Being an unlabeled queer like me is a lot of fun. Yes, I describe myself with broad labels (bisexual, aroace, agender), but I also don't like using them. They're helpful to give people a general idea of where I lie on this garbled spectrum of identities. And yet, I've grown tired of feeling restrained by them.
I've not seen much of it myself, but I am quite aware of the active policing that online LGBTQ spaces do for themselves. Bisexuals and pansexuals get pitted against each other in some imaginary war over which label is the more valid one. The aroace subset is generally excluded from any sort of long-term beneficial discussions. And all those labels above aren't complex enough to scratch the surface of the depth and complexity of my real identity. Which I refuse to unpack, even for myself.
It's antithetical to the entire culture! Being queer is about being you! Not conforming to societal expectations of cisnormativity and heteronormativity! So then what gives?!
Argument one: no matter where you fall on the list of labels, you're a faggot to homophobes. To paraphrase a Tumblr post I saw recently, "the word "homosexual" in the mouth of a hateful, conservative senator from Virginia is more offensive than "faggot" in the mouth of a 40-year-old gay man from Seattle." We are so quick to divide ourselves and police these divisions, and everyone gets hurt. "Slur discourse?" Who cares?! The intent behind a word matters far more than who's using it. This isn't some Starbucks rewards card where you have to earn a certain number of Homo Points to earn your Slur Drink; this is a word to describe a group of people that can be used benevolently or derisively. And those who use it derisively aren't going to look in a dictionary to refer to you with the correct slur. They already don't use pronouns! They're going to call you by what they know you as: groomers, homos, queers, fags, trannys, whatever.
So then why do we do this to ourselves? Why do people want to draw a battle line between bisexuality and pansexuality? Do homophobic people care? No! Bi/pan people are all the same to them. Such rigid divisions fall apart in the face of hatred. We are stronger united, not divided. All should be welcome (unless you unironically identify as a MAP or zoosexual. Fuck right off!)
This leads me to argument two. Excluding a group based on heterosexuality, whether falsely perceived or not, is wrong. This affects me as an aroace; but it also affects our allies too. The full descriptor for us, LGBTQIA+, includes a fucking "A," you know. Nobody can decide whether it stands for aroaces or allies, but it should stand for both. Excluding aroaces is bad because, AGAIN, we all face the same hatred. Aroaces get worse pushback, from both heterosexual society and the "accepting" LGBT community. We have different definitions of sexual and romantic attraction. Some of us are completely repulsed by sex and romance (as I have felt before). People tend to not understand this feeling, but sex, and to a lesser extent, romance, has never sat well with me. The best way for me to portray it is through the conversation I had when I came out accidentally (long story). I said that I didn't see any appeal to sex and that I could live in a relationship without one. To which my father replied (paraphrasing), "You're always going to feel that sexual tension in a romantic relationship, and eventually you'll come to want sex with them. That's just a fact of life."
I felt so incredibly sick. My mind was completely empty, and I couldn't formulate a response in my head. I sat numbly as he went and complained about the labels "demiromantic" and "demisexual" and how they were normal things and not at all queer. Clearly, he has not been to high school in 30+ years. Being groped in the guys' locker room is an all-too-normal occurrence. One of my friends got sexually assaulted at a football game. Sex is common in the bathrooms. Clearly, a romance between two people who were friends first is not the only dynamic possible. Whether you believe it's the most acceptable is a whole other question. The fact is that it's not the norm. And it wholly crosses out the influence of sexual assault on aroace identities. And unfortunately, it's an experience widely shared among many people in the queer community. So why, in conversations about the community, is it okay to discount our experiences? Is this same discounting not happening to allosexual queers from non-queers? When did it become okay to do the same to a relative minority among queer people?
God. All this horrid discourse makes my head spin. How do people think like this? Things like this are a big part of the reason why I leave myself unlabeled.
But then there are people like Kit Connor, who isn't visibly queer, starring in lead roles in queer media. Connor got lambasted because fans of the show perceived him as a straight male playing a queer role. He had to come out, against his will, to kill the hatred and the venom in his own community. Not even unlabeled and closeted queers are safe.
I worry that we are driving ourselves into a small corner where most everyone gets forced out. Those that remain will be the only "authentic queers." The first to go will be those at the fringes of the gender spectrum. Then the aroaces will be cast away. Then unlabeled queers, and bi/pan people will get forced to identify one way, or it's the highway for them. Many of the allies will leave on their own, either because the people they came to support were ejected or because they realized what I'm describing now.
All policing is bad. We had (and still have) the right idea with ACAB, but we have to go deeper, dammit. All POLICING is bad. We cannot police ourselves; we have to protect ourselves. They are two vastly different things.
Policing, as defined by Oxford, is "the maintenance of law and order by a police force." Protection, as defined by Wikipedia, is "any measure taken to guard a thing against damage caused by outside forces." If we continue to go about trying to maintain this status quo, the queer community will shatter. This kind of gatekeeping is what drives people into conspiratorial rabbit holes and far-right-wing thought. It's what drives potential allies away. And Lord knows we need all the support we can get.
I initially wrote this with the descriptor device of "being punk", and as another treatise on my own identity revolving around a perceived lack of identity. Halfway through I realized it had somehow changed to be about gatekeeping and queerness. I wonder why.