Today I was helping run the booth for the local queer non-profit at the farmer's market and a woman told me that she would like a flag, pointing to our little bucket of flags. So I picked up the bucket and I brought it over and asked her which one she'd like.
"Well, tell me about them!"
"Oh! Okay! This one is the inclusion flag- its for everyone, including allies."
"That's the bisexual flag: it represents people who are attracted to two or more genders."
"Hmm... what about this one?"
"That's the nonbinary flag: it represents people whose gender isn't strictly 'male or female.'"
"Hmm... what's this purple one?"
"That's the asexual flag: it represents people who may not feel sexual attraction the way that others do."
She put her hand to her chest and got this really curious look on her face. "Tell me more about that!"
"Oh, happy to! So like if you're out with your bestie and someone real fine walks by and she's like 'omg look at him' and you're like 'girl get a grip?' Or like you just don't get what the 'big deal' is about sex or why everyone is so weird about it? But there's also room for like- you don't fall in love with the way someone looks, you're attracted to the person- their sense of humor and their kindness, or there's something about their personality that just makes it click for you? That's asexuality, too!"
And she got real quiet and seemed to think about it for a minute. So I grabbed our little informational sheet about different queer identities and handed her a copy. "If you want to do some research, this is probably a great place to start."
She thanked me and took an ace flag, stuck it in her hair.
Sometimes when you're online all the time, its easy to think that 'everyone knows about (topic), there's no reason to keep talking about it so much.' But while the people on the internet are real people, the internet ISN'T real life. And there are lots of people who do need to know that they do have community!
One of the jokes is that I'm a lot of people's 'patient zero' for discovering that they're queer. This is why.
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