Young adults who identify as asexual feel excluded from the wider LGBTQ community

[IwantToRetire]

From a survey of 3,695 young adults aged 18-25 27% said they “rarely or never” feel a part of the LGBTQ community. Aside from those who said they were questioning their sexual or gender identity, asexual people were most likely to say this.

18% said they “rarely” felt included and 9% said they “never” felt included.

30% of asexual young adults said they “always” feel included and 30% said they “sometimes” feel included.

39% of asexual people of colour said they rarely or never felt part of the LGBT+ community, compared to 24% of white asexual young people.

It’s also estimated that between 0.44-1 percent (295,768 to 672,200) of the UK population identifies as asexual.

The data paints a disappointing picture that suggests a significant portion of young adults identifying as asexual don’t always feel like they’re a part of the LGBTQ community.

“I hope that this research makes clear the need for greater awareness of the lived experiences and realities of asexual people, especially as we can see a wider pattern here of LGBT+ people of colour feeling excluded from our community.”

https://www.attitude.co.uk/news/a-quarter-of-asexual-young-adults-feel-excluded-from-lgbtq-community-430087/

I also don't understand why anyone needs to identify as asexual, surely you are or you aren't?

surely you are or you aren't?

you’re assuming it’s a meaningful category!

But it just boils down to accepting how you feel, really? Not "identifying as" something.

The vast majority of teens who don't fancy anyone are either just late developers or haven't met anyone they are attracted to yet. A lot of the kids who do claim to be attracted to someone or other aren't being entirely honest. They are just exaggerating to feel grown-up and fit in. When I was a young teenager I used to buy Big magazine every fortnight and hang the posters from it on my walls because I thought I was supposed to. I had zero interest in celebrity culture. I liked Star Trek and X-Men comics and I never had the slightest crush on any Starfleet officers or drawings of superheroes. But I wasted some of the tiny amount of money I had on a magazine I couldn't really afford because I thought I was supposed to. I drew the line at pretending to fancy a Take That member to fit in with my TT obsessed friends. But I picked an actor my best friend's older sister said was hot and went all in on having a thing for him. I didn't.

We shouldn't be telling kids that what they feel as a teenager is necessarily any indication of their sexuality. Obviously if you have strong sexual feelings for someone of the same and/or opposite sex, you can assume you are most likely gay/straight/bi. But if a teenager isn't experiencing sexual attractions, it means precisely nothing at all about their adult lives. And it's utterly, utterly fucked up to tell them that it does. Asexuality is an adult concept, because it is usual for adults to have some degree of sexual desire. But it has absolutely place being taught to teenagers as anything other than something that they may or may not find out about themselves when they are fully developed. And adults should be taught that complete lack of sexual desire can also be symptomatic of a health condition. Because it can. I'm not saying asexuality isn't real. But fancying someone of the sex you aren't normally attracted to, isn't a common symptom of a number of health conditions. Lack of sexual desire is. And those conditions should be ruled out before anyone considers a possible symptom of a health condition to be their identity.

But it just boils down to accepting how you feel, really? Not "identifying as" something.

Sure, for adults. You might remember that self-acceptance and self confidence don’t come easy to teens and identity is very important. Honestly, it was just a throwaway remark that I’m struggling to explain because it seems so obvious! Do you really not get why it might be easier for a teen to say to other teens “I’m asexual” than to say “I haven’t developed sexual feelings yet?”

I think schools are emphasizing "sex positivity" too much. They should tell young people it's totally fine to put off sex until they are more mature and feel comfortable. Until university.
I had a whole bunch of late maturing friends. Male and female, who waited until uni. And it made it easier to set strong boundaries as we were older and more confident.

I see no particular reason to share either one, tbh. That's probably the difference between us 🤷🏻‍♀️

Me neither, I don't remember any of these type of conversations when I was younger.

Identifying as asexual would have relieved the sense of pressure and the sense of not being “normal.*

What's so unusual of not wanting sex? Why is it even worth discussing? What 'pressure' are you even talking about ?

Why are people so keen to advertise and discuss their private thoughts about their sexual preferences? It's a private matter imo.

Me too, a childhood of CSA meant I was processing that and did not understand what the fuck other girls were talking about. Sex was a dirty secret to me. And all men were gross as fuck.

I still didnt think the world was owed an explanation.

Yesm teens are unsure about themselves, so they are always looking for ready made identities and labels and personality tests to tell them who they really are. It's a normal stage.

It's also not something that works. It's adopting a mask and mistaking it for our real selves.

Which is why adults understand when teens adopt these silly labels, being a goth or metalhead or jock or nerd or whatever. But they don't typically reinforce them or encourage kids to think that's who they "really" are.

In the end we all have to do the work to understand ourselves, to accept ourselves where we can't change things, or sometimes to not accept certain things and try to become a better person, and to have a comfortable positive relations with others and also not require others to validate ourselves.

