#especially because they literally added the ace flag so they Know what ace/aro identities are????

[shoelace-and-friends]

Okay so I added this to someone else’s post about this topic a while ago, but I feel that this is important enough that it needs its own post. 

I constantly, constantly see people reblogging posts filled with a ton of aphobic language and dogwhistles. And a lot of you, even if you’re aspec inclusive,  don’t even notice what is wrong with what you’re reblogging because you don’t realize how the way certain things are worded are cleverly disguised to be exclusionary without people who aren’t exclusionary noticing. 

Anyway, here are some things you need to look out for so that all of you stop accidentally reblogging posts from aspec exclusionists:

Posts talking about being inclusive as if it is a bad thing or unimportant/less important than something else, or really just talking about inclusivity in any way that is not positive

Posts mocking, belittling or making fun of MOGAI identities or microlabels. A lot of the time for exclusionists, a-spec and non-binary people fall into that category that they like to mock or criticize

When looking at pride flag posts, if there are more flags than just the first four letters of the LGBT acronym (such as pan, intersex, and non-binary also being there) but the ace/aro flag isn’t present, than OP is probably an exclusionist

Adding more to the flag thing, when someone complains about the ace or aro flag being in a post instead of some other flag, that’s an exclusionist. Like, it sucks the other flag isn’t there, but there’s no need to throw a-specs under the bus

Pay attention to the way that people use the word “cishet”.  It’s upsetting since it’s a useful word for the community, but exclusionists have corrupted the meaning. Oftentimes when exclusionists use the world cishet, it’s either as a code word for asexuals, or they include ace people in cishet’s definition. It’s gotten so bad that I check OP’s blog literally every time I see cishet used and, they end up being exclus like half the time. Honestly if someone says “no cishets” in their BYF, most of the time they actually also mean “no inclusionists”.

If the person thinks it’s funny to mock or reblog posts mocking virgins or people who aren’t interested in sex or do not have/have not yet had sex, that’s another indicator. Also in general that’s just really rude and not actually funny even if a person is not ace? Basically if a post implies that people who have sex are superior to people who don’t, that’s an indicator. 

Actually, if that person seems to enjoy making fun of people in general or thinks being mean in general is fun or good, that’s another indicator, and a sign they are just an asshole in general. A lot of exclus think cringe culture is a good thing and enjoy reblogging and writing mean-spirited posts.

Obviously if someone makes jokes at the expense of ace people that’s a red flag (for example, ace Reagan or Putin moodboards and other disgusting shit like that)

People who go on and on about how “Respect that PDA is allowed at pride! If you have a problem with that don’t go.” Everybody at pride should already know that PDA is expected without being told. People make posts like that under the false belief that asexual and aromantic people aren’t okay with other people doing PDA.

When someone says “I support LGBT aces”, they’re an exclusionist. ALL asexuals are LGBT. Saying “LGBT aces” is redundant because all of us are LGBT by default. When people say that, they think aces are only part of the community if they are also either trans or LGB. They believe that the aceness is not part of what makes someone LGBT.

Anyone with “allo”, “dirtyallo”, “sexhaver”, or other references to having sex in their username is probably an exclusionist. Almost every url with “-course” or “discourse” at the end of it is as well.

I know not everyone is comfortable with the word queer, but nearly everyone who is adamantly against the word being used  is an exclusionist who just hates the fact that “queer” can potentially include a-spec people, or the types of non-binary people they don’t like

Criticism of the split attraction model is another indicator. It’s not a-spec people’s fault if an exclusionist wrongly identified as a “panromantic homosexual” when they were younger instead of realizing they are just gay or lesbian sooner. We didn’t tell them to use the split attraction model. They decided to use our thing. 

Also, look out for any implication that the asexual community is generally homophobic or has a homophobia problem. That’s a disgusting thing to imply, especially since a huge percent of us are gay or m-spec and a lot of the people they accuse are gay or bi/pan. 

Calling the community “LGBTPN”, with the deliberate absence of the A (and the Q and I)

The use of “SGA” (same-gender attraction). Not only is this a popular exclusionist term, its origins also lie in conversion therapy, which is all the more disgusting. 

