Do You Know What I'm Seeing? It's Pretty. Odd.

“I support SGA/MGA and trans aces but—“

No. Stop there, because I guarantee that whatever comes after will completely invalidate that whole “support” bit.

Because you don’t support SGA/MGA and trans aces. Not in word and not in deed, and you won’t until you take a radically new approach to the way you treat the entire a-spec community.

Because, see, here’s the thing: even when you bother to specify the targets of your nastiness as cis and het aces/aros—and make no mistake, you frequently DO NOT remember to make that distinction, and we do notice—we, the ~respectable~ aces, the ones you claim to protect? We still hear you, and we still know that we are but a hair away from being included in the list of people you hate, when we are not explicitly included anyway. And we know that it is only our SGA/MGA or trans identity that keeps us “safe,” not respect for our aceness. Our aceness is always disrespected, always ignored, always unwelcome, and you reinforce that fact every damn time you open your mouths. And so long as you continue to make it clear that our asexuality is unworthy of consideration in this community, that we must fracture and divide and neglect vital parts of our identities, you create a community in which we are not welcome, regardless of what you say to the contrary.

We hear every nasty, vicious, hateful, damaging thing you say, and we know when we hear it that you’d be saying it to us, too, if you could get away with it. Hell, sometimes you DO say it to us.

When my LGBT+ community rallied around the woman who raped me because I “misled” her when I came out as ace, when they protected her and dismissed my assault, I was made unsafe and unwelcome in my community.

When I proposed a fight against a corrective therapy facility which I had been forced to attend and was dismissed from the movement because, as an ace, I really just wasn’t a sympathetic victim, I was made unsafe and unwelcome in my community.

When one of yours sends death threats to aces and the rest of you circle the wagons to defend and endorse him, I am made unsafe and unwelcome in my community.

When you extend understanding and support for the corrective rape I experienced as a lesbian but dismiss the rape I experienced as an ace, I am made unsafe and unwelcome in my community.

When you suddenly forget that there has always been a call for non-sexual LGBT+ spaces when I mention that, as an ace lesbian, they would be a hugely important resource for me, I am made unsafe and unwelcome in my community.

When the gendered and ableist slurs you defended me against as a lesbian become weapons in your mouth against me as an ace, I am made unsafe and unwelcome in my community.

When one of yours sends messages to aces telling them to kill themselves, and you support them in this, I am made unsafe and unwelcome in my community.

When you portray aces as lazy moochers out to steal your resources, neglecting both the years of work that aces have already done to create those resources and the need we have for them in return, I am made unsafe and unwelcome in my community.

When you fail to acknowledge that my asexuality intersects with my lesbianism to create a unique identity with unique experiences and needs, and try to paint me as “just a lesbian, no other issues” I am made unsafe and unwelcome in my community.

When your relentless attempts to keep aces out of the community leads you to redefine terms and the community itself in ways that exclude and devalue its members, and accept that as a tolerable sacrifice for keeping the aces out, I am made unsafe and unwelcome in my community.

When every last argument you have for why I don’t belong rests solely on the exclusion and dismissal of my ace identity, when I am forced to excise it from my life in order to fit into the seat you’ve reserved for me at the table, I am made unsafe and unwelcome in my community.

When you invade our tags and communities and gathering places to remind us, lest we ever forget, how much you hate us and want us to go away, you are saying it to all of us, and I am made unsafe and unwelcome in BOTH my communities.

The net result of this, for me, is that I have nowhere to go, nowhere to turn. I am a vulnerable, poor, mentally ill, gender-questioning lesbian survivor of sexual assault, corrective rape, conversion therapy, and forced institutionalization, living in a deeply conservative religious state. I am on the knife’s edge of survival, and I am going it alone. The local community has made it very clear that as long as I am ace, I am unwelcome. I cannot access those resources without being subjected to rape, assault, corrective therapy, or apologism for all of the above. I cannot turn to digital communities—the LGBT+ communities do not want me, or will not extend their support to include my asexuality. I cannot access those resources without wading through an endless torrent of messages that will remind exactly how hated people like me are. I cannot turn to A-spec online communities because they, too, are filled to the brim with that same hate. For every post that might give me the motivation not to kill myself there are 100 urging me to do so.

I am alone, I am isolated, I am cut off from the support structures designed to help me, and I cannot see a future where that isn’t the case. I have asked myself too often—if I die, if I am killed, if I kill myself, if I am lost to a system that wants to destroy or remake me, if I become another statistic, will they mourn the lesbian? Or shrug off the loss of an ace? I don’t want to find out. We should never have to find out.

baby pete

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