Tag: you are all welcome under my umbrella

nylaporp:

akamine-chan:

the-s-s-anna:

I wanna tell you guys a story,

Not too long ago, my friend Bella came out as aromantic to me, and now I’ve got some things to say.

I was the one who told her what aromantic means, because I was explaining different sexual orientations to her. I remember saying, “Asexualiy is when you have romantic attraction, but no sexual attraction.”

Bella immedently, without missing a beat, asked, “Is there an opposite to that?”

I asked what she meant, and she asked if there was a term for sexual attraction but no romantic attraction. I told her about aromantics. She got weirdly quiet, then excused herself.

Not two weeks later I was heading to my boat. I was supposed to meet Bella and another one of our muteral friends there for a day of fishing.

As soon as I was in earshot, I saw Bella storming off the boat, and our other friend standing there like an idiot. Boi had no idea what was happening.

Anyway, Bella isn’t looking where she’s going and walks smack dab into me. That’s when I realized she was crying. Puffy red eyes, wet cheeks, the whole nine yards… And if you know anything about Bells, she does not cry. Ever.

She’s been through some serious crap in her life, and she does not cry. She’s tough as nails. Bella has a steel core. She does not not cry. I’ve seen her fall off a roof and break her arm before, not a single tear. I can’t stress this enough, Bella. Doesn’t. Cry.

So seeing her in tears shook me. I took her by the shoulders and escorted her somewhere more private where we could talk. We ended up in the women’s restroom, which was weird as fuck for me, because haven’t been in a woman’s rest room for years. Luckily it was empty, and I’m realistic, I know I don’t pass so well, so I don’t think anyone would have said anything anyway.

Before I can even ask her what’s wrong she hugs me around my middle and burys her face in my hoodie. Then, in a voice I can only describe as traumatized, she says, “I think I’m broken.”

I’ve never seen her in so much pain, and Bella and I are CLOSE. She’s one of my dearest friends. She’s like my little sister, but if she’s like my sister, our other muteral friend is like her twin. He and Bella have know each other WAY longer, they’re practically inseparable. They come as a pair. They’re a duo. They’re a package deal.

Appearently, said muteral friend asked Bella out and forcefully kissed her. She shoved him off, and told him she’s aromantic, which she only recently figured out. She wasn’t ready to be out, but this muteral friend left her no choice. She tried telling him no, and he didn’t listen. Bella saw no other option.

Quote on quote, this is what he said to Bella. “That’s okay. You just haven’t dated me yet. We’ve been like, unofficially together for years. You’re probably just freaked out that it’s finally going somewhere.”

After that I’m not 100% clear on what happened, but apparently Bella kept saying no Nd trying to explain herself, but he kept insisting he could ‘fix her.’

Eventudally she started crying and stormed away. That’s when I found her.

Keep in mind, this was her first experience coming out, and her best, closest friend insisted he could fix her and forcefully kissed her. I found out later he also implied corrective rape would ‘solve the problem.’

Bella was traumatized. She’s still traumatized. I tried to make her feel better by buying her an aro pride shirt, and taking her go a local LGBTQ+ hang out. I wanted her to be around like minded people, so she could see she wasn’t broken, and her identity deserved to be respected.

Instead of a warm, welcoming environment… The first thing someone said to her was, “This place is for REAL lgbt people. You don’t belong here.” He also implied she wasn’t human.

Just think about that for a minute. Her first experiences with being an out aromantic have been limited to;

  1. A person she trusted more than anyone forcing himself upon her, claiming she was ill, and needed to be fixed. (Raped.)
  2. Sobbing in my arms in the women’s restroom because she thought she was broken and defective.
  3. Being told she wasn’t welcomed in LGBTQ+ spaces and called inhuman.

This isn’t what I want for her. Bella deserves better than this. She needs a support system, not all this crap. I’ve spent the past week trying to undo all the damage exclusionists, arophobes, and people she trusted did.

Aromantics and asexuals belong in the LGBTQ+ community. You literally cannot change my mind.

Did I already queue this? Dunno. But let me say that I’ve never stood by while gatekeepers try to well, gatekeep.

I didn’t put up with it as a teenager really into sci-fi, I didn’t put up with it from the dude bros in game and comic shops, and I certainly won’t stand for it in my LGBT+ community.

