This essay was written for a school assignment about what I believe in. I decided that I should write about something close to home for me. That was the experience of being asexual and the under representation we face in the media.
Cultural Erasure
The general population has an issue with ignoring and erasing entire cultures and subcultures simply for the sake of convenience. It is seen in simple day to day life, in seemingly minor offenses where one refers to the LGBTQIAP+ community as simply “The Gay Community.”
As a member of the Asexual but not Aromantic community, I frequently face this forgetfulness for convenience sake. Even in places structured as a safe haven for LGBTQIAP+ the subsection of asexuality that I adhere to is often misrepresented, forgotten and ignored. One instance of this overlooking over my culture is a bag sold by American Apparel marketed as a pride bag with the words from the acronym “LGBTQA” written over and over again in rainbow text, separated by slashes. Except they made a mistake. Rather than using the correct acronym, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Queer, Asexual,” the bag replaced Asexual with the word “Ally,” a term for someone who is not part of the LGBTQIAP+ community but supports our plight. They left out a large part of the community to make room for someone who isn’t part of it to feel welcome. Likely, to market it to allies who don’t wish to be mistaken for LGBTQIAP+ but do want to support those who are. They misappropriated the term. I have no issue with allies, or non LGBTQIAP+ people at all, don’t mistake my anger for that. Allies are a valued part of the LGBTQIAP+ movement and I’m very thankful they exist. My anger is directed at the misappropriation of a term that I and many others identify with. Even if it wasn’t my term, I’d be upset. If they’d mislabeled “bisexual” as “backer” I’d still have an issue. Bisexual is a valid sexual identity just as asexual is a valid sexual identity. It needs to be adequately represented. As tweeted by author Nita Tyndall, “asexuality is often looked down on even in the queer community. It’s often erased, forgotten, seen as making things up for attention.” and continued in another tweet, “We’re called ‘not queer enough.’ We’re sexless, frigid robots. Our representation is media is practically invisible,” which is true and not said enough. The culture of asexuality is erased frequency for the sake of convenience or to make room for another culture’s comfort.
Within the same example of the erasure of cultures, there’s another snubbed culture, again one with which I identify with, mostly. The bag mentioned in the previous paragraph excludes another crucial part of the LGBTQIAP+ community: Pansexuals (or for me pansromantics), the ones that the “P” stands for. The bag leaves pansexuals and pansromantics out which is not uncommon for objects that claim to support LGBTQIAP+. The culture of pansromantics more so than the culture of pansexuals. This is simply because pansromantics fall at a junction of asexual and pansexual where they get the prejudice of both sides shoved upon them. Not only are they perceived as not gay enough to be queer, but they’re also considered not straight enough to be hetero.
So yes, in the words of Nita Tyndall, “cishet allies claiming a seat at the queer table is problematic.” Especially when they’re taking that seat from a culture that has been fighting long and hard for a seat at GSA meetings for years.