Tag: corrective rape

It’s All A Fucking Joke, Right

autumndiesirae:

homoelitism:

lunarsolareclipse:

lavabendingthot:

hirasawaschoiceass:

lavabendingthot:

satansbra:

millenniumfae:

In the few months I’ve been modding at fuckyeahasexual and touring ace Tumblr, there’s been a very. Steady. Stream of info that detail horrifically abusive situations and overall poor mental unhealth. Two a week in the inbox if I’m lucky, usually around seven-ten.

And there’s been so many, I can officially categorize all 500+ of these kinds of asks and submissions into an extensive bulletlist of Why Asexual Exclusionary Radicalism Is Incredibly Toxic And Shitty;

Coming Out To Family, Friends, And Employers

  • “My parents keep telling me that I’m something else, and it’s making me doubt my sense of judgement, not just about my sexual identity, but also about everything in general.”
  • “My family, friends, and co-workers keep referring to me as an inanimate object in a manner that’s clearly meant to humiliate and devastate me. Nothing I say will get them to stop.”
  • “My parents vocally/bodily forced me to undergo medical examinations, some of them concerning my sexual organs, many of them concerning blood tests and other trauma-centric procedures.”
  • “My family is intervening with my private life by changing my schedule to include exercise, socialization, friend influences, and whatever they think can ‘change’ me.”
  • “My friends/co-workers no longer respect my bodily boundaries when I came out to them, because they no longer see me as someone who should be respected. They regularly touch, fondle, grope, and prod me without permission, and/or verbally harass me, and don’t take my objections seriously.”
  • “My family, friends, and co-workers no longer just harass me, but also anyone I’m currently dating because they view my significant other as pathetic, underserved, or even being abused.”

First Few Days Of Dating

  • “My date got irrationally angry and confrontational when I came out to them, in a manner that made me fearful.” (SO many of these.)
  • “My date immediately lost any respect they had for my boundaries, no longer asked for consent, and {tried to} force themselves upon me.” (A lot of these, too)
  • “My date tried to verbally circumvent any boundaries and issues I confessed to, and it made me feel like I was in danger.”
  • “I didn’t come out to my date at first, and when they found out, they radically changed their behavior in an attempt to control and manipulate our new relationship to their benefit.”

Long-Term Relationships

  • “My partner has forcefully and radically changed our long-term relationship after finding out about my asexuality, and I’m now trapped and controlled in a way that I wasn’t before.”
  • “My partner broke up with me/is fighting with me because of my asexuality, and trying to make it seem like I’m hurting them. It’s made me doubt myself and my ability to trust my own intentions.”
  • “My partner is slowly changing from what was once supportive of my asexuality, and I’m wondering when I have the right to be worried and when I’d be overreacting. I’m aware of the worst case scenario, but I also worry that I’m being selfish and childish – which are things I’ve been told all throughout my asexual experience.”

Self-Care And Self Development

  • “I don’t trust my ability to say either yes or no in sexual situations, and this has extended to my life in general. I don’t feel comfortable in my ability to self-determinate.”
  • “The lack of authority, definition, and schooling of the concept of asexuality has made me very uncomfortable with what I think I am, and that uncertainty haunts me every waking moment.”
  • “I think it’s too late/too early to tell if I’m asexual, but the longer I hesitate, the worse my mental health and emotional wellbeing gets. I’m effectively stuck.”
  • “I see no benefit in coming out, or even identifying as asexual. There’s no positivity, role models, or supportive community for what I consider a big and scary part of my overall identity.”
  • “I think this was sexual abuse, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfish and childish.”
  • “I think I was treated badly by my parents/friends/partner, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfish and childish.”
  • “I want to believe that I’m deserving of equal freedom and human respect paid to other, not asexual people, but people tell me I’m being selfish and childish.”
  • “No one encourages this part of me. And that makes me feel forgotten and abandoned in general.”

Shut the fuck up about your petty beef with tumblr bloggers and youtubers and Archie comics or whatever. I literally do not care, I can’t care. I see these messages every goddamn day – this post was written and drafted a month ago, and I very easily compiled most of this bulletpoint list from scratch, just by eyeing what I see in the askbox and what comes across my dash. 

