#and people still repress their sexuality without identifying as ace!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ckret2 · 4 months

Note

Hi, found you through your Hazbin fic "You've Got A Face for Radio" and just. I've already left a comment on the ao3 about the fic in particular, but I also wanted reach out to another aro ace person, because while I do think I am on the ace spectrum, I am still kind of figuring things out. I've talked to a few people about not experiencing attraction, at least in the form most people do, and what they say almost always boils down to "you'll know it when you feel it" and "maybe you've felt it but repressed it subconsciously", which, I know they mean well but, it's not what I think is the case. I'm just. Kind of stuck on the enjoying NSFW stuff if it's fictional characters bit. What even classifies as sexual attraction anyway? Who defines it when it can vary from person to person?

Anyway, I hope I'm not being a bother, it's just that your fic gave me a lot to think. I'd have sent a dm since this might become a discussion (if you're willing) but I'm not sure what the Internet etiquette is here.

"You'll know it when you feel it" "maybe you've repressed it" lmaooo if that isn't THE MOST COMMON line questioning aces/aros get. Have you got "maybe you haven't met the right person" yet? There probably isn't an ace/aro in the world who's explored their identity without some (hopefully) well-meaning but oblivious allo saying one of those things.

When they DO mean well, it comes from a place of not being able to imagine being ace/aro; it seems more likely to most allos that the attraction is hiding rather than absent entirely. You can rest assured that anybody who says that is expressing something about their own understanding of sexuality, rather than anything about their understanding of your sexuality.

Honestly and sincerely, the "enjoying NSFW stuff if it's fictional characters" bit is what personally delayed me from identifying as ace for, like, a decade longer than it had to. "Well hey, I love thinking about sex if it's some kind of alien or robot, that doesn't seem very ace; so I must not be ace, maybe I just haven't yet met a normal real-life person who's interesting enough for me." But that kind of thinking comes from not understanding what being ace is!

Because the criteria for being ace is actually a lot lower than most people think. It's not "never thinks people are attractive," or "disgusted by sexual situations," or even "never wants to have sex." Those can be part of the experience of asexuality but they aren't necessary. (Some aces think people are attractive, just not sexually attractive! Some aces want to have sex, they just aren't sexually attracted to the people they're having it with, they're interested in the act rather than the partner! It's a spectrum!)

The litmus test I personally use for "sexual attraction," and that's worked for a lot of people I know, is this:

Have you ever looked at somebody, thought they were hot, and automatically thought to yourself that you'd LOVE to have sex with them if the opportunity ever arose? Maybe not even realistically wanted that to happen, but just felt that as a gut feeling? Just thought yeah, it'd be hot to sleep with them with the same instinctive immediate reaction that you might, say, see something delicious and think "ohhh that looks so good I wanna eat that" or see a really cool trailer and think "I SO wanna see that movie"?

That's sexual attraction. You, personally, automatically feel like you wanna have sex with somebody—possibly even a stranger!—possibly even if you know you wouldn't actually really choose to do it IRL for whatever reason—just because they're sexy.

If you haven't experienced that specific feeling before, you're almost definitely some flavor of ace.

(And even if you HAVE experienced that feeling before you might still be ace—possibly some flavor of gray-ace or demi-ace. Some people do experience that feeling, but so so very rarely that they feel like their overall experience of sexual attraction is more ace than allo. Some people experience that feeling but ONLY toward somebody they have a deep emotional connection to, whereas allos can experience that feeling toward strangers. Some people experience that feeling but if actually faced with the OPTION to have that sex they're turned off. All of these are ways to be ace. So the litmus test isn't the be-all end-all; but if that feeling has NEVER happened to you, that's probably ace.)

Based on this ask and on the comment you left me on Ao3, I'm guessing your form of engagement with sexuality is like what I wrote about in the fic: reading about characters having wild nasty sex is great, could read smut and/or smutty comics all day, maybe you fantasize about your blorbos screwing, maybe you've gotten off to these fantasies or to smut... but: all your fantasies are about somebody else having sex. Probably somebody else who isn't even real.

Are you ever in those fantasies? How do you feel about "character x reader" fics, does being y/n turn you on or does it squick you out to imagine [character] flirting with YOU? Do you ever think "wow I'D like to fuck [character]" or is it only "I wanna see [character] fuck (but I don't wanna be there myself)"? If "you" ever ARE in these fantasies, is it actually YOU, REALLY YOU, or are you just imagining the fantasy from the perspective of another character who isn't you? Do you ever have a sexual interest in the actors/voice actors, or does your sexual interest in them vanish when you aren't viewing them as their (fictional) character?

I can't tell you whether you're ace; but I can tell you that "I'm ONLY interested in FICTIONAL characters doing EACH OTHER, and I would lose interest if they were real people" is not a normal/common allosexual experience.

And if you're into micro labels, there are a couple under the asexual umbrella that describes that exact experience. The current term is aegosexual. (Older term autochorissexual; that was the current term when I learned it so I still tend to use it lmao.) It's for people whose primary experience of sexuality is fantasies that they themselves aren't part of. It's not mentioned on the page I've linked, but a LOT of aegosexuals have reported that they're specifically most into fantasies about cartoon/drawn characters and other fictional characters—the more "real" they are, the less appealing they are.

(And there's the related term "aegoromantic"—I'm focusing on sexuality here since that's mainly what the ask focused on, and also because historically I've seen less people struggle with "I don't want romance, I just enjoy reading love stories; I must be aro" compared to "I don't want sex, I just enjoy reading smut; I must be ace.")

Learning the term autochorissexual/aegosexual and why it made sense to fit under the ace umbrella is what got me over the hurdle of "oh, hey, I guess I am ace"—if you think it describes your experience, I hope it can help you too. If not, it at least shows just how varied the ace experience can be.

(I'm answering this publicly because I've seen SO MANY PEOPLE grappling with "I like FAKE sex; does that mean I can't be ace?"—many of whom have contacted me because of that fic, shocked to see someone else describe their own experiences and call it a flavor of ace—so I'm hoping this might help other questioning aces/aros! But you're also welcome to DM me!)

#thepanopticon is just azkaban #ask #asexuality #aromanticism #aegosexual #sexuality #about my writing

78 notes · View notes

entropy-sea-system · 6 months

Text

I thought I'd talk a bit about being analterous as I don't often talk about My atertiary identities separately other than apl and afamilial.

Anyways, I should probably start by saying I don't actively crave an emotional connection just for the sake of it. It often involves friendship for a lot of people which already repulses Me. I happen to have emotional connections to My partners but its not about friendship, its about sex and in a few cases also romance bc Im demiromantic and allosexual.

A big reason I realised Im analterous is because people often said thats the attraction type behind qprs, and eventually I realised I didn't want a qpr but just thought I did bc a lot of other aros seemed to, and I felt like I'd be seen as 'aphobic' if I refused to want a relationship that aros and aces came up with. I also was unfortunately feeling like I had to have nonrose attraction to seem 'normal' and 'not sex obsessed' as an alloaro.

When I first heard of alterous attraction, it was kind of defined in a very vague way like 'not being sure if you have a (romantic) crush or just want to be friends', and that didn't make sense to my brain, as I would later realise, its bc Im arospec and apothiplatonic and those are simply not emotions I can feel like to a stranger. And friendship? I literally can't feel that towards anyone.

I define alterous attraction as being an attraction connected to wanting an emotional connection with someone (though of course, one can also have the attraction without being favorable to alterous relationships). My brain often lumps all the nonrose attractions as being something that has no relevance to me, and especially with terms that arent as used in larger society like alterous, I struggle to explain why I am like this.

Additionally, when people talk about feeling alterous attraction or a qpr (though that tends to be more associated w queerplatonic attraction these days) (I am also aqueerplatonic and qp repulsed though) I feel grossed out by it. I don't personally want to hear about it due to my repulsion.

In the past when I questioned if I had a nonrose crush it always ended up either being intrusive thoughts or Me repressing a sexual crush. I learned of things like squishes long before I knew I was aro because I formerly identified as demirose and even after I stopped using that label at one point, I still looked obsessively through AVEN forums where a lot of aces talked about having squishes.

I will admit that with acespec I have some sort of sexual orientation OCD where I have intrusive thoughts that Im 'really' ace when I don't identify that way, but thats a whole other topic. Its kind of distressing for Me to feel that but anyways. Explanation for why I was rather often looking at those forums.

I assumed I had the capacity to have squishes. I felt kind of creepy and genuinely kind of distressed that I was incapable of caring for people as a friend when multiple times, I thought I was having friendship emotions but it turned out to just be sexual attraction. Of course, people can have both emotions at once but I could kind of tell tht I had never even had the platonic attraction emotions, but didn't label it until i realised I could be apl.

I felt like I was obligated to like people in nonrose ways, because it made Me feel arophobic and acephobic, and anti-relationship anarchy, and selfish if I were to say no. But I'm glad I realised Im atertiary, because I'm a lot happier when Im not forcing Myself to have and like nonrose relationships. I'm content with my sexual and romantic-sexual relationships, and also content with the idea of not having any relationships, if at some point that becomes the case for me.

Also, I never ship alterous ships for example, I used to think I did but it was just me shipping characters romantically and/or sexually but thinking I needed to label the emotional care as alterous? And also its worth noting that I'm pretty much an analterous person with no alterous attraction who is alterous repulsed. This will not be the experience of every single person with these identities.

Also, seeing as how people often position alterous and qprs on a created romantic-platonic binary it just irks me that some people act like romantic and platonic are the only attractions ever. Especially when they ignore SEXUAL attraction, like its not romantic OR platonic but ppl act like it doesnt exist when they force the platonic-romantic binary on labels such as alterous and queerplatonic.

Also, I happen to have sexual intrusive thoughts about people, due to hypersexuality and OCD, that I don't like having. Sometimes, I tried to use tertiary/nonrose attractions as a coping mechanism for this by trying to say 'No, I only feel platonic/alterous/sensual/etc. for this person' even though I didn't, and was mistaking emotions like happiness or literally the rush from getting narc supply (NPD) or attention, and being touch starved, sometimes even just being triggered by people acting overfamiliar with Me, for nonrose attractions.

