(((Digimon Is Forever)))

I need people to realize that “dying alone” isn’t a moral failing that happens to bad people who deserve it. Many people don’t have family (left) to be with them when they die. Many people do not have a partner to be by their side whether it be because they were never given the opportunity or they chose not to have one. Instead of using “dying alone” as an insult or a curse on people we don’t like, we should be thinking about how we can let people who are “alone” die with dignity.

An asexual and/or aromantic person “headcanoning” characters as being asexual and/or aromantic will always be different from someone who is not asexual and/or aromantic doing the same thing.

People who are not asexual and/or aromantic don’t have to go through an internal crisis over whether or not seeking representation in “headcanoned” asexual and/or aromantic characters is “wrong.”

If someone tells someone, who is not asexual and/or not aromantic, to not headcanon a character as asexual and/or aromantic because of x, y, or z - does it impact them in any significant way? No.

…but when the same is said to asexual and/or aromantic people, it tells us that we can’t exist. We can’t be asexual and/or aromantic and [insert other identity], because that’s “promoting problematic ideas” about [insert other identity]!

We can’t see ourselves in complex characters, because people perceive that our existence is wrong and/or harmful to other identities. We internalize that to the point where we don’t let ourselves exist in the media we consume.

This is a problem across fandom spaces, especially when asexual and/or aromantic people are positioned as detrimental to the progress of others forms of representations.

As if we were the ones who created disparities in representation. As if our identity is a weapon to be wielded against vulnerable and marginalized people. As if we are not in fact our own complex human beings.

There’s no such thing as more or less a-spec. Every a-spec identity makes up the community and deserves attention and a voice.

You may not be neutral to or uninvolved in “the discourse” re: asexual and aromantic acceptance in LGBT+ spaces if:

You either support asexual and aromantic people, or you don’t. 

Having an opinion at all about the belonging of asexual and aromantic people is not neutrality. Refusing to learn anything about asexual and aromantic people is not neutrality. Ignoring and blocking asexual and aromantic people is not neutrality. Neutrality is not really neutrality. 

Stop asking people to “leave myself out of ‘the discourse’” when we all know you mean really “allow me to ignore my impact on asexual and aromantic people, even though they have no choice but to be impacted by my own actions and opinions in a way that attacks and erases their identity and experiences”

You choose what types of relationships are important or meaningful to you. Not society.

Look. Okay. There are tons of instances of queercoding where the coding in question concerns characters that are most likely intended to be gay, but the recent use of “gaycoded” as a term meant to replace queercoded is not from an innocent source.

It showed up in specific reactionary circles – aspec exclusionist groups – and has spread from there, and it was intended unambiguously to posit that other types of queer people couldn’t/shouldn’t see themselves as possibilities in it. It was intended to not only insist that queercoded characters must be specifically intended to be gay, but also to insist that therefore, suggesting other queer sexualities for such a character is homophobic.

It originated as a derivative term to shit on aspec headcanons and to tell aspec people not to “steal” characters who don’t even have a canon orientation, and was immediately employed to also shit on mspec people. It puts me on edge to see it, and I’m fucking gay.

(See also: the substitution of “gaybaiting” for “queerbaiting.”)

I have actually seen someone claim that there’s no such thing as ace-coding, since they say there was never any rules in place saying asexuals couldn’t be in media.

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I’ve been on this website a pretty long time - since 2012 - and in the non-straight side of it for that whole time, so I’d like to talk about a bit of recent history, both of the site and from my point of view.

When I started, I didn’t yet identify as asexual or aromantic spectrum. I hadn’t really heard of them before. But in the first few years I was on Tumblr, there were so many ace and aro people, proud, talking about their experiences, sharing jokes and puns, inventing terms for their experiences (squish, zucchini, WTFromantic, etcetera, etcetera). It was wonderful. I learned that I wasn’t alone and what I was feeling wasn’t freakishly unique. I started identifying as ace and arospec. I started an ace/aro humor blog, which got very popular.

