Character: I think boys are pretty

Fandom: oh! They're gay! That's canon!

Different character: I have no interest in romance or sex. I don't understand it. Relationships confuse me. They seem pointless to me. I have no desire to be in a romantic or sexual relationship. I am an aromantic asexual.

Fandom: well, I guess you can interpret them as aroace...I don't see it though.

I honestly hate how characters who dont like the opposute sex are automatically assumed to be gay. I hate it even more when the character explicitly shows no interest at all in any gender.

for example reyna from hoo was the first fucking aroace coded chracter i ever saw in a book. she was one of the first chracters to finally make me feel heard. i finally felt like there was a chracter i could truely relate to and who understood me. and i might sound like a bitch, but i absolutely fucking hate when people make her a lesbian. thankfully its rare to see her in a hetero pairing. but seeing her in a queer pairing isnt any better.

there are so many other chracters who would work better in queer parings, so why does it always have to be the aroace chracter.

Ive also noticed that its more common for a female aroace chracter to be put in lesbian pairings way more than male ones. correct me if im wrong though.

the aroace rep is so fucking rare anyways, so please stop putting them in relationships. while there are aroace people who want to be in relationships, not all of them want to be in a relationship, and they dont have to be you first pick for one.

im just so tired of seeing aroace chracters constantly being changed to fit ships. this might be very bitchy put for the fucking hell please stop.

I didn't see anything from somerton until about a month ago when he popped up in my recs and I ended up binging his content for about 2 days, but something kept being off and I noticed some of the lies/ignorance, and there was something really dismissive and weird about how he talked about aspecs and women in particular... I stopped watching him cause I watched one of you guys' podcast and realized I also just felt like crap after his videos.

I did end up getting his rwrb video in my recs when it came out cause of the binge and I just remember leaving a comment about the way he talked about aces in it. It was especially upsetting seeing people in the comments who were simply happy he mentioned aspecs at all. He replied to me just saying his cowriter was ace. I don't reply to youtube comments but I just remember wanting to point out that same co-writer he was using as a shield said aces don't face discrimination or conversion therapy, and in that video wrote that aces have to have sex to find out they don't like it. Being something doesn't make you instantly know everything about it, as somerton himself demonstrates with his ignorant comments about gay history.

I'm not really one of his victims since I avoided him as soon as I found him, but I feel bad for all the people he tricked and/or guilted into believing him. I hope some other creators make videos exposing the weird way he manipulated the queer community, cause I think a lot of young folks could use a breakdown of it.

Anyways I just wanted to finish by saying I love you guys' work and learning from you. You helped me understand why certain phrases make me upset, and that and watching your podcast back to back with his videos helped me figure out what I didn't like about Somerton, so you helped protect me from him and not convince myself I was just being Weird as I often do when I get Bad Vibes from someone.

Thank you so much for reaching out <3

It's so fascinating that you stopped watching Somerton after finding us. We've tried to keep things as professional as possible these last 2 years by only citing directly harmful things he's done to us and direct members of our community, and even then it was sparingly and as kind as possible.

When we first spoke with him about including Asexual representation in his future Telos endeavors, he assured us that not only was there already an Ace in the writers' room, but that two real, fully-fleshed out Ace characters were already being written. This was encouraging! After all, we had no way of knowing if he was the kind of cis gay man who loathes Aces or doesn't view us as queer. Since this didn't seem to be the case and rep is important, we supported him. We now deeply regret not doing our research on him first.

Even before his video "The Queer Erasure of Asexuality", we started watching a few of his YouTube videos for the first time and some of the subtext was NOT kind to our community. Subtle things that we'd see get repeated by his fans over and over again, like how queer art is bad these days because all the "artists" and the "exciting queers" who "really lived" died in the AIDS crisis. Or the implication that the Interview with the Vampire reboot was *more queer* because the vampires actually had gay sex on screen, despite this being a complete departure from the source material and neglecting the fact that Anne Rice's vampires have always been undeniably queer *and also* sexless. In fact, we didn't say his name, but we did mention some vague "bad takes" we saw about the series in our podcast episodes 75 & 76 The Triumphs and Failures of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire Part 1 and Part 2...At least some of those came from James.

We did not see his rwrb video, because we had long given up on him by that point, but it is not at all surprising to hear that he had bad takes and also hid behind Nick once again to shield himself from any criticism. It was very much his MO, and yet we're also certain we've heard him chastise straight women for using the "I have a gay friend" defense.

