It’s a Spectrum

Gender and sexuality are touchy topics in today’s society. The underlying belief in America and all over the world is that everything is a binary, male and female, gay and straight, but that is far from true. Sexuality and gender lie on spectrums, a collection of genders and sexualities between male and female and gay and straight. More spectrums come within the spectrums. Within the sexuality spectrum there is the asexuality spectrum, and within the gender spectrum there is the non-binary spectrum. This is why I decided to do an ELI on gender and sexuality, as an LGBT+ teen myself I often identify with the struggles that others, who are not so lucky as to fit into the binary ideal, go through. Being an LGBT+ teen is hard, and having a community in which you feel safe and accepted is immensely important; however even within the LGBT+ community a lot of controversy and prejudice against people who identify outside of what people consider “normal” still exists.

The majority of the population has grown up with the binary; they have been taught that male and female are the only genders and you can either be gay or straight. Now it is a bit different, the LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual, +) community, which started as LGBT, has slowly become more accepting of genders and sexualities they were not previously familiar with. This is evident in asexuality; originally the “A” in LGBTQIA was meant to stand for “ally,” or a cis-gender (someone who identifies as the gender they were assigned at birth), heterosexual person who supported the cause. This was called into question with the building of the asexual community and the introduction of AVEN (the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network) which is a website created by David Jay in attempt to create more recognition for asexual people (people who do not experience sexual attraction regardless of gender).

My goals for this ELI are: 1) To learn more about Asexuality and why it is not widely recognized; 2) To learn more about gender and preferred pronouns including why they are an important personal identity; and lastly, 3) To create a reference guide of genders and sexualities to create more visibility and understanding for less recognized orientations and identities. Through this ELI I hope to spread awareness of different genders and sexualities that people might not know about, or do not think are valid.

~Maggie