Ace Communities: A Caution

[gincurls]

Hi all

I know this is a bit late in the day but after I listened to Episode #298 with the email from DarkStar1988 I felt compelled to email Paul and he suggested I repost my email here on the forum so here goes.

This is quite long (it’s 2060 words) so no worries if this is something you skip or if it takes a few days to get through or whatever, no pressure. I’ll put word counts at the top of each section as well so you know what to brace yourself for. This introduction/preamble is x words.

Another warning with regards to my style of writing is that I do a lot of asides in brackets, so feel free to skip them if they’re making a sentence too difficult.

The TL;DR for this post is basically that I toyed with asexuality as an identity but ultimately dropped it for a variety of reasons. One reason is that I find who I am attracted to more important than how I experience my attraction, another reason is that I found a lot of harmful and awful opinions in the ace community which really did not make me feel comfortable in either wanting to join the community or even aligning myself with them from the outside.

It was because of the rampant terrible opinions that I felt compelled to email Paul; in her email DarkStar1988 says that she has trouble connecting to people because of her autism and my concern was that she’s jumping feet first into the community and accepting absolutely everything she reads, and that she’ll then have trouble connecting with the LGBT community at large.

I don’t want this to seem too negative, I don’t think having a community for asexual or aromantic people is inherently bad, I just think that in any community there needs to be a degree of critical thinking and in my personal adventures I found that sorely lacking.

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[507 words]

My first impression of the email was that DarkStar1988 had been looking at the Split Attraction Model.
This model takes ‘sexuality’ at absolute face value (rather than as sex=gender) and splits your romantic and your sexual attraction. It sounds like DarkStar1988 is leaning towards identifying as an aromantic asexual [aroace] and I’m so pleased! Like, being able to finally label the way you respond to something is such a good feeling.
That being said… the Split Attraction Model isn’t for everyone. While I was still feeling things out I briefly toyed with biromantic heterosexual, but to be honest it doesn’t take a huge amount of self-reflection to work out why I was initially interested in having sex with only boys (hello, internalised homophobia). What I received from the ace community was heaps of validation of my identity (and everyone else’s identity), but no one suggesting looking critically at this mismatched attraction. I already had a lot of internalised homophobia (from bullying and y’now, society at large) and so I personally found that an uncritical use of the Split Attraction Model helped nudge me further back into the closet.

Another issue with the Split Attraction Model is describing people as h*moromantic and/or h*mosexual. Again, because of DarkStar1988 saying that she has trouble connecting with people due to her autism I really don’t want to see her having further trouble because she’s unwittingly picked up homophobic ideas from whatever aro/ace sources she’s been using.
‘H*mosexual’ is a pejorative because of its history as a pysch disorder and criminal behaviour. I worry that talking about the word’s ‘history’ makes it seem like something far off and distant, but in New Zealand (where I live) being gay only stopped being illegal in 1986, and even then there was still huge opposition to that reform. 1986. Labelling someone as ‘h*mosexual’ might seem really handy for the Split Attraction Model but it is Not Okay. (I mean it’s a-okay if you’re reclaiming for yourself but you should know the history of what you’re reclaiming and you shouldn’t apply it carte blanche to other people)

A further issue with the ace community’s interpretation Split Attraction Model that I personally find really hard to stomach is that while I could quite easily be labelled as a bi ace, if I considered myself a heterosexual ace that somehow makes me Not Straight and therefore inherently part of the LGBT community. Like, LGBT doesn’t stand for L-absolutely G-definitely B-not T-straight.
There’s this idea that if you’re asexual you can’t benefit from Straight Privilege. Straight Privilege is merely a catchy way of describing someone benefiting from homophobia or not being harmed by it. Related to this is that an argument sometimes used that inherent ace/aro inclusion – and ace/aro people using the q-word – is justified on the grounds that if you’re ace/aro you’re deviating from the norm.
a) yep, there is no history with gay or trans people being called deviants, this is totally acceptable [sarcasm]
b) it’s an overused counterargument but paedophiles also ‘deviate from the norm’ so…


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This section’s also long [1005 words] but it’s a more manageable bulleted list (in no particular order) of things I’ve been aware of being discussed or being thrown around by the ace community that also Aren’t Okay.

Again, to reiterate, I’m not intending this as some super negative these-people-are-all-awful kind of PSA. I personally considered myself part of the community and uncritically absorbed plenty of ideas and discourse before I started pushing back.

