#acespec discourse

[flip-flopping-frede]

How do you advocate for something that doesn’t even exist, lol. How do you advocate for awareness of an identity that gets no awareness? I have no statistics, oppression, or evidence of erasure because there is no awareness in the first place. So far, I have believed I need community organization and community support/community unity to accomplish anything, but…how do you organize and foster support for a community that hates itself?

Lithros, frayros, and fraysexuals, you have to want awareness too.

Self-pity, hating yourself, hating being lithro/fray is not going to result in change. It is ok to not like being lithro/fray. It is ok if you can find 0 good things about being this way. However, please understand that we are misunderstood and lack community because people with platforms who can raise awareness for us choose not to. They blatantly exclude lithros/frayros from awareness, which hurts us. Awareness is essential for education on our label (people discovering themselves) and acceptance (which is seems our community desperately needs—to be ok with being lithro/fray).

Please care about this.

[lifenconcepts]

hot take but. Before people were fucking about with terms and stuff, old movies had WAYY more deep platonic connections that could be mistaken for romance and stuff. Not that they had romantic or sexual tension but like.. people nowadays look at two characters glance at eachother and think ‘wow. They should fuck’ but a room of guys would stare at some guy tenderly holding another guy on tv because he had a nightmare and think ‘wow. What a very sweet moment with absolutely no other connotations other than deep respect and sincerity.’

just think that’s neat.

[miitopia-cake]

I wish some aces would stop excluding other aces with complex sexual experiences. like I get why but you have to realize that being ace does not mean they don't enjoy sexual experiences and it's weird when you complain about allo people and boil it down to "people who have sexual experiences" and also shame people for their sex life and kinks as if your own community doesnt INCLUDE those people. because there are other aces out there who still masturbate, who feel sexually attracted to their own body, who barely experiences sexual attraction but still enjoys sex, who like consuming sexual media, who like sfw kink. being ace is so so much more complex than just "disliking sex". and also aromantic exclusionism in the same genre of posts is something i see a lot. especially aro allos. I hate hate hate seeing a community that SHOULD be inclusive boil down sexuality and exclude people.

[eightglass]

hooooooly fuck did i actually just come across some ace discourse. in 2025. "demisexual isn't a sexuality" "demi isn't queer" "asexuality isn't queer" come the fuck on. what happened to using whatever labels feel comfortable? so what if a hetero-aspec person feels queer about it? so what if they don't? none of your business. doesn't hurt anyone.

"they think it's queer to not want to fuck anyone" "they invented a hundred terms for minute differences in attraction so they can say they're being oppressed when someone says that's stupid" shut up shut up shut upppp

[flip-flopping-frede]

This is another example of how this is a missed opportunity to raise awareness. Although the comments were turned on, so people could help anyone who asked, at least 1k people saw this poll, since there are 1k votes. There is also not a results/other option for people who are not on the asexual spectrum and still saw this, so this post was probably seen quite a bit more than 1k, not to mention all the questioning people who didn’t vote.

To show what would have made an impact in terms of acespec awareness, especially fraysexual awareness, this is a link to a post https://www.tumblr.com/cristi-makes-userboxes/767050421599617024/acespec-userboxes that takes the time to define the labels they mention in their post. Assuming everyone knows what these labels mean, even if you have seen them defined before, frequently, is a privileged perspective. Especially if you are asexual, there is starting to be more noticeable awareness, education, acceptance, representation, and pride in being asexual. In most social media spaces, you can find an ace community as well. All labels on the asexual spectrum do not have this same level of awareness, education, pride, community-establishment, etc. Especially the asexual label. Let this poll be an example that acespec awareness matters. Not everyone’s label gets education when polls like this are reblogged and contain no education within the post. Not everyone’s label gets raised awareness for by relabeling Asexual Spectrum Awareness Week to “ace week” and only focusing on ace celebration, memes, and pride, and neglecting acespec awareness altogether.

reblog for a bigger portion size

[flip-flopping-frede]

Update and disclaimer:

I have tried and have not finished going through the fraysexual hashtag. However, I have reported more posts as spam under this tag than I had to report as spam under the frayromantic tag. There are more polls too. Someone has tagged the history of the ace flag + word origin of the asexual label under the fraysexual tag…and then, these kinds of posts which are not fraysexual related get boosted under the fraysexual tag.

