so apparently things have exploded in the ace comm and now there is talk of moving to DW??
points:
- I don’t think anyone will mind if people take over asexuality (the DW comm) because that’s dead
- have invite codes if ppl need them
- am kaz on DW feel free to add will reciprocate
points 2 and 3 will however have to wait 10 days or so till I am back from holiday as my only Internet is via mobile phone and even typing this is awful srsly trolls I disapprove of your timing.
okay, someone needs to link me to places where Dan Savage is being a douchenozzle because I know very, very, VERY little about him, have never read anything he’s written, and I think I may have watched ten seconds of a video with him in it.. I can’t really remember.. but, anyway, yeah. Everyone’s talking about him so EDUCATE ME PLS.
Greg told me to tag this with “asexual” cos you all might be able to inform me. Thanks in advance?
I am sure someone else will have more for you - I know he’s said multiple horrible things about asexuals re: how they “should not inflict themselves” on “normally sexual” people or equating asexuality to being repressed and having issues or things like that, there’s also been a recent interview he did with David Jay that I honestly didn’t read because I know what the last five times Dan Savage met asexuality were like and I don’t need to see it again, short story is that he has been essentially nothing but nasty to asexual people and as a result most of us kinda dislike him. However, he’s said biphobic and transphobic stuff too (making his “LGBT activism” thing something of a mockery, given how he treats the B and the T) and has also been -ist in other ways.
One link I do have for you: the fucknodansavage tumblr which has been collecting his douchenozzlery. I’m linking to page 2 because page 1 didn’t seem to have much in the way of links; I think most of the really horrible stuff got linked on that early on.
- I am not viewed as slutty or ‘loose’ for my sexual behavior.
- My sexual behavior is not immediately associated with hedonism, free love, etc.
- My sexual identity does not lead people to believe that I am joking or making things up.
- There has been a large body of creditable research/tumblr blogging done regarding my sexual identity.
- If I choose to date, it is hard to find someone who can keep up with my intense desires.
- I am generally not asked to educate others on my sexuality or answer personal and uncomfortable questions regarding my sexual behavior.
- If I enter a romantic relationship with a person, my sexual identity is not in question.
- I am often frowned on in communities based on sexual orientation for seemingly embodying archaic stereotypes (ie, the stereotype of LGB individuals as hypersexual).
- I can go to a mental health professional without having my sexual behavior questioned as an illness.
- My sexual orientation is not considered a disease or symptom in the DSM (sex addiction, hypersexuality, etc.)
- I am more likely to find a partner whose sexuality is similar to mine.
- I am unlikely to encounter opposition for acting out my sexuality in a way that is comfortable to me (ie, ripping my clothes off at the sight of an attractive person)
- Before a certain age, I am assumed to have not had sex, and this assumption does not challenge my identity.
- I don’t have to clean up sexual fluids all the time.
- My identity does not pose a significant health risk to me.
- I don’t experience damaging dry spells.
- I don’t get leg cramps from having sex 24/7.
- I never/hardly have to worry about being quiet when having sex.
- I never/rarely will experience the embarrassment and shame of anyone walking in on me during sex.
- My identity is not appropriated by the media, etc for shock value.
- My identity is not held up as some unrealistic behavior.
- Media representation of my sexuality exists and is not frequently cast in a negative light.
- Mainstream religions hold up my identity as an ideal, or do not abhor it.
- I will never be put under significant financial strain to support my identity.
Wow, this is some excellent satire! When I first looked at it, I went “oh god, not the same-old same-old “asexuals are privileged! privileged I tell you!” bullshit we have seen a thousand times before and are sick to death of”. But then I reached the first item that didn’t just apply to asexuality as well but was actually a standard asexual complaint. At that point I thought it was just a coincidence - but then I reached the second, and the third, and so on and so forth and by the time I hit “My sexual orientation is not considered a disease or symptom in the DSM (sex addiction, hypersexuality, etc.)” I realised that this list could not possibly be a serious attack on asexuality - instead it’s a perfect lampooning of them! Kudos, honestly.
Which still doesn’t mean I’m binary, I note. Still not a woman and not a man.
But the thing is… I think a lot of people, when they hear “nonbinary/genderqueer”, think of someone at least somewhat male. Maybe because their default idea of genderqueerness is “in between man and woman”. Or because the world still tends to operate under the assumption “male default, female exception”. (See also: how I tend to consider my ideal body as “a feminine version of neutrois” and wonder how much of that is because my idea of a “default” neutrois body actually has quite a few typically-considered-male markers which I don’t want.) And I cannot stand the idea of someone listening to me say “I’m nonbinary!” and hearing my preferred pronouns and then assuming I have male parts to my identity or that I don’t have female. “I am not a man and not a woman”, although accurate, simply isn’t *enough* to be the only information to give people about my gender, and it’s the only information “genderqueer” and “nonbinary” convey.
