This upcoming week is Ace Week (or Asexual Awareness Week). I try to celebrate it every year, it's really a highlight of the fall for me. This year I was able to celebrate by organizing events for my school's asexual community! Which is very exciting, we're going to have a community discussion, a student panel, a workshop on sex ed, and a social event. This is the first year that we've had a student panel, and I'm so excited for when that happens!
Having said all that, the ace community has a long way to go in terms of inclusion and diversity. More and more aces of color are speaking up about how the community is racist, and I've seen more disabled aces speaking up about how the community is ablest. We need to make radical strides towards making these intersectional identities more welcome.
But I also want to discuss the inclusivity of aces in queer spaces. So many people are still aphobic, possibly without realizing it. In particular, I want to highlight assumptions that get made when you tell someone "I'm asexual." Knowing that someone is asexual doesn't actually tell you anything about their relationship with sex. Same thing goes for aromanticism, knowing that someone is aromantic doesn't tell you anything about their relationship to romance.
So it follows that not dating someone just because they're asexual or aromantic is inherently aphobic. Maybe sex is important to you and you want to have a lot of it. Great, there's plenty of asexuals who love to have sex. But you don't know that from knowing someone's identity, you have to have a conversation about it. Same as if you're dating anyone else. There's so much diversity within the asexual community, we need that diversity to be respected. Not being inclusive of all aces means that you aren't inclusive of aces at all.
So here's to another year of being asexual! And here's to hopefully seeing some improvements in diversity and inclusion over the coming year!
No comments:
Post a Comment