Aces and aros are welcome in my community.

You bet your ass that aces and aros are allowed here. And you can fight me if you don’t agree.

i-am-the-punk-mermaid:

i-am-the-punk-mermaid:

I literally dont know how i can make this any more clear. Asexual and aromantic people belong in the LGBT community as much as the rest of us. And before your dumbass pipes up “but not cishet aces”, first of all fuck you. Secondly, they are NOT HETERO. They are Asexual. Which literally negates the idea of them possibly being heterosexual. They are not heteromantic. They are Aromantic. Which literally negates the idea of them possibly being heteromantic.
Support aces and aros this pride season.

I lose followers every time i reblog this. Good. Aphobes can gtfo my blog.

Look I have no problem with aces being part of the community, but historically queer was never used as a slur against them, so as someone who has been called queer as a derogatory insult plenty of times, I’m pretty uncomfortable with them using it. Reclaiming the word queer is fine, but not if it wasn’t directed at you in the first place.

damnfool-of-a-took:

systlin:

Hey.

Quick tip. 

You are not the Queer Pope. You don’t get to decide who is and isn’t queer. 

Also, get off my blog. 

Not only is anon not Queer Pope, they’re also factually incorrect. For others champing at the bit to be the next grayface too chickenshit to be wrong with their URL attached: 

Google “the spinster movement”. 1920′s and 1930′s. Ace women considered “queer” by straight society for not complying with the demands of compulsory heterosexuality (i.e. marry, let your husband fuck you whenever he wants, produce hordes of children, probably die of tuberculosis (well, that last bit’s not compulsory heterosexuality, but I digress)). 

Better yet, look up stuff from the research of Alfred Kinsey and/or Magnus Hirschfield (of the

Institut für Sexualwissenschaft- the Nazis burned it for advancing knowledge and acceptance of ace, trans, and gays & lesbians- all enemies of the State because their existence undercut the Aryan call for men FATHER MANY ARYAN BABIES and to FIGHT FOR THE FATHERLAAAAAND and for the women to manage Kinder, Küche, and Kirche (children, kitchen, church). 

Here’s a nice excerpt from a 1935 newspaper on how asexual women should be barred from teaching (one of the very few jobs a woman could hold in those days) based on their sexuality:  “The women who have the responsibility of teaching these girls are many of them themselves embittered, sexless or homosexual hoydens who try to mould the girls into their own patten.”

In the Victorian era, there was a movement for decades in favor of evicting spinsters (read: asexual and lesbian women) over 30 from Britain, and send them to Canada, Australia, or the United States instead. 

They were at best, “surplus females”, and at worst? Here’s another quote! This one is from Eliza Linton, a Victorian writer quoted in a more modern work analyzing Victorian families, describing spinsters in contrast with “naturally” celibate women, that is, widows: “Unnatural and alien: Painted and wrinkled, padded and bedizened, with her coarse thoughts, bold words, and leering eyes, [the wrong kind of spinster] has in herself all the disgust which lies around a Bacchante and a Hecate in one…. Such an old maid as this stands as a warning to men and women alike of what and whom to avoid.”

TL;DR YOU EXCLUSIONIST SHITHEADS KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE HISTORY OF YOUR OWN COMMUNITIES, LET ALONE BROADER QUEER HISTORY. SHUT YOUR MOUTHS, OPEN A FEW WEBPAGES, AND READ. 

iwantthatbelstaffanditsoccupant:

aphobephobe:

preoccupiedpepper:

vaspider:

holybikinisbatman:

lestermygaard:

excessively-english-little-b:

I just… wanna remind people that asexuality was classed as a mental disorder by the DSM all the way up until 2013…. Because I feel like people don’t know this or like to ignore it because it doesn’t fit into their “asexual people don’t face discrimination” rhetoric.

Asexuality was only removed from the DSM in 2013. Please, know this and remember it.

asexuality is STILL in the DSM they still have a disorder that’s literally the definition of asexuality called “hypoactive sexual desire disorder” which is what they’ve always classified asexuality as. they just added a clause that said “if the patient IDs as ace it’s fine” but it’s not like the general population knows what asexuality is and people want to complain about how visibility is such a high priority for us jesus christ

thats a very good point. i knew about that distinction, but it bears repeating for people that see this post and arent aware of it

And that’s why we need the queer community to be like ‘no really we exist and it isn’t hurtful it’s quite fine they belong here with us, the other queers, who were just de-pathologized.’ 