Tell me why the fraysexual community is supposed to care about asexual history when the ace community doesn’t care about the fraysexual community, makes no effort to raise awareness for the fraysexual community, and actively harms/makes it harder for the fraysexual community to get awareness by doing things like relabeling Asexual Spectrum Awareness Week to “ace week”? It’s frustrating bc you all seem to have no problem with demi awareness, inclusion, education, etc, which is why the demi option on these polls I am re blogging is so high.

Moving on, some other things I have noticed in the fraysexual tag so far is how people, particularly uneducated aces (it seems) will do things like “@/user” is an exclusionist! They believe [exclusionist rhetoric]. Or, I literally saw a post where someone was like “telling someone I was asexual was emotionally draining/hard enough for me. Now, I’m just grasping how vast the asexual spectrum is! Wow. Omg”. Posts like that aren’t fraysexual related and shouldn’t be tagged in the fraysexual label. Keep the fraysexual tag out of posts like that, because it comes across as “gawking” at fraysexuals and treating them like a zoo animal for being so different for you. Maybe if fraysexual awareness, inclusion, and education was normalized, grasping how diverse the asexual spectrum is (and why the ace community needs to do a better job with awareness for acespec labels) wouldn’t be such a surprise.

In other words, I reported a lot of posts as spam. Another thing that was lowkey pissing me off was the art. The only fraysexual art I had seen was bulk/collection posts, where they have tons of labels and do tons of tags, which ultimately boosts their posts. Although it was disheartening to see to posts like this as the only fraysexual art, I really didn’t like how fraysexual was portrayed as the last option, or sometimes even literally “smaller” than other acespec/aspec/queer art options. It really seems to be communicating a vibe of “insignificant” or how fraysexual was quite literally “barely included”, and is the first to be excluded (since it is the last option). How are fraysexuals supposed to feel pride in their identity when it’s treated like this? And if labels like asexual already have the privilege of having the most awareness out of all acespec labels, why are you making them the biggest, first, and most prominent option? When is the fraysexual community feeling included and welcome going to matter? When is pride in fraysexual going to matter? Can we stop spamming the fraysexual tag too on ace posts, while we are at it?

Bottom line: I haven’t witnessed any fraysexual pride (from fraysexuals) on tumblr. I have seen artists, sellers, and aces spamming the fraysexual tag with irrelevant or depressing content, which I have done my best to report those posts as spam so far. This culture needs to change; amplify fraysexual voices and fraysexual-focused art instead of focusing on the maximum number of notes for your blog.

Disclaimer: don’t harass anyone whose content I am reblogging. If they want to read my reblog, they will. Otherwise, it’s probably best to just accept these people don’t have empathy or don’t care about/value acespec/fraysexual awareness. Keep in mind 1) there’s still self-hatred about being asexual. Someone who hates themselves cannot uplift others in their community. 2) the garlic bread culture. There’s a non-serious, silly, “joke” culture that makes it difficult for aces to have serious discussions. Not saying this is an excuse for no acespec awareness or fraysexual exclusion; I am saying some people are not willing to listen or willing to have discussions like this. Do not harass anyone. You may agree or disagree with me on my blog.

[lgbtransgirl]

Referencing old queer discourse but I'm not arguing anything

I know I post a lot about queer discourse but goddamn, but back in around 2014 I remember the big thing I kept seeing was the Dual/Split Attraction Model where people were saying that your romantic and sexual attraction can't be seperate/different and I was so confused cause like... What about Ace people that liked sex? That seemed like smoking gun evidence IMO

It was all just so confusing because it felt like a "Wait why wouldn't this be the case?" When I was first realizing I was queer

Wait I'm just now realizing this, is that why Ace discourse was so big right after that era of the internet?

[cannibalistic-deer]

It baffles me that I've seen people say "Alastor is canonically sex and touch repulsed" as a reason people "shouldn't" be shipping Alastor sexually/romantically.

Why assume that the sex repulsion applies to every relationship in his life, permanently? Some aces are sex favorable, or may develop more favorable feelings for specific people, even if otherwise repulsed.