This is not so say nonrose attractions are unhealthy, but the way I conceptualised of them back then was. It's astounding to me that people think my atertiary identity is what's unhealthy when forcing myself to seem allotertiary was what was unhealthy for me.

At one point, when I was initially with a few of My current partners, I kind of felt the need to split every emotion I had about My partners into being a nonplatonic nonrose attraction, even when I knew I was apl. That was kind of unnatural to Me personally as a way to label My emotions. Because it wasn't any attraction other than sexual.

The way people talk about sexual attraction as fleeting and meaningless influenced this as well. I feel a lot of emotional care and enthusiasm towards people I am sexually attracted to, and I only like sexual relationships that are long term and involve affection. This made Me feel like it couldn't JUST be sexual attraction because people around me, even in aro spaces that included alloaros, acted like sexual attraction can never include these things.

Maybe thats just how people who either are alloromantic and/or are allotertiary feel because they label anything thats not 'I want to have genital sex' as some attraction other than sexual. But thats not how my sexual attraction works. I support people whose sexual attraction is not that deep/is fleeting or does not involve much emotion or desire for long-term involvement, and those who engage in casual sex. I just want people to acknowledge that thats not the only way sexual attraction and sexual relationships, especially nonromantic ones, can be.

Actually, anaesthetic was the third atertiary label I found myself realising I am, but I though I was aestheticflux. However it turned out that I am just completely atertiary. Also I think at one point that. It got kind of too much of a cognitive effort for me to want to classify my attraction into so many nonrose types. It made me feel kind of split apart and dissociated from my identity personally.

Anyways, this was a lot and I meant to just talk about My analterous experience, but all My atertiary identities seem to be tangled together in ways that mean they aren't very separable. I think I did only realise Im analterous around the time I realised Im completely atertiary, but it was also very linked to Me realising I'm aqueerplatonic.

Anyways, I'm also realising that maybe I feel My atertiary identities are all interconnected in a way that means I see a lot of them as lumped together for Myself, and how much I talk about them tends to depend on the percieved way I find societal norms regarding relationship types to be antithetical to My way of existing.

(-Rift)

9 notes · View notes

mondscheinprinzessin · 1 year

Note

You have helped!! I would never have really started to relate/identify with being ace without this community either 🥰 I understand losing sleep over it though, I've been in crisis on and off with my sexuality since I was like 14? I've been really bad again recently too 😭

I definitely still think those things too, But I feel like it's the only thing that explains my quirks I've never been able to figure out. For a long time I thought I just had a weird introverted type of sexuality or I was somehow repressing myself more than I thought but after talking and researching things I know there's shades of ace and it's all okay 🥺 💖

🥺It's so nice when we can help each other out.

That sounds so exhausting, so long. I hope you can figure it out and be confident in it. I'm glad I understood my bisexuality (is it biromantic now or what, labels confuse me🤔) at around 16. And then when I was 24 BAM let's have another unrelated crisis because the first one was so fun.

I feel like when I put everything that makes me different or where I feel like I differ from the people around me on a pile it would fit the best under asexuality as well.

But it's so hard to find yourself under that term. For me for example as I had never bothered to get informed about it (and tbh I wasn't really aware of it anyways for the longest time) I only knew one thing about asexuality and that was these people aren't interested in sex. And that is the biggest misconception (that a lot of people have sadly) when in realiy it's so much, and that makes it so difficult because it's this huge spectrum with so many people having so many different experiences so when a lot of what I heard people say didn't really fit me I immediately thought well, then it can't apply to me.

I think i still struggle with feeling different. Cause I could never relate to my friends (talks at sleepovers were so uncomfortable for me) and I always thought ugh great, the weird one out, why can't I be the normal one again.

"there's shades of ace and it's all okay 🥺 💖" Esactly, we should always remind us of that

#answered #you know this also helps me a lot really accepting myself #I always felt kinda ashamed when I couldn't understand my friends but couldn't tell them what was wrong #maybe I should make a new tag:#ace positivity #jupiter-balls #I'm sending you all the good vibes to find yourself

1 note · View note

nothorses · 3 years

Text

Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

#transgender #transphobia #trans #transmisogyny #radical feminism #radfem #feminism #transandrophobia #terfs #tirfs #gender critical #nothorses #cult mention #long post

3K notes · View notes

fricklefracklefloof · 3 years

Text

comin just under the wire for ace week to bring you some of my favorite ace characters, canon or just my personal headcanons :)

jonathan sims is one of the first asexual characters i have ever encounted in media and his representation means the world to me. i couldn't be more grateful for the tma fandom for helping me realize my own asexuality and i hope this year we continue to remember jon's asexuality and not let it be forgotten <3

guillermo de la cruz isn't canonically ace and i love all kinds of different interpretations of him and his sexuality but my headcanoning him as ace is something that's just a bit personal to me. i can relate to his sheltered catholic upbringing as it was something that actually ended up making it more difficult for me to realize i was ace. i just like him i think he's cool

i used to be super against ace kaz brekker! but that was because i was aphobic at the time and repressing my own feelings. it irritated me that people seemed to conflate his traumatic experiences with asexuality but i've come to realize that that can be a very real thing that aces with that sort of trauma can identify with. that doesn't mean i think he's automatically ace because of his experiences, but i think it can have an effect. at the very least i think his aversion to sex or even touch is something that we aces can relate to, and i think it's beautiful that he can still have intimacy with those he loves without it

[image description: the first image is a digital drawing of jonathan sims, guillermo de la cruz, and kaz brekker. jon is a thin brown-skinned pakistani person with long wavy dark hair, and he's waving the asexual flag. guillermo is a fat light brown-skinned mexican man, and he is holding a larger blanket-sized version of the asexual flag that he is dragging behind him. behind the two of them is kaz, who is a pale white boy with dark hair that is shaved on one side. he's holding his golden crow's head cane over his shoulder and there is an asexual flag draped behind him.

after is a series of images with the same format of a chibi character and text above them. the first is of guillermo, who has text above him that says "asexuality is not infantilizing nor does it take away my agency!" the second is of kaz, whose text says, "asexuality comes in many forms!" the third is of jon, whose text says, "asexuality is not inherently white! our experiences will not all be the same", and the fourth is of me, taro. taro is a thin light-skinned mixed white and filipino boy with brown hair and a black shirt that says "TMA". handwritten text above him says "i hate sex but i like saying things are sexy because it's funny". end id]

#yeee!!!!#asexual #asexuality #ace pride #ace week #the magnus archives #what we do in the shadows #six of crows #grishaverse #shadow and bone #jonathan sims #guillermo de la cruz #kaz brekker #the magnus archives fanart #what we do in the shadows fanart #six of crows fanart #ali draws

670 notes · View notes

fiddlepickdouglas · 2 years

Note

How did you find out you were lgbt? I’m curious because nowadays teenagers just know so I wanna know how as an adult did you realize. For a science project.

Thanks for asking!

It's been a process for me, for sure. I grew up very Christian and believed I was straight and just had a natural...idk, immunity to 'temptation' in regards to dating and such? Temptation in the sense of wanting the physical aspects of a relationship and trying to be mature about appropriate ages and such. I was a little self-righteous about it because it gave me an excuse to avoid a lot of petty drama. Like sure, I could find boys attractive and I'd grown up with all the pressure to be in relationships, plus getting married and having kids, and so I fantasized about the idea. I had crushes, but looking back they were either purely emotional attachment or aesthetically driven with no sexual desire involved.

For a long time I just thought I didn't really get into the dating scene because I was too picky, or that it was too emotional of an endeavor for me to go on fun dates without immediately hoping for the long game, or even that I was too emotionally damaged to be good enough for it. I was pretty strong in my faith for a long time, so although I was inwardly supportive of LGBT friends, I still held to certain beliefs and felt that I had all questions answered on the subject. I lived that way for years, even after I had a sibling come out as trans and my best friend came out as bi. Didn't understand trans identities a bit. All I knew about being bi were the awful stereotypes I now hate. I only heard about asexuality briefly after high school and it hadn't been explained to me very well.

I eventually found myself with a disconnect, wanting to be an ally and holding onto an opposing ideal. Having queer friends and family plus being on tumblr, I loved being surrounded by all these people with unique experiences and I saw tidbits of queer history and queer news. It made me reconsider a lot of ideas. I also had a short-lived, long distance relationship that I ended up calling off and briefly wondered about being ace, but I wrote it off as me just being emotionally overwhelmed.

Then a few months later, out of nowhere I saw a girl on Tiktok and realized I found women attractive. And I was more ready to accept that idea than I'd expected. It blew any desire of holding onto previous beliefs away - that part of me was gone and it couldn't come back. I looked back and reread some poems I'd written about a friend and realized, "Oh, I am so dense." I started seeing pretty women everywhere. But if I had been manifesting those feelings before, how did I not notice? I talked with several friends and paid more attention to what experiences I had in regards to attraction, and I was really grateful for the split model.

For now I identify as aegosexual biromantic, or bi-ace to make it easy on people. There's still nuances that I'm trying to figure out, so I also like just saying I'm queer for the sake of ease and brevity, and I believe that I may ultimately not want to use any particular label and simply live out my own unique experience. I'm only out to my queer friends right now. Don't think I'll ever formally tell most of my family. However, I'm really happy to have come to this point.

Idk how I would have accepted myself if the realization had happened to a younger me. It would have likely worsened my already bad circumstances if I stood up for myself, and the alternative probably would've been repression to the point of actually harming myself. And I certainly wouldn't have had the strength or resources back then to help me navigate it well. Timing is timing, and while I do sometimes think it would've been nice to know a little sooner, I'm glad I know now.

