#ace discourse //

[mentallystill]

The ace/aro discourse was horrible. I wasn't really involved in the aspec community and I didn't search tags, but it still fucking haunts me. I've ID'd as being aspec for almost fifteen years, and I think I can count on my fingers and toes the number of times I have said out-loud that I might be aspec (might be, because I have such DEEP anxiety about faking it). Even with close friends who are also aspec. I don't post it anywhere.

I don't know if I've ever definitively said that I am aspec. It makes me too anxious. It makes me so anxious I shut down.

Like. I'm more open about being plural than being aspec. Do you know how bad it has to be that potentially having dissociative identity disorder isn't as bad?

I don't think younger/newer users fully grasp the shit show that ace discourse was around 2014-17

It was so hostile that, to this day, discussions that begin to derail just enough can make me physically nauseous, some specific mockery trigger crying sessions years later. We lost most accounts with any sort of ace positivity. There was no information, no support, and all this damage was done predominantly by other queer people.

All this to say that you, however you identify yourself, should be engaging with aphobic comments the same way you do any hate. We don't sugarcoat or try to be comprehensive with people who are blatantly racist, homophobic or terfs, so why give it a pass just because it's coming from a queer person? I see how this tolerance goes and it's done enough damage as it is.

[thisismajortomtogaycontrol]

So random but yall better shut the fuck up about what asexual people and aromantic people can do. They can do whatever they want actually. No you shouldn’t be saying ‘well ace people can still fuck’ if you’re not ace. No you shouldn’t be saying ‘well aromantic people can still fall in love’ if you’re not aromantic. No you shouldn’t not be saying ‘ace people can’t fuck’ regardless of what you are no you shouldn’t be saying ‘aromantic people can’t fall in love’ regardless of who you are. Every single asexual and aromantic person is different. It’s up to them what they do. Stop telling people what to do.

[a-polite-melody]

It would be so nice if every few years queer tumblr didn’t do a, “this queer identity is more privileged than the rest of us and shouldn’t talk about their issues/shouldn’t even be in the community,” about another identity.

Since I’ve been here it’s been: nonbinary people, bisexual people, asexual and aromantic people, polyamorous people, pansexual people, people who only use the word queer for their identity, trans men/mascs, and intersex people. At least. I might’ve missed something.

We’re stronger together. We all need space to discuss our experiences and all deserve not to be spoken over.

[fourohfourlifenotfound]

I think a lot of aces don't get that ace discourse wasn't just your run-of-the-mill aphobia.

It was a targeted harassment campaign orchestrated by TERFs to cause LGBT community infighting. And they were successful in pushing back the aspec community's progress in visibility and conversation, causing infighting in the broader LGBT community, and even causing infighting in the aspec community itself.

It's been about 6 years since the decline of ace discourse, and in that time we have not managed to move past aspec community infighting over assimilation to prevent that kind of harassment versus actually being ourselves and making progress as a community.

Every single "but aces can have sex too" and "but aros can have romantic relationships too" and "well we don't experience that much oppression" and every time an aspec meme is called "cringe", that's all assimilationist bullshit sourced from people trying to cater to the people who only wanted to crush us.

Newsflash: we're all queer in the eyes of society. We will never conform to their standards as they exist today. We need to stop the infighting and redirect towards breaking down amatonormativity and compulsory sexuality, as a united front.

[haileys-dreamland]

"Allonormativity doesn't exist"

When I was young, my parents made very clear to their kids that if wouldn't matter to them if we were gay or straight; they would accept us regardless.

When I thought I was bi, they had no problems with it.

When I first mentioned the existence of asexuality, my father's immediate response was "that's not a real thing."

As far as I know he still doesn't believe in it, let alone accept that I am ace.

If you're not het, you might be seen as a deviation, an abomination, etc. If you're ace you're just seen as broken.*

(The argument from "We don't need a word for 'not ace'" is just funny. Do you think the dictionary is running out of room? We might not have needed a word for it but we do have one now, so we may as well use it.)

*Absolutely not saying that's worse, just meaningfully different.

[xx-slug-xx]

“Your fantasies equal your real life desires”

I’m fucking asexual? I have no desire to do anything I fantasize about irl. Same with a shit ton of other people who are aspec?

Tbh, I think it’s just queerphobic, specifically aphobic but other shit too, to say “your fantasies are what you want irl.

It’s not just aspecs either. I know a fuck ton of lesbians who fantasize about fictional men. They are not any less lesbians because of their fantasies though.

