(ID: two memes using the "it's 2023 i'm done arguing / if you hate X i'm straight up murdering you" meme format. the first says "asexuals" and has a picture of the ace pride flag, and the second says "aromantics" and has a picture of the aro pride flag. end ID)

having aromantic feelings in this denny’s tonight bc i had to go on a blocking spree yet again.

I just think like... people don’t know shit about what it’s like to be aromantic. aphobes complain about the Fandomization Of Pride and say shit like “asexuality is basically a fandom thing; if your community is entirely online and based around tumblr tags and headcanons, you cant possibly compare it to actual real life gay experiences”

and like. i have some bad fucking news for you about gay people who live in super homophobic backwater small towns. I’ve known plenty of gay people who were completely closeted irl and whos entire interaction with queerness was online communities, especially gay shipping. that doesn’t mean there aren’t other gay people in those homophobic little towns, its just often too dangerous to look for them. there are definitely other aro people in my backwater little town! I just can’t find them. I’m not saying this is the best way to interact with the queer community! or even a good way! for instance, nobody gives a shit about gay vs aro or bi vs pan irl! this drama is all internet shit! but being terminally online is certainly not a problem unique to aspec people.

honestly, as someone who’s trans, bisexual and aromantic, the thing that’s actually made my life the most difficult for cishets to swallow is the aromantic part. my backwater town is fairly liberal, so they can be chill about the gay thing, they can even tolerate the trans thing, but not getting married???? what do you mean you can’t be like the sweater-wearing chaste gay dads in the commercials? what do you mean you don’t want to date but you still want to have sex???????

nothing about my identity is palatable. nothing about me is relatable or marketable. my life, my future, my happiness, looks completely alien to your average cishet. the first time I told someone irl that I was aromantic, the immediate reaction was “oh my god I’m so sorry” as if I just said I had cancer.

like. actually. yknow what. yeah I think the aromantic experience is very easy to compare to my experience as a disabled person. its because I’m fundamentally missing something that Typical People consider completely intrinsically tied to their worth and their happiness. what’s the point of life if you can’t get married? whats the point of life if you can’t have a job? “i’m so sorry to hear you’ll never experience the be all end all of human existence; retiring to live comfortably with your aging partner as your grown children take up the mantle of your legacy.”

people don’t know what its like to be aromantic. they think of it as a tumblr tag, or headcanons, because the only time they bother to interact with aromanticism is when they’re complaining about our headcanons. no one can deny that aspec identity in this decade is intrinsically connected to the internet, in the same way that no one can say that gay identity in 1970s and 80s america wasn’t intrinsically connected to gay bars. its because That’s How You Meet People. queer people have always taken whatever was the current way for humans to connect to each other and carved out their own space.

aromanticism is in the stage where its hard to find other people, and no one knows what you are, and if you explain it to them they think you’re sick. we’re in the stage where we don’t get a lot of explicit canon representation, we have to scrape by on aro readings and subtext and coding.

and it IS coding! its coding! I don’t care if aromanticism wasn’t named yet back then! there are plenty of instances of queer coding from before we had words like “trans” or “gay” or “lesbian” or even “queer.” what matters is that someone somewhere was like “this character has the experience of not feeling the socially mandated attraction to the opposite binary gender,” which is a queer experience whether the person feeling it is gay or aromantic. just like bisexuality and lesbianism weren’t separated for a long time because straight society didn’t care if the wlw could also technically like men, lesbianism and aromanticism and asexuality weren’t separated because straight society didn’t care if the woman who wouldn’t get married to a man wanted to kiss girls or not.

this is way longer than I intended it to be and it got kinda rambly and train-of-thought, and I don’t think I really have any particular conclusion here. just aro feelings. idk if this makes sense but I’m tired of trying to edit it to make more sense so I’m just hitting post

Kinda ironic how the ace attorney fandom, who has the word "ace" in it, is packed full of aphobic lgbt+ exclusionists.

Headcanoning a character as asexual, aromantic or as aroace is as valid as any other queer headcanon. Even if some here have the IQ of a rock and cannot comprehend that.

there are plenty of gay ace people idg why people would be mad 💀 being ace doesn't make you less gay (not directed @ you just Those People you mentioned)

the logic was like. somehow him being both gay and asexual was like. sanitizing the gay experience and making it more palatable to heterosexuals. or something. it was very stupid.

I feel like theres this inherent disgust people feel towards "male" bodies and "male" sexuality that permeates through so much of online lgbt communities its crazy. Especially when that sexuality or bodily expression is aimed towards women whether to transition to womanhood or to desire women in a sexual way its always labelled as predatory and perverted and evil.

U see it so often when people are uncomfortable with aro men who arent asexual and speak down on them like they seek to abuse or hurt people by using them sexually with no emotion involved, as if sexual relationships aren't a thing that exist and are respected but suddenly they're evil if one of the parties is aromantic and a man. Not to mention the disregard people feel towards ace men who may not want to participate in anything sexual but are forgotten or spoken ill of. Or the way terfs label anyone amab as predatory, seeking to emulate women in order to invade their spaces and take away their resources, to get closer to women because fundamentally, it always links back to them wanting to sexually use and manipulate things into their favor. Its fucking anger inducing.

