Privilege Denying Asexuals

girlsarestrong:

[Trigger Warning for discussion of homophobia, nazism, torture, murder and genocide]

I’m still seeing people who are arguing that the appropriation of the triangle by AVEN isn’t a big deal.

So, a quick history lesson is in order.

[Image may be triggering as it shows concentration camp prisoners imprisoned for homosexuality]

“The real story behind the pink triangle begins prior to World War II. Paragraph 175, a clause in German law, prohibited homosexual relations (much like many states in the U.S. today have laws against “crimes of nature”). In 1935, during Hitler’s rise to power, he extended this law to include homosexual kissing, embracing, and even having homosexual fantasies. An estimated 25,000 people were convicted under this law between 1937 and 1939 alone. They were sent to prisons and later concentration camps. Their sentence also included sterilization, most commonly in the form of castration. In 1942, Hitler extended the punishment for homosexuality to death.

Prisoners in Nazi concentration camps were labeled according to their crimes by inverted colored triangles. “Regular” criminals were denoted by a green triangle, political prisoners by red triangles and Jews by two overlapping yellow triangles (to form the Star of David, the most common Jewish symbol). Homosexual prisoners were labels with pink triangles. Gay Jews- the lowest form of prisoner- had overlapping yellow and pink triangles. This system also created a social hierarchy among the prisoners, and it has been reported that the pink triangle prisoners often received the worst workloads and were continually harassed and beaten by both guards and other prisoners.

Although homosexual prisoners were not shipped en mass to the Aushwitz death camps like so many of the Jewish prisoners, there were still large numbers of gay men executed there along with other non-Jewish prisoners. The real tragedy though occurred after the war. When the Allies defeated the Germany and the Nazi Regime, the political and remaining Jewish prisoners were released from the camps (the regular criminals- murderers, rapists, etc.- were not released for obvious reasons). The homosexual prisoners were never released though because Paragraph 175 remained West German law until 1969. So these innocent men watched as their fellow prisoners were set free, but remained prisoners for 24 more years.

In the 1970s, the pink triangle started to be used in conjunction with the gay liberation movement. When people, especially public figures such as law makers, were confronted with such a symbol, they risked being associated with the Nazis if he or she were to attempt to openly limit or prosecute gays. In the 1980s, when the triangle’s popularity truly began to take off, ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) adopted the it as their symbol, but turned it upright to suggest an active fight rather than passive resignation. I’ve also been told that some people wear their triangles pointing up if they personally know somebody who has tied of AIDS. In any case, the pink triangle is definitely a symbol very closely connected to oppression and the fight against it, and stands as a vow never to let another Holocaust happen again. Like the word “queer,” it is a symbol of hate which has been reclaimed and now stands for pride.”

Queer people aren’t jumping all over aces on tumblr for no reason, or because of ‘acephobia’ as some seem to believe. It’s because so many people in the community are doing things that are appropriative, homophobic and fucked up - brushing off the appropriation of symbols without even realising the violent and bloody history behind them, or dismissing it as irrelevant as the holocaust ~happened before their time~. Stop it. 

Do you even know where the word ‘straight’ came from? It came from us. From the queer community.  At first it meant ex-gays, people who had ‘gone straight’, and then it just meant heteros. It’s our word, do you understand that? We defined it, we still define it. We said “straight” when we talked about heteros who were calling us f*gs and d*kes, and we say “straight” when we’re talking about hetero aces who are calling us trolls and haters and barnacles.  When you make posts about how “the queers will never win” we call you straight.  You are straight because you are hetero and you are straight because you are attacking us and you are straight because you will never bring us down.

I’m not saying you don’t have problems. Let me repeat that because y’all seem to have convinced yourselves we don’t believe it. ASEXUALITY IS REAL AND IT CAUSES YOU PROBLEMS. But you “queer het” aces on tumblr who have been attacking queers, you can’t pick and choose which of our words are real. You can’t have queer without straight and we get to say who’s straight.

We’ve fought straights for a long, long time. Do you really think, just because your internet buddies are giving you asspats on tumblr, that we’re going to let you demonize and dehumanize us?

WE ARE HERE.

WE ARE QUEER.

WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE.

We are real people whether you want to believe it or not.  You are straight and you are cowards.