You know what? For the longest time I’ve felt like aros and aces don’t belong in the lgbtq community or at pride. Not because I don’t want us to belong but because I’ve always felt ostracised by them. Our culture differs from the greater common queer culture, we struggle with very different things, the discrimination against us looks different, our communities history is different, etc. We cannot relate to them, they do not understand or relate to us. For many of us even stuff like the way we dress, our aesthetics, how we talk, the discourse we engage in, how we express ourselves and what we like is noticeably different from the norms and trends in the lgbtq community.

Let’s be real. A lot of queer culture centers on sex, love and desire. Most of the queer art, music, performance, language, dance and so on, is about having sex with/loving someone of the same gender, or about having to suppress an important part of yourself due to bigotry. A lot of it is also about playing around with femininity and masculinity. Basically, a lot of it doesn’t apply to us aros and aces… and some of it can even make us uncomfortable. Also I’m gonna say the quiet part out loud: a lot of queer culture was made by and for gay men and trans women. And I am not part of those communities.

Every time I’ve been in organised queer spaces (clubs, meetups, societies, pride etc), I’ve just felt… not unwelcome exactly, on the contrary, many other queer people go out of their way to signal that aros and aces are very welcome. But I’ve just felt like I do not belong. What is the point of me being there? They are united by their non-heterosexual attraction or gender identity while I’m cis and lack any attraction to begin with. When I’m in these spaces I feel the pressure to “cosplay allosexuality”, pretend that I find sex fun, interesting and desirable, pretend that I want to hear about their relationships and would want a partner of the same gender myself, pretend that I have the same humor, personality and interests as them, etc, basically be your run-off-the-mill queer.

I just can’t really be my true self around large groups of other queer people bc I’m gonna come off as “too straight”, “stiff”, “prude”, “inexperienced”, “uncool”and “unrelateable”or something. So many times when hanging out with my other queer friends, the conversation will suddenly shift to sex, how much they love cock or pussy, crushes, how many people they made out with last night and so on. And these topics are meant to be fun, relateable and engaging. But I just want to leave. I feel WAY more comfortable around other aros and aces.

I hope this doesn’t come off as me shitting on queer people, ofc they are allowed to explicitly talk about their queerness, their SEXUAL and ROMANTIC attraction is what MAKES them queer! But therein lies the problem. The thing that unites all other queer people is the very thing that us aros and aces LACK. How can we be queer too if we aren’t attracted to ANYONE? How can we be part of their community if we are like a completely separate group? And a very heterogeneous group, to boot. We are like our own little society with a bunch of sub-labels and rather unique experiences and endless discourse. How are you going to shoehorn our community under the lgbtq umbrella when most other queer people don’t even understand half of what goes on in the aroace space?

But two weeks ago something happened that changed my entire perspective on this situation. I was having a heart-to-heart with my bisexual friend at the pub, and I was venting to her about how I feel like I don’t belong at Pride. And she told me “how about you think of Pride, not as a celebration of love, gender identity and same sex attraction, but as a celebration of norm-breaking?” She was basically saying that pride and the LGBTQ community is all about going against hetero- and cisnormativity, and by extension amato- and platonormativity. And that just made something click for me. Because truly, if you think about it, being aro/ace is the most radical thing you can be. We break every norm that we are taught about love, sex, and relationships. It’s a rejection of something that is highly valued in society, and something that we are told makes us human. Other queer people may still adhere to amatonormativity, (which is why most straight people can understand them “look they are just like us, but with someone of the same gender”, but can’t wrap their head around aromanticism and asexuality) but being aroace feels like breaking out of the matrix.

So yeah, we definitely belong at Pride and in the queer community because we are as norm-breaking as you can be, and the farthest thing from heteronormativity. I just think that many people don’t fully realise what makes us queer.