#ace discourse i guess

[colorisbyshe]

I do think it's funny that whenever the muddy remains of ace discourse float before my eyes, it's always something like "Trans people are being attacked now more than ever, which is why we need to STICK TOGETHER! Infighting is tearing us apart when we should be standing together!"

And it's like... the irony is wholly missed.

Yes, LGBT people (mostly trans people but cis LGB people, too) are being attacked right now. Which is why advocating that we divert time, money, and any other resources (even just mental bandwidth) on asexuality and aromanticism is wasteful and harming the cause. Because, notably, aces and aros aren't under attack right now.

There are no LGBT-specific resources needed for the interpersonal hardships aces an aros are having (because that's what y'all are facing--individuals being cruel to you on individual levels). An oppressor (cishet aces, cishet aros, cis aroaces) DEMANDING resources from those they oppress, AS they are being attacked by other groups, is just furthering said oppression.

Everyone is right. We shouldn't be wasting energy on ace discourse. We shouldn't be wasting energy on asexuality or aromanticism at all. Aces, aros, get your shit together and fix your own problems. And then when you realize that only takes 5 minutes of fixing boundaries with the people around you, spend the rest of your time being better allies to LGBT people. That is the ONLY way you can actually help the community.

Advocating for ace and aro inclusion while LGBT people are facing violence and legislative discrimination (which is violent, I realize I'm being redundant) is the infighting you guys complain about so much. YOU are the derailment. You are the problem. It's you.

[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.

[coolaidstain]

TIL that theres aphobes on Tumblr trying to claim that Jughead Jones has actually been gay coded the whole time and that saying he's ace is homophobic I fucking hate it here

[kaninchen-reblogs]

I’m not entirely sure how to word this correctly cuz brain currently scrampled egg but I feel like being on the aro/ace spectrum as a transfem is incredibly frustrating when the majority of online transfem spaces are very hypersexual

Like on one hand, trans women are constantly told by society that they’re undesirable except when they’re objectified and chased, so the act of taking their sexualization into their own hands is super important and I’m legitimately glad that trans girls can find spaces online where they can be unabashedly horny in a liberating way.

On the other hand, you can’t look up “transgender” on this site without getting 80% porn bots and 20% discourse, I can’t share [animal]girl[bodypart] blogs to my ace friends without them being jumpscared by the most recent post being uncensored explicit imagery, and a big chunk of the online white anglo-centric transfem culture now is being super horny, alongside NEET-posting, blahaj, and striped socks.

Like I’m on the ace spectrum but I’m sex-positive and not bothered by the horny stuff so it doesn’t affect me too much. But I cannot imagine how alienating it must feel to be aromatic, asexual, and/or sex-repulsed as a transfem and your only other option is the sanitized, infantilized “uwu im anxious eepy baby with shark plush” meme-space. And I’m aware that HRT affects libido — ever since I started it, it’s definitely gone up, so I can’t blame people for needing an outlet.

I mean I guess that speaks to how you can never be “truly” inclusive in a space because something will always be exclusive to another person. Idk I just wish the world was safer for transfems from all walks of life, and there were more spaces for us to be proud of ourselves without it falling into “super horny”, “discourse”, or “ultra-sanitized”.

[immortalarizona]

for pride month I am haviiiiing. an itty bitty gender crisis

[ionlyeveraskedquestions]

idk who needs to hear this but ace people can, in fact, kiss

[sanyu-thewitch05]

Both LGBT people and straight people were jumping on this black asexual women. Mainly saying she couldn’t be asexual because she’s wearing fetish gear(like since when did asexuals have a dress code). In both the quotes and replies. Plus they were asking, “what right do asexuals not have?”

Either way, I think it’s time we had a discussion about asexuality leaving the LGBT community and forming a community of our own and making exclusive organizations that just support US(Asexuals). Because it’s pretty clear the rest of the LGBT doesn’t want us, and I’m not going to waste my time around people who don’t want us.

Here’s Yasmin’s Instagram if you want to support: https://instagram.com/theyasminbenoit?igshid=MTIzZWMxMTBkOA==

[nat-20s]

IDK i just feel like

actively sexual Jon Sims 🤝 skinny Martin Blackwood

-go against what is VERY strongly implied to be canon and can be interestingly explored in fanworks that actually go into depth about the character’s relationship with their sexuality/body and I have seen some works that do in fact do that and are amazing but often instead of that, at best, a lazy excuse is thrown in to justify making these characters more “palatable” for established norms even though literally 99% of all popular characters (including the majority of characters IN TMA) are either canonically or mainly interpreted to be non sex averse and thin and you can literally just pick one of those characters for smut/drawing only “““conventionally attractive”“ people

[the-fear]

As an aro person, I’m not unfamiliar with the fact that canonically aspec characters are few and far between, but the way that some people regard people shipping arospec and acespec characters is kind of annoying.

Like you do realise that fanon shipping isn’t always going to reflect canon, right? Shippers aren’t erasing canonically aroace characters by shipping them with others. If characters are aroace in canon, they will most likely continue to be so* even if fans shipped them with other characters.

The way that some people regard aroace characters as “off-limits” from shipping when their orientations are confirmed in canon also ignores the fact that some (e.g. romance/sex favourable/indifferent, partnering, oriented, angled) aroace people do in fact choose to enter romantic/sexual relationships regardless of their orientation.

Also, fandom is pretty much built on non-canonical ships. Some of the largest early slash ships were between characters who were textually straight (or at least not textually percieved as non-straight). It didn’t matter if those ships didn’t become canon, because you can enjoy fanon/headcanons without wanting them to become canon!

I can of course agree though that fandoms are on the whole extremely amatonormative/allonormative, especially with tropes like “everyone has a soulmate” or “Pair the Spares” or “more than friends”, so it can be annoying to see canonically aroace characters treated in that way. However, this is a wider issue not just acertaining to fandom but to pretty much all popular media, so it would be unwise to blame only shippers for the abysmal lack of aspec representation. Instead of focusing on what characters “should” and “should not” be shipped together, maybe the focus should be on creating fandom communities where shipping is not the only goal.

*(of course, there is the problem of aroace characters’ identities being erased in canon, for example Jughead Jones from the Archie comics, but this was an unfortunately terrible choice made by the producers of Riverdale, not by fans of the Archie comics. There is a very significant difference between characters’ identites being erased in canon and fans making alternate fanon versions of characters, and I hope you all can recognise which is worse for aspec representation and knowledge of aspec experiences within wider culture.)

[gibbearish]

anyone else experience the thing where you have like. ships in law. like someone you follow is turbo into a pairing from a media you know nothing about so youre like. well guess this is our ship now

[jacketrepresents]

the very dumb things tumblr users are saying about rap weirdly surprised me bc i distinctly remember those ideas being combated on here in like 2014-15. which ofc i know that’s not how ideology or social media work and obviously people still hold those views but this one has like stayed completely off my radar since then, unlike exhausted discourse subjects #1-78 which have all reared their ugly heads in my vicinity once in a blue moon

[empyrangel]

Cannot fucking believe the nerve of some queer people to just… demand that others disregard trauma for them. Yeah this is about “sex positivity” woohoo.

“You shouldn’t call yourself sex negative or neutral, you can be sex repulsed and still be sex positive!” No I’m literally going to call myself whatever the fuck I want because I’m the only one that gets to decide my labels. Just because you can be both sex repulsed and positive doesn’t mean under any circumstances that you have to be.

“All the sex repulsed people would gladly pass out water bottles at an orgy, there’s no reason you shouldn’t feel the same.” I have every fucking reason to not want to do anything under the sun. Especially the out of my hands reasons. Everybody can speak for themselves. I wouldn’t be caught dead at an orgy on the account of I would literally have a panic attack, but I guess that doesn’t matter.

“Just be sex positive. Even if you have trauma, it doesn’t give you an excuse to say sex is bad. Nothing gives you that excuse. It’s not that hard to just be okay with it.” You. Cannot. Fucking. Negotiate. Trauma. Listen, due to events in my life, I have certain involuntary reactions and voluntary opinions on sex and sexuality that concerns other people besides myself (and fictional characters). I did not ask to be this way. It isn’t my fault. And it isn’t my obligation to overcome to appease people. I am sex repulsed and sex negative. There’s nothing I or anyone else can do about it. If this offends anyone I’m out of fucks to give. I simply am this way. It is a fact. It is the truth. The truth is supposed to be a good thing, why should I lie and pretend I’m something I’m not for other people’s comfort. I do not use this as an excuse to shame people, to try and stop them from doing sexual activities, or to say or do anything mean, negative, or hurtful to anyone (unless I’m defending myself). So what’s the problem? There isn’t one. I don’t want to be involved in this at all, I just want to be left alone. But some people just won’t stop going after non sex positive people, so I inevitably get dragged into this.

People can use whatever labels for whatever reason they want, and nobody owes you a fake version of themself.

[alynnl]

Ace Attorney: Investigations 2 and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney spoilers under the cut.  I found a contradiction!

Let me get this straight.

Raymond Shields was Gregory Edgeworth’s understudy.

