glitched bi

Hey! I got a huge response to the survey, so thanks to everyone that participated. No thanks to the girl who submitted the exact same answers five (5) times in a row and thought I wouldn’t notice.

First of all, the big question: Is asexuality an LGBT identity? 39% said yes, 61% said no.

Interestingly, whether or not someone thought asexuality was LGBT didn’t depend on whether or not they were asexual. I found no correlation between being asexual and choosing one way or the other. But I did find another interesting fact.

100% of people who did NOT identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, trans, non-binary or agender (ie cis straight people) think that asexual IS an LGBT identity. Either that or they were unsure (about 3 people).

On the other hand, if you are LGBT you’re much less likely to view asexual as an LGBT+ identity.

33% of gay men, bi and trans people (not including trans lesbians) thought asexuality is LGBT. 67% did not. 6 were unsure. Only 13% of cis lesbians think asexuality is LGBT. 86% don’t. 1 person was unsure. And, overwhelmingly, 100% of trans lesbians think that asexuality is NOT and LGBT identity. 0 were unsure.

So from the first part of the survey, we can see that if you are a lesbian, gay, bi, or trans you are much less likely to think that asexual people are LGBT, with cis & trans lesbians being the least likely. The conclusion: the overwhelming majority of LGBT people don’t think asexuals are LGBT. Cis straight people do.

18% of asexual people reported that they felt their asexuality puts them in danger of being physically or sexually assaulted. However, only 2 people said they had been assaulted (less than 1% of responses).

I included the following questions in response to a common thing I’ve heard: that asexual people are LGBT+ because they face many of the same issues. I also got A LOT of people saying this on the survey. So, I decided to include some common issues that threaten LGBT people to see whether the issues are comparable.

0 people were aware of any laws that discriminate against asexual people.

2 people (less than 1%) said they were less likely to be hired due to their asexual identity. 0 people reported losing their job or being denied a job due to their asexual identity.

3 people said they’ve been to conversion therapy in order to change (or “cure”) their asexuality. 2 people said this was because they didn’t want to be asexual. The third person didn’t specify why.

0 people reported being denied shelter/kicked out because they are ace.

Aces/aros lack of attraction

Aces lack of interest in sex

Aros lack of interest in romantic relationships

People not wanting to have sex 24/7

pLaToNiC rElAtIoNsHiPs

LGBT aces/aros not "actually" being LGBT solely because they're ace/aro

Cake vs dragons

What Exclusionists Are **Actually** Upset About:

Making LGBT seem like a community for **anyone** who doesn't follow the societal norms in their relationships

Non-autistic aces/aros using autistic terminology

Non-lesbian aces/aros using historically lesbian terminology and experiences and claiming them as their own

Comparing their experiences to that of POC and their experiences

Trivializing the experience of trans and nb people

Forcing the intersex community into the LGBT+ community without their consent

Infantilizing each other

Calling all lesbians terfs

Calling trans and nb exclusionists terfs

Throwing around the usage of "terf rhetoric"

Sexualizing allo LGBT people

I just came from a conference for LGBTQ+ folks and there was widespread support for aro/ace people. There were entire panels centered around being ace/aro. There were ace/aro flags being sold alongside other LGBTQ+ flags. The language used was inclusive to a spec folks. In the panel on lateral oppression, there was no mention of exclusionist or TERF ideologies (rightfully so). Panelists who were specifically invited to speak spoke freely about them being a spec or about how great they thought the split attraction model was.

especially considering organizations like GLSEN were pretty much forced to include aces under threats of pulling donations/losing support from ace people when they had the #gotyourback week. when lgbt groups are fucking DESPERATE to have money, they’ll do what they have to in order to get resources.

i know many exclusionists irl who are silent about being exclusionists in lgbt spaces because of the fear of being kicked out so the cishets in their group won’t be ~uncomfortable~.

but aside from that– what safe space is this woman trying to access? a support group for female rape survivors at a big city LGBT center? is she browsing the self-help section at one of the few remaining LGBT bookstores? attending an anorexic-focused meeting of SLAA marked LGBT-friendly? hanging out at the castro country club and having a latte by herself?

look, you could only bring up this hypothetical if you are totally unfamiliar with how these spaces work in real life! there is no gatekeeping that happens! there are no “GayIDs” and no one to check them! an ace dude could show up to my weekly A.A. meeting for HIV+ gay men and everybody would just assume that he’s gay and HIV+, because why else would he be there? an ace woman attending a support group for lesbian survivors of rape will be assumed to be a lesbian survivor of rape!

and when they inevitably get up and clarify that they are not those things, the response will be “well… ok, then why are you here?” with an undercurrent of “this person is probably closeted” because these groups are almost totally self-selecting. this fear you idiots have of being chased out of real-world spaces is a self-indulgent persecution fantasy.

