Tuesday, 18th November 2014
October 26th – November 1st was Asexual Awareness Week. I sincerely hope that most people within the LGBTQ+ community heard about this in some shape or form, and particularly that any people identifying as asexual or ‘ace’ were able to attend workshops or events held for that week.
To be honest, when I was a teenager, what I knew of asexuality was limited to the biological terminology and I had never heard of someone identifying as asexual. However, once I reached university (and particularly when I joined blogging site Tumblr), my awareness increased a significant amount. It took very little time for me to accommodate this new information – I mean, if different people can experience different sexual attractions, surely it isn’t a stretch of the imagination that people could experience no sexual attraction at all?
Well apparently, this is an issue for some people. It is my personal understanding - both from posts on blogging sites and from conversations with ace people - that they come up against an onslaught of questioning, misunderstanding and often downright rudeness on a regular basis. In this way, I drew comparisons with my own experiences of my sexuality. This is one of many reasons why I react negatively to LGBTQ+ people who consider asexuality to be ‘different’ and thus not a part of the community.
Humanity struggles to learn, especially when faced with ‘new’ things. A natural reaction to this is fitting all things into nice neat little categories. Generally speaking, society groups anyone who doesn’t identify as heterosexual or conform to gender ‘norms’ together (e.g. the LGBTQ+ community). Now hold on to your underwear, because here comes a laboured metaphor!
The LGBTQ+ community all reside on a fabulous cruise ship afloat on the sea of society. Now many people expect the intrepid voyagers of the Great Ship LGBTQ+ to abandon their vessel and join the Great Ship Conformity. Now some of the voyagers aboard LGBTQ+ believe that certain fellow shipmates should have their own little lifeboat, as they neither belong here nor on Conformity, and so they send them off to fend for themselves. However, this leaves the LGBTQ+ vulnerable, and it is subsequently boarded by the Conformity and everyone’s rights are heavily suppressed forever!
Ok so I ran out of metaphor a bit at the end there…my point is this: every member of the LGBTQ+ community has a responsibility to consider and accommodate the needs of everyone covered by that umbrella – and that is anyone who doesn’t fit society’s ‘cisgendered’, ‘heteronormative’ view of the world. Encouraging asexuality awareness is just one of the ways we can strengthen our bonds and continue to campaign for equal rights for EVERYONE, and not leave any member of society out at sea.
TTFN
Written by Nigel
