#this is not happening but u sure r invalidating a trans issue

[homingpigecns]

"people can't talk about feminism in any significant way without being accused of being a r*dfem" is very annoying to see on my dash when people Still put r*dfem takes on my dash without even thinking about it. you need to change your circles and the people you engage with b/c this is not universal, i see people talk abt misogyny and the patriarchy every day and they don't get accused of being t*rfs or r*dfems and pretending this is universal is gonna make everyone who rbed the thing that was like "being a young girl is curling up into a ball and wishing so deeply that you were a boy so you could feel like a human instead of always feeling pain" be like oh shit i was right lol like those posts ALREADY circulate uncriticized stop acting like trans people begging you to stop drinking r*dfem koolaid for a SECOND are ~ruining feminism~

[pointsofpride]

I do not tend to make posts of my own here, but I happened across this, and I have seen far too much of this same horrible rhetoric, and this was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, and I felt that it warranted addressing. I’m blurring this person’s name and avatar, hopefully to avoid any unnecessary drama, because I do not want to invite it, and, looking at this person’s blog, they have made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that they are not willing to concede or consider anything in favour of the a-spec members of our community. So, instead of making an attempt to bring awareness of our community’s history and purpose to one person who’s demonstrated they are unwilling to receive it, I’m just going to use this person as an example, to talk about this virulent attitude toward a-specs.

“There is n o  g o o d a r g u m e n t for w h y aces / aros are a u t o m a t i c a l l y L G B T”

Every single one of those links is a reason. There are many. Some statistical, some anecdotal; some made by a-specs, others made by the trans and bi members of our community; some historical, and some current; some examples of why a-specs are already a part of the community, and some examples of what’s wrong with this kind of gatekeeping rhetoric.

Now, if I were to outline every point in all of those links, this post would be obscenely long, and I’m already concerned it will be, as is, so I will just hope that leaving all of those points in the links will be enough. But I’m still going to talk about this problem as a whole.

Aces and Aros are - and always have been, whether you’re aware of that history or not - a part of our community. They’re already here; they already belong. They are, by default, included, and they do - whether or not you personally decide to not believe or even listen to them - face more than enough to warrant their place in our community, without people in that community adding onto it like this. And their place in our community already exists. It is not an issue of whether they're automatically LGBT, because they already are; this is an issue of “why are you trying to remove them?”. And those who want to exclude them, either by lack of knowledge of LGBT history, or by lack of awareness (or by, as seems to be the case here, direct and intentional denial) of what they face, or by lack of understanding of what our community represents, or by true malice, are in the overwhelming minority within the whole community. The community, as a whole, categorically includes and respects a-specs, but some people. Some few extremely unpleasant people... defy the community.

In spite of this, there very much is infighting, and this is a direct example of it, and it is severely disheartening to keep seeing people - people who ought to know better than this - trying to remove a-specs’ place in this community. And using Stonewall as a gatekeeping rhetoric device, firstly, profoundly disrespects what those riots meant, and, secondly, ignores not only the full extent of our community’s much more detailed and extensive history, but also the fact that the Stonewall Inn itself, right at this moment, celebrates a-specs as a part of our community. That remark also belies a misunderstanding of a-specs’ preexisting place under the LGBT umbrella (which is mentioned in several of those links), and of the community’s purpose. This community is one of support. It does not exist to exclude a-specs, and absolutely exists to support and include them. They are marginalized for their sexual identity in many ways, regardless of people burying their head in the sand to those issues. Members of their own community treating them with this kind of willful disdain does no service - no benefit of any kind - to anybody, in or outside it. The until-very-recent (and still current, in other parts of the world) pathologization of asexuality, the sexual violence, the dehumanization, the emotional abuse and trauma, the harassment and aggression, and the outright fear that a-specs face are not some fabricated myth. No person capable of reasoned thought, knowing what a-specs deal with with, would think they should be excluded. And, as evidenced by this example, exclusionists have catastrophic misunderstandings and/or gaps of knowledge that lead to their insistence on a-spec exclusion. Unfortunately, often those gaps of knowledge are voluntary, due to willful avoidance and wholesale refutation of LGBT history and of a-spec voices, and, perhaps even more bizarrely, of the voices of the non-a-spec members of the community.

