If you were scrolling on your feed, saw the title, and jumped on to defend yourself as a member of the LGBT community, relax my friend, you don't have to. This is an ace positive space.
I just had to rant on here for a second because I was on Twitter, and I came across a tweet that said "Your reminder that the "A" in LGBTQIA does NOT mean "ally". It never will."
Of course, people who are apart of the community or have done research into the community know that the "A" can stand for asexual, aromantic, or agender.
Anyone who's stuck with my thought books for an extended amount of time knows that I identify as greysexual (grey-ace or aspec works as well). So I loved this tweet. But I just HAD to read the comments, which were full of people arguing the validity of certain aspecs in the community.
Basically, the argument goes that if you're cisgender and asexual BUT heteromantic, you're not LGBTQ.
Which... idk, that doesn't sit right with me. I don't like being grouped in with allosexuals because I've shown romantic interest in men. I'm not allosexual. My allosexual sisters experience much different desires than I do. It's just not the same thing.
Like all things, sexuality is a spectrum. And no, I'm not talking about a spectrum between being straight or gay. I'm talking about the concept of feeling sexual attraction vs not feeling it.
Here's a visual. I used the skull to mark where I felt I fall on the spectrum. As you can see... I'm not allo in the same way the majority of society is. I've experience "sexual attraction" three times with three different men. Sexual attraction is in quotations because I'm honestly not even sure if it was physical attraction or romantic attraction. I've experienced this feeling so infrequently that I literally can't tell what it even is yet.
So yes, I consider myself grey-ace instead of ace because I might have experience heterosexual attraction a few times. But from the conversations I've had with others... by the age of 21 three instances is not a lot. Apparently, it's a very normal thing to experience, even on the daily- that legitimately blows my mind!
So as you can see, I do not fit the definition of allosexual. Therefore I am not straight. I'm a heteromantic grey-ace. Why does that make me LGBTQ+? Because romantic attraction and sexual attraction are NOT the SAME THING. YOU CANNOT GROUP ME IN WITH HETEROSEXUALS BECAUSE I WANTED TO HOLD A BOY'S HAND. HETEROMANTIC IS NOT HETEROSEXUAL.
To conclude, I'm going to quote a reply I saw beneath the original tweet that calmed me down and made me realize that not everyone is so unaccepting in the community:
"If you're not SIMULTANEOUSLY cis, heterosexual, and heteromantic, then you're LGBTQ+."
At the end of the day, let's just agree to stop trying to disclude the ace community, whether they're purely ace, aroace, aspec, homoromantic ace, or heteromantic ace. There's not limited numbers of identities that LGBTQ+ encumbers, and it's not a competition. We're all here to support and love one another, so let's let one another do just that!
Thank you for coming to my 1 am Ted Talk.