You are too young to remember that 25 years ago certain people had an absolute fit and fell in it when the 1993 March On Washington official title included bisexuals, or how horrible people were to bi women especially when they tried to participate in lesbian/dyke spaces. I was in the room when the Julia Penelope-inspired Lesbians For Lesbians refused to participate in Northampton, Massachusetts Pride because bi people were being included and held their own picnic in protest. You may even be too young to remember the exact same fight about trans people being added to the term LGBT, or people saying transantagonistic and generally horrible things about trans folks when we tried to join queer groups and Pride events, even those of us who are queer-identified (which especially confused me). So it’s completely exhausting to discover that we are having, literally, the same fight again about some slightly different but basically associated concept in which a sexual minority group that is consistently stigmatized and disempowered is trying to join under the banner of resistance to the heteronormative, cisnormative, allosexual mainstream.
::takes a deep breath and collects myself::
Here’s the thing, Brave Correspondent: at the end of the day, there’s who is privileged and empowered by the dominant culture and then there is everybody else and you, my friend, are the else. You are, along with me and a whole lot of other people for whom “bride and groom” are not now and may never be a thing, for those of who are neither pink nor blue, for everyone who has ever needed to call ahead and ask whether our family group would be welcomed, everyone who has ever needed to take a friend into the public washroom (or wished we could). Along with all the rest of us for whom the primary narrative that’s shoved down little children’s throats from birth (or while they’re still fetal, in some cases, thanks to the fresh new misery of the gender-reveal party in which people start projecting gendered expectations on tiny humans LITERALLY BEFORE THEY TAKE THEIR FIRST BREATH) doesn’t apply.
How many people saying this is it gonna take before people fucking listen?
THIS IS THE SAME FIGHT. This is the same argument. This is the same shit, 25 years later.
Can Asexuals be part of Pride? Who decides?
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