Asexuality is a minority orientation not an (evil) ideology
Okay but ace/aro is kinda like an ideology. Not that it’s evil per se, but it can hold a person back from growth once one has latched onto it and found the tumblr a-spec community.
I know quite a few people who identify as ace/aro or aroace. I’ve never met one who didn’t fall into one of these categories. They came to that label as teenagers, usually not entirely through puberty yet. Or they came to it after a sexual-related trauma. Or they came to it as a result of having a mental illness that affects their ability to connect to people or to identify those connections correctly (such as BPD for example). Or they came to it as a result of a side effect of medication, often anti-depressants. Or they experience dysphoria to the extent that having anything to do with sex in their current physical bodies is unimaginable. Or they’re dealing with internalized homophobia.
I think they latch onto a-spec labels when they have the above by misunderstanding what sexual attraction/romantic attraction is for “allosexuals”. They get their idea of attraction from TV shows, beer commercials (sex) and jewelry commercials (romance). They have very little interaction with IRL people where they talk about sex and romance. Or if they’re school-age, they actually believe all the lying/bragging that goes on about who’s fucked whom, and the intense period around puberty where it seems like everyone has a bf/gf and are PDA’ing all over the place.
Anyway, they’re at one of those vulnerable points I mentioned in the 2nd paragraph and they stumble upon the labels ace, aro, or aroace. It seems to fit them perfectly! And once they identify as that, they find a whole group of online ‘friends’ who accept them for all the things they are. Oftentimes, these ‘friends’ are adults, a category they feel separated from and hold resentment towards because mom and dad won’t let them be on the computer 24/7 or give them all the things they want. But here are adults who don’t do any of that and ‘validate’ everything they say.
So they fall into the a-spec community. And for many of them, as time goes on, they still identify as a-spec even once they really aren’t anymore. They’re just unwilling/unable to give up on the ‘validation’ that the a-spec community gives them.
Why do I say they aren’t really a-spec anymore? Because they do start to have sex and/or romantic relationships same as everyone else. Only because they’re inculcated in the a-spec community, they come up with all sorts of other names for what is really just being like everyone else, us evil ‘allosexuals’. They’re not experiencing romance, they’re in a QPR. They’re not experiencing sexual attraction, they’re just ‘sex positive’. Stuff like that.
They have blogs that are full of the same kind of lusty drooling over celebs that all us ‘allosexuals’ have. But they can’t admit it’s attraction, so they come up with ‘it’s only aesthetic attraction.
Or they are involved in kinks that are quite decidedly sexual and that yield sexual pleasure when performed. But that’s only being ‘kink positive’ or identifying the pleasure they get as only being sensual pleasure.
Or they have blogs/AO3 accounts full of fics that are extremely romantic and/or sexual. Often in great detail, often bordering on the obsessive or fetishistic. But somehow this isn’t indicative of the fact they experience romantic or sexual attraction.
Despite all their denials they, for all intents and purposes, are experiencing the exact same things that allosexuals experience (because not all allosexuals experience ‘attraction’ 24/7 or under all circumstances). They are clinging to the a-spec labels because of the ‘validation’, comfort and familiarity that the a-spec community gives them.
To me, this feels a lot like what people who eventually leave cults like Scientology say. They weren’t able to leave the cult because they didn’t want to lose the friends/family/familiarity that they got in the cult. They were afraid of what the world might be like without the comfort they had within the cult.
I believe that there are people who are genuinely asexual. But that they are an extreme minority. Most (who are not simply teens who have yet to pass through puberty completely) are simply unwilling to admit that they have left behind the structural things that make up the ‘ace/aro identity’.
I don’t like posting “discourse” here anymore, so I apologize. However, I think this is important to address because of the arguments here and their historical impact on LGBT+ people. In particular, I want people to pay attention to the language used in a response like this because it mimics anti-LGBT+ rhetoric.
It is clear that anti-asexual/aromantic “discourse” does not aim to discuss the boundaries for asexual and aromantic people in LGBT+ spaces. Instead, it aims to completely dismantle our identities and disempower us through the invalidating tactics ironically used by anti-LGBT+ groups.
LGBT+ identities have been referred to as ideologies and/or cults in religious, conservative, and radical spaces, who view these identities as dangerous to youths who could get “drawn in.” In addition, LGBT+ people are told they identify that way because of their age, trauma, neurodivergence, disability, or illness.
