not to be inclusionist on main but i find it shocking and frankly a little horrifying how easily the online LGBTQ community has turned on itself in the past 2 years. like, i need you all to know: i’m not old. i’m 23. so that leaves about a bit less than a decade of me knowing i’m gay, and a bit less than that of me learning about my new family and friends and lifestyle and such, as well as a bit less for actively campaigning/being deeply involved in civil rights and social justice issues.
like, i don’t know if yall realize this if youre newer here but: this whole “asexuality exclusion” thing and this “queer is a slur” thing? this is new. this is only within the past two or so years that its gained any real momentum, the same with terfs and radfems. it wasn’t a concept. there were massive, massive rallies in support of our asexual community. it’s horrifying to me how simply and neatly we as a group have gone from “The A doesn’t stand for Ally” to “There is no A at all”.
and i need you all to know: this is not a coincidence that TERFS have risen up in roughly the same time period. i need you all to realize that when you talk about your exclusion of asexuals from our community, you are parroting well-known TERF and neo-nazi rhetoric.
“they are invading [LGBT/women’s/white] safe spaces to steal our resources and oppress us.”
“they’re only pretending to be [gay/a woman].”
“[asexual/trans women/POC] aren’t REALLY [LGBT/women/human].”
and it goes deeper, fundamentally flawed: when you try to reason that asexuality isn’t inherently LGBT, but if you are otherwise LGBT but asexual it’s somehow fine and different but otherwise youre cishet…all you’re saying is that “you’re only allowed in this club if you don’t support others who are like you. you’re only allowed in this club because i as an authority say you fit nicely under a label that i agree with.”
it’s terrifying, to me, and i’m not asexual. it’s terrifying that this manufactured divide using literal talking points created by and stolen from TERFs and neo-nazis has such an appeal to so many LGBT people. i’m worried for our future on so many levels; climate change, political upheaval, the list goes on. standing strong together is so important right now, perhaps more than ever, at least in my lifetime. and yet we are so destructively focused on ideas of ‘the model of social justice’ and ‘purity culture’ and ‘respectability politics’ and so on that we would rather turn on our own–not even our allies but our own community–because we don’t think they’re LGBT enough.
we spent so long saying “my sexuality isn’t a choice” and arguing “why would i choose to be oppressed for my sexuality” and yet…here we are.
@thetatteredveil just in case you get any yahoos arguing with you (who are we kidding this is Tumblr you totally will), I’m 32. I’ve been an activist since 2006.
YOU ARE COMPLETELY CORRECT.
42, activist since 1995. TERFs have been around longer than that, they just called themselves other things, like “lesbian separatists”. They’ve come around before, and we told them they weren’t fucking wanted. We united against them, and their numbers and influence dwindled. Now they’re back, along with the rest of the fucking fascists.
You ARE correct, OP, but that isn’t all that’s correct. Here’s what you don’t know from experience, only from theory: We beat them before, and we can beat them again. And we’re going to have to.
