When I first realized that I was asexual in middle school, it was a breath of fresh air. My peers, although adults often refused to acknowledge it, were already showing a real and significant interest in each other — and I, at 13 years old, was not, neither sexually or romantically. Honestly, I didn’t get the whole hype around it anyway. I had done a quick google search and I had an easy answer, and even though those same peers teased me about “asexual reproduction”, I had something to tell other people about me, something that felt important.

It would take me almost a decade to finally come to terms with the fact that I was aromantic — asexuality’s “sister” orientation, describing a similar lack of attraction implied in asexuality, this time for romance. For me, romance and romantic feelings were more intangible, difficult to understood, apparently impossible to exist without. Was this a crush? Was that a crush? What was a crush anyway, and who am I without these crushes, whatever they are? My romantic confusion, or lack thereof, was troubling in and of itself, but what added complications and fear was another factor that hadn’t been there when I realized I was asexual — a continually spreading debate about asexual identities (and with them, aromantic ones), and where they belonged in the landscape of LGBT identity and belonging.

You see, I had considered myself LGBT for a long time, at least by some measure. Almost all of my friends were (and are, to this day), unabashedly queer. I had never found a self that made sense in the straight world, either. With all of its assumptions about attraction, partnership, and straightness, it did not welcome me. At this time, however, I had begun to notice more and more often a spreading distrust in people like me. Almost always, it was named to be a problem with asexual people, not specifically aromantic folks. It framed either so-called “straight” asexual people, and sometimes in extremes any asexual people regardless of other attraction, as invaders to a fragile LGBT community. Often, we — we? I wasn’t sure where I stood due to my complicated romantic orientation — were framed as resource-hungry, insecure, and greedy. Apparently, we wanted the apparent “benefits” of queer community, but in this view, we did not share a history, we did not respect our peers, and sometimes, we espoused homophobia. Sometimes, this call of homophobia implied our identities were intrinsically homophobic (the idea of asexuality is apparently a cover-up to convince gay teens that their sexual desires are disgusting and unnatural). Sometimes, our theories were troublesome (the idea of sexual attraction separate or different to romantic attraction is, here, tied to people who don’t want to deal with ‘shameful’ sexual attraction, or who only want to fuck queerly and not date queerly). And, sometimes, our community was just straight up homophobic (we hate gay people!).

Briefly, a small detour: I noted that this is, on a surface level, almost exclusively about asexual people, especially “straight” asexual people, but so much of that focus seems to solely be under the guise that aromantic people just aren’t worth caring about at all. (In fact, much of the arguments can be brought over to aromanticism and sometimes are — it’s easy!). All of this, being as focused on asexuality as it is, is often called “the ace debates” or “the ace discourse”, or, by those in the know, often just “the discourse”. Throughout this essay, I’ll refer to it as such, and mostly talk about asexuality — although, as I’ll talk about more in-detail later, the ace discourse has implications for aromantic people too.

Either way, this “discourse” largely started on micro-blogging website Tumblr, but has since spread outside of Tumblr to many other social media platforms as well as offline spaces, including Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit — with the last, evidenced by an entire subreddit (a community focused on a topic) called “r/exclusionism” which features banners of flags for each of the letters in LGBT, and Facebook exemplified by a screenshot below.

“Why Are The Aces So Pure? So Wholesome?” is an “exclusionist” Facebook group which mocks a perceived “purist” asexual community that is apparently toxic to the LGBT community as a whole. — [Image description: A screenshot of a Facebook group named “Why Are The Aces So Pure? So Wholesome?” The group description says: “This is SATIRE. We are an EXCLUSIONIST group. The godmin is a dirty allo wlw.”]

The asexual-coined “split model” here is being framed as self-hatred, pushed on vulnerable queer youth by selfish asexual adults. — [Image description: A twitter thread. A anonymized user says “the split attraction model did more harm to gay teenagers than has ever been properly addresssed. / youre not “homosexual heteroromantic” you are a kid struggling with your sexuality and internalized homophobia / “i’m attracted to women but could never marry a woman” is literally just compulsory heterosexuality and telling teenagers that this is a legitimate identity and not something that needs to be severely addressed is shameful”

Another tweet by a different Twitter user in the same thread. — [Image description: an anonymized user says “You’re not aromantic, you’ve just had bad relationships were people used you for sex, untreated depression which makes you think you’re too unworthy to be loved, / not caring about people is psychopathic behavior”]

