#what gets me is when cishet women will call men gross and then make fun of them for practicing self care

[cydippida]

seeing people comment under cis men's posts about how they have a skincare routine or wear makeup or just do anything to take care of themselves with shit like "god made you a MAN" or "act like a MAN" is really telling when it comes to how society expects men to behave in ways that bars them from taking time to care for themselves, and that treating yourself to nice things is seen as explicitly feminine in spite of that being far from the truth.

[schizowitchic]

re: the last post i reblogged i am now going to rant about biphobia i have experienced and am experiencing! yay /s

(under a cut bc this got way too long)

so in secondary school i was in a friend group full of queer people, majority of whom were bisexual girls (at the time. a couple are now nonbinary / asexual) . and they were very big on the whole "bisexual culture is liking every woman and 2 men" thing, a lot of "ew men" jokes, and all in all general "liking women is better than liking men" "why am i dating a gross icky man i should be with a woman".

now i am more attracted to men than women, not by much, its typically fairly equal, but i definitely have a leaning towards men. and i repressed that for AGES. because it simply was "frowned upon", so to speak, from almost everyone i was close with

(for further context for the rest of this. i am not out as genderfluid. i use she/her pronouns irl and ppl know me as a cis woman. i am not really out as aromantic, when i identified as aroace i did tell a few people but i think they either completely ignored me or forgot. lol.)

nowadays, i tell my friends i am bisexual. one in particular always seems to forget, constantly calling me gay/lesbian, assuming i have no opinion or that my opinion will be "ew no" when she asks if i find a man she likes hot. (she has told me so many times "why am i asking you this you don't even like men". i have told her i am bisexual several times) (she also thinks it's funny to call me & another friend "f-slurs" . she says that not the actual word but still. i have to find it funny bc she gets so defensive if we imply she's homophobic)

(i do call myself gay bc i consider none of my attraction ever to be straight. i have no major issues with being called a lesbian apart from the fact that. yknow. im not a lesbian and have never identified as such)

i made a post a while back saying something like "help im being biseuxal erasured". because i am!! i am stuck in yet another situation with people who are either mainly attracted to women/only attracted to women/don't often talk about their attraction to me & also two cishet girls who are attracted to men in a very different way than i am (one of whom erases the fact i am attracted to men and the other who i don't like and probably assumes i'm a lesbian bc of how often everyone else says that)

also full of "ew men" jokes!!. might i add.

i literally have no space to talk about the way i experience attraction, i have to water it down and pretend i only like women, pretend i am interested in romance, pretend i feel attraction when the occasioanll bout of extreme sex-repulsion hits, take (albeit censored) homophobic slurs, sex jokes about me & another female friend that are getting uncomfortable.

and pretend like the main perpretatror of this isn't being at all queerphobic. (she also has massive racism and antisemitism issues. although my friend did throw basically a whole book at her face when she made a really bad joke). to the point where i no longer consider her a friend but i can't say that bc then im overreacting and i'll get the same bullying ostracisation treatment & my friends are still gonna hang out w her so i can't avoid it

people wonder why i am aplatonic when throughout friendships i have experienced: making fun of me to my face & behind my back, bullying, homophobia, biphobia, aphobia, ableism .

like what the fuck. im sick and fucking tired of having nowhere safe to express my sexuality bc let's be real, the internet often isn't the best space.

ive made my peace with either having to compromise my aromanticism or my allosexuality irl (ie either be out as bisexual or out as aroace) but apparently i can't even freely be bisexual without people making assumptions and at this point im just waiting it out until i can hit restart and try make new friends

[lovemars]

hm. time to psychoanalyze myself i think. cw traumadumping cw long ass post cw oversharing 😭

the srs cws are talk of sex and stuff but in a sad way not a horny way, sa, men on the internet being gross, bad coping mechanisms, etc

like. idk. i was thinking abt this last night and now im thinking abt it more and like. i feel like. the way i appear in headspace and stuff is just. completely based after. OH MY GOD SOFT BOY CAME OUT? um. sorry it just came on shuffle. ANYWAY. 😭. i feel like how i appear and everything is just based off of like our brain trying to be attractive to- well men mostly. other genders nd stuff but mostly men Specifically cis men. and like. literally none of us actively want to have cis (esp cishet) men attracted to us ❤️. but its like, i know Why like i know its cuz one of my roles is a sexual alter and our brain made us appear the way we do in headspace as part of it trying to keep us safe etcetc WHATEVER i dont care 🫶. like. i literally even- like for instance when we were dating our ex i remember trying to like. be attractive to her and make her like me/us even tho like. i was uncomfortable as fuck and like. i did the same with redacted from irl and just didnt set boundaries at all- no thats not true we definitely did set boundaries. i was just bad at enforcing them- i guess cuz i was like. idk completely lost in this mindset of like, not being able to say no and not feeling safe and feeling like it was my only purpose inguess?

and then like- i also feel like. imean i dont really get the love languages thing but if i had to pick one it would definitsly be words of affirmation and like- i feel like. okay 😭. im not a good person by. whoever the fuck uhh. pat the bunny i think? plays in the background. like for years and by for years i mean ever since 4 days after i turned 18. my thing had been like. posting on reddit . in various subreddits that like, Well the men in them are not very nice to me or to women . and like. i feel like that ties back to the words of affirmation thing cuz i was like intentionally seeking out people who would hurt me (<- which also ties into being a persecutor). and i dont do it anymore because months in the getalong shirt with nik made me feel bad abt it 😭 and then i started to realize that i like when people are nice to me actually. and then i was like Huh maybe tjats not super healthy for me probably. (it is not). well and thats the reason im banned (by nik) from reddit and sex with cis people forever.

but like. 😭 SORRY THIS IS SO LONG. writing a damn novel here. ANYWAYYYY. the whole posting images on reddit dot com -> talk to creepy men on reddit dot com -> intense self hatred and shame -> nik fronts and freaks out and deletes everything -> i feel bad -> i do it again next time i feel like making myself feel terrible on purpose for fun Spiral. like. ive spent all this time gojng down that spiral and now its like. bro i jusr want someone to be nice to me. like i spent ages convincing myself that actually i didnt care abt the shit those men were sayinh & that i liked it and now im like. i literally dont. like. i dont wabt someone ive never spoken to who didnt even say hi or ask what im ok with to say like. waves hand. stuff im not repeating just make up something genuinely disgusting and a bit terrifying and ive probably heard it. and now i dont even KNOW like. what i want i guess. idek my sexuality cuz ive never bothered to think abt what i want cuz i was too focused on what people i dont like/am scared of/etc to think abt how i felt. which in retrospect. bad and scared and. etc.

anyway. idk its just dawned on me the other night how much of who i am is wrapped up in how much i want everyone to like me all thw time and also how much i dont like myself. and like im working on it. and if working on it means thinking about drm from minecraft youtube ******* ** ** ***** so be it i guess 😭. idk man if nik can read dr*amnotnap fic and call it coping i can thirstpost abt drm in my head. idk.

ig im just. now that im able to be more normal and rational and stuff im able to see like. damn i was really bad at dealing with my emotions and tried to do that in ways that were not healthy for me or anyone else. and now all my sense of. who i am is wrapped up in that i guess. which sucks. and im working on it . SLOWLY! but im working on it

tldr: damn this guy should probably talk to a therapist abt all this shouldnt he. well thats okay at least hes hot

[thatblondeperson]

Earlier I wanted to make a post calling out someone's BS specifically, but I'm not going to anymore. I've simply blocked them and I'm going to move on from that because it's not worth my time. Imma vague them instead.

As soon as I saw that Connor Hawke was confirmed as ace, I knew there was going to be people upset, because we cannot have ace rep without people screaming that it's somehow inherently homophobic.

And I will never discredit the fact that Connor and Kyle have some serious chemistry going on because obviously they do, but it was not cannon that either of them were queer until we got the news that Connor is coming out as ace. It's all headcanon. Based in subtext, sure, but subtext is also speculative and while someone may read Connor as not showing an interest in women as him being gay, many others also read that as him being ace.

It is valid to be bummed out when a character isn't written in a way that coincides with how you read them. Especially if you see yourself in that character, it can be hard to have that vision shattered. It is NOT valid to use that as an opportunity to stamp out representation for others.

Ace representation matters.

And the person I really wanted to scream at isn't even crediting that a character can be gay and ace, since Connor is not aromantic but rather just asexual. Apparently it's not representative enough for him to be announced as ace because we haven't hammered down his romantic interests, and it would be better for him to come out as gay rather than ace.

Writing a character as asexual is not an inherently homophobic act.

And I get why they are calling it that from an objective viewpoint, but their view is also very biased given that they don't call aces LGBTQ+ UNLESS they're in some other part of the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup fun zone. This is something I've gotten from two different standpoints. That I'm either not LGBTQ+ or I'm harboring internalized aphobia for calling myself a cishet ace. Like I'm aligning myself with some evil group by doing so.

But there isn't anywhere for me really. I'm not straight, I'm not gay. I would love to see more characters in that queer in between. Connor Hawke is a wonderful character to provide that representation, and I'd love to see his they explore his romantic attraction given that they have confirmed he is not aromantic.

This person claims that Connor being ace is homophobic since because he is queer-coded (which unfortunately is not really true. Regardless of subtext and headcanon pulled by fans, the original intent of the character may not have been so. Headcanons are not the same as coding) him being ace is apparently an active choice by DC to make sure he doesn't have sex with a man. Be eyes it would be icky and it tracks back the aids epidemic. I get exactly what they're talking about, but holy fuck...some people just DON'T want to have sex. A gay man can be asexual. That's a fact.

It bothers me that this gets into the discussion of whether a relationship is valid or not if no one's fucking. If Connor were to get in a romantic relationship with Kyle or another man, would it not be as important of representation if they weren't having sex? Why is romantic love less valid? And I dare to wonder how much angrier this person would be if Connor was aro/ace.

I want to note the importance of showing not only a man coming out as ace, given that ace men struggle with representation due to the stereotype that they are inherently sexual beings, but that it is an ace man of color. I don't need to explain how the already general stereotypes get heightened with racism. Ace men of color are severely underrepresented and this is a HUGE step for DC.

But that doesn't matter to this person. They are heartbroken, I can't change that, but their attitude is plain and simple: aphobia.