*bang gavel*

I was going to college and grad school when the fight over this diagnosis being included in the DSM-V was going on. 

If I remember correctly, the big push to keep it in the DSM came from the pharmaceutical companies who need this diagnosis to exist so that they can market a drug they are currently working on to treat “female sexual interest/arousal disorder”. 

This diagnosis is so fucked up. It not only pathologizes Asexuals, it also pathologizes non-asexual women for having less interest in sex than men. This disorder literally used to be called “Frigidity” and feminist psychologists had to fight like hell to get the DSM to clarify that simply having a lower sex drive than one’s husband was not sufficient for a diagnosis. 

The APA throws in that little disclaimer about being a “self-identified asexual” and the diagnostic criteria of distress, but they did the same thing before they removed homosexuality from the DSM. 

A lot of people think that psychologists stopped considering homosexuality a disorder in the 1970s, but that’s not entirely true. They kept it in the DSM with a slightly changed name and a criteria that the person experience distress about being gay. This was used to justify “reparative therapy” for decades. 

This diagnosis is just one part of the APA’s long history of pathologizing human sexuality, especially women’s sexuality. Women who deviate even slightly from the prescribed amount of sexual interest will find themselves labeled as either borderline or frigid. 

Continued reminder that asexuality is still only listed in the desk version of DSM-V, and that many countries either use the ICD or an outdated version of the DSM. 

Yes, some people experience this issue due to medication or to depression– as a side effect. That’s not how this has been used. I know this because I received this diagnosis and treatment for a couple of years. A couple of years being told I was broken, without even the merest hint that I was simply different.

When I was allowed to just *be*(actually when I gave up on therapy and started writing fic and doing it on my own) I found my own interest in sexual things, at my own level, on my own terms, and not rooted in desire. Never managed to develop that supposedly essential thing to make me “healthy” and “human”.this should sound damn familiar to those who are aware how homosexuality was viewed in therapy.

If you still think aces don’t face discrimination which is, of course, different in style from others in the queer community because everyone’s experience is different (the issue is about being treated a certain way because of not being what society defines as “ correct ”, het, cis, convenient libido ), I’m wondering what you’d call that, if not queer.

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. ❤

anauthorandherservicedog:

honeylout:

why are people such assholes to those who identify as asexuals? so the + that you have been putting in lgbtq is just for show? so if they happen to be cis and het they are no longer part of a minority even though they identify as asexual? so you only accept people who are interested in having sex? so the inclusive community is just fit for those that YOU judge that don’t fit the norm? show some fucking compassion and stop excluding people. ace people are valid and part of the lgbtq+ community.

They have no idea how hard it is to be ace.

How hard it was to grow up ace back when “asexual” only applied to single-celled organisms.

How hard it still is to grow up surrounded by sex everywhere. You have to have sex. You have to want sex. You shouldn’t have sex with anyone but ~the one~ but you’re going to want it anyway.

Sex factors into everything. What you wear. How you look. How you walk. Where you go. Who you hang out with.

Everyone wants it. Of course everyone wants it. Anyone who doesn’t is broken.

Get on The Pill or get T to fix it, because it’s hormones. Get therapy to fix it, because it’s your brain. Get laid with new people to fix it because you just haven’t fucked the right person.

WRONG.

Because aces aren’t broken. Aces are erased. Persecuted. Forgotten. Abused. Coerced. Raped. Forced to take meds and go through therapy and told again and again that this is ~fixable~.

But we’re not broken. We’re just fucking fine as we are, and nobody has any right to say otherwise. Yet we still go through this shit every time Pride rolls around, and I’m sick of it.

Every goddamn thing any queer person with any other letter in the LGBTQ+ alphabet could go through, we go through, too.

You’re goddamn right we’re part of the community, no matter what other shit you think “disqualifies” us.

In fact, protip: If you’re gatekeeping any fellow self-declared queers, saying they don’t deserve to be part of the community, you’re being an asshole.

How do different identities accept and reject the label “queer?”

the-real-seebs:

wetwareproblem:

oodlenoodleroodle:

autismserenity:

qesurvey:

Overall, queer was approved of by 72.9% of respondents, with 37.2% of respondents specifying queer was their preferred umbrella term.

