hi as pride month draws near for june reminder that cishet aces/aros are not LGBT and don’t belong in our spaces
And like, just a reminder that people like op are the people I don’t want to share my spaces with.
Every time I see an exclusionist on here and I click their profile they’re like 17 or 19 or maybe 21 at best.
And that’s fair- it’s not like people that age can’t have opinions or be right, they’re people.
But when I think about how long it took me to work out my own damn sexuality, gender, and all that crap, and how gently I stepped once I realised I was queer, and how much listening to people I did to see who the hell was out there…how much I am STILL learning about people who have different experiences…
…it feels really odd to see people this young being so secure in their belief of who should be excluded from the community.
Not how to support and include, to help and support, but how to exclude.
Like…being confident in your own sexuality at 19? Fuck yeah, good for you, I’m happy you had a better chance and an earlier start than I did.
But… telling other people they’re not queer enough to be in ‘your’ space?
Your space? Not mine anymore? Huh.
I’m over here at 35 still listening and learning and trying to understand everyone’s perspectives, discovering that sexuality is even more complex and nuanced than I know…and all these people barely out of their teens are talking like they know everything there is to know about being LGBT, ever. Like it’s all been written down, stamped, sealed, confirmed by some Authority.
Mmmm. No. Just… have an ounce of humility. Try gaining some perspective, please.
You haven’t lived long enough to even really listen to real life aces, to really think about what LGBT means. I don’t mean this as an ageist insult, I just really think that this kind of shit deserves TIME- hell I know it deserves time and thought because I am STILL unlearning bad assumptions and behaviours, and STILL meeting people who define themselves outside of the frame that I was once taught meant ‘LGBT’.
And you, a teen raised in a world that’s still pretty fucking homophobic and doesn’t recognise half of what the LGBT community itself has taken years to acknowledge, you think you know it all?
Because you’re online?
While you’re here, read some posts where ace people talk about how they’re treated. Forget semantics for a while: read the experiences.
I’m online too, I have been for some time. Doesn’t make me right, but experience is of some value. Experience in listening to queer people who aren’t quite like me, that is, in trying to understand how I am similar, instead of trying to figure out how they do not belong. In how people rework things, figure out how they can be less harmful, more inclusive, more representative of all those who are marginalised.
See, Q is queer but also often Questioning. It’s still important to let people be Questioning, there is an astounding amount of queerphobia in the world and we are NOT done working out the labels. We may never be.
Not so long ago, the T in lgbt was under question. Bisexuals are still being excluded.
So I’m being told I don’t matter by people who weren’t even born yet when I realised I wasn’t straight. They’re skipping right over all the reflection and going straight to self-affirmation by exclusion.
Which, again- if you are born into a world where you never have to question your identity, oh good grief I hope that’s real for everyone some day.
But we’re not there yet, yanno? And I resent being told that after all these years of soul-searching and careful, very careful questioning of whether I belong and how I can be a good member of the community, people arrive so 100% certain of their claim to being LGBT that the first thing they do is try to kick others out.
tl;dr I was here first and I’m not amused.
This is a great read. So please read, everyone.
^^^^^ This!
I’ve known I was attracted to multiple genders since I was 13. But I didn’t know that there were different types of attraction until I was 25. And it took almost two years of soul searching and feeling really weird about myself until I realized that I had never experienced sexual attraction. That is an extremely strange thing to realize and understand and come to terms with. I spent a while thinking I was broken or that something was wrong with me. It was confusing as hell.
And you know what helped me feel better about it all? Talking to people online and offline who understand the different types of attraction and sexuality. People in the LGBTQIA+ community. Without talking to people with a general knowledge of gender, attraction, and sexuality (not people who think straight is the default and everything else is a disorder or a quirk) I wouldn’t have understood my asexuality.
And you’re telling me that if I were (romantically, or aesthetically) attracted exclusively to the opposite gender I wouldn’t belong in the community? I shouldn’t have been able to have access to the resources that helped me stop feeling broken and depressed?
Well it’s a damn good thing that your opinion carries no weight outside of tumblr because you have no right to tell anyone they don’t belong.
Grow up. Go outside. Try listening and trying to understand people whose perspective and experiences are different than your own.
Asexuality is a difficult thing to understand. Many allosexuals cannot wrap their head around it because sexual attraction is so natural for them and the majority of people they know. But asexuality is real. It is valid. It is not a disorder. And it is its own identity. You cannot be heterosexual if you are asexual. Asexuality falls under the LGBT spectrum, even if the person in question is romantically or aesthetically attracted to the opposite gender. Period. End of story. Die mad about it.
I was very close to nearly 30 when I came to the conclusion that I was a brand of asexual. My mother was in her 60′s before she even knew that such a word existed, and she’s as ace as they come. It’s one of the reasons I never knew I was ace, because my mom validated my own lack of sexual attraction.
I belong here. This is my space just as much as yours.
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Question of Smoke 