#obligatory i am ace and this is my perspective and i don't speak on behalf of everyone disclaimer

[do-you-have-a-flag]

I wanna give more context so here is my analysis of the chain of events here:

Fox News and right wing conservatives interested in escalating culture wars for profit have a motive in discrediting the Washington post and furthering transphobic policies. a big part of that is using the concept of predation of children which is an old tactic used against homosexuality but is also currently feeding into more extreme conspiracy theories about politicians ect. It is an extremely profitable narrative both for their target audience and outrage clicks and traffic for their advertisers.

As a part of the current wave of transphobia they are targeting Odele Pax, who is trans femme, and this could possibly be because in the past she has spoken to the press about her own name change process as a part of a larger story about lawyers waiving their fees to represent LGBTQ+ people.

So the focus on valentine's day and asexuality, in this case, is likely to be a shield for the larger discourse they are shaping equating trans people to deviant predators. It's a way to harass someone for being trans without directly saying so.

The fox news article does not say much and mostly targets the washington post but Matt Walsh's video opens with a stated "normal" valentine's day joke with his audience: guys who forgot to get their wives a present so they pick up cooking utensils at the store as a romantic gesture. I'm not even going to get into all the stereotypes in this because it is half joking and boring.

Matt Walsh targets Odele calling her immature and mocking her trans activist named (ikea?) sharks (which is, to the best of my knowledge, a bit of a meme for trans girls?). he calls her life "utterly pathetic and depressing"

He then continues to do his usual thing of deliberately mocking and refusing to correctly interpret asexuality to discredit it entirely. it's the same "that's fake" and "you're not oppressed" arguments a-spec people are used to hearing for years now, only with the addition of attributing the term's existence to "the left" and "narcissism"

The real core here is when he gets into how it's "more bizarre than marching around and claiming to be proud of your sexual attraction." it loops back to classic homophobia disguised as the sentiment of upholding normality, that it's not normal or necessary to do any kind of activism or pride demonstration

SO to summarise:

The old tactic of equating homosexuals and transgender people with predators is being continued with the added elements of infantilising, profiting from political culture war narratives, mocking and discrediting asexuality as a part of a larger dismissal of LGBTQ+ rights.

This isn't a "first they came for X and now they're coming for Y" this is "they are coming for Y because they are a part of X"

I don't see this as aroace people being targeted separately. i read this as a flattening of all identities to equate them with each-other and label them as "deviance" "mental illness" or "pedophillia". The narrative being crafted is "it's all leftist bullshit and also it's immoral" and ace people are being used as a convenient way to avoid transphobia accusationsit's

THIS is why solidarity matters. Not because "oh no we're next" but because the distinction never existed and what facet people are going to let themselves be seen as attacking is what changes. it was always an attack on all of us.

So within two days of each other, Fox News writes an article comparing aromanticism and asexuality to pedophilia, and then Matt Walsh releases a video saying asexuality is a mental illness and asexuals are tricking teenagers into having depression.

Not sure what’s going on right now over in Conservative World, but it’s a hell of wild U-turn for them to suddenly switch from “Oh no! The left is sexualizing our children!” to “Oh no! The left is asexualizing our children!”