The LGBT community is a loose network of organizations, events, spaces, and groups, both online and off, in which LGBT people both take part in and are the main focus. Ex. LGBT charities, scholarship organizations, pride parades, college groups, community centers, bars, homeless shelters, forums, Facebook groups, tumblr tags, etc.
Some of the resources the community provides include:
free or low-cost STD testing/treatment
legal representation for cases of discrimination
LGBT-friendly counseling/psychological services
research grants for LGBT issues
low-cost hormones, srs, binders, etc. for trans people who need it
political lobbying against anti-LGBT bills
funds for LGBT events (panels, pride parades, etc.)
I know there’s more that I’m surely forgetting, but i think 11 is still a pretty decent number to illustrate that there are material, concrete services provided by the LGBT community.
It’s important to realize that all of the resources listed cost time and money, both of which are limited commodities. When cishet aces and aros demand to be included and have access to hotlines that have very few volunteers and too many calls, support groups that pay to rent out a tiny room in a building that can only fit seven people, event funds that are extremely limited, etc. they are taking away time, money, and places that could have be spent on sga and trans people. When sga and trans people talk about resources, we don’t mean understanding and pride, we mean concrete services that abide by the rules of scarcity.
You are correct that cis sga people and straight trans people do not face the same types of oppression and are capable of oppressing each other. However, the alliance between sga and trans people is based on history and mutual agreement, something that cannot be said about the connection between sga/trans people and ace/aro people. Back when the LGBT rights movement began, the clear-cut distinction between sga and trans people that we have today didn’t exist; the line between gay, bi, trans, etc. was very blurry, to the point where homophobia and transphobia were pretty much indistinguishable from one another. The first wave of the LGBT rights movement was started by bi trans women of color in response to police brutality against BOTH sga and trans people. The police at the time would raid “gay” bars (gay in parenthesis because these bars were also hubs for bi, trans, etc. people, because once again, there was no clear-cut distinction) because they were places where sga and trans people gathered. The police didn’t make any distinction between them; they were seen and attacked as one.
The LGBT rights movement and community includes both sga and trans people because, at the time, their problems WERE largely the same. The line between transphobia and homophobia wasn’t drawn until the 90′s. And the reason why sga and trans people continue to share a community despite facing different isses and oppressions is because both sga and trans people agree to. It’s based on mutual agreement. There are tons of all-around general LGBT organizations that contribute resources to fighting both homophobia and transphobia. And honestly, as a nb lesbian, I’d argue that the line between homophobia and transphobia can still be pretty foggy at times despite being more defined now than it was in the 70′s.
When it comes to cishet aces and aros, the story is nearly the opposite. Ace and aro communities first developed on the internet in the late 90′s completely independent of the LGBT community. David Jay, a cis heteromantic asexual man and founder of AVEN, was the first to assert that cishet ace and aro people are apart of the LGBT community in the early 2000′s and the assertion caught on among AVEN’s userbase, which at the time was both the largest ace community on the internet and primary dominated by cishet aces and aros (which it still is, actually).
There was zero basis for adding cishet ace and aro people to the LGBT community. Asexuality and aromanticism were never intertwined with other LGBT identities the way that sga and trans were. And more importantly, it was done without the consent of sga and trans people.
This doesn’t mean that cishet aces and aros face zero problems or don’t deserve a community. What it does mean is that it’s not the sga and trans people’s responsibility to focus what little time and money the LGBT community has, resources that sga and trans people spent decades creating, on cishet aces and aros who never contributed to the building of those resources in the first place. That would be the responsibility of aces and aros, who actually did have an independent, thriving community in the early 2000′s capable of laying the groundwork for it’s own resources and services, but all of that got thrown aside when David Jay thought they’d be better off taking resources and services from the LGBT community instead.
I’m having a hard time comprehending your third paragraph, but yes the LGBT community is absolutely based on systematic oppression? Which I’m assuming you have very little grasp of considering you seem to think that closeted or “passing” people don’t experience it. Closeted and “passing” (whatever you mean by that?) sga and trans people DO experience systematic oppression. All sga and trans people do, period.
“At least we’re oppressed together” is probably one of the most ridiculous things I’ve read in a while. You realize that a GROUP of oppressed people have much more leverage than an individual, right? So yes, absolutely I’d rather be a part of a community that focuses on my oppression than face it alone, like fuck, who wouldn’t?
The LGBT community is not for pride and acceptance, although those things can be a biproduct of it’s main purpose; the LGBT community has been and always will be for fighting against the systematic oppression of sga and trans people, whether it takes the form of police brutality like it did in the 70′s, the AIDS crisis like it did in the 80′s, the ban on same-sex marriage like it did in the 00′s, or other discriminating legislation like it is right now, as well as providing concrete, tangible resources like the ones I listed about for sga and trans people. It’s not all rainbows and glitter like the ace and aro community seems to believe.
an aro non-binary lesbian.
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