Another part of it too is that gay people have been on the receiving end of a lot of hate along the lines of:
- “You’re disgusting licentious animals”
- “Have some self control and stop putting your sex drive before decency”
- “Why can’t you just be abstinent?”
- “Why are you so obsessed with sex?”
- Direct quote from an anti-gay evangelist I remember hearing in a documentary as a kid: “Why can’t two women just share love without genitalizing?”
- “Sex between a man and a woman is about love. Gay people are just hedonists who can’t be bothered to love anyone.”
For most sexual people, sexuality is really, really important, and being told to disregard it is degrading and dehumanizing on a level it’s hard to describe. Gay people, lesbian people, bisexual people… tend to really, really need space to celebrate their sexuality as an essential part of their humanity.
The asexual community needs space to downplay the importance of sex, to emphasize that sexual attraction isn’t part of everyone’s experience, that it’s ok not to have sex or be interested in sex, and so on. (And I’m sure any number of other things that I don’t understand)
I think that, often, those need to be different spaces. Not always, but often.
Not because asexuals are unimportant; asexuals matter and face some really awful things and need and deserve support and solidarity. The issue is that there are often diametrically opposed needs. (And often, equal and opposite triggers).
There are things like, you know, gay people might say things like “sexuality is human; all humans are sexual and that needs to be respected”; and asexual people might say things like, “why is the queer community so obsessed with sex?”, and those things are both being said for reasons and they’re both really, really hurtful to some people who come to community to have who they are recognized and celebrated. (Because there can be a visceral reaction of “Are you saying I’m not a person?” or “Are you saying the people who said I should just suppress my sexuality and be alone forever are right?”)
Which is a reason that I also see the LGBTQ space and the Gender and Sexuality center really, really differently.
It’s definitely more complicated than that, and sometimes there’s overlap (especially for homoromantic or biromantic asexual people), and any number of other things… But I think this is important context to understand.
This is a lot of stuff that’s been going through my head for the last couple years and that I really do agree with. Thank you for summing this up in a way that I had not yet managed to put together so coherently!
All of this can also be difficult to articulate and think about because asexuality tends to get lumped in with LGBTQ as an “other” sexuality (which… *headdesk*) and there ARE a lot of correlations in those respects (as well as LGBTQI people on the ace spectrum!) So there’s the assumption of crossover when, as you say above, sometimes those spaces need to not be the same. Especially with new members of various communities who are still learning and figuring themselves and these new spaces out.
You’re very right in the concept of equal and opposite triggers. In the same way that you mentioned that there are concepts and things you can’t understand about asexuality, there are absolutely things that I’ve had to confront and make myself say “I don’t understand this. I will never understand this. That is FINE, as long as I listen to the people who are saying this and do understand this. Listen, and trust the people sharing their own experience, and believe them.”
So, again! Thank you not only for the original post/history lesson, but also the follow up. Education and mindfulness are worth their weight in gold.
I think it boils down to: you don’t have to think that everyone is the same to think that everyone matters.