I could go on with more about how it’s a stupid argument, and even how it’s ableist in certain contexts, but I’ll save that for other posts lmao

[queerum]

aspec person:kinda fucked up that some queer people think aspecs aren't queer unprompted allo person: oh but what they mean is that you're not in danger because you're still basically cis/straight. They're right but you're still part of the community

even ignoring the casual aphobia of saying aspecs are cishet-lite, i'm tired of those kind of exchanges so let's be for fucking real right now:

Proof that aspecs go through conversion therapy:

The “A” Is Not for Ally: The Continued Pathologization of Asexual People in Modern Mental Health Practices

Better understanding of the scope and nature of LGBTQA+ religious conversion practices will support recovery

Proof that aspec have high rates of suicidality and self-harm:

Intersectional Impact of Allosexism Experiences on Non‐Suicidal Self‐Injury Among Asexual Youth

An Intersectional Exploration of Outness, Encountered Discrimination and Violence, and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury among Asexual Youth across Gender Identities

Variations in suicidality across multiple social identities in asexual people: An intersectionality analysis

Comparing Asexual and Non-Asexual Sexual Minority Adolescents and Young Adults: Stressors, Suicidality, and Mental and Behavioural Health Risk Outcomes

Proof that aspecs go through corrective rape and assault:

Sexual Violence Against the Asexual Community

A quantitative examination of the role of relationship status in asexual college students’ sexual victimization

Battling Asexual Discrimination, Sexual Violence And 'Corrective' Rape

and that list of reputable sources took less than 20 minutes of research. you just don't want to recognize it.

[knifearo]

"asexual discourse" is so funny cause dude that's not discourse and it's never been discourse. it's not an argument and it's not a conversation bitches are just yelling at us unprompted and then making up people to get mad at 😭

[eightglass]

hooooooly fuck did i actually just come across some ace discourse. in 2025. "demisexual isn't a sexuality" "demi isn't queer" "asexuality isn't queer" come the fuck on. what happened to using whatever labels feel comfortable? so what if a hetero-aspec person feels queer about it? so what if they don't? none of your business. doesn't hurt anyone.

"they think it's queer to not want to fuck anyone" "they invented a hundred terms for minute differences in attraction so they can say they're being oppressed when someone says that's stupid" shut up shut up shut upppp

[resdayn]

whats wild to me is i blocked thousands of people during the peak years of ace discourse. now that its ramping up again (against transmascs this time) when i go to block shitheads they are already on the list. way to say you are still licking TERF (conservative) boots in 2024. embarrassing!

[heartless-aro]

There’s no tumblr experience more aspec than having to go to the search bar on someone’s blog and search “asexual” or “aromantic” before following to make sure they weren’t Like That about aspecs back in 2016

[marshmellowtea]

apparently ace discourse is allegedly returning so a few things on that:

i feel like we learn this lesson every couple months but a significant chunk of the popular funnyman bloggers on this website are just bigots and bullies and your dash will be way more peaceful if you just block them on sight and stop giving them the time of day lmao

aro/ace exclusionists in general are, again, just bigots and bullies and again, you don't have to give them the time of day, and

tbh i think the only thing keeping these kinds of people from being outright conservative queerphobes is because they're queer themselves in some way--they're able to empathize and/or sympathize with what they consider "normal" lgbtq people but not anyone else who falls outside of their limited scope of "acceptable". also lbr a lot of them are homo/transphobic as well just in ways the larger tumblr community finds "funny" or "ironic" or they target the weirder queers who are considered acceptable to attack, and we need to stop giving them a pass for this and then being surprised when it turns out they actually do hate trans people or ace people or bisexuals or pansexuals or whoever else they like to target as a "joke".

i'm not saying any of this to downplay how harmful aphobia is, what i am trying to say is that aphobes are fucking losers and we have history and solidarity on our side. most of the queer community doesn't give a shit about this stupid terminally online discourse and will choose to support each other, don't let assholes online let you forget that fact. bigots are not going to win, no matter how much they try lol.

[a-polite-melody]

Oh actually.

Many of the tumblr queer “discourses” have centred around identities which are erased or invisible.

A common tactic of people trying to deny others language in these “discourses” has been to look at the people describing their less visible experiences with oppression, and then scream at them, “oh my god you just want to be oppressed SO badly!!”

It’s a direct weaponization of the invisibility of the experience to further erase that experience.