‘Ace discourse’ anger is empty and so meaningless. This is what I see by being part of this one 17k follow asexual ask blog for maybe half a year. I am so Done with all the faux rage posts and all the false positivity about how it’s ok to NOT be ace and all the acephobia that falls perfectly in line with the gaslighting typical of acephobia-101 while also having the audacity to claim it not so.

This is what’s real and I want to bleed it into your goddamn eyes.

Reblogging this again, for obvious reasons

Ace ppl are not INSTITUTIONALLY OR SYSTEMATICALLY OPPRESSED BECAUSE OF THE DEGREE THAT YOU FEEL SEXUAL ATTRACTION. If ur trans ur lgbtq. If ur aro but ur gay, bi, pan ur lgbtq. If ur ace but homo, biromantic etc ur lgbt. Being ace doesnt make u lgbt by default. Does the interpersonal lack of understanding suck and should change? Yeah. But society doesnt want u dead so cishet aces stay tf out our business.

Someone read this, all this stuff about struggles of people coming out as ace, people abusing them and telling them that their identity isn’t real or is a problem to be fixed, making people feel worthless and feeling that they’re in the wrong about their own goddamn identity, and said “nah they ain’t oppressed™ enough to be in a community of people who face the same issues”

U mad huh?

Anyway….aces can’t be systematically opressed. None of those things are examples of systematic oppression

Also nice how they called it “asexual exclusionary radicalism” as if it wasn’t a cheap tactic to compare ace exclusionist to twerfs

@lavabendingthot @lunarsolareclipse @homoelitism

Hey, instead of being a giant piles of garbage, try reading up:

“Aces don’t face oppression”

Asexuality was listed in the DSM as HSDD (Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder) until 2013, making it officially a mental illness that would be treated with therapy and medication. It is still in the DSM, except that you can ‘opt out’ if you self-identify as asexual, which is great except that asexuality is still so unknown that there undoubtedly many people who are asexual but don’t know that it’s “a thing”. This means that who knows how many asexuals have been sent to therapy and told they’re sick, then been “treated” for their orientation to try and force them to experience sexuality “correctly”.

In short, our orientation has been and continues to be pathologized, and asexuals have been put through corrective therapy: x,x, x, x, x

Posts of people describing the hardship they’ve faced for their asexuality:x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

The blog @acephobia-is-real has so many submissions and examples of hatred, harassment, hostility, and abuse, of aces who have been raped and/or sexually assaulted in an attempt to ‘fix’ them, and made suicidal due to aphobia and/or their own perceived brokenness, that it would be pointless for me to try and link any. Just go and start reading. Try their suicide tag.

There may be dissatisfyingly little research done on asexuality, but there has been enough done to prove that they do face discrimination, no matter how hard some may find that to believe. But guess what? You, an allosexual person, do not get to say shit like “aces don’t get kicked out” or “aces don’t _____” any more than I as a white person get to say that things I don’t experience must not happen to black people either. Just because you haven’t experienced it personally or witnessed it with your own eyes doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. You haven’t walked in an ace’s shoes, you don’t know what they deal with. Period.

Not even other aces can tell asexuals that their experiences aren’t real or aren’t valid. Different people can deal with different amounts of oppression, that doesn’t mean the lack of oppression is the default “truth”.

Nobody is trying to say that asexuals have it “as bad” or worse than gay or trans people, but we don’t HAVE to “have it worse” to beincluded and for our experiences to have merit without being compared to anyone else’s. Let me say that again: our experiences have merit without being compared to anyone else’s.

“We just want to protect our safe spaces”

Aphobes have:

Are all aphobes this vile? Maybe not, but this is still the disgusting, hateful attitude festering in the gatekeeping community, and it stinks like shit. The examples I have provided above are only a fraction of the harassment and abuse that is perpetrated on a regular basis.

“Het aces/aroaces are straight”

Some het aces identify as straight. Some het aces don’t identify as straight, they identify as asexual, and it’s not your place to label them against their will. There is no world in which aroaces, people who experience no attraction to anyone, are straight.

“We accept SGA (same-gender attracted) and trans aces”

Firstly, SGA (same-gender attraction) is a term that was used and is still used in Mormon conversion therapy, so as one can understand,a lot of people are very uncomfortable being labeled with this description. Secondly, it enforces a gender binary of “same” and “opposite” gender that leaves a large number of nonbinary people out in the cold. Is a genderfluid person only “same-gender attracted” if they’re attracted to other genderfluid people who are genderfluid in exactly the same way? How about agender, intergender, demigirl/boy people? And before the argument “well they’re included as trans” is made, there are plenty of nonbinary people who do not identify as trans. I’m one of them.

