#crapcourse mess

[herefortheace]

So here’s the thing. Society is very invested in policing and scrutinizing the sexualities and sex lives of oppressed groups.

People you meet also tend to care about the sex lives of aces and aros a biiit to much for comfort from my experience, though in personal encounters I had I did indeed chalk quite a bit of that up to misogyny, because well I’m a woman and usually it was guys who pulled the shit that made me feel the most uneasy (by which I mean the most threatened lol). 

But watching the anti-ace/aro crowd on here really DOES make me see that shit in another light. Like. The sheer extent of it. Coming from supposedly progressive people. Who suddenly sound like your standard not so friendly neighborhood conservative or that creepy guy you hope just forgot the fact that someone once mentioned to him you are ace

“so what you mean is you don’t fuck”

“um why the hell would you discuss your sex life (aka the absence of one or even the concept of a lack of attraction) with ANYONE. Aside from a romantic partner because in that case you absolutely have to I guess or we’d accuse you of being manipulative”

“No one cares you don’t wanna fuck”

“wait other people know you’re ace?? So did you just walk up to them randomly on the street and start talking to them about sex? did you scream it from the rooftops? OBVIOUSLY you must have. gross. freak”

“well saying aces don’t fuck is accurate because if you did you would no longer be ace, because I know your sexuality better than you do and I REALLY want to keep talking about you not fucking”

“if you would have or ever had sex without sexual attraction being involved from your side, no matter what you say or what the reason, there is something wrong with you. at best you falsely believe you can exert sexual agency, at worst you’re manipulative+abusive”

“aces who date non-aces are harming them (because see above)”

“if you had more sex maybe you’d not be so dramatic”

“if you sleep with people or even are just sexually attracted to them without also being romantically attracted to them, you are using them and probably a misogynistic monster”

“asexuality is desexualizing which is a statement that makes sense if and only if you believe aces lack sexual agency”

“asexuality is inherently nsfw”

“so much as stating the fact that you are ace is tmi and equivalent to airing details of your sex life for all to hear (but also, at least if you’re aro just stating your romantic orientation is not enough because that’s just a modifier, so in that case we are entitled to what we deem information about your sex life)”

It’s. So much wild+blatantly horrifying stuff that in a ton of cases harms many marginalized groups aside from aces and aros, but suddenly becomes okay and important to them to spew, because they hate us so much and are that invested in policing our sexualities.

And this is leaving aside the constant pathologization, the tendency to spread harmful bullshit lies about us and our communities and never correct them, the outright threats of violence people have made and so much other horrible shit...

It’s all. Very telling?

And I knew this was going on and that there’s a lot of deliberate dehumanization involved but...

Damn why are we even debating this. You want to tell me society at large is kinder to aces and aros than “progressive” people who claim to care deeply about social justice?

Not buying it

[impossible-enemy-wombat]

Why the fuck do I keep getting the impulse to look at the ac/e di//sco//urs/e,,,,

[herefortheace]

aphobia is literally just rape culture. it's not aphobia. it's rape culture.

no.

[herefortheace]

Ah the anti-ace crowd is at it again acting like it’s not fundamentally dehumanizing and harmful to say ace people are literally incapable of consenting to sex and if we think we are we are both confused and dangerous

Like... wtf

[herefortheace]

Honestly if you say “no one cares whether you have sex or not” you have, irrespective of so called ace discourse, failed at oppression 101 and I will cease to care about your opinion

[herefortheace]

How are you a "mixed race black woman" and don't understand the dehumanization inherent in so much ace discourse and asexuality in general? Like, black women aren't constantly desexualized just because they are black in order to render them less human? Also, if you are asexual, and therefore have no sexual inclinations... why would you consent to a sexual interaction? How is that not contradictory to your identity... besides simply doing so for the pleasure of others... which is dehumanizing?

Honestly if you think asexuality is inherently desexualizing you 1) have no idea what desexualization means and 2) are literally dehumanizing aces including black aces

I and others have explained this so many times and it’s tiring.

