I can’t for the life of me understand the weird overlap between ace discoursers and kink discoursers on Tumblr. It makes sense with homophobic Christians, but not on a place like Tumblr fandom. How do discoursers put these together, rhetorical styles aside?

freedom-of-fanfic:

What a good question.  Let me see if I can explain my understanding of this in less than a 10K-word essay for once.

A one-sentence summary of the overlap would be kinky people and ace people are both seen as invaders of LGBT spaces. (I’ll be using ‘LGBT’ as opposed to ‘LGBT+/queer’ to refer to non-straight/non-cis spaces that exclude people who identify as queer.)

This concept that kink communities and ace people are suddenly trying to get in on the LGBT fun is ahistorical.  Having a kink doesn’t make you queer, but kink communities have long been a haven for LGBT+/queer people and have many non-straight/non-cis people in their clubs, bars, and communities. they provide good spaces for questioning people to explore their sexual/romantic interests.  And ace people, frequently identifying themselves as bisexual as the ace identity was so invisible, have long been part of LGBT+/queer communities. 

However, this is how exclusionists perceive them. They see kinky people and ace people as kind of like flip sides of a coin, so the talking points for each group are strikingly similar:

• kinky people & ace/aro people don’t experience social stigma or harm for being kinky/ace. ‘nobody cares about your sex life,’ exclusionists scoff, while simultaneously caring a lot about their sex lives. (This is predicated on misunderstanding ace identities as being synonymous with celibacy or sex-repulsion. In reality, asexuality is simply not experiencing sexual attraction to others.) In reality, both kinky people and ace/aro people experience lots of social stigma, and ace people are sometimes singled out for harm because of their identity.
• kinky people & ace/aro people can both be ‘cishet’, so they do not belong in LGBT spaces. kinky people may be only attracted to the ‘opposite’ gender & identify with their birth-designated sex & gender. ace people may be only romantically interested in people of the ‘opposite’ gender and identify with their birth-designated sex & gender. Because some ace/kinky people are like this, all kinky people and all ace people are either outright excluded or carefully screened for the proper qualifications to be LGBT.
• kink communities and ace/aro communities create alternative spaces where ‘real’ LGBT people are encouraged to deny their true identity.  to ensure LGBT people are forced to come to terms with their true identity, the communities they hide in must be kept distinct from LGBT spaces. This is ironic because kinky spaces have long provided a space for questioning people to explore non-straight or non-cis experiences without being forced to immediately ‘choose a side’, and ace communities are frequently very encouraging of people to move in and out of the identity as they discover themselves.

the fresh rise of purity culture in the US through a combination of factors causing ’abnormal’ sexual acts and ’abnormal’ sexual desire to be perceived as  forbidden, scary, and dirty in a way it wasn’t for a decade or two has had its own weird part to play in this. (Though ‘abnormal’ no longer always includes monogamous cis mlm and wlw the way it used to.) the tl;dr version is ace people are overly prudish and kinky people are overly sexual rather than staying between the Acceptable Sexual Interests/Displays boundaries.

• sexual myth 1: ace/aros think LGBT people are disgusting for wanting sexual relationships but want to be in the LGBT Cool Club anyway. through a combination of factors including but not limited to misunderstandings of what asexuality is, some ace people making bigoted or unthinking statements that have been virally spread, and the pure/prude dichotomy of being perceived as sexually abstinent (sex is dirty, but not wanting sex is inhuman), ace-identifying people have a reputation for looking down on and disdaining LGBT people for being ‘dirty allos’ while simultaneously wanting in on the ‘special’ status of LGBT circles. This is a weirdly self-contradictory myth – why would you want to be part of a community with people you despise? – but there you are.
• sexual myth 2: suggesting a minor may be asexual is inappropriately sexualizing them. asexuality is the realization of an absence of sexual desire, which can make it hard to identify. some people argue that implying a minor can identify as asexual is inappropriate. Minors aren’t yet sexually aware enough of themselves to make that assessment. If a minor thinks they might be asexual, it’s more likely they just haven’t matured enough to have sexual interest.  In reality, a minor might already know – and if not, they are always free to identify differently later.
• sexual myth 3: kink communities are entirely made up of sexual abusers and their self-deluded prey. In this reductive and mistaken view, all kinky relationships are abusive. clg and ddlg are indistinguishable from csa, bdsm is physical abuse, pet play is beastiality … and you’ve exhausted the concepts of ‘kink’ that most anti-kink people have. LGBT circles aren’t safe spaces for these abusers!  But in reality kink is much more broad than these circles and when handled and negotiated correctly, clg/ddlg/bdsm/etc are enjoyable and safe for all participants.
• sexual myth 4: public LGBT+/queer demonstrations, parades, etc should always be child-friendly/safe spaces, so kink is unwelcome. ace/aro people are too prudish for LGBT communities, but kinky people are too flamboyant. the example I see over and over again is ‘imagine a kid going to a pride parade and seeing a guy on a leash and collar crawling around on all fours. How will you explain that to them!?’ This shows some severe lack of awareness of how nsfw Pride demonstrations could once get!  But when you take away the alarmist ‘think of the children!’ language, it’s clearly a game of respectability politics – specifically, Pride making itself respectable to the straight, cis(, non-kinky) majority. A kinky mlm couple – while gay, and clearly LGBT – would not find it is acceptable to be kinky in a public Pride space anymore because the image of Pride has cleaned up. 

All this care about how sexuality is expressed in LGBT+/queer spaces is because in its most mainstream form, Pride is no longer presented as counter-culture. Pride displays are more often aimed at ‘we’re just like you [cishets]!’ acceptability now, rather than the sometimes vulgar displays demanding recognition that they exist (and aren’t going away).

(This is also why shedding the ‘queer’ label is important. ‘Queer’ has come to represent ‘people who aren’t straight and/or cis, but also aren’t necessarily fitting any label.’ These are mostly people still struggling against invisibility, being counter-culture to keep from fading from existence – but they’re not helping the respectability angle too much.)

long story short, both kinky people and ace people are socially unacceptable to LGBT exclusionary groups for mirroring reasons, resulting in vetting practices that harm questioning people and purity demands that weirdly echo … well, homophobic Christians.

(All that to get right back where we started.)