Thanks again for asking me! I hope this provides some really good insights 💕💕

#answered #anon #queer #asexual #bisexual #tw religious mention #aegosexual biromantic #queer experience

9 notes · View notes

dragynkeep · 3 years

Note

If we're making confessions about problems with the greater lbgt community may I say something? You can ignore this if you want. But I'm a young woman in her 20's and identify as aroace. And I don't think I need to tell you how sex and romance obsessed the world is. All society's, all people, all media, tv shows, movies, songs, video games everywhere everyone assumes on some level that every person born wants to fall in love and have sex. Those of us in the aspec community are basically ostracized from everyone. Straight people who refuse to believe our identities are real, gay and other identities seeing us as straight passing and thinking we're infiltrators taking up resources. Everyone invalidating our feelings that oh we're just confused silly and immature. We'll find someone to love us and if we don't we're repressed losers, weird, broken, wrong. If it's not rape threats to "fix us" we get harrassed by someone thsr has romantic feelings we just can't return and getting screamed at because our friendship isn't good enough. Not to mention we always get sidelined. All people prioritize and value romantic and sexual relationships and the family's they will make themselves. Friendship is not valued the same it's seen as lesser that slowly loses importance over time. So friends get pushed further and further to the wayside and if you remain single and without kids everyone starts excluding you. Parents focus more on their children who gave them grandkids, siblings will want more in wills because they have their own family's to care for. That doesn't even go into the sexism ace women face in the workforce. Women who settle and have a family are often overlooked for promotions but ace women who don't seek out qpr and are single get overloaded with work and seen as having more "free time." But if ace women remain single and childfree they get harrassed by everyone they know to settle down eventually, they're not a real woman if they don't fall in love, get pregnant, adopt, or just have sex with someone. It's so lonely it's a loneliness no one ever considers. No one wants to understand asexuals, no one cares for us. I haven't experienced every single thing listed above thank god but it's still common enough that as I get older I'm sure will become more common place. Sorry I just. I'm proud to be aroace I am. I'm not ashamed but man is it hard when everyone looks at you as the other. The outlier that seems barely human that doesn't conform to any conventional standard. I'm low key relieved I've never been able to date anyone long enough to become serious, have crazy exes or even fall in love. It sounds exhausting being distracted by a person or multiple (not putting anyone down) but I've lost many good friends. Friendships I've spent years building up. And that was real heartbreak to me. I lost relatives and no one knows how to help with that because my support group is small. No boyfriend or girlfriend whose friend group would adopt me. Just mostly on my own having to rely on myself as best as I can. Anyway thanks for listening and letting me speak. And to my fellow asexuals and aspec people you're perfect just the way you are. Don't let anyone tell you you're wrong or your feelings are fake. You are fine just as you are so take up space don't hide yourselves if you are safe to be out.

i’m honoured that you see our blog as a safe place for you to vent your feelings & i’m sorry for the way society & people other you for who you are, even those in the community that is meant to be home.

to all our ace / aro followers, we love you & you’re safe here, for anything you need. ♥

#queer #lgbt #asexuality #aromantic #owl.txt #answered #q #aphobia /

31 notes · View notes

sourwormsaresour · 3 years

Note

what are your thoughts on La Squadra's sexualities?

First off, Happy Pride Month! Please have a safe one. Before I start, I just want to let you guys know that I’m a straight cisgender woman so I’m not 100% knowledgeable on sexualities so these are based on my current knowledge of the community. I’m open to all head-canons about La Squadra’s sexualities besides my own :)

Sorbet and Gelato are gay, both using he/him pronouns, and are the most out compared to everyone in the team. Even though La Squadra knew about their relationships, the two themselves aren’t open about it outside of the team and their families. This is especially because relationships can be used against you in the crime world but also because their families rely on them to have a “good reputation” to live comfortably. I head-canon that they are both breadwinners of their families: Gelato has siblings that go to very conservative, academic institutions and rely on scholarships that look into family history for recommendations, and Sorbet’s mother requires medical attention from reputable doctors that also have homophobic biases that can be used against her. They’ve secretly used some of their money to help a street kid or two that they learned was disowned after being outed or assassinated a few people for hurting kids for being part of the LGBTQ+ community or even preying on them. The two men probably both went through phases where they thought they only liked women, tried to be in heterosexual relationships, and their enemies-to-lovers type of relationship had probably stemmed from their inability to properly process their attraction to each other at the time.

Formaggio is bisexual and prefers using he/him pronouns; he has a stronger attraction to women but is unaware that he’s attracted to men as well. A big part of why he’s so unaware or in denial of it came from his conservative upbringing in a working-class family and lack of representation growing up. Formaggio knew that men can be attracted to other men, but other aspects of the LGBTQ+ community is either unknown to him or seen in a negative perception; he’s learning more about the community and how to be a better ally, especially after meeting Sorbet and Gelato, but he’s still struggling to reverse the anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments he grew up believing. As a result of his past, Formaggio assumed that one can only be attracted to one gender and never crossed his mind that people can be attracted to more than one. He often tries to hide his attraction to men via “straight guy who’s unaware he’s gay occasionally spits homophobic jokes and says ‘no homo’ every time he says "I love you" to his friends but he means full homo” approach.

Illuso is pansexual and gender fluid, preferring he/him/they/them pronouns most of the time but also likes using neo-pronouns and occasionally prefers to use she/her pronouns. As a former intern for a fashion designer before he joined La Squadra, he’s relatively more exposed to meeting different people in the LGBTQ+ community through fashion; those who were higher in status and power would be more out about it than those in lower ranking and the community was a huge source for avant-garde, counter-culture influences. Despite getting more inspiration for his designs from his interactions and developing his identity in the LGBTQ+ space, that also led to him witnessing discrimination, abuse, and powerplay caused by the higher-ups; some became victims simply because of rumors that they may be part of the LGBTQ+ community or being forcibly outed, some are forced into relationships in exchange for opportunities and privileges, etc. He remains closeted and part of his arrogance stems from him hiding his sexuality due to the trauma of enduring the abuse and witnessing it as well. La Squadra doesn’t know his sexuality or know that he’s genderfluid, but they’re fine with adapting to his pronouns whenever they change.

Pesci is unaware that they’re gay and are non-binary that prefers they/them pronouns. Although they try to stick to he/him pronouns to avoid being out, they like using they/them more and get secretly happy when someone refers to them as such. I head-canon that they’re actually younger than Giorno when they encountered Team Bucciarati, which would explain why he never killed anyone up until this point (they’re a literal kid that’s slowly getting involved in the team when Sorbet and Gelato were killed, albeit they’re on the buffer side despite their age), and with their sheltered childhood and Prosciutto’s strict mentorship, they never got to sit down and think about their sexual and gender identity. They often try to pretend they’re a macho straight man alongside Formaggio but they end up feeling bad about it after trying to say a bad comment or joke to fit in. Pesci themselves feel like they’re alone in terms of the emotions of not being able to put your sexuality into words. It doesn’t help that they’re rather isolated compared to everyone except Risotto; they only knew La Squadra as their family ever since they joined the team and they never talk to anyone outside of the group.

Prosciutto is bisexual and genderfluid, preferring to identify with he/him pronouns, but he’s also the most closeted and probably has the most internalized homophobia as well. Growing up in the entertainment industry, especially in acting, means adhering to heteronormative standards; controversies of any kind would make or break a career and he constantly heard homophobic statements “disguised” as critiques around him from all levels of the entertainment industry. The fact that he was overworked up until his “career retirement” also didn’t give him the time to sit down and realize both his sexuality and how fucked up the film industry is in terms of its treatment towards the LGBTQ+ community. With his upbringing of being presentable and hiding his sexuality, he tries to present himself in the most Italian metrosexual straight machismo man he could and uses his “gentleman charms” towards women to avoid people from questioning further about his sexuality. But at the end of the day, he knows he’s lying to himself about his sexuality. And unfortunately, his anger at being unable to express that is often misdirected.

Melone is demi-sexual, though he presents himself as asexual and panromantic, and prefers using any pronouns. Like his teammates, he prefers using he/him for his safety. As a former scientist, he learned and got to know about the LGBTQ+ community through a more scientific perspective, but also knew there are hidden homophobic biases in the science community as well. Still, he does his best to be an ally for his peers before realizing he is demisexual and panromantic. His sexuality allows him to view the incubation and child-rearing aspect of his Stand without emotions or feelings involved and further explains how he views fornication and training his Juniors in a very scientific and analytical way without guilt taking over. Despite presenting himself as ace/straight (mostly for safety and because it’s easier to explain that he has no attraction to people than being a demisexual), I also see someone who yearns to have a strong emotional connection to someone and would give his all to the person he loves most. His overtly sexual nature is more of an act (I've heard that some aces tend to act overtly sexual, either to avoid being outed or as a result of growing up thinking that need to feel an attraction is necessary) and Melone secretly desires being attracted to someone he learns to trust, admire, and love over time. I have a backstory that plays into that but I might disclose it another time. ;)

Ghiaccio is on the same boat with Prosciutto in terms of having internalized homophobia due to his childhood career as a child athlete. At the time he was training to be an Olympic hopeful as a solo figure skater, Ghiaccio was born female and had to remain in the closet due to the conservative nature of the ice skating world and his step-father being notorious for his opinions favoring homophobia and sexism. Once he joined La Squadra, Ghiaccio began experimenting with himself and ultimately came out as transgender, presenting himself with he/him pronouns, and had been using testosterone ever since. Most members that joined after him only knew Ghiaccio as male while the other members are either indifferent about his gender or are involved in helping Ghiaccio transition to be male. Transitioning also helped him realized he was aromantic and gay, which provided him closure from the years of struggle he had trying to fit into the heteronormative expectations he thought he had to conform to when he was female. The effect of testosterone also explains his brash and short-tempered nature, although that stems more from him finally being able to express himself after years of repressing his emotions as a child.

Risotto is also aromantic and asexual, preferring he/him/they/them pronouns, although he doesn’t know that he is aro/ace, to begin with. Growing up, he never really cared when he heard his older relatives or adults making comments about how “he’d make a good husband” or “have the girls chase him”, because all he cared about was his family and friends. He just assumes that once he becomes a “big boy”, then he’ll have thoughts of wanting to get married like the fairytales say. Just let his future spouse have children with him in any way and he'll play the role of husband regardless. Since his cousin’s death, he gave up the idea of having any sexual or romantic interest in anyone. Why to go out of your way to find any relationship when they’ll be dead soon enough- that was Risotto’s logic. He’s not aware that he can define himself as aro/ace, he just assumes that the trauma he went through with his cousin’s death stops him from feeling any attraction and doesn’t make an effort to figure out why.

20 notes · View notes

themalhambird · 3 years

Text

Growing Up Broken: I Talk About My (A)sexuality For 4 ¼ Pages.

