Okay. But here’s the thing: Most cis hetrom aces don’t have full straight person privilege! A lot will actually feel alienated and some may feel broken because, get this, they are not actually straight people! (And don’t even get me started on aromantic people because also guess what, I am not straight, I have never felt straight, and I sure as suger-fucking don’t have straight privilege if I am open about my sexuality, which I am! I do everything but wear I AM ASEXUAL shirts, and that’s only because I don’t have one.)
So when you claim that hetrom straight aces coming into queer spaces is just like straight cis people coming into queer spaces, you are making a comparison that is not actually accurate. If you want to fight with me over this, just consider that a heteroromantic cis asexual married couple were denied adoption rights because of their sexuality. That? That is not straight privilege. That is not straight people. That is not what straight people experience. So while I do understand your worry about “straight” people in queer spaces, it stands that hetrom aces are not straight.
Nobody is claiming that you don’t experience oppression. You’re right. You don’t have sexual privilege. And that really sucks. That doesn’t make it okay to appropriate the word queer. It has a history. It’s a reclaimed slur. It can’t mean the same thing to the cishet ace community and it’s really insulting to claim as much. Certainly there can be spaces where we all interact as part of a broader community who have non-normative sexualities and gender expressions, but that doesn’t mean non-cishet people don’t need their own safe spaces.
Thank you, this is a very respectful post.
I think most of the disagreement comes from definitions of the word, and I do understand that by that definition, hetrom aces are not queer. But not everyone goes by that definition, not even within the queer community - it puts aces in this weird position where some people recognize all aces as queer, some only recognize non-hetrom aces, and some just won’t have aces at all. While I respect that as someone who doesn’t use the label it is not mine to define, if the meaning is so fluid at this point in time, what are we to do?
I personally believe that if hetrom and arom aces are allowed in queer spaces, they do need to be respectful, especially hetrom, because they will have different experiences than other queer people. Hetrom in particular have to recognize that their relationships will, for the most part, seem “normal” to outsiders, just like a bi/pansexual with a partner not of their gender will seem “normal.”
