Should Asexuals Be Included in the LGBTQ+ Community?
Recently, there has been some debate online over whether or not asexuality truly belongs in the LGBTQ+ acronym and community. There are several arguments from both sides of the issue, including debating whether the history of LGBTQ+ is what should be driving inclusion today, or whether the community should expand to include all sexualities other than straight.
Those arguing in favor of excluding asexuality from the acronym base their arguments in the logic that the LGBT community has historically been one of a fight against the shared systematic oppression of homophobia and transphobia, and that asexuals are not systematically oppressed; in fact, they are technically still straight. While some people claim that the fact that a person is asexual makes them “not straight” regardless of their romantic orientation, if that argument were true, it would invalidate asexual biromantics, asexual lesbians, etc., by saying that they aren’t truly “bi”, “gay”, etc. because somehow being asexual cancels it out, as it supposedly would with a heteroromantic asexual. Asexual heteroromantic people are still cisgender heteroromantic, which puts them under the umbrella of cishet, despite their sexuality.
Though it has been argued that asexuality should be included since other identities that have been, such as non-binary and pansexuality, the case can still be easily made that non-binary people and pansexuals face systematic oppression, while asexuals do not.
But how is it determined whether or not a group of people is systematically oppressed? In short, “Oppression in this sense is structural, rather than the result of a few people’s choices or policies. Its causes are embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences of following those rules” (1).
Iris Young, a political theorist, defines three categories of systematic oppression:
Exploitation, wherein “oppression occurs through a steady process of the transfer of the results of the labor of one social group to benefit another” (2). Exploitation creates a structural relationship between social groups, including rules about what work is, who does what for whom, how work is compensated, and the “social process by which the results of work are appropriated operate to enact relations of power and inequality” (3).
Marginalization, which is “perhaps the most dangerous form of oppression. A whole category of people is expelled from useful participation in social life and thus potentially subjected to severe material deprivation and even extermination” (4).
And lastly, powerlessness — including state-sanctioned violence and the state-sanctioned denial of natural rights, as well as increased vulnerability to interpersonal violence that the state overlooks.
The LGBT community has a history of oppression in all areas of their lives, ranging from being arrested for not wearing at least three articles of clothing from their ‘assigned gender’ to being denied jobs. In fact, between 1937 and 1950, 1,700 federal job applications were denied, 4,380 people were discharged from the military, and 420 were fired from their government jobs just for being suspected homosexuals (5). AIDS was initially called GRID, which stood for gay-related immunodeficiency disease. Despite having been identified in 1981, Reagan didn’t use the word ‘AIDS’ publicly until 1985, and barely referred to it again until 1987. He later referred to it as America’s number 1 health priority, yet designated researchers less than 1% of the national healthcare budget, and the FDA refused to accommodate patient’s requests for a faster research process and legal importation of drugs used abroad. Most importantly, the fact that gay, bi and trans people were having sex was specifically used again and again to condemn them and excuse the lack of assistance they received from people in positions of power (6). Recently, crimes against LGBTQ+ people has risen to the highest number of hate crimes per one million adults. LGBTQ+ people are “twice as likely to be targeted as African-Americans, and the rate of hate crimes against them has surpassed that of crimes against Jews” (7). These are just brief snapshots in time of the oppression LGBT people face, nowhere near a comprehensive history, and yet the statistics are still horrific.
Since heteroromantic asexuals do not experience or have a long history of systematic oppression, nor homophobia or transphobia, they therefore cannot understand the struggles that lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people go through — so why should they be a part of the community? Not to say that being asexual isn’t sometimes a struggle or difficult, just that heteroromantic asexuals do not face the same level of constant public scrutiny that LGBT people do. Additionally, in most circumstances, asexuals do not require the resources that LGBTQ+ spaces can provide, so it can be harmful to those who do face systematic oppression when those resources — such as scholarships, suicide hotlines, homeless shelters, food, and other benefits are taken away from them.