This not only invalidates the identities of youths who are beginning to form a sense of self, but it removes the sexual agency of people who have experienced trauma, neurodivergence, disability, and/or illness. The only identities that go unquestioned are heterosexual and cisgender.
The pathologization of LGBT+ people has been a problem for a long time, but it’s also something that has been impacting us as we reach new levels of visibility. Not just with online platforms, but in our media and for some, in their doctors’ offices. This ties into ableist attitudes/removal of sexual agency.
In addition to this, belittling the agency and struggles of LGBT+ people in times of conflict has been a problem that is affecting asexual and aromantic people as well. It is fairly easy for someone to position any struggle we experience as something that it is not – e.g. dramatic teens whining on the internet.
What this does is create barriers for people like us to solve real issues that we want to overcome, such as having adequate health care, preventing abuse, building healthy relationships, supporting suicidal people in our community, educating parents on how to support their children, etc. etc. etc.
This does this in much the same way it creates barriers for LGBT+ people to address big issues such as homelessness and abuse. You implicitly deny that these are real problems, by creating strawmen “issues” that seem petty and immature making it easier for you to deny our experiences.
Even things like microaggressions and lack of representation warrant discussion, but these things too are chalked up to people being dramatic and entitled. This effects the LGBT+ community as a whole, and denying these things perpetuates cisheteronormative values at our detriment.
As for youths, puberty is a time of accelerated growth, identity formation, and a search for accepting communities. It’s important not to group cults and gangs in with identity-supporting LGBT+ organizations including those that accept and support asexual and aromantic identities.
Why? – because it’s not acceptance that creates conflicts for youths. It is lack of acceptance. If youths are not well supported by organizations that provide resources and education, they seek out incredibly harmful spaces that promise acceptance but perpetuate abuse.
There may be valid criticisms of LGBT+ spaces and aromantic and asexual spaces, but these absurd comparisons with “cults” actively shut down these conversations instead of expose real problems that we can fix to make our communities safer for everyone. So, the “cult” language is unacceptable.
In addition, within these spaces we develop our own language because our cisheteronormative society fails to represent different facets of our human experiences. Redefining our terms in a cisheteronormative context is disempowering, once again ignoring our agency to identify ourselves.
For example, QPRs aren’t romantic relationships. Sex positivity is not the same thing as sex favorability, and participating in sex doesn’t invalidate asexuality. Aesthetic attraction is not sexual or “lusty,” and “lusty” isn’t a fair term to define sexual attraction as it is often used in a perverse sense.
Having a fetish or kink does not invalidate one’s identity because these things aren’t inherently about sexual attraction. You also do not need to be able to experience something to write about something. The argument that writing sex and romance invalidates asexuality and aromanticism is absurd.
LGBT+ people also may not act within the “boundaries” given for their identity due to a variety of factors such as the pressure of society to adhere to cisheteronormative standards. Policing their behavior does not allow for them to grow in acceptance. It simply shames them.
The same goes for asexual and aromantic people.
Some people remain with their sexual and gender identity their whole life, while others change. Misidentification can happen to anyone and is not the fault of any one community. Also, misidentification is not always a stressful or traumatic experience, rather, it’s a process of knowing one’s self.
Yet, this is something that you use and that anti-LGBT groups have used to convince people they don’t know themselves. TERFs use it to convince people to de-transition. Radical conservative Christians use it to “convert” people to heterosexuality. It is harmful thinking.
If your arguments mimic very real anti-LGBT+ arguments, maybe you should reflect on that and finally figure out that you’re really a massive bigot who cannot accept that people live contrary to your current beliefs and expectations. Nothing you said was okay in any way nor does it help LGBT+ people as a whole.
I have tried three times to write out a calm, reasoned response to “ace/aro is kinda like an ideology” and I can’t do it. I’m glad actuallyasexual did, so I’m piggybacking on their response so people can see that, but I just can’t. I’m too angry. I’m so angry about that original response to OP that I can’t point out its flaws without letting that anger seep into my reply.
(Which isn’t allowed in ace discourse, because if I’m angry, that apparently negates the validity of my response, because everyone knows that angry people are inherently wrong, and that people who are emotionally detached must have superior logic, right?)
I’m angry that it pretends to be supportive while claiming that asexuals are either too young, too traumatized, too incapable due to mental disorder, too medicated, too dysphoric (and seriously, how can anyone read that trans people must inherently misunderstand themselves without feeling angry?), or otherwise too vulnerable to accurately understand themselves and/or their sexuality, leading them to incorrectly identify as asexual.
I’m angry that it tries to paint “things that asexuals do that prove they aren’t asexual” in a “like us allosexuals” way, but reverts to purity-coded wording that implies those behaviors are bad (”lusty drooling” and “kinks…[that] yield sexual pleasure when performed” and “obsessive or fetishistic”).
I’m angry that it claims that young asexuals who talk to adult asexuals online only cling to them (and, by extension, to asexuality) because of teenage angst and the fact that their parents don’t coddle them or give them whatever they want (since they must just be greedy).
I’m angry that it implies anyone who once identified as asexual but later changes labels suddenly loses all “validation” from the community, and all support, and all friends who are asexual (though they are quick to always put “friends” in quotation marks).
I’m angry that “friends” is always in quotation marks, implying that being friends with other asexuals isn’t actually real friendship, it’s just fake manipulative friendship (that is being perpetuated for some reason that isn’t explained).
I’m angry that it says asexuals are “for all intents and purposes” just like allosexuals because allosexuals “don’t experience ‘attraction’ 24/7 or under all circumstances” while ignoring that asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction. That demisexuality is a lack of sexual attraction until, suddenly and after knowing someone for a very long time, developing sexual attraction to just one specific person. That grey asexuality is for those people who aren’t sure if they’ve maybe felt sexual attraction in the past, or know that they’ve felt sexual attraction maybe once or twice in their lives, or who don’t feel sexual attraction for the majority of their lives, and that all of these are perfectly acceptable definitions because the word was Specifically Created to be as broad a term as possible to include everyone who doesn’t easily fit into asexual or non-asexual labels.
I’m angry that it claims all these behaviors prove that someone isn’t asexual (or aromantic, let’s not forget it also briefly shit on QPRs) while ignoring that asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction, and that aromanticism is a lack of romantic attraction. That it ignores the fact that sexual or romantic attraction aren’t required for any of the preferences or behaviors that were listed.
I’m angry that it derrides the existence of non-sexual, non-romantic forms of attraction.
I’m angry that it claims that “structural things” make up an “ace/aro identity” instead of, for example, asexuality and aromanticism being legitimate orientations.
I’m angry that someone can sit down and, with a clear conscience, write a manipulatively worded response that says “Hey, you’re not evil! You’re just cult-like, and every adult asexual on this site is lying to (and faking friendship for) every young asexual for some reason that is never explained, and all asexuals shun everyone who once ID’d as asexual but now IDs as something else, which causes people not to change their identities, and also most all of you are not asexual because asexuality should be defined by behaviors despite the fact that no one else’s identity is defined by behaviors. But hey, I’m just being reasonable here. I said you weren’t evil, didn’t I? Your identity just holds vulnerable people back from personal understanding and growth like other cults do, and it’s not even a real orientation. That’s all.”
I’m angry that people think any of this is anything but flawed.
I’m just so angry. I don’t understand how anyone could not be.
It’s also utterly dismissive of every adult who spent their life thinking there was something wrong with them, only to learn in their third or fourth (or older) decade that they’re not, and never have been, broken. That there’s a word for what they’ve are, what they’ve ALWAYS been, far before they found the label to “latch onto.”
It’s just…such a shitty position to take. Frankly, any time you decide to lecture other people about what you think their sexuality is, or is not, it’s a shitty position to take.
You don’t get to decide for other people whether or not their identity is valid.
You aren’t the gatekeeper for their relationships, or the nature of their sexuality.
Your interpretations of whatever aspects of their life you may have glimpsed, based on the biases you already hold, are not more accurate or more meaningful than the conclusions that their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences have brought them to.
And what you are doing is far more harmful than any “attachment to a label” that you’re crusading against ever was.
I’m glad for those who have responded already to that unmitigated pile of horse shit that was the first response to the OP, and awesome, wonderful things they’ve said.
There is one part of it that I want to address myself, and it’s that bit about trauma causing someone to identify as asexual as if that invalidates a person’s self-identification.
Because there is no fucking way that invalidates an identity, and to assume and claim it does so not only denies a person agency, but can be traumatic or reinforce trauma all on its own.
Yes, some people identify as ace after trauma.
Yes, some people do so BECAUSE of trauma.
Ditto aro.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
And anyone who wants to say otherwise can chew on molten rocks because I have absolutely no patience for that. Just a fuck ton of rage.
Oh, and another thing, on the romance and fluff and sexy times and kink fic-writing meaning a person can’t possibly be aromantic and/or asexual.
The author is not the characters, and conflating the two is a dick move and also really sarding annoying.
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