Desexualization is something forced on people and tied to denying their agency. When people desexualize black women they dehumanize us, as you yourself point out

My orientation does not dehumanize me.

(People who pretend it does, on the other hand...)

I honestly don’t know why I have to explain this. Something I and others, again, have already done many times.

Such as in posts that, if you used the search function, are not hard to find on my blog. Heck, I’d not complain if you had just asked in a less shitty way

I’m just so tired?

As for consent. People consent to sex for a lot of reasons. People can consent to sex even just to try it out or to have biological children - this is not uncommon. It’s an individual decision.

Aces have minds and lives and reasons of our own, which we know better than you do. We have agency. We are an incredibly diverse group of people, and it’s not up to you or anyone else to make decisions for us. It’s messed up to deny our agency.

Why do I have to explain that claiming aces, claiming black ace women and ace WoC in generel, inherently lack the ability to consent to sex (and that if we think otherwise about our own selves we’re the ones being toxic) is horrible and dehumanizing?

We have agency, we have the ability to make our own decisions about our own lives including sex lives or lack thereof, like everyone else. We are real people with agency.

And while it is important to make sure no one ever feels pressured to have sex they do not actually want and that harms them - most definitely including aces -, and while plenty of aces do in fact not have sex, denying our literal agency is not the way to go. Trust us to have the ability to make our own life decisions like other people do

Please? Like honestly I’m so tired

[herefortheace]

hey I hate to be a bother but I'm literally ace myself and today a mutual posted some post that basically goes on about how demisexuality was invented by someone on a forum and therefore demisexuality is false and a lie and "thats just what most people experience" and I don't even know what to say dude I'm just fucking losing. my. mind.

:/ People are wild honestly I once followed someone who spewed crap like this and when I, way before really getting involved in crapcourse, gently explained that their opinion was bullshit they were mistaken, they didn’t respond at all. Eventually I realized they’d blocked me which just baffled me but okay

Like... ?? I have no clue where they get the idea that “most people” don’t experience sexual attraction to people they have no close relationship with (... as opposed to wanting to actually sleep with them but ah the anti-ace/aro crowd has already demonstrated they don’t want to understand this is not the same thing), or that “most people” can’t say when they are romantically attracted to someone/are in a romantic relationship with them if they will eventually also feel sexual attraction towards that person.

It just bewilders me they try so hard to come up with crap?

[herefortheace]

why do you want to be oppressed so badly?

... I swear at this point idek if perhaps I’m talking to your friendly neighborhood anti-sjw

[herefortheace]

I hope this doesn’t bug you, but what do you think of the argument that people are only ace because of trauma? I remember I used to think I was ace but figured out it was just gender dysphoria. But obviously that’s not true for every ace? Sorry if you’ve addressed this, I’m new to your blog

Hey! No worries, though I’m sure other people have explained it much better than I could. I’ll try though since I have no handy links available

At the end of the day though it comes down to taking people at their word. I could cite as evidence that there are aces who have never experienced any trauma, but even then it’s not up to those aces to “prove” this and most importantly, trauma does not make anyone’s asexuality less valid. Their feelings and orientation are something only the people in question themselves can know or figure out and it’s not okay to deny anyone’s agency (this is not aimed at you, from your wording I’m sure you are not trying to do that and it’s awesome you figured yourself out)

Like basically people who claim all aces have trauma, and are ace because of this, are telling me and others they know ourselves better than we do. They are forcing us to either prove we have not experienced any trauma (but will not actually believe us about that) or to explain our trauma to them in detail and to explain how it is or isn’t connected to our asexuality. And of course since they’ve already decided what the truth of our lives is, they will then pick anything deeply personal we might tell them apart and explain to us how it really is

That’s fucked up.

