Asexual people face discrimination and alienation

The argument

(CONTENT WARNING: acephobia, sexual violence) Proponents of including asexual people under the LGBTQ+ umbrella argue that the acronym has always functioned as a coalition of people marginalised because their sexuality departs from an assumed norm, and that asexual people meet that test on the evidence of the harm they suffer. Asexuality is not merely unrecognised but actively policed. In a poll of 8,000 asexual people, 43.5% reported being victims of sexual violence, much of it corrective rape: assault carried out on the premise that the victim's sexuality is a defect to be fixed. On this view the motive is what matters. Violence undertaken to correct a sexual orientation is the same category of harm the LGBTQ+ coalition already exists to name and resist, and it makes little sense to recognise that pattern when the targeted orientation is one thing and not when it is another. The second strand of the argument concerns alienation rather than violence. Asexually coded characters are routinely written as objects of ridicule, their lack of interest in sex played by their friends as a running gag — Sheldon Cooper in the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory being a well-known example. The cumulative effect, proponents argue, is a culture in which asexual people meet their own orientation as a joke or a malfunction rather than a way of being, with no ready vocabulary for what they experience and nowhere obvious to take it. Inclusion in the acronym is offered as the remedy that follows from both strands. It would give asexual people somewhere to find community, to share experiences and resources with others who have faced comparable hostility, and to have their suffering recognised as discrimination rather than dismissed as a private oddity.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who argue against inclusion reply that facing discrimination is not, by itself, the criterion for LGBTQ+ membership — many groups face prejudice without belonging to a community historically organised around same-sex attraction and gender-minority status. The corrective violence and mockery asexual people face are serious harms that deserve recognition and support, but that recognition, critics argue, does not by itself require inclusion under this particular umbrella. They add that asexuality is a distinct axis — the absence of sexual attraction — and that some, including some asexual people, question whether cisgender, heteroromantic aces share the specific experiences the acronym denotes. On this view the boundary question is genuinely contested within the community and turns on what the umbrella is for, not on whether asexuality exists or matters.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Facing discrimination is not by itself the criterion for LGBTQ+ membership — many groups face prejudice without belonging to a community organised around same-sex attraction and gender-minority status. [Rejecting P2] Corrective violence and mockery are serious harms deserving recognition, but recognition and support don't necessarily require inclusion under this specific acronym. [Rejecting P3] Asexuality is a distinct axis (absence of sexual attraction), and some — including some asexual people — question whether cis, heteroromantic aces share the experiences the umbrella denotes, so the boundary is contested within the community.