I could argue with them all night about how gross I think their dismissal of asexuality is. It bothers me that they talk about how this is a way for DC to separate itself from the "grossness of gay sex" while not even discussing the importance of romantic relations Connor still might have with men. They also say that no character has ever been coded as ace or aro in history. It's apparently impossible. Which reminds me of every time I've suggested that a character may be ace or aro given their lack of interest in sex or romance, and gotten torn apart by shippers online who felt personally attacked.

I've been called a homophobe for headcannoning a character as asexual or aromantic or both. Literally one of those characters was Sherlock Holmes back in the JohnLock days.

I understand the importance of gay representation, and the need for media to escape that awful period during and after the aids crisis when any gay expression seemed even more taboo than ever before. I understand that Connor has 0 interest in women, yet nothing else has been explicitly stated for me to understand his other romantic attractions. I understand so much about this discussion, except the fact that someone looked at DC trying very hard to get some genuine ace representation and immediately wanted to turn it into something hideous.

This isn't about you, this isn't about sex, this isn't about anything other than showing representation that is rarely seen in media. This does not discredit Connor's gayness, as unless he comes out as aromantic as well, he could be just as valid as a gay man in a romantic relationship, without needing to seal the deal with sex. Connor is not a character that belongs to you, he belongs to his readers, and sometimes a story is going to be for a percentage of them.

A lot of characters are coming out now because DC has the chance to tell new stories with less in their way, and I for one welcome the chance for Connor to explore his asexuality and what that means for him. Maybe he will also come out as aromantic later, i don't know. But whatever occurs, it will be an important story that needs to be told fof those who rarely have their voices heard. If that bothers you, then that's a you problem.

[beetlemancy]

Anon again: Thank you!! I appreciate you taking the time to answer me because I am kind of active in the community but very very new. I did know your opinions but being new I just wanted to know whether those recent posts held any weight. I want to be socially responsible with my media consumption and I was worried there was something I was missing, given I have seen specific call outs for certain cast members (Travis, Laura, Sam, and Liam) recently. Thanks again!!

Anon pt2: you don’t have to post this but for context the call out posts were as follows: Travis actively supports the military, Laura voiced a black character?, Sam did brown face??, and Liam is fake woke/virtual signaling (or something along those lines). Obviously I can find out information about this for myself but I have seen more anti-CR stuff lately which prompted my ask.

As with everything, I suggest you do your own reading on those topics, and any topic that comes up in regards to the media you watch. Below is simply my opinion. Note: this gets long.

Travis does support the military - but not as an institution. He has family in the military. He supports the soldiers. He works with Operation Supply Drop and I’d encourage you to look into OSD specifically. Whether you agree with the idea that we should even have a military or not, you cannot deny that our veterans and soldiers are given the short end of the stick. We cannot just abandon them because helping them might be viewed as giving money to the military. I have so many military vets in my disability groups. The VA is awful because it has no funding (I know good people who work at the VA too, but they just cannot help everyone like they’d want to). Programs like OSD are genuinely helpful to a lot of hurting folk and the people who shit on Travis and CR for promoting and helping them out have clearly never actually sat down and talked to a vet or a soldier before. 

Laura and many many other voice actors have voiced people of color in various shows. Yes, this is a legit problem. However, obviously as with most things, the problem is nuanced. The fault mainly lies with the VO industry as a whole, in that actors actually have very little control over what they do. There was a whole strike about this very topic (though the strike covered other issues in the industry as well). In the case of Laura, for instance, she was never told what her character would look like until after the fact. And that is super common in the industry. One of the things they tried to get in the strike was more transparency so that actors could make the decisions themselves whether to voice characters or not - not just based on race or culture but also based on type of work (stressful screaming vs chill dialogue) and whether the content of the game itself was something they wanted their name attached to. 

Sam’s blackface scandal is extremely old news. That’s not to say it isn’t important to note, and in fact Sam made a point to note it again back in 2018. I know people who can’t watch CR because of it, even after his apology, and that’s fine because its not my place to judge others for how they react to that kind of thing. However I know a lot of people who read his apology and the circumstances surrounding it and decided to forgive. To some people, the fact that he was asked to do so by will.i.am changes the situation. To others, it doesn’t. To some the fact that he apologized and has clearly worked to improve his behavior matters, to others it doesn’t. You have to decide that for yourself. You can read Sam’s letter HERE. 

Now. Regarding Liam. * sigh * I think, and again this is my opinion, that you cannot proclaim someone you do not know as ‘fake woke.’ I think there are parts of this fandom that have it out for Liam because of a whole bunch of gross reasons, many of which I’ve spoken about before. He is sensitive and a man - that makes people uncomfy. He plays a lot of women characters and tends to embody them in both personality and body language - that makes people uncomfy. He fully embraces the bi energy (this is not to say whether he himself is or not) - that makes a lot of people uncomfy (and angry). He loves theatre and loves to explore the human condition, warts and all - that makes people super uncomfy. Now. There are people who thinks he’s homophobic. Do you know why? Its because his bi character ended up with a woman instead of a man. That is biphobia, no matter how they twist it. Bi people being “allowed” to be bi and not ‘pick the right side’ in the LG (not BT, lets be real) community IS revolutionary because its so very hated. 

Another reason they say he’s homophobic is because of the jokes he is often involved in - some gay men in the fandom believe that joking about sex is him ‘making fun’ of gay relationships. As a bi enby, I disagree, and I read many of the jokes he himself makes as the kind of humor I use among my own friends. I think there is a definite disconnect between bi vs LG humor and I’m not entirely sure who would be considered in the ‘right’ on that. However, when LG people in the fandom claim that he cannot talk about gay relationships because he is cishet? They cannot know that. That is an assumption they are making. When LG fans say that he alone is responsible for this issue and not -literally every single member of CR- ? I have to question whether its really the issue and not just that they still hate Liam for deigning to make a bi character bi instead of gay.

Another thing re: Liam. Aside from Marisha, he is the one I see the most hate about. People on Twitter and Tumblr both have legit uttered death threats about him if he doesn’t do exactly what they want his characters to do in the game. Usually this is about shipping. I have seen people claim that they WISH he was ‘like vic mignogna’ so they’d have a reason to hate him more. I’ve seen a certain group of people and one in particular say they have ‘dirt’ on him but refuse to say what the dirt is - and yet continually bring up that it exists, but that they just cannot say. Why would you incessantly bring up information you possess just to say that you cannot divulge such information? 

Legit issues about CR that is attached to Liam is the whitewashing issue. Some say that only Liam is responsible here because he controls all the art. I would say that we actually don’t know that for sure. He is ‘Art Dad’ and clearly has some pull. I do think that CR should address this issue, but I’m not sure they can legally do what the fandom wants them to do, which is “call-out” artists by name and denounce them. Now, this too is more nuanced than the fandom makes out because its often way more about colorism vs whitewashing. Many people do not draw Beau as white, but they do draw her as much lighter skin tones than her original art. Colorism is a real problem, but white allies tend to go about talking about it wrong or making smaller things a bigger deal when POC would really rather talk about something more important to them. It was these same white allies that tore Mica Burton apart on Twitter because she liked and enjoyed a drawing of Reani, her own character, that was a few shades lighter than the drawing she herself had brought in, even after she had said that she appreciated the variety of skin tones due to seeing herself in each of them. On the topic of whitewashing/colorism in the fandom, I personally tend to wait to hear from POC over the masses of white allies.

The CR fandom is very big for a niche thing like DnD. As such, there are many many corners of the fandom that can get really jaded, really dark, and really up their own ass in regards to the discourse. There are legitimate issues in the fandom and with CR as a whole. Nothing is perfect, nothing ever will be perfect, and people should absolutely do what they can to do better and to ask their media to do better. That being said, there are also people who think that if you don’t do something exactly like they want, then you’re Problematic by default. There are also members of this fandom who have an active vendetta against certain cast members and will use any opportunity to co-opt legit issues in order to shore up their false arguments. These people are only using the real issues and it becomes clear pretty quickly that they don’t actually give a shit about the people they say they are trying to speak up for. 

There is also some fandom drama that has occurred ONLY in fandom and has absolutely nothing to do with CR other than the fact that the people involved happen to be CR fans. Certain people in the fandom think that CR should arbitrate this issue and involve themselves, call out the individuals responsible, etc. This is, I believe, a GROSS misconception of what CR’s role is and asking way too much of a source of entertainment. The fact that CR has not involved themselves in this issue has led certain members of this fandom to claim that CR is homophobic. I would caution that most callouts of CR as homophobic are directly linked to this first issue, and also a callback to the Vaxleth drama from campaign one, and is incontrovertibly tied to bi and enby-phobia and a seriously sick misunderstanding of the responsibilities a show has versus the responsibility individuals have as viewers of said show. 

That’s it for now. I could go way more in depth on this problems, but I’m tired of typing. Suffice it to say, its easy to make a list of things Problematic with CR, but once you actually delve into each topic hopefully you’ll realize how complicated and filled with nuance and Different Opinions going on back from the first episode of Campaign One... Listing problems without actually addressing them head-on isn’t a good way to deal with the problems that are true anyway, let alone tell them from the false ones. 

[citrineghost]

100 Humans on Netflix

So there’s this neat Netflix Original show called 100 Humans. I immediately got interested in it because they take this group of various humans from different backgrounds, age groups, and so on, and they use them to conduct experiments to get answers to interesting questions.

So, right away I had concerns about this show because

If you know anything about data and statistical research, you know 100 people is a very small sample size and does not breed accurate results

However, I’m very curious and wanted to see what they came up with anyway. I watched all 8 episodes and, honestly, I enjoyed watching it for the most part. However, I have a LOT of issues with the show and how it was conducted and I want to list them out here.

If you’re interested in watching 100 Humans or have already watched it, please consider the following before taking any of the show’s data as fact.

100 people is a very small sample size. This is because, the more people you have, the more weight each increment in your percentages has. With 100 people, each person represents 1 entire percent. That’s a lot. That means even a few people giving incorrect answers, having off-days, or giving ridiculous results (such as you can see in the spiders georg meme), can sway the entire result of an experiment into unreasonable territory. This is why most scientific studies attempt to get data from many hundreds or even thousands of people. The bigger the sample size, the more accurate it is to the entirety of the world.