Then exclusionists suddenly started appearing. They attacked everyone with a wiff of non-alloness and attacked anyone who defended them. They threw around accusations of homophobia, pedophilia, racism, anything they could think of. There was massive discourse. Everyone was in turmoil.

Ace/aro people stopped talking about their experiences because they knew they would be jumped on. We stopped using our words because we knew they would be used against us. We shut down our blogs to desperately try to escape the hate, anonymous and personal. I shut down my humor blog which had given so many people innocent laughter. People took their identities out of their descriptions - including me - because we knew they would be quoted and used as weapons in debate.

Then, the exclusionists died down.

I want to make this very clear. You don’t see less exclusionist debate now because the exclusionists died off. You see it because the ace and aro people did - or at least pretended to. We stopped being proud, and laughing, and using our words. They’re not attacking us anymore because we’re in hiding. I can’t remember the last time I heard someone happily talking about their squish or their zucchini. (And I bet you’re thinking, right now, how silly those words are, aren’t you? That’s what they’ve done. They’ve taken our playfulness and used it to belittle and demean us.)

Exclusionists have moved on to the “queer is a slur” battle because they already won this one. They already beat ace and aro people into submission and now they’re moving on to queer people.

I’ve seen the rise and fall of ace and aro people on Tumblr. This is not our rise. It is our fall.

But we don’t have to accept that. Be proud again. Start laughing again. Start your blogs back up. I’ll start mine. Remember that you can use words like squish, and zucchini, and quoiromantic, and they don’t need to make you cringe. If it’s been so long since we were open that you don’t know those words, find one of the blogs that remains and learn about your community. Stand again with the other marginalized people who defended us during the main force of the battle, the trans people, the bi people, the queer people. To those people, please, help us. We’re scared. But pride is a wonderful, wonderful thing. And we deserve to find it again.

I want to take this moment to officially announce on my blog that I am in fact aromantic and extremely proud of it.

I’m in a queerplatonic relationship with an aroace person and a demiaro ace person and I love them both so much.

I will not tolerate any sort of aspec hate on my blog, I’ve never felt more at home than with the aspec community, for this community is so full of wonderful people.

And a soft reminder to any aspec person reading; you will always be safe on my blog and I will protect and defend you to my goddamn grave.

grey-ace and grey-aro very queer bat, here

Big old queer ace here. Always here, always queer.

I’m not ace, I am queer, and ace exclusionists should fuck off my blog. All exclusionists but let me single out the ace ones here.

Not ace, extremely queer, will never stop identifying as queer. Ace and aro folx are explicitly invited to be awesome around me, and I think my stance on exclusionary bullshit is p clear by now. (It sucks.)

shoutout to pan, omni, ply, fluid, queer, unlabeled, and all other non-bi mspec people!

there is absolutely nothing wrong with finding a label that works for you and makes sense to you and captures how you feel about your attraction, even if it’s unknown, looked down on, a microlabel, created on tumblr, or severely misunderstood.

despite what people say, your label is not the reason people outside of the community hate us. your label does not make people think the community is a joke. the narrative that queer people with lesser known, understood, and accepted labels (microlabels, non-bi mspec labels, most aspec and non-binary labels, multiple labels, etc.) are to blame for queerphobia is simply repackaged homophobia that the community internalized.

the labels you use, or don’t use, to make sense of your feelings and experiences in good faith hurt absolutely no one and take away absolutely nothing from anyone else.

please do not let people who are taking their internalized queerphobia out on their own community shame you out of identifying in a way that feels right for you or make you question yourself and your identity.

once more, there is nothing wrong with identifying as pan, omni, ply, fluid, queer, or any other non-bi mspec labels. there is nothing wrong with being mspec, but not using any specific label.

being mspec and not using the bi label, however you decide to label or not label yourself, is not hurting anyone.

you are an important part of our community and history.

please remember that.

