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
Also, it’s normal for teens and preteens to experiment with different labels. That’s usually the time when people start questioning their identity in that way. I went through a whole gamut of different labels as a teen before feeling pretty secure with just being a gay man.
If a twelve-year-old says they’re ace and they end up being something else, that’s their business and it’s fine. If they identify as ace their entire life, that’s also fine and also their business. And if that means a larger portion of the population identifies as ace, then so what? The earth won’t split open, there won’t be a plague of locusts, probably not much will really change on a grand scale.
Back at summer camp when all the other girls were hanging pictures of N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys on their bunks, when it seemed like I was the only one who wasn’t into them–but who wasn’t really into girls either–I wish I’d had the word ‘ace’ to use for myself instead of “I’m weird, I just don’t like them.”
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