I’ll put the rest under the cut because it gets long

The 3 hosts, who I’ll refer to as the scientists (regardless of if they actually are, because I’m not sure and don’t feel like googling it) repeatedly make false statements. For example, in one episode, they told their humans to “raise your hand if you believe you’re less bigoted than the average person here,” to which 94 people raised their hands. One of the scientists then made the statement, “If that were true, it would mean only 6% of Americans are bigoted.” This statement is entirely false. The only way to actually determine a true meaning to that would be to determine at what percentage of bigotry you are considered a real bigot. You also must consider that believing you’re more bigoted than other people in a small group, who you already have an impression of, is not necessarily indicative of how you feel you measure up to America as a whole. Anyway, I could go on and on. The only way to accurately summarize the results of that question would be to say that 44% of the humans had an inflated sense of righteousness or something of the sort.

The 3 scientists, both in person and in narration, for the sake of entertainment (if that’s what you call it) continually made “jokes” that poked fun at different groups, implied men are shit, etc. Maybe that’s fun for some people, but the kind of jokes they were making to amp up the hilarity of their host personas was genuinely just uncomfortable and made me feel even more like they couldn’t be trusted to go about unbiased research.

The scientists continually drew conclusions where the results should have been labeled inconclusive

The scientists made blanket statements about certain groups based on 1 element of research that would not stand up to further evaluation. For example, when explaining that ~93% (i think it was about that number) of Americans have access to clean, drinkable, tap water and yet some large number of single use bottled waters are sold every year, one scientist said it was because people believe bottled water is safer and cleaner than tap water. I am going to do my next survey on this to see if my own perception is flawed, but I simply don’t believe that all of the people who buy bottled water do so because they think its cleaner than “tap” (as if all tap is the same.) I know there have been studies about people drinking unlabeled bottled water and tap water and not being able to tell the difference, but this neglects to account for the fact that different houses pipes can affect the taste of the tap water running through them, people can use disposable bottles of water for certain activities or events too far away from tap for people to refill their reusable bottles easily, and so so so much more. Anyway, it just really bothers me to see “scientists” making these kinds of generalizations when they’re the ones whose results we’re supposed to trust.

The show was incredibly cisnormative. There was an entire episode based on comparing men and women that made me extremely uncomfortable with its division of people by men and women. There was the implication that all men have penises and all women have vaginas. There were implications that reproduction is a necessity in picking a partner. It was just a shitshow. There was one comment by one subject who asked, when being told to separate by men and women, “What if I’m transgender?” Obviously I can’t say for sure, but this person didn’t appear to be transgender and the sort of tone it was asked in makes me think it was literally something they asked him to say in order to get inclusivity points with the viewers and to “prove” that they’re not transphobic by having them divide up, because they said to go to the side you identify with. This whole thing is a) harmful to nb folks who would not have had a side to go to and b) completely negating the fact that the way we were socialized can have an effect on our social responses. That means that for a social experiment, a trans person could sway the results of one side due to their upbringing and the pressures society put on them before/if they don’t pass. This is all assuming they had any trans people there, which is potentially debatable.  I also take issue with this entire fucking episode because just, the amount of toxicity in proving one sex is better than the others is really gross and actually counterproductive to everything feminist and progressive. Not to mention, them implying that they’re trying to support trans people only to reinforce the notion that a trans man is inherently lesser for being a man when even prior to hatching, he would have also been force fed propaganda and societal pressure implying he’s less than for supposedly being a woman is really gross and makes me angry. The point of what I’m saying is that it’s actually not woke to hate men as a way of bringing women up because there are men who are minorities who are being hurt by the rise of aggression being directed at them for their gender. Anyway enough about that.

The tests drew false conclusions because they did not account for how minorities adapt to a world that’s not made for them. This is specifically directed at the episode where subjects were asked to match up 6 people into couples. There were 3 women and 3 men and the humans were asked to put them together into pairs. they could ask the people 1 question each but then had to match them up with only that information. The truth is, the people brought in were 3 real life couples already, which the humans didn’t know until after they matched them. The couples were m/f, m/m, and f/f. I think that’s great, but the problem is, literally none of the humans asked any of them their sexuality as their question and most people didn’t even consider they could match up same-sex people. One girl even thought that they had told her to make m/f pairings, even though they didn’t.  The scientists concluded from the experiment that the humans have a societal bias toward people, and assume they’re all straight, even if they, themselves, are not straight. I personally believe that was the wrong conclusion to draw. You could see some of the queer humans were shocked that they hadn’t considered some of the pairings might be gay. But, I don’t think it’s because they believe everyone they meet is straight, I believe this says more about what they expected from the scientists themselves. If someone is in a minority and they go to do something organized, like a set of experiments, they are going to be judging the quality and setup of the experiments by those designing them. I feel that the lack of consideration that the couples might be gay has a lot more to do with queer people having adapted to a world where queers are rarely involved or included in equal volume to the cishets. The queer humans taking part in the experiment and failing to guess gay couples shows that they have adapted to a world where they are excluded rather than a belief that every random person that they meet is straight. My point is further supported by an expert they had on the show who explained that, statistically, it was entirely likely that they were all straight and that even queers will account for being minorities by going with what’s most likely. The truth is, we are surrounded by a whole lot of straight people. It makes sense to assume only 6 people are all straight and that, if any aren’t, they may be bi.

The scientists frequently broke an already small sample size into even smaller groups. The group was very frequently broken in half, in thirds, or into sets of 10 people. These sample sizes tell us almost nothing actually conclusive. 

The experiments/tests frequently were affected by peoples abilities, unrelated to what was being tested. For example, one test that was broken down into 6 people and 6 control people competing at jenga was meant to show whether needing to pee helps or hurts your focus. first of all, sample sizes of 6 are a fucking joke. Second, this completely ignores these 6 people’s actual ability to play Jenga. If someone sucks at jenga with or without needing to pee, them losing Jenga when they need to pee says exactly fuck all about whether needing to pee affected their focus. They should have tested people’s Jenga skills beforehand, counted the amount of moves they made before the tower fell, and then did it again after hours of not peeing to compare their results. This test made no logical sense at all.

The scientists ignored the social effect of subjects knowing each other as well as duration of events during their last experiment. They were testing to see if people with last names near the end of the alphabet get a shittier deal because they go last in everything where things are done by name order. They tested this by doing a fake awards ceremony where they gave out some 30 awards to people, gauging the applause to see whether the people at the end got less hype and therefore felt worse about themselves than those in the beginning who got the fresh enthusiasm of the audience. the results showed that the applause remained fairly consistent throughout the awards. The issues with this test are numerous, but here are the three I take most issue with. 1) the people here all got to know each other very well over the week it took to make the show. People who know each other and have become friends are much more likely to cheer for each other with enthusiasm, regardless of how long it’s been. On the other hand, polite applause from a crowd at, say, a graduation, where you are applauding people you don’t know, WILL start off more raucous and grow very quiet except for individual families near the end. 2) the duration of the test was a half hour, which is not very long at all and doesn’t say much to test the limits of enthusiasm. Try testing the audience at a graduation with a couple hundred graduates that also involves the time it takes to walk all the way up to a stage a hundred feet away, accept a diploma, and then wait for the next person. These kinds of events take hours and nobody keeps up their enthusiasm that long unless they’re rooting for someone in particular. 3) this study tested only one of many many ways name order affects a person. Cheering and applause is only one factor. It does not take into account people having their resumes looked at in alphabetical order and therefore people at the beginning of the alphabet being picked before anyone ever looks at a W name’s resume. It doesn’t take into account a small child’s show and tell day being at the very end of the school year, after 6 other people have brought in the same thing they planned to. No one cares about their really cool trinket because they’ve seen a bunch like it already. This test doesn’t take into account how many end-of-the-alphabet people just get straight up told, “we ran out of time. maybe next time,” when next time doesn’t really exist. I feel genuinely bad for the girl who suggested this experiment because the scientists straight up said something akin to, “lmao her theory was bs ig /shrug” even though it was their own shitty research abilities that led to their results.

They did one experiment intending to see how many people have what it takes to be a “hero.” The request for this test was made by someone curious about the effect of adrenaline and if it really works how some people say. The scientists thought it an adequate method to determine an answer by testing their reflexes with a weird crying baby sound and then dropping a doll from above while they were distracted with answering questions. The scientists looked up before the doll dropped to indicate a direction of attention. While this does give some answers about peoples intuition, reflexes, and ability to use context clues, its entirely an unusual situation, makes no sense in reality, fails to take adrenaline into consideration literally at all, and has a lot more to do with chance. The person dropping the doll literally couldn’t even drop it in the same place from person to person. Some got it dropped into their lap and others almost out of arm’s reach. This, like a few of the other mentioned experiments, was during the last episode, which felt lazy and thrown together last minute, with very little scientific basis to any of the results. The last episode was weak and disappointing overall. 

One of the big issues I have with this show is actually their repeated use of the same group. They said at the end that they had done over 40 tests. Part of doing studies is getting varied samples of people in order to get more widespread results. Using the same 100 or less people (already a tiny sample) repeatedly is a terrible research method. You’re no longer studying humans at large. You’re studying these specific humans. You can’t take the same group with the same set of inadequacies, the same set of skills, and the same set of biases and then study them extensively and in many different ways like this. Your results are inherently skewed toward these specific people and their abilities. I expected them to at least get a new group each episode - every 5 or so studies - but no. They keep the same group all week, which makes the entire season. This is inexcusable in research imo.

