Asexual Awareness Week 2018

[meridian_rose]

It's Asexual Awareness Week. I'm not creating anything this year but I have tags for my previous asexual awareness week posts and a tag for all posts including meta and fiction looking at asexuality, theme: asexuality spectrum

There's been pushback against asexuality in some places. Some tumblr posts insist that asexuals aren't "oppressed enough" to be consider part of the LGBT+ community (those posts insist "queer is a slur" too despite significant commentary to the contrary on how important the reclaiming and use of the term is for many.)
There are posts accusing people of "sexualising" children by saying that we should acknowledge more than just heterosexual romantic and sexual attraction. That telling someone you're asexual is "unneccessary" and exposing them to "information about your sex life".
Posts saying asexuals just need hormones or counselling or to be raped.
Posts saying that asexual posts confuse people and prevent them from being gay because of "internalised homophobia".

Most of those things have been, and in some cases, still are used as fodder against other queer groups.
"Trans people aren't allowed in gay spaces because a transman with a woman is heterosexual"
"Bihets aren't allowed in gay spaces!" (ie a bi/pansexual person in a relationship with someone of the opposite gender. The term bihet erases bisexuality by making same sex relationships gay, opposite sex relationships straight, and ignores trans people and nonbinary identities)
"Don't mention lebsians or women won't get married as they should."
"Stop mentioning you're gay, you're throwing your sexuality in my face!" (As they wear a wedding ring and have a photo of their wife on their desk, secure in displays of heterosexuality)
"You're not a gay man or a transwomen, you just need more testosterone and to pray harder to be the straight man you should be."
"She won't be a lesbian after I've f*cked her"

There's been some interesting discussion about the Russian bots that infiltrated Tumblr and the rise of dissent amongst queer groups who should be allies not enemies; "gold star lesbian" rhetoric, posts that are anti-bisexual and anti-asexual, a rise in TERF posts centring womanhood on menstruation and reproduction. Divide and conquer. It's awful and it's unacceptable.

If you don't know anything about asexuality there's a primer here and a lot of other links in this Asexual Awareness Week 2017 post.

Thanks for reading.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Terfs

Sigh :o(

[meridian_rose]

Yep :/ I didn't want to go into detail in this post but the rise of Terfs and the pushback against basic rights for and recognition of trans people is horrifying.

[capri0mni]

I am rather pleased with this analogy for asexuality that I came up with a couple years ago (shortly after figuring out I'm Ace, myself), so I reblogged it for today's post.

Exclusionists frustrate me no end. I can't come to any other conclusion that they're trying to turn the LGBTQ community into some sort of country club -- so that it's only for those who are most privileged within a marginalized group (only the biggest fish in the smallest pond), instead of a community of solidarity, so together we have enough strength to change an unjust society.

So it's kind of ironic that they're using the Oppression Olympics as their filter of choice.

[meridian_rose]

That's a great analogy, reblogging that :)
Ugh, yes, the gatekeeping is horrendous lately. But things can and will hopefully change.

[capri0mni]

I'm glad the analogy was helpful.

I don't understand the forces behind gatekeeping. So I won't comment.

[under_the_silk_tree]

Yeah I’ve seen those posts on Tumblr and they are disheartening. I try to only reblog positive posts and ignore the rest but it is difficult. It does seem like there is more infighting lately. Which is a shame when we all need to support each other in such hard times. What with so many outside forces trying to best to strip the community of their rights.

[meridian_rose]

Sometimes you have the strength to reblog the rebuttals against discourse and sometimes you just have to stick to the truly positive or you'd lose all faith and hope in humanity! We really do need to stick together.