#fuck man just say you hate aspec ppl and move on

[redysetdare]

A character looks straight into the camera and says "I'm not interested in romance" and people will still say "No, it's not confirmed they're aromantic!!!" "They could change their mind!!!" "it's a challenge for them to overcome!!!" "They'll have character development that makes them fall in love"

It's like they are given the most blatant answer to a character romantic orientation and they actively ignore it. all the while all it takes is subtext for people to speak as if it is fact for a character to be any other sexuality.

[take-some-vampire-money-bro]

As an ace person myself I really appreciated what you had to say. Also the irony of them complaining about being gatekeeper-ed out of the LGBTQ community while gatekeeping ace people seemed lost on them

Hey sorry for answering this late, I kinda wanted to wait until I was sure that that guy's followers weren't gonna attack/make fun of/screenshot my profile. Its been a huge fear of mine for years now so I just wanted to make sure. (This is why I miss the better anonymity of g+, u could actually post things privately and it was just way more user friendly in general).

As for your ask, I'm glad to help. I honestly understand where a lot of exclusionists come from as someone who used to be one, but a lot of them are huge assholes and worry more abt ppl within our community who are just vibing than the actual threat, that being oppressive cishets. And also I just think it's counterproductive to gatekeep ppl over every little thing. A lot of them will claim to say "oh aces are valid, they should just have their own community" and then proceed to dedicate a huge chunk of their profile to generalizing/making fun of/scrutinizing every little thing they do like it's a hobby or something. At the end of the day, aces and aros being in our community aint harmful, they just have slightly different experiences. Which makes sense bc there's already such a vast variety of LGBTQ+ experiences. A cis gay man is gonna have a hugely different experience in society as opposed to a trans woman. I also just feel it's unfair to hate on all aro/ace ppl just because there are some bad apples. Like there are shitty people in any group. There's gatekeeping transmeds in the trans community, theres the "I'm not like other gays" in the gay, lesbian, and bi communities. Not to mention how much racism/transphobia/ableism/etc there is within the LGBTQ+ community too. So idk why we're suddenly casting out a whole group of people because a minority of them are homophobic????

there were never strict guidelines that explicitly wanted ace/aro ppl out of this. Just don't be cis, heterosexual, AND heteroromantic. Which is a pretty good rule imo. I'm not even ace and I think the split attraction model makes sense and applies to a fuck ton of ppl. I wasn't even aware that ppl thought this was an aspec exclusive phenomenon. While sexual and romantic attraction can intertwine sometimes, they are still separate forms of attraction that act independently often enough to not need to be one thing. My attraction for women is way more sexual than it is romantic, for example.

And moving on from that point, LGBTQ+ used to only be a community for gay folks until trans and bi ppl eventually were included as well. So wouldn't this be the same thing. aro/ace folks suffer under heteronormativity just like any of us and have struggles w society just like a lot of us. As a bi trans guy, I've faced bigotry from both outside and inside my own community, so I can empathize with ace/aro folks. We should focus on lifting our siblings up and shutting down bigots.

But anyways enough of this essay lol. Bottom line, ace/aro folks are valid members of this community and are always safe on my blog.