Conclusion: I need some kind of shorter less awkward way of expressing “in between ‘woman’ and ‘neutrois’.” The only thing I am coming up with is demigirl demineutrois (demigirl/neutrois?) which isn’t too handy. Anyone have any ideas?
Why does so much of our information talk about “self-identifying” as asexual?
Doesn’t anyone with a label self-identify with that label?
If you’re a lesbian, you are self-identifying as such.
If you’re a vegetarian, you are self-identifying as such.
If you are Christian, you are self-identifying as such.
Am I just tired and need to go to bed or am I on to something?
Does anyone else seem to feel like we push this whole self-identifying thing?
Yeah, I think it’s one of those pernicious undermining of identity things. It reminds me of something similar that happens to trans people: a cis man or woman gets to be a man or woman, a trans man or woman is suddenly identifying as a man or woman or considering themselves to be a man or woman and let’s not even talk about what happens with nonbinary folk… which all to me results in the implicit message that cis men and women are “really” their gender and everyone else’s is less valid.
*Alternatively*, it’s because of people putting emphasis on the key part of asexuality being that you say you’re asexual and identity-policing not being okay, but if so that usage has some unfortunate parallels.
(Note: my first paragraph is aimed at *other people* saying someone is self-identifying as X, not that person using it themselves.)
One of the most common things I run into when people find out that I am asexual is a comment along the lines of:
So, you could technically be straight / gay / bi / attracted to animals
No.
Some people like to think of asexuality as the schrodinger’s cat of orientations. These people would be wrong. You are making the assumption that asexuality is just a transition into whatever my “real” sexuality is. So long as the box is closed, I could be both considered gay or straight or whatever.
Asexuality is not a blank canvas for you to impose whatever orientation you want onto. It is a valid orientation - my orientation - I would very much appreciate it if you would quit trying to morph it into something else to make yourself feel more comfortable around me.
This.
These are often the same people who don’t really understand that there’s a difference between sexual orientation/preference and romantic or affectional orientation/preference. Being ace doesn’t mean you’re necessarily aromantic, although some aces are (as are some sexual folks). But it also doesn’t mean you’re just in denial about your ~*true sexuality*~.
Yeah, it really amuses me when people think asexuals are just gay people in denial, because… I’m already kind of gay? I just don’t have the sexual part. Like, I’m not denying my attraction to other guys, I just don’t want to have sex with them.
Yeah, my answer to that is “well, I am sort of gay! except that, you know, the way I’m attracted to women that I’m not to men isn’t sexual *or* romantic but, uh, queerplatonic - I call it homoWTF. And I’m not actually a woman so technically it’s not same-gender attraction, but it wouldn’t really make sense to use the strict definition of “same-gender” because a) I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone of my gender b) I think my gender may be a bit fluid so even if I meet someone of my gender there’s no guarantee they’ll *stay* someone of my gender, so I figure I can count my attraction to women as same-gender-after-rounding.”
This is the part where people’s heads generally explode.
On a related note, attempting to come out has never been quite so ridiculous.
David Jay is 29 (if you wanna make a bet that he’ll completely renounce asexuality in less than a year, I doubt you’d win). Swankivy (youtube) is 33. There’s a whole section on AVEN for older aces. Just looking quickly at the ages of some AVEN members, I found: 41, 46, 60, 58, 58, 52, 49, 61….. But let’s ignore facts, shall we?
And I thought I was immune to the “you’re too young to know for sure!” when I hit 21 or 22…
Also, it gets me how we are expected to sit around waiting for sexual attraction to magically appear (it’s a ninja, I swear) for over a decade after sexual people generally start experiencing it. How we are supposed to try and squash ourselves into weird interim “late bloomer” “might still happen!” category where we can’t know for sure and can’t actually claim an identity and can’t make any firm plans at an age where some of our friends are getting married and/or having kids. And of course, if sexual attraction *does* suddenly decide to move into my life, this must mean that instead of my sexual orientation changing (as does, you know, happen to some people) I was actually “really” the new orientation all along - you know, for all of the seven years I’ve been identifying as ace and the thirteen fucking years since I hit puberty.
*tears hair out*
(sorry for the overuse of italics, but this is one of my angrymaking buttons.)
Hi-C Educates the Masses: Why I have problems with the idea of sexual privilege.
