#this low empathy nonsense has absolutely ruined the landscape of the neurodivergent & mentally ill community on social media

[abandoned-hippie2022]

so some popular youtuber, Jaiden Animations, came out as aromantic asexual recently, which is HUGE & amazing for our community, but some people are seriously harassing her & bitching on social media because at the end of her coming out video she made a comment about how she “still loved people platonically, I'm not a monster.” 

this apparently “dehumanizes low/zero empathy & loveless aplatonic people”

I really can’t fucking stand how our community isn’t allowed to have anything, without some little straight assholes who want to be special coming in & co-opting it with their special brand of aphobic hetero bullshit.

I guarantee she made that joke specifically because of how stigmatized asexuality is. people HATE the idea of someone not being sexually attracted to anyone. people literally view us as psychopaths that need to be medicated. she made that joke because she probably wanted to demonstrate that romance & sex don’t equal love, & humor is a really good way to get things across to people when you are a) telling them something that goes wildly against the status quo & b) coming out as something that is not well accepted or understood in society. 

she should be getting applauded for her courage in coming out as a highly stigmatized sexuality. instead, you go in the asexual tag right now & you’ll see a bunch of psychopaths, who’ve co-opted the little community we’ve managed to scrape together, shaming her for trying to spread awareness & acceptance for us.

we have worked for so long to get people to realize that not being sexually attracted to people or romantically inclined doesn’t make you a loveless psychopath. now we have literal psychopaths, who are all straight little teenage weirdos that just got finished ruining the neurodivergent community with their “low empathy” shit, coming here & undoing all the work we’ve done.

I don’t know what’s up with this disturbing surge in people not understanding what empathy means, but so far its skewing & misrepresenting TWO communities that are already highly stigmatized, so anyone who preaches this “low/zero empathy” bullshit can go right to hell. 

y’know... as much as I hated not knowing what I was for the longest time, seeing stuff like this makes me realize how grateful I am to have come into understanding my asexuality prior to the internet. the internet made it easier to connect with others & research more information, yeah, & it was really hard to search the library & catalogs for what little there was, but I am endlessly grateful that I never got exposed to this kind of shit. I can’t even imagine the damage it would’ve done to my sense of self if I saw people complain about an asexual woman coming out because she didn’t cater to straight, neurotypical, psychopaths.

with how increasingly reliant on social media & the internet kids are these days, I can only imagine how muddled & confused they’re going to be with all of these straight people constantly policing gay, bi, & ace people.