OK, see, this shit is unacceptable.
I’ve been reluctant to step in here because I think that discourse overall is a good thing and there’s nothing wrong with criticism of use of models such as the split attraction model. But Crux, for the last two pages, most of what I have seen is you actively discouraging or discounting the experiences of those who are identifying as asexual or aromantic, challenging them to prove what “value” they bring to the LGBTQ+ community, belittling people who share their personal experiences and even going as far as to compare the inclusion of aces and aros into the LGBTQ+ community to forcing feminists to include TERFs and MRAs into their community. This is way beyond anything resembling reasonable discourse, and has turned the corner into outright bullying. It’s unacceptable anywhere and it’s especially unacceptable here, in a space that should be safe for people to share and discuss their experiences.
I’m not asexual or aromantic myself, so I haven’t really wanted to get too involved. A lot of the attacks levied at the asexual and aromantic community do feel unfortunately familiar to me, though. I don’t tend to talk publicly about my own sexuality here for a variety of reasons. My age and position of authority is a big one: I’m 36 years old, which both means that my own experiences are likely not going to be super relevant to those who are significantly younger than me, and also that frankly I’m a bit uncomfortable talking much about sex and sexuality with those that are underage given the ~20 year age gap and authority position I have as a staff member here. Another big one is that I’ve spent the last 13 years in a monogamous heterosexual relationship, and I think there’s a pretty good chance that I will remain in it for the rest of my life (here's hoping!). If you only met me in 2007 or later, you’d have every reason to assume I’m cishet. It means I have a very different lived experience than the majority of what people here have.
But despite all that, I am bisexual, and first identified as such in the late 90s. My first active relationship with another man was in 1999 at the age of 15. I bring this up because the landscape was very different for bisexuals in that period, not just among heterosexual communities but also in gay communities, where I was often dismissed either as someone who was gay but too full of internalized homophobia to openly identify as such, or who was just “toying” with homosexuality to gain entrance into gay spaces that I didn’t belong in. In 2002 I went to Antioch College in Ohio, in what was at the time one of the most radical queer spaces in the world, and yet often found myself excluded for those same reasons. I had a single long term male partner for most of my time in college, interspersed with many shorter term relationships and encounters that were mostly with women, and once again I found myself simultaneously accused of being both a fake gay and being gay but too homophobic to admit it. The concept of bi erasure from queer spaces isn't new: Professor Kenji Yoshino coined the concept of an "epistemic contract" of bisexual erasure between self-identified heterosexuals and homosexuals due to overlapping interests back in 2000, arguing that both communities sought to erase the category of bisexuality because they benefited from the stabilization of exclusive sexual orientation categories and the retention of sex as an important diacritical axis.
Anyhow, I'm not bringing this up to be all "woe is me." I've had a pretty privileged life overall, and the fact that for the majority of my adult life I have reasonably passed as cishet (not necessarily intentionally so, but it's generally the default assumption for dudes that are married to women, especially those with children) has certainly granted me various advantages. The reason I bring all this up is because the anti-ace discourse I have seen levied over the past 5 years or so, and regurgitated by Crux here, feels really shockingly familiar. All the same accusations are coming back up again: that identifying as bi/homosexual but aromantic or asexual but bi/homoromantic is actually offensive and reinforces internalized homophobia, that aces and aros benefit from cishet privilege and therefore shouldn't be included within the LGBTQ+ community, that aces and aros are attempting to "sneak into" spaces that don't belong to them. These are the exact same arguments that I've been hearing for more than 20 years for why bisexuals don't belong in queer spaces.
It feels like gatekeeping, and it feels especially offensive here, where people believe they're entering a safe space where they can discuss who they are and what they're going through, and are met with outright dismissal and exclusion. It's ironic that you compared being "forced" into including aces and aros into the community as equivalent to requiring feminists to include TERFs, because these arguments are really reminiscent of TERF arguments that trans women benefited from male privilege and therefore can't be feminists. Never mind that major depressive episodes and suicidal ideation among self-identified asexuals is often significantly higher than those who identified as heterosexual or homosexual (
source1 source2). Never mind that asexuals, especially asexual women, are targets of corrective rape and other sexual violence (
source1 source2). Never mind that belittling people for bringing up their own personal and lived experiences and reducing said experiences to "tumblr and twitter takes" as a substitute for actual analysis is nothing but a bad-faith argument to stymie and put down any potential disagreement.
So yeah, if you want to discuss issues with, for example, the split attraction model or how it's used (and while I'm far from an expert on the matter, it seems like a good portion of the ace and aro community agrees that there are issues!), that's fine. But either do it in a way that doesn't put down or attack users and their experiences, or fuck off.
