What you said about ace ppl is true but I will say I've known a few ace people to say that being ace is harder than any other kind of queer and turn a queer space into all different kinds of queer people competing in an oppression olympics which really bothers me. we're all oppressed you can't calculate how oppressed you are!!
yeah from what i’ve seen ace people experience the most intra-community discrimination out of any other identity in my opinion (meaning they get a lot of shit from LGBTQ+ people specifically), and yeah, it tends to be because people don’t think ace people belong because they’re not oppressed enough.
first of all, the assumption that oppression is the only legitimate membership into the LGBTQ+ community is kind of stupid. depending on the intersection of your identities and where you live, the amount of oppression/discrimination you experience will vary greatly (e.g. i’m sure i get a lot less shit for being gay living in nyc than someone living in a more conservative, more rural, and more white state). also, in a theoretical universe where we completely eradicate oppression, does that mean our community ceases to exist?
second of all, i always see people say shit like “no ace person has ever been killed for being ace” which, see point one, but also i can guarantee you ace people have been in situations where they’ve been beat, assaulted, and killed because they were unwilling to provide for their shitty partners in the way that they wanted them to. leave alone the unnecessary and invasive therapy they’ve had to go through as a community for supposed sexual dysfunctions they don’t have.
third of all, this whole mindset of ace people not being oppressed enough to be LGBTQ+ just completely undermines the concept of intersectionality. there’s a difference between “check your privilege” and “you’re not one of us because not enough people want you dead.” it’s necessary to consider the intersections of every person’s varying identities in order to understand the breadth of the prejudice they experience. everyone experiences discrimination in various ways and to different degrees. that’s what makes our community so diverse and that’s why it’s necessary to listen to each other and learn from each other so we can learn about these various systems of discrimination and oppression and help to eradicate them.
a white lesbian isn’t going to understand what it’s like to be me, a queer woman of color. i’m not, as a cisgender woman, going to understand what it’s like to be a trans man. i’m also not, as an allosexual woman, going to understand what it’s like to live my life as an asexual, constantly being inundated with shit from both straight people and my own community. the only way i’m going to come close to understanding is by listening and, obviously, by accepting people into my community as opposed to shutting them out because i don’t “get” them.
half this website could afford to do the same.
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
yousharknotpass