Basically an, “obviously, if this was a real problem we would have heard about it before now and so you’re making this up to seem oppressed, even though you’re telling us the reason we don’t see it is because of lack of visibility, we don’t believe you and are further going to erase your experiences.”

[cecilpedia]

"no this time I'm right about ace people not being oppressed and just wanting attention I'm right this time even though last time it happened thousands of people online and in person forced themselves back into the closet and lost a huge community this time it's different from the 2015-2017 ace discourse I swear"

[lovelydisgusting]

no more infighting over identity labels. i just saw a post where op listed various queer identity microlabels, sorted into two categories under "support" and "don't support". It was super silly, but also made me frustrated and sad. so here's my message to my fellow severely online queers: other queer people are not your enemy. you might think their labels are nonsense, or contradictory, or even offensive - learn to accept this. remember what you are fighting for: freedom of identity, freedom of expression, bodily autonomy, liberation from binary-hetero-patriarchy. FOR ALL! playing identity cop is utterly counterproductive to the cause.

[certifiablyinsanez]

Mammon is great ace representation: an essay on aphobia in the Hellaverse fandom

I’m seeing a lot of people be mad about Mammon having a thing for Leviathan. And I’m going to need the fandom to step back and examine these issues, because they are 100% rooted in aphobia. I have been out as an oriented aroace person for over 10 years if you want to doubt my credentials, rather than listen to my analysis, lived experience and reflect.

So. Tell me Hellaverse fandom; why, when it comes to Alastor, who is a character who very clearly has zero interest in others, it is always a chorus of people saying “aces can have sex”, “aces can enjoy sex”, “it’s not harmful to the ace community to use Alastor for shipping material, he isn’t real and asexuality and aromanticism is a huge spectrum”, “Aroace people can still date and have sex”?

But when it comes to Mammon, he is “bad asexual representation”, he “clearly experiences sexual attraction”, “he can’t be demisexual”, etc.

No genuinely, why is this? I want you to examine this, think on it from a place of neutral examination and come to your own conclusions. Because this is a worrisome double standard. This can for starters, be an instance of fat phobia. Because out of the two of them, Alastor is thin, and therefore closer to the beauty standard, which is hysterical considering that Alastor canonically has horrible hygiene, and I don’t think I know a single person who thinks that stank ass body and breath is attractive. Mammon, as seen from the slovenly way he eats, can potentially be assumed to have poor hygiene as well, but it has a very different connotation because of his weight. [Research the connection between thin privilege and body odor/hygiene. It’s very real].

I can spend a lot of time and energy going into the shipping dynamics between the shows, as well as how Alastor is a more “shippable” character in comparison to Mammon, but I honestly don’t find this as interesting or as compelling as to what I’m about to say next.

Because aphobia in the real world is still very alive and well today. In my 10+ years of being in the ace community, I have genuinely spent a lot of emotional energy, time, knowledge, experience, and compassion, just fighting for the right to even be acknowledged as queer. I have vivid memories from when I was first out of the closet at the age of 16, telling ace people across apps and forums that they were valid, that they weren’t broken, that they were deserving of love, respect, and a place in the queer community. I was telling people, younger, my age, and older that they shouldn’t kill themselves, that they had worth beyond what they could do in the bedroom for others. I had to convince people that they didn’t owe anyone sex, and that they were in fact being sexually abused by their partners. I was on the phone with people in tears. I spent HOURS of my life in these DMs at an age where I was a suffering, mentally ill queer child that was also being victimized by aphobia. Still to this day people think the “A” stands for ally. And still to this day people have discord about our community as a whole. I have had to sit and watch as people went from loudly proclaiming with their whole chest that asexual people didn’t exist, or at the very least weren’t queer. Then years went by and it became less and less okay to say things like that, because asexual people finally had fought long enough and had supported each other enough that we discovered our voices and began to use them. So people were finally facing the consequences of saying bigoted shit.

And now that they can’t say that asexuals aren’t queer, they moved on to another group. Demisexuals. Demisexuals by far have it roughest, because while there are many micro labels in our community to explain our diverse range of experiences, demisexual is probably the most well known one. And every handful of months or so I have to use my voice once again to stand up for my people, because an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and people on the internet have made it clear that they have no qualms of attacking us. The asexual and aromantic community have made extremely valuable contributions to the queer community that are entirely overlooked because we are not valued in it.

