aces are lgbt

For people who can’t see the image for some reason:

It’s a “Dear Abby” column, published in 1995. The letter writer, “Not Looking for a Girlfriend in New Jersey,” identifies as a 53 year old male virgin with no interest in either women or men, despite coworkers having assumptions that his lack of a family means he must be gay.

This man expresses no concern about his situation (other than the presumed exhaustion at being continually misidentified), and suggests he was writing simply so other people could see that “a man who had no interest in sex” exists.

Abby blows it out of the ballpark with her response:

People who have no sexual feelings are called “asexual.” Since it doesn’t appear to bother you, it should present no problem. You are accountable to no one except yourself [emphasis mine].

Here we have the bastion of middle American, the “nice White lady with all the answers”, normalizing this man’s experience and literally telling him to ignore the haters. Pre Millennium. She even calmly supplies this man with the language to identify himself, since he seems not to have encountered it before; that must have been so empowering for him, to have a word for his experience and identity, and to hear that others shared it.

@ ace teens: you are wonderful and valid.

You aren’t sexualizing yourself by calling yourself ace.

You aren’t sexualizing other teens by calling yourself ace.

You aren’t being homophobic by calling yourself ace.

If you feel like ace works for you, use it.

It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t fit later on or others think you’re too young or whatever.

1. You are NOT sad, and no one has a right to be upset by your identity. 2. You do not need to explain, to an adult person or anyone else, what you consider sexual attraction, or why you think you are not experiencing it. No one has the right to ask you to question your own identity. 3. You do not need to listen to anyone trying to convince you you are probably more gay or more straight, or anyone trying to change the way you identify in any other way. 4. Asexuality is not about whether you have had or are having sex. If you self-identify as asexual, that is not you sexualizing yourself, and you are not harming yourself by taking on a label that MIGHT change in the future. and don’t ever let anyone convince you otherwise.  5. You are not required to keep an open mind that your orientation may change. It MIGHT change, and if it does, i hope you can welcome and enjoy whatever you are feeling when it arrives. But you aren’t required to participate in the rituals of dating, crushes, or experimenting just to prove that it’s really NOT what you want. 

I am a firm believer in self-exploration, and obtaining self-knowledge through questioning what we know about ourselves, and the world. But the way ace kids are constantly expected to provide answers for how we are the way we are, and what it means, and how we’re really really open to being something else, is just disgusting. It does more to turn kids AWAY from relabeling or reexamining themselves.

Relationships don’t have to be passionate to be intimate.

Relationships don’t have to be intimate to be loving. 

No, y’all literally erased our section. You can see it in the wiki history (page is LGBT symbols). @discourseprincesa (won’t let me proper tag, sorry) @killvrsmaim here’s your receipts.

No, y’all literally erased our section. You can see it in the wiki history (page is LGBT symbols). @discourseprincesa (won’t let me proper tag, sorry) @killvrsmaim here’s your receipts.