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Any people who do not consider themselves part of the "community"?
I would probably be considered asexual, but I've never really tied too much if my identity to it or anything.
The reason being that I find myself a little put off by the political nature of social advocacy. I'm non straight and non white and non neurotypical, but never in the "popular" kind if way. I'm not BIPOC or LGBTQ or whatever the hip neurological problem to have is.
I'm wondering if anyone else has this kind of perspective. I realize asking this in an LGBT forum is probably not likely to reach people that feel alienated from identifying with the LGBT community, but I'm just seeing if there's other lurkers like me on.
I think "social advocacy" is far from a single, monolithic idea. There are many ways to be an advocate, to be part of the community, and I'm quite sure you belong somewhere in that spectrum, even if the "political" type of interaction doesn't speak to you.
I'll give you a little story for context. It's always been easy for me to pass as straight; I was on the spectrum, so I've had to make "passing" a conscious project for most of my life. And on the surface, as a serious-seeming cis white male academic, well, people just assume I'm straight. I'm on easy mode.
Peel back the covers, though, and you'll discover I was raised by two lesbian moms in the 90's who were forced into self-advocacy: We had family friends who were victims of hate crimes, and one friend in particular who had her house burglarized and arsoned. They had to leave the state in secret to survive. My mom's partner worked for a prominent religious organization that would have fired her had they known. We had to vet every friend of mine to ensure the secret wouldn't come out. Oh, and my father never paid child support because the judges in my state liked to take custody away from gay parents. He told my mom, "If you make me pay, I'm going to take your son away."
How could I live through all that and not become an advocate? It didn't help that in my late teen years I discovered I was bisexual, and that my partner today is trans.
Yet I have never done any of the stereotypical things that would mark me as a member of the community. Does that mean I'm not a member of it? Of course not! I was part of this whole thing from day one. And, if you find that your story places you here, then so are you.
Don't start believing that all LGBTQ stories reduce to what you see on TikTok and fast-consumption media. There are real people just like you everywhere.
I was straight until I realized I was bi in my 20s, as a result it was never a big part of my identity growing up. When I was first realizing it it came as a huge shock and I had a mini identity crisis, but ultimately I remained more or less the same person as I did before, but I think more empathetic and open.
I've never been to a gay bar, haven't marched in a pride parade (but have watched), don't have a lot of gay friends, and don't consume a lot of LGBT media. I also have nothing against all of those, I'm not actively turning them away, they just haven't been a part of my life. I feel like I'm a part of the greater community, but not part of the "community" where the above things are a bigger part of one's life.
Chiming in from a disability point of view, I absolutely see what you're saying. I have ADHD, but I find the modern "neurodiversity" movement feels patronizing, and (in my opinion, I recognize other people think differently) papers over the real problems I face, which aren't just societally imposed. I also have some ethics issues with the way certain autistic people who are verbal, and can communicate in everyday life speak for the nonverbal folk and claim to have authority.
Which leads me to my actual point, since I don't want to derail this. I think what both of us are feeling is just a natural consequence of human tribalism. Unfortunately, once some critical mass of humanity has built a category, they try and fit as many humans as possible into it, and that leads to squishing in the people who don't quite fit.
I'm not sure what to do about it. In my example, I recognize that the neurodiversity approach is a better fit for some low support needs autistic people that, historically, pre-2005 or so just would have just gone undiagnosed (a form of squeezing them into the normal group, in its own way).
So perhaps the core question is: "How can we keep majority-created identities from spreading to people who they don't quite fit?"
I mean, more-abled/privileged members speaking on behalf of a group isn't exactly a new thing, though there's definitely some existing (and valid)critique on how the neurodiversity movement is mostly led by white autistic folks who have access to oral speech. Broadly, though, I've mostly used the neurodiversity movement as a way to advocate for the medical model of disability to be opt-in, rather than opt-out. There's lots of dis/abled folks who seek medical intervention, I'd just love for interventions to not be thrust upon those of us that don't want them (Google pitching Google Glass as a way to cure behavioral manifestations of autism is a fantastic example of what shouldn't happen).