I am asexual.

No, this doesn’t mean that I’m some form of plant budding off copies of myself if I get enough water and sunlight. It’s a shame. I could do a lot with multiple copies of myself- get someone else to do the dishes, the cleaning, my schoolwork…

I am asexual.

Asexuality is the absence of sexual desires or feelings for other people. I say absence deliberately: sexual attraction is not something that I lack or am missing. I am not going without. I’m just a 23 year old who has never once felt the desire to have sex with another person, who couldn’t describe how it feels to “fancy” someone if there was a gun to their head, who thinks women and men and anyone in between can sometimes be stunningly beautiful, would possibly be nice to cuddle- but kissing on the mouth seems like it would be a really weird thing to do.

I am asexual, and it’s almost Pride Month, and so I want to untangle some of the thoughts in my head and spin them out on to paper, to try and lay out my feelings about my sexuality, or lack thereof, and what it’s like growing up when no one bothers to tell you that not experiencing sexual desire like, ever, is a thing. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

It’s 2014. Puberty has doing stuff to me for the last two years or so: periods (urgh), breasts (neat!), underarm hair (why do I have to shave this? no one’s gonna see it), growth spurts (I’m getting taller than my older sister. I want to keep going till I’m taller than mum). The only thing not happening is wanting to have sex, something the nurse who came to Talk To Us All About Growing Up back in 2009 assured us Year Sixes would definitely happen as soon as puberty hit.

Still. It’ll happen soon, probably. Sixteen is still a bit too young to be having sexual feelings, right? The boys…really not interesting at all, but the other girls are pretty. I like their hair. I like the shape of their bodies. I just don’t fancy any of them. When we’re told to imagine our future husbands or wives in class (don’t ask my why, I’ve long forgotten the point of the exercise, I just remember that) I picture a wife.

(Lesbian is the first label I apply to myself. I stick it on tentatively- keep peeling it off my shirt and putting it back somewhere different like I’m not quite sure where it fits. It’s not wrong, necessarily. I’m just not certain it’s right. I like girls a whole lot better but I’m not saying I could never love a guy. I’m just not attracted to them. I’m not attracted to women, either- but I feel like I will be. When I’m old enough to feel that kind of thing. )

Sex Ed lessons are mortifying. We’re asked to list all the sexual terms we know on an A3 sheet of paper. I don’t know what half the things other people say mean- blowjob, 69, masturbate, porn . I don’t know how other people know these things either. We’re sixteen. It’s too young.

That summer I play Sebastian in an abridged version of Twelfth Night and it convinces me to take Drama at A-level, although I didn’t at GCSE. The drama classes teach me two things. First of all, I don’t like acting women. I prefer breeches rolls. I don’t know why. We’re talking about my asexuality, not my gender confusion, so let’s put a pin in that and move on to point two. My drama class teaches me that everyone my age is having sex, or wants to have sex, or is planning on having sex soon; sex is a constant, every class, every conversation. Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. So apparently sixteen (seventeen) isn’t too young after all.

It’s like this. One day you wake up and you realise that everyone else is speaking a language you don’t understand. Suddenly, sexual feelings aren’t something that no one your age is having but you’ll all develop soon- it’s that sexual feelings are something that everybody your age is having apart from you. People your age are dating, kissing, fucking, and it’s not something you’re interested in doing, necessarily, but you still feel so horribly left out. Like you’re missing some kind of major milestone. You try not to let it bother you- you watch Buffy every Monday you get to see your dad. (You watch loss of virginity be portrayed as growing up). You read. (The books you pick up all involve love and love always seems to at least imply sex). You- google things. You google the words you didn’t understand in that sex ed class. You google “how to tell if you’re attracted to someone” in case there’s some secret signal your body sent you that you missed. You feel like you should know if you’ve ever felt sexual attraction but then maybe you’re just really, really dumb. Maybe there’s something wrong with you. The NHS website reckons that if you’ve got a low sex drive you ought to see a doctor. The girls in your drama class keep talking about boys and sex and sex and boys and you aren’t really interested in either of those things. You cling to the thought, lesbian and hope that when you get to university, you’ll stop being so repressed. Girls are pretty- but the ones at school are either your friends or kind of mean. Of course you don’t fancy anyone there. University. University will save you. (Boys are sometimes pretty too. There are boys at school whose personalities are nice enough- who are the type of man you wouldn’t mind dating one day maybe- but you can’t ever picture yourself having sex with one. Dicks seem weird and really not the kind of thing you’d want inside you. I mean for fuck’s sake- why? You can’t even get a tampon in.)

I don’t like looking back on this. Sixteen, seventeen year old me was starting to get pretty freaked out. I like looking back at the first year of uni even less, because if seventeen year old me was freaking out, eighteen year old me was buying alcohol. That’s how it goes, right? Sex and alcohol. You see it all the time on T.V. Fictional people get fictional drunk and fictional cheat while they’re on fictional breaks with their fictional partners. David Tennant is pretty. A man at work is handsome and more importantly intelligent, into Shakespeare, into good conversation. The label switches from lesbian to ‘bisexual but heavily skewed toward women’ and I cling to that as tightly as possible because after that, I’m out of options. It is impossible that I’m not feeling sexual attraction: the whole world screams about sexual fucking attraction all the fucking time, I’m obviously just too uptight, I obviously just need to relax-

I once drank a whole bottle of wine in what was essentially one go. I paused for breath, but that was about it- I don’t think I even bothered with a glass. My goal was to get myself drunk enough that I could feel sexual attraction. I thought that the best way to go about things- to finally ‘grow up’- would be to get super drunk, and then leave the flat and find someone who would screw me. I reasoned that I would enjoy it once I was doing it- after all, the whole world pushes sex as this wholly desirable thing for any normal adult to want, even need- so I would like it once I was doing it and then I would be fixed. Fortunately, drinking a whole bottle of wine when you’ve never had more than a single glass of champagne or a couple of glasses of rum and apple juice before in your life gets you past “lowered inhibitions” to “can’t walk straight or upright” very quickly. I got as far as the bathroom, threw up, a lot, and staggered back to my room. I woke up at 3 pm the next afternoon feeling stupid for drinking, and mad at myself for still being a virgin.

I had a lot of problems in my first year of university and not all of them were about my sexuality crisis. I was isolated, fairly friendless, and not really cut out for socialising with my housemates who were probably all lovely people, but I find new people painfully difficult and hiding away seemed easier. But the feeling that there was something broken inside me because I wasn’t experiencing what everything seemed to be telling me was one of the most vital parts of the human experience- sexual attraction to other people- contributed to my general feelings of self-loathing and disgust. I attempted to induce sexual desire in myself by drinking on several further occasions, although never quite to the same extent as the first time. I’m not sure whether this counts as self-harm, but it certainly wasn’t healthy.

I didn’t know asexuality was a thing.

I knew I wasn’t straight- I’d known that for a while. I learnt that I enjoyed reading, talking, even writing about sex, as long as it was sex between people who weren’t real, but fantasising about fictional characters having sex and fantasying about myself having sex are two very different things. The former happened fairly frequently. The latter didn’t happen once, and still never has. My second year at university was better than my first: I was living with friends, I was further away from campus which meant I had to walk more, which probably helped, I had also started to make several friends online with whom I could happily chat even when I wasn’t in the mood for ‘actual’ people. I used bisexual to describe myself because on the rare occasions I thought about romance, I couldn’t really see myself ruling out anyone who was willing to put up with me.

I’m not quite clear when I first heard the term ‘asexuality’. I became aware of it gradually. Someone I followed on Tumblr identified as ‘grey-ace’. Characters from my favourite fantasy series were being headcanoned as ‘asexual’. At some point I must have learnt properly what that meant.

It sometimes feels like there ought to have been a lightbulb moment- like I should have seen the word, seen the definition, and instantly seen myself. But it is very, very hard to delete the message- ‘sex is important- sex is what grown-ups do- sex is what you should want to do’ – that the world constantly sends to us: in advertising, in entertainment, in the conversations of a drama class that always circled back to that topic, to the detriment of the sole seventeen year old who wasn’t really bothered. To embrace asexuality seemed like I was giving up on trying to fix myself, on waiting for the right person to come and make everything better. On the potential of their being a right person. I can wrap my head around people having casual sex very easily. It’s romantic love without sexual desire that I’m scared won’t work- how am I supposed to know if it’s love without there also being physical attraction? No romance arc that I had ever seen was without an element of sexual tension. So, no lightbulb moment for me. No switch going off- “aha, at last, that’s what I am!”. Just a gradual thought washing across my mind every now and then, like the tide rushing up a patch of sand and drawing straight back, leaving only dampness to show where there had been a good half-inch of water only a moment ago.

I might be asexual?

And ‘I might’ becomes ‘I think I am’, and the tide starts coming in. ‘I think I am’ became ‘I am’ at some point or other.

I am asexual.

I find reassurance in knowing that there’s a word for what I am, for how I (do not) feel. I am asexual. Not broken, or damaged, or too uptight to properly feel, or too dumb to recognise what I do feel. I am asexual- I have an absence of any sexual desire for others and that’s perfectly okay. I might fall in love one day. I might not. I don’t know how you’re supposed to know if you have the capacity to fall in love before you find yourself doing it. It might be nice to have a wife. It would also be nice to have a cat. I could cope with it just being me, a cat, and good friends for the rest of my life. If I fall in love- if I am capable of falling in love- it will just mean I am asexual, but romantic, and I will have learnt something new about myself. The point is-

The point is, I am incredibly lucky that I stumbled across Asexuality before I got myself hurt trying to force something that wasn’t there. The point is, this world assumes that sexual desires are the norm, and maybe they are, but that just makes it all the more important that people know that they aren’t abnormal for not experiencing sexual desire. To all the people who need to hear it: You are not broken. You are not alone.