If an anon asks if someone thinks aces/aros are LGBT and they avoid answering the question or say “I don’t do discourse” instead of giving a flat-out yes. They are exclusionist but too scared to admit it out of fear of losing mutuals.

Exclusionists also have the tendency to stage or make up posts that are seemingly written by aspec people to make them look bad so they can mock or make an example out of them, so look out for that too. 

If you already know or suspect someone is panphobic, enbyphobic, truscum, or a terf, that person is absolutely an aphobe/exclus as well. Honestly aphobia is sort of a gateway to the other phobias within the LGBT+ community, which is part of what makes it so scary. A lot of terfs and truscum start off as just aspec exclusionists before they become exclusionary of others as well 

[izzyliker]

hey - this is one of the mods of the bi jon project. we don't actually dislike or disagree with pan jon at all, we just want to make a project focused on and celebrating bisexuality. our carrd is a bit rambling, but frankly we were trying our best/overcompensating to try and make sure people didn't misunderstand us and do - well, this. our intentions are good, and it's really kind of disenheartening to see all the hate we've gotten for what was meant to be a positive project. (1)

you're under no obligation to answer these, but i saw some of your posts in the tag and felt like reaching out because you did give us even the tiniest bit of slack in good faith. honestly, if you have any advice about what in our carrd is so overwhelmingly bad, we'd be happy to hear it. we've been trying to respond to the overwhelming amount of criticism we've got in a positive way, and take peoples' suggestions. (2)

as for why 'no anti-antis' was at the bottom of our rules list, it's legitimately bc we were trying so hard to be preventative about this negativity that we forgot to add it when we first posted the blog, and just remembered later. again, you're under no obligation to answer these, i just feel like no one's really actually letting us defend ourselves/are taking things in as bad faith a way as possible. (3)

im not exactly sure how the posts showed up in the tag bc ive been very purposefully not tagging them, also ive blocked all of you back (not sure why you blocked me if you actually want feedback, so it seems more like you just want free positive pr and not actual feedback) so its unlikely youll see whatever it is that i reply to this but whatever. 

the issues have all been repeatedly brought up to you so i dont really see how me repeating all of them once again could help. when i last looked at the cardd the things that stood out immediately included. 

pitting ace & bi identities and people against each other REPEATEDLY,  

starting off with a guilt trippy tone and maintaining it throughout (in my experience this is the #1 best way to receive backlash because people do not want to participate in events where you feel like youre being guilted into it, which going into scrutinizing detail over there not being enough content and passing judgement onto authors or artists over it is something that comes across as guilt trippy.),

repeatedly equating asexuality with sex repulsion (not to get into the misleading information about modteam aspec identity breakdowns, since you claimed that 3/4 of the team are aspec, which is technically correct, but what you didnt say was that only one is acespec. surely you know that [allosexual] aro and [alloromantic] ace are not interchangeable) and calling using biromantic over bisexual a “misunderstanding” of the identity as if how to define romantic vs sexual attraction (how to divide, if or if not to divide, use interchangeably different labels) isnt a deeply personal choice ace people who experience romantic attraction make, 

claiming that bisexual jon is canon (he isn’t. this is why people are suspicious of anti-other mspec identities sentiments. which theyre right, if youll be so kind as to stick around til the last paragraph) and repeatedly implying that the reason there isnt “enough” content centering bi jon because the aces are simply unable to not fixate on his asexuality (again, pitting identities against each other),

making the banned ship list way needlessly confusing and including ships that dont even include jon to it, which simply comes across as some kind of a list of bad ships, idk. a way to bypass this would simply be to say “we are looking for portrayals of healthy relationships!” and that couldve just been it. if you felt that that wouldnt exclude specific ships (eg. jondaisy that a lot of people write as a relationship between trauma survivors who have done very bad things trying to get better and learning to trust each other) it is possible to simply say “the modteam is squicked[/triggered] by ships with daisy/elias/peter and we’d like to read all of the works submitted so we’re asking not to receive submissions with those ships.” hating ships is literally completely normal but making rules hard to parse is going to attract questions, especially when the implication is that ships are excluded on the grounds of morality, and a blatant power difference ship (jonelias) is equated with jondaisy, which is from what ive seen almost exclusively shown to be a relationship between equals. that makes people EXTREMELY confused about where the line is. thats why youre getting so many questions about this.  

