Well, y’all finally did it. The “ace discourse” has reached Facebook Meme Pages. Yesterday, one page, “Genderqueer Gengar,” posted a lil post warning off “cis hets” aces from participating on their wall:
It’s disappointing to discover that this bullshit is starting to permeate other social media networks, but here we are: it’s the year of our lord 2017 and ace people are still somehow the villains, the infiltrators, the space-takers. At this point, I’m no longer even really that mad at this, just irritated and a bit sleepy.
“Cishet” aces – secret heterosexuals trying to sneak their way into sacred gay spaces – don’t exist. That’s just what shitlords, gatekeepers and tankies like to call aces in general to mock our use of the split attraction model. Cisgender, heteroromantic asexual people absolutely do exist, but if you operate on the knowledge – like I do – that asexuality is a real sexual orientation, and that people who are romantically attracted to people of different genders than them does not supersede their sexual orientation, then you can conclude, like I have, that cisgender, heteroromantic aces are still, absolutely and unequivocally, asexual people. And seeing as how aces are still under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, you’d not be faulted for making the assumption that even “cishet” aces are included there, as well.
(There are entire paragraphs I could write here as well regarding treatment of aromantic folks, but I’m gonna keep things simple and say that aro people are also absolutely fucking queer.)
What a lot of gatekeepers seem to have done (and insist on doing, even when a lot of who they’d consider to be “queer” and trans aces, and even a few non-ace queer folks, try to talk to them about this) is ignore the “asexual” part of this equation entirely and focus solely on romantic attraction.
This is subtle ace erasure, as it not only signals that NO asexual person is truly welcome in the queer community if these gatekeepers have anything to say about it, it also creates this facade of “we’re only trying to protect the true members of the LGBT+ community from cishet infiltrators!” that’s super disingenuous.
I hereby apologize for any instance in which I’ve been frustrated by the purely-visibility-based activism of mainstream ace advocates. It’s clear that more of us are needed than less, that until this shit goes away it’s a literal all-hands-on-deck situation for ace visibility.
“Anti-ace, no. Against cishet aces being some of the loudest voices in lgbt communities, yes.”
I’m sorry, I can’t fucking take this argument seriously. You mean to tell me that the asexual community – including the mythical “cishet” ace – has been LOUDER than the reductionist “GAY TRADITIONAL WEDDINGS OR NOTHING” neoliberals whose entire raison d’être is scrubbing queerness of its colorfulness and turning us all into fucking suburbanites? That we’re more destructive than Roland Fucking Emmerich and his bullshit revisionism of Stonewall? We’re asking for representation on fucking RIVERDALE, for fuck sake. That’s where we’re at as a community. We’re asking for acknowledgement that we exist.
There’s evidence of us going back to the original Kinsey experiments, and earlier than that. We are a fucking part of the queer historical record, god dammit. And now that we have a name we’ve simply been asking – not demanding – for a deeper reexamination of queer history, for a broadening of our understanding of ourselves and each other. We should be demanding that.
If the folks who think asexuality is a “fake queer” identity are uncomfortable with their proximity to SW/TERFiness, biphobia or other harmful gatekeeping activities, it’s not on us to make them feel better by just going away. That’s something they’ve gotta confront and ultimately come to terms with.