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aroaceconfessions · 2 years

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hi i’m here bc i need to rant. warnings for acephobia and invalidation ahead

OK so. i love my family. they’re incredibly supportive of me and i’m pretty sure they’d all kill for me. that being said. the casual acephobia i get from my parents ANY DAMN TIME i talk about my sexuality (or lack thereof) is fucking exhausting and so invalidating and it sucks.

like for example: tonight i was explaining to my brother why i don’t masturbate (basically just saying “i get nothing out of it and i find it either boring or uncomfortable depending”) bc he fell into that stupid youtube nofap trend that’s literally just repackaged evangelicalism but that’s a different conversation. anyways my dad jokingly goes “yeah she’s crazy, you’re just holding yourself back” and it made me want to kill him. haha funny. i’m crazy for not wanting to participate in something that makes me ACTIVELY UNCOMFORTABLE. thanks. and i point out to him like “hey let’s not equate my asexuality [still questioning where i fall on the spectrum but yanno] with being crazy please and thank you” and he kinda acknowledged it but not really. so the conversation moved on and i started talking about my personal reasons to avoid masturbating n porn again and then my MOM chimes in with the ever so lovely “hey i’m not trying to say you’re wrong but have you ever considered that you may just want to have sex later?” oh my GOD i was annoyed the first time but this brought tears to my eyes. i, trying not to choke up too hard, said “yes that’s why i waited for so long before using the label but i’m ace right now and that’s what matters” and attempted to move on. i knew i couldn’t so i quickly let the conversation end and went out to our garage where i cried for like. a solid… idk 10 minutes? 20? i have no perception of time but it was a bit. the “what if you change your mind” has always been the piece of internalized aphobia picking at my brain and it actively kept me from letting myself just be acespec despite the fact that i’ve probably known for years. i think i first questioned in jr high. worst part is they don’t even REALIZE how hurtful it is to say those things. so I have to be the one to educate them and i’m so TIRED of it. i love explaining things but god i should not have to justify my existence to you!!! why does it matter what i choose to do with myself it doesn’t affect you i have autonomy!!!! like. do they WANT me to make myself feel unsafe by “biting the bullet” and having sex when i don’t wanna? of course not! but the shit they say tells me they’re subconsciously thinking it!! it’s so so fucking invalidating and it makes me wanna cry/scream. if even my horniest of friends can be perfectly chill with and normal about my asexuality then my parents can too. it’s not that hard they already knew i was queer before i learned abt this part of it. you wouldn’t tell a lesbian “hey how do you know you’re not attracted to men if you haven’t slept with one” but APPARENTLY it’s fine to tell me “how do you know you’re ace if you’ve never had sex” oh i don’t know maybe because i’m almost an adult now and i have NEVER ONCE FELT HORNY OR HAD A DESIRE TO BED SOMEONE I FOUND ATTRACTIVE ????? CRAZY HOW THAT WORKS I KNOW.

on the bright side i’m forming a plan to set that boundary with them and i got to actually cry out loud which i haven’t done in way too long (middle school taught me to silent cry 😔) so. progress there at least but GOD i’m so ticked off

#asexual #ace #acespec #aspec #aphobia #acephobia #invalidation

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seaofolives · 11 months

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ok but some selfish and abrasive g witch finale thoughts:

all these boohoos going on about how that shit sucked bc they were really expecting a kiss on screen and it didn't happen and how the execs chickened out of a """real gay rep""" just really tells me how much better we acespecs are at finding and telling a love story. like if fucking yuri on ice didn't/couldn't do it (I know this is a time slot thing and pls, we are talking about a production that happened in a country where the fucking nagano ruling is already considered monumental! try to imagine that if u can!!!!), what the fuck makes you think a gundam show will? and like, a kiss? really is the only way you'll believe two queer people are in love? so if you see two people who are out and out and they're just holding hands, you're not gonna believe they're in love??? come the fuck on, stranger

like let's give this the benefit of the doubt: execs wanted an onscreen kiss for the impact and the hashtag but censorship is homophobic and stuff. look, they went around it, didn't they?? eri identified herself as miorine's fucking sister-in-law, they have motherfucking rings, and they're living together???? and in so doing delivered an even more holistic couple??? and you're telling me that's not queer rep, that they're not in love, and that they owe it to you to explain their love story as if they didn't fucking spend 576 minutes telling it and almost literally even died for it??? like maybe at this point, people should just fing reevaluate their shallow grasp on romance and maybe even their inherent acephobia

am I stepping on toes here? yeah I'm fucking stepping on toes here but I wouldn't be me if I wasn't making enemies left and right, right? also you can't blame me for being angry about the way media has turned romance into a narrow checklist. I'm tired of that shit

in other news, after that roller-coaster ride of an anime, I think I'm suddenly prepared for anything the other animes I'm watching/games I'm playing can throw at me. character death? give it to me; my favorite character got a great ending in g witch so I'm happy to take a loss on another front. (and like come on, I was prepared for Jin Sakai to die until I realized that he was the mc of the DLC too which is a big duh on my part but anyway—) gay skater suddenly gets a girlfriend in the next season? give it to me, I don't care anymore. we'll all know it's fake anyway, we just need the money from the hetties

lastly and selfishly, I can finally work on my guel fanmix holy shit and boy am I glad I've been going on the right direction all along 😭😭😭 (guesule fanmix, don't worry, I have a hundred sad songs waiting for you, so you just sit right there and auntie liv will get to you soon 💖)

#liv is typing #g witch #g witch spoilers #yes I talk more about that missing onscreen kiss and no the people who are demanding it won't like what I had to say #can't believe I have to preface this post bc i happen to be using a public search tag for organizing my blog...#was it a bad idea on my part yes it was a bad idea on my part but to my defense past!me didn't expect to have this opinion in the future #noisyofolives

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yuvon-augold79 · 2 years

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I hope this is ok to ask. I see that you identity as Ace. What advice would you give someone who feels they may be ace but isn't sure and is really confused about it? I may or may not be struggling with this.

