Ive seen an influx in posts asking the LGBT community to hold itself accountable for ace/aro bigotry and they're fucking right.

How are we supposed to hold homophobes and transphobes accountable and demand they do better when we won't even do that for each other?

We're a community right? A family who's supposed to look out for each other? What happened to everyone being valid? Is a sibling saying "you hurt me, please correct it somehow" not valid?

For my part I'll admit I was part of this.

I was on the side of the asexual exclus back in the late 00's/early 10's. I was deep in the belief that oppression had to be systematic in order to count and at the time I didn't see any systematic oppression faced by aces. I even identified as ace and I didn't consider myself oppressed for being asexual. I saw the hostility and vitriol directed at aces everyday...but I didn't see it as wrong. I didn't see it as bigotry. I saw it as righteous anger.

I know how awful things were because I was one of the people making them that way. There is Real trauma that was experienced. There's no fucking way that a normal person could be invalidated that much and take the vitriolic bigotry aces/aros did everyday and have it not leave a lasting impact.

I fucked up. That was wrong and awful of me and I'm genuinely so fucking sorry.

I see the broken trust and promises between us now in 2023 and I see how shattered the community is and it's partly my fault. That gap is there because of me and people like me.

We should have loved and supported and welcomed you. We should have saw the way you were being treated and said something. You deserved to be protected and loved and supported from people who treated you that way.

And you weren't. We didn't. And it was normalized.

We absolutely fucking failed you as a community and as human beings. I need to own that. And I need to be one of the first people to trying to repair that.

And I know an apology is barely even a first step and I know it's just a drop in a giant bucket but I am sorry. For everything it's worth to you, I'm sorry.

Because of me and people like me you experienced the kind of identity trauma that typically only homophobes are capable of. And you experienced it at the hands of the community that's supposed to be fighting specifically that sort of ignorance against a-typical sexualities.

We fucked up

And it'd just be hypocritical salt in the wound if 10+ years later we ignored your asks for accountability and didn't do anything about it when it's resurfacing.

So yeah.

I was a bigot. I hurt people. I hurt my own community. I thought I was right and I wasn't. I was wrong. And so is everyone who insists on continuing that today.

There is no excuse or justification for it. I thought there was too but I was wrong and I'm gonna spend the rest of my life making up for it.

Whatever justification you find for treating people with a-typical sexualities and genders is shit. It has no leg to stand on and it sure as hell isn't being done for the sake of the community.

The LGBT community was founded not by people with checklists on how to be a Good Gay or Acceptable trans woman but by people being treated like shit for who they were choosing to love or not love. It was founded by people who's gender didn't fit in cishet boxes. It was founded by people who just wanted to be free to exist as themselves.

You can't treat asexuals or aros or bisexuals or pansexuals like shit and say that it's in the name of the LGBT community.

It's not.

It spits in the face of everything our community is supposed to be and it's time someone besides aces and aros said it.

None of us should be okay with how they're treated and all of us should be part of stopping it

I don’t really know how to word this without immediately knowing that tumblr could accuse me of a fuckton of different buzzwords, but I’m going to try to anyways - and hopefully if any hyper-woke people find me, they’ll tell me how I should better word myself in the future instead of immediately calling me an abuse apologist or some shit.

But anyways, here’s a hot take - people of minority groups can be abusers.  Sometimes, they can abuse people for their minority status.  Sometimes, people lie about sexual assault.  Sometimes, people use their mental health or identity or race or whatever as an excuse for being a despicable human being.  How do I know?  Because I’ve had it happen to me, over and over and over.

I am: a trans, LGBT+, mentally disabled + ill, DFAB person.  I am also: a white, able-bodied fuckboy who lives in California, one of the most progressive states in the country, even in its conservative areas.  I am on both sides of the spectrum, and the times when I see minority statuses being abused are usually from the groups that I’m a minority of.

For example, I was harassed (and arguably sexually abused, however because I couldn’t find those comments that could’ve made him face legal consequences for all he’s done, I struggle to say that this is the case - additionally, I was never his target, just my art) by an autistic man online when I was younger.  It’s the reason why I can’t interact with the HT/TY/D fandom and why I won’t be seeing the third movie (keep in mind this happened right before the second movie, and I went to see that one because it legitimately interested me - this one seems heterosexual AND reminds me of my abuser’s dragon OC, which he guilt tripped me into drawing for him as his form of porn).  He ruined an entire franchise for me because he harassed me so badly.  He guilt tripped me in about how hard it was being autistic (and threw in some comments about how teens think they have it “so hard with their anxiety and depression” when “they really have no idea”, to a teenager struggling with identifying anxiety and depression - i didn’t believe that bullcrap but I did fall for his autism sob story) and convinced me to do art trades with him which were just redraws of my own stuff, and he’d repeatedly spam me and yell at me and guilt trip me to finish his work if I so much as read his note without responding.  He drained my motivation for DeviantArt along with my love of a franchise.  This man was also a serial harasser/spammer, he did this to MANY people, including other minors.  I wasn’t a specific target - honestly, I think I was pretty low on his priority list, considering he only tried to come back a few times.  The kicker?  I’m pretty sure I’m autistic, even though I had no idea back then.  At least, I sure do have a lot of symptoms of autism now that I look back.

