u/thew_rshipper

It sometimes feels like “aroace” gets interpreted as “doesn’t experience romantic/sexual attraction, but is otherwise assumed to be totally comfortable with romance and sex” rather than…actually paying attention to what the character does and how they actually react in relation to sex and/or romance

And obviously aroace people can be sex favorable, sex indifferent, sex averse, or sex repulsed. But when a character is explicitly aroace, fandom often seems to default to: “Okay, they don’t feel attraction, but they can still totally be written into sexual/romantic situations!”even when the canon characterization is more like: “This character repeatedly demonstrates zero interest/disgust/aversion in this entire category of thing. Please stop putting them in it.”

I guess I just notice a weird tendency to treat lack of attraction as the only meaningful part of asexuality/aromanticism. So if canon doesn’t explicitly say “I dislike sex”,* *people can act as though sex-favorable is the default interpretation, despite being clear that it is not the case in canon

I think that the frustrating part to me is that the distinction between:
“This character is aroace, and I headcanon them as sex favorable.”
and
“This character is aroace, I headcanon them as sex favorable/comfortable with sexual situations unless canon explicitly says otherwise, even if their actions/reactions point to disgust/distress/etc.”
is becoming harder and harder to separate by the day…

I personally think we still face a LOT of stigma, that mainly comes from people conflating discomfort with judgment. If we say “sex grosses me out,” people sometimes interpret it as “sex is gross and you’re gross for enjoying it,” even when we explicitly meant “it is gross to me.”

There is still this weird expectation that aces have to demonstrate that they’re “progressive enough” by being comfortable with sexuality. So a sex favorable ace gets treated as proof that asexuality is valid, while a sex repulsed ace gets treated as somehow imposing morality on everyone else...

We shouldn’t have to soften “I find sex disgusting” into “I’m personally not interested in sex” if disgust is genuinely the feeling. That’s a perfectly valid experience. I think more people (both allos and aces alike) need to learn to distinguish “this makes me feel disgusted” from “therefore everyone else is bad for doing it.”

I feel like I’m only asexual because of trauma, and no matter what, it feels like I’ll never be in love with someone who does not crave sex, asexuality is so rare in the real world and I feel so hopeless

I’m already a nb, soon-to-be nullified person, and my whole life is agony over being trapped in a sexed body, to be tied to the notion of reproductive roles biologically.

If I could somehow “cure” or “fix” my asexuality, I would, and I’m scared that even with no trauma, I’d still be subjected to this hell

Despite being head admin in the discord, this subreddit is not under mine or any dev's control, it was created by a fan and we have no responsibility over it, nor any power to hire moderators