So we’re seeing a resurgence of exclusionary rhetoric- and most of this is on Twitter, but I think it’s time to unpack what happened during the “ace discourse” as well- because this stuff will happen again.
These are just the examples I can remember off the top of my head- but they’re good things to watch out for.
Echo chambers: Over the course of the first year especially, exclusionists would form tight-knit groups and private chats (especially over Discord). They would invite people into these groups and suck them in pretty intensely, creating environments where only one way of thinking was allowed. People who disagreed would often be mocked and harassed back into conformity.
Avoiding Criticism: Any comparison of exclusionist rhetoric to some more “legitimate” form of bigotry was usually met with the claim “why are so many of us [targeted group] then?” Oftentimes they would point to exclusionists claiming to be trans women or people of color, later found out to be fabricated by cis and white people. Exclusionists also tended to put “TERFs do not interact” and similar statements in blog descriptions or on TERFy posts in order to avoid comparisons to TERF rhetoric.
Targeting Allyship: Communities would be pit against each other in order to discourage allyship with the ace community. The most successful example is the way lesbians were encouraged to see aces as “a lesbophobic community”, the effects of which linger today. They also attempted to pit the bi community against us, and the autistic community.
Targeting Language: Exclusionists often targeted the language the A-spec community used; “allo” came under fire for being “homophobic” and “lumping people in with their oppressors”, “a-spec” was said to have originated as a term for the autism spectrum (a blatant lie), and even pointing out similarities to TERFs came under fire- again for “lumping people in with their oppressors”.
Targeting Community History: Asexual history (which is by nature also aromatic history) came under intense scrutiny; any prominent figures or spaces were now considered “too problematic” (like David Jay and AVEN), and longstanding history was actively erased; while folks claimed that asexual history had begun with the inception of AVEN in the early 2000′s, ignoring documented history as far back as the 70′s at least.
Erasing Community Definitions: A popular tactic was to claim that a word “had no real definition” and thus couldn’t be legitimate. Exclusionists often compiled seemingly conflicting definitions of core words like “asexuality”, always given by unofficial sources and either allos, or baby aces. Official definitions and sources were erased entirely.
“A Danger to the Community”: A core tenant of all exclusionist movements is that the group they’re excluding is “a danger to the community”. They’re “stealing resources” which usually cannot be described or quantified, nor are they actually limited- they’re “invading”, they “think it’s just a club”, they’ll “make us harder to accept”, etc.
Character Assassination: Anyone who spoke up about asexuality had their every action put under unreasonably scrutiny, and accusations were often slapped on with minimal prompting. Most often used were “lesbophobe” and “pedophile”; ever disagree with a lesbian? Now you’re a lesbophobe. Ever interact with someone under the age of 18? Now you’re a pedophile.
“Think of the Children!”: The ace communtiy was said to be “sexualizing children”, citing the fact that some young people identified as ace, and the belief that nobody should be thinking about sex or sexual orientation until legal adulthood. This often lead to people claiming aces were “pedophiles” just because of their identity.
Belittling Trauma: Aces were often asked to lay out the oppression they’d faced and trauma they’d experienced for exclusionists to pick over and “validate”- pretty much always, the end result was that exclusionists tried to convince the person in question that their trauma wasn’t real, or was “misdirected” and thus didn’t actually hurt them.
Harassment Campaigns: Exclusionists would often find one person to target as a community, with the end goal being that they leave the site, shut down their blog, or far worse. A wave of harassment would come over one person at a time, in asks and mentions and all over everything they’d posted recently. We’d see dogpiling, basic insults and bullying, mocking, targeted bigotry (like ableism) etc.- and well as…
Suicide Baiting: Exclusionists would often “jokingly” suicide bait people they disagreed with, aces in particular, and I remember one ace blogger citing this harassment as a reason they eventually did take their own life.
Sexual Harassment: Aces were often targeted with sexual harassment as if it might “fix” their orientations, or just as a malicious way to hurt them. Sexual jokes, sexual insults, etc. were thrown at aces, many of them children or teens.
Grooming of Minors: Within their own communities, exclusionists often took advantage of their status, their weaponization of the term “pedophile” against others to make themselves appear safe, and the normalization of sexual jokes and comments within their communities to single out and groom minors. Minors were often roped into sexual spaces or conversations with predatory adults.
What eventually started to shut “the discourse” down and dissolve this movement was diligent de-platforming. People were encouraged to blog exclusionists on site, blocklists were circulated, we were discouraged from reblogging any post with an exclusionist on it, etc.- Instead we would make our own posts in response to their points, and screenshot theirs if needed.
Over time, this genuinely did work- and while we’re still recovering from “the discourse” to this day, we are at least in the process of recovering now.