I’m also cautious about saying that people are encouraged to be asexual. In a lot of these cases (admittedly, I’m used to the examples of gay and lesbian people, so I don’t want to suggest that this will actually apply to your experience), usually people aren’t really expected to be asexual. Sciatrix wrote about if fairly well here, and I’m not sure I could do a better job. Although I would also add the experience I had with my parents when I came out to them. When I mentioned I was asexual, throughout the conversation they kept asking “Are you sure you aren’t gay? It’s okay if you are gay”, all while trying to argue that I wasn’t asexual. I strongly got the impression that it was okay if I was gay, but *not* okay if I was asexual. This is also reflected in the fact that they eventually settled with “Well, I guess it’s okay if you are asexual as long as you never mention it, think about it, or let anyone know and instead pretend to be normal (as in, straight/gay/bi)”. The thing is, I’m sure if I actually was gay I’d probably still get a bad reaction. Just because people seem to want me to be gay doesn’t mean that straight privilege doesn’t exist.
(I’ve edited his reblog to show only the parts I’m gonna respond to. Read the whole thing!)
Again, I think this is a cultural difference. In more liberal parts of the country, where being LGBT is more acceptable, where pre-marital sex isn’t a big deal anymore, being sexual is all but expected of everyone. Asexuality just doesn’t fit into the discussion we’ve been having in these places since the 1960s.
Repressed people are not the same as asexual people, but for too long, repressed people have been living under the assumption that they have no sexuality. So when sexually marginalized people come out and finally claim their sexuality, they are going to look at others who identify as asexual and think to themselves: “they’re repressed, just the way I was.” And not all of them are.
And here’s my point: we don’t all live in super liberal enclaves. The work of the sex positivity movement has not infiltrated all sections of the country or the world equally. There still exist repressed people who are NOT asexual.
Its a damned delicate balance, here. And I’m beginning to think looking at this issue through the eyes of “sexual privilege” makes little sense, because it can’t be applied universally.
First off, I really apologise if this comes off as confrontational or angry in any way; I appreciate your post and want to discuss the points I disagree with calmly, but at the same time I’m disabled and have suffered from the intersection of disability, including disability-based desexualisation stereotypes, and asexuality and simultaneously have had a lot of people telling me that that can’t be possible because disabled people are “expected to be asexual” or have seen nondisabled sexual people use those stereotypes in order to attack the idea of asexuality and asexual oppression - appropriating half of my identity to use against the other half - and as a result this is a *really really* touchy subject for me. I might also have to bow out after this because of that.
I think one of the things we have to consider when we make this argument is - when we say someone is “expected to be asexual” or “not allowed to be sexual” or so, would an asexual person actually be better off in that situation? Would they face problems of their own a sexual person wouldn’t? Often the problems aren’t entirely obvious or necessarily ones you’d think of without having been there yourself (e.g. the utter *mess* desexualisation stereotypes made of figuring out what my orientation was and coming to terms with what it meant for me) but sometimes they are.
For instance, in almost all situations I know of where women aren’t allowed to show sexual desire, they are still expected to have sex. They’re just not meant to show they enjoy it and seek it out on their own. But in my experience (also pretty Western-based, I admit, so I could be missing things here) the sort of places that teach women that they’re not allowed to show sexual desire or attraction *also* tend to teach “it is your duty to get married to a guy and then let him have sex with you as often as he wants.” And honestly, I cannot see how an asexual woman - who might not even be romantically attracted to guys, to boot - is *better off* in that sort of situation or being taught to enter that sort of situation than a straight woman. I can easily imagine how they could end up worse off.
Or, in situations where the desexualised group *isn’t* expected to still have sex, this tends to come hand-in-hand with expecting no romantic relationships… which, on the one hand, is really shitty for romantic asexuals, and on the other often doesn’t actually offer any alternative intimacy models or support models for aromantic or WTFromantic asexuals. I am thinking of disability here, where the desexualisation stereotypes *do* tend to be along the lines of “disabled person will never have sex” and in my experience often seem to have the corollary “and you shouldn’t date which is good because no one would ever want to date you anyway so just go be alone forever”. Which is a nasty message to send to anyone but especially nasty when it comes to disability, where someone (*waves*) might *need* the support that living with people brings them.
