Kaz's tumblings

A question about vocabulary

Here I work through my thoughts and personal definitions for some apparently contentious vocabulary. I’d like it if people could tell me where their personal definitions diverge.

Repulsed: Having strongly negative feelings about the idea of having sex oneself (e.g. being disgusted at the idea, finding it repulsive). Does not have to mean being squicked or triggered by sex in other contexts (e.g. porn), although it frequently does. Does not have to mean not having a libido, not masturbating, not having sexual fantasies, not reading/watching porn, etc. Does not imply anything about one’s attitude to sex in general, other people having sex, etc.

Sex aversive: Is a new word I’ve seen that appears to cover the same ground as “repulsed”? It doesn’t really make sense to me, though, because averse is the word that means “having an aversion to”. Aversive mainly has meanings a la aversive conditioning. Plus, I’m also not too keen on the association with Sexual Aversion Disorder - so I’m not currently planning on using that word for myself.

Indifferent: Having neutral to slightly negative feelings about the idea of having sex oneself (e.g. feeling “meh”, “boring” about it). Just as repulsed, doesn’t have to mean anything about sex drive, masturbation, moral feelings about sex and sexuality, etc. Does not have to mean actually willing to have sex or consider having sex themselves.

Sex positive: Okay, I cheat, I know the difference in definitions here and am just taking the opportunity to point out it exists. This word frequently gets used as “not judgemental about other people’s sexual decisions and sexuality”, with the implication that if you’re not sex-positive you’re an arse. I personally don’t feel it’s possible to divorce it from the sex-positive movement, and I’ve had such nasty experiences with ace erasure and anti-ace attitudes there plus other issues with their priorities (embedded in “positive) that I refuse to identify that way despite having those attitudes; I call myself “sex-nonjudgemental” when I need to describe this, which I feel is more accurate, but that doesn’t seem to have caught on.

Nonlibidoist: Originally very strongly associated with the Official Nonlibidoism Society back in the day, it looks as if this term has lost its antisexual elitist connotations and is now just a word for “someone who doesn’t have a sex drive”?

I should probably also toss in that I, personally, try to use ace as an umbrella term for the ace spectrum - it was suggested a while back and I liked the idea a lot. Now, however, I worry that this is idiosyncratic and hence I’m being read as ignoring/erasing grey-a people.

There are probably others I can’t think of right now. What spurred this post is someone drawing a distinction between “sex-aversive” and “repulsed”, which really confused me. I’ll also note that it seemed as if “repulsed” was taking on a negative meaning, and that… kind of makes me angry? Because I actually identify that way under the above definition which I am *relatively certain* was widespread at one time and I feel as if people are stealing my label out from under me. Plus, it’s pretty frustrating to not have the slightest idea what is going through people’s minds when I say “I’m a repulsed ace and…”

I can’t find who posted it,

metapianycist:

but so far my favorite response to my informal “What is your favorite response to give to ‘How do you know you’re asexual if you haven’t had sex?’ ” poll is

“How do you know you wouldn’t like eating live scorpions if you’ve never tried it?”

dying. DYING.

@pmzzo

asexuality-exists:

I agree with you however some people doesn’t like it when they say they’re asexual and people just assume they’d never have sex, it bothers them. they wanna make it clear that it doesn’t necessarily mean that they would never have sex. whereas I have the same problem, I wanna make it clear that I don’t wanna have sex, ever. so yes, line is unclear for some but for some of us it actually is pretty clear.

(reblogging this because I can’t figure out how to reblog any of the posts further on in the discussion, aaaaugh tumblr)

I don’t think “repulsed” and “indifferent” can be taken to be equal to “don’t want to have sex ever”/”willing to have sex”. It does often divide up that way, but it doesn’t always. I’m especially worried about saying that indifferent = willing to have sex, and that you can only say you don’t ever want to have sex if you’re repulsed.

The way I know ‘indifferent’/’repulsed’ is that repulsed = you find the idea of you personally having sex disgusting or in some other way strongly negative. indifferent = you find the idea of you personally having sex neutral to mildly negative. And I really don’t want to say to people that they’re only allowed to go “no sex ever, kthnxbye” if they really, really hate the idea. It’s perfectly valid for an indifferent person to not want to have sex either. (In fact, it’s perfectly valid for an asexual who enjoys sex, a demi, a grey-a, a *sexual to never want to have sex!)

(And, of course, some repulsed people may be open to experimentation all the same.)

I sometimes feel as if there’s - ironically - pressure to have sex or be open to having sex in the asexual community, and saying that willingness/unwillingness to have sex precisely follows indifferent/repulsed lines seems to add to that to me.