Offline, I’ve made the hard choice to leave a queer support group I was in after another member of the group implied that I was “fooling” myself into my aromanticism or simply confused, even after I spoke genuinely about the long years I spent coming to terms with my lack of romantic attraction. Later, I expressed frustration about poorly thought out arguments for those pro-asexual-inclusion. An argument for asexual inclusion came up, one based on the apparent inherent inclusivity of LGBT community (“asexuals are LGBT because LGBT is about inclusion!”) This argument, unwieldy and inappropriate as I think it can be if used without thought, was weaponized in another way. It was compared to similar arguments for pedophilia (“Pedophiles are LGBT because they experience attraction that people are biased about, and anyway, isn’t LGBT supposed to include everyone?”). The two, here, share similarities — an often under-baked idea about what LGBT identity means (that is, that it is only about including as many people as possible for any deviation from a norm)— but a comparison to pedophilia puts asexual people on a hostile playing field, where we are painted as selfish people trying to worm our way into otherwise positive spaces. Our actions are still implied to be hurtful and disgusting actions. Here, we are seen as seeking acceptance for something otherwise intolerable by manipulating people eager to be kind and inclusive, claiming oppression where we have none.

Early on, my asexual identity was not especially important to my LGBT identity. I wasn’t sure who I had feelings for, but more than that, I felt alienated in a straight and cisgender world. Almost all of my friends, including early elementary school friends as proved by later meetings at local area LGBT events, were queer. They recognized me as such, even though I had problems defining a coherent orientation. As the ace debates grew larger, growing unavoidably into my periphery and then into the foreground of my life, doubts surged. If the only thing I was sure of was that I was asexual, was I LGBT? And if I wasn’t, what responsibility did I hold towards my “actually” LGBT friends? Was I a liar, a betrayer in their midst? Was I mimicking the apparently overzealous allies, people that my friends and I had begrudged for a long time, who seemed to have little understanding for LGBT people and only a bare minimum of compassion? People who insisted that they had to be given space, even when they held that space in bad faith and hurt the people in our community? If I was like this, then who was I? Was my existence inherently painful to the people I held close, my vicinity to them spiky and toxic?

I tried out having crushes on people, hoping to find an answer or some belonging. It made me miserable and anxious. I had originally, before even really hearing about the ace debates, thought that I was a lesbian. I hadn’t liked men, so that was my only option — plus, I had had a confusing dream about one of my female friends. Then, I thought… what if I’m straight? Is my lack of attraction a ruse, my subconscious plotting ways for me squirm my way into a community that didn’t want me? That felt wrong, too, so I thought I might be bi — I certainly seemed to feel equally not terribly interested in men or women. When I brought up the idea to a “properly queer” friend of mine, he rose an eyebrow and seemed to scoff. And later, when I said I wasn’t sure what crushes meant, but I thought that if I had ever had any there were only one or two mild ones, he told me it was tragic — sad as hell, honestly — and I didn’t think about being aromantic for years afterwards.

A lot of that isn’t about the toxicity of the ace discourse. It’s about shitty friends; the attractiveness of a single, easily definable label; and young kids being bad at empathizing or understanding the other. But some of it feels like it is about the ace debates, too, or at least acephobia. When I asked these same, “truly” queer friends to be more conscious of my uncomfortable relationship with sexuality, I was berated and told that I wouldn’t be able to find friends who didn’t want to talk about sex, later that I would never find a girlfriend, since lesbians were so rare and asexuals even rarer, and asexual lesbians must be the rarest. Never mind that I had already begun expressing doubt that I was a lesbian — that didn’t matter. Later, as more of us started to “do” ace discourse, we debated in our GSA and I felt more and more isolated.

Despite all of this, with ace “exclusionism” peaking its half-formed head into our little group of friends and a significant number of friends still in the “inclusion” camp, I never felt quite easy saying I was or was not LGBT with regards to my asexuality. Most people, especially other asexuals, seemed to imply that inclusionism should, naturally, be appealing to me. It was apparently the kind side of the debate, the one that cared about me and loved me and wanted to be thoughtful about asexual people and asexuality, but even alongside exclusionism, it never quite felt like the utopia it was supposed to be. Maybe it was apparently nicer, but it felt flat, half-hearted. It felt ignorant. I sat in my uncomfortable LGBT limbo, feeling queer but not-queer, sitting in a quasi-discomfort with my apparent status as a maybe-invader to a community that I held dear to my heart.

