Anyway the LGBT community is for anyone whose identity is outside of the heteronormative rule (heterosexual, heteroromantic and cis, all three of these) and any “older” LGBT person is gonna confirm BECAUSE THEY BUILT THE DAMN COMMUNITY. Try asking them. Ask a 40-50 year old (or older) gay man or lesbian what the community is for. Ask them. Do it though. Learn some of your own history from them, and then come back to me then try and tell me I’m wrong.
You’re wrong.
I’m a 59 year old gay man and I’m telling you in no uncertain terms, You. Are. Wrong.
Here’s a history lesson from someone who both lived it and has read extensively about LGBT issues, as well as being involved in many different organizations. I realized what I was when I was very young. I first came out in the late 60s. I was an activist during the 70s, 80s, and early 90s.
This is long, but history is long. It’s important. I tried to break it down into smaller paragraphs for easier reading. But it’s long. I debated not putting this under a cut, but holy hell it’s long.
If you’re actually interested in WHY you’re wrong, OP, I hope you’ll read it.
“”But to rewrite the history of the LGBT movement/community to say that
“asexuals have always been there”, that it’s “for all
non-heteronormative people”, that “bisexuality has always included
asexuals”, that “bisexuality itself has always been a distinct
‘identity’ from lesbian or gay”, that “trans has never been about sex
rather than gender”, etc. etc. etc.
Also this collection of quotes from older LGBT people (specifically bisexuals who got erased from the main LGBT history’s narrative, as it always happens)
“[A]s a bi trans woman who was there and actually saw aroaces being part of the bi community and putting in the work and dealing with the oppression… The bi community was actively rejecting definitions beyond ‘not gay, not straight’ into the mid-90s, because every definition offered excluded some of its members.” – @wetwareproblem, from this post
“When I grew up, heterosexual/homosexual/bisexual were explicitly not specifically sexual. “It’snot about sex!” was a battlecry. This was emphasized frequently as people would sit there trying to come up with some gotcha that meant that you couldn’t be gay and a virgin at the same time. Or — and this is important: that you couldn’t be queer if you weren’t interested in sex. While it’s not necessarily the same as explicitly affirming asexuality, this was a way in which the asexual experience was made intelligible under the mainstream organization of sexuality.
“There was a lot of rhetoric that emphasized this point. In particular, that the fixation on the sexual part of homo/bi-sexuality was actually a form of heterocentrism in which hets would try to strip queers of the capability for romantic attraction. “Yes, there are problems there. Yes, there’s the privileging of romantic attraction as better and more pure than sexual. And it’s worth talking about.
“But that’s not what I’m getting at right now.What I am getting at, is that in the models I grew up with, among the queers I grew up around, both aro and ace people could qualify as not just bi, but bisexual….
“During a time in which being aro or ace (or aroace) was even less intelligible to the mainstream — or even the mainstream queer community — than it is now, where were the ace and aro bi people? Where did they organize under when trying to deal with monosexism? Where did they vent their frustrations over LG exclusion? Where did they openly talk about their attractions? Who were they fighting alongside? “Bisexuals.
Aside from this, I already replied to this post saying how it enlightened me to reach the actual truth about the ace discourse: it’s pointless, because it’s a discussion on inclusion and exclusion of people in various parts of the world and it’s trying to speak over single LGBT groups’ policies. If you have a problem with your local LGBT group allowing aces to participate, you should bring it to them, not to the internet.
But my initial point still stands. The fact that von–gelmini has his own truth coming from his own experience doesn’t mean that everyone else’s truth is automatically false just because it doesn’t fit your narrative. So no, I wasn’t really being ahistorical. People were there and they remember things differently.
“actually what you’re saying is only half true because wetwareproblem and autismserenity have made up things that say otherwise, ace pride!“
the thing that rly gets me is that all that history was well-documented
if asexuals existed in the community and were involved back then then where are the historical ace pamphlets? their photos? newspaper or magazine clippings? badges? stickers? posters? where are the references to their activism? where are their mentions in the literature?
not a single one. but someone on tumblr said something was true, so it must be true
the thing that rly gets ME is that exclusionists assume that these things don’t exist because they haven’t seen them.
there’s this repeated logical fallacy in the discourse where people assume that because they don’t know of ace-related historical ephemera, or they don’t know of shared experiences aces have with the rest of us, or they don’t know of any examples of ace oppression, those things do not exist.
and then they begin all their arguments at the “these things do not exist” point.
mind you, what i should actually be annoyed by is the fact that no matter what I cite, they’re like U MADE THAT UP like really??? that’s the best you got????
that’s basically an admission that what I gave you DOES destroy your argument and that all you can do is be like “well then it must be fake.”
but anyway
examples of lesbian and gay publications casually referencing asexuals
I have access to it through the San Francisco Public Library; if anyone’s local/school library doesn’t give them access, i’d be happy to share my login, just message me. It’s really easy to search and has amazing stuff.
