Howdy folks, it’s your friendly neighborhood asexual anarchist back for a very special occasion: the dumbest argument against aces ever made!
Yes, it’s true: I’ve been away for a while, during which time the anti-ace contingent has been roaming the wilds of the internet, making their bullshit spurious claims about asexuality. Honestly this shit has been going on for too long; the great ace-related blogs that started as a resource for the community have had to either ignore the bullshit or expend all their resources on fighting it.
For a while I made the decision to kind of stay out of that fight, not because I thought it didn’t matter, but because there’s no amount of rational argumentation you can make with these fucksticks that will convince them that anti-asexuality is a dumb position to take and that’s really. fucking. tiring.
But I woke up this morning (well, 1:55 PM) and saw this.
Hachi machi. (Thanks Tiffany Rose for the tipoff.)
So, let’s start with a quick overview of who acephobiaisajoke is as a person (or at least as they portray themselves publicly). According to their blog, they believe:
- That asexuals (as a community) are harmful and abusive
- That sex is literally the most important aspect of any relationship
- That aces should only date other aces (or die alone)
This is some wet-n-wild shit we’re on, friends. I’ve been out of the game for a hot minute but last I checked, asexuals weren’t the ones telling folks that their lack of sex-wanting was abusive. And this idea that the community should self-segregate or die alone is 1.) unfuckingtenable and 2.) suuuuper uncomfortably close to arguments white nationalists have been making in support of “ethnostates” lately, so Y I K E S.
But let’s look at this fun lil snippet of what-the-fuckery, shall we?
Originally posted by yourreactiongifs
For the sake of time, I’m going to keep this shit as constrained as possible to “how to interact with a partner” and “consent 101″ territory with regard to the screenshot, and nothing else. Keep in mind, when I go down this road I’m doing so not only for my ace buddies but for anyone in a relationship ever, because as you’ll see, this applies to you too.
“If an asexual person forces their partner to not have sex”
So, in a relationship, in any relationship, consent is a major player. If both partners want to do a thing, like having sex, then there’s no problem here. But if one partner wants to have sex and the other doesn’t (whether it’s at the moment or at all), then there’s no way around it: partner number one is not having sex. It’s just flat not happening. This isn’t like Partner 1 saying “hey want to go to Six Flags?” and then Partner 2 saying “no” and then Partner 1 dragging Partner 2 to Six Flags anyway and it’s kind of adorable, it’s Partner 2 exercising their bodily autonomy and sexual agency and telling Partner 1 “no, I don’t want to fuck you (right now or at all).”
This isn’t a hard concept to grasp. Allosexual people do have sex, get sexually attracted to others and place a level of importance on sex in a relationship, that is all very true. But for the wide majority of the population (not counting folks suffering from sexual compulsions), sex is not something you need all the time, and there are going to be times in which a partner doesn’t fucking want to have sex with you. EVEN IN A PURELY ALLO RELATIONSHIP.
And if you think that’s abuse then I don’t fucking know what to tell you.
Originally posted by slaughteringbunnies
Communication is key in any relationship. If you’re not talking to your partner and they’re not talking to you about the level of sexual activity y’all’re comfortable with in your relationship, I imagine it’s probably kind of awkward. But you have to be able to recognize that no fucking means no and that is not an indictment on your sexuality, nor is it abuse – it’s a statement that the person you are in a relationship with does not fucking want to have sex with you, that consent is not granted, and they are communicating that to you as clearly as humanly fucking possible without being mean.
Sex without consent is sexual assault or rape. Someone not wanting to have sex with you and saying so, clearly? That’s telling you that you do not have consent.
In my prior writings on asexuality, one of the things I worried about was making allosexual people sound like sex-crazed monsters. I think that’s an unfair characterization (and it’s super hella fucking problematic when you consider that that’s also how society as a whole portrays hypersexual folks). Even people who fuck six times a day are engaging in consent, and can revoke it at any time (“I’m too tired for round seven”). Allo people have sexual agency and bodily autonomy, they are not at the mercy of their libidinous whims, and any fucking portrayal of them as sex monsters is disgusting.
Ace people and allo people have this to agree on: sexual activity must be consented to. Don’t be a chungus.