I am 22 years old, sitting on a panel to discuss the experience of the queer community on college campuses when I see a hand go up in the back of the room. The moderator calls on the student and they reluctantly stand up and take the microphone.

“Can you clarify that word you just used? Ace? I’ve never heard it before.”

I realize that I have gone too fast in my speech and forgotten to define terms that may be unfamiliar to students who do not work within the queer community every day.

“Oh, sure, Ace is short for Asexual. It’s a term used to refer to someone who doesn’t experience sexual attraction, but there is an entire spectrum surrounding the term and people can have different identities relating to being Asexual, for example you could still experience romantic feelings for another person, but not want to have sex with them. Or you could be Aromantic which is the converse of that.”

I realize that most of the eyes have glazed over in the room full of college students who couldn’t possibly fathom the idea of not wanting to have sex. But the student who asked the question is hanging onto my every word. I give the moderator my business card to give the student in case they want to discuss the issue further, then I turn the discussion to the rest of the panel who move onto the next question.

Two days later, I am in my office running a report and catching up on emails when the student from the panel knocks on my door. I wave her in and she smiles.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to say ‘Thank you’. I thought I was broken, but it turns out there are a lot of people like me. I finally have a word for it.”

It takes me a minute before I realize she is referring to Asexuality. The word I used on the panel. It takes me another minute to realize that she had no idea it was an identity before then, let alone a part of her identity.

This 19-year-old student may have gone her whole life thinking that she was broken, and never having a word that made her feel comfortable in her own skin. She may have never known her identity outside of race and religion because she had no other words to define herself by.

I think back to my own experience of coming out as bisexual and how for many years, I too felt broken. Even being part of the LGBT acronym doesn’t always come with the recognition that it should. We live in a world where Piper Chapman uses words like “fluid” instead of “bisexual” on a TV show that could literally save lives if they managed to acknowledge that a dichotomous sexual orientation was possible.

I think back to my best friend texting me to tell me that she identifies as Asexual and that she found the word on a tumblr blog after taking a Kinsey Scale test that literally came up 0 on a scale of 1-6. She had to do her own research to find this word because they don’t even touch on LGBT in our high school, let alone any other letters of the queer community alphabet.

I think about the 30 or so students in the PRIDE club at my undergrad. I think about the unfair amount of discussions we had relating to the issues of gay and bisexual students without ever acknowledging the Ace community or the Pan community or even the growing Trans* community on college campuses. I wonder if I ever left a bitter taste in their mouths by not giving their identity enough recognition. I wonder if that is why attendance fell by November.

We learn identity in pieces.

Sexual identity is not a skin you are born into, but rather a journey of self-discovery into who you always have been. It is taught to you in hushed whispers as a part of a language spoken only in panels and PRIDE meetings, but never in textbooks or the media.

Having a word to define the feelings you’ve been experiencing can validate those emotions. Being able to identify with a group gives a person common ground to stand on. It lets you know that you are not alone in the world. It provides community.

This is not a call out post on words like” fluid” and I am not demanding that everyone find a word to define themselves by. Defining yourself fluidly or not defining yourself at all is equally valid and equally important to our queer community. My purpose is to look at the impact of marginalization within a marginalized community. Not every queer person’s problem is solved by a supreme court decision.

We think that we are making so many advances for LGBT people. We legalized gay marriage and we are working on non-discrimination in employment, and these are great advances, but they also sometimes cloud our view that while things are getting better for some parts of the queer community, they are still pretty bad for others.

Within the queer community, we need to work to end our internal marginalization of certain identities. Within the world, we need to make these lesser known identities more common. We need to stop qualifying importance with a placement in an acronym and start creating safe spaces for everyone, regardless of identity.

We need to normalize words like “asexual” and “bisexual” and any other letter in the queer alphabet soup so that everyone feels welcome. We need to open up our discussions beyond what is known and begin to educate others on our entire spectrum.

We need to call on the student in the back of the discussion and bring their issues to light.