#and then there's me editing random character's head's onto the lesbian flag

[gay-little-isopod]

i uh was bored

enjoy this creation (or dont, i don't even know what this is)

[aro-culture-is]

It's that time of year again- pride is coming up and I've already gotten some acephobic dogwhistles crossing my dash.

Below is a list of specifically aphobic dogwhistles that I'll update as I spot them or if you guys suggest them:

Before I begin, a definition of dogwhistles:

“Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different, or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup. The analogy is to a dog whistle, the ultrasonic tone of which is heard by dogs but inaudible to humans.” - Wikipedia

Not everyone who uses these phrases is intending to have that additional, different, or more specific resonance for aspec people, but if I bold the item, it doesn’t have an okay meaning.

"PDA IS ALLOWED AT PRIDE!1!1!!11" - While a number of ace and aro folx (among others such as trauma survivors) do find that PDA can be triggering or a squick, I've never seen someone legitimately claim that PDA shouldn’t be allowed at pride, as these aphobes insist. Every time I've seen this sort of claim cross my dash, there's 2 things I find to be true: the original blog is acephobic (or a 13 year old and that does tend to be a pretty dumb age due to brain reasons) and there's a legitimate and oftentimes decent conversation by people in the notes about making sure that PDA during daytime events is nonsexual so that minors are safe. That discussion is ok, So are counter arguments. But, PLEASE recognize that emphatic declarations like above are a dogwhistle.

“I support LGBT aces/aros!” - yikes. So, the basic idea here is that this person believes that being ace/aro is a modification of being straight rather than a sexuality or romantic orientation or that same-sex attraction is necessary to be LGBT(Q+) which tends to be completely and immediately contradicted by a generic “but trans people are ok” or just a total LGB or even LG only. They do not actually support aspec people. They support only the letters they claim to support at best. (thanks to @clownpieceoffreedom for suggesting this addition!)

“A is for allies!!!” - not sure how much detail I need here if you’re on my page, but honestly... basically, people who say this fall into 2 main camps: 1) ignorant but trying, and haven’t yet learned enough to know that A is for asexual, aromantic, and agender folx, and 2) the asshats who know that and consider all of those identities invalid. Generally speaking, assume ignorance and evaluate the speaker via searching them, speaking with them, or other methods. 

url including “allo” (especially as “dirty/sex -allo”), “aphobic”, “-course” referencing discourse - this one is subtle, but usually a quick glance at their blog reveals their true nature. Many if not most are frankly speaking, awful and aphobic. If they are of that ilk, you’ll probably find no less than five dogwhistles on the first page. However, some aspec people have claimed these urls because their are alloromantic or allosexual and it is a term for them, among other reasons, so I would advise checking before you reach for the block button. see the section on allo/dirty for why those in particular are included.

“asexuality/aces are homophobic” - this might just be implied but I also recently made a blocklist based around a post that literally referred to aspecs as “ homophobic ace tumblr” because they believe one of the following: 1) that sex-repulsion and romance-repulsion are always referring to seeing same-sex attraction, commonly used in reference to PDA at pride while insisting that aspec people who don’t want to see romantic or sexual situations are telling them not to be gay in public. usually, the aspecs in question were just... talking about romo or sex repulsion and how they handle it because they don’t want to do that. 2) one I can’t fully wrap my head around: aces are homophobic because some gay people will identify as asexual to avoid acknowledging their gay feelings. like... bud. internalized homophobia is a bitch but it’s yours. we welcome you for as long as you’d like to stay, and if you realize that you aren’t aspec, you can feel free to hold onto it for as long as you’d like, but ultimately confronting your feelings is your business. we won’t tell you what to do as a community. if it’s homophobic to respect your feelings and allow you to decide if and when you, a random online stranger, confront your feelings, then it was aphobia when you didn’t tell me likewise to confront my internalized aphobia when I thought I was gay because I knew I wasn’t into the people I was “supposed” to be. you had no way of knowing that and neither do we.

“allo” “dirtyallo” “dirty” etc as a self description particularly with a mocking tone - for some reason a lot of allo people think allo is a poorly made slur of some sort or lumps them in with their oppressors. idk man. they think that it’s clever to use it preemptively or something. I’m not sure but I think that they think our experiences are mocking theirs somehow. it gives me the same vibes as like, those people who insist that political correctness is ruining everything. they don’t know or care to know what the term means so they decide it must be secretly insulting them. insert “i am smart” memes here.

“cishet” - ah, yes, the biggest and most annoying dogwhistle of them all. coopted by exlusionists in which they actually mean “cisgender heteroromantic aces” or more rarely “cisgender heterosexual aros” and usually makes a big point about how “cishets” are awful people who should never be allowed at pride related events etc. typically used in a way that normal blogs have no idea. this is probably the most effective aphobic dogwhistle. as for why it’s bad, see “I support LGBT ace/aros!” above.

pride collections (such as edits of a popular character with pride flags behind them) without asexual/aromantic flags, specifically ones with only LGBT flags - I totally get that not every artist is gonna make edits for every queer identity they know, but I’ve seen enough of these lead back to aphobes that I’m including it regardless. If you don’t see an identity, especially one of the Big Ones... check it out. Do a search. If you aren’t sure what I’m including, here’s an off the top of my head list, contact me for additions b/c I don’t double check what I type enough. Common: lesbian, gay, bi, pan, queer, asexual, nonbinary, trans; less common but still possibly a sign: aromantic, demi -romantic or -sexual, agender, intersex, newer variations of lesbian flags that have significant support.