I'd push back on the tribalist bit though. Neurodiversity, like LGBTQ+ community, approaches with the goal of building affinity. Part of the reason that words like "neurodivergent" or "queer" are so powerful is that the buckets are way, way bigger than autistic/adhd/ocd/bisexual/heteroflexibile/etc. That's not to say that more selective labels aren't helpful, just that coalitions for power & action tend to work a whole lot better when they're based around affinity. Neurodiversity/LGBTQ+ movements aren't monolithic, they're often messy and fragmented, and full of people that don't entirely fit every piece, but again, affinity as a mechanism for political coalition rather than a way to speak for everyone under the umbrella.
Majority-created identity is a great way of describing it. Good natured people try to engage in solidarity by listening to and echoing the sentiments of others, but its hard to engage in a dynamic discussion with someone advocating on someone else's behalf because they don't have the ability to alter the common sentiment.
Ah, I guess, soft-same, and also, most of the trans folks that I meet are neurodivergent in some way or another. But, like, I don't meet folks that feel like "my people" at bars/pride/drag shows, more at kink events (which are super neurodivergent), social dance events (which skew that way for me too) or in poly spaces (also pretty neurodivergent). It's rare that I totally mesh with anyone, I've mostly settled for finding folks that I can share parts of myself with? Like, trans spaces with trans folks that I can talk about trans things, ND spaces with ND folks that I can talk about ND things; it's not perfect, but I've learned that it's a really big ask to expect that any space would be able to cater to more than 2 aspects of my identity, I've found value in just finding more space. But again, I'm in a big west-coast US city that affords lots of opportunities, I know that lots of folks don't have that.
Also, there's a pretty hefty trans/autistic crossover, something like a 12x increase in ASD diagnoses if folks have a dysphoria diagnosis (which also means that it's probably a good bit higher, given how hard it is to get a diagnoses of any kind).
Yeah, I totally get what you mean about needing to grow and develop your own identity separately. I also believe that it has led me to become more "complete" as a result. But it also feels like I'm out of step with the rest of society on what that means.
I do understand where you're coming from. I would say that it varies on the community for me. The online LGBT spaces I frequent are usually much more relaxed and grounded than the ones I've visited in real life. I never felt that there was a community so much as a sort of... Silent support network, in a way. When I pass a visibly queer person on the street we smile at each other, and at that moment I feel a connection to them - not because of their labels or whatever, but because we both know that we're in this together.
The way I see it, even if I don't feel very attached to the community at large, just knowing and seeing it's existence is a sort of comfort. They might not be my kind of people or share my views but we share an experience that most people don't, and there's something valuable in that.
(This ended up being a longer comment than I intended, and it probably goes off the rails of the topic a bit, but at this point I've already written it down and I'd rather share it than abandon it:)
I would say, I like that the communities exist, but I do not find myself actively going out of my way to be a part of them, especially in meatspace. Certain online spaces with memes and such I enjoy participating in or scrolling through, and they're usually good fun despite the problematic elements that come from some of them. One-on-one, I relate to a lot of people "in the community", especially now that I know which aspects apply to me, how they apply, and where I can find the more top-level comraderie where the lower levels don't line up. To answer the question directly, I guess I do consider myself "in the community" but more often in the periphery than the center.
I dunno, I feel a lot of times like I didn't have the opportunity to consider and explore my identity growing up, because of most of what was on my plate and the lack of varied, positive exposure to have as role models. I was vaguely able to make do and tolerate my life growing up, so I didn't really take as much of a chance to step back and question a lot of the assumed-defaults at the time. It wasn't until after I graduated high school and moved out that I really started to analyze my sexuality and gender identity.
One of the barriers was that I didn't identify with popular conceptions of the gay/queer community and the wider "casual/hookup" culture it seemed to carry with it, because the way I felt attraction to others just felt different from people both same-sex and opposite-sex attracted of my assigned gender. I kind of acknowledged a latent bisexuality at some point during adolescence, but it was characterized by the thought "well, I'm not against the idea of me being with a boy, but I've only ever been attracted to girls" but then I struggled a lot with forming relationships because the "script" of how it's supposed to work and who's supposed to make the moves just felt... wrong somehow? I just wrote it off as a personal issue to work past and that I had other things to work on, which to be fair to myself, ended up being an accurate assessment.