The next issue is contestant familiarity. The humans all getting to know each other is great, socially, but it also destroys the legitimacy of many of the studies that involve working together or comparing yourselves and your beliefs

Many tests had issues with subject dependency. One study, meant to compare age groups and their ability to work together to complete the task of putting together a piece of ready to assemble furniture had each group with members they relied on entirely. A few people built the furniture while one person sat across the room, looking at instructions with their back to the others. They had to relay the instructions through a walkie talkie to another contestant and that other contestant had to relay it to the people they’re watching build the chair. You cannot study a group’s ability to build something with instructions by the ability of one single person to communicate. You’re testing that individual and the rest of them on two completely different capabilities. One person fails at being able to communicate and everyone else becomes unable to build the furniture. Even if everyone else in the group is more effective than all the other groups at building ready to assemble furniture, they might end up falling in last because of their shitty communicator who is literally not able to convey simple instructions. (yes, this actually happened in the test)

One test judged the subjects at their speed of getting ready, to see if men or women are faster at getting ready. While most elements of this test were just fine, the part I took issue with was that they did this test without regard to social convention. They told the subjects they were going on a field trip and to get ready by a certain time. Then, they gave them many things to get distracted by, like refreshments to pack with them, a menu to preorder lunch from, and so on.  The part that upsets me about this test is that they ignored social convention entirely, to the point that subjects were judged based on their conventional actions and expectations more than their actual speed at getting ready. The buses promptly shut their doors and left at the time they were supposed to but there was no final call to get on the buses. In general, when a group is to be taken somewhere by bus, there will be an announcement to load up and leave. You could clearly see many of the subjects were ready to go and were just standing around talking while they waited for fellow subjects to finish getting ready. I have no doubt that, if given a final call, most of them would have loaded up within a couple minutes. However, they were relying on the social convention of announcing departure and were therefore, left behind entirely (for a nonexistent field trip). These people who were left behind were counted as being late and not making the time cutoff. If one were to look at the social element of this situation, if everyone there believed there would be a warning before departure, the fact that 24 to 14 women to men were loaded onto the buses at departure doesn’t necessarily indicate the women were faster to get ready. It seems to me that it’s more likely to indicate anxiety at being late and a belief that they need not impede on anything lest they be reprimanded or have social consequences for taking too long - something women are frequently bullied for. There’s also the chance that many who boarded without final call are more introverted or antisocial. Plus, we can’t forget to include the people who have anxiety about seating. If someone is overweight, has joint pain, or has social anxiety, they will be more likely to board early to get a seat they feel comfortable in. If they had counted up all of the people socializing and waiting on the sidewalks nearby, they may have found that there were more men who were ready to board up at a moment’s notice. I’m not saying I think men are faster to get ready, I’m just saying that we can’t know based on who boarded without a final call. If people believe they will have a last minute chance to board, a large number of them will take the last few minutes to socialize with their new friends until they’re told they have to board. Therefore, this test cannot be considered conclusive without counting and including the people who were ready and not boarded as a third subset.

Honestly, I could go on and on about how sensationalist and unscientific this show is, but I just don’t have 6 more hours to contribute to digging up every single flaw with it. There’s A Lot.

My point is, if you feel like watching this show, which I don’t necessarily discourage inherently, I just beg you to go into it with a critical eye. Enjoy the fun of it and the social aspects, but please don’t rely on the information provided and please don’t spread it as fact, because it’s not.

It’s entertainment, not science.

[autumndiesirae]

Response to @bigmeangatekeeper’s ‘Why I’m Exclusionist’ Page

So recently I came across by far one of the most bigoted exclusionists I’ve seen in a while, that being @bigmeangatekeeper. Normally I block and ignore these sorts of people but given the exceedingly harmful and frankly disgusting rhetoric espoused on this person’s blog, I felt it was necessary to make a formal response, even if the person in question isn’t going to listen to reason or care.

I’m going to be mentioning @herefortheace​ and @justaphobethings​ in this post for their reference, as the arguments presented here are common exclusionist rhetorics and also to share my resources with more inclusionist blogs.

DISCLAIMER: This is not intended to be a ‘callout’, not is it intended to call upon my followers/anyone to attack this blog. This is merely a response to tired old exclusionist rhetoric by an asexual who is sick of people legitimately trying to act like their gross views haven’t been time and time disproven. I also won’t be addressing this blog’s status as a truscum as that isn’t relevant to this post.

TW FOR RAPE/SEXUAL ASSAULT DISCUSSION AND RAPE APOLOGISM.

PAGE LINK

First thing’s first. While I do not automatically exclude LGBT aces, I exclude cishet aces AND homo/transphobic or homo/transphobia apologist aces. It’s not just about the cishets. It’s about so much more.

As stated hundreds of times before, there definitely are homophobic, biphobic, transphobic, sexist, and racist asexuals. There are also apologists for these asexuals. Absolutely no one is arguing that these are problematic people. However, exclusionists like to pretend that the occasional ‘bad’ asexual is somehow a representative of the entire community, to which I respond ‘how then do you feel about TERF lesbians or biphobic gay men?’ Because if a few bad members of a sexuality are enough to warrant that entire community being removed from the LGBT community as a whole, then this rhetoric should be applied to every single sexual orientation or gender identity. Yet, asexuals and aromantics get singled out for this time and time again. It’s almost like exclusionists are unwilling to admit that they just want to remove asexuals as a whole and are only grasping for excuses so much that they will use the occasional problematic ace as a gotcha to push forward their ideologies. It’s funny because half the time what exclusionists define as ‘homophobic asexuals’ are often either blatantly obvious trolls or minors simply making jokes or having fun with their identity.

Also, thank you for including SOME aces! We appreciate you soooo much for driving a wall between our community! /s

The standard of “SGA and trans” as requirement for entry to the LGBTQ community is used nowhere outside of aphobic tumblr, and it seems crafted specifically for the purpose of excluding aces, aros, NBs, intersex people, and others not deemed “gay enough”.

There are also many “SGA and trans” aces who are against the gatekeeping and feel that they are hated by these aphobes.

You’re not protecting me by being an ace/aro exclusionist.

What we hear when you say “I only support SGA Asexuals/Aromantics”

my favourite thing is when aphobes try to tell me that their aphobia doesn’t apply to me / affect me because “[i’m] queer for other reasons”

okay, you wanna know why I’m for including all aces in the LGBT+ community?

Why your acephobia and arophobia is really just bullshit

it really annoys me when I see Discoursers say they support LGBT+ aces, just not cishet ones.

when you say “i accept sga and trans aces and aros but not cishet aces/aros because they’re straight”

Suffering! Suffering?

when people ‘accept’ sga/mga/non-cis aces and aros, but not others, what it actually means is they accept the part of you that isn’t directly tied to your asexuality/aromanticism

if ur gonna fuckin claim those four letters cover them & the whole damn community, they sure as fuck can cover aces as well

“Ace discourse” is really a Tumblr-only thing

I’m a lesbian ace and I’ve never felt more worthless and disgusting than this ace discourse

The reason even trans and bi/gay/pan/etc asexuals get defensive when you talk about cishet aces/aros not being part of the LGBT+ community is because you’re erasing a part of our identity??

If you talk shit about aces/aros with the disclaimer “cishet” it still affects all aces. Saying “notably cishet aces should all go die” still makes all ace/aro people feel like they are being called out.

Your “discourse” is harmful to all asexuals. And PS, your rhetoric is literally indistinguishable from TWERF rhetoric.

It’s about the blatant homophobia, transphobia, and serophobia in the ace community.

Again, this may exist in some members of the community, but that does not magically erase the status of the community as being LGBT. If it did, TERFs lesbians would have caused the lesbian community to be no longer considered LGBT.

It’s about there being no consistent definition of asexuality, thus allowing literally anyone regardless of relationship status, libido, etc to claim the ace label, and thereby try to shoulder their way into the LGBT community.

There is a consistent definition of asexuality. It’s ‘a lack of sexual attraction’. Libido, relationship status, etc, do not have any role in the asexual label. This has been the definition of asexuality for years. Looking up ‘asexuality’ on Google literally explains this:

I found these in one quick search. What’s your excuse?

The reason there appears to be ‘no consistent definition’ is the fault of non-asexuals and exclusionists pushing their own definitions of what asexuality is so that they can later pretend that its the asexuals who are changing the definition. The idea that asexuals never have sex was a misconstruing of the description of sex-repulsed asexuals. The idea that asexuals don’t have a libido also came from this. Asexuals can and do masturbate (for pleasure or stress relief), have sex (for pleasure or to have children), etc. These are not related to the definition of asexuality.

Additionally, if the fact that there isn’t a consistent definition of asexuality bothers you, then why not address how bisexuals and pansexuals don’t always have a consistent definition for their sexuality either? Some bisexuals claim the bi label is only for men and women, some say it includes nonbinary people, some say bisexuality is a transphobic label compared to pansexuality, etc, etc.

It’s about asexuals telling traumatised people/mentally ill people/dysphoric people/autistic people/CHILDREN that they’re ace rather then encouraging them to consider other reasons why they might feel sex repulsed.

Telling an individual ‘have you considered you may be asexual’ is not the same that saying ‘you are asexual, no arguments, you just are’. A person suggesting a label is not forcing anyone to co-opt that label. In addition, sexualities are fluid. I know many people who identified as ace at a younger age and then identified differently at an older age. I know many people who are the reverse. Are there individuals who identified incorrectly as ace at one age and feel upset or angry about it? Absolutely. But that is not the fault of any asexual who suggested the label. And, again, sex repulsion is not the requirement for being asexual.

It’s about asexuals not understanding that asexuality is not comparable to other sexualities bc it’s about how you feel attraction instead of who you feel attraction to

“Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, erotic, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied over time, it lacks a precise definition.” From Wikipedia

A Definition of Sexuality

Sexuality is no longer just about ‘who’ you experience attraction to.

It’s about asexuals hypersexualising all other sexualities (most particularly gay people) and making us out to be fucking sex craved deviants

Citation fucking needed. Also, yet again, a few asexuals doing this (not that I have ever seen any aside from one extremely obvious troll doing this) is not somehow a representation of the entire community.

It’s about asexuals pushing the toxic and harmful split attraction model even though it’s been shown time and time again to allow people to explain away their internalised homophobia/biphobia, and encouraging microlabelling that just confuses people more and causes divisiveness in the community

What we call the split-attraction model was first described by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a gay advocate from the 1800s, as “disjunctive uranodioning”. (source) (credit to this post)

There is absolutely no evidence aside from exclusionist rhetoric to uphold the idea that the SAM is homophobic or toxic. Additionally the SAM is used by non-ace and non-aro people regularly - I am familiar with many people who make that distinction in their romantic and sexual orientations, such as one friend who is pansexual but heteroromantic (in that she will have sex with all genders but prefers to romantically date men). It seems your bigger issue is the existence of microlabelling, which while that is a debatable problem in this community, at the end of the day it really isn’t any of your business. The only real source of divisiveness in this community is gatekeepers like you.

It’s about asexuals erasing gay history and literally just fabricating false stories for asexual representation, usually at the expense of gay people

Citation needed, once again.

Asexuals recorded as “Group X” in the 1948 Kinsey Reports

What is asexual history? The 19th and 20th century

From The Westminster Review, a political magazine, in 1907; an essay by Helen Fraser called Women’s Suffrage, on how if women got the vote, butch and ace women were gonna dominate the whole thing and screw it up for all the Real Ladies.