Nobody “wants” to be ostracized. To think a-specs are dreaming of stigmatization is nothing beyond a mentality that is, in totality, ignorant. Nobody “wants” to be stigmatized. They simply are. A-specs are. The refusal to listen to their voices, or, perhaps worse, the disturbing outright zeal for denying them, that some seem to have, is telling. It comes not from a place of any real understanding of our community’s history, or of its purpose, or what it faces, but from a place of genuine contempt. It is that contempt that leads people to simultaneously convince themselves that a-specs face no forms of oppression, of any kind, while in the same breath bemoaning the fact that a-specs are now pointing out the validity of their inclusion in this community, in direct response to exactly this kind of exclusionary rhetoric. And that very citation of the fact they face those issues, made in response to people like this saying they don’t, ends up getting called “fearmongering” in an attempt to further delegitimize a-spec voices.

If a-specs say they’re part of the community, aphobes will say they’re fantasizing their oppression, or “fetishizing” oppression. They very obviously are not. Hell, if you’re so eager to tell a-specs they don’t face real oppression and that your oppression somehow has more “value” or whatever, then it sure sounds like you’re the one fetishizing it. And if a-specs point out their oppression in response to being told they don’t experience any, then aphobes will call it fearmongering. And if a-specs benignly make positivity posts, apbobes react with “all you talk about is being ‘valid’” without the self awareness that they are a direct example and contributor to why a-specs are now having to vocally fight back against those people trying to invalidate them. If a-specs point out the hypocrisy of this exclusionism and its direct parallels to rhetoric used against trans and bi people, aphobes (in spite of the vocal concurrence and solidarity of the other members of the community) dismiss that too.

Hell, I sure as fuck am not cis or straight, and I’M telling you your opinion is fucked to hell and blindingly ignorant. Just goddamn listen to a-specs. And learn your history. Don’t pretend Stonewall is the only history we have, and don’t use it this disrespectfully as an excuse to hate on a-specs, because if you knew your history, or gave a single damn about what we actually stand for, you wouldn’t be so fervently trying to kick a-specs out of a community in which they very clearly belong. People like this have just... totally shut themselves off from any willingness to consider why a-specs are a part of the community. Actively, intentionally refusing to consider anything said on their behalf. And when all of this behaviour is pointed out to them, they say “you’ll call people aphobic over nothing”.

The willful ignorance against, and intentional attempt to exclude, a-specs is not “nothing”. It is against everything this community stands for, and this mindset is flat out, in every possible way, morally wrong. The fact is, people like this demonstrate a complete unwillingness to concede anything said in favour of a-specs, regardless of sapience or content, so, more than likely, all those links above would not change their mind. And that, I would hope anyone can see, is a detrimental mentality to choose. I have seen too much of it. Most of what I see is positive solidarity and support. But, even though this disgusting hate is far between, it is still happening far to often without contradiction.

And this hatred of a-specs that aims to remove aces and aros is an incredibly recent, bewilderingly sudden thing in the community. They seem to think a-specs are “invading” our community. They’ve been here the whole time; there’s no “invasion”, but this sure is an attempt to exile.

I would hope that most people that are hesitant to include a-specs are not that amount of closed off to being corrected on this issue. I would hope that most are either just repeating what they see, because nobody’s telling them anything otherwise, or because they just don’t know much about a-spec issues. But I assure you, A-specs are very much LGBT. The acronym doesn’t end at four letters, and it was never created to be an unchangeable prescription of who we are as a community, and I very much doubt that Stormé DeLarverie or Marsha P. Johnson or Sylvia Rivera or Miss Major would have shown this kind of disdain for aces and aros during the riots. I mean really, just... really think about it... for a moment. When you reduce the community to only the L, G, B, and T, you ignore the fact that most of the contemporary terminology surrounding gender and sexual identities either did not exist or was almost entirely unknown, until well after Stonewall. Agender people are LGBT, and many don’t consider themselves trans, but I don’t see the same hate toward them. Those riots were not about a prescribed definition of the community. They were about getting respect for those who weren’t given it. They were about acceptance and fighting back. They were about pride, and the community existed before those riots, and during other demonstrations, but even if you believe Stonewall is the only history we have, those riots were about demonstrating for all identities that didn’t fit inside the heterosexual, cisgender idea of “normal” gender roles. The purpose of the community is to represent and support, and it exists for a-specs as well. Do you think those who rioted would harbor this level of contempt and exclusion? Really? Do you believe you represent what they stood and stand for by trying to be a gatekeeper? You absolutely do not represent their spirit. And you benefit nobody by doing this.

A-specs belong, and they always have, and they have always been a part of this community, and will not be cut off from it by hatekeeping. I won’t allow these people to get away with trying it. Not without pointing to, and shaming, this piss-poor behaviour.

Also, just... fuck this person for spouting this during pride month. PRIDE MONTH. Of all times to say this. Fuck’s sake. Fuck. Fucking hell. Wow. During pride month, you do this. Holy hell. It’s just vicious and making pride month into the rest of the year, condensed, but coming from people who really should know better. Support your a-spec community members. I am sick of people like this thinking they speak on behalf of all of us. It’s gross, and it’s malicious, and harmful.

There is no good argument for why aces/aros aren’t automatically LGBT. There is only the bad argument “aces and aros being included makes me feel bad :(”.

Links and additional resources under the cut:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/asexual-discrimination_n_3380551.html

http://sveriqueer.tumblr.com/post/143833364554/my-favourite-thing-is-when-aphobes-try-to-tell-me

http://asexualawarenessweek.com/docs/AsexualityBias.pdf

https://www.zotero.org/groups/950137/asexual_research

http://twilightalpha.tumblr.com/post/138052104372/when-people-accept-sgamganon-cis-aces-and

https://asexuality-and-aphobia.tumblr.com/post/148413220633/hey-about-the-data-on-asexuals-there-has

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/201209/prejudice-against-group-x-asexuals

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/201508/attitudes-toward-asexuals-ata-prejudice-scale

https://fuckyeahasexual.tumblr.com/post/144810204477/the-ace-of-weasels-it-really-annoys-me-when-i-see

http://redbeardace.tumblr.com/post/141092188480/mainstream-lgbtqqueer-support-for-asexuality

https://acephobia-is-real.tumblr.com/post/145731848039/just-a-thought-how-many-straight-people-do-you

https://asexualsurvivors.org/tag/corrective-rape/

http://train-heartnet-xiii.tumblr.com/post/141269386225/a-lot-of-what-i-see-in-regards-to-lateral

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/asexual-disorder_n_3361472.html?1371562287

http://asexualmew.tumblr.com/post/143692156709/youre-not-protecting-me-by-being-an-acearo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ5pbNj73jg

http://courteousmingler.tumblr.com/post/148002580835/courteousmingler-yknow-i-typed-this-up-a-while

http://officialqueer.tumblr.com/post/147848132058/ace-discourse-is-really-a-tumblr-only-thing-and

http://theasexual.com/article/2017/8/7/most-asexualace-people-identify-as-queer-or-lgbtq

https://acephobia-is-real.tumblr.com/search/conversion%20therapy

http://queeraro.tumblr.com/post/143069633039/corrective-rape-in-relation-to-asexuals

http://www.utdailybeacon.com/news/article_c3ada048-6d60-11e5-821c-db75108bfbc3.html

https://autismserenity.tumblr.com/post/142035894961/the-acesaros-were-part-of-the-bi-community-until

https://theacetheist.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/religion-and-asexuality-overview/

http://the-ace-of-weasels.tumblr.com/post/146275488100/okay-you-wanna-know-why-im-for-including-all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQPBjRnxRQs

https://prismaticentanglements.com/2011/04/05/do-you-want-to/

https://kaz.dreamwidth.org/249758.html

https://findyrway.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/asexuality-and-victim-blaming/

https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/asexual-erasure-mental-health/

http://www.asexualityandislam.com/2015/09/im-queer-grappling-with-orthodoxy-as-an-asexual-muslim-woman.html

https://epochryphal.wordpress.com/2015/06/30/grey-and-nb-in-therapy-on-cbt-and-the-sneakiness-of-therapeutic-abuse/

https://acephobia-is-real.tumblr.com/tagged/suicide

https://wetwareproblem.tumblr.com/post/141923181706/thisisntgoodbi-thisisntgoodbi

http://dukeofellington.tumblr.com/post/144725858535/invisibility-is-not-a-privilege

https://banal-adventures.tumblr.com/post/143619386105/anyway-since-i-see-people-harping-on-this-heres

http://historicallyace.tumblr.com/post/146262756292/where-were-you-when-a-history-of-asexual

http://historicallyace.tumblr.com/post/146268437437/where-were-you-when-a-history-of-asexual

https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/142851841977/im-not-ace-myself-so-im-coming-at-the-whole

http://www.asexualityandislam.com/2016/02/coercion-violence-and-queerness-in-the-context-of-islamic-orthodoxy.html

https://stepchildofthesun.tumblr.com/post/131766997010/feathersmoons-autismserenity

⁂

Many of these, and further additional resources can be found here (this list, however, is not regularly updated, and some links therein are defunct):

http://theasexualityblog.tumblr.com/post/148745974859/the-aphobia-masterpost