Curate, connect, and discover
Holy fuck. I’m aroace and haven’t had this experience (thank god I wasn’t online much as a teen), but that might have been because as part of a non-disordered System* most people who knew about my sexuality (or lack thereof), knew about me as distinct from my Headmate, and thus already had a socially acceptable reason to hate me.
My sister is bi and identified as lesbian for a long time, but our family and friends have been accepting, so she didn’t face much homophobia. A few years ago she said that maybe she shouldn’t be allowed at pride events, because “it’s not like she suffered for it.” Like, no???? No! I’m not accepting the idea that you have to meet a certain level of trauma to be queer. Most LGBT+ people not having queerness-related problems is kinda the goal here? And when people talk about their issues, you don’t say “your issues aren’t big enough.” Telling people they’re not hurt enough to join doesn’t keep your community safe, it just fucks people up.
*If you’re curious: we don’t know for sure why we’re Plural and if it was caused by trauma or not, and our experience doesn’t seem to fit with DID or any diagnosis we’ve heard of, but it’s pretty goddamn clear to us and almost everyone we’re close with that we’re distinct selves and Not Singlet. We have a few mental health issues, but we don’t think being a “we” is one of them.
idk can we stop…treating a.ce disc.ourse like it’s some haha funney cringe compilation or whatever the fuck because it fucking destroyed the entire ace and aro communities. there is no solid aspec community on tumblr anymore (which was by far the biggest number of aspec ppl). exclusionists took our community and fucking smashed it to pieces and y'all treat it as this fucking stupid joke when they traumatized, gaslit, and abused an entire group of queer people back into the closet. fuck every single person who doesn’t take that seriously.