Asexuality is a misunderstood and often overlooked group within the LGBTQIA+. Over the years they’ve had to fight, often alone, for recognition within both the LGBT community and within scientific circles. For a large portion of the twentieth century, what we now understand to be just another orientation was seen as a disorder or hormonal imbalance. After overcoming the scientific misunderstandings, asexual activists dedicated attention to overcoming misunderstandings within the LGBT community.
A quick tag search on Tumblr and a few hours spent reading the pages of discourse will show that despite the best efforts of asexuals, the LGBT has been somewhat unwelcoming. This is something I tried to tackle in my article for The Matador Network, A Bisexual Call to Arms in Support of Asexuals, where I discuss the importance of bisexuals supporting asexuals, since our two communities truly do share things in common.
Simply reading an article… Continue reading
Enhance your jacket or backpack with an identity affirming pin or two, from the treasure trove of Etsy.
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Past the look: What is demisexuality?
I have recently been doing some research on the asexual (ace) and aromantic (aro) communities that are included within the LGBT+ umbrella but are very often ignored. One main difficulty the ace community faces is people rebranding the “A” in LGBTQIA as being for allies and not asexuals. This erases them even further as they are replaced by non-queer representation, which is exactly, not, the point.
The problem with LGBT+ spaces being hypersexualised means that queer ace people could feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in queer spaces due to the heavy focus on indulging in casual sexual behaviour, which is totally fine and awesome if you are into that sort of thing, but if you aren’t it leaves you in the cold as to where to find queer spaces and likeminded queer individuals. This oversexualisation of queerness and queer spaces also means that asexuals get forgotten and are sometimes not seen as being “queer enough” to be part of the community. Which is something that to bisexuals sounds strangely familiar…
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