I postponed answering this ask for a long time because I couldn’t get an proper response out without wanting to start cussing. I didn’t want to cuss, because I wanted to treat you with respect and not anger. I finally feel like I am ready to give an answer while still maintaining eloquence and hopefully you will take this as a teaching moment because I am doing my best to make it one.
First off, the LGBTQA does not fight just for legal issues. It fights for recognition, acceptance, understanding, and education. They try to stop bullying, to encourage people to learn about minority sexualities, and in general to just treat everyone with equal respect. I wanted that cleared up before I even touched on asexuality, because I can’t teach anything at all if you have such a convoluted and limited view of what the LGBTQA is supposed to fight for. It is not all about legal rights.
So, about asexuality: I know that many people feel the same way you do and I can see where you get that idea. It comes from a lack of education about the issues faced by the asexual community. Just because you have educated yourself with a brief (and widely offensive on many levels) documentary does not mean you have sudden knowledge of the inner workings of our community. You’ve seen a small glimpse of our lives and made assumptions based on that knowledge alone. So, here is a condensed list of some of the worst problems asexuals face.
1. Corrective rape. Many in the LGBTQA community share this struggle with us so they, of all people, should understand it. People decide that they know us better than we know ourselves and so in a misguided attempt to fix us, or show us what we are missing, or any other stupid justification they can think of, they rape us. This isn’t just some abstract concept that I am saying could happen to us, it is something that does happen and is still happening every day. It happened to me and it has happened to far more of my asexual friends than I care to think about. If that isn’t something we need support for then I don’t know what you could possibly consider a serious enough problem for us to earn a letter.
2. When I go to my doctor, if I mention my asexuality it is automatically written down as a disorder. When I was in therapy (to deal with PTSD from my rape) my asexuality was treated as a symptom despite having existed long before the incident. My sexuality is thought of as a mental illness. Again, this is an issue that many in the LGBTQA community have dealt with themselves and I assure you asexuals face that same issue.
3. When I come out to someone I am told that I am:
- Lying
- A prude
- Must have been molested as a child
- Haven’t met the right person
- Just in a phase
- Diseased, I should get tested
Again I am seeing a startling similarity to the exact same insults and accusations that get slung at LGBTQA people.
4. Because of a lack of education about my sexuality, I spent the first 20 years of my life convinced I was broken. I genuinely thought there was something wrong with me on a fundamental level because I didn’t feel sexual attraction. Because of a lack of education, there are still people today who are asexual and have no idea that there are others like them and a name for what they are. The visiblity and education that the LGBTQA fights for actually stands a chance of changing that for us.
5. I have been told many times to just go kill myself because me and my, “special snowflake,” sexual orientation don’t deserve to live. I am not alone in being told that.
You talk about the LGBTQA fighting for a safe space and for respect and I cannot for the life of me understand how you could possibly believe that those same needs are not present in the asexual community too.
We are bullied, raped, insulted, erased, and even the group of minorities that is supposed to support people in those situations refuses to acknowledge us. We fight for you and your rights because we know exactly what it feels like to be hated, abused, and threatened for who you were born as. It’s about time you guys started fighting for us too instead of adding on to the attacks.
Even if none of that were true, I want to point out that we shouldn’t have to earn our way into the acronym through acts of oppression. People don’t have to be threatened with death or violence in order to be considered, “worthy,” of a place among the elite sexual and gender minorities. Our identity should not be erased or deemed insignificant just because someone decided that we aren’t nearly bad enough off to deserve the respect and support of our fellow minorities.
I got through that without swearing, I did my very best not to get too angry at you because I know you were likely not trying to be insulting. I hope that I have gotten my point across respectfully and that maybe you will respect me enough to listen and allow yourself to see more clearly exactly why we fight so hard for that single letter at the end of your acronym.