Honestly, I think I’m quite a bit worse off than a romantic sexual person would be in my situation (think aromantic/WTFromantic sexuals might have similar issues though) and definitely worse off than a straight person would be*, because if I were that I could go “screw stereotypes telling me I shouldn’t be wanting these things, I do!” and try to find a partner, which would probably be harder than if I were nondisabled but not impossible. Since I’m not… there is nothing quite like attempting to carve out new relationship possibilities beyond the romance/friendship binary while at the same time knowing that if you don’t succeed in finding a relationship of the type you’re attempting to invent your life is probably going to spiral into absolute disaster and ruin. So much for disabled people being expected to be asexual…
* ironically, given this post, I’m not too enamoured by the idea of sexual privilege either, but it’s because I prefer to think of it as an aspect of straight privilege and am not sure it’s useful to subdivide anti-queer oppression in quite this manner. I’m not really interested in proving asexuality means I face problems that non-heterosexual sexual people don’t, but that it means I face problems *straight* people don’t.
No, I am not straight.
No, I am not heteroromantic.
Get the fuck over yourself. Don’t claim to know anything about me. And don’t you dare try to lock me out of community-supporting because you think you’re a better judge of who I am than me.
Fucking hell.
I said at one point I was heteroromantic? Well, I’m not. Your argument is invalid.
I post a lot of pictures of really attractive men and squeal over them? So fucking what. That is by no means an accurate means of deducing my identity. Now you’re just being lazy.
I talk about wanting to have sex with men? That doesn’t mean anything.
I talk about wanting to have sex at all? WHOOPS. Still asexual.
Just get the fuck over yourself and stop policing identities.
I am so so sorry people keep doing this to you. D:
seawitchery replied to your post: pianycist replied to your post: Whenever I read or…
Is it just the way it’s handled in the story? Or are you uncomfortable with characters/people who identify as cross-dressers-but-still-their-assigned-sex?
Just how it’s handled, I think.
In a lot of narratives centered around cross-dressing, at or near the end there’s a big reveal, showing that, no, the character isn’t really how they’ve been presenting, and often that moment is portrayed, not as a, “no, sorry, I was actually doing this for love/to get a job/what have you and I actually live this other way when not in exceptional circumstances,” but a “I have these physical characteristics and therefore cannot be how I was presenting duh,” and that makes me uncomfortable.
Like, for example,
Terry Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment, which is about a bunch of girls in a conservative, backward country on the Disc who all dress up as boys to be soldiers, and I don’t think it’s a spoiler to tell you that because come on duh.
I would like that book a lot more if, like, any of the characters had remained presenting as their male counterparts and the author had continued referring to them according to that presentation. I could easily see, say, Maladict as a trans* person, and as preferring to be seen as and treated like a boy, or even a kind of sophisticated masculine androgyne. And Jackrum clearly preferred living as a man, but as soon as it’s revealed that he was ever seen as something else, Pratchett switches immediately to female pronouns.
And that bothers me, the idea that, no matter how comfortable you are a certain way, or how long you’ve lived that way, or how much you identify with living that way, if you were born like this or have such and such parts, you’re automatically a man or a woman.
Oh man, seconding this so much. I’ve had the misfortune of reading some crossdressing fics recently where… there was no real *reason* why a cisgendered woman would be pretending to be a man in the situation given (i.e. nothing like “women are not allowed to do X”) and still the character in question had been going to some lengths to be read as male ever since they were very young and the only conclusion I could come to, was “character prefers being read as male to being read as female” which… uh, I so do not read that as cis female and yet still it was presented as “LOOK SHE’S A WOMAN AND HIDING THIS FROM EVERYONE”.
Just. Gender! It is more complicated than whether you have breasts or not! /o\
and why this does not lead to productive dialogue. (I’m bouncing off polisci-prelaw’s recent post and some of the arguments we were having re: educating as well as some of the recent trolls in the asexual tag.)
Lately, I’ve seen some people go “okay, you say you’re asexual? I want to see scientific evidence that asexuality is real before I believe you.” And whenever I see this, I, personally, take this as a sign that this person cannot be argued with and is best ignored and I should spend my energy in more promising and less frustrating areas.
Because the thing is? Asexuality isn’t something diagnosed by a blood test or MRI scan or wtfever. Definition of asexuality is “lack of sexual attraction”, another one I’ve seen and like is “you’re asexual if you think the label fits and is useful for you.” Neither of those are in any way something science can *confirm*. Both of those are something that each person knows for themselves.
As a result, anytime you enter a discussion about asexuality going “first, prove to me that asexuality is real!”, what you are implicitly saying is that you are seriously entertaining the idea that every single person claiming to be asexual is either lying or has their own feelings wrong (I hereby dub this the ninja model of sexual attraction - no matter how hard you look you can’t seem to find it but people are still certain it’s there…). This is your starting assumption, and you are asking asexual people to convince you to change that or (in the “but science!” variant) asking asexual people to find (presumably) sexual authorities to convince you to change that.
