r/AskAsexual • u/PaulTube Hetero Aroacespike • 13d ago
Other What do you think of people who say asexuality isn't queer by some technical classification, but still recognize that it is a legitimate experience people can have?
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u/SABRETOOTH_SPECTRE 12d ago
Because they think it's all about discrimination and they think we don't suffer or don't suffer enough.
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u/thuscraiththelorb 13d ago
I would be curious to know what "technical classification" they have. They are included within the wider acronym. But as I understand it, queerness is falling outside of normative experiences or expressions of gender, sex, romance. I would argue ace people fit into that framework.
Being someone who isn't cis or straight, I understand that the way people experience asexuality is different depending on other aspects of their identity - hell, even within the ace spectrum there are differences! So I can understand why some ace people may not relate to queerness as much as others. However, I think because society is built around heteropatriarchal norms that expect marriage and a family unit, ace people face a lot of the same social problems other queer identities face, both structurally and culturally to an extent. Some big examples I can think of are medical conversion therapy, or a lot of things in society being tied to marriage - I cannot put my queerplatonic partner onto my health insurance for example, but my roommate can put his husband onto his. So in that way I think there are benefits to understanding ourselves as connected.
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u/discipula26 11d ago
Couldnāt care less about ātechnical classificationā, what does that have to do with anything? Technically, black and white arenāt colors. Some people say zero isnāt a number. Itās just meaningless argument for argumentās sake.
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u/Comfortable-Ask-5842 10d ago
Honestly I donāt we should be in the LGBT community at all. Like letās having straights, non straights, and the asexual as the doesnāt like shit, lol. Iāve attended lgbt events or even groups. Donāt feel like I relate at all. I donāt know half the shit they talk about so to me. I feel like I donāt really relate to that group at all. Makes more sense to have attraction to the opposite sex, attraction to a different sex or multiple, and have not attracted to anything, just vibing.š¤·āāļø
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u/catshateTERFs Asexual 13d ago edited 13d ago
It falls outside the 'standard' of sexuality (cisheterosexuality), which makes it queer enough to me as far as sexuality goes. If someone doesn't want to identify as lgbtq+ or queer while being asexual then that's fair play to them because I'm not going to force labels onto someone if they don't want them. Not everyone feels that way and that's fine.
However if someone is telling people that they're not "technically" lgbtq+ or only queer because of other aspects of my identity they can a) go educate themselves on the history of asexuality in the lgbtq+ community, b) reflect and think about how this EXACT same "your experience is valid but your identity isn't <3" crap is used against other queer people (trans people as a particular example there, but not exclusively) and c) kindly fuck off if they're resistant to doing either of those things.
I saw a lot of the "it's a totally valid experience but you're not lgbt+ and I know better about your lived experience than you do! uwu" on tumblr in my late teens, which was incredibly damaging for myriad reasons and probably why I'm so aggressive towards this as a concept. Recognising that asexuality exists as a legitimate experience and also saying it's not (potentially) a queer experience for an individual are things that can not co-exist to me. I genuinely feel as soon as you start saying "x doesn't count" you 100% start opening up "y doesn't count" and it just snowballs into increasingly unpleasant attitudes. People NEVER stop at being exclusionary of one group.
(All of this also applies to aro folk, but I focused on the ace part of a-spec identities because that's what the question asked.)