Luckily I was able to avoid bullying in school for the most part, I guess I was pretty good at diffusing situations or just "not feeding it" (at any rate, I don't recall being called any pejoratives). I attribute the relative lack of conflict to part of why I don't carry around nearly as much internalized guilt that a lot of LGBTQ+ folk deal with, especially regarding instilled religious beliefs, as I was able to dismantle most of the Judeo-Christian Values™ dogma in my own mind long before everything else became a question that felt worth exploring.
Looking back, there was a lot more there than I realized regarding what groups I hung out with and where I felt most welcome. It typically ended up being "the outcast/misfit" table at lunch, which I accepted and we kept to ourselves and the rest of the school mostly kept to themselves as well. Turns out a large portion of my friend groups ended up coming out as gay/lesbian/bi and/or trans as the years went by, but I unfortunately fell out of touch with most of them since my family frequently moved and I attended different schools.
Coming to terms with myself came with a lot of unlearning of previous beliefs, educating myself with what resources I could find online, and a lot of stress that is partially ongoing to this day as I work a job where coming out could affect its stability or negatively affect the way I'm treated by coworkers (which has come at the cost of longer term burnout and mental health issues). Unfortunately I think the stress/anxieties are pretty engrained into my general mental operation at this point, and it's probably going to take a lot of work to move past that. At any rate, finding local support groups has helped a ton, even if I don't say much and just listen to other people share their own experiences.
I don't really. I'm for any gender but I've never been in a relationship. I've also never felt love or anything for anyone else who wasn't my cat.
People have labelled me as asexual but I have felt physical attraction.
Basically, I feel like I'm more of a nothing than a something since I don't have data to prove where on the spectrum I'm on.
So just going to LGBT things feel like a lie. Especially when they've been marginalised and have gone through so much shit. My life is so easy in comparison.
I have dated people of a similar gender to me and they've asked what the LGBT community in my area is like and I have to awkwardly say I don't know.
I do have queer friends. I'm in the local art community instead. There's plenty of diverse people. But we mostly bond over art rather than our identities.
Not to try to assign labels to you or anything, but that sounds more aromantic than asexual to me, in case you do find yourself trying to find like-minded people.
I think it's pretty common for aro and ace people to not really feel included in the LGBTQ+ umbrella since they don't really experience much in the way of discrimination and it doesn't often become a big part of how they identify themselves. I think it is important to have them be recognized because they can have the need to talk with others "like them" in a safe way. For instance, my wife is ace and I'm a cis male (or maybe a transfem, that's a whole other can of worms at the moment) so it puts a strain on our relationship in a unique way that can be more comfortable to discuss with other people who are ace, or she can talk to people who are just discovering for themselves that they're ace and explain how that's affected things for herself.
Long story short, in general I think the community should be welcoming of just about everybody but not everybody who might fit the labels needs to become a part of the community. If people are happy doing their own thing then that's cool with me.
Yeah, I totally get that. This is probably the closest to where I'm at, except I'm not in the art community and haven't dated.
Yeah. Well my dates were just me on the apps and trying something because I'm getting older and all that. But I don't really do many repeat dates because I'm very half hearted about it. I'm terrible with upkeep.
So I've stopped.
Funnily enough I was thinking this today and actually came to post something similar. I've been "out" as bisexual for a couple of years now, and the other day my SO made a comment about how I fall under the lgbt+ umbrella. It kind of caught me by surprise because I've never really considered myself as being part of that. I'm just...me
I'm technically a straight leaning bisexual, though I usually just identify as being straight. Generally speaking, I see myself much more as an ally then as an actual part of the LGBTQ community. Only occasionally do I feel any attraction towards men and it's usually not that strong. For this reason I feel like I'm very disconnected from the struggles of the community and I usually only hear it described to me by other people.