i’d make a quasi-linkspam of a post about the many times and ways that i’ve had aro aces tell me that i can’t do / say / talk about / feel / understand something because i’m “romantic”, but more than likely i’d get accused of being arophobic instead of, you know, pointing out a legitimate problem within the aro ace community that ought to be addressed.
anonymous said: I heard that “nonsexual” means non-aro ace and “asexual” means aro ace in Japan. I’m still confused about general Japanese terms in the ace community. If you don’t mind, could you please explain the most commonly used terms? hi, anon. you heard correctly, “asexual” (Aセクシャル) doesn’t mean what it means in English in Japan.
…i mean, i know i’m particularly depressed and irritable right now, but is it really too much to ask for people to not throw others under the bus like this while trying to get theirs (or in this case, ace-friendly brownie points)? whether a particular post, article– whatever is written by an ace or not, i am just as tired of the asexual community’s uncritical consumption and promotion of writing and publications like this as i am of aces themselves being the ones writing it. sigh.
never not going to be bitter about having been essentially told to ‘shut up’ and ‘stay in my lane’ repeatedly by aro aces because i ‘already have enough [media] representation’, all based on them deciding for me that i’m an (allo)ro ace. let’s not forget the added irony that i am in fact not (allo)ro– the very premise of their claims which were subsequently used to fuel an inquisition against (allo)ro people in general, be they ace or not– but more importantly, i was being told this specifically over a show that is ripe with homophobic tropes, erases one of its lead characters’ bisexuality in addition to another lead character’s asexuality– all while simultaneously perpetrating biphobia; a show that also lacks a single non-binary character and in fact only has a couple of black characters because they were inserted into it as tokens. yeah, never going to not be bitter about that.
…can i just say that it is beyond shitty that despite questioning my romantic orientation openly for the first time 2 years ago and having explicitly disidentified with ”-romantic” anything for a year at the very least, now more than ever i feel like i could and would never identify as being anywhere on the aromantic spectrum because of negative experiences that i continue to have re: having both my identity and my experiences assumed, ignored and polarized by some aces on the aromantic spectrum? because yeah, that’s really shitty imho. edit: oh lookie here. rediscovered a video where i openly questioned my romantic orientation for the first time back in 2014. oh well, doesn’t matter now. never identifying as aro or -romantic anything anyway.
anonymous said: hey i just wanted to comment towards your post about the fracturing of the asexual community. i think that has to do with the history the ace community has on tumblr. two, three years ago, the argument wasn’t whether aces belonged to the community; the argument was ‘you aren’t asexual if you aren’t sex-repulsed’, which was debated and disputed for a very long time until terms like grey-, demi-, that sort of stuff started to come out and become more popular and accepted. the discourse used to be ‘a is for asexual, not allies’ and about being sex repulsed. and i think that the struggle to find validity in /their own community/ has caused a lot of splintering that has affected how people treat the ace community today. NOT to say they are to blame for how they’re treated, by any means, i don’t want it to come…
….you know, considering how much talk there is in the ace community about how asexuality and aromanticism exist on a spectrum– of “grayness” and differing types of attractions with occasional attention paid to diversity of one kind or another– it both amazes and frustrates me how so many of the same people who speak of these things still seem to operate based on the very same assumption that exists within society at large: that everyone is (allo)romantic and / or (allo)sexual by default unless explicitly stated otherwise. while i understand that aces (and aros) internalize and subsequently have to unlearn amatonormativity and sexnormativity (and heteronormativity) just the same as everyone else and that there’s also likely an element of self-defense / self-preservation involved, it is beyond frustrating every time i see or am subjected to microaggressions from aces who adhere to the very same “______ by default unless otherwise stated” mindset that…
actually acknowledging the fact that they do not exist as two mutually exclusive groups of people, ie. aromantic asexuals vs (allo)romantic asexuals.
this post marks the last time i’ll be responding to asks about / reblogs of the post i made about the fight for Jughead’s correct portrayal on the CW’s Riverdale. after 3 days of responding to nearly 15 asks / posts on the topic and the anxiety that that has caused me on top of everything else going on in my life, i’m calling it quits on that post. while i still stand by the admittedly unclear point that i was attempting to make, i do apologize to those who were hurt by my unclear wording. i’m also done with talking about asexual representation in general or fandom-related anything anymore. while i appreciate the kind words of encouragement i received, it’s not worth the cost to my mental health to talk about even my own representation anymore. this post serves as both a future point of reference on the mess that…
EDIT 1/20/2017: if after reading this post you get pissed off, have questions or other things you’d like to say to me, please read this. while at work, i was scrolling through my Twitter timeline and noticed a bunch of tweets by people who are upset about recent news about how the popular Archie character Jughead, who is canonically asexual, will be portrayed on CW’s “Riverdale”. that is, that Jughead “will have romances with women and, of course, burgers”. people are responding to this by tweeting things like “keep Jughead #asexual” at the show’s Twitter account and saying how they’re not going to watch the show because of #asexual #erasure. curious, i checked out the article that i initially thought was at the root of these tweets and was astounded by what i actually found in the article. i quickly added my frustrated 2 cents about how aces were responding to…