Hey, everyone!

raumlet:

Just block unicornenimas.  Really, your life will be much, much better.

At least the block button seems to be working properly again. I have never been so happy not to see something.

hm.

mostlydeplorable:

Sometimes I think to myself “you can’t possibly be asexual. Only one percent of the population, as the very popular statistic says, is asexual. So the odds of you being one is crazy slim.” But then I think, “well nothing else makes sense and it seems to be like teenagers thinking they’re immortal and couldn’t possibly get hurt hurtling down a hillside road sitting on a skateboard. Even if it’s a slim chance it’s still possible.”

The way I usually view this is:

There is only a 1% chance that a random person you grab off the street is asexual. However - most of these people will never entertain the idea that they’re asexual. For most of these people, their sexual orientation - or the fact that they are sexually attracted to people - is obvious. Most of these people will probably never even have heard of asexuality before and not feel the loss.

If you are seriously wondering whether you’re asexual, the chance you are is going to be way higher than 1%, just due to the fact that you got to that point! “People who are seriously wondering if they are asexual” does NOT count as a random sample for this purpose. By that same sort of argument, I could say that someone who posts on the #asexuality tag only has a 1% chance of being asexual. How does that make sense?

In conclusion: ignore population statistics. They say nothing about individuals anyway. Do you think you’re asexual? Do you feel that the label “asexual” is one that’s useful to you? That’s what counts.

-a mathematician who has had people use the “but you must be straight because it’s statistically most likely!” argument on zer before.

youneedacat:

“But anyway, we have seen a few discussions going around lately about how non-autistic professionals tend to say autism is about impaired socialization, “theory of mind,” stereotyped repetitive behaviors, etc. While autistic people say that it’s about profound differences in cognition, perception, and communication. (And often the autistic people disagreeing with the professionals about this, are the ones who’ve been labeled as severely affected or low-functioning or thought by other people at some point in their life to be incapable of understanding what was going on around them. And no, these things are not mutually exclusive with having been labeled high-functioning, mildly affected, etc at some other point in a person’s life.) And… one other thing we’ve noticed is this: Autistic people who believe that autism is primarily a deficiency in social skills, “theory of mind,” etc, often tend to be more unhappy than autistic people who believe (as we do) that the most important aspects of it are profound differences in perception, cognition, and communication. To actually have a lower “quality of life,” when it comes to what they want versus what they have. And this probably has a lot to do with the fact that they have been taught to believe that their entire life is going to consist of trying to strive after Almost Normal even though they will never quite get all the way there.”

— amorpha&, Things that make us headdesk (reading the whole thing is good for context)

This is FANTASTIC.

I have often thought about how the aspects of autism that get most stressed by allistic people, by professionals, by the way diagnostic symptoms are weighted, etc. are the ones that affect allistic people. Actually, “affect” isn’t the right word - the ones that allistic people find most annoying and bothersome. Read: differences in body language, not fitting into social norms when it comes to social skills, not demonstrating the coded behaviours that equal “empathy” for a lot of people in the normative way, etc. etc.

I used to think I was weird for going “well, the social stuf? Annoying, yes, but I can deal with it. It’s not actually the part of autism that has the biggest impact on my life.” In fact, it’s third place on my mental list, after executive dysfunction and sensory issues. But I’ve run into a number of other autistic people who think similarly. On the allistic side, it’s all social stuff all the time. Sensory stuff is only a problem, to them, if it makes us behave in non-NT ways in public (via, for instance, melting down due to overwhelming and painful amounts of noise). If I end up unable to go to loads of social events because they take place in environments that are too noisy for me (this being the reason I made no real friends at all my first year at uni), that’s invisible to them and therefore not important. Executive dysfunction isn’t even on most people’s radars at all, and that’s the thing that keeps me up at night, makes me wonder if I’m capable of keeping a job. Frequently, I see allistic people attacking autistic coping strategies without which they would have a much harder time as Bad Because You Look Autistic (stims, routines).

Obviously there are autistic people who have more issues with the social stuff than I do, who would say that it’s the thing that has the biggest impact on their life. But I doubt there’s enough to justify the relentless focus on it and brushing other issues under the carpet you see from the allistic side… the priorities are just totally out of whack, and out of whack in a very nasty way that marginalises the experiences of the actual people they claim to be talking about in favour of centring allistic ones.

Also, some of the other stuff in that post just reaffirms me in my belief that passing “privilege” isn’t a privilege at all.