hi as pride month draws near for june reminder that cishet aces/aros are not LGBT and don’t belong in our spaces
And like, just a reminder that people like op are the people I don’t want to share my spaces with.
Every time I see an exclusionist on here and I click their profile they’re like 17 or 19 or maybe 21 at best.
And that’s fair- it’s not like people that age can’t have opinions or be right, they’re 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 there…how much I am STILL learning about people who have different experiences…
…it feels really odd to see people this young being so secure in their belief of who should be excluded from the community.
Not how to support and include, to help and support, but how to exclude.
Like…being confident in your own sexuality at 19? Fuck yeah, good for you, I’m happy you had a better chance and an earlier start than I did.
But… telling other people they’re not queer enough to be in ‘your’ space?
Your space? Not mine anymore? Huh.
I’m over here at 35 still listening and learning and trying to understand everyone’s perspectives, discovering that sexuality is even more complex and nuanced than I know…and all these people barely out of their teens are talking like they know everything there is to know about being LGBT, ever. Like it’s all been written down, stamped, sealed, confirmed by some Authority.
Mmmm. No. Just… have an ounce of humility. Try gaining some perspective, please.
You haven’t lived long enough to even really listen to real life aces, to really think about what LGBT means. I don’t 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 ‘LGBT’.
And you, a teen raised in a world that’s still pretty fucking homophobic and doesn’t recognise half of what the LGBT community itself has taken years to acknowledge, you think you know it all?
Because you’re online?
While you’re here, read some posts where ace people talk about how they’re treated. Forget semantics for a while: read the experiences.
I’m online too, I have been for some time. Doesn’t make me right, but experience is of some value. Experience in listening to queer people who aren’t 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. It’s 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.
So I’m being told I don’t matter by people who weren’t even born yet when I realised I wasn’t straight. They’re skipping right over all the reflection and going straight to self-affirmation by exclusion.
Which, again- if you are born into a world where you never have to question your identity, oh good grief I hope that’s real for everyone some day.
But we’re 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.
No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
This technically counts, as students are civilians, and thus considered a “protected person”. So yes, collective classroom punishment breaks the fourth Geneva Convention, and she should be rewarded for standing up for human rights and doing her research.
straight people stop trying to profit off of gay audiences while doing absolutely nothing to actually help us challenge
btw this is about the new rita ora song called “girls” which features the chorus “sometimes, i just wanna kiss girls, girls, girls / red wine, i just wanna kiss girls, girls, girls.”
except literally all of the four singers are straight. and the song was written by five men and cardi b.
about the song, rita said “at first listen, you’ll be like ‘oh wow. she’s definitely letting us know that she likes girls.’ but it’s not that…the song is basically about females complimenting other females and supporting each other”.
so like. she’s singing this song (written by almost all men) about girls wanting to kiss girls, and then frantically pulling a no-homo and saying that the song is about feminism somehow. not girls loving girls. which completely invalidates the love of women that wlw like myself actually have.
and her trying to immediately advertise and sell the song as a “bisexual anthem” when it features no actual bisexual artists. the lgbtq community is not a marketing campaign.
and there’s this:
because, oh, of course. women wanting to kiss women is “twisted.” thanks rita.
(also the song’s inspiration is apparently katy perry’s “i kissed a girl” so no wonder it’s a mess tbh)
tl;dr: rita ora, charli xcx, bebe rexha, and cardi b released a song trying to profit off of the lgbtq community and wlw specifically while doing literally nothing to actually help our community and marginalizing the voices of actual lgbtq artists.
the song’s just trying to take our money, treat us like nothing more than a trend, and exploit our love. please, instead of listening to this garbage song, support actual lgbtq artists.
as always, hayley kiyoko has given a perfect response. exactly what i was trying to say ❤