The Spinster Movement, and how they were treated as queer

From “Feminism,” by Correa Moylan Walsh, 1917

the “aces/aros were part of the bi community until they very recently chose to split off, so stop telling them that they have never been queer or that they don’t belong in ‘the LGBT community’” masterpost

asexuality existed before David Jay and AVEN

“Where were you when…?” A History of Asexual Inclusion (Part One)

“Where were you when…?” A History of Asexual Inclusion (Part Two)

It’s about asexuals stealing autistic terminology, and creating false axes of oppression that make literally everyone who isn’t ace their oppressors

The ‘actuallyasexual’ tag supposedly being stolen from the ‘actuallyautistic’ tag was never proven to be a legitimate claim. Autistic people have repeatedly come forward saying that this was never the case. Since I am not autistic, however, I won’t press on this particular point. If anyone is autistic and has some information on this, please DM me.

It’s about adult asexuals literally acting like children and using the ‘uwu im a pure ace’ response

Citation needed. I’m sensing a trend here.

Any asexual who partakes in, excuses, or explains away this behaviour in the ace community is dangerous and could easily cause harm to the LGBT community.

Once again - TERF lesbians, transphobic gay man, etc. should also be included under this rhetoric if you’re going to treat asexuals this way, otherwise you’re just being a hypocrite.

Asexuals are not oppressed under homophobia or transphobia. The LGBT community was not built just to combat oppression, because that would mean women and POC would automatically be LGBT, which is absurd. The community was developed specifically so that SGA and non-cis people would have a place to get away from societal homophobia and transphobia, and to push back against legally instituted oppression, like fighting for gay marriage, and to get laws put in place that protect us from hate crimes.

Firstly, SGA (same-gender attraction) is a term that was used and is still used in Mormon conversion therapy, so as one can understand,a lot of people are very uncomfortable being labeled with this description. 

Secondly -

“The LGBT community has always been about fighting homophobia and transphobia/we came together to fight homophobia and transphobia”

“Homophobia and Transphobia”: What does the LGBT+ community fight for?

The modern American movement was first known as the “gay community” when cis gay men refused to even accept lesbians, then the “gay and lesbian community”. (Good reading on the subject.)

“After the elation of change following group action in the Stonewall riots in New York, in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, some gays and lesbians became less accepting of bisexual or transgender people. Critics said that transgender people were acting out stereotypes and bisexuals were simply gay men or lesbian women who were afraid to come out and be honest about their identity. Each community has struggled to develop its own identity including whether, and how, to align with other gender and sexuality-based communities, at times excluding other subgroups; these conflicts continue to this day.” (source)

“From about 1988, activists began to use the initialism LGBT in the United States. Not until the 1990s within the movement did gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people gain equal respect.” (ibid)

These are scans of a gay magazine from 1999 showing that 48% of those surveyed did not believe that trans people should be a part of the gay community.

The community’s boundaries have always been in flux

Insisting that LG people have always been accepting of bi and trans people is incredibly revisionist and does a great deal of injustice to those who have been excluded.

While I agree that asexuals go through some discrimination, ‘aphobia’ is not an axis of oppression because it is not institutionalised. The discrimination asexual and aromantic people face is based within rape culture, toxic masculinity, traditionalist values, and misogyny.

You sound like transphobic sexists who claim trans men do not experience transphobia that is specific to trans men (transmisandry) much in the same way that trans women experience transphobia specific to trans women (transmisogyny).

First of all, what do you use as the definition of ‘institutionalized’?

Second, why are you acting like asexuals are seen as some ‘other’ group rather than a part of the LGBT community when institutionalized discrimination is being discussed?

Third, ‘institutionalized discrimination’ was never a requirement to be LGBT. By that logic, a gay man who lives in a country/state where gay marriage is legal, conversion therapy is banned, and who has never experienced any form of anti-LGBT discrimination in his life is straight. That’s an asinine proposition.

For some examples of asexual-specific discrimination - 

“My parents keep telling me that I’m something else, and it’s making me doubt my sense of judgement, not just about my sexual identity, but also about everything in general.”

“My family, friends, and co-workers keep referring to me as an inanimate object in a manner that’s clearly meant to humiliate and devastate me. Nothing I say will get them to stop.”

“My parents vocally/bodily forced me to undergo medical examinations, some of them concerning my sexual organs, many of them concerning blood tests and other trauma-centric procedures.”

“My family is intervening with my private life by changing my schedule to include exercise, socialization, friend influences, and whatever they think can ‘change’ me.”

“My friends/co-workers no longer respect my bodily boundaries when I came out to them, because they no longer see me as someone who should be respected. They regularly touch, fondle, grope, and prod me without permission, and/or verbally harass me, and don’t take my objections seriously.”

“My family, friends, and co-workers no longer just harass me, but also anyone I’m currently dating because they view my significant other as pathetic, underserved, or even being abused.”

“My date got irrationally angry and confrontational when I came out to them, in a manner that made me fearful.” (SO many of these.)

“My date immediately lost any respect they had for my boundaries, no longer asked for consent, and {tried to} force themselves upon me.” (A lot of these, too)

“My date tried to verbally circumvent any boundaries and issues I confessed to, and it made me feel like I was in danger.”

“I didn’t come out to my date at first, and when they found out, they radically changed their behavior in an attempt to control and manipulate our new relationship to their benefit.”

“My partner has forcefully and radically changed our long-term relationship after finding out about my asexuality, and I’m now trapped and controlled in a way that I wasn’t before.”

“My partner broke up with me/is fighting with me because of my asexuality, and trying to make it seem like I’m hurting them. It’s made me doubt myself and my ability to trust my own intentions.”

“My partner is slowly changing from what was once supportive of my asexuality, and I’m wondering when I have the right to be worried and when I’d be overreacting. I’m aware of the worst case scenario, but I also worry that I’m being selfish and childish - which are things I’ve been told all throughout my asexual experience.”

“I don’t trust my ability to say either yes or no in sexual situations, and this has extended to my life in general. I don’t feel comfortable in my ability to self-determinate.”

“The lack of authority, definition, and schooling of the concept of asexuality has made me very uncomfortable with what I think I am, and that uncertainty haunts me every waking moment.”

“I think it’s too late/too early to tell if I’m asexual, but the longer I hesitate, the worse my mental health and emotional wellbeing gets. I’m effectively stuck.”

“I see no benefit in coming out, or even identifying as asexual. There’s no positivity, role models, or supportive community for what I consider a big and scary part of my overall identity.”

“I think this was sexual abuse, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfishand childish.”

“I think I was treated badly by my parents/friends/partner, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfishand childish.”

“I want to believe that I’m deserving of equal freedom and human respect paid to other, not asexual people, but people tell me I’m being selfishand childish.”

“No one encourages this part of me. And that makes me feel forgotten and abandoned in general.”

Dr Gordon Hodson wrote this about his 2012 study:

In a recent investigation (MacInnis & Hodson, in press) we uncovered strikingly strong bias against asexuals in both university and community samples. Relative to heterosexuals, and even relative to homosexuals and bisexuals, heterosexuals: (a) expressed more negative attitudes toward asexuals (i.e., prejudice); (b) desired less contact with asexuals; and © were less willing to rent an apartment to (or hire) an asexual applicant (i.e., discrimination). Moreover, of all the sexual minority groups studied, asexuals were the most dehumanized (i.e., represented as “less human”). Intriguingly, heterosexuals dehumanized asexuals in two ways. Given their lack of sexual interest, widely considered a universal interest, it might not surprise you to learn that asexuals were characterized as “machine-like” (i.e., mechanistically dehumanized). But, oddly enough, asexuals were also seen as “animal-like” (i.e., animalistically dehumanized). Yes, asexuals were seen as relatively cold and emotionless and unrestrained, impulsive, and less sophisticated.

When you repeatedly observe such findings it grabs your attention as a prejudice researcher. But let’s go back a minute and consider those discrimination effects. Really? You’d not rent an apartment to an asexual man, or hire an asexual woman? Even if you relied on stereotypes alone, presumably such people would make ideal tenants and employees. We pondered whether this bias actually represents bias against single people, a recently uncovered and very real bias in its own right (see Psychology Today column by Bella DePaulo). But our statistical analyses ruled out this this possibility. So what’s going on here?

If you’ve been following my column, you’ll recall that I wrote a recent article on what I called the “Bigotry Bigot-Tree” – what psychologists refer to as generalized prejudice. Specifically, those disliking one social group (e.g., women) also tend to dislike other social groups (e.g., homosexuals; Asians). In our recent paper (MacInnis & Hodson, in press), we found that those who disliked homosexuals also disliked bisexuals and asexuals. In other words, these prejudices are correlated. Heterosexuals who dislike one sexual minority, therefore, also dislike other sexual minorities, even though some of these groups are characterized by their sexual interest and activity and others by their lack of sexual interest and activity.

This anti-asexual bias, at its core, seems to boil down to what Herek (2010) refers to as the “differences as deficit” model of sexual orientation. By deviating from the typical, average, or normal sexual interests, sexual minorities are considered substandard and thus easy targets for disdain and prejudice. Contrary to conventional folk wisdom, prejudice against sexual minorities may not therefore have much to do with sexual activity at all. There is even evidence, for instance, that religious fundamentalists are prejudiced against homosexuals even when they are celibate (Fulton et al., 1999). Together, such findings point to a bias against “others”, especially different others, who are seen as substandard and deficient (and literally “less human”). “Group X” is targeted for its lack of sexual interest even more than homosexuals and bisexuals are targeted for their same-sex interests.

From news coverage of a recently published study (2016):

What should the average person take away from your study?

Since I first became interested in the issue, I have come to conclude that U.S. society is both “sex negative” and “sex positive.” In other words, there is stigma and marginalization that can come both from being “too sexual” and from being “not sexual enough.” In a theoretical paper, I argued that sexuality may be compulsory in contemporary U.S. society. In other words, our society assumes that (almost) everyone is, at their core, “sexual” and there exists a great deal of social pressure to experience sexual desire, engage in sexual activities, and adopt a sexual identity. At the same time, various types of “non-sexuality” (such as a lack of sexual desire or activity) are stigmatized.