Hiya! :D Yeah it's completely okay to ask, no worries.

Oh I've definitely been where you are, anon X'D Figuring out this stuff can be really difficult.

Tip one, spend some time in ace spaces, and see if you can relate to what some people there are saying. For example, the ace tags and several ace blogs right here on Tumblr. When I was figuring myself out, I lurked around r/Asexuality. I had mixed experiences, but the people there were friendly and they have a lot of resources talking about asexuality and the ace-spec and acephobia and so on.

Tip two, talk through what you're struggling with and your experiences with someone. Just typing things out/saying them out loud can be really helpful sometimes, it sort of gives you a bit of a different perspective on things. Bonus points if the other person is ace or acespec :)

Tip three, literally just start calling yourself ace and see if you feel like the label works for you. If you don't like calling yourself that and it feels wrong, you can just drop the label again. There's no harm in it.

I'm always open to talk more about this if you want :) Feel free to send me another ask or a DM anytime if you think it'll help you.

Thanks for the ask, and have a lovely day/night! 🖤🤍💜

#anon #questioning anon #yuvon speaks

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arokaladin · 5 years

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i kinda skirted the edges of the vld fandom because it was Large and Scary but what were the aphobic things that it perpetuated? i was less aware of aro stuff back then and i'd like to know if i was swallowing aphobic rhetoric without realizing.

hey i am very dumb can you explain the voltron post in like,,, baby terms? i don’t really understand it but i’d like to because i think you’re making a good point

(Quick note: I’m gonna talk about acephobia and arophobia in this post because a lot of it overlaps, or is applicable to all aspecs, or was referrred to as an ‘ace’ problem but effected aros too. I also think it’s important to building a full picture of aphobia in this case. Also, I’m going to mention the average (low) age of the parts of the fandom this came from a lot. Not because I think kids are stupid, but because it’s true that they were often young and I think that played a part in how this whole shitfest manifested.)

So, the specific aphobia surrounding the voltron fandom can be summarised by four main beliefs…

It’s problematic to headcanon anyone under eighteeen as ace. (should point out this bars acespecs from most of the cast). This idea obviously exists outside of and before voltron, but I think it’s prevelance in the fandom came from so many aspecs identifying with Pidge, and people feeling they needed to ‘defend’ her.

It’s problematic to headcanon ‘gay coded’ characters as aro. The idea that queer coding equals specifically gay coding and is the same as canon somehow is everywhere, but with voltron ‘gay coded’ could mean the fandom was quite literally reading into things that weren’t there, or just to anyone ever’s gay headcanon. The extent of this can be seen in that shipping lance with allura was labelled homophobic. Identities other than gay were erasing something that didn’t exist. there was some support for bi headcanons as pushback, but nothing for aros.

You can support aspecs and still be an exclusionist/’neutral on discourse’ but this coming from baby queers who really thought aspec exclusion was Right, and genuinely claimed to support us still. It’s hard to explain the specific Vibe of this one, but it had a Vibe and if you were there you know what I’m talking about.

Supporting every other group but aspecs. There was a culture surrounding vld that you had to criticise every problematic detail of the show before you could say anything good. That’s fairly common for kids new to social justice I think. But these kids were ‘Woke’ even to the issues of groups often lumped in with aspecs, like nb people with ‘cringy’ identities/pronouns. The majority belonged to these groups! based on this you would have thought they’d support aspecs but for some reason they didn’t.

…and three core characteristics

Genuine belief in the shit they were spouting. When they said ‘its bad to headcanon Pidge as ace because it sexualises minors!’ they weren’t grasping at straws to keep aspecs from headcanons, they actually seemed to think saying a teen was ace presumed something gross about teens. I think this is worth mentioning because most aphobes imo don’t fully believe the stuff they use to smear us with. But these were baby queers who’d been scared and brainwashed. Not that any of that absolved them of blame because they said vile shit.

Other fandom issues (aphobia) overshadowed by creeps. It’s no bad thing that there was such massive pushback against shei/ths and other ‘antianti’ fucks, but it meant this became the only fandom issue, and if you were on the right side you were Good, end of. If people put ‘meanie anti’ in their bio they were on The Right Side and didn’t even have the potential to be a bigot. Which is an easy but dangerous place to end up as someone new to social justice.

massive difference between canon and created romance levels. Voltron itself was fairly romance free. The fandom was a fandom. This means that while the show was attractive to aros, the fandom pushed harmful, amatonormative beliefs, and was so oversaturated with romance that we were clearly not welcome. This isn’t uncommon, but it’s worth mentioning because when romance is prioritised, aro headcanons are less valuable than others, and the wellbeing of real life aros is less valuable than having fun. So I think this is part of what allowed for points 2 and 4 on the first list.

tl;dr: voltron fandom specific aphobes supported all other queer groups but excluded aspecs and saw aspec content as problematic. unlike other aphobes they genuinely believed they were doing the right thing, perhaps due to their young age, and their aphobia left unchecked in part because of their good guys complex due to their stance on other fandom issues.

postscript: and then they all deleted their vld blogs because it was ‘cringy’, got into shera or whatever, never had to question any of their rampant aphobia, and continued on with the same shit beliefs. The group doesn’t exist but the people still do, and ‘14 year old exclusionist not educated enough on queer issues to know its ok to say queer’ culture owes them everything.

#long post #um #yeah i had onions on this #mine #aro #im so glad the fandom is dead so i hopefully wont get shit lol #sorry it was so long between getting the asks and writing this #fandom

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