If you asked me today, I think I’m much in the same position. I don’t, as much as many people seem to want me to, have a position on the essence of asexuality, and whether or not that essence is “truly” LGBT. But, having grown up, having spent years in this community and thought about the ace debate to my own anxiety-induced nausea, I have the ability to say why, and to really, finally say that I’m no longer interested in this debate as it stands today. I don’t think that it’s meaningful, at least not yet. Not now, with the way it is going. And I’m not sure that it will find this meaning that I so desire in the near future.

You see, the ace debate — and by relation, the aro debate, as quiet as it is — is asking the wrong question. It asks if asexual people are queer, but when we ask that, we are really asking dozens of more interesting, more nuanced, more complex questions. We are asking:

What is queer identity?

Is the LGBT identity just about inclusion? If so, for who?

Can inclusion have a “who?” What does it mean if it does?

Is it even possible for asexual people to be “straight”?

If so, what are asexual aromantic people? Can we somehow be straight? If we say that asexual people can be straight, and straight is the opposite of queer, which means being attracted to people of your own gender, and if aromantic asexual people experience attraction to no one, then how can straight and queer be a binary? (Here, asexual aromantic people could not possibly fit in this binary, neither loving their own gender or another. Neither do bisexuals.)

Why is it assumed at all that the default asexual person, the only one we need to worry about, is apparently “straight”? What does that mean?

Is there really a scarcity of resources to be used in the LGBT community? If so, what does that mean? How do we decide who is “worthy”, along what lines? If not, what does that mean for LGBT identity?

Is asexuality new, at least in our understanding of it? Or is it old? Somewhere in-between, being theorized in different ways throughout time?

Is history, people writing down and talking about their attraction in these ways in some kind of past, crucial to proving that an orientation is “real” anyway?

When does sexual attraction make itself different from romantic attraction? When doesn’t it? When is it troublesome to imply that they are inherently tied, and when is it troublesome to imply that they can be separate?

Have asexual people experienced oppression or injustice? If only to some degree, what is the “threshold” for level of oppression or injustice needed to count? If we have experienced oppression, to what degree, and is it worthwhile relating it in a meaningful way to other experiences of oppression or injustice in the broader LGBT community?

If asexual people haven’t experienced oppression or injustice, to the same degree or at all, how do we talk about the sad and horrible things asexual people have experienced? If it is just sexism, misplaced homophobia, or something else, how do we create justice for that hurt?

How have the asexual and aromantic communities fallen into the traps of homophobia, biphobia, or transphobia? How have we constructed other people, many of which have shared experiences to us, as our enemies?

How have the broader, non-asexual, non-aromantic communities fallen into the traps of acephobia, arophobia? How have we constructed other people, many of which have shared experiences to us, as our enemies?

Where have we built allegiances? How can we build more of them?

How can an understanding of broader LGBT history and community empower asexual people to understand ourselves and create justice?

How can an understanding of asexual and aromantic history and community empower asexual people to understand ourselves and create justice?

How can the idea of “split attraction” (romantic and sexual attraction as not inherently linked) or “multiple modes of attraction” (aromantic and asexual ideas of “queerplatonic” attraction, alterous attraction, aesthetic, platonic, sensual attraction) both help and hurt?

Does heteronormativity (the idea of straightness as natural, inherent, good, and expected) intertwine and interact with amatonormativity (the idea of romance as natural, inherent, good, and expected)?

What do we have to lose from inclusion? What do we have to gain from it? What do have to lose and gain from exclusion?

How do biphobia and acephobia share similar histories?

How have ace inclusionism movements pushed reductive ideas of orientation and attraction, flattened ideas of LGBT community and history, or homophobic rhetoric?

How has ace exclusionism aligned itself with trans-exclusionary feminism and transmisogyny broadly? How has it aligned itself with harmful ideas about a universal sexual experience, anti-sex work attitudes, and coercive ideas about relationships and attraction?

And, lastly: can you actually ever, in a meaningful and predictable way, decide who is or is not queer? What of the the complications? What of people who have detransitioned but love their community? Of people with shifting orientations, who were once apparently “queer” and who no longer are? What of people once apparently “straight” and who are now queer, genuinely? What of people who will forever be in the closet, who will always be assumed to be straight or cis but who are not? Who might not be able to out themselves or might not be willing or interested? What of bi and pan people at pride with their other-gendered partners? Or trans people, in or out of the closet, who refuse to transition? Trans people who never plan to come out? What of aroace people, who are neither traditionally queer or straight? What of gender non-conforming people, especially youth? What of all of them, and their potential complicated, undefinable queerness?