Queer is the most widely preferred umbrella term, and the 3rd most approved of umbrella term, behind LGBT+ and LGBTQ+.

Groups that do not prefer the use of queer as an umbrella are: straight respondents, exclusionst-identifying respondents, transmedicalists, truscum, sex-negative respondents, and sex work critical respondents.

Queer as an umbrella was preferred above other umbrella terms by all gender identities, and by all orientation groups other than straight.

Keep reading

I’m fascinated to see that exclusionists are BY FAR the most opposed to the term “queer.” And that the only group that comes close to their 17% approval of the term is truscum, at 27%.

Not that I’m surprised they don’t like it. I’m surprised at the immense gap between what they insist, and scream, over and over – that very few people have reclaimed queer, that we should all avoid using it, that older people hate it because it was used against us but younger people hate it because only older people briefly reclaimed it –

and the reality of it being overwhelmingly accepted, preferred, and used, outside of all but a few very insulated groups.

What tickles me the most about it is that the one group where the majority does agree with exclusionists’ view of “gueer” is THE STRAIGHTS! 

Like this makes me think so much of the whole “terfs and conservatives agree on a lot of stuff” -thing. (There’s a whole game somewhere, with quotes from terfs and conservatives where you have to guess which one said it, and it is a real fucking hard game…)

Like maybe you aren’t really all that much on the side you think you are, if you actually have a lot in common with the side that wants to hurt the group you claim to support. 

We are officially done arguing about the appropriateness and appropriate usage of “queer.”

This matches my experience very closely. I know one (1) adult-over-25-or-so LGBT person who specifically disprefers “queer”, and she actually agrees that it’s the best umbrella term, she just dislikes it personally. I have encountered dozens of angry teens who are aggressively hostile to various other parts of the community and use the “queer is a slur” thing to justify attacking their preferred targets.

lizardlicks:

susiephone:

since pride month is coming up, that also means we’re getting closer to the month when there’ll be 10000 posts reminding us that all the gay pride merch is just a corporate cash-in, that these corporations don’t care about us, that the world isn’t really any better, that none of the pride merch and ads actually mean anything, that it isn’t really progressive, blah blah blah

let me just say

i know. most people on here know. you are not the sole thinking person in a world of sheep. i promise you that the person you’re making all these points to has heard it 100 times 100 ways from 100 other people. we know, tumblr. we know. 

but dammit, one month a year i get rainbow everything, and that’s a breath of fresh air after eleven months of straight nonsense. i LOVE seeing pride everywhere, even if it is just a corporate cash-grab. and it’s not like i can just opt out of this capitalist society, so fuck it, imma buy all the rainbow, pride-themed, gay merch i can get my hands on.

the world is a capitalist hellhole and there is no escape, so we may as well have what fun we can with it while we try and make things better.

happy pride, folks.

And hey, you know what you can do if you want merch that doesn’t just feed the corporate wallet?  Go on Etsy, Storenvy, Society6, or just about a bazillion other websites where independent artists sell their products,and support your queer/LGBT+ artists!  Directly!  Hand them cold hard cash, there’s no better direct action than that, my dudes!

Do both! I really, truly believe that people protesting corporate pride merch, (unless they are protesting art stealing which of course they are right about. Stealing art is 100% not ok), are missing the point by a mile. It used to be that you could only find pride merch in small specialty stores that were owned and or frequented by the queer* community. The fact that enough people are safe enough to be coming out as who they are AND as allies, that multiple large corporations know they can make money off it is HUGE. People used to hold protests and try to get companies shut down for even hinting at being ok with the community. So honestly? Take my money. It has become overall unpopular to voice antigay opinions and I really think some of the bigots are going stealth and infiltrating online communities to try to turn us against one another (ace/aro exclusion; bi/pan exclusion; trans exclusion). Buy pride stuff. When possibly buy it from local artists who need to make a living, but mostly, please display pride merch so that the world can see that despite this evil administration, we are still here, queer, (or your preferred term), and fabulous.

(*queer is my identity. If it isn’t yours insert your own term/alphabet soup here. It isn’t a slur any more than all the other words for us. If you don’t like it, don’t use it, but don’t freakin’ flame me over it.)