when i was 13, i thought i was ace. when my friend was, 14 they thought that they were ace. my cousin is twelve years old and already ids as pan ace. do you see the fucking problem?
why would a twelve year old think they have to id as ace? who told her she should already be thinking she’s ace because she doesn’t experience sexual attraction WHEN SHE’S TWELVE FUCKING YEARS OLD?????
literal children should not be thinking about this shit. and no, fuckers, this is not the same as figuring out you’re lesbian/gay/bi/trans young because none of those imply anything about sex!
being ace is literally directly about sex and how people experience sexual attraction! i don’t know how to explain to you people that pushing these labels towards children is harmful!!!!!
I’m going to cut in and say young children id-omg as ace isn’t the problem. The sexualization Of teens and children is what causes kids who haven’t felt those emotions yet (or never will) to gravitate to a label that they feel describes them
We constantly expect teens and preteens go have crushes and little boyfriends/girlfriends/etc. We push the narrative that everyone is losing their virginity by the time they graduate high school without thinking about those who haven’t or don’t want to.
Personally? when I was 15 I Id’ed as ace bc I wasn’t interested in any boys or girls romantically or sexually. And all over the tv eas teenagers and tweens at minimum having those feelings or being swept up in romance or sex. When I discovered the ace community, it was a comfort to know there were people who didn’t feel that. And having never experienced sexual feelings, I couldn’t IMAGINE ever wanting it
By the time I had given up on love and sex, I was 20.
THATs when naturally I fell for someone and did have those feelings. Was I late in that? Absolutely not.
I was so shocked to find his sexual experience was just as limited as mine— because the narrative we are told is that if you’re 18 surely you’ve fucked or at least agreed to wait till marriage with your HS sweetheart or whatever.
But that’s not the universal— or even common experience.
TLDR; aces aren’t responsible for young children feeling pressured to adopt that label, its our societal narrative that sexualizes children and relies on the assumption that All Teens Have Fucked
It is much better for a teen to misidentify themselves, take comfort in their label and remain safe than for them to push themselves into experiences they are not ready for. Society’s saturation of sex and sexualisation pushes that narrative so badly. So what if later they decide “actually that’s not who I am.” Like @bravebattalion, many teens who don’t have crushes and attraction are made to feel abnormal and wrong by media, dominant social narratives, and by extension their peers. If the ace label makes them feel whole for a while, then that is a good thing. If the community has something to offer them, be it kinship, feeling whole, or simple resources, and they identify with us, then they belong here as long as they choose to stay.
This confuses me because when I was a kid, I had no idea what asexuality was, but I knew that the dominant heterosexual culture I was in wanted me to have sexual feelings. I was assumed to be boy-crazy, to have crushes, to sigh over celebrities. I was supposed to want to sneak out of the house at night and hang out with guys. I was supposed to want to be found sexually attractive. My classmates sang about being sexy and wanted to know if I found them sexy. The lived experiences of tweens and teens for generations have abounded with stories of kids who feel pressured to develop sexually when they aren’t ready for it.
I would have loved to have a way to say, “Nope, this all feels uncomfortable and overwhelming, please count me out,” without implying I was babyish or immature. Because at 13 I wanted to be grown-up more than anything, but there was nobody around to say, “Some adults never develop sexual or romantic attraction and that’s fine.”
I’m not ace and wasn’t even particularly ace then; I just want to handle my attractions and relationships without a ton of social pressure on my back. But goddamn, how can you blame aro/aces for something THE PATRIARCHY has been doing, that they provide resistance against?
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