Q&A: “I’ve just seen a lot of discussion on my dash about straight cis ace/aro’s not belonging in the LGBT+ space…”

anonymous said:

Hi Vesper! Hope you’re well. I’ve just seen a lot of discussion on my dash about straight cis ace/aro’s not belonging in the LGBT+ space because it’s “not for them” (I’m Ace but not straight) and I found it really disheartening how so many people (Who are part of LGBT) agreed that they didn’t belong w/o listening to actual ace/aro people. To me it sounds like they want to drop the “A” altogether. I was just wondering what your thoughts are? Thanks.

hi anon! sorry for taking so long to respond to your ask.

sadly, people saying crap like this is nothing new. it is incredibly disheartening how people within the LGBT (and ace) community(ies) are so quick to police others’ identities. you’d think that people who have had their own identities policed wouldn’t rehash the same shit onto others, but no. everyone wants to host an oppression olympics and/or erase asexual identities.

my opinion (and to be honest, i don’t even see this as opinion so much as fact) is that anyone who is asexual is by definition not ‘straight’ in the sense of ‘straight’ meaning ‘heteroromantic heterosexual’. there are heteroromantic aces who self-identify as straight aces, but being heteroromantic does not erase their asexuality. they are still not heterosexual. i feel like people who argue against heteroromantic aces (especially cisgender ones) conveniently ignore this fact, thus attempting to erase heteroromantic aces’ asexual identity.

it goes without saying that that is absolute bullshit.

there is a lot more to be said about this topic, but i’ll leave it at this because i really don’t want to be angry today. ;(