And this is why I have been an outspoken proponent of my displeasure over Alastor being a character that is the most shipped with others, and my disdain for the fanbase has grown even wider after Mammons appearance in Mastermind. It is a painful reminder of all the discrimination I’ve faced over the years, that my community still goes through. Because people are contrarians. Alastor is canonically asexual, and other aspects of his character are reflective of aromanticism as well. Well, the fanbase doesn’t like this so much. If you genuinely pay attention, you’ll notice this is a trend with a lot of other aroace characters. My favorite example is Peridot from Steven Universe, a canonical aroace character. In the show, Peridot goes through a lot of unlearning and growth. The scene where she tries to fuse with Garnet has massive implications for a few reasons. Because one, she is genuine in her desire to understand Garnet, and fusion better. And two, fusion while forbidden on Homeworld, is commonplace and normal in the Crystal Gems. As a Crystal Gem, she feels this is what is now expected of her. This is a major experience in the aspec community, as living in a cis heteronormative society means that sex, marriage and children are all things expected of each individual, which is dangerous and harmful ideology to everyone, asexual/aromantic people as well. Peridot couldn’t go through with the fusion, but that didn’t stop the fandom salivating, and foaming at the mouth over a potential Lapis/Peridot fusion. People were genuinely mad at Rebecca Sugar for never making that pairing canon, when they had absolutely no right to behave the way they did. Let’s not forget how the fans also misgendered Rebecca Sugar constantly. It was absolutely bigoted.

This is happening with Alastor. Fans feel entitled to ship him with whomever, an entitlement that is not seen with other characters. When people ship Vaggie with Angel, there is backlash, and for good reason. Because people understand that despite the fact that Vivienne Medrano said people can ship whatever, shipping a gay man with a woman and a gay woman with a man is…gross. It is wrong, it is disrespectful of their identities, and is forcing heteronormativity onto characters that are strict in their sexualities. Most people are able to recognize the thinly veiled homophobia. But Alastor does not receive the same treatment, and in fact receives the opposite treatment. I don’t know what I could say to convince you that the aroace coded character in a show being the #1 most shipped is thinly veiled aphobia the same way Vaggie x Angel is thinly veiled homophobia.

Now what does that have to do with Mammon? Mammon seems to not be aroace coded like Alastor, and for some reason, that has thoroughly pissed people off. Because Mammon is not the “acceptable” caricature of an asexual person. Most allosexual (non-asexual and/or aromantic people) view being asexual as being synonymous with being aromantic, which shows a painful lack of understanding and at times respect for the diversity of our community. Alastor fits this category, so he’s an “acceptable asexual”, while also essentially being a toy for shippers. But Mammon, with his clear attraction to Leviathan, is a “bastardization” of the asexual image. When we aren’t being viewed as broken, we’re often being viewed as chaste, virginal, and innocent with attachments to infantilization. But Mammon, with his aggressive and even icky approach to flirting with Leviathan, is seen as a subversion of this, which for people who don’t understand our community, hate. And these people are blaming Vivienne for having “terrible ace rep” when in actuality, having multiple ace characters having very little in common is actually fantastic rep. Because there are many labels in our community that Mammon can fit into as an asexual. To me, he looks like a sex-positive, high libido, demisexual. He’s known Leviathan for thousands of years, of course it makes sense that he would be into her, but not into anyone else which would explain why his “posse” are just female robots. This could also be because of his classism, but I genuinely think that he’s just demisexual. And you already know how people feel about demisexuals.

If you’ve read this far and have genuinely set aside your biases and personal feelings like I requested in the beginning, I appreciate that. Because from my own lived experience, the double standard between Alastor and Mammon doesn’t annoy me; it frightens me.

Because what the fandom is actually saying when they do these things is this:

“We see you as a homogenous group. Your voices go in one ear and out the other. If you don’t conform to our values and standards, we won’t give you the respect or recognition you deserve. If you don’t conform to my view of your group, you lose my “allyship”. We do not see your identity as a sexuality in its own right, but rather a literary device we can play with. I do not care to learn more about your community, your culture, or your struggles. I barely (if at all) acknowledge you as your own sexual minority and marginalized group. I barely acknowledge (if at all) that you are queer at all. I do not care about your feelings about societal biases that I might carry, I don’t care about how you’ve lived it, because it takes away my fun and fantasies. Because I devalue your group as a whole, your voices mean little. Your narrative is mine to do with as I please.”

I really hope you can see my perspective and understand the sincere place this comes from. Thanks for reading.