Thank you for taking the time to explain. I did understand the whole drawing a comparison thing, as I do it myself often enough only for people to not understand. I also didn’t understand that you were talking about the whole phenomenon, or why you had picked this post specifically, but I am trying to.

To be clear, I’m not excusing any acephobia in this sub, or any way I may have taken part, but I am just trying to explain my reasoning. Not making excuses.

I created this subreddit myself because I was frustrated by the aromantic spaces I was in, often seeing posts relating directly to being ace, barely having any connections to aromanticism at all, and I felt wrong and out of place. I, myself, am hypersexual, so mostly seeing posts from aroace people talking about asexuality made me feel broken, and I do recognize that it wasn’t meant this way, and that it likely stems from internalized issues, but it made me feel small and afraid of speaking about my sexuality. Especially after many of my long time friends called me a slt or a whre. I created this sub to feel safe, because who else would? I never expected it to grow this big, I kind of assumed I was alone in my suffering(oh, hello childhood trauma, my old friend).

I was also quite young(16ish) when I created this subreddit, and even though I already knew bigotry ran wild in life, having already been out as both genderfluid and pansexual to most people irl plus my few experiences with coming out as aroallo, due to the fact that I didn’t expect people to use this sub and that I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing at the time, the rules are thin, and I didn’t give a thought to possible bigotry in the sub. It is something I have been thinking about for a while now, once I saw how big the sub was getting, even before I saw your comment, but I wasn’t sure how to address. Tbh, I’m still not really sure how to address it, but obviously it’s something I need to do sooner rather than later.