And the same applies to touch repulsion. That's such a weak argument. Alastor canonically, and very clearly, is okay with or possibly even enjoys touch in specific situations. He does seem to be touch repulsed in general, but again, there are specific people it doesn't apply to. (Rosie is the best example, since with anyone else it is more brief, but Rosie touches him, and is the one initiating that, frequently.)

All types of attraction, or comfort levels with different manners of affection, are fluid. This isn't ever an excuse to invalidate real people who are telling you their identities, but it does mean that assumptions really can't be made about what a person would or wouldn't do.

And this type of thinking is what really leads to invalidating real people, because even if you think "being asexual means never having sexual attraction," and then an ace person shares that they think they might have experienced sexual attraction at some point but still identify as ace... then you have to be open to that. You cannot put sexualities in boxes. This applies to all sexualities.

I'm a fictive of Alastor myself, and I am sex repulsed, so I understand the discomfort, but I also understand that people are not harming any real, living person by making fanworks where Alastor is having sex. It also doesn't mean they're inherently rejecting his asexuality.

If people want to ignore Alastor being aroace completely, that's different. Alastor is canonically aroace (or asexual at minimum), and he always will be. But jumping to conclusions about what people think because you're too naive and stubborn to understand that sexuality and attraction doesn't fit into tidy little boxes is harmful and is a way of thinking that must be changed.

This became longer than intended because I was mostly thinking about the "Alastor is touch repulsed to everyone!" claims some people make, which are frankly incompatible with canon. But the rest of this post is also true.

[flip-flopping-frede]

I want to try an experiment.

Pretend you are fraysexual. This is just an exercise; don’t overthink it. So, you are fraysexual. You search the fraysexual tag on tumblr, and this is one of the top posts, and one of the only art posts with a fraysexual flag. (Incase you don’t know, the fraysexual flag is the blue, light blue, white, and gray flag. 💙🩵🤍🩶

Do you notice where the fraysexual flag is? Again, this is one of the top pieces of art content under the tag. The fraysexual design is dead last.

Not only is it dead last, 1, fraysexual’s opposite, demisexual, is prominently featured as a larger size, along with other labels that frequently get awareness, like the asexual and greysexual labels.

The demisexual label is a label for people who experience secondary sexual attraction. The fraysexual is a label for people who experience primary sexual attraction. Making a label for acespecs who experience secondary attraction prominent, in addition to providing 2 options, and presenting the opposite (fraysexual) as dead last, smaller, and only having one option, is blatant inequality in how these directly connected acespec labels are presented.

Back to our exercise. Do you, as a fraysexual, feel empowered by this post? Does this post make you feel pride in your identity as a fraysexual person? Friendly reminder this is how this author (and others) see you and your community. Insignificant, small, not worth a second design, probably wouldn’t give a second thought if they didn’t include you.

The reason why I get so frustrated by this is because these posts get boosted to the top of the tag because they get so much engagement. When in reality, I would argue posts like this are harmful to the fraysexual community and directly contribute to a lack of fray pride.

Apparently, people are reading my posts, and I am not venting into the void. Dear author, if you read this, thank you for taking the time to create designs for so many labels. I never report any art I see as spam. I think any and all fraysexual art is precious.

With that being said, if you have the time and energy, it would be much better to do an individual, fraysexual-only focused post for any fraysexual art you do. It’s not just your art; I’m only using your art as an example. All of the fraysexual art I have seen so far has been bulk/collection posts like this that have been boosted to the top of the tag. Art that is not fraysexual focused, or even seems to be fraysexual “un-focused”, can be depressing and make it harder for fraysexuals to have pride in their identity. Fraysexual isn’t just a name on the list to check off so you get the maximum number of engagement or seem like an inclusive platform; fraysexuals are real people who exist and struggle with having any pride in being fraysexual. Asexual, demisexual, greysexual, and aegosexual are not “more important” than other labels. The alloromantic asexual flag (that is never used by aces; they just use the ace flag) and aroace flag (which got 2 options) are not more important than fraysexual on an acespec focused post.

Thank you for creating art for so many labels, and also, please consider being mindful of things when you are creating art for a diverse community that has inequalities in awareness and discrimination of some labels within the community.

