queer as fuck

@afab-bitch I don’t know for sure, but I think @lgbtpnflags is accusing you of being a TERF. which is awkward, because you’re a nonbinary trans man. 

i double checked with the dictionary:

https://twitter.com/CriminelleLaw/status/1037511306906099712

Reminds me of my mom getting remarried several years ago, for about a weekend - dude waited until after the wedding to tell her he expected her at waiting at home with dinner waiting when he finished work.

This is why it’s so confusing to me that there’s this ace exclusionist/inclusionist argument going around. It’s as if a large chunk of the community just changed their minds on their opinions of asexuals seemingly out of nowhere, it’s such an unprovoked heel-face turn that no one could’ve predicted.

This is why I was immediately suspicious of the exclusionist/inclusionist debate. The tumblr hivemind had already made peace with its feelings towards asexuals, or so I thought. They were members of the LGBT community. They were why, for a while, people were conscious of putting an “A” or a plus sign after the usual acronym.

That whole “straight people lying about their sexuality and having no way to prove them wrong” is the exact kind of bullshit that bisexuals had to put up with. Trust me, I know. I am one. Whenever a bi person is in a relationship with the opposite sex suddenly their queerness is invalidated, and the queer community turns into this “you have to be this gay to ride the rides” clusterfuck that excludes everyone but, surprise, gays and lesbians.

time for a friendly discussion in reference to this post

“Why can’t they do their own thing? Why do they need access to the lgbt community, whst purpose does it serve?” 

Why should they do their own thing? The LGBT+ community is a congregation of groups that aren’t the “default” cishet. If we just randomly exclude groups who fit that criteria then why do we group ourselves together? We should split up LGB and T into separate groups for starters, gender and sexuality aren’t the exact same thing, after all. NEXT we should split off the B from the LG because us nasty bi people can be in het relationships so clearly we don’t belong with the True Gays. So there, we have our new, more exclusive groups! The Ts, the LGs, the Bs and the As!

Alternatively: what purpose does excluding ace people serve other than to hurt them? 

“If you are asexual aromantic go talk to other like minded people for support the LGBT community is an activist group, pushing for rights and is by nature a political movement to push for our collective rights,”

I’m not gonna lie, I had some trouble figuring out where to break this up. You had a 223 word sentence there dude. Not picking on your punctuation, I have a habit of writing running sentences as well, just wanted to mention that if it looked like I was cutting off in a weird place.

As a proud member of the LGBT+ community, I am going to say that a) my being LGBT+ definitely makes me like minded with ace people and b) I am not a LGBT+ activist. Have I been to Pride? Yes. Have I joined in a few campaigns? Yes. So has my cishet best friend. Does that make her a member of the LGBT+ community? Or does the fact that I’m not a LGBT+ activist exclude me from the community? The answer to both of those questions is no. 

That’s because the LGBT+ community isn’t solely an activist group. It is a group of people who find solace in each other because everyone else has ganged up on us. It’s not some exclusive activist group. If you aren’t cishet, you’re LGBT+. That’s why there’s a ‘+’ because ‘LGBT’ only defines a portion of the group, with the rest being so non-specific that you just hae to define by “everyone else”.

You can and do have exclusive activist LGBT+ groups. lesbian activist groups, trans activist groups, trans lesbian groups. The difference is, you have to actually apply to these groups, where merely the fact that you exist means you’re LGBT+

Getting back to point a, I can relate to aro/ace people, as someone who is LGBT+. Maybe I don’t get what it’s like to not feel attracted to people, but I get what it’s like to have people invalidate you because of something about you that you can’t control. I know what it feels like to have everyone around you talking about romance and sex and knowing that you can’t join in. When I came out to my mother, she laughed. When one of my closest friends came out to his mother, she told him that he just hadn’t met the right girl. I know that we both had the same sick feeling in our guts.

“so unless their are ways the government is oppressing asexuals I question why we are ceding our already microscopic stage time to people who need community and not an activist group,”

You know what I can’t relate to? Being oppressed for being LGBT by the government. I know I’m lucky in that regard, whereas so many others aren’t. I grew up with liberal parents in liberal towns and liberal schools. When I go to the doctors office, I get the option to tick other on my forms. When I voted for marriage equality, it went through. Psychologists are understanding, friends are understanding. In school, I got bullied for being fat and autistic, not for being LGBT. The worst that happened was some guy in high school made a snide remark about it to me, followed promptly by one of my friends decking him and getting herself suspended for two days.

I am not oppressed. Does that mean I don’t deserve to be LGBT+? 

And we’re not sharing our stage with asexuals, we’re making our voices louder. The whole point of the LGBT+ community is to stick together. We support each other and understand what everyone else is going through. 

“I’m not saying you’re not valid, I’m not saying you don’t have a place in intersectional solidarity, I’m not saying you don’t deserve support,”

I’m going to say this again: why not? Why don’t these people deserve our support? Because they haven’t filled their oppression quota? What about bisexual people? Plenty of bisexual people end up in heterosexual relationships, should we dump them out too? Why are you so exclusionary? Why do you see people who are invalidated everywhere they go, people who clearly fit into the criteria for the LGBT+ community, and just turn them away? Why are you so cruel?

The LGBT+ community is for people who don’t fit into the cishet cookie cutter mold. Ace people don’t fit that mold. You can’t just turn up your nose and say that they’re don’t belong because you arbitrarily decided to ad “oppressed” to the criteria. So you can’t relate, so you don’t think ace people have had it as tough as you, why do you want to hurt them for it? It doesn’t hurt you in any way to love and support other people, to be open and accepting of people you might not really understand.

Because ace people are hurt when they are told they don’t belong. That they’re not enough. I’m bisexual. Once a lesbian friend of mine told me that she’d never date a bisexual girl because bisexual people don’t really get what it’s like to be LGBT+. Once, a straight friend of mine said she’d never date a bisexual guy because she wouldn’t want to date a gay guy. My ace friend sometimes talks about how no one ever believes that he’s ace, that people don’t believe that ace people exist. I know what that feels like.

Like when Toys ‘r Us opened in sweden 1995.

They refused to sign on to the union deals that govern such things as pay/pension and vacation in Sweden. Most of our rights are not mandated by law (we don’t have a minimum wage for example) but are made in voluntary agreements between the unions and the companies.

But they refused, saying that they had never negotiated with any unions anywhere else in the world and weren’t planning to do it in Sweden either. 

Of course a lot of people thought it was useless fighting against an international giant, but Handels (the store worker’s union) said that they could not budge, because that might mean that the whole Swedish model might crumble. So they went on strike in the three stores that the company had opened so far.

Cue a shitstorm from the press, and from right wing politicians. But the members were all for it, and other unions started doing sympathy actions. The teamsters refused to deliver goods to their stores, the financial unions blockaded all economical transactions regarding Toys ‘r Us and the strike got strong international support as well, especially in the US.

In the end, Toys ‘r Us caved in, signed the union deal, and thus their employees got the same treatment as Swedish store workers everywhere.