At first he was being vague when meeting Miles Edgeworth the first time in a while in Investigations 2.  He speaks in cryptic language and implies that he’s going to “report to ‘that person’ about Miles’s betrayal, following the Von Karma ways.”  Presuming “That Person” is referring to Gregory then we assume at first, that Ray has no idea Gregory is dead.

We dive further into the case, we meet Ray again.

He clearly states that he inherited Gregory’s practice, the Edgeworth Law Offices.  Him and Miles talk about his late father when he mentions this.  Ray actually knows that his mentor is dead after all and has been carrying on his work with the Edgeworth name on the line.

If Raymond Shields knows Gregory Edgeworth is dead...

Does he not know about the DL-6 Incident at all?

Is he not aware that after he was orphaned, Miles was legally adopted by Manfred von Karma and didn’t really have a choice but to become his student?

Adding to that, this was done on purpose to erase any traces of Gregory’s legacy

Where was Raymond at the time Miles was orphaned, and why didn’t he take him in and raise him as a defense attorney to follow closer in Gregory’s footsteps?

Did Raymond not hear about the events of Turnabout Goodbyes, where Manfred von Karma framed Miles for two murders and came very close to getting away with it?

And then there’s the events of Farewell, My Turnabout where Miles says, under oath that his only aim is to find the truth.  (And you can’t tell me that the trial of a celebrity like Matt Engarde didn’t make national, or even worldwide news.)

I suppose my Watsonian (in-universe) question is this: Has Raymond Shields been living under a rock for the past year and then some?

You would have to be, to miss all that!

And my Doylist (meta, out of universe writing) question is this: Why are the writers of later AA games almost allergic to making direct connections to the previous ones?

I don’t speak for every AA player, but I would love to see incidents and events referred to by name and not just “a case I worked on previously.”  Capcom.  You have the power to do this.  You own all the games.  Step up your continuity!

... All this being said, I’m willing to be patient and see if these contradictions are answered for in the narrative of AA: I2.  Despite my long sessions in the game (I think my latest one was an hour and a half today) - I’m still only on the second case, The Imprisoned Turnabout.  This game will be a long runner, a bit like reading a brick of a novel.  But I’ve come too far not to piece together all the lore to see if it fits.

[lemuel-apologist]

idk, the moment you start saying shit like "making a character asexual is desexualizing them," i think you're just a weird jackass who's reading too much into things

[ifidogaysomyself]

reached a venn diagram moment for my autism top 3 fictional women of all time

(the grey text in the middle says *insert a 10 page essay in which i talk at length about the under-appreciation and amount of bad takes i've seen for all three of these characters get and how sad it makes me that so many people are sleeping on them and what they bring with their respective storylines*)

[rjalker]

Like. Why are you proud to admit you don't like the way queer people lable themselves.and why is everyone suddenly okay with supporting people happily admitting this.

If you have to reassure your followers that you still do hate those bad weird queers with the bad ""microlabels"" but *this time* you're not going to harass the person because it exposed racism....maybe you should just shut up instead!!! Maybe you should stop thinking you get to decide and judge what other people can and cannot label themselves.

And lest everyone fucking forget or pretend not to know, when these kinds of people say "microlabel" they mean identities they have fucking decided are microlabels, not an identity the person identifying it calls a microlabel. These people will call literally any fucking identity they don't like a "microlabel" to delegitimize it.

These people think asexuality and pansexuality are micolabels. Do not let this fucking shit go unchecked. It is literally just bigotry. It's 2023. Learn the fucking exclusionist dogwhistles already or fuck off.

[ID: A screenshot of a cropped post by weaver-z that reads, "As someone who doesn't like most sexuality microlabels......if you focus on the fact that the no fly list leaker is 'cringe' in any way (i.e. the fact that it's a therian, uses ~weird~ pronouns, or uses microlabels) and not on" before being cut off. End ID.]

All of you better stop reblogging posts that start out with saying "now I don't support mspec lesbians, but--"

Literally just find someone else to reblog from. Literally just reblog posts that are not from bigots. Or make your own. It's free.

Anyone who goes around calling other peopel's identities "microlabels" when the person who's identity is being disparaged does not fucking call their identity a microlabel is purposefully delegitimizing and insulting that person's identity. This is purposeful fucking bigotry.

Do not let this shit fucking go unremarked on and act like it's totally normal and acceptable fucking behavior. Oh you're nonbinary? I think you mean you have an embarsssing cringey microlabel that's not really real. Oh you're ace? Well your microlabels don't make you oppressed, we all know you're just a cishet looking for attention!