For this particular study, I identified thirty individuals who identified as asexual and asked them first, if they had experienced stigma or marginalization as a result of their asexuality, and, second how they challenged this stigma or marginalization. I found that my interviewees had experienced the following forms of marginalization: pathologization (i.e. people calling them sick), social isolation, unwanted sex and relationship conflict, and the denial of epistemic authority (i.e. people not believing that they didn’t experience sexual attraction). I also found that my interviews resisted stigma and marginalization in five ways: describing asexuality as simply a different (but not inherently worse) form of sexuality; deemphasizing the importance of sexuality in human life; developing new types of nonsexual relationships; coming to see asexuality as a sexual orientation or identity; and engaging in community building and outreach.

I hope that average people would take away from this study the idea that some people can lead fulfilling lives without experiencing sexual attraction but can experience distress if others try to invalidate their identities.

Some of the social isolation we aspecs experience comes from religious communities. Indeed, the popular myth that religious people revere aspecs is very much NOT TRUE. For example, read “Myth 8″ from the VISION Catholic Religious Vocation Guide:

MYTH 8: Religious are asexual

Question: What do you call a person who is asexual?

Answer: Not a person. Asexual people do not exist.Sexuality is a gift from God and thus a fundamental part of our human identity. Those who repress their sexuality are not living as God created them to be: fully alive and well. As such, they’re most likely unhappy. All people are called by God to live chastely, meaning being respectful of the gift of their sexuality. Religious men and women vow celibate chastity, which means they live out their sexuality without engaging in sexual behavior. A vow of chastity does not mean one represses his manhood or her womanhood. Sexuality and the act of sex are two very different things. While people in religious life abstain from the act of sex, they do not become asexual beings, but rather need to be in touch with what it means to be a man or a woman. A vow of chastity also does not mean one will not have close, loving relationships with women and men. In fact, such relationships are a sign of living the vow in a healthy way. Living a religious vow of chastity is not always easy, but it can be a very beautiful expression of love for God and others. Religious women and men aren’t oddities; they mirror the rest of the church they serve: there are introverts and extroverts, tall and short, old and young, straight and gay, obese and skinny, crass and pious, humorous and serious, and everything in between. They attempt to live the same primary vocation as all other Christians do: proclaiming and living the gospel. However, religious do this as members of an order that serve the church and world in a particular way. Like marriage and the single life, religious life can be wonderful, fulfilling, exciting, and, yes, normal. Yet, it also can be countercultural and positively challenging. It’s that for us and many others. If you thought religious life was outdated, dysfunctional, or dead, we hope you can now look beyond the stereotypes and see the gift it is to the church and world.

NOTE: YOU CAN BE A GAY CATHOLIC PERSON BUT NOT ASEXUAL, BC ASEXUALITY DOESN’T EXIST (yet somehow we’re also “most likely unhappy” and “oddities”). I sincerely hope and believe that not all religions characterize us aspecs this way. But here are some personal accounts I found on a reddit site answering the question “Do any religions have a negative stance toward asexuals?”:

Please note that the Christian pastor in the last example was fearful (or something?) that an asexual was helping to lead a youth group and kicked them out of the church as a result.

(Not to mention that there is now a published dissertation with a whole chapter dedicated to understanding why a-spec people have been erased from history and virtually invisible up until recently, which is a very real issue in this debate that cannot be ignored).

This argument is as tired as the rest of the ones you’re putting out. And since i know you’re just going to ignore this with some backhanded commentary - 

If we give primary sources based on lived experiences (which is the basis of qualitative research, which founded so much of the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and more, and is still used today as a very common research practice), such evidence is dismissed because it’s not academic or in a news publication. Never mind that this practice of citing tumblr blogs for personal experiences is similar in practice (if not as rigorous) as netnographic research (a practice developed by Rob Kozinets, whose book on it has close to 1500 google scholar citations, and whose seminal article on it has over 2000).

If we give articles from press outlets, they are dismissed as commercial and therefore not acceptable. (I could find a lot more of this, but look, it’s happened a lot and not main point here).

If we give academic citations, such as the study that was published a few years ago (what I’ve seen referred to as’ the Group X study’ by discoursers), they are dismissed (read, not ‘debunked’ because that is a different thing) because popular press such as psychologytoday.com dared to cover the story, or because they don’t believe the need for such study exists, and because someone hadn’t read the original research so felt free to critique it’s methods (????).  Slightly more legitimately, I’ve seen it dismissed based on the use of convenience samples (though I can’t find the link), but it’s worth pointing out that the actual research also used a sample drawn from the general public. And if you’re dismissing a study based on the use of a convenience sample, you can also throw out about 90% of academic research done in psychology and related fields in the past 40 years. Almost all research uses convenience sampling, and this study actually went beyond that anyway.

(For the record, that study also goes a long way to explain why intra-community aphobia exists, if you read the full article, and finds that the more biased people are also more right-wing authoritarian and endorse social-dominance orientation, basically meaning they “endorse dominance and inter-group hierarchies”).

Source with more information

Literally every argument for ace oppression, like corrective rape for example, is not ace exclusive. On the other hand, gay and trans people face specific pointed prosecution for being non-cis or SGA.

“The term ‘corrective rape’ was coined by South African lesbians and should only be used by lesbians”

No one means any disrespect to lesbians or other victims of corrective rape, but this is not a correct statement.

“We’ll Show You You’re a Woman” describes the violence directed towards LGBT people in South Africa, stating, “Negative public attitudes towards homosexuality go hand in hand with a broader pattern of discrimination, violence, hatred, and extreme prejudice against people known or assumed to be lesbian, gay, and transgender, or those who violate gender and sexual norms in appearance or conduct (such as women playing soccer, dressing in a masculine manner, and refusing to date men).” It goes on to say, “Much of the recent media coverage of violence against lesbians and transgender men has been characterized by a focus on “corrective rape,” a phenomenon in which men rape people they presume or know to be lesbians in order to “convert” them to heterosexuality.”

The Wikipedia article on corrective rape in South Africa states that, “A study conducted by OUT LGBT Well-being and the University of South Africa Centre for Applied Psychology (UCAP) showed that “the percentage of black gay men who said they have experienced corrective rape matched that of the black lesbians who partook in the study”.”

It is not only lesbians, but also bisexual women, transgender men, gay men, and gender non-conforming people in South Africa who experience corrective rape. This is not in any way meant to minimize the horror of the epidemic or shift attention away from lesbians, but other victims, including asexuals, deserve attention as well. Do not silence or speak over victims of rape by policing their language.

And regarding ace-specific discrimination, I provided a wall of it, if you’d like to scroll up and read it again.

I’ve been beaten bloody while called a fag and a tranny and left for dead. I’ve had a guy rape me while aggressively misgendering me and telling me what a freak cuntboy I was. Those attacks were specifically because I’m trans and gay. Ace people are attacked because they won’t have sex, not because they’re ace. It’s just good old fashioned rape, there’s no hate crime element I guarantee it.

I’m very sorry that happened to you.

I was repeatedly molested by my first boyfriend because he told me that “wouldn’t be ace anymore when he was done with me”. I’ve been punched, thrown to the ground, and had my nose broken because I wore an asexual flag pin on my backpack, with people calling me a disgusting queer. My girlfriend of five years, the person I intended to marry, cheated on me with a mutual friend because I was asexual and ‘didn’t validate her body’. And, as I already shown, my experiences are commonplace for asexuals. Your trauma, as horrible as it is, does not give you any right to say that an asexual who is raped and told “I’ll fix you” is not ‘good old fashioned rape’.

Please read this and tell me about how there’s no hate crime element to it:

“‘I just want to help you,’ he called out to me as I walked away from his car,” she explained. “He was basically saying that I was somehow broken and that he could repair me with his tongue and, theoretically, with his penis. It was totally frustrating and quite scary.”

Sexual harassment and violence, including so-called “corrective” rape, is disturbingly common in the ace community, says Decker, who has received death threats and has been told by several online commenters that she just needs a “good raping.”

“When people hear that you’re asexual, some take that as a challenge,” said Decker, who is currently working on a book about asexuality. “We are perceived as not being fully human because sexual attraction and sexual relationships are seen as something alive, healthy people do. They think that you really want sex but just don’t know it yet. For people who perform corrective rape, they believe that they’re just waking us up and that we’ll thank them for it later.”

“There is a real fear even among the asexual community that people who identify as anything other than heterosexual will be harassed and assaulted,” wrote “Angela,” a self-identified aromantic ace. “They have a reason to be upset and a reason to be afraid, it has happened to many people before.”

In response to the post, an anonymous user wrote, “[A]sexuality is not a thing. You are just ugly and no one wanted to date you, so you made up a thing to cuddle your lonely self as you cry into your pillow. Also, I hope you get raped. It has a dual benefit, you’ll get laid finally AND put you into your place as well.”

The comment triggered a firestorm, with some asexuals speaking out and sharing their own experiences involving sexual violence.

Asexuals and ace activists say the conversation about sexual assault in the asexual community is part of the wider societal discussion about rape culture generally and about corrective rape in the queer community specifically. They also say it speaks to a bias and an invisibility that asexuals face in everyday life.

Source

Asexuals and aromantics are notoriously homophobic, transphobic, and serophobic in their arguments. I personally have seen them say things about inclusionists like ‘I hope they get antibiotic resistant gonorrhoea and crabs in the same week’ (actual quote), I’ve been told ‘you probably have aids’ because I’m a gay man, I’ve seen them argue that non-ace people can’t be raped because we constantly want sex and have had my own assaults denied, etc. This wasn’t just one incident, it’s a pattern. Over and over ace people wish violent sexual threats on non-ace people. They call us disgusting. They call us filthy. They call us ‘the oppressive monogays’ and ‘filthy allos’. I’ve had them go so far as to fling homophobic slurs at me, and say we deserved the aids crisis. Sorry, but any group that is totally fine with even some of its members being that actively, unabashedly homophobic has absolutely no place in this community. I wouldn’t let my grandfather who called me a pathetic fag into the community either, no matter how much sex he did or didn’t have.

I like how you say ‘actual quote’ and yet do not provide a single link, screenshot, or even falsified anonymous message as proof of this.

For the 100th time - the behavior of a few asexuals does not represent the entire community, otherwise TERF lesbians, transphobic gay men, biphobic trans people, etc, would mean their entire community are no longer considered LGBT.

Would you like a glimpse at some of the behavior exclusionists that are ‘real LGBT’ bestow on asexuals?