A lot of people commented on my post about how shippers will use “autistic/autistic-coded characters cannot consent” to win ship wars - despite the fact that this is not true and actively hurts autistic people - with disbelief.

Like “why would people think this way? Where is this coming from?”

And it’s simple.

Ship wars are the bottom of the trickle down of bullshit.

And this bullshit is everywhere because “think of the poor autistic people!” has become the new “think of the children!”

For the savvier pieces of shit who know that “think of the children!” is a well known right-wing dogwhistle, “think of the autistic people!” has become the new way of dressing up bullshit in social justice language.

TERFs can say that you can’t let people transition because autistic people don’t understand gender and might mistakenly try to transition!

Aphobes can say that you can’t use the term a-spec because it was stolen from autistic people!

And shippers can claim that your ship is abusive if one character is autistic because autistic people are incapable of giving consent!

And even though this is paternalistic bullshit that is just factually inaccurate by all accounts - autistic trans people exist and have the same right to transition as allistics, a-spec was never used by the autistic community to refer to autistic people, and plenty of autistic people have fully consensual romantic and sexual relationships - no one listens when autistic people point that out.

Just as no one would listen to children arguing that they don’t need to be protected from sex education or those evil gays, no one listens to autistic people because autistic people fit into this nice little box of either being too autistic to know what’s best for them or not autistic enough to speak on issues relating to autism.

We’re the perfect fucking scapegoat and I have reached peak-anger over the whole thing.

Like, it’s bad enough when assholes use the fact that they can ignore us to hurt us, but when they use us as shields to hurt other marginalised groups?

I am fuming.

And how many of these people stand up against Autism Speaks? How many add “plus autism is better than a painful death and it’s mean to act otherwise” when discussing anti-vaxxers? How many reblog posts about disability issues? How many stand up against “autistic” or “r*tard” jokes?

Oh, yeah. The lack of genuine concern about us is so transparent. In their eyes, we’re just there to be used as a prop for the “gotcha,” and then never thought about again.

Well, I’m not your Exhibit A of why you can be mean to people.

Autistics aren’t one-dimensional victims of Whoever You Dislike. We’re real, complex people who deserve to be treated as such.

(Tagged #actuallyasexual because… surprise! Autistic asexuals exist, and I am one of them. And neither of these traits negates that I deserve respect.)

I don’t know if there are any really detailed posts on the creation of the word “amatonormativity” on this site, but I thought I’d make a small one as a quick rundown on how it came about and why aros(and some aces)have adopted it so.

puts my head in my hands. I get that this is a very understandable mix up and the words are similar, but the terms to describe an asexual person’s attitude towards engaging in sex are not “sex positive”/“sex negative,” the words you’re looking for are things like sex favorable, interested, averse, repulsed, etc., sex positive and negative are social stances, sex positive meaning being in favor of things like accessible birth control and comprehensive sex education and sex negative meaning being against those and thinking of sex as something inherently deviant, perverse, and shameful. again, this is an understandable mistake to make, but things can get real hairy if people start associating asexuality with sex negativity.

You’re not missing out by not doing something you didn’t want to do in the first place.

Not to be that person but there’s no such thing as a relationship deeper than a romantic relationship.

There’s no such thing as a relationship deeper than a platonic relationship

Relationships don’t work like that. There aren’t set depths to which a relationship can go based on what type it is. Each relationship’s depth is determined individually.

To say that a relationship is “deeper than a romantic one” you demonstrate your lack of understanding of how relationships can grow and how any relationship can be as deep as any other one of the people involved want it to be and put in the effort

[ ID A series of ribbon-like bars going across the image in different directions, each in the colors of the asexual flag.  The middle text reads, “This space is Ace Inclusive” and the bottom text has the Asexual Outreach logo and the words, “This is a safe and inclusive space for people on the asexual spectrum” ]