Also from personal experiences it’s so incredibly uncomfortable and invasive when your friend’s friends think because someone told them your orientation, they get to now ask... deeply personal questions about you behind your back to figure out what “caused” your orientation. That shit made me feel pretty unsafe

[herefortheace]

Also I’m really tired of people lying about aces, aros and the ace/aro communities like holy fuck

Like while reading through info on said conference I learned about David Jay’s current relationship status and while I never paid much attention to him... those lies people keep spreading are horrible like.

I’m not aware of him ever id-ing as hetero, he has spoken about attraction to men before, and now you can’t even pretend any longer you looked at his relationships and just “thought” he was hetero as a result like.

People need to stop putting labels on aces and aros to fit their narrative, wtf

[herefortheace]

When my colleagues talk about romance (or sex) I smile and hope desperately no one is gonna ask about my “love life” and if they do I am almost definitely gonna lie in some capacity, as I more or less do by omission already

And when I get to know new people in my free time, I will usually do essentially the same unless I can easily disengage and am very invested in the people in question already, no matter how detailed the conversation gets, because I don’t want to risk having to deal with pathologization, dehumanization and/or dudes who decided they just received an invitation to creep on me

but sure neither aromanticism nor asexuality are in any way marginalized orientations, not being able to talk about your orientation without fearing repercussions is normal and not a problem :)

[herefortheace]

Honestly the more I think about it the more tired I get

Me, literally: it’s fucked up to say aces “can’t” have sex stfu if you can’t put what you’re actually (supposedly) concerned about in a more respectful way

The anti-ace crowd: here let me explain to you that this is not what ANYONE. meant in a LITERAL way. they just say it like that but they mean something else. They just put it that way you know

Me: ...

[herefortheace]

Aros and aces are literal non humans lmao

I don’t know why you’re here calling me out for being a vampire it’s a bit rude I didn’t even steal your sheep??

but also isn’t it exhausting being this much of a piece of shit like does it not take effort

[herefortheace]

people rlly think aces are infants who cant consent to sex because we just dont know whats right for ourselves and dont understand our own thoughts and bodies jesus christ

it’s really creepy

Like they’re not even just saying we can’t have sex that isn’t unhealthy for us (which uhh would still be a messed up patronizing claim), they’re literally declaring our consent invalid if we give it or gave it in the past

as if we have no agency over our own sex lives or lack thereof. like... we’re not even able to have BAD sex in their opinion, to make BAD decisions about our sex lives. if we “think” we have had sex it was either without our consent or we’re wrong/lying about our orientation

I’m making another post about that because it’s so fucking messed up

[herefortheace]

I'm thinking about making a survey for asexuals and aros about life contentment. im tired of exclus acting like aros and aces live easy lives so i want to prove that ace and arophobia does impact people. is this a good idea?

hey if you want to do this in general and for yourself and aces and aros who’d appreciate such a survey, I’d say go for it! but if you want to do it to prove anything to anyone in crapcourse then I’m afraid you will probably end up disappointed.

People who hate/don’t give a shit about aces and aros to the point where they in the year of 2020 will keep yelling about how we really face no serious problems on the basis of our minority orientations do not care about actual data. From experience they will only bother taking a look to shit all over it and try with great dedication to find flaws, and they have proven they are more than willing to make shit up/draw wild conclusions. Anything “inconvenient” most of them will ignore

Just keep that in mind?

Whatever you decide, all the best to you!

[herefortheace]

Hi! First, sorry for bothering you, but. Do you know what's the "problem" with the guy that created the AVEN website?

I honestly never cared much about David Jay, I can tell you all about how AVEN as a site/forum sucks but if you want to read about shit David Jay pulled it makes more sense to do research since I honestly don’t have the time to to fact check everything being said about him.

Like I know some stuff but since I never paid attention to him back in the day, and since people keep claiming he is hetero for literally no reason I can discern considering he’s said he’s not only attracted to women, I’d not wanna say anything without proper fact checking

He just never much mattered to me? I think I may only know/remember his name because of crapcourse