Really tho, the most arophobic posts i find tend to be from actual literal terfs, and they’re going after aro het men specifically.
Arophobia from run of the mill ace exclusionists is bad, I won’t deny it. But with them, 90% of the time we’re an afterthought. They reduce our aromanticism to screwing and not calling the next day, and they often forget aro aces exist.
When radfems do it, they frame us as all being straight men who use women for sex at best, abusive men at worst. The think the idea of being a man attracted to women sexually but not interested in dating her means he’s preying on her. They don’t even mention aro women or aros who are not exclusively attracted to a different gender. “Aromantic” gets processed through their minds as “straight misogynistic men”.
But you know what ace exclusionists do when they see those posts? Some probably check the source, but others trust it cause it’s going after a-specs, and they reblog it cause they either don’t know thats a radfem or they don’t care. And if you criticize it? They’ll defend the radfem. Supposedly anti-terf ace exclusionists will defend a terf if said terf is talking negatively about aromantic people.
This is how radfem/TERF ideas spread. It’s insidious. Be aware of who you’re supporting.
I know I talked about this on my blog once but it was a while ago, so I’m gonna say it again. I have seen so many radfems blatantly state that aromantic allosexual people should undergo conversion therapy. Not like implying it, just outright saying that feeling sexual attraction without romantic attraction could only be proof of mental illness and that also aros need help.
if you ‘defend’ trans women by accusing twefs of ~disrespecting our identities~ or whatever, you’re basically doing the twefs’ work for them.
respond with materialism, talk about how women are constituted as a class regulated by sexual violence and how this works in the same ways for cis and trans women, talk about how twef ideology exposes us to greater sexual violence and death, talk about how ‘biological sex’ is ideology that maintains gender and discuss the actual complexities, etc. etc.
but don’t make it about ‘identity’ please because not only is that easy for them to ridicule, even if it’s accepted it still makes trans women into lesser/fake women.
“Autistic and a-spec coding often go hand in hand because NTs use both of these identities to Other a character and make them seem ‘not quite human’” is a good breakdown of the problem, not “making autistic aspec characters is automatically ableist/aphobic” and CERTIANLY not “lack of sexual attraction dehumanizes characters” and otherwise throwing irl autistic aspecs under the bus
This.
A-spec and autism are both often used to dehumanize. Autistic characters are portrayed as lacking sexual (and usually romantic) urges, attractions, feelings because they “can’t comprehend those emotions.” A-spec characters are often stripped of any emotional “intelligence” and uncaring/ignorant of societal boundaries.
Specifically because autistic coding is usually lacking emotional intelligence and completely ignorant of how to act in public/manners in general and specifically because a-spec coding is usually lacking any sexual/romantic urges and feelings (which is different than lacking sexual/romantic attraction) and often as if the character feels “above” such base urges…
Because the stereotypes that don’t automatically go with being either autistic or a-spec essentially uses the same ridiculous coding as each other, it’s virtually impossible to tell if many writers meant to code autism, a-spectrum, or both. Perhaps no coding was intended at all.
These issues aren’t the fault of a-specs or autistics or a-spec autistics. And they aren’t the fault of a-spec autistic headcanons. These issues are society’s, these issues are with allosexuals and allistics that don’t even try to understand what either of these identities mean or how they intersect.
I’ll continue to headcanon autistic a-specs, because I’m an autistic a-spec, because I know this identity isn’t ableist or aphobic.
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