TW: rape
No, I am going to talk about this and you are going to listen.
Asexuals often receive rape threats because people believe that asexual-identifying individuals cannot possibly not want to have sex; even though the idea that asexuality is defined by specifically not wanting to have sex is a false one. (And I’ve explained that here) It is for this reason why I am tired of the constant oppression game people like to play with the asexual community. Are we oppressed? Are we not?
It doesn’t matter, all these arguments do is mask the fact that this unacceptable thing is happening. People actually think that “corrective” rape will change someone’s sexual identity. It starts with people asserting your orientation does not exist, and asexuality is not the only orientation to face/to have faced this. Then people assume things about yourself that “made you the way you are.” Then people move into threats territory. Then people move into the actions part.
There is a real fear even among the asexual community that people who identify as anything other than heterosexual will be harassed and assaulted. They have a reason to be upset and a reason to be afraid, it has happened to many people before. Many people within the asexual community and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole have experienced harassment and assault.
By denying that asexuals exist despite evidence that they in fact do, solely based on your misconceptions and political agendas that have little to do with our identity, you are perpetuating this dangerous mindset that people who do not fit into your idea of what a human being should be, need to be corrected.
My question to you is why then in situations where asexuals become upset over people harassing them, do asexuals get blamed for sticking up for themselves? Why are we not questioning why people think it’s okay to send rape threats to people who identify as such? Why are we not questioning what their problem is, instead of what ‘our’ problem is?
My right to exist and to be safe should supersede your right to say whatever the hell you want. Your words have consequences and the consequences of them should not result in people like me getting harmed. This is more than about hurt feelings. This is an attack on our entire existence.
You do not belong in our spaces. You need not voice your “opinion” on our orientation, it’s not a debatable topic and it is not a matter of conflicting opinions. The fact that you get defensive when asexuals rightfully become upset when you attack them shows that the problems lie with you and not with them. Furthermore, it is not your job to regulate what the asexual community does or says, that is something people within the community can debate and discuss critically.
If I reblogged this every time someone told me if I can’t handle the regular rape threats then “maybe I shouldn’t be on the Internet,” you’d see this about every other week.
And while it certainly doesn’t happen as often in person because of the kinds of people I hang out with, I have absolutely had people strongly proposition me and respond to my refusal by mocking me while walking closer to me menacingly; I have had people refuse to stop touching me when I asked them to stop (on the leg, on the shoulders, once it was my butt) and I had to push them away and try to go elsewhere; and I even had one person start propositioning me in a car and leaned over and LICKED MY FACE while I was stuck in the car, after I said no.
These were conversations and interactions that happened immediately after or during conversations about my orientation, so they were triggered to behave this way by the so-called “challenge” of finding a supposedly attractive woman who was “going to waste” (that has been said to me in a gross way more than once in person).
So people better not try to tell me the unwanted touching and propositioning is just part of the suckage of being a woman and therefore it’s “only” sexism, not a specifically asexual problem. (Though that’s of course sexism and some men’s feeling of entitlement to women’s bodies is part of it.) When you try to remove the additional information about my asexual orientation that seems to have triggered these men to behave this way toward me and claim this is just what men do to women so the only problem we should try to deal with is sexism/misogyny, you are refusing to accept the intersectionality of asexuality and femaleness (in my case), and you’re also suggesting it doesn’t happen to other genders (or else uh well it must be some other prejudice/some other -ism because anti-asexual prejudice just doesn’t happen).
I don’t care what you call it. I don’t care if you believe it doesn’t hurt us enough or clearly enough in a way you recognize to “count” as worthy of attention. I don’t care if you believe our experiences aren’t as bad as someone else’s. What I DO care about is whether it’s acknowledged as a real problem and given the weight it needs to be addressed, rather than treated like we’re exaggerating or lying because we want the special snowflake recognition we’re commonly accused of desiring.
Screw that. Or, rather, don’t.
856 notes
button