Not good enough for you?  Okay.  How about the fact that a relative of mine tried to convince my aunt that she (my aunt, not the relative) was sexually abused by my paternal grandfather as a child, sending my aunt into a mental breakdown because she couldn’t remember anything like that and had no idea?  My aunt is the weak link in our family, she’s adopted and felt othered for it, and lived away from the rest of our family for a long time.  She recently started getting involved and just happened to be attacked by a known financial and mental abuser in our extended family right when she started getting back involved.  I’m thankful that my dad and my uncles were able to help her get a better picture of her father.  Keep in mind that I don’t have a positive image of my paternal grandfather, because he smoked and gave my dad + uncle health problems due to it - and I personally consider that an accidental form of child abuse, in a way.  But he was NOT a fucking incestual pedophile.  It infuriated me to hear that, despite never meeting him, and having a negative overall impression of him.

How about another?  My step-step-grandmother (long story) has accused my deceased uncle of being a money-hungry monster and stealing all of her rightful money after his father/her husband died.  We’re in a court case to get the inheritance we deserve from her now, but she only ever brought this up AFTER he passed away.  When informed about his dead, she bitched about how he made her loose money, and how she was struggling despite using up all of my mom’s inheritance (from her step-father AND her mother).  Because you know, that’s what you do when someone dies.  My uncle was the only uncle on my mom’s side to make it to my birthdays, his family gave my mom and I a place to stay when we ended up stranded down south due to a bad head injury my dad got (also long story) and we didn’t have time to make it back home and we didn’t want to just leave my dad there.  My uncle was probably the nicest, kindest family member I had.  His funeral was the first funeral I went to, and there were TONS of people.  He was a Christian man who lived by true Christian values, and plenty of people testified this at his funeral.  People I’d never even met before.  This old woman accused him of stealing her money (where did it go?? his wife is fucking broke now that he’s gone!), never caring enough to visit her, ect.  This old woman, who never even responded to my birthday invitations let alone came, who never made any attempt to make a mutual outreach to us.  She expected us to do all the work, and when we decided it wasn’t worth her ignoring and rejecting, we stopped.  And then she accused us of abandoning her.  This is an old woman, but she’s still an evil person - or an evil person who is now just a shell of evil, unable to even remember a time when she didn’t believe these lies that she told herself.

And don’t get me started on how this applies to ace discourse.  Heaven forbid I compare the ace/aro experience to another LGBT experience!  It’s only okay if I compare it to the straight experience (which i do btw, because i KNOW we benefit from homophobia unless we’re also sga) even though it has 99% more in common with the LGBP experience than the straight experience.  This isn’t an inclusionist vs exclusionist thing - this is just COMPARISONS.  It’s like saying murkrow looks like a crow - like yeah, no shit sherlock!! doesn’t mean murkrow is just the same as a real life fucking crow!!!  And god, haven forbid you talk about real aphobia and how it affects real aspec people.  Immediately every allo in the area will jump on you about how that’s just misogyny and rape culture and blah blah blah.  Then what about when it happens to men?  What about when it happens to nonbinary people?  What about when it has literally nothing to do with gender or being forced to have sex, and is just a constant feeling of being othered and excluded?  Forgotten and not believed?  Constantly doubted that your experience is real?  And then to be told that the very bigotry you suffered was just a part of a bigger issue, instead of specifically about a part of your identity....bullshit.  There IS overlap in certain social issues.  Race affects how homophobia and transphobia affects a person deeply.  Same with misogyny and race.  So of course there’s overlap.  But to say that aphobia doesn’t exist, I’m sorry - I don’t say this lightly, but that’s unconscious gaslighting. (there is no better term than that - believe me, I looked.  My point is that I don’t believe it’s intentional, but LGBP people, trans or not - you NEED to stop doing this.  You ARE unconciously gaslighting aces and aros.  This is not anecdotal, there are statistics and you refuse to believe them, despite pointing at just as credible statistics to prove your own points.  You say we can’t use anecdotal evidence, but then go on to use it yourself.  Intentional or not, you need to quit it.)

I really don’t want to talk about how race and this stuff intertwine because I really don’t have any experience with that as a white person.  All I know is that groups of POC can be bigoted towards other groups of POC, and they can even be bigoted towards people of their own race.

Which leads me to the most important part of this post: The fact that minorities can abuse majority groups, even if its on the basis of their minority group, does NOT mean that minority groups are not oppressed.

Just because a few women lie about being raped, doesn’t mean that all women who say they were raped are lying.  Just because an autistic person abused me, doesn’t mean that all autistic/mentally disabled people and mentally ill people are scary.  Just because aphobia is real doesn’t mean that non-SGA aces and aros don’t benefit from homophobia to a certain degree.  Just because homophobia kills doesn’t mean that aphobia isn’t just as real.  Just because the LGBT community has a habit of gaslighting victims of aphobia doesn’t mean that the LGBT community oppresses the aspec community.  Just because POC can discriminate against or even hold systemic power over another POC doesn’t mean that they aren’t both oppressed by white people.

Abuse is not oppression.  Oppression is a repeated, prolonged offense of cruel and unjust control.  None of my anecdotals “prove” that oppression for these groups isn’t real.  Because I’m part of these groups, and it’s my opinion that it IS real.  But my anecdotals are also still valid.  It is not problematic to point out when someone uses their minority status to abuse and manipulate others.  It is not problematic to call bigoted, cruel mentally disabled people problematic for being manipulative and abusive.  Their disability is not an excuse.  Their identity is not an excuse.  Their experience may be a reason, but not an excuse.  But neither is your experience.  Let people talk about their individual experiences AND the wider issues of oppression as a whole.  They don’t have to be opposite faces of the same coin, and it’s sad that we act like they do.