Here’s a page from a 47-year-old issue of “It Ain’t Me Babe,” which was California’s first feminist newspaper, and then became the first national feminist newspaper. The opening line of this article: “We affirm that all people are sensual, sexual and compassionate beings and shouldn’t be labeled as hetero- homo- bi- or asexual.”
(I mean obviously I disagree with the author, but the point is that they listed “hetero, homo, bi, or asexual” as the four options. (Keep in mind that “homosexual” was the “formal” language at the time, it wasn’t considered a slur; this wasn’t technically a lesbian newspaper, but like off our backs, it basically was one in all but name.))
(OH MY GOD SIDEBAR: I just read more of the piece linked about, about how this was the first feminist underground newspaper, and OFC my old boss, Laura X, was involved in it. she has some “women’s herstory archives” she runs now, by which i think i mean a shed in her backyard BUT ANYWAY that’s a whole nother story)
In 1975, a Eugene, Oregon newspaper called Women’s Press showcased a quote by lesbian Florence Rush, from “The Parable of the Mothers and Daughters,” about women’s rights, which said “this right can be for us all – lesbians, celibates, bisexual, asexual, amazon virgins and heterosexual….” (I’m skipping a bunch of examples that are in the same vein, because why bother giving more similar examples when I could skip to examples of other things on the list?)
…and another one in 1975 Pennsylvania, called Hera, published an article about battered women that lumped lesbian and asexual women together in contrast to straight ones: “For the most part, the herstory of heterosexual women can be summed up in three words: used, abused and abandoned. Not that the destructive male spares the lesbian or the asexual woman when he is set to mate the female.” (Bi erasure, but never mind.)
but where are the people identifying themselves as asexual?
Bristol, apparently; the first classified ad on this 1976 page of Move, a UK publication, seeks a pen pal for a “lonely asexual tv/ts.” (today this would likely say “for a lonely asexual trans woman,” but it was nineteen fucking seventy six).
In this 1977 issue of Feminist Communications, out of San Diego, CA, four women are interviewed about their sexual orientation and how they relate to the lesbian-feminist movement. Two are lesbians, one is bi in a “straight” relationship, and one, Pam, identifies as “self-sexual and not open to a relationship right now.”
I’m not ace, but I know enough to know she’s saying she’s on that spectrum. Later in the interview, she clarifies, “I think labels are really oppressive and I really resent being called straight or bisexual, asexual, non-sexual, or having to deal with a label. I think that really inhibits me as far as relating to people. People see me as one sort of sexuality and they relate to me in that way… Such an emphasis put on who you relate to takes all the fun out of relating to anyone for me.“
The way she describes her experiences is basically, “I’m asexual but I hate labels, and I don’t know if I’m heteromantic or biromantic or lesbian or what honestly.”
ok I need to take a break, but I’ve only gone through 6 years of this stuff and there are another 40 to go.
TL;DR: where is all the LBGTQ+ community ephemera that mentions aces? i don’t know, did you look through any?
Can I just be momentarily salty on how we the voices of older bisexuals, trans people, and people of color (aka the people who we know for a historical fact were shunned by the 1960s-70s gay-cis-male centered movements) are all erased and accused of lying, but the voice of one older white gay cis man (aka the people who were centered in the movement, so, you know, someone who would have been hanging out in DIFFERENT POLITICAL/SOCIAL CIRCLES) is absolutely definitely 100% true the entire truth nothing but the truth and nothing else could ever come close.
I’m not sure what’s worse, the hypocrisy, the willful ignorance, or the bigotry.
EDIT: It’s come to my attention that the guy in question is not white/cis (I just assumed the guy in his icon was him, because he looked about the right age). So my apologies to the guy in question! Although I do still think that assumption might be part of what’s causing him to be taken more seriously, my original accusation of confirmation bias still stands true. Five people say one thing, one person says another, and rather than assuming that they were just in different groups, like I did (note I didn’t accuse him of lying; I have no idea why he would do that to begin with), people assume the multiple people saying something different are maliciously lying instead of just, you know, in different groups.
Just as there are now, there were always groups that swing one way or another in terms of inclusion/exclusion. The existence of radfem/terf groups in the 90s doesn’t mean that anyone who wasn’t a radfem/terf in the 90s is lying about their LGBTQ+ experience. My group in the early 00s in Montgomery, AL was wildly accepting of all sorts of different people, with a black bisexual cis woman as our president and a black heterosexual trans woman as our VP. Whereas the groups where I live here are all VERY gold star lesbian and hostile towards any bpq+, ace, aro, and trans women. I don’t think this means the community as a whole has gotten more hostile towards the BTQ+ segments; I think it’s just a difference in leadership. If all the lesbians in your area are radfems, chances are you be too, even if it’s just so that you have a place to belong.
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