in general the carrd was spotty, guilt trippy, and needlessly moralizing where it definitely did not need to be. the key to getting people to engage without getting backlash is to make the event seem fun. when your carrd is filled with stuff about unrelated negative stuff people are not going to think it’s a fun event at all. 

and none of this even gets into the fact that at least one of the mods has a history of open hostility against pan people. i heard through the grapevine that he has since made a fauxpology about it, but frankly it already shone through in the language used in the event descriptions. its extremely hard to take any of this is good faith when it is easy to see that one of the organizers is quite fucking clear about thinking pansexuality is biphobic and the carrd is or at least used to be full of anti-pan (and other mspec identity) dogwhistles, and is notorious in some of the tma fic author circles for being extremely fucking nasty about trans men writing fic he doesn’t like to the point of pretending that we’re all cis people (in case youre not keeping track that is misgendering us by implication) because he doesn’t like it. i think some of you (or maybe all of you? idk) in general could stand to examine whether your engagements and participations in the fandom have been at all about having fun or adding positivity to anything, or simply making posts about what other people are doing wrong. it seems that every post i see from anyone in this group is guilt trippy and authoritative, and sadly this translated directly into the event. 

when youre, say, a trans man whose first touch to one of the mods was a post about how fic where trans men have piv sex with cis men is hurting him personally and making it a moral issue and not a matter of a simple preference to the point where he feels comfortable making claims about the trans men (and transmasc nonbinary people) writing fic about trans characters re: their gender or whether theyre fetishizing trans men, your willingness to engage in good faith with an event hosted by him that features numerous red flags is not going to be unconditional. 

im sorry to hear that it has been bad for your mental health, and idk whats fucking going on with this event anymore, but my good faith interpretations have diminished significantly since i saw the shit tmc specifically has been saying about pansexual people and pansexuality as an identity label. i have no clue where the rest of you stand but tmc has repeatedly, consistently shown himself to be unable to act in good faith towards anyone other than people who agree with him.  

[aromoji]

FAQ

(Pwease no rebloggy, this is subject to change)

[Insert any invasive question about my ethnicity]

I’m Ghanaian American. My parents were born in Ghana and I was born here. For some reason both black Africans and black Americans seem to have a problem with that. I will not elaborate on this.

I sent you an ask and you never answered it!

It’s likely that

I never got it

You were blocked 

I’ve already answered this

It’s a random positivity ask (which I appreciate but not sure how to respond to those)

You were rude in your ask and I didn’t feel like answering

I forgot until it was too late, which happens when my inbox gets a lot of asks at a time.

You sent it to the wrong blog (I.e, sending asks about my ocs to this blog instead of @ochood )

Non is just a prefix, black people don’t have a monopoly on the term! I suppose you think nonbinary people are racist huh?

This person explains it better than I can. Plus we’re talking about marginalized groups here. Black people are a marginalized group. Binary people as a whole are not so the term nonbinary isn’t appropriative at all. Also shut up, racist.

Follow up: If we can’t use non-[marginalized group], what can we use instead?

There are other words to describe the people you’re talking about

non-transfem- TME

non-lgbt- cishet, or people who aren’t lgbt

non trans - cis

etc

Black people don’t have a monopoly on the acronym nb! I’ll call myself nb if I want to!

I’m always gonna mean nonblack when I use the acronym nb. Die mad about it.

Hey, the op is [insert post] is [someone on my dni]!

I usually double check myself, just to be sure. If the person’s url is uncensored I’m not going to post the ask

Have you heard about [someone who is mutuals with someone who is mutuals with someone I’m loosely connected with]?

Most likely, no. And unless they’re an immediate danger to someone or they’ve got my name in their mouth, I don’t care.

Are you an anti?

Yes. Here’s why

Please don’t send asks about this

Are you an inclusionist/exclusionist?

Yes and no. I do think aces + aros are lgbt but they still should have spaces outside of the lgbt community because they have issues that both overlap with the lgbt community but are also different as well. Idk wtf is going on with the inclus community, but exclus are nonetheless insufferable, I’ve never met a single ‘respectful’ exclusionist who doesn’t thinks unironically calling themselves an aphobe is a personality trait or doesn’t reblog from people who feel that way. As someone who’s definetly not cishet in any sense of the word, I don’t believe the acecourse is about the “cishet aces and aros” like they claim.

Also as an addendum: I don’t like being called queer nor do I agree with calling people who do not reclaim the term as such, but that doesn’t mean people who are comfortable with the label shouldnt be allowed to reclaim it for themselves and take pride in it. Unironically calling yourself a queerphobe is cringe bro, and calling people “kweers” is disrespectful to asian queer people who use it as a personal identity

I’m also pro-pansexuality, no I don’t think pan people oppress or harm me as a bi (and trans) person. Yes, they should check their transphobia, but that is the case for people of any orientation.

Please don’t send asks about this. I am not a discourse blog, and I’m trying to stay as far away from any lgbt related discourse as possible, but I want to makae my stances clear for anyone that wants to follow me and must know before doing so. 

Do you need dysphoria to be trans?

No. Next question. 

Please don’t send asks about this

Are you pro/anti mogai?

I dont personally engage with the mogai community (and I’m pretty sure a lot of the identies people make fun of are literal trolls. Come on, no one’s actually calling themselves audiosexual...right?) but people who use mogai as an insult or run flop accounts  are cringe.

Please don’t send asks about this

Why do you continue to use the ace flag even though known homophobe David Jay made it?

He didn’t. It was created by a user named standup on the AVEN website, who has no connection to David Jay himself. A lot of aces don’t even know who the fuck this person is anyways.

Edit: I no longer identify as ace but this still stands.

Please don’t send asks about this.

Do you know who [x person/group/thing] is?

Most likely no. Not to sound like a hipster but I dont usually keep up to date with trends. If I do hear about something, it’s most likely from twitter or instagram.

Is x AAVE?

I have a tag dedicated to what is and is not aave.I know some things overlap with southern culture but others are specifically for black people. No, I can’t tell you how to stop using AAVE.

Hey, I can’t see your blog or reblog your posts!

You were blocked. And now you’re block evading. I don’t remeber why I specifically blocked a user, but it’s most likely because you’re on my dni.

But I’m not on your dni?

You probably said or did something annoying then. Lol.  Or you’ve added a stupid comment to someone else’s posts and I don’t want that nonsense on mine, so I blocked preemptively.

There’s the occasionaly chance while I was blocking people on a spree in the notes of a bad post you may have gotten caught in the fray, and if so, I apologize.

However, there’s also a chance you also blocked me on @mojiis and yet continued to interact here. So I blocked back.

Can you tag x?

I have a list of things I usually tag because they come up on this blog a lot.  I cannot do catch all tags, as I have way too many followers for that. The closest thing to that is the “ask to tag” tag when there’s something potentially triggering but I’m not sure what it is. Everything is tagged as “x tw”. If something is extremely triggering, I’ll tag it as “major tw”

Do you tag slurs?

I’ve decided in order to be fair I’m tagging any possible lgbt related slur as the letter itself. Hopefully those who dont want to see it will have it black listed and I wont offend the people who reclaim it. I don’t tag the n word, as I reclaim that one. I always tag the r slur

Can I message you about something/someone?

Unless you’re a mutual, most likely no. My DMs are only open to mutuals. 

Do you want to be mutuals?

 I don’t usually follow back people who follow me, especially if you’re under 17. I’m sure you’re a nice person, but don’t post about things I’m interested in.

Can you give me advice on x?

Most likely not, because I’m not an expert or an advice blog. I’ll try, but dont take my word for it. I’m also tme, ablebodied, not jewish, singlet, etc, so I’m not able to accurately answer questions about transmisogyny,  (physical?) ableism, antisemeitsm, “sycourse”, etc. 

I might be able to give advice on school related stuff, but remember that students are not a monolith, and what worked for me may not work for someone else.

What’s your main blog?

If you know, you know.

Why do you continuously move mains/change urls/update themes?

I’m inconsitent. Plus someone is stalking me.

Can I tag you in posts I think I’d like?

Of course!