Every time I see an exclusionist on here and I click their profile theyâre like 17 or 19 or maybe 21 at best.Â
And thatâs fair- itâs not like people that age canât have opinions or be right, theyâre people.
But when I think about how long it took me to work out my own damn sexuality, gender, and all that crap, and how gently I stepped once I realised I was queer, and how much listening to people I did to see who the hell was out thereâŚhow much I am STILL learning about people who have different experiencesâŚ
âŚit feels really odd to see people this young being so secure in their belief of who should be excluded from the community.Â
Not how to support and include, to help and support, but how to exclude.
LikeâŚbeing confident in your own sexuality at 19? Fuck yeah, good for you, Iâm happy you had a better chance and an earlier start than I did.
But⌠telling other people theyâre not queer enough to be in âyourâ space?
Your space? Not mine anymore? Huh.
Iâm over here at 35 still listening and learning and trying to understand everyoneâs perspectives, discovering that sexuality is even more complex and nuanced than I knowâŚand all these people barely out of their teens are talking like they know everything there is to know about being LGBT, ever. Like itâs all been written down, stamped, sealed, confirmed by some Authority.
Mmmm. No. Just⌠have an ounce of humility. Try gaining some perspective, please.
You havenât lived long enough to even really listen to real life aces, to really think about what LGBT means. I donât mean this as an ageist insult, I just really think that this kind of shit deserves TIME- hell I know it deserves time and thought because I am STILL unlearning bad assumptions and behaviours, and STILL meeting people who define themselves outside of the frame that I was once taught meant âLGBTâ.
And you, a teen raised in a world thatâs still pretty fucking homophobic and doesnât recognise half of what the LGBT community itself has taken years to acknowledge, you think you know it all?
Because youâre online?
While youâre here, read some posts where ace people talk about how theyâre treated. Forget semantics for a while: read the experiences.
Iâm online too, I have been for some time. Doesnât make me right, but experience is of some value. Experience in listening to queer people who arenât quite like me, that is, in trying to understand how I am similar, instead of trying to figure out how they do not belong. In how people rework things, figure out how they can be less harmful, more inclusive, more representative of all those who are marginalised.
See, Q is queer but also often Questioning. Itâs still important to let people be Questioning, there is an astounding amount of queerphobia in the world and we are NOT done working out the labels. We may never be.
Not so long ago, the T in lgbt was under question. Bisexuals are still being excluded.Â
So Iâm being told I donât matter by people who werenât even born yet when I realised I wasnât straight. Theyâre skipping right over all the reflection and going straight to self-affirmation by exclusion.Â
Which, again- if you are born into a world where you never have to question your identity, oh good grief I hope thatâs real for everyone some day.
But weâre not there yet, yanno? And I resent being told that after all these years of soul-searching and careful, very careful questioning of whether I belong and how I can be a good member of the community, people arrive so 100% certain of their claim to being LGBT that the first thing they do is try to kick others out.
tl;dr I was here first and Iâm not amused.
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