And I am watching as they slowly try changing the definition of terf/twerf and moving it away from transmisogyny, transphobia and misogyny so they can give their “you’re aphobic” claims more power. They are removing the definition so we cant use it to specifically refer to terfs and their harm to trans woman.

They are sticking with their claim that cishet aro/aces have it just as bad or worse than trans woman. They are continueing to compare trans woman to actual terfs and using their new definition to do so.

At least they are trying to. And its fucking disgusting. I had to witness inclusionists use a term that means “trans (woman) exclusionary radical feminist” to say “ace exclusionists are just like trans exclusionists!” then “ace exclusionary came from trans exclusionists” then “ace exclusionism is terf rhetoric” and finally to “ace exclusionists are terfs”.

We fucking see what you are doing.

Terf is not a slang word for you to use lightly against people you disagree with. Terf does not mean just “exclusionary”. Terfs specifically target trans people. Twerfs specifically target trans women with the belief that trans women are not real women. Terfs specifically exclude trans women from spaces they need to survive.

Terf rhetoric has actually caused deaths, terfs have been harming trans women from the beginning and you want to use that to scare people into believing in aphobia?

Ace History Day! Please click the links if you want to more clearly see the posts.

Time to Learn about The History of “The A” and AVEN’s Response to that:

On May 11th 2003, AVEN User whirlygirl suggested “hi group, if we could add an ‘A’ to the end of the LGBT, we could help add ourselves to the list minority groups.” Implying at that point in history (over a decade after LGBT as an acronym came into existence), there was no “A for Aro/Ace”

3 Hours Later, David Jay brags about how at his school, he got the A included and in a really “cool” way!! He put f*g in the acronym, with “asexual” (not aro) as the A! He also included BDSM in the community, just cause. What a cool dude.

Hours later during the morning of the next day, AVEN User VivreEstEsperer, Kate, tells him, hey, the a is already for allies, isn’t that confusing. This comment implies that, wow, the A really WAS for allies before this mess. Strange?? Almost… as if there’s a long history of allies being in the acronym.

Over 12 hours later, David Jay acknowledges the importance of Allies but says they don’t go under the A! Allies are Q for Queer because allies ~queer heteronormativity.

Days later, Kate is confused. “ What do you mean, out to mess with heteronormativity? I know what the term means but Im confused as to what you mean by it, in this context. You’re, and most of us on this board, an ally yourself… you’re not gay but still ally yourself with the “gay cause” and such, its the next best thing to having an asexual movement and all. So how can you say you dont exist? did you mean by that statement that all allies are not heterosexual? cus that certainly wouldnt be true. *confused* Kate”

David Jay does not reply to her pointing out that David Jay is just an ally. Awkward. Time passes, even more ace folk chime in on the then growing debate and admit, “The A is for Ally, the LGBT community doesn’t even know we exist. Just change the acronym to GRSM or Mogai.”

Over a Decade after the original thread, in 2015, GLAAD launches the twitter campaign #GotYourBack saying “A is for Allies,” encouraging allies to actually support LGBT folk. Ironically enough, it calls out people uncomfortable with LGBT PDA and asks them to do something about it. AVEN responds in horror and starts the #GiveItBack campaign, a controversial move not everyone agreed with. GLAAD gave in after a couple days of harassment and issued a statement, which AVEN commented on. Everyone there is convinced that the A has always been for Asexual. Only now it’s not just Asexual, it’s also for Aromantic and Agender too.

What a leap ten years can do! It progressed so much they accused an LGBT community of STEALING the A and making it about Allies. Amazing!!

Started from recognizing that The A is for Ally, now we’re acting like that never happened.

Never forget that David Jay and the Ace community once acknowledged that the A is for Allies but decided, a decade later, to act like the A was stolen from.

you people just dont fucking care about lgbt people do you. not really. not ever.

ace tumblr: lol you guys sound like cis people :) people in the same category can have different experiences, as is shown by the fact that straight guys are rewarded for their sexual attraction while you guys sometimes get murdered for it :) it’s called intersectionality sweaty :)

lgbt people: just because heteromantic aces and heterosexual aros have different experiences than “heterosexual heteromantic” doesn’t make them any less straight, because “straight” is about your position in society as decided by which genders you’re attracted to…

ace tumblr: how dare you. this is oppression. this is acephobia. someone called me gay once which proves that our oppression is similar. anyway i don’t feel straight so I’m not. why are you calling me homophobic when we’re both qu**r? you allos are so weird.