Lastly is an argument including the fact that the founder of the largest asexual awareness network, David Jay, is known to be homophobic and misogynistic, going so far as to post “I’m an active member of my school’s LGBTTQQPFAGIBDSM community, proud to say that I was key in allowing the creation of the word “fag” in the middle of the acronym. For anyone wondering that’s: Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Transexual Questioning Queer Polyamorous Flexual Asexual Genderfuck Intersex Bondage/Domination Sado/Masochism” (8). (Incidentally, this forum also shows that the A was used for allies before it was used for asexuals, so the claims that ‘allies stole the A from asexuals’ is false). Since the founder was homophobic and misogynistic, some believe that the asexual community will never escape his dark shadow, especially since there is still blatant homophobia in the conversations that take place on some asexual chat sites and popular media by asexual individuals.
There is, of course, another side to the argument that states that asexuality should be a recognized part of the LGBTQ+ acronym, and that it is harmful to asexuals to exclude them from the community. This faction deals not as much with logic but emotion and how asexuals feel rather than the history of the LGBT community, though some do draw comparisons between the ongoing argument regarding asexuality and the past arguments regarding bisexuality.
There are many personal anecdotes from people on the internet about undergoing forced medical examinations and blood tests, as well as therapy, because family members see asexuality as abnormal or a disorder, which is understandably distressing. People also mention the harm done to their relationships when they brought up that they were asexual, sometimes saying their partner became more controlling or no longer respected their boundaries. And it was only in 2013 that asexuality was officially taken out of the DSM-5 as a mental disorder (9).
Some people have drawn comparisons between the challenges bisexuals and asexuals face, drawing on faulty arguments against bisexuals from the past:
One argument was that bisexual folks should excluded from the LGBT community because their sexual orientation was ‘dependent’ on their partner; their being ‘gay’ was defined in terms of currently having a sexual partner of the same gender. A bisexual person who had a partner of a different gender was functionally indistinguishable from a straight person, and would therefore be regarded as straight. This argument is similarly applied to asexuals through the assertion that their orientation has no discernible performative component; an asexual person is functionally indistinguishable from a straight person who simply isn’t involved in a sexual relationship in that moment, so asexuals should therefore be regarded as straight by default.
There were also efforts to rewrite history to erase bisexual contributions to political LGBTQ rights movements, and then claim that bisexuals have never done anything for the community at large. This could, debatably, apply to asexuals as well, although it is often hard to tell whether historical figures truly fit the label of ‘asexual’ or not. There was an argument that bisexuals should be excluded from current political movements because their goals are distinct from, or even contradictory to the goals of the LGBTQ rights movement at large. Any attempt on the part of bisexuals to make safe spaces for themselves within the community was seen as an attack on gay safe spaces, generally by reframing bisexual pride as homophobia, or by dismissing accusations of biphobia as inherently homophobic. In other words, arguing that bisexuals (and later, asexuals), rather than being contributing members of the community, were undermining the community and its goals.
By showing how similar arguments against the inclusion of bisexuals is to asexuals, people arguing for the inclusion of asexuals in the LGBTQ+ community hope to show people the faults in their thinking and thus be more open-minded and accepting.
The inclusion of asexuals in the LGBT community is a heated issue, with passionate arguments on both sides; however, it is best to keep both sides or the argument in mind, whichever view one takes.
References:
1. Young, Iris. “Five Faces of Oppression.” Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press. 1990.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Adam, Barry D. The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement. New York: Twayne, 1987.
6. Research, policy and practice: Annual meeting, American Educational Research Association, 1988.
7. Mykhyalyshyn, Haeyoun Park and Iaryna Mykhyalyshyn. “L.G.B.T. People Are More Likely to Be Targets of Hate Crimes Than Any Other Minority Group.” The New York Times. June 16, 2016. Accessed April 16, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/16/us/hate-crimes-against-lgbt.html?_r=0.
8. “Let’s change LGBT to LGBTA.” Asexual Visibility and Education Network. May 11, 2003. Accessed April 16, 2017.
http://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/601-lets-change-lgbt-tolgbta.
9. “Asexual history.” Asexual history — AVENwiki. March 22, 2017. Accessed April 16, 2017.
http://wiki.asexuality.org/Asexual_history.
10. Morris, Bonnie J. “History of Lesbian, Gay, & Bisexual Social Movements.” American Psychological Association. Accessed April 16, 2017.