The standard of “SGA and trans” as requirement for entry to the LGBTQ community is used nowhere outside of aphobic tumblr, and it seems crafted specifically for the purpose of excluding aces, aros, NBs, intersex people, and others not deemed “gay enough”.

(SGA did NOT come from ‘SGL’, same-gender loving. That is a term created by black queer people and not to be appropriated by white people.)

Discussion of the history of the word ‘queer’ and why it’s better than ‘SGA’: x, x, x, x, x

There are also many “SGA and trans” aces who are against the gatekeeping and feel that they are hated by these aphobes.

Your “discourse” is harmful to all asexuals. And PS, your rhetoric is literally indistinguishable from TWERF rhetoric.

“The LGBT community has always been about fighting homophobia and transphobia/we came together to fight homophobia and transphobia”

Despite the fact that bisexual and transgender people have always been around, and have done great things for the community, they have faced a great deal of lateral oppression from the LG part of the group that did not want to see them get an equal share of attention, support, or legitimacy. This post is not about proving LG transphobia and biphobia, but it’s so rampant that I don’t feel like I need to provide sources whatsoever. Nevertheless, here’s a collection of biphobia, and the blog@terf-calloutdocuments some of the violent transphobia on this site, particularly in the lesbian community. This post is an example.

“The A stands for Ally so that closeted people can be the community without being outed”

No one is saying that we don’t care about closeted people, but a) even if you’re a closeted L, G, B, or T, you are still a L, G, B, or T. Allies do not need to be part of the acronym to be intrinsically welcomed. As someone said, this is like saying the ‘B’ in BLT stands for ‘bread’. We can pretty much safely assume that a sandwich is going to include bread, we don’t have to go of our way to give it a letter. Either you are outing every “ally” as a closeted queer person, or you are giving 100% cis straight people an LGBTQ member card, the very thing you are arguing against by trying to exclude asexuals.

Furthermore, this puts forth the argument “I’m willing to let cishet straight people into the community for the sake of a few closeted people” while at the same time stating “I’m not willing to let the A stand for asexuals because I don’t think letting cis heteroromantic asexuals into the community is worth giving all asexuals representation and support”. Which says that you consider asexuals less valuable and more of a threat than cis straight people.

Bonus: The History of LGBT(QQIAAP+)

“Aces have never been a part of the LGBTQ/queer community”

“Stop tokenizing bi and trans people/stop comparing bi/trans and ace experiences”

We’re not the ones doing it. They are comparing them, themselves.

“I have proof of an asexual being homophobic/transphobic/racist/a terrible person”

Of course there are asexuals who are terrible people. There are legions of gays and lesbians who are racist and transphobic. Does that make them not gay/lesbian? Does their bigotry invalidate their sexual orientation, or remove the L and G from the acronym? No, I don’t think so. Some asexuals being bad people doesn’t justify you trying to invalidate all of us.

“’Allosexual’ is a bad word because ____”

I actually have an ‘allosexual’ tag just for posts about why ‘allosexual’ is a perfectly fine word: x, x, x, x, x. x

“The split-attraction model is homophobic”

What we call the split-attraction model was first described by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a gay advocate from the 1800s, as “disjunctive uranodioning”. (source) (credit to this post)

“The term ‘corrective rape’ was coined by South African lesbians and should only be used by lesbians”

No one means any disrespect to lesbians or other victims of corrective rape, but this is not a correct statement.

“We’ll Show You You’re a Woman” describes the violence directed towards LGBT people in South Africa, stating, “Negative public attitudes towards homosexuality go hand in hand with a broader pattern of discrimination, violence, hatred, and extreme prejudice against people known or assumed to be lesbian, gay, and transgender, or those who violate gender and sexual norms in appearance or conduct (such as women playing soccer, dressing in a masculine manner, and refusing to date men).” It goes on to say, “Much of the recent media coverage of violence against lesbians and transgender men has been characterized by a focus on “corrective rape,” a phenomenon in which men rape people they presume or know to be lesbians in order to “convert” them to heterosexuality.”