It is so good to hear that our podcast has been helpful to you. There are FAR too many Aces who are willing to let bad behavior or ill-informed takes slide just because someone with a decent following noticed us. We deserve so much better.

I will never not be absolutely furious about the fact that one of the Big Three tumblr sexymen is canonically aroace. And most people who are not into the show he’s from probably don’t even know that and would be surprised to find out because the most known thing about him outside of that fandom is the fact that he’s a tumblr sexyman. The fact that people can know a character is canonically asexual and STILL sexualize him to THAT degree is absolutely disgusting.

my psychiatrist tried to explain to me why asexuality does not exist. i’m not even ace and i wanted to strangle him

My absolute hatred for asexual and aromantic erasure (the unstoppable force) v. My delight in any poly representation, especially as the endgame (the immovable object). Fight!

Won by: My sheer disbelief at people calling Riverdale the pinnacle of queer representation DESPITE THE ASEXUAL AND AROMANTIC ERASURE BAKED INTO ITS VERY CORE, I'M GOING TO WRECK SOMETHING-

:/

People who put Alastor into sexual situations make me uncomfortable

Casual Aro-spec and A-spec Erasure 🙃

So, I was visiting a gallery in my home city, and they had some interesting items for sale. One of them was a neat-looking postcard from 1920s France that said "Bonne Année" (French for "Happy New Year"), and I wanted to buy it. The seller made some remark about how it will "attract my lover to me," I guess since it has a romantic picture on it. When I said that I only really want dogs in my life, she said that I'd eventually change my mind.

Then she told the cashier. They joked about it a bit, then started to put everything together so I could pay for the postcard.

I tried to just stay quiet and move on; I didn't want to cause trouble, especially since the seller knows one of my aunts. We talked about other things for a while, but then she brought it up again, unprompted. She said that I'd meet a man who's interested in the same things I am, and we'd connect. I said that I'd ideally just be friends with this hypothetical man, but she laughed it off and said once again that I'd change my mind.

So yeah. That was annoying. I know she didn't mean serious harm; she was very sweet and friendly to me otherwise, and she even gave me a 44% discount on the postcard when I went to buy it just for the heck of it. But man, I wish romance and physical attraction weren't always assumed to be parts of everyone's lives.

Is it lesbian erasure, or is it just asexual visibility?

Yeah, I know "not all aro/aces" and all, but please don't use "not all aro/aces" as an excuse to not explore anything exclusively aro/ace ever. Otherwise any trace of aro/aceness might end up effectively lost to fandom osmosis.

To sum up... If you wouldn't be homophobic that way, please don't be aphobic that way.

I am so incredibly disappointed that they made Nancy straight in Rise of the Pink Ladies.

It’s crazy how many people just don’t understand why a lot of aro and or ace people don’t like that Alaster gets shipped. It’s not that hard to understand we don’t have a lot to let ourselves lose. I mean can you name 10 asexual characters? 5? Can you name two aro characters. There’s the guy from Archie who they made have a sex scene in a movie version. There’s a few books. I think a background character in Heartstopper? Do you see the theme here??? You’re all queer people, do you not get it? How it feels to have nothing? Is it so wrong to be upset that there’s finally an outwardly aroace person in popular media and instead of people embracing that they’re fighting on the internet about why it’s ok to ignore it? And I will never in my fucking life have anything against the people who are aro and or ace and portray him in THEIR experiences, even if it is a romance or sex favorable experience, but it is obvious that way too many of you guys are allo and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t even like him as a character that much, he isn’t even made by an aroace artist. The show isn’t even that fucking good, I just want to keep someone like me for once in my life. If there were a million other aroace characters I wouldn’t care, but it just hurts seeing erasure coming from my own community. It just sucks, man, I don’t know. It just sucks

oh I'm sorry this AROACE character exists and you can't ship them with any other character because they're AROACE, must be so sad for you

"Oh but without sex or romance the characters are just boring" without even getting into the array of existing wonders outside of interpersonal relationships, the modes of affection I have seen real aspecs invent for eachother would humble you.

Aroace people are aromantic too, please remember that

Hey aroaces ily I'm aroace too, but please stop tagging aromantic posts that don't mention asexuality as “#asexual” or “#aroace”. Like, this is one of the reasons aroallos are seen as “weird”, we immediately assume someone's asexual because they're aromantic.