I’m not sure how to wrap this up. I feel like I should say something profound or something. But I think I’m just gonna leave it like this:

I am asexual. Asexuality is the absence of sexual desires or feelings for other people. I say absence deliberately: sexual attraction is not something that I lack or am missing. I am not going without. I’m just a 23 year old who has never once felt the desire to have sex with another person, who couldn’t describe how it feels to “fancy” someone if there was a gun to their head, who thinks women and men and anyone in between can sometimes be stunningly beautiful, and possibly be nice to cuddle- but kissing on the mouth seems like it would be a really weird thing to do. I am not broken. I am not ‘going through a phase’ or ‘looking for attention’ or ‘trying to be special’. Everyone’s special, fuck you. Knowing that I am not the only person to feel how I feel makes me feel like I’m standing on solid ground. May all people experiencing the same confusion and distress over their sexual orientation that I felt growing up find their way safely to the same solid ground: you are not broken. We’re not broken.

#asexuality #wow this got long #no i haven't proof read it i just wanted to get it off my chest #discussion of sex tw #alcohol tw #self harm tw #(mostly just in case I'm not sure if it counts or not)#I don't know what this is except a long winded account of growing up asexual when you don't know that's a thing and how you cope with that #or- y'know- don't cope with that #maybe someone else will find it helpful or relatable idk

18 notes · View notes

ironwoman359 · 4 years

Note

Hi, I am currently questioning my sexuality, and I was wondering if you could talk a little about how you realized you are ace? I think I might be ace as well, but it's hard to tell since asexuality is defined by a lack of attraction, and I cannot tell if I have ever experienced sexual attraction before or not. I might have without realizing it...? I just don't know. If it helps, I know for sure that I am sex-repulsed... Thx.

Basically, when I started using tumblr (NONE of you guys would have been following me then, I had a different url and that account actually got deleted by mistake) was the first time I was exposed to the queer community as a whole, and around that time there were a lot of “aseuxals are LGBTQ!” posts floating around, I think because this was around when a big online pushback to asexuality came around and aphobes took over the ace disc-horse tag. Since I didn’t know anything about the LGBTQ community other than what gay, lesbian, and trans meant, I was just sorta all “yeah sure of course they are, all the queer kids are saying it so they’re probably right.”

Then I actually learned what asexuality was....and everytime a post describing the ace experience came up I had a little bit more of an “oh no” moment in my head. It was like...slowly coming to the realization that most people, even people who were raised with the beliefs about sex that I was raised with, still wanted sex, and that I didn’t.

I really didn’t want to be ace for a long time. I joke sometimes that before I knew what asexuality was I was so deep in the closet that I didn’t know the closet existed. Well, when I first learned about asexuality, it was like suddenly realizing that I was surrounded by fur coats, but trying to frantically insist that “no no no, that’s just the wallpaper! I’m not actually in a closet, hahaha...”

I researched stuff about sexual repression, I learned for the first time what libido was (can you tell I did not have good sex ed at my school?) and pretended for awhile that surely that was the problem, I googled “is asexuality a sin” and found that on the rare occasion Christianity acknowledged asexuality it still wasn’t in a positive light, and I began to fear what that meant for my romantic relationship should we ever marry. I even spent a long time desperately hoping that I was demi, cuz if I was demi then surely those feelings would start to appear for my boyfriend and then everything would be fine, right?

I was dealing with a LOT of internalized aphobia, but at the same time, the more I read and researched the more I realized that the label was one that fit me perfectly. “Why do people act like abstinence is a hard choice? Why would you just have a one night stand? Who just cheats and sleeps with someone other than their partner?” All thoughts I’d had before that suddenly had a simple explanation: allos and aces experience the world differently, and the allo experience is considered the norm.

I unfortunately can’t tell you whether you yourself are ace, whether you have experienced sexual attraction without realizing it, or if your sex-repulsion is tied to asexuality or not (for some people it isn’t!). But I can tell you that if you do decide to identify as ace for awhile and then later realize a different label fits you better? That’s totally okay, and very normal! Human sexuality is diverse and weird and complicated and beautiful, and it’s okay to take as long as you need to figure out where you fit on that spectrum. Happy Pride, and I wish you the best of luck, friend <3

#ace things #advice #taylor talks #pride #ace pride #asks and answers

78 notes · View notes

fuckyeahasexual · 5 years

Text

Sharing of experience

I just want to tell the younger aces as much as the older aces who believe they have to do something to prove their belonging to the asexual or LGBTQ+ community (or even themselves!): do not do something you are uncomfortable doing. Do not disrespect yourself because of someone else's vague assumption of who you are. You know better. I'm 26. I've been ace for as long as I can remember. In my case, I've never felt sexual attraction at all, for any gender, ever. Like so many of us did and still do, I believed I was broken and something was wrong with me so much I didn't have the right to exist if it was not for fitting in. And because it's only recently that asexuality has started being truly acknowledged despite it having been present for forever just like any other sexual orientation, I just could not find peace within myself until I found out about it being something legitimate like, two or three years ago. I do not feel sexual attraction but I am aware of it in the sense that it's something I can see others experimenting in a way, that's what has been so hard for me. To be able to decipher what is lust in the eyes and behavior of another person and realize it's something I am completely incapable, unable to feel or mimic myself. I tried to fit in, so I did plenty of stupid things I will forever regret. I thought that it was a phase. That I was a late bloomer. That I was probably not ready. That something in my head was not working properly. That I had not met the right person. That I was maybe repressing another sexual orientation. And with everyone always saying "if you want to grow you have to get out of your comfort zone!" and the implicit pressure with years passing by that "you have to have sex and be in a relationship to become a real adult and gain maturity", I went where I should not have. I started relationships I didn't want to have. Let things I didn't want to happen happen. And all it made me feel even more broken. More self-conscious of what I was lacking in comparison to others. I, myself, without others' judgment, I felt happy with not feeling sexual attraction at all. I lived it well. It wasn't there so I was not suffering regarding the fact I was lacking it. I did not have the sensation I lacked something at all actually, as I didn't know it was supposed to be there in the first place and never felt it before. But the fact society and most people put sexual activity above everything and entangle it with every possible matter of life made me feel sick and ashamed of how I was so much I tried to find ways to make value of myself which ended up badly and hurt me physically and mentally. Because we had the right to feel any type of sexual attraction but the lack of it was never properly assessed I felt I was wrong because I could never relate. And because others knew I could not relate despite me trying to fake it, bullying and harassment comforted me even more in believing I was wrong. In high school I identified as bisexual at first. Because I felt the same thing, that is to say nothing, to everyone the same way. But it did not feel right to me. That was not me. As much as any orientation is not about being sexual, it still depicts which way your sexual attraction goes. And mine wasn't going anywhere, it was not here but it was not here for everyone. Then as I grew over 20, I discovered the term demisexual and thought it was fitting as despite knowing I could not feel sexual attraction, MAYBE, like others suggested it, I might feel it one day with the right person (to me right person = one I have developed a wonderful and deep mental, emotional and intellectual relationship with). Needless to say that I was proven wrong by my ex, who I felt really connected to until I let them have their way with me one too many times... and it hit me like a truck in the worst of situation. Made me sick for weeks. No matter what I did, no matter the stimulation, no matter the period of my life, no matter my mental state; I could not feel sexual attraction. It was impossible. It could not go on like this, I could not keep on hurting myself. After this toxic relationship, weirdly, when I came across the term "asexuality" which I had seen some time before already but didn't check; it all clicked. That's it. That's what I am. It was like a revelation to me and like the world stepped out of my shoulders after all these years. I was no being a prude. I was not being picky. It was not me being sick, not ready, not having met the right person. It was not me believing I was superior to others, or being inferior to them either. It was not me being abstinent or celibate. It was just me being a regular human being, but not feeling sexual attraction. It was just me being asexual. Just asexual. And it was okay. I then realized that it was the only thing that mattered. That it felt right to me and that I was alright with it. I just wish that for the sake of others and how it is said that I'm supposed to behave, I didn't go to such lengths to accept to realize it. To listen to myself and take my own word seriously. So, please, do not push your boundaries just to try and follow what society said you should be or do. Or to prove who you are. You are a proof enough of who you are because you are you. You are you, and it's more than enough. Only you can know about what you feel and who you are, and only you can talk about it. Others have no say in it, no matter what their stance on the matter might be. You know better. If the label asexual made you feel like you finally put pieces together, then it's all that matters. If you feel it's where you belong, it's where you belong. And if you are unsure, it's okay too. Maybe you'll figure it out later. Maybe you won't ever figure it out and it's perfectly fine as well. Identity with whatever feels right to you, and know that you don't have to have it "right" on the first try. You don't have to have it "right" at all. You just have to be okay with yourself being yourself. Trust yourself. Stay safe you lovely acepirational sweethearts. Nana, your new adoptive sis who loves you to the moon and back.♥

#ace stories #submission

290 notes · View notes

pseudoneiiric · 4 years

Text

meta post: lili and her gender

let me go on the record to say that i fucking love lilian eyler with my whole heart, like, i typed all this out and im so fucking emotional about her! in the past, i've written things about hello charlotte and how the lgbt representation is... lacking, let's call it, and i've also made a few headcanon posts here and there about lilian's transition and her relationship with gender. so i thought, you know, let's actually write a whole ass thing about it. so here it is.

content warnings: gender dysphoria, suicide attempts, homophobia/transphobia in the original source material

PART 1: ETHERANE'S BAD TAKES so... etherane did not handle lgbt stuff well, like, in the slightest. lili is canonically genderfluid, as seen in one of those little profile things that etherane drew that doesn't actually show up in any of the games. but her genderfluid identity isn't handled well at all in the actual source material. actually, in general, hello charlotte is pretty transphobic. to cite one example, there’s this journal entry in hello charlotte 3 talking about “defective” charlotte vessels, and one of the things that can make a charlotte vessel “defective” is for them to be born amab or intersex. this already has some really bad vibes, but then we remember also that one of the big functions of charlottes is apparently for them to be sexualized (yikes!!!!!) and so we also get this weird kind of like, “trans people aren’t hot” kind of take?

but anyway. when it comes to lilian specifically, she never actually states in canon that she’s genderfluid or otherwise trans, not even in the spinoff visual novel, which, by the way, would have been the perfect place to address her gender identity, and she consistently uses he/him pronouns. we don’t actually get to see any of her thought processes about her gender at all — like at this point, i can’t even say it’s a non-issue because that would imply that they even mentioned her gender in canon. the only time we can potentially extrapolate from canon that lili might not be cis is when anri mentions that charlotte is lili’s self-insert oc. that’s kind of heavy-handed with the whole “charlotte being the female name for charles”, but that’s another matter. the point is, with the lack of any canon basis that lilian’s even vaguely questioned her gender, the reveal that she’s actually genderfluid with like, two pieces of artwork that are detached from the actual game feels very pxrfxrmxtxvxly xnclxsxvx (performatively inclusive) especially considering how.... etherane talked about lilian’s gender in particular within the actual canon material.

after all, the story behind lilian is effectively that, after she was born, her mother was forced to abort her second child, a daughter that she would name scarlett. doing so plunged her into a really deep depression that eventually took on delusional qualities. so ever since lilian was about three years old, her mother has been referring to her exclusively as scarlett, asking her to ‘ be a good girl ’ and similarly raising her as a girl. we can see here that etherane seems to have implied that genderfluidity is something that happens because other people make it so, and isn’t an identity and lived experience. (bad take!) although, albeit unintentionally, i think etherane did lay some groundwork to talk about lilian’s relationship with her gender, specifically with regards to her projection onto her oc, charlotte. in high school, when she’s more active on the internet, we see that she’s going by charlotte and using she/her pronouns. anri, her irl friend, is pretty openly critical of that, but she sort of brushes off anri’s complaints and continues to present as feminine online. now, there’s this fanfic writer who goes by the pseudonym “c”, and lilian very quickly takes an interest in him. the way she talks to c, who doesn’t know her irl, compared anri, who does, is just like flat-out like they’re completely different people.

compare, her with c:

to her with anri:

i also wanted to mention that lili does occasionally act more “femininely” with anri, but it’s never to the extent that she does with c, and in general, affectionate banter is sort of... outright ridiculed in their friendship both ways. see this one exchange:

anri: >:) always up for some roasting lili: right? <3 <3 anri: now you’re the one being gross

unrelated but it fucking kills me that anri was like “ily <3” and lili went “gross” so she went “kys” and lili deadass goes “that’s better” like that’s what anri is referencing when she says “now you’re the one being gross” and im like... please just be healthy friends who don’t wish death on each other???

it’s also worth noting that c doesn’t know that she’s not “actually” a girl, and literally when they meet, she goes like, “it’s you who should be disappointed in me. charlotte turned out to be charles, whoops! i bet you were hoping that i’d be a cute girl.” and that’s... really depressing, like, she ended up really leaning into that cutesy side of her when she was talking to c and now she feels the need to be a lot more... sarcastic and bitter, like how she is with anri, because now c “knows the truth about her”, that she’s “actually been a guy all along”.

in any case, i think the intent that etherane was going for with this was kind of like... “lilian’s actually a repressed cis gay man!” which is . not great. it gives off this really gross vibes where it’s implied that since lili was raised as a girl and is into men, she got “confused” and started going by she/her online because she couldn’t come to terms with her sexuality or whatever. and that’s just such a bad take!!!

not to mention that a really important part of lili’s backstory is... her germaphobia. she has persistent delusions accompanied by visual hallucinations where she sees people as “parasites”, which visually manifests as them rotting or decomposing. because of that, she wears gloves all the time and is repulsed by physical touch. but when she meets c (whose real name is vincent) in person, she pretty much instantly goes for skin-to-skin contact with him, where she takes off her glove and holds his hand. and like, sure, that’s sweet, but that’s really not how mental illness... works. in the slightest. she doesn’t react at all when his hand touches hers, despite the fact that she has literally had panic attacks in canon from touching things without her gloves. and it gives off this implication that mental illness can be cured with romance somehow, and that’s a really bad take!

this feeds into fandom understanding that like, well, if lilian sees vincent as pure and allows him to touch her, then Obviously she’d let him kiss her, they could probably have sex, etc. and like... she’s canonically asexual though! and that brings us to the other implication, that asexuality is somehow... caused by something. like, there’s nothing in canon to state that lilian experiences sexual attraction (or even really romantic attraction, like i know etherane went off in heaven’s gate and did a lot of ship tease, but she never really outright says she’s crushing on anyone), but judging from the way etherane handled lilian’s gender identity, i have a sneaking suspicion that she established lilian’s asexuality with her mental illnesses specifically in mind. lilian’s autistic, germaphobic, has severe ocd, and she’s been sexually assaulted in the past. therefore, she must be asexual! that’s the sort of vibes i get from the game, and im not here for it. similarly to how her genderfluidity was handled, she makes no actual statement in canon that she doesn’t experience sexual attraction. the closest she’s ever come to this is when she says to anri in heaven’s gate that she is just straight up not interested in kissing (to which anri is like, “well what if it were vincent owo??” which. ugh. anyway). it just seems really strange to me to design a character with severe mental health issues with regards to physical touch and then just sort of treat it as a given that she’s asexual. it’s another example of etherane implying that lgbt identities are results of traumatic experiences or symptoms of mental illness and not an identity or lived experience. you can be sex-repulsed and not be asexual, and while i understand that many people do identify as ace due to trauma and other such things, it still feels like really bad rep when taken with the way lilian’s genderfluidity was portrayed.

PART 2: HOW “CHARLES” IS DIFFERENT FROM “LILIAN”

throughout hello charlotte, lilian identifies herself as a passive observer, someone who doesn’t directly interfere in events. this applies mostly to her existence in false realm, where she’s like... a god, and doesn’t want to interfere in the balance of the world. but i believe she also has always seen herself as an observer. in her very first scene, the one where she and anri are watching someone get bullied, she’s the one who tells anri that there’s no point in getting help. because her role is just to observe. to take pictures for anri, to be a good girl, to say yes to everything and to never express her opinions, feelings, thoughts.

and honestly, i think the main reason for that is that she’s dysphoric. whenever she talks about herself, she’s really self-deprecating, especially compared to when she talks about charlotte. i feel like the main reason why lilian detaches herself from the world and refuses to really perceive herself is because she’s fundamentally disgusted with her gender presentation. and like, we can see in the two times that she’s presented femininely (with c and in that one comic) that lili is just so much happier and more bubbly when she’s presenting as feminine. you can literally see her stop dissociating and becoming more present in the moment because she’s just. so much more comfortable in her skin. compare:

these pictures with this one:

it’s funny i was going to say that there is a picture where she’s presenting as masculine and actually smiles like a person, but guess what! she’s texting c! so she’s actually performing femininity!

but the point is, like... when she’s presenting as masculine, especially in the canon pictures rather than etherane’s art, she just doesn’t look... happy. and then we compare that to how much more present she seems when she’s presenting as feminine, and how much more comfortable she seems in being, like, happy! and cute! but there is a downside to this. and that is...

PART 3: DIFFICULTIES IN LILI’S TRANSITION

in my sort of... “main verse” for lili, i have it so that her suicide attempt failed and that she was somehow... saved from drowning. mother passes away and she starts to... soul search a little bit and find a reason to live, and somewhere along the line she starts to transition socially. that means she starts transitioning at a pretty... extremely vulnerable point in her life. in the year between 18-19 years old, she’d be a wreck. she’s growing her hair out, but she feels insecure about it. she starts to wear skirts, but only at home. she buys makeup and never wears it. it’s a long process for her, because it’s one thing to go by she/her online or to claim she’s just a gender-confused gay boy and a completely different thing to come out as a trans woman and to actually see herself as a woman and not some kind of imposter. considering that she was raised as a girl, she would have a large amount of guilt over transitioning, feeling like she’s going to be seen as confused, or that her gender identity is a direct result of her childhood trauma. but she’s not just worried that others will see her that way: she’s worried that she’s going to see herself that way.

and for a long time, she probably does see herself that way. for a long time, scarlett would probably treat her transition as some kind of attempt to personify her unborn sister and comply with perceived expectations rather than an attempt to feel comfortable in her own skin. she’d get nervous that she’s somehow becoming scarlett, because though she’s always thought it would be easier if she’d just been her sister, she’s never really wanted to be scarlett. she’d be scared to wear mid-length skirts, scared to put her hair up in a bun, probably even scared to wear red for a time, all because she’s scared of somehow losing herself and becoming her alter.

because of her caution and concern with identifying as a trans woman and not as the “safer“ gender identity of genderfluidity (where she can say she’s trans but never actually have to “push boundaries” by wearing feminine clothing or using any pronouns besides he/him), it would likely take her a very long time to take the step to medically transition. she’d likely never get any gender affirmation surgeries just because of how invasive the procedure is, but hormones would probably be something she’d look into once she’s much older and has a more stable income.

i mentioned before that before her transition, she uses dissociation and observation as a way to cope with her gender dysphoria. she saw herself as someone who didn’t really participate in the world, was a class ghost, invisible to everyone and a minuscule part of a vast universe. but upon transitioning, she’d feel much more actively self-conscious. once she starts to present in a feminine way, she’d feel like she’s being seen, like she’s actually participating in the world, and that’s both a blessing and a curse.

she’d be much more prone to stammering, especially when saying her name, and would blush far more often. she’d be afraid of saying the wrong thing or messing up somehow. and on top of that, she’d likely feel predatory for talking to others, always wondering if others find her cute or repulsive, always wondering if someone will perceive her and harm her in some way.

she’d very likely also feel really guilty about her own emotional experience. because she’s so used to being a passive observer, a puppet that only does what others want, she would feel like it’s selfish to be just... content. she’s so actively disgusted with herself before she transitions that she’s never allowed herself to be mentally present for a happy moment in her entire life. she always second-guesses, always dismisses positive things as a mere coincidence, and after she transitions, when she starts being more present in her life, she’d feel so guilty for just allowing herself to be happy.

because of that, she has some trouble with presenting as feminine consistently — she’d vary the “level” of her feminine presentation from day-to-day, where she might go full femme one day and another day stick with a beanie and a pair of slacks. she’s much more comfortable with presenting as more traditionally feminine when she’s at home or with trusted friends in a private space, but around 19 years old, she makes a vested effort to remain in public spaces. she’d time herself, saying, “for one hour, i’ll stay in this café while wearing a skirt, and then i can leave,” and she’d gradually increase the amount of time she spends in public spaces. and eventually, eventually she does end up feeling really comfortable with her gender presentation and falls into a more static sense of style. she really likes clothing design, so she ends up wearing a lot more dynamic outfits when she’s more comfortable with herself, and she probably also mildly gets into cosplay.

i also like to think that she reconnects with anri during her young adult years. either it’s like, right after her suicide attempt (i’ve written before that she’d had anri listed as her emergency contact and forgot to change it when she moved), or it’s at some point after she starts transitioning socially. i think it’d be really sweet for them to be friends in a more real way, and the sheer concept of anri teaching lili how to properly apply makeup and to set her hair is just so fucking sweet i might die. they both deserve to have friends so i think this is just a step up from hello charlotte canon.