Not listed here are some intra-[LGBT]community issues that ace/aro people have picked up and are playing with. That’s obviously a separate issue. But things to look out for:

• Jokes about the AIDs crisis/AIDs in general, or just really inappropriate comments revolving around gay people having all the sex (and deserving the consequences)

• Massively inappropriate comments after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando about how saying it’s a ‘gay’ hate crime is erasing asexuals and aromantics, or the alternative that it means fewer aphobes

• Aromantic people using ‘no romo’ (it’s from a homophobic phrase like pls stop)

• Generally terrible behaviour with regards to Coming Out [Day], and crying ‘but you don’t know what it’s like to feel broken!!1’ (As someone who hasn’t come out as bi to their religious family because I can’t be sure of the reaction, and someone who is only coming to terms with maybe not being straight in their mid-20s like… pls tell me more about your uh… struggles. How I feel during sex is the least of my concerns)

• Misuse of the term ‘corrective rape’. The UN’s changed this term because it implies there’s a problem to be solved, so it’s now the more specific ‘homophobic rape’. This isn’t to say that aces can’t/won’t experience rape because of their asexuality but this isn’t the term for that

• Misuse of the term ‘gatekeeping’ with regards to members of the LGBT community expressing discomfort at cishet aces wanting unquestioned inclusion. (Gatekeeping specifically refers to systemic barriers trans people (trans women particularly) face when it comes to access to necessary [medical] resources for their transition and so tied to this term is the massive bodycount of trans people who were denied resources like this is so unacceptable)

• Insisting that cishet is a slur. It’s not. It’s short for cis hetero-

• Misuse of the phrase ‘conversion therapy’. (I personally haven’t seen a lot of this which I am pleased about. If your therapist tries to cure your asexuality/aromanticism then they’re a shitty therapist and you should absolutely not have to experience that. Conversion therapy is defined as ‘pyschological treatment or spiritual counselling designed to change a person’s sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual’. Conversion therapy is rarely consensual (unlike visiting a regular therapist). Conversion therapy utilises extreme emotional and physical abuse, and people kill themselves while in ‘treatment’ because what they are subjected to is so unspeakably evil. Your shitty therapist is not on the same plane)

• Total disrespect towards sexual assault victims/survivors who are hypersexual

• Total disrespect from ace people towards aro people that have sex

• Really awful ‘purity’ discourse i.e. asexuals are pure because they don’t have sex (this might be more of a personal gripe tho given my religious background)

• Sexualising anyone that doesn’t actively ID as asexual by calling them ‘allosexual’, rather than something exponentially less offensive like ‘non-ace’

• Sexualising anyone that doesn’t actively ID as asexual, including people of colour, women, LGBT people, disabled people or children, and any combination thereof

• (bonus bullet point just to specify that while disabled people do get infantilised and are perceived to be generally asexual as a result of societal dehumanisation, they are at least as likely to be sexually assaulted as the general population. NZ sources are quite cautious about putting numbers/percentages out there but I have seen American sources with plenty of statistics if that’s what you’re into. I feel like the MentalPod community would have a good understanding of why sexualising the rest of the people in the list above is a Bad Thing, but I feel like disability doesn’t really get discussed as much on the show)

• Because asexual people don’t have sex Age of Consent laws don’t need to apply

• Absolute rejection of the ‘A’ in LGBTQA as standing for ‘ally’. (I myself was totally guilty of this for a few years but when you have A for Ally you allow closeted people a space in the community without having to out themselves. A for Ally also allows for straight people to offer their support (which is 100% still needed), but it is important that it’s almost like a little ‘a’ for ally so that you don’t have straight people shouting down and talking over and using their privilege over the very people they’re supposedly supporting)

• Related to the rejection of A for Ally, saying that closeted people can instead have the Q for ‘Questioning’ (I think we all know what the Q stands for, and ‘questioning’ kind of defeats the purpose of being a safe space that doesn’t out people)

• Absolute denial that any ace or aro person can be homophobic or transphobic, because they’re part of The Community

• Comparing LGB and particularly T people who are uncomfortable with the inclusion of cishet ace/aro people in the community to TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists)

• The lack of understanding that everyone has a complicated relationship to sex. It’s really easy to get the message from the media that everyone is thinking about sex pretty much all the time and you should be ready to jump in the sack with someone at a moment’s notice, and so under the ace umbrella is ‘demisexuality’ which is when you don’t want to have sex with someone until you’ve formed an emotional bond with them. While I think it is 110% important to understand your personal boundaries and wants when it comes to sex and relationships, and to understand that those boundaries and wants can fluctuate and change over time, I feel that terms like ‘demisexual’ can really otherise people and create divisions that don’t need to exist


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I totally understand that this post is way too long.

But again, all of this isn’t to say that people should never ID as aro or ace ever. I personally chose not to because I was finding it increasingly difficult to accept all the things I kept seeing people talk about in the community, but also because for me I feel like who I’m attracted to is more important than how I choose to express this attraction.

I hope this post isn’t coming off as The Case Against Asexuality. I feel like DarkStar1988 has just found this lush meadow and is there with their picnic, and I’ve watched her skip in and I’ve turned on a shower of effluent that I’m trying to justify like ‘just want the grass to keep growing!’

I think it is always so good to find a community – either online or in real life – of people who share your experiences or feelings, but I think in any community you just need to be aware of any ideas that reinforce bigotry and ultimately I found that there was way too much unchecked classical homophobia in the ace communities that I was looking at

[oak]

Thanks for sharing.

Sexuality is a fluid thing, even within one person, and over time.

I accept you as you are.