The Wikipedia article on corrective rape in South Africa states that, “A study conducted by OUT LGBT Well-being and the University of South Africa Centre for Applied Psychology (UCAP) showed that “the percentage of black gay men who said they have experienced corrective rape matched that of the black lesbians who partook in the study”.”

It is not only lesbians, but also bisexual women, transgender men, gay men, and gender non-conforming people in South Africa who experience corrective rape. This is not in any way meant to minimize the horror of the epidemic or shift attention away from lesbians, but other victims, including asexuals, deserve attention as well. Do not silence or speak over victims of rape by policing their language.

“Aces are valid, they’re just not queer/LGBTQ”

You cannot in one breath say “Asexuals are valid” and in the next deny their experiences. Spend five minutes in the community and you will see testimony after testimony from aces describing their abuse, their sexual assault(s), the countless times people have called them confused, broken, wrong, mentally ill, inhuman, sinful, and how these experiences have left them feeling hopeless, alone, alienated, subhuman, depressed, and suicidal. Almost every asexual out there will tell you a story of how their orientation has caused them pain and struggle, and you can’t call them valid while at the same time calling these experiences invalid and nonexistent.

Bonus: This is a list of all the mainstream LGBTQ groups that include asexuals.

“Form your own community!”

a) We do have our own community, because every letter in the acronym has its own communityand yet is still part of the acronym, b) you fucking shits won’t stop sending us hate and bombarding us with shit meant to trigger and harass us.

“Aces take resources from other LGBTQ who need them”

I’ve seen some pretty wild claims about this one, insisting that asexuals “steal” things such as scholarships, beds at homeless shelters, food and space at pride events, suicide hotlines, and so on, yet I have never seen any actual proof that any “stealing” has ever taken place. For one thing, I thought “you’ll never get kicked out or fired for being ace”, “no one is suicidal because they’re asexual”, so why would you think aces need these resources? Either we don’t need them or we don’t use them, you can’t have it both ways.

For another, how heartless do you have to be to tell asexuals that they can’t use suicide hotlines? Do you realize that you’re saying that asexuals should be denied life-saving services? That, in essence, asexuals are suicidal due to their orientation, but you think they’re not “queer enough” so they deserve to die? Because that is the logical progression of refusing someone suicide prevention, and that’s the message aces receive when you tell them they are “stealing” suicide prevention.

LGBTQ resources offer them to asexuals, andbenefit from us using them.

Lastly, do you not realize we are alsoPROVIDING resources? We are bringing bodies and minds to the community, we are here to be voices, to volunteer, to bring encouragement, information, and support. We earn our keep. You just have to admit that you don’t WANT us here.

Nasty shit aphobes do

(Thanks to @livebloggingmydescentintomadness for these)

My own contribution:

Living in a world where the media is overflowing with sexual imagery and where society constantly puts value on sexual intercourse, virginity, and related topics – who can forget the phrase ‘sex sells’? – men and women who do not experience sexual attraction (the definition of asexuality) and who are sex-repulsed or masturbation-repulsed (as many asexuals, myself included, are) feel alienated and ‘broken’. We also face erasure in terms of representation, being either grossly underrepresented or represented as cold, harsh, and ‘synonymous with celibate’ people. Let’s not forget erasure from LGBT spaces – I have many times been told that asexuals do not belong in the acronym or in “our spaces”, even though asexuals have the capacity to be homoromantic, biromantic, panromantic, etc, as well as transgender or nonbinary. And, if we don’t belong in LGBT spaces, and we clearly aren’t heterosexual, what do we belong? Nowhere, it seems. Of course, the argument also drifts to “asexuals don’t experience oppression”, which is false.

Examples of asexual oppression:

http://autumndiesirae.tumblr.com/post/118710018295/aces-dont-face-discrimination

Asexuals are the highest targets for corrective rape:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/asexual-discrimination_n_3380551.html

Go fuck yourselves. ❤

Corrective Rape- A South African Speaks

wickedwitchofthewhothehellcares:

Okay, I wasn’t going to do this, but it kept eating at me (and other people around me). So. Let it be known that I am a South African Bisexual cis female.

“Corrective rape was a term coined by South African lesbians! Thus this is a lesbian-only term!” is something that’s getting thrown around a lot by the Discourse Brigade. 

The first time I saw this I burst into laughter. I mean, I am the victim of corrective rape and never have I ever been told by any of my lesbian sisters to not use this term. It never occurred to anyone I know that I would not be able to use this term, or that this is not what my sexual assault was.

It was yet another example of how silly people could be. Were people who had never spoken to a single LGBT+ South African really going to be this ignorant? 

I never took it seriously for a second because, really? Surely nobody actually thought that South African Lesbians were gonna expect everyone to conform to some nebulously specific list of things to qualify to use the term “corrective rape”. 

But hey, as an African you get used to people talking over you and thinking you ride to school on a lion. Whatever, you laugh and you move on. 

But I couldn’t move on. 

Because people kept telling other people that they were, I don’t know, spitting on people’s graves, for using this term “incorrectly”. 

So let me tell you this right now: If your assault happened because you do not conform precisely to your society/culture’s cisheteronormative* values, congratulations! You get to use the term corrective rape. Compliments of your South African brethren. 

End. Of. Fucking. Discussion. 

Now- let me tell you why I couldn’t move on. 

Because the assholes that are policing the use of this term are spitting on the graves of every single one of my fucking ancestors. 

Allow me to explain. 

South Africa is a really unique place. Did you know we have eleven (11) official languages? That’s not including the minority ethnic groups that call my country home. 

Now, when you realise that you have nine (9) traditionally black South African cultures, two (2) white cultures, the Chinese people, the Indian people, Other Africans… You may begin to figure out we’re really fucking diverse. 

And we’re pretty proud of that diversity. Post Apartheid. 

Apartheid was a system built- at its core- on ‘us’ vs ‘them’. It wasn’t inclusive. It separated people. It put some people in positions of power over others. It redefined the term ‘gatekeeping’ (in my opinion).

It was really fucking nasty. 

It killed a lot of people. 

And then Nelson Mandela came along. You know the story- he was imprisoned and instead of hating everyone he taught love and inclusion (after Winnie Mandela got him freed whilst running the Struggle- go read up on her. She’s a true feminist icon). 

He is the father of our nation. And he taught us that hatred and bigotry and exclusion are never ever the way to go. 

Afrikaans is still an official language. Part of the old Afrikaans anthem is still included in our official anthem. 

We are taught that this is our country’s way forward. 

We’re the Rainbow Nation! 

LGBT+ people were granted every single right American LGBT+ people are still fighting for in our constitution in 1994. 

But unfortunately, this lead to a huge homophobic backlash. 

Thus- corrective rapes started happening all across the country. 

But! The assholes who rape people? They don’t ask whether you’re lesbian or gay. They don’t check your credentials. 

They can rape the girl who’s a little too ‘butch’ for their tastes, or the boy who might not play football (soccer for the Americans). 

They do not care if you are a card carrying member of the LGBT+! They care only for the fact that you don’t look masculine/feminine enough. That you might have been staring at a boy/girl. That you said no earlier. Maybe you have a LGBT+ friend, so obviously you’re the same. Or hell, maybe your parents know you’re LGBT+ and they pay someone to rape it out of you. Maybe your arranged husband does it on your wedding night. 

They do not care how you do not conform to societal standards- only that you do not. 

And in South Africa we know this. 

We know that no one’s rape is exactly the same as anyone else’s. Because it could never be exactly the same. 

So yeah, here a completely straight white girl could use the term “corrective rape” and no one, no one, would bat an eyelash. Because she was correctively raped. 

Because we know that united we stand, but divided we fall. And we have fallen so very very far in our past. 

So no. 

You do not get to fucking gatekeep this term which my brothers and sisters and I in this struggle have shed our blood and tears in. 

You do not get to exclude people in our name.

Not when we freely gave this term to the world to use as and if needed.

Kindly respect us and our culture enough to not spit directly into our and our forefathers faces. 

*I’m so sorry Trans Tumblr. I couldn’t find another word that really worked here. 

** Yes, I have spoken to my fellow LGBT+ brethren. This is a PSA from the majority of us. If only because I cannot speak for all South Africans. Some of us are assholes too. 

*** I know the UN wants to rename it “homophobic rape” but we will never us this term since it throws our Trans/NB/intersex/Bi/Ace/Aro/Agender/Questioning/Ally siblings under the bus. It frankly goes against what we invented it for. You, however, are welcome to coin the term yourselves.