#long post //#lilian eyler: study.#ive been working on this post for days. im fuckign emotional about her

2 notes · View notes

rabbitindisguise · 4 years

Text

I think one of my biggest discomforts with identifying as ace in the aro community as opposed to aro in the ace community is based on community reception of aroacesness, actually, now that I think about it.

If I call sex “icky” in a completely joking manner, allo aros are going to come down hard about it in aro spaces, so I can never fully relax and be comfortable. In comparison, if I call romance “the most awful thing in the entire universe” in total seriousness, alloro aces will nod along companionably about it, if not outright agree. The most absurd part about this is, I’m far more vehement about my hatred of all things heart shaped, but it’s far easier to deal with that in ace spaces than to be aroace in aro spaces.

And I know sex is different, for some people. We live in a very simultaneously hypersexual and repressed society in America. That creates a lot of tangled feelings. The worst part is, I talk about my personal feelings about sex, and people perceive it as a personal attack on their orientation. I think this is because most of the aros that make up the new aro community that’s distinct from the ace and a-spec community left because of their sexualities.

And since many of those people are allo, they just don’t understand what being ace is like. I see criticisms get aro-splained responses (for a lack of a better term, basically just get aromanticism explained to the readers, who include me, an aro) a lot when I do dip my toe in the disagreements happening. It’s like they can’t conceive of the ability to say “hell no” to sex as more important than the ability to say “hell no” to romance. I’d say my aromanticism has been a negative issue, if not actively positive experience-wise. Since I’m ace the aromanticism is the assumption if I don’t explain the SAM . . . except with aros that don’t like what I’m saying.

So I mean. I don’t like aro spaces, is what I’m saying. I don’t like allo spaces. I don’t like talking to allos about sex. I can talk about sex for hours, but allos get pissed whenever I dare imply that sexual attraction isn’t the purest form of human connection. And I see those complaints mirrored a lot in a lot of aros about alloros with romance. So it must probably be happening somewhere. I just don’t see it, and I don’t relate to it, so whenever I try to talk about sex and a disparaging manner, I feel like it’s suddenly less important that I’m aroace, and more important I stay polite to keep the peace and not get forcibly ousted or even just tolerated and unable to form any actual connections with other aros.

Under all this I think it’s important to remember that the issues around why allosexual aros need to have spaces to talk about sex the allosexual way are often true of alloromantic aros. As much as sexuality, especially without the follow through that it will lead to a long term romantic relationship, is charged, not all alloromantic people have their alloro orientation valorized. Many otherwise LGBTQ+ people, people of color, mentally ill, and disabled people have been denied access to the idea of romantic attraction as a good and pure thing. These people have been hypersexualized, desexualized, objectified, excluded, erased, and silenced. Romantic attraction for aro-spectrum people isn’t easy either, especially with the polarizing forces of allosexual aros and alloromantic aces both having different needs. This is why everyone had a different section of the AVEN forums.

And on top of that, many alloromantic aces still face incredible prejudice. “It must be terrible to date an ace” is something that gets said by allos all the time. Exclusionists attacked the entire community, but aces did not have it easier- in fact the hypervisibility spared me some serious attention for a long time on any other part of my identity. I have first hand experience as an aroace also and what it has been has been nothing pleasant for myself as an ace, both inside the aspect community, and outside. I just wish people were prepared to preemptively apply the suffering they’ve experienced to practical compassion towards allied identities so that we can all help each other the best ways that we can.

And, okay, I do feel that my aroness is debt to the ace community. Not in a “don’t complain about the ace community in any way” way, but in a “I appreciate this community with so much admiration and respect that I can’t imagine that we can’t move past this and make it more welcoming to all aros.” Especially since aroness was forged in it. I know aroness didn’t get the community support from allos in society as a whole, that’s for damn sure.

If I want anything from this whole mess, it’s an aroace hut in the ace community where I can be the somehow crotchety young person sipping hot cocoa with my buds and making sex jokes and ridiculing sexual attraction in the same breath. But that is incredibly self serving, I think. Also, that’s not something I want all the time. Sometimes I want a space that’s never heard of “sex” and doesn’t want to find out what it is. Sometimes I want a space that’s dripping with romantic squeeing with no sex. Sometimes I want practical sex tips. But I’m never going to want a space where I have to pretend I feel something I don’t. I know how to talk romance when it’s not my vibes to do so without upsetting alloros- I don’t know how to soften the blow of “I simply think sex is not that important.”

TL;DR may we diversify our communities so we can have our cake and eat it too

#personal #asexuality #identity #allosexism #sexuality #lmao I love how many red squiggly lines this has #we're out here making language and terminology the likes of which google spellcheck has never seen before!#tbh the best part about being ace is how much sexuality jargon I know now #it's made me incredibly powerful #food #puns #thought you could escape the wrath of Ace Puns huh #no way #oh crap I gave it away #*facepalm*

6 notes · View notes

astromechs · 5 years

Text

there’s nothing grand or revolutionary here, but i wanted to write down some pieces of my journey to... self-acceptance, i guess, before pride month 2019 is over. i never had a sweeping, cinematic moment of a big realization of my sexuality or anything like that, i didn’t have a dramatic coming out moment, so this story won’t be particularly interesting. but:

i kind of wanted to get it out of my own head, and

if it helps someone who’s struggling with similar things, i think that would be awesome, because i wish i had more of this when i was younger

i’ll put this under a read more for potential length to save your dashes.

i grew up, and still live, in the southeastern united states -- north carolina, to be specific. while i grew up in a fairly liberal urban area of the state that’s accepting of a lot of progressive values, i’m surrounded by a pretty conservative (and homophobic) southern culture. my immediate family consists of some fairly progressive and open-minded people, but the stock “southern” values do apply to my extended family, as well as to friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc who have been part of my life at various points. my state still doesn’t have laws in place to ensure protections for lgbtq+ individuals in terms of employment, housing, and other areas, and we are the state that passed the infamous “bathroom bill” a few years back.

this gives you an idea of the context from which i’m coming. a lot of self-acceptance among lgbtq+ individuals growing up in contexts such as these involves overcoming your own internalized homophobia instituted by the environment around you, and i’m no exception.

as a child and adolescent, i always knew something was “different” about me, but i could never put a finger on it -- it would take until adulthood before i really had the tools to do so. when i was in elementary school, the majority of my friends were boys, because at that time, i simply felt more comfortable around them; with a few notable exceptions of girls i formed intense friendships with (i’ll get to this more in a second), girls tended to make me... nervous, almost. i was very much against wanting to be boxed into stereotypes of traditional femininity, so i wanted to reject things like the color pink and playing with “girl toys” and “girl games” -- my emergence into adulthood and as a feminist has involved overcoming a lot of internalized misogyny; i’ve always been set in my gender identity as a cis female, but i resented gendered expectations put forth by society -- but upon further reflection, i think something else was going on there, too.

the “something else” involves multiple examples of very intense friendships with other girls that i can remember taking place through my late elementary school years and up through the end of high school. i won’t go into those in detail, but looking back, they had a lot of the same features -- the feeling that people described as “butterflies” that i desperately tried to feel for a boy and never did, intense connections, feeling like it was a true “breakup” whenever i encountered a falling out in one of these friendships. i bring up that last point, because i actually did date a boy when i was 17 (the one and only time i ever did), and when we broke up, i was sadder about losing the friendship i had with this boy than the relationship -- and my “friend breakups” with the other girls had felt much more devastating. (it’s also telling that i’m 30 now and have had zero desire to try to date a guy again since i was 17 but... you know.)

throughout high school as well, i had multiple “crushes” on guys that were either unavailable or turned out to be gay, and looking back, i think i did that very intentionally. there was a sense that i had to “fit in” with the other girls who were constantly talking about boys. i felt excluded during conversations about actors people thought were hot, so i definitely convinced myself to like a few of those, too; i was still doing this in the marvel fandom up until about a couple of years ago, but deep down, i honestly don’t care about which chris is more attractive than the other or whatever the hell. so this is how i’ve gone through many aspects of life: performative “crushes”, really trying to convince myself to like guys because i thought i was supposed to (and some guys, i really thought i did like).

i never closely examined that i could be anything other than straight until i hit college -- that was, you know, the default, what was expected of me by everyone around me. in my initial reflections, i determined that i was not, really, in fact attracted to men, a conclusion that i know to be true at this point in time, so that idea’s really been with me for a long time. i decided that if i wasn’t attracted to men, i had to be asexual, and in discovering that there was actually a label you could put on something that meant “i’m not really attracted to men and i don’t want to have sex with men like everyone else around me does”, i started to feel more secure about myself. i did a lot of reading about the asexual community at the time, about all the different places on the ace spectrum. it was awesome, people were welcoming, and i’m still grateful to the ace community for making me feel like something different could be “accepted” for the first time.

to any aces out there reading this -- you’re beautiful and valid, and i’ll fight anyone who gives you shit.

but here’s the kicker, y’all; in all that time, in the years between around 20 and 25 or so that i identified as ace, i had never, not once, considered that i could be attracted to women in a romantic/sexual way. oh, i had lots of dreams in my early-mid 20s about women (very often romantic/sexual) -- which i totally tried to repress, i talked extensively about how women were “aesthetically attractive” to me because they’re pretty and you can totally appreciate anyone who’s pretty without anything else attached right?, and i tried long and hard to convince myself that that was it. and by god, i kept trying.