I don’t think we can throw out the ace debate entirely. We’d be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Either way, people wouldn’t let us throw it out yet. I don’t think this conversation won’t be going away any time soon. And, as much as I think the simple question of “are aces queer?” distracts from more important, real, nuanced discussion, it also creates that real discussion from time to time. I do think that the way we are playing it out right now, though, is deeply harmful. It does us an incredible disservice by flattening the complex realities that asexual and aromantic people face, the time we spend making sense of our orientations, finding new words to talk about our unique lives and our unique pains, our unique joys. Inclusionism, too, can do us injustice — if asexuality and aromanticism are truly, inherently queer, then that needs to come as a result of asexual and aromantic self-reflection and community-wide reflection as well. I can’t count the number of times exclusionists have harassed me and spread incredibly harmful ideas. On the other hand, non-asexual allies have insisted, while speaking over my frustration with the ace debate, that they really are inclusionists, that of course asexual people are queer — and in the next sentence, can’t properly define asexuality in any meaningful way that aligns with my community’s self-understanding, nor can they put forward any meaningful way to make that inclusion actually happen. This may have a harm that is less violent towards asexual people — a harm that doesn’t threaten our mere existence, call us liars, or name us as abusers, but it does real harm nonetheless.

If asexuality and aromanticism are queer, if they are LGBT orientations, then I want to be queer and LGBT in a community that has thought about that and made the space to know what that means and understand me. I don’t want tired tropes about prudish asexual people. I don’t want to be the only asexual person in a group of dozens of LGBT people, eyes turned towards me to define the word when it comes up, tokenized instantly and soul-crushingly (but, oh, inclusion should be enough!). No more “I get asexual people, but demiromantic people are just straight”. No more “queerplatonic relationships sounds just like best friends”. No more “asexual people can’t enjoy sex”, “you’re abusing or using your partner if you refuse to give them sex or aren’t sexually attracted to them”, no more “if you don’t let your partner have sex with other people than you are a bad partner”, no more “you’ll never find someone who wants to date you”, and actually, I should mention, no more assuming one way or the other that all asexual people are or aren’t aromantic.

I don’t have an answer for how we can create a healthier conversation and environment for asexual, aromantic, and non-asexual and non-aromantic people any time soon. I wish I did. I do think that, if we are truly hell-bent on having this discussion, we need to do so in a more thoughtful way. “Traditionally” queer asexual and aromantic voices should be centered — gay asexual people, trans aromantic people, everyone else. (At the very least, if one isn’t queer by the virtue of being asexual, than the people we already know are queer are the ones who should be talking about this, especially in conversation with so-called “straight” asexual people). Yes, too, the conversation needs to start by inviting asexual people (yes, even “straight” asexual people) into the LGBT community to have the discussion, with an assumption of belonging until we decide otherwise, if we decide otherwise. Without somehow implying that asexual people are completely incapable of feedback or potential critique without it being said in a kind voice, there is a lot to say about how afraid many asexual people are right now to talk about this issue at all. Hell knows I have a number of friends who are completely in the closet due to legitimate fear of acephobia — acephobia which often very closely mimics homophobia both past and present. I also compel all of us, especially non-asexual and non-aromantic people, to listen to asexual and aromantic people about our experiences and what our attraction or lack thereof means, even if there is initial suspicion. Learn, properly, how our community defines our orientations. Learn our terms for our relationships to romance and sex, and make space for the nuance that exists there. Have serious conversations about the questions that the ace debate actually poses, and do so knowing and expecting and making space for discomfort, confusion, and a frustrating lack of clear answers. And, fellow asexual folks: look towards yourself and question where our community may have closed the door to gay, bi, and trans people’s experiences, asexual, aromantic, or otherwise. If we are all often suspicious of each other, and in a space where I genuinely believe we have all been hurt and hurt each other horizontally, we need to name and talk about that hurt, and to work towards making a future of queer, aro, ace identity that we would all be happy to inhabit.

I’m queer, and I don’t know if my asexuality or my aromanticism has anything to do with it. Some people are asexual or aromantic and are queer and know they are asexual or aromantic precisely because they are queer — I’m genuinely really happy for them. Me, though? My identity is both personal and community-based. I am not there yet; to me, my asexuality’s queerness is only meaningful if it is aligned with a community that believes it, has given it serious, genuine thought, and has still come to that conclusion after all of that. And if my community thinks seriously about it, discusses it, and still decides asexuality isn’t queer, that would change things, at least for me. For now, though, I’m tired of the ace discourse. Even if I am queerly asexual, I don’t want that queerness if it doesn’t want me in my whole self; I don’t want that queerness if it doesn’t want my community in all of the complexity it deserves.