Giving kids these made up categories like they are objective so they can "feel comfortable" is not kindness. Feeling comfortable is not always the answer. Growing up requires feeling uncomfortable sometimes.

When I was a teen and twenty-something, most people by 20 had started to see that these are limited things, and by 25 had really grown out of them. Maybe they still wore some of the clothes, they might have the same hobbies, listen to the music, but they understood that people are way more complicated than that, and more interesting, and they didn't need to limit themselves in such artificial ways.

I wonder now if the fact that these kids are being taught that these identities are real and important is part of why so many seem to mature quite late?

Tbf they do get a ton of this sexual identity stuff now.

I worked at a library a few years ago that for Pride month had a big basket of buttons with the different flags and a list of what they meant. In the youth area. So teens and tweens were meant to pick out the one that applied to them.

So basically a lot of 11 year old girls who were either pansexual or lesbians. If they did it now I am sure some might say asexual.

The way they teach about these things, and the way it's emphasized so much in schools in special activities and assemblies and posters etc, it seem that the kids feel they are supposed to have this as a major part of who they are.

So maybe it's a solution to a problem they've created themselves.

well, it’s a difference between you and many teenagers, certainly.

I wonder.

I worked at a library a few years ago that for Pride month had a big basket of buttons with the different flags and a list of what they meant. In the youth area. So teens and tweens were meant to pick out the one that applied to them.
What on earth was the purpose of that? Who needed to know what sexuality preteens considered themselves? So creepy.

I have a young adult DD, who recently told me she thinks she might be asexual.

She is spending too much time on the internet, being brainwashed. I have no control - she goes to University and lives a couple of hours away.

I just despair at the damage being done to young people - this need to be 'labelled' and fitting into a box.

What’s to wonder? It’s simple fact that many teens are feeling the pressure to adopt these labels! the need to label yourself is, like the need to congratulate yourself on adult levels of maturity, a juvenile impulse.

Meanwhile, in other news, Young adults who identify as athiests feel excluded from the wider Religious community.

I'm sad that no one wants to take up the point I have tried to make a couple of times.

ie that the point of starting this thread wasn't about whether or not anyone was asexual, but why an anti woman, gender conforming cult should think they can appropriate it. And why some on this thread thought they could use their position of influence as a teacher etc., to push young people towards this cult as a way of understanding the personal conflicts they were experiencing growing up.

I presume none of us would think of pushing young people needing support towards a fundamentalist religious group, and yet some on here seem to think it is okay to push young people towards practioners of queer theory.

That is the issue. That somehow it has become the norm that a group who is only expanding its remit to get more funding and political influence.

As just thought of all places FWR would be the place where those posting would see the danger in that.

Who are the people who are actively conteracting the pernicious growing spider web that is dragging everything into this deeply malevolent movement.

Queer theatre, cabaret and drag are included in “interdisciplinary performance practice” offered on the course, said to be the first of its kind in the UK.

The degree will “examine how performance art, drag, theatre, street performance and cabaret has played a central role in the development of trans, lesbian, bisexual and gay lives”, according to the Rose Bruford website.

One of the course leaders is Professor Stephen Farrier, whom the school refers to as an “acclaimed scholar of drag”.

Most of the 15-month course is taught remotely, apart from four short residencies, meaning they will also have to pay out for “travel, sustenance and accommodation”.
It costs £11,000 for graduates in the UK and Ireland, rising to £18,000 for international students.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/master-s-degree-in-how-to-be-a-drag-queen-slammed-as-a-mickey-mouse-course/ar-AA19CVnl

(I have some sympathy for young people growing up in a world where not just social media but tv etc., is pushing a sort of lifestyle is life message. And if you only have your old boring parents / guardians telling you there is a bit more to life than adopting an identity, its pretty obvious who they are going to listen to.)

That's a slur against Mickey Mouse.

Let's call it a Billy Bragg course.

Or a Paris Lees course.

Or an Emma Watson course.

Again on one level you just want to laugh, and I know theatre / the performing arts has certainly got an unsavoury past, but not it too is being enclosed in the trans / queer reality.

Can you imagine we, let alone the papers and politcians, would all be simply nodding along if for instance instead of "queer " politics that it was (one of the factions of) the Communist Party.

What is going on with people's brain cells.

Who would have thought that in 2023 the pinnacle of aspiration would be drag?

The effect was creepy, the impulse not so much, I would say. This scheme was the brainchild of a bunch of women, desperate to be "right on" and figure out how to promote Pride month at the library. Women who had a button making machine.

Rather narrow minded, conventional, uncreative, conservative by temperament, and adverse to being seen to be won the wrong side of history, women, all of which feeds into their particular form of progressivism. But not, I think, creepy. Unaware of the creepieness of others. Unaware of what is normal for young people.

Theater seems to be a completely horrible sector now.

I saw this interview a few weeks ago, slightly different topic but the same problem really. The incident the guy describes is just jaw-dropping: