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Q&A not Q&A: “i’m nonbinary and i’m also aro/ace. i no longer WANT to be part of [the LGBT] community…”

anonymous said:

okay sorry for dragging this in here, but. i’m nonbinary. and ppl have been saying that nb ppl ARE lgbt+. but here’s the thing: i’m also aro/ace. i no longer WANT to be part of that community, even if i “qualify” bc at the end of the day, they still don’t want me there. they may be accepting of my identity as nb, but that would mean ignoring my identity as aro/ace. if i’m gonna be accepted somewhere, i want to be accepted for all of me, not just part. just my 2 cents.

hello anon,

i feel you on this. i really do. as a non-binary, bi / pan ace i’ve also been faced with people wanting to selectively choose what part of my “counts” or is “valid reason” for me to be included in something. like you, i am of the stance that acceptance of me is an all or nothing thing; anyone who would attempt to dissect and selectively acknowledge who i am can go to hell for all i care. i have zero fucks to give.

having said all that, i am not you. my experiences are not yours. and me feeling confident in who i am as part of the larger LGBTQIA community says absolutely nothing about how you (or anyone else) feel(s) about the community. your feelings are, of course, valid and deserve to be acknowledged and respected.

you bring up a good point, anon. there is a serious problem right now within various communities that overlooks people like you. in the efforts to combat identity policing and gatekeeping that would keep aces and aromantics out of the LGBTQIA community, many people within the ace community (including myself in the past) have been making blanket assertions that “all asexuals, all aromantics are LGBT” or that “all asexuals, all aromantics belong in the LGBT community.” as you’ve noted, people in general have also been making such blanket assertions about non-binary people (be it about us being part of the LGBTQIA community or the trans community). people have nothing but the best of intentions in mind when they do this, but that does not change the fact that they’re overlooking people like you.

i can’t speak for everyone, but i’m sorry that keeps happening to you and those in a similar situation as you.

as much as i want to try and reassure you that “they” (whoever you’re referring to, presumably gatekeepers) do not speak for the community as a whole and that i, along with many others, do accept you for everything that you are– i won’t dwell on that because i’m sure you’ve heard it before and it’s beside the point anyway. the point is that those of us who do feel like we are a part of the community need to choose our words wisely as to not overlook some people in our efforts to support others. for example, instead of saying that all X are Y, we could assert every individual’s agency over their own identity; how all X ought to be welcome into the Y community if they so choose rather than asserting that X are inherently anything.

anyway, thank you for sharing your feelings with me, anon. this is something that i’d been meaning to bring up and yet hadn’t. it’s the reason why i only reblog a small fraction of the ace, aro and non-binary positivity posts that come across my dashboard, because so many of them overlook people like you.

YouTuber and Blogger, Vesper is an American expat currently living in Japan.

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