part 0: premises
the conversation that inspired this post got me to realize that many people are actually very unaware of what happened to asexuals in queer spaces as a result of the thing called "ace discourse." this stuff did real, serious damage to the ace community, especially where it overlaps with queerness writ large. it's odd to imagine that i have a perspective on this that is unknown to many others, but it does seem like i do, and i think it is worth sharing if only to establish a context for discussions of asexuality in the future.
so: this post is my attempt to document my own experience of ace discourse and what it did to us. it will be, in all probability, flawed; i am one woman with a limited perspective, and i am largely going to be speaking from memory because i don't want to go spend hours hunting down and screencapping a bunch of vicious bigotry about me and those like me. but my hope is that, while i may get things wrong here and there, the broad strokes will be accurate enough to give people a sense of what things were like.
(a brief note: this post has been lightly edited here and there to make it clearer that what i describe here is deeply influenced by my own particular perspective. this post is about The Discourse as i saw it, not necessarily as it happened.)
This was a very informative post. I've never really been on tumblr so this is all news to me. As someone who discovered they're on the ace spectrum fairly recently, and who's place on that spectrum isn't what most would consider representative of a "normal" ace person I feel like the path that was opened to me to understand my unusual sexuality was opened by those who must've lived through this, which caused the development of their own anti-exclusionary world views and led to the creation of the language and resources that helped me to finally better understand myself.
As varied as the different kinds of anti-queer bigotry in the world are, it's often unpopular to argue the through-line many see in all of them. Simply that there is a norm and that those who do not adhere and abide by it must be made an example of. And the lie that for some to be made whole, others must be left lacking, used as a wedge and a weapon to divide. That to support someone seen as less oppressed as others, is a drain on resources that could be better used for those who may be more oppressed. Even when the resource being discussed is just someone expressing an anti-exclusionary mindset. It's like saying the fight to stop the production of weapons of war in general is a threat to the fight to stop the production of nuclear weapons.
For the longest time my sexuality confused me as much as my gender, because I didn't think it was possible for me to be a variety of ace as I understood that ace was a specific and solidly defined thing, not a spectrum. In a strange way, not finding a way to adequately understand my gender but finding comfort in the idea that gender is a spectrum containing multitudes, and that the answer must be in there somewhere, led to the way I understand my sexuality. Attraction is multiple spectrums overlaid upon one another to form the whole. Sexual attraction, romantic attraction, sensual attraction, platonic attraction, intellectual attraction, aesthetic attraction, etc. We boil it all down into simple labels when the nuance is integral. I always thought my overabundant aesthetic attraction, sensual drive, and sensual attraction to others made it impossible to be considered ace, and without it I likely would have gained an understanding of my sexuality much sooner and started calling myself aegosexual. But the way sexual attraction is described in modern western culture usually sweeps up people like me into the definition despite the fact that I have no desire for sex with anyone. I always heard sexual attraction described in terms of finding someone "good looking" and wanting to "get physical" with them. Removing nuance and boiling things down until the understanding is of a singular normative and exclusionary definition.
I typed up that whole spiel as a way to say this: Being ace and/or aro is seen by modern western culture as "abnormal", and those who wish to maintain a death grip on what that culture will allow will do their best to divide ace and aro people from others who are deemed "abnormal" to better conquer all. As spreading a fuller and more open understanding of the gender spectrum is integral in the fight for trans rights, spreading a fuller and more open understanding of sexuality and the spectrums of attraction is integral in the fight for queer rights. Those that want to erase queer history and keep queer people from being seen by the masses as "normal" have been doing their best to drive wedges between those in the LGBTQ+ community in the same way that they've been trying their best to drive wedges between the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalized groups. They loathe us all and we should all be standing shoulder to shoulder in the fight to unravel them.
