Ace Admiral

This morning, I was just sitting on twitter, minding my own business, and then something horrible happened. If you don’t have a twitter and wish to remain blissfully ignorant, please feel free to scroll past. But I need to get this off my chest.

Here is what happened:@asexuality (AVEN) first RT’d a tweet that said that realizing one was asexual was just as difficult as realizing one was gay. I saw it and thought, “can we please stop with the comparisons?” but otherwise ignored it. Then @asexuality RT’d another tweet, in response to the first, that said they disagreed with the first person b/c social consequences for homosexuality are in general much worse and it is disrespectful to say otherwise.

This is what I hate about AVEN in a nutshell.

Every opinion is not inherently equal and deserving of a RT. There’s this thing called “objective reality,” see, and if you’re the AVEN twitter, i.e. the voice of the ace community whether we like it or not, you need to actually be thoughtful about what you’re RTing.

Looking at the first tweet, we can see it is objectively false. Realizing one is asexual is harder than realizing one is gay** (**in western democracies, which are the only type of country I feel comfortable speaking to). This is because current visibility combined with societal forces (e.g. the Right Person myth) conspire to make asexuality invisible, and it is very difficult to realize you are something that you don’t even know exists.

The second tweet is thankfully correct in its assertion, but misguided in its direction. The original tweet talked about REALIZING one was asexual, not coming to terms with it or coming out or anything else. So, you’re right, but completely irrelevant.

And then, enter @asexuality. There was no commentary, no challenging, just RTing. Without the initial RT, the second would have never even happened. This whole thing only occurred because the AVEN twitter decided to just RT whatever old thing there was to RT!

And I just. Can’t.

Can we please, please assign some inherent value to things that are true and things that are on topic? And not just blindly repeat them? Please?