#aseuxals

GOOOD MORNING YOU AWESOME ACES, YOU PRETTY POLYMORUS, YOU INTELLEGENT INTERSEXS, AND TREMENDOUS TRANS F

Goood morning you amazing aces!!

I think there’s are good arguments to be made about the importance of asexuals being included when we’re talking about marginalized sexualities. (They should be included!) And I think there are some good reasons to have spaces for members of queer communities that don’t include allies of those communities. (We need some of those!) But I keep seeing some comments going around about how the A in LGBTQA “stands for Asexual, not Ally” that just don’t work for me. It would make sense to me if we were starting a new LGBTQA organization, and we elaborated that we were using that A to stand for Asexuals and not for Allies. But that’s not what I’m hearing in this. What I’m hearing isn’t that the A SHOULD be used for Asexuals, but that it was MEANT for Asexuals. And I just can’t find the evidence to support this. As best I remember it, I was first introduced to the acronym LGB, and told it stood for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual. Then I heard LGBT, and I was told the T was for Transgender or Transexual. (At some point it changed, and now I just hear the T is for Trans.) Next I heard LGBTQ, and I was told the Q was for queer… or questioning. Then I heard LGBTQA. And I was told the A was for Allies. And then later I was told it was also for Asexualies. And somewhere in there I heard some other variations, like LGBTQI and FABGLITTER. Of course, it’s possible other people were introduced to the A (or other letters) differently than I was. I’m definitely not saying my experience perfectly encapsulates the history of the language. But I’ve been hearing the A used for one of both of those things for a long time now. And it’s clear to me that the popularity of LGBTQA has grown a lot while the A’s been being used for both those things. I’ve also done my research, and I’ve asked around, and I can’t find anything significant suggesting that the A was introduced with the intention to mean one or the other. (It doesn’t even seem totally beyond possibility that it was introduced in differently places to mean different things at the same time….) So, how about we stick to saying “asexuals should be included!” or “allies shouldn’t!” or “let’s use the acronym this way!” and shy away from the “it was meant to mean” stuff? Or, please, someone send me some evidence about the introduction of the A! (Really, if someone could get the scholarship together, I would love to see an article or book on the development of all the LGB acronyms. We’ve seen a lot of interesting changes in the past decade, that are clearly tied up with a lot of changing social interests, but there’s not a lot documenting them! It might take some really good oral history work to pin some of this stuff down. Or, hey, maybe I’ve just been looking in the wrong places.)