Should asexual people be included in the LGBTQ+ community?

Asexual people are not systematically oppressed

Question: Should asexual people be included in the LGBTQ+ community?
Position‹2 of 2: No, asexual people should not be included in LGBTQ+
Argument‹2 of 2: Asexual people are not systematically oppressed

Unlike homosexuality, it has never been illegal to be asexual or to abstain from sex. Other sexualities have had to fight for the right to their identities and relationships, but asexual people have not.

The argument

This argument holds that asexual people should not be included in the LGBTQ+ community because, on this view, the community is fundamentally a coalition of groups bound together by a shared history of systematic oppression — and asexuality does not carry the same record of persecution. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people have faced, and in many places still face, criminalisation, violence, legal discrimination in marriage, employment and housing, pathologisation, and organised social persecution specifically because of their orientation or gender identity. The LGBTQ+ movement, proponents argue, arose as a response to that oppression, and the solidarity that defines the community is rooted in the shared struggle against it. From this premise, proponents argue that asexuality does not fit. Asexual people, on this view, are not subjected to the same structures of systematic oppression: there have not been laws criminalising asexuality, no comparable history of asexual people being imprisoned, attacked or denied basic rights specifically for lacking sexual attraction, and asexuality does not face the same organised social hostility. Whatever misunderstanding or personal difficulty asexual people may encounter, proponents contend that it does not rise to the level of the systematic, institutional persecution that has defined the experience of the groups the community was formed to support. From this standpoint, if shared oppression is the basis of the LGBTQ+ coalition, then including a group that has not shared in that specific history dilutes the community's defining purpose and the meaning of its solidarity. Membership, on this argument, should track the experience of systematic persecution that united the community in the first place. Because asexual people are not systematically oppressed in that way, this argument holds, they should not be included in the LGBTQ+ community.

Premises

[P1]On this view, the LGBTQ+ community is fundamentally a coalition bound by a shared history of systematic oppression — criminalisation, violence and institutional discrimination. [P2] Proponents argue asexual people have not faced that same record of laws, persecution and organised hostility directed at their orientation. [P3] If shared oppression is the basis of the coalition, including a group without that specific history dilutes its defining purpose. [C] Therefore, because asexual people are not systematically oppressed in that way, they should not be included in the LGBTQ+ community.

Counter-arguments

Inclusion in the LGBTQ+ community should not be determined by systematic oppression. Asexual people face discrimination in many forms.

Rejecting the premises

Asexual people are often raped "for correction" and are one of the most misunderstood sexualities in the LGBTQIA(asexual/aromantic)+ community.