Dear asexual-spectrum community:
I have phobias of various things. Irrational fears of various things. Specific phobias such as these are a mental illness. I didn’t learn to experience these irrational fears.
Prejudice, while it is irrational, is not a mental illness. Bigotry is not a mental illness. Prejudice is learned, and wrong.
By using terms for prejudices that end in -phobia, you are making an association between having a prejudice and experiencing mental illness, and you make it more difficult for asexual people with actual phobias to have their mental illness recognized as a legitimate experience. Using words like asexphobia, asexophobia, asexualphobia and the like makes it harder for asexual people with actual phobias to have mainstream culture recognize phobias as legitimate. [Edit: It makes an association between mental illness and violence, which totally fucks over asexual people with mental illnesses.]
On the flip side, associating prejudices with phobias also has the effect of other people considering prejudice to be a mental illness and therefore potentially sympathizing with the prejudiced person. [Edit: And coercively medicating them.]
This is a request from me as an asexual person who experiences disabling specific phobias: stop using “asexphobia,” “asexophobia,” “asexualphobia” and the like to describe anti-asexual prejudice, anti-asexual violence, (allo)sexual supremacy, and compulsory sexuality.
This entry was published on 12 April 2012 and has 51 note(s).
It was tagged: asexuality, ableism, mental illness, phobia, phobias, asexual, actuallyasexual, prejudice, specific phobias, disability, anti-asexual prejudice, asexual, demisexuality, demisexual, allosexism,
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