i tabled this for the next three years, though, because there wasn’t a lot of time in my life for personal reflection or anything else; i was trying to get through an intense master’s program while simultaneously trying to keep my family from falling apart through the news of my father’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent hell with treatment, and it was really all i could do to keep my head above water. dating, relationships, how comfortable i felt in my own skin were all about the last things on my mind. it was “i don’t really need a label, anyway” and i left it at that.

after my father’s death, i went through a period of deep self-reflection. i think that’s a natural part of grief, to evaluate where you are in your own life when confronted with mortality much earlier than you expect to be like that. and in that self-reflection, i admitted to myself, finally, at the tender age of 28 years old, that i was attracted to women.

and that admission was terrifying.

i came to accept it, though, came to love it and embrace it as a part of myself, and i felt more comfortable in my own skin than i ever had. there was one lingering piece, though -- any attraction to men, or lack thereof. i pointed to all the times that i’d had crushes on guys, thought i felt attracted to them, and said, well, yes, i have these instances of being attracted to guys, so therefore i’m bi. that was the identity i carried for the next two years.

that label never felt 100% right, though. i knew that i had an overwhelmingly strong preference for women, and i was constantly interrogating the little slice of attraction to men that could potentially exist. was it genuine? was it compulsory heterosexuality? and the more and more i thought about it, the more and more i interrogated it, i realized -- it was the latter. i thought back to my experience of being in a relationship with a guy, and how everything felt fake. i thought about all the “crushes” on guys i really tried so hard to convince myself of. every single instance came back with the same thing: it was performative, rather than genuine.

about three weeks ago, at 30 years old, i called myself a lesbian for the first time in my life. standing in front of the mirror on a sunday morning, the word left my mouth with a rush of anxiety, the same rush that had come with the realization of my attraction to women, but after that passed -- i felt calm. at peace. like something had finally, finally clicked into place.

this pride month, i feel proud of myself and who i am. i’ve learned to love myself as a woman, and i’ve learned to love my love for other women. these things are beautiful.

if you made it this far, thank you for reading.

#lbgtq tag #personal #the pride 2019 post of self-acceptance and self-love or something #ok to rb if you want to #there's nothing that revolutionary in here but #if something in my story resonates with you i'm happy for others to see it

9 notes · View notes

queenofthecommunistcannibals · 5 years

Text

@yikes-trademarked

i mean yeah, the post has nothing to do with it just comes across as a bit of a slap in the face to people who are genuinely oppressed in a modern day society. how are asexuals ‘neglected’ and ‘isolated’? so most people experience sexual attraction and you don’t, whoop de doo. nobody actually cares if you do or don’t experience sexual attraction. if you could please give me an actual, real life, not someone-calling-you-a-plant-online example of asexual discrimination then i’ll take back my words

___

@yikes-trademarked I super love how instead of apologizing you are doubling down. Okay. I'll give you examples. Here are some general prejudices that affect aro and ace people. They aren't in any real order.

•Until the DSM V asexuality was considered a mental illness. Despite the fact that now we are "allowed" to "identify" as asexual HSDD (Hypoactive sexual desire disorder) is STILL considered a disorder. So instead of trying to help a person accept themselves as asexual allosexual (nonace) doctors will try to "fix" someone if they want to. Asexuality is still seen as something to be cured. It is still a dysfunction in their eyes, they just hide their prejudice a little better.

•Asexuals have been harrassed and raped in an attempt to fix them. Asexuals and aromantics are often seen as a "challenge" to be harassed into affection.

•Mainstream Christianity discriminates against asexuals as they do other queer identities. Here is one quote from a document called "Asexuality and Christianity" produced for Asexual Awareness Week (the fact that we get "awareness" rather than "pride" ain't great either)

"While celibacy is officially considered a good stance in religion, declaring oneself disinterested in sex is often met with disapproval. Asexuals have been told that they are rejecting God's gift of sexuality, that they are just as bad as homosexuals because they are not 'normal'...or people decide to pray to God for them to be fixed or for the Almighty to send the right person for them to fall in love with."

Or from the horse's mouth "Question: What do you call a person who is asexual? Answer: Not a person. Asexual people do not exist. Sexuality is a gift from God and thus a fundamental part of our human identity. Those who repress their sexuality are not living as God created them to be: fully alive and well." This was written by two Jesuit priests David Nantais and Scott Opperman. In other religions this is also often true. I know more about Christianity personally but I know similar doctrines exist in Islam and Orthodox Judaism. Not to mention the notion that marriage is the only acceptable option in these religions (unless you are Catholic clergy) and children are a necessity. Hell, according to the conservative traditional gender roles of these religions even an otherwise gender conforming aro/ace doesn't fit (not marrying, no kids, no family, all that).

•Dehumanization from all sides. We are told to be human is to love and that love is nearly always put in romantic or sexual context. Indeed NOT being capable of or experiencing romantic or sexual love is often used as shorthand for someone being a bad person (As Dexter [from Dexter], for example, becomes more sympathetic he develops the ability to feel sexual/romantic love. Robots in fiction can be asexual and aromantic but only if you want to show them as apart from humanity. Once you want to make it clear they have a soul they have to experience some kind of romantic urge or longing. Like Data from Star Trek) An article in Psychology Today by Dr. Gordon Hodson Ph.D. (who specializes in studying dehumanization) postulates (with a study to back it up) that asexuals are the most dehumanized sexual minority.

•On the specifically romantic asexual front in many places do not consider a marriage valid until it has been consumated.

•In media in which asexuality and aromanticism are not proof of evil they are judged to be not real. Here is one of if not our first actual representation in media. In the film Nymphomaniac the SELF-PROCLAIMED asexual character turns out to be a rapist who the protagonist murders in what is supposed to be a "woo! You go girl!" moment. AT BEST this says asexuals aren't real. We're just sexually repressed misanthropes. It might also imply that asexuals are base animals who are waiting to strike. THAT IS ONE OF THE FEW TIMES THE WORD ASEXUAL IS EVEN USED IN MAINSTREAM FILM! I cannot think of a single other.

•We are erased constantly in real life and in media. Here are two examples of active erasure, Jughead Jones (canonly aro/ace in the comics and coded as such since day one) was straight-washed for Riverdale. You may say "oh maybe they didn't know" (which is bullshit) then consider example two: Sherlock Holmes. Holmes (who I adore) has long been one of the few characters that has been "allowed" to aro/aces, but when the creators of BBC's Sherlock were explicitly asked if he was aro/ace they said he absolutely wasn't.

This is part of what I am talking about. We are not allowed to exist. We are invisible.

•Asexuals and aromantics are somehow toxic in our mere existence. We make kids think it is okay to be like us and are poisoning their young minds. We hate sex and thus are against the sex positivity movement.

•"Virgin" is an insult and we are treated as constant children. Somehow we have failed to grow up and cannot be treated as adults.

•And here is what I was really talking about SOCIETY IS NOT MADE FOR US! CULTURE IS NOT CONDUSIVE TO OUR EXISTENCES! I didn't know asexuality was an option until I was about 24. And before that I, like many aro/ace people, put myself in a lot of situations and relationships to "fix" myself. To make myself normal. My first and only sexual encounter was one of the things that sent me spiralling into a serious depression. I didn't know that it was okay to not be interested and to say "no.". So I said "okay" because I thought it was what I had to do to be a normal teenager. I don't know if I ever shared that online before so congrats you got me so mad I revisited my personal trauma. From childhood we are told falling in love is the ultimate reward. As teens we are told we gotta get laaaaaid. As adults not being involved in a sexual/romantic (often indistinguishable) relationship is WEIRD and TROUBLING. I have been told by people who don't know I am asexual that asexual people are "too weird" or even "creepy." The idea that someone might not be capable of romantic love sets off people's red flags that said aromantic might be crazy.

•We are surrounded by sex and romance constantly. Constantly. It is inescapable. In your real life I want you to pay attention to romantic or sexual imagry and storylines around you. There is no break. No alternative. This is what I mean by "invisible at best."

•Also, we are denied a history. It is very hard to prove absence but often sexless figures are immediately dubbed to be gay/lesbian because of their lack of interest in "appropriate" gender. Forgetting entirely that asexuality and aromanticism are options. Then when the question is raised they maybe a figure WAS aro and/or ace we are told that we are """"stealing"""" history. There is like one person in history we are allowed: Nikola Tesla. I love him very much, but he also fits the bill as a weirdo asexual. Because anyone who was the least bit acceptable to society must be allosexual. An example in reverse, Queen Elizabeth I, Britain's most beloved monarch, who never married, never was romantically or sexually involved with anyone (aside from being assaulted as a teenager), and was in her era very famously THE VIRGIN QUEEN who used her virginity as part of her persona to great affect. She is not considered asexual or aromantic and never has been. I have seen a biographer bend over backwards to get away from that accusation including using an incident where an elderly Elizabeth flashed a dignitary to make him uncomfortable as proof that she was allo. We can't have this awesome historical figure be one of those creeps right?!

•i am not even going into the history of how "sexlessness" was historically treated, especially in women. Let me just say that "spinsterism" was considered a danger to children and young women.

•NOTICE I WENT THIS WHOLE POST WITHOUT MENTIONING ASSHOLES WHO USE THE DISK HORSE AND BAR US FROM QUEER CIRCLES EVEN THOUGH SOME STUDIES FIND ASEXUALS HAVE LOWER SELF ESTEEM THAN ANY OTHER QUEER GROUP AND WOULD REALLY BENEFIT FROM A COMMUNITY!! THIS POST IS ENTIRELY EXAMPLES OF NON ONLINE PEOPLE BECAUSE SOMEHOW YOUR CONSTANT ABUSE OR REFUSAL TO RECOGNIZE ABUSE IS A-OKAY BECAUSE IT IS PART OF "THE DEBATE" BECAUSE SOMEHOW OUR EXISTENCE IS ACCEPTABLE DEBATE!

These are just some examples. People are free to add more but I am tired. If you want links I will dig them up.

Sincerely,

Fuck you.

I apologize for the "fuck you" but the exclusionist attitude is so disheartening. It is bad for not only aros and aces but also the queer community in general. We should be in this together! Fighting for one another side by side! We should be there for each other for hardships and for celebrations. I think it is vital that exclusionists really examine what and who they are actually fighting against.

#asexuality #my posts #asexual #aromantic #lgbt+#queer

32 notes · View notes