In the LGBTQIA community, the A stands for asexual, aromantic, and agender. You may say – “That’s great, but what do those terms actually mean?” Asexuals, like myself, are individuals who don’t feel sexual attraction. Aromantics are those who don’t feel romantic attraction. People who identify as agender don’t identify with any gender. Never heard of these terms before? You’re not alone. The a-spectrum, referring to the combined asexual, aromantic, and agender spectrum, is often left out of the mentions of the LGBTQIA community. Sometimes when it is included, it is mislabeled to represent allies of the community. This happened recently in fact by an organization which proclaims to “rewrite the script for LBGT equality”. (This comes directly from their website which can be found here).
On Tuesday February 10th, GLAAD made a post saying that “A is for Ally” with the added hash tag #GotYourBack. This immediately was met with criticism on various social media sites, particularly on Twitter. Tweeters responded by addressing posts to GLAAD and tagging them with the hash tag #giveitback. These tweets all address or make some statement referring to the fact that the A stands for asexual, aromantic, and agender and definitely not allies. That day GLAAD responded with the following tweet.
Thanks for reminding us to always be allies to each other http://t.co/aqmPCP0KLd #GotYourBack #GiveItBack
— GLAAD (@glaad) February 10, 2015
The reception to this tweet was confusion which can be summed up with the following tweet.
“@glaad: Thanks for reminding us to always be allies to each other http://t.co/fGF3MRaJ9m #GotYourBack #GiveItBack” Is this your apology?
— Dearnonacepeople (@Dearnonaceppl) February 10, 2015
People continued to tag GLAAD in their posts with the hash tag #giveitback. GLAAD finally addressed their mistake and made changes to their post.
This was met with many thanks from tweeters. The purpose behind the hash tag and tweets wasn’t malicious. People just wanted to correct the erasure of the a-spectrum from the LGBTQIA. The spread of the hash tag in such a short time is understandable due to the fact that it adhere’s to the 6 Things That Make Things Go Viral. The original GLAAD post invoked a strong emotion for the community. It was strong enough for posts such as this one to spread, encouraging people to reach out to GLAAD. Despite having such a short life-span, the hash tag proved to help at least marginally decrease the erasure of the a-spectrum.
This was interesting to see this in a new light since I’ve always thought about intentional advertising doing well, but I never thought about mistakes spreading fast since they too would invoke emotion. I also find it interesting how the people responded not by using the #GotYourBack, but instead with #GiveItBack. It shows how a community can come together to create their own tag to be united for a separate cause.
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This is pretty cool. It’s uplifting to know that something like this spread well enough to invoke a proper response from the original authors,
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