I haven't posted my art in a while but I love drawing nudity and vulnerability, esp with my amab characters, so often nudity and sexuality and all this is warped and seen as disgusting and perverted and evil when the human body is a neutrally existing thing, not even a sexual thing, yet it's so stigmatized. Its so anger inducing to me i dont even know what to say about it it's just so fucking evil. (Not to mention the intertwinings with both of those examples of how arophobia and transmisogyny interact w those and exemplify the issue).

OK BUT IF KATHERINE DOES MAKE HER CHARACTER ARO WITH NO INTEREST IN ROMANCE EVER YOU ALL BETTER RESPECT THAT I WILL TOLERATE NO APHOBIA IN THIS HOUSE

As a Nature Wives shipper i get being bummed if a ship you wanted to be canon isnt, but that doesnt excuse aphobia. I havent seen any yet cause the news is new but i’m saying this early so yall dont Start Shit. Kay? Kay. 

My dehumanized aromantic ass ain't taking none of that

the Venn diagram of antis & people who think ace people talking about our sexuality is inherently sexual/predatory/tmi is a circle I think

Yeah that’s sounds right. Or there’s a couple who seem to think ace proshippers can’t exist because reasons

Tumblr user did-is-not-real is canonically a bigot the same way me being canonically aroace does, in fact, make me queer. Hope that helps.

My "are cishet aro women lgbt" poll will be closing soon. It didn't manage to hit critical mass for any real data to be gotten from it but if there's one thing it did show is that my immediate circle of followers as well as the people on the #aromantic tag are seemingly mostly not aphobes/misandrists which is nice.

Just to be clear, my stance on "being lgbt" is that anyone can "be lgbt" or "be queer" for whatever reason and if you have a problem with that, you're the problem. It's at least nice to see that most people in my immediate vicinity on this site agree.

If you believe aromantics can't be lgbt or that cishet people can't be lgbt then you can fuck right off my blog. And special shout outs to cishet men, a lot of people's specific stance on That One Poll was explicit misandry. Being queer is only up to you.

oh dear. it seems the radfems, terfs, lgb supporters and aphobes found my aroace support posts. whatever shall i do... oh, i know. keep living my life knowing that a hundred of them isn't worth a single aro, ace, and trans person. so they can fuck right off and keep living their miserable lives.

I def agree with the B part of your Steve argument, but there’s a huge issue with the fandom assuming Steve having sex with a girl = him being straight. I’ve seen so many people blatantly acting as if bisexuality/pansexuality doesn’t exist, which isn’t surprising because bisexual/pansexual erasure is a huge thing in this fandom from my experience (ie. Valkyrie being referred to as a lesbian when she is canonically bi.). But if people think Steve having sex with a girl means he could NEVER be attracted to or in love with Bucky, Tony, whatever man they ship him with…that’s an issue that needs called out.

Hello anon!

First of all, I'm bi myself and have experienced bi erasure personally for oooh, nearly 30 years now. So I very much relate to your frustration in general, my goodness do I. <3

And I do absolutely agree that bi erasure can be a problem in the MCU fandom, as in all places. See also ace erasure, in fact, which is also a factor here. However, I don't think that that's what's happening in this case and I know it's not what I'm doing, because we're not talking about whether Steve having sex with a girl = Steve is entirely straight. We're talking about whether the MCU, specifically, constantly reiterating Steve's apparent sexual relationships with women (often in a really crass and intrusive and clumsy and ableist way, as in She Hulk) while actively undermining or even denying earlier established platonic closeness with male characters (especially Bucky) is intended to demonstrate his straightness to viewers. And yes, I think that absolutely is their intention. Especially since they do appear to have actively wrecked Steve's character arc and development (and character, frankly) simply because they were... feeling some way or other about the popularity of the stucky ship. Which is pathetic of them, but there you have it; homophobia and biphobia *are* pathetic.

If the MCU were wanting to affirm Steve's possible biness as opposed gayness, I'd be absolutely here for that[1]. But... well. Do you think that's really what they're doing, dear anon? Truly?

[1] In a way that I wouldn't be with Bucky, I note, given that they gave him the backstory of a specifically gay Jewish character (Arnie Roth) and oh yes I *am* angry that they then keep trying to persuade us he's a heterosexual gentile...

"aphobia isnt real" yeah well explain wilbur stealing shelbys pc during ace race then 🤨

God remembering that one ace/aro exclusionist that would find pride wallpaper/icon sets that included aspec flags and repost the ones that they thought were acceptable identities/flags. Then when people were telling them they were an asshole for reposting were like “Look it’s so easy to put a transparent picture on a pride flag!” Okay then do it yourself, I didn’t see you doing it to people that DON’T include flags past the first four letters. Like we all knew why you were doing it.

Ur not queer

What, you think straight people made this mosaic?

Yeah right.

Hate how the word cishet - a useful term - became so tainted by the aphobes of tumblr in ~2015-2019 that seeing it in a post or hearing it spoken by someone who isn’t aspec instantly has me like

Do you wish for me to unexist