💜 Happy Ace Week! 💜

Have a master post of all my ace-spec pokemon stickers. I’m always looking to add more on, so suggestions are welcome.

If you would like to support a queer artist, you can find these designs here!

[thund3randrain]

“It’s fine to ship Yelena with people bc aroace people can also have sex and be in relationships-”

I am putting you in a meat grinder and making you into spaghetti bolognese, which I will share happily with my aroace moots who are also tired of this shit

[healingmoth]

so hopefully what we all learn from JK Rowling starting to go after asexual people is that when we bully or exclude queer people in our own communities we make this discourse popular enough for it to eventually spread to homophobes, right?

This is not the first time I've heard people outside the community parroting Ace Discourse talking points either. One of my sister's friend's parents believed that it was a form of social contagion when her son came out as asexual. She said very similar things to people online that I've seen. My mom had to talk her down and discuss it with her, but yeah.

Ace Discourse breached containment a few years ago. They have some of these talking points because of acephobes on this website starting discourse and invalidating peoples' asexuality. When a transphobe as notorious as her starts parroting these points, please know that you fucked up.

When you make fun of poly people or people with neopronouns you're making it more likely for homophobes and transphobes outside our community to spread hate and violence against small, vulnerable communities. I don't care if you think it's cringe or a phase or whatever, don't give homophobes ammo and stand with other queer people, even ones you don't understand/don't like/don't agree with.

[justcallmemrslupin]

Remus Lupin is Canonically Straight!

(And aroace coded)

Many people ship canonically straight characters and that's fine. Everyone has their fantasies, fetiches and favourite tropes. But when it comes to Remus Lupin, some people — Marauders fans again, of course 🙄— say he's implied to be gay or bi in canon.

Let me just correct you right there: No. he's not. He's actually heavily implied to be grey aroace. I'm sorry, ship what you want but this is not a matter of Interpretation. It is what it is. Full stop.

So, let’s sit down, pour some tea, and straighten out a few things (pun not intended, but I’ll take it):

Remus John Lupin is canonically straight.

• He had a mild crush on Lily Evans (stated by J.K. Rowling in an interview).

• He fell in love with and married Nymphadora Tonks. He had never fallen in love before! Never.

His romantic arc is exclusively with women.

His official biography states that he had never fallen in love before Tonks. If you’re still arguing, you’re not arguing with an interpretation. You’re arguing with a direct statement. That’s not canon-adjacent. That’s just canon.

David Thewlis is a brilliant actor — and a notorious joker.

He’s witty. He’s playful. He cracked a joke about Lupin being gay because Cuarón (the director) told him to play the character like a “gay junkie.”

Everyone on set laughed. Because it was a joke. It was behind-the-scenes direction and performance.

The metaphor of lycanthropy is about stigma.

Specifically, J.K. Rowling said it represents “the stigma surrounding blood-borne diseases such as AIDS.”

That’s about how society treats people, not a metaphor for queerness.

(Side note: Not all people with AIDS are gay, and not all gay people have AIDS — let’s not regress 40 years in our public understanding.)

Remus as queer representation

You know who else is emotionally repressed, guilt-ridden, touch-starved, and awkward around romance? Aroace people.

If anything, canon leans toward grey aroace, not toward any gay or bi reading.

He spent most of his life avoiding love, never fell in love until his mid-30s, and struggled with intimacy due to trauma and internalized stigma. That’s aroace spectrum, baby.

So... Just write your fanfics and be happy. But let people who apreciate canon and who seek true representation be happy too.

[flip-flopping-frede]

There are many things I want to address in this post. However, first and foremost:

This poll is not representative of how many people who use this labels exist. This poll is an accurate representation of how much awareness these labels get.

Now that that is out of the way, I want everyone to note how this post originated from an aromantic account, not an asexual account. Again, it was an aromantic account that was interested in something community and awareness related.