Comparing aces and aros to Trump  (and pretending this is funny)

Comparing aces to Pence  

Comparing aces to Ronald Reagan (and pretending this is funny)

Comparing aces to a literal slave owner

Making fun of aces not being accepted by their parents and of aces finding this upsetting (making it into a crytyping “joke”)

Making aces feel shitty/shaming them for telling their parents they’re ace because it’s supposedly “unnecessary”

Saying if we tell family about being ace, it’s no wonder if they send us to therapy

Doing their best to sexualize the orientations of aces, in so many cases. The link before these two is also connected to that. They treat our orientations like (graphic) details about “our sex lives”, frequently acting like if we want to talk about them ever we’re gross/creepy

This one is also “nice” re sexualizing aces (one of many examples of ppl also engaging in sex-shaming while they’re at it, saying only one’s partner should know anything about one’s “relationships with sex”. Except this person goes kinda even further)

More sexualization, when I say this freaks me out as a WoC, I’m told this white person gives no fucks and wants me to be miserable

Another person who says the identities of aces but also of aros need to stay between them and their Partners because they’re “TMI” and inherently sex-shaming somehow

Oh yeah did I mention, much the same with sexualizing aros and ppl frequently link our identities to misogyny and to using people while they’re at it

Making light and fun of ace WoC asking to not be sexualized because don’t we know aces have done Bad things and so we deserve it/don’t get to complain

One of many examples of white people who hate aces+aros talking over PoC and trying to erase us from our communities (+usually when we call that shit out they don’t care. This is actually one of the more cordial responses I’ve come across despite the lack of apology lol. [Eta: my wording here was misleading before, they weren’t talking to me - I’d also called them on this but they ignored me. Sorry for the confusion!] Also, I have a tag somewhere with several non-black/white ppl who made Rachel Dolezal comparisons to shit on aces/aros). Another example of talking over us here complete with condescendingly lecturing a PoC about racism

People like this saying outright they hate aces

Saying sex ed shouldn’t teach about asexuality

Outright stating they think being ace/aro gives people privilege (because supposedly aces+aros both benefit from conservatives pushing for abstinence)

Outright invalidating the identities of aces (who don’t have the attitude towards sex they think they should have)

Calling asexuals demons

Outright calling aces and aros a “plague” and saying aces/aros regardless of other identities all need to be kicked out of the LGBT+ community.

Erasing the identities of people who speak out against anti-ace/aro shit to declare them “straight” or “cishet” …or saying that treatment is what they get for being “traitors to their own community”

Ignoring the boundaries of aces/aros who have them blocked and don’t want to be vagued to make fun of them …

…or even to continue sexualizing them after they have made it very clear that shit freaks them out (cheerfully doing this to a WoC)

Someone saying asexuality does not exist and “encourages slut shaming”

Spamming the ace positivity tag with vile hate (ppl have talked a lot about how this harms and endangers especially mentally ill ppl)

“aces are embarassing“ in the positivity tag

Posting nsfw content in the ace positivity tag and being completely unapologetic, apparently using the reasoning that our identities are inherently nsfw anyway (see the “TMI discourse” aka people sexualizing our identities)

Calling aces and aros a “sexuality fandom” while pretending we’re a group full of people with every privilege imaginable, bored of being accepted by everyone and of having no Actual Problems in our lives. This kind of nasty erasure constantly goes on and is a big tactic in this mess tbh

Wanting aces to be “exterminated”. For good measure putting this in the ace positivity tag

This disgusting vile shit that I don’t even know how to sum up but it includes wishing death on someone

Talking about wanting aces/aros dead after somehow misunderstanding(?) a post that was very clearly not about asexuality or aromanticism

Graphically telling aces to die

Specifically telling ace kids to kill themselves

Did I mention that many people in this mess have wished death on aces and aros and that they often put it in positivity tags. Some of the most messed up shit I’ve seen is missing because I didn’t reblog/respond to it at the time or can’t find it right now

And I know anons don’t count as hard “proof” for anything but have the less graphic one of the death/rape threats I got in my inbox for speaking out against anti-ace/aro shit (still kinda eerily detailed though. Not linking the other one because it is extremely graphic)

Comparing aces to a literal white supremacist (in the positivity tag)

Again someone invalidating the identities of aces who don’t have the attitude towards sex they think they should have

Sexualizing aros again, not caring about how it affects particularly aro PoC. And here two other ppl sexualizing and demonizing aros, like in posts further above claiming (non-ace) aros just use people for sex (said on positivity post).

Someone sexualizing aces again and engaging in sex-shaming at the same time, as usual with the claim that literally no one but a partner “needs” to know our orientations

Those Rachel Dolezal comparisons I mentioned made by non-black/white people who want to use antiblackness for what they call “ace discourse”?Yeah here is one white person doing it and here is another, even worse example where a white person goes “this is like if I pulled a Rachel D. and put on blackface and used the n-word…” (paraphrasing here). Here is the latter person utterly dismissing me being upset by their antiblackness (because black ppl’s pain only matters when it’s useful)

[For ppl who don’t know: Rachel Dolezal is a white woman who pretended to be black and built her career on it. White people sure as hell do not get to compare this shit to anything that is not antiblackness and use black people’s pain for their own purposes.]

A white person using antiblackness as a weapon against aces and aros in general (aka “ace tumblr”), acting smug regarding how supposedly we’re all so racist and “get triggered” by black people existing. (I am so tired of white ppl using racism as a cheap “gotcha” against aces and aros - groups which include PoC. And who then ignore or belittle PoC who call them out)

White person randomly informing WoC aces/aros can have white privilege

Again someone claiming ace privilege exists and here another person doing it adding to the post further above, claiming aces/aros have privilege for being ace/aro and that this is the case bc people who don’t have sex are privileged (wrong definition of asexuality… also of aromanticism??… and also no. No.)

What I mentioned about ppl telling us asexuality/aromanticism are not orientations but only ever modifiers? It’s happened a lot but here’s one example. And here’s someone outright saying aro aces don’t have an orientation but only modifiers.

Here’s the same person who said aro aces don’t have an orientation later turning around saying the orientation of aro aces is determined by how they behave and who they have sex with.

Another person putting nsfw shit in the ace positivity tag (link is to nsfw text)

And people try really hard to justify despising aces and aros by pointing to shitty people who share our identities/orientations. Honesty is secondary in this. Here you have someone taking a shitty post from an obvious nasty troll blog to say this is why ppl hate aces, and later when having the troll thing pointed out to them saying they already know. The post got over 3k notes.

“asexual shouldn’t even be a way people identify themselves”, with a second person in the thread agreeing

If you’re interested, some way back I also made a link-less post that is important to me talking about how nasty and harmful the racism and erasure of ace and aro PoC in all this has been

These are not even referring to more recent horrors that the exclusionist community has forced down our throats.

They don’t have a coherent definition of asexuality. Literally there’s no cohesive definition. None. Some of them say it’s people who feel no sexual attraction, some say it’s people who feel no sexual desire, some say you can have and enjoy sex and still be totally valid uwu, some say you can only have sex to please a partner, some say you have to be sex repulsed, the list goes on and fucking on. If we let in a group that has a definition that’s this fucking loose, we are opening the door for literally anyone to shoulder their way into this community.

I’ve already addressed this. There is a consistent definition. One Google search gets you that definition.

And even if there wasn’t, or if certain people reframe the definition to better mesh with their own personal experiences, why are you not extending this same rude-ass rhetoric towards bisexuals and pansexuals who constantly argue over the definitions of bi- and pansexuality? Why are you not extending this towards cis lesbians who argue if trans women can or cannot be WLW? Why are you not extending this towards cis gay men who argue if trans men can or cannot by MLM?

No one is ‘shouldering’ their way into any community. The asexual community is already a part of the LGBT movement. They’re not leaving just because you make rude posts like this.

Almost every single exclusionist I’ve spoken to has thought at some time or another that they were ‘demisexual’ or ‘grey-ace’ or some other bullshit ‘aspec’ term.

Exclusionists who do identified or have identified as asexual are not some sort of ‘gotcha’ for how the asexual community is bad. Once again, ace people expressing their experiences and suggesting to someone ‘you might be ace’ are not somehow homophobic or forcing people to be LGBT any more than the people in my life who told me I may be trans or agender were transphobic or forcing me to be trans or agender. If someone no longer identifies as asexual because of any given reason, that isn’t the fault of the asexual community for expressing that the option exists.

Have you ever spoken to an asexual who first found out about the definition of asexuality? Let me share my experience - when I first discovered the definition of asexuality and realized ‘oh, that’s me’, I sobbed tears of joy and relief for hours. I spent ages pouring over asexuality resources and participating in forums and embracing my new identity. And my experience isn’t some one-off thing - if you look into asexuality forums and websites, this is something many of us experience. In a world so overcharged with sexuality and people constantly telling us ‘you’re broken’, ‘you’ll find the right person’, etc, etc, an allosexual will never ever know what it’s like to have this feeling of relief that an asexual experiences when they first find out that’s an option.

Asexuality isn’t a spectrum. You either want sex/feel attraction to some degree (non-ace) or you don’t (ace). You don’t need a label for not wanting to fuck strangers. In fact, most people don’t want to fuck strangers. Demisexual is the norm!

“Why is there no coherent/consistent definition of asexuality???”

“Here is my (wrong) definition of asexuality! If you disagree with it you’re a homophobe!”

And that’s why the ‘asexual community’ should never be allowed in bc it’s an excuse for cishet people who don’t like hookups to invade spaces that were specifically made to get away from cishets.

We’re already allowed in. The ace community isn’t some out-group trying to get into the LGBT community. We’re here, and we’re staying, even when whiny exclusionists like you try to make these gotcha-style posts. Asexuals aren’t cishets, no matter how much you cry about it.

“Straight” isn’t a sexual orientation, it’s a position of power.

A-Spec Identities are Not Secondary.

Invisibility is Not a Privilege.

“passing privilege” is not a real thing.

Straight-passing privilege: a myth

Bad arguments against allowing a-spec to identify as queer

Having your identity erased is not a privilege.

asexuality, like bisexuality, is deliberately misunderstood by out groups in order to exclude us.

ace/aro people don’t “only” experience attraction to the ‘opposite gender’ or any other. that’s the point. we also experience a lack of attraction, either romantically or sexually, and that lack of attraction is part of our identity.

Straight is not default.

How many straight people do you know that want to kill themselves because of their orientation?