“Bi woman brings shitty/violent homophobic boyfriend into lgbt safe space.”

Let’s think about that as a reason to exclude bi women from spaces if they want to bring a boyfriend..

What is the alternative for that bi woman? Being excluded from her community with her shitty homophobic boyfriend and being further isolated with this person.

The lgbt community is a community for a reason. OBVIOUSLY safety is the priority. So why is the safety of bi women so easily discarded?

The response to a bi woman with an unsafe boyfriend who likely will not allow her in these spaces by herself is to help her !!! Protect her ! Support her!

Like hello?!?

“Bi women can’t bring their boyfriends because they might be shitty and hate the lgbt and we need to think about safety.”

So we .... leave the Bi women alone with men who hate them? That’s the solution that keeps the community safe? Only when bi women aren’t members of the community.

A 17 year old girl being murdered by a 21 year old man for dating someone else isn’t a victim of “aphobia,” that’s misogyny. When he posted pictures of her mangled and broken body, he didn’t talk about her being ace (which is a ridiculous thing to call a teenager), he did it to demean her as a young woman/girl. He was an incel which is an extremely misogynistic hate culture. His social media posts about her murder were explicitly about how men “orbit” around women and was in fact based in hatred of women.

Asexuals using the murder of a child to pretend aphobia is real and to spread ace visibility are straight up evil. Like… please let this girl rest in fucking peace without using some fucking batshit agenda. No, this isn’t like homophobic hate crimes, yes this was entirely misogyny. An innocent girl was murdered for simply being a girl in the presence of an evil man. That’s it.

you are not LGBT. you never, ever, ever will be and you cannot change that. you do not belong in the LGBT community. you cannot reclaim the q slur. pride is not about you. you have no rights to LGBT spaces or resources.

Defining pan as “not caring about genitals” or “attraction to men, women, and trans people” is transphobic.

and then they realise they are gay/bi

but they’re not gross and dangerous and looking for attention and sex! and they have no idea what internalised homo-/biphobia is, how to recognise or overcome it because they have no contact with any actual LGBT communities because they’re hiding behind a screen and isolating themselves

and because they have this skewed online-only perspective and don’t know any actual LGBT people they keep believing the LGBT-phobic propaganda

but at the same time they can’t deny to themselves that they are a part of the community

so because they’re 14 and confused and self hating they just make up a new word that means the same but gives them this nice comfort of a clean slate

and i hear stories like yours very often and stories of people who used to id as MOGAI but grew out of it and are now LGBT

but the problem is that most people don’t understand that this MOGAI shit is just kids being stupid on the internet, they take it seriously and then you get mainstream publications writing about how “pansexuality goes beyond bisexuality, includes trans people and means you love the person’s soul” or whatever because guess what

cishets love that shit! they love their homo-/biphobic ideas of us as soulless sex monsters reinforced by people from our own community! they love hearing that you need to be a Special Separate Sexual Orientation to not be grossed out by trans people!

you are not special for identifying as a word that you’re pushing on the rest of the community. queer used to be special! i liked it because it was something that cishets called me that i could take back! now you fucking idiots have made it the new, cool, inclusive thing for cishets and everyone else to call LGBT people! it isn’t special anymore, and you’ve made it so I can’t tell my friends from my enemies.

putting ‘we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it’ in your bio or, usually, as a response to someone saying queer is a slur, is one of the most insulting things ive ever seen. literally, how fucking dare you you stupid goddamn blogger. you are not dying of a plague. you are not dying of a plague that is being deliberately ignored by your government so more of you will die. you are a fucking blogger who’s been asked to maybe not call us the queer community. get the fuck over yourselves challenge.

also fuck you in the fucking ear if you think queer isn’t a slur. I’m so goddamn sick of my experiences being treated as either inconsequential or straight up lies. the only times i heard the word queer from birth until fucking 8th grade was when my stepdad was telling me we should kill all the immoral, ungodly queers, or when boys at my school bullied me for being visibly LGBT. i have mutuals (ya’ll are welcome to comment) who had identical if not worse experiences.

Queer is a slur and I don’t care what fucking made up argument you have against that

no, the idea that queer is a slur was not started by TERFs. if it was then i guess i better warn my stepdad, the kids that used to bully me, and the people who abused my mutuals that they’re unknowingly repeating TERF rhetoric.

no, queer was not reclaimed by the LGBT community in the 70s/80s/90s/whatever. if it was it didn’t reach Arkansas.

and finally, bolded so you can’t ignore it: