#im so glad the fandom is dead so i hopefully wont get shit lol

[arokaladin]

i kinda skirted the edges of the vld fandom because it was Large and Scary but what were the aphobic things that it perpetuated? i was less aware of aro stuff back then and i'd like to know if i was swallowing aphobic rhetoric without realizing.

hey i am very dumb can you explain the voltron post in like,,, baby terms? i don’t really understand it but i’d like to because i think you’re making a good point

(Quick note: I’m gonna talk about acephobia and arophobia in this post because a lot of it overlaps, or is applicable to all aspecs, or was referrred to as an ‘ace’ problem but effected aros too. I also think it’s important to building a full picture of aphobia in this case. Also, I’m going to mention the average (low) age of the parts of the fandom this came from a lot. Not because I think kids are stupid, but because it’s true that they were often young and I think that played a part in how this whole shitfest manifested.)

So, the specific aphobia surrounding the voltron fandom can be summarised by four main beliefs…

It’s problematic to headcanon anyone under eighteeen as ace. (should point out this bars acespecs from most of the cast). This idea obviously exists outside of and before voltron, but I think it’s prevelance in the fandom came from so many aspecs identifying with Pidge, and people feeling they needed to ‘defend’ her. 

It’s problematic to headcanon ‘gay coded’ characters as aro. The idea that queer coding equals specifically gay coding and is the same as canon somehow is everywhere, but with voltron ‘gay coded’ could mean the fandom was quite literally reading into things that weren’t there, or just to anyone ever’s gay headcanon. The extent of this can be seen in that shipping lance with allura was labelled homophobic. Identities other than gay were erasing something that didn’t exist. there was some support for bi headcanons as pushback, but nothing for aros. 

You can support aspecs and still be an exclusionist/’neutral on discourse’ but this coming from baby queers who really thought aspec exclusion was Right, and genuinely claimed to support us still. It’s hard to explain the specific Vibe of this one, but it had a Vibe and if you were there you know what I’m talking about. 

Supporting every other group but aspecs. There was a culture surrounding vld that you had to criticise every problematic detail of the show before you could say anything good. That’s fairly common for kids new to social justice I think. But these kids were ‘Woke’ even to the issues of groups often lumped in with aspecs, like nb people with ‘cringy’ identities/pronouns. The majority belonged to these groups! based on this you would have thought they’d support aspecs but for some reason they didn’t.

…and three core characteristics

Genuine belief in the shit they were spouting. When they said ‘its bad to headcanon Pidge as ace because it sexualises minors!’ they weren’t grasping at straws to keep aspecs from headcanons, they actually seemed to think saying a teen was ace presumed something gross about teens. I think this is worth mentioning because most aphobes imo don’t fully believe the stuff they use to smear us with. But these were baby queers who’d been scared and brainwashed. Not that any of that absolved them of blame because they said vile shit.

Other fandom issues (aphobia) overshadowed by creeps. It’s no bad thing that there was such massive pushback against shei/ths and other ‘antianti’ fucks, but it meant this became the only fandom issue, and if you were on the right side you were Good, end of. If people put ‘meanie anti’ in their bio they were on The Right Side and didn’t even have the potential to be a bigot. Which is an easy but dangerous place to end up as someone new to social justice. 

massive difference between canon and created romance levels. Voltron itself was fairly romance free. The fandom was a fandom. This means that while the show was attractive to aros, the fandom pushed harmful, amatonormative beliefs, and was so oversaturated with romance that we were clearly not welcome. This isn’t uncommon, but it’s worth mentioning because when romance is prioritised, aro headcanons are less valuable than others, and the wellbeing of real life aros is less valuable than having fun. So I think this is part of what allowed for points 2 and 4 on the first list. 

tl;dr: voltron fandom specific aphobes supported all other queer groups but excluded aspecs and saw aspec content as problematic. unlike other aphobes they genuinely believed they were doing the right thing, perhaps due to their young age, and their aphobia left unchecked in part because of their good guys complex due to their stance on other fandom issues. 

postscript: and then they all deleted their vld blogs because it was ‘cringy’, got into shera or whatever, never had to question any of their rampant aphobia, and continued on with the same shit beliefs. The group doesn’t exist but the people still do, and ‘14 year old exclusionist not educated enough on queer issues to know its ok to say queer’ culture owes them everything.