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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote (edited )

As per the various large comments I made in this post, on my understanding, I say yes. Unfortunately the two best challengers to my understandings - Dumai here and Galdra here - didn't follow up with my enquiries at all or all the way through. I think we're working with multiple different ideas of what makes aceness though and also of what inclusion means in this context and that's part of the problem.

I think I'm troubled at making some of these calls about inclusion because I work off of an affinity rather than identity-based way organising with people. (I still account for how identities affect oppression, but that's not usually the lines along which I like to organise). I generally don't exclude anyone before knowing them if I have the energy. And if I'm excluding them then it's because I don't know them, though I'm more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to queer people.
Except here, queer is not a term for LGBT people at all, but people who live their lives against normative ways of loving others and living gender and having family etc.

Ummmm yeah this is the short and not-perfectly-explained outline of my thoughts.

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hermit_dragon wrote

Aside - I just wanted to thank you for articulating some things (affinity based organizing, queerness as non-normative, etc) that I don't always have the words and framing for.

This brings my own preferred ways of organizing into focus and clarity for me, and reminds me what this looks like, when things had gotten rather murky in recent years. I super appreciate your words.

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n_n wrote (edited )

That's a good take, tho I still have trouble to grasp some things. I made a comment but with no answers and I'm still unsure on the issue.

against normative ways of loving

My question is:

Is cis ace heteromantic normative? For what I understand, heterosexuals are romantically/sexually attracted to the members of the opposite sex, romantic atraction is included in sexual orientation. The ToS talks about heterosexism, so you can argue that groups among the asexual community suffer from it. But is that a reason to included ace as a whole in the queer community? As an example of what I trying to point, women are affected by heterosexism so we should include women as a whole also? That seems to be the principal concern among people that are against inclusion here.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Is cis ace heteromantic normative?

Categories like cis or ace or whatever are generally normative. They have content that generally reinforces and is reinforced by power structures in this world.

But we don't have to act in ways the reinforce the structures, we can act against the normative structures. To make a dramatic example, cishets could organise themselves and collectively refuse to marry, to have children, or organise their families in a nuclear structure and those actions could themselves be queerer than (again for example) assimilationist rich white cis gay bros who marry and are 'apolitical' and set themselves up with nuclear families etc.

I'd rather organise with kind, solid aroace people I know who put real energy into making queer events great than with shitty LGBT people who are racist or transphobic or biphobic or whatever. I'm not friends with any cishets but if they were kind and solid I would organise with them also.
That said, I don't do things that are exclusive to queers generally. Even at public queer events we leave it open to everyone, and we keep an eye out for assholes and get rid of them by being too queer for them or just kicking them out. If I'm excluding people at events it's not by category, it's because I know their individual politics, and everyone there I've chosen or is vetted by someone else I have strong affinity with.

But is that a reason to included ace as a whole in the queer community?

What does this mean though? What queer community? There is no abstract queer community. Included means what? (I'm serious).

If people want to organise under common oppression they can, but there's actually loads of different kinds of oppression within LGBT people, and I don't see why being oppressed is a good basis for organising for someone rather than just affinity.

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n_n wrote (edited )

What queer community?

The people for what queer spaces exist, safe spaces to being themselves whiteout being oppressed by cisheteronormativity and its abuse. Also people here used LGBT+ and queer as a synonyms, I'm not.

I still think that is not necessarily against the ToS, only if people use it as excuse to discriminate Queer aces it will be against it.

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n_n wrote (edited )

I still have a lot of doubts. I think that I will stop of comment on it at the moment. ._____.

I appreciate your opinion. I will think about what you said. ^__^

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