#fuckthat

GOODBYE QUIZ BEE U WERE MY WORST NIGHTMARE

Eugh, here we go again.

Okay, my end goal isn’t “Aces do their own thing away from LGBT people.” My end goal is “Aces stop spreading fucked up shit that hurts LGBT people and also other ace people.” Let’s not forget that LGBT people have two type of spaces–LGBT spaces and uhhhh the rest of the world. Just because something happens outside of LGBT spaces doesn’t mean it stops affecting us or being an LGBT issue.

Ace Awareness Week means spreading ace ideals, many of which are antithetical to both feminist and LGBT activism, rhetoric, and culture. Aces having a week to scream about the split attraction model, how healthy it is to have sex without sexual attraction (and how wanting to have sex with someone isn’t sexual attraction), or how 7 year olds can call themselves ace if they want to doesn’t… help LGBT people just because it’s not being marketed by all aces as an LGBT thing (though many aces ARE promoting AAW as an extension of LGBT pride).

Aces screaming about their non-sexual kinks, queerplatonic friendships, and totally real oppression while we watch Trump pretty much decree that trans people are fucked for the rest of his term if not the rest of our lives distracts from the real issues.

And, yeah, I am saying that most aces issues–as they are framed by ace people–aren’t Real Issues. Or at least real ace issues. Reframing rape culture, ableism, misogyny, and misdirected homophobia as anything other than rape culture, ableism, misogyny, and misdirected homophobia takes away from those issues and makes it harder to fix them. Rebranding actual issues as New And Improved Oppression distracts and derails conversations that were already happening in order to validate someone’s need to feel extra special. All of these issues on their own–expectations of sex, the forced narrative of heterosexual marriage–are real issues but the ace take on them misses the real point. And makes it harder to address them.

I don’t have time to flit around and pretend I’m okay with hordes of people looking to hog the spotlight for a week when their incessant need to make everything about themselves is hurting other people. I don’t want to validate people who act like rape isn’t awful enough unless you can classify it as a hate crime (corrective rape) or think the way to solve the problem of oversexualization in society is to create classes of “sexual” and “non-sexual.”

I don’t stand for anything the ace community stands for. I don’t stand for how the ace community tries to take larger problems and make them about them.

I am here for dialogues about how sex shouldn’t be expected of anyone, how you’re allowed to never want sex or only want sex of your own terms, and how living a life as a single person is absolutely as liberating and fulfilling as dating is but those aren’t issues we need to be made aware of in the context of aceness.

There are no ace issues, just issues aces try to make about themselves.

There is nothing to aware off in terms of asexuality that I think helps LGBT people or helps vulnerable people when it comes to issues of sex and romance. I wish all of the effort that went into crafting asexuality as an identity went into actual sexual + consent education as opposed to convoluted micro-identity politics. When they pretend rape culture and everything else are ace issues we need to be aware of, we take away from the fact that those are ubiquitous problems with more insidious causes than “allosexism” with a lot more fucking nuance (ie you think you’re hated for not wanting sex or only wanting sex with people you aren’t into? boy HOWDY try having sex and seeing how much fucking hate you get then). 

This is my definitive Ace Discourse Take. I don’t support the ace community as it is or any efforts at “activism” or “awareness” they undertake because they ideals they are spreading hurt just about everything you can think of. I live my life knowing people want people like me to die for having sexual feelings or romantic desires. I don’t have time to handhold some cishets (or even some LGBT people) who think they’re extra special because they think bullying is oppression or because they think they’re the only ones who receive flack for their sex lives or lack thereof. Sex is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t issue for all marginalized groups.

Until the ace community understands systemic oppression, what rape culture actually is, and stops the martyr complex, fuck their awareness weeks. No one is attacking their right survive the way actual LGBT people are being attacked right now and this is just the fucking beginning, okay?