However, because this post originated from an aro platform, I believe that had an impact on the amount of visibility this poll got. Not a major impact, but an impact nonetheless. If this poll originated from an ace platform, that might have helped the chances of this poll having more awareness. Another thing to note is how the replies were turned off. A lot of these terms may have been the first time people had ever seen them. If there is no awareness, education, acceptance, or pride for the fraysexual label, and instead, you see the ace community being hyper-inclusive and dismissive of fraysexual awareness, by saying things like “fraysexual is included under asexual!” And “fraysexual is a microlabel”, then obviously, 1. People who feel they are fraysexual will just use the asexual label and 2. Who wants to raise awareness for a microlabel? Even though fraysexual and demisexual are opposites of each other, selectively calling fraysexual a microlabel, and not demisexual, hurts fraysexual awareness, fraysexual pride, and fraysexual. Who is going to be proud of their label if they believe it is a microlabel?

There’s discrimination against microlabels—we openly see it; aspecs say “I don’t want to use a microlabel 😣” or “I don’t want to have to explain my microlabel 😣”. Someone who doesn’t care about your identity (as someone on the asexual spectrum) in the first place is not going to give a shit what you identify as; they will continue to remain as willfully ignorant for as long as possible. We saw it in the 2024 election; people don’t care about other people, they only care about themselves. They will only start to care when things affect them personally.

💆🏽‍♀️

Moving on: Again, comments being turned off seemed like a…harmful choice by this author. For many of these labels, this may have been the first time they were being seen/being raised awareness for. If the author “didn’t feel like” putting the definitions on this post, at least turning on comments, so other people could define these terms, would have been helpful. This is a link to a bill acespec post: https://www.tumblr.com/cristi-makes-userboxes/767050421599617024/acespec-userboxes where the author made an effort to define these terms in the caption.

The author of this poll, who I believe had also created at least one arospec poll like this, NOT defining these terms in their caption, AND turning off comments, seemed irresponsible at best and lacking empathy/understanding, or creating this post with more selfish/self-centored intentions (dopamine) at worst. It kind of shows the privilege of this author—as someone who appears to use the aromantic label, they probably were under the assumption that “everyone knows what aromantic means” or they didn’t need to define it. To be fair, I absolutely support self-education, or people educating themselves. However, aspec awareness, arospec awareness, and acespec awareness is not something to be petty or “underachieving” or fuck around with.

People who discriminate against "microlabels”, and people who lack empathy and want to continue to remain ignorant and uneducated, are going to weaponize polls like this to justify not giving fraysexuals awareness. I’ve seen people create polls like this involving fraysexuals in bad faith with the intention to negatively judge the fraysexual community/ use it to justify their discrimination/ choosing to exclude fraysexuals from awareness.

Regarding the fraysexuals themselves who see this post—I can’t imagine how difficult it is to avoid internalizing shit like this, especially if you are not taking into account 1) the author preventing education of all of these labels by not providing the definitions in the captions and turning off comments 2) the lack of awareness for fraysexuals that already exists, making the results biased because awareness of acespec identities is not equal 3) this poll was most likely reposted by those who had high numbers in this poll, skewing the results. If this post was reposted by all discovered fraysexuals, those results again probably would have been skewed.

Pretty sure that's everything I had to say on this. i wish I could say that this poll: https://www.tumblr.com/aces-and-anime/708810540140691456/aces-of-tumblr having 2k+ reblogs, and this post I am reblogging having 200+ reblogs really shows where the ace community’s priorities are (and what they value—which does not seem to acespec awareness), but I’m trying to be mindful of how this post originated from an aro-presenting account and not an ace one.

[srcbias]

i don't normally post much on here behind just reblogging silly haha memes, but if you're not aware, the #asexual tag on tumblr has been swarmed by bot accounts trying to sell stuff.

It'd be really great if you could take a few minutes to report all the bot posts in the asexual tag

An online space for a marginalised group is not real estate for commercialism :]

[pep-rambles]

While I can't speak for other Alastor ships (but I'll tag you all and you can weigh in). But in the RadioApple/DuckieDeer fandom a lot of those making fanwork, including the smuttier stuff, are acespec/arospec themselves so maybe learn what is actually going on in these fandoms before try to gatekeep in their tags

[lilyrosegold]

To those who counter any general discomfort people have with aro and/or ace characters being shipped romantically or sexually with “but aro and aces can still date/have sex/be in relationships”- that’s is true but, do you actually care about the complexities and nuance of navigating romance and/or sex as someone who falls on the aroace spectrum or are you just looking for an easy way to not get hate for blatantly ignoring a character’s identity in favor of your shipping?