The closet is not a privilege

On that point—you can absolutely be ace and cishet. First of all, you can be asexual, cisgender, and heteroromantic (or aromantic, cisgender, and heterosexual). That’s pretty obvious. If you can have gay ace people, you can have straight ones. But that’s not even the most important point.

Yes, you can be a ‘cishet ace’, in the contexts you described. The reason people despise being called ‘cishet ace’ is because it’s being referred to in the traditional ‘cishet’ context of ‘non-LGBT person’.  Some het aces identify as straight. Some het aces don’t identify as straight, they identify as asexual, and it’s not your place to label them against their will. There is no world in which aroaces, people who experience no attraction to anyone, are straight.

Let’s talk about the marginalised sexualities in the LGBT community. Prior to the introduction of the wholly unnecessary, toxic, and damaging split attraction model (I’ll get into that on my next point), homosexual meant homosexual and homoromantic. The sexual suffix designated the sex of people you’re attracted to. Homo meaning same, thus, same sex attraction, because that’s how Latin works. Same for bi. Same for hetero, even. Asexual is the only one that attempts to redefine this system. It should mean a- (meaning none, or lack of), therefor attraction to no sexes. It’s pretty simple. But the pure aceys saw the sexual suffix and immediately thought ‘oh that means fucking right?’ And decided they had to change shit.

Once again, citation needed. Stop trying to redefine asexuality and speak on behalf of asexuals. Asexuality IS ‘attraction to no sexes’. You’re so desperate for material that you’re pulling shit out of your ass to pin on ace people.

The split attraction model is massively harmful. It encourages internalised homophobia and compulsive heterosexuality. My gay ass for AGES was like ‘I’m grey-ace homosexual biromantic uwu’ because I thought I couldn’t just be a filthy homo, I had to be special somehow, I had to make myself available to women in some way even if it wasn’t sexual availability. The SAM causes LOTS of developing LGBT kids to struggle with denying their own identities under the guise of embracing them through microlabelling. Among teenagers it’s almost like a damn contest, like who has the most obnoxious, convoluted label. It’s stupid and damaging.

Can you provide any non-tumblr sources about the SAM being problematic? Because I have only ever seen exclusionists on this hellsite trying to claim this. Additionally, your experiences are not universal, they are not a ‘gotcha!’ for the ace community, and they are not a valid argument. I spent 5+ years believing I may be transgender, before establishing I likely was not. I do not in any way blame the transgender community for making me think that way, because it was not the fault of any trans person for providing resources for me and supporting the possibility. Healthy exploration of one’s sexuality and gender is OKAY. It isn’t a bad thing, despite what exclusionists like to claim. If you identified one way for a while, and then no longer identify that way, that is HEALTHY EXPLORATION AND GROWTH, not internalized homo-/transphobia and not the fault of any asexual.

Also, the SAM is only commonly used amongst ace and aro people anyway, since it offers a chance for us to distinguish what kind of ace we are. If you can acknowledge that ‘cishet aces’ exist who are heteroromantic and asexual, then you shouldn’t have any issue realizing that biromantic, panromantic, homoromantic, etc aces also exist and may, you know, want to acknowledge that part of themselves? I am romantically interested in men and women - should I ignore the SAM and just call myself aro/ace anyway even when that isn’t an accurate description of who I am? Am I hurting myself by giving myself a more specific label?

Another serious topic I need to discuss: Ace advocates encouraging children and teens to identify as asexual. Literal children shouldn’t be experiencing sexual attraction. I’ve seen ace people telling a TWELVE YEAR OLD that she was asexual because she didn’t feel any interest in sex. She’s a child. Of course she didn’t. I was told when I was 14 that I was ace and I, being a vulnerable child, embraced the label and carried it til I was 17.

No one ‘encourages’ children and teens to identify as asexual, ESPECIALLY not children. Once again, someone saying ‘you might be ace’ is NOT forcing that label onto someone. YOUR EXPERIENCE IS NOT UNIVERSAL. YOUR HATRED FOR THE ASEXUAL COMMUNITY IS NOT A STANDARD.

I was 14 when I discovered asexuality. I was ruthlessly mocked in school for not having a boyfriend. Many people in my class were discussing how they had lost their virginity and the sexual endeavors they took part in. Yes, at FOURTEEN. 13+ year olds are not innocent children who do not experience any form of sexual attraction or libido. It is far more damaging for teenagers growing up to NOT know there is an option to be asexual and force themselves into dangerous and harmful sexual situations to ‘fit in’. The number of asexuals I know or have spoken to who were forced to have sex, send nude pictures of themselves, or otherwise been put in a sexual situation they didn’t want to be in, simply because they didn’t know that being asexual was a valid option that existed and thought they were broken, is immense. THAT is a unifying asexual experience that an allosexual will never understand.

The reason you can be too young to identify as asexual and not too young to identify as lesbian/gay/bi, is because LGB people experience attraction of ALL sorts to the gender(s) they are attracted to, and romantic attraction develops much earlier than sexual attraction (that’s why we have puppy love and not puppy lust). Asexuality as it is defined presently is purely about sexual attraction.

I thought you said there WAS no coherent asexuality definition? Can you at least try to have a coherent argument?

By your logic, 12 year olds who feel they are transgender and go on permanent body-changing hormone blockers/HRT that they may eventually regret are more valid than a 15 year old using the label of asexuality that they may eventually move away from without any damage. That is asinine.

Honestly it’s far more creepy that way exclusionists constantly talk about minors and sexuality. You guys are more obsessed with it than any asexual who suggests or acknowledges the existence of asexuality to someone.

Lastly, asexual and aromantic people absolutely deserve a sense of community, a sense of belonging. They absolutely need a place where they can interact with people who are like them! The problem is, LGBT people and ace/aro people don’t have that much in common. At all. We don’t face the same issues either. If LGBT people could make our community amidst serious legal and social ostracisation and oppression, without the help of the internet, ace/aro people can absolutely make their own community in the cyber age that is relevant to the issues they face so that they don’t talk over the serious topics the LGBT community discusses.

You cannot in one breath say “Asexuals are valid” and in the next deny their experiences. Spend five minutes in the community and you will see testimony after testimony from aces describing their abuse, their sexual assault(s), the countless times people have called them confused, broken, wrong, mentally ill, inhuman, sinful, and how these experiences have left them feeling hopeless, alone, alienated, subhuman, depressed, and suicidal. Almost every asexual out there will tell you a story of how their orientation has caused them pain and struggle, and you can’t call them valid while at the same time calling these experiences invalid and nonexistent.

Bonus: This is a list of all the mainstream LGBTQ groups that include asexuals.

Also, we do have our own community, because every letter in the acronym has its own community and yet is still part of the acronym, and yet you fucking shits won’t stop sending us hate and bombarding us with shit meant to trigger and harass us.

I genuinely don’t expect you to read or attempt to acknowledge any of this - that’s simply the way exclusionists are. However, you are wrong. You are not helping anyone by being an ace exclusionist. You are simply a vocal minority and a bigot - nothing more, nothing less. 

A full list of resources and information can be found HERE for further reading.

[radplaidtacofan]

This is obviously a very personal topic but this needs to be said.

Not everyone is into period sex...

... and that is okay.

If your idea of feminism is screaming at people for not being into period sex you are in the wrong.

There are many reasons people might not enjoy it and most of them are valid.

Yes, if it comes down to it being a cis man who puts on a look of disgust whenever he so much as hears someone talk about periods and shames people for having them he's a pathetic, misogynistic asshole. But that's not the point and framing the issue as being entirely "feminists vs patriarchy" is disingenuous at best and gaslighting at worst.

Someone could have hemophobia or germophobia. It could be due to trauma around blood. Someone could just not be interested.

Shaming them is wrong. The vitriolic tweets, FB and Tumblr posts go so far beyond any reasonable definition of "shaming", however. They're abusive. Anyone who disagrees with these messages is attacked, usually by swarms of so-called feminists who actually have no respect for others' feelings or freedoms.

Like, what do those posts seek to accomplish? Beating others down so they hate themselves for feeling the way they do about period sex? Do the people making those posts think that's helping anyone? It's outright delusional thinking. All those posts ever do is hurt people rather than opening a true dialogue. They make sense if you think everyone who isn't into period sex is some sort of misogynistic, patriarchal monster but that just isn't the truth. It doesn't matter if you want it to be and honestly it's fucked up if you do.

Those posts portray people with a preference as a group of monsters. They are also almost exclusively addressing the monster they've created: a cishet man who thinks periods are disgusting. Those people definitely do exist and I've had the misfortune of knowing some really shitty ones. However, the problem is that they are lumping everyone who doesn't enjoy period sex into this group. A few will refer to "anyone who's attracted to women" and pat themselves on the back for being "inclusive" by not specifically talking about cishet men... though they always seem to forget that it's not just women who have periods. Who'd've thought that people who rely on strawmen arguments would also half-ass being woke? lol

On to the personal bit:

I'm afab and sort of genderfluid. I have a lot of problems with having a period. Some of them are personal, some of them are physical. All of them are valid.

I used to (and sometimes still do) have a lot of dysphoria surrounding my period. I don't even like to call it "my" period even when I feel less dysphoric. I also have an extremely heavy period with a lot of pain, stomach problems, bloating, anemia and low blood pressure. I usually feel sick as hell each month and even get flu symptoms. I am miserable as hell and even if I have any libido at all during this it would be physically painful to have sex. Even masturbating causes pain. So, I don't do any of that (and it means I have more fun when it's over because not doing that for a week makes things more sensitive).

I also don't like seeing blood. I don't like the smell, I don't like having it on me and when I get even my own on me it triggers panic. It's like touching dirty dishes - it feels like my entire body is rejecting it and I just need it off me right fucking now oh my god.

I don't want to have sex with someone on their period. I just don't. It grosses me out and it has absolutely nothing to do with someone's gender or their anatomy.

I'm sick and tired of going through hell every month, being undermined for it by men and women, then seeing posts comparing me to the worst misogynists out there.

I personally know women who feel the same way. They don't want to have sex on their periods and they don't want to have sex with anyone else on theirs.

So for once try to put some fucking thought into the shit you say. If you need to create a strawman to support what you're saying then your point is shit. You're not a feminist for attacking others and you should feel just as unwelcome in feminist spaces as TERFs should be - your period sex posts sound an awful lot like the shit they spew anyway.