One of the conditions that I consider necessary to have productive dialogue is that everybody assumes everyone else is telling the truth, at the very least about things like one’s basic experiences. If you ask me to prove asexuality exists - to prove that *what I say I feel and experience* is actually true - then you’ve just failed that massively and I am not interested in talking with you. All the stuff like “dude, asking us to scientifically show *anything* about asexuality is screwed up when we have a time and a half getting academics to even accept our existence let alone take us seriously” is just the cherry on top of the can-you-*be*-more-disrespectful cake.
…mmm, cake.
straight means that you are not interesed in people of the same gender in any manner
wait so wait
wait this means that AROMANTIC ASEXUALS ARE STRAIGHT TOO GUYS
OH MY GOD I have learned so much about myself! I was straight all along and just NEVER KNEW~
(bold is mine, italics are not)
I might actually be straight then since I don’t think I’ve ever met someone of my gender (yo, any fluid-between-demineutrois-and-demigirl folks reading this?) so I have no idea if I’d be interested in them or not. Wow this is some interesting redefinition going on!
So on the #genderqueer tag on Tumblr I’ve been seeing this identity spectrum picture going around and thought I’d try filling it out! So, let’s see…
[image description: at the top, there is a transgender logo and text saying “This graph is a fun exercise to help one understand that Sex, Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sexual Orientation does not have to be black and white as both the Heteronormative/Cisgender society around us (aka Straight People) and the LGBT Community ascribe them to be — find your own identity with this exercise and sincerely explore who YOU are and challenge the stereotypes of Gender and Sexual Orientation. Simply draw a line that best identifies along these spectrums.”
Below there are four lines indicating the relevant “spectrums”, first SEX, going from “Female” to “Male” with “Intersex” in the middle, then GENDER IDENTITY going from Woman to Man with Genderqueer in the middle, then GENDER EXPRESSION going from Feminine to Masculine with Androgynous in the middle and finally SEXUAL ORIENTATION going from “Attracted to Female” to “Attracted to Male” with “Bisexual Pansexual Asexual” in the middle.
At the bottom, there is text: “This has been a production of http://translategender.org and Ahuviya Harel http://adf-fuensalida.deviantart.com” - Reproduction is permitted for Fair Use and Psycho-Educational purposes. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.”
The spectrum labelled SEX has a red “CONFIDENTIAL” stamped across it. In blue cursive, someone has written “I reject your premises” over the other three.]
…uhhhh. Okay, let’s try this from scratch, shall we.
(personalised versions of the above spectra that actually work for the poster and should hopefully serve to point out some of the serious flaws and assumptions in play here at the above link.)
So, here’s what I’d like to know:
Is there anyone out there who actually has a zucchini, or a queerplatonic life partner, or a Boston marriage, or anything even remotely resembling any of the above? If so, I would really love to hear as much as you are comfortable telling about how exactly this wondrous thing came about. Alternatively! Have you ever made a concrete effort to acquire such a relationship? How did it go? Any advice on how to approach the whole business?
My story/why I’m asking: I am sort of in love with both my current roommate and my childhood best friend. Both are straight (they’re female, and so am I, more or less). Both know I’m asexual, and have been supportive and accepting about it. Neither knows how I feel about them, and I am increasingly uncomfortable with hiding things from them, especially in the case of my roommate, since I was once in the opposite position with a different, earlier roommate, and the fallout after I found out about her (sexual/romantic) crush on me was kind of awful for both of us. I really really don’t want to do that to my current roommate.
However, since the relationship I would like to have with her is nonsexual and nonromantic, maybe this is different. Maybe it’s not creepy. Maybe something wonderful could happen, if only I could find a way to bring the subject up and articulate exactly what it is I want - which is essentially just the friendship we already have, plus some mutual acknowledgement that what we have is important. And ideally a promise that it will remain important, even when she marries her boyfriend, or has to move to another city for work, or whatever (by which I guess I mean that she will at least take me into consideration when making those sorts of decisions). Oh, and perhaps permission to touch, too. But that’s it, I swear!
So, what I’m wondering really is: how much is this to ask of a sexual, romantic person who currently has other life plans? Feedback from anyone who has tried to propose such a thing to such a person would be extremely helpful as I try to decide what to do here. Feedback from (ace-friendly) sexual, romantic people about how they might react to such a proposal from a good friend is welcome too.
(Yes, I joined tumblr pretty much solely to ask this question, so I don’t know quite what I’m doing, or if anyone will even read this. Apologies in advance for any newbness I may perpetrate, and thank you to anyone who who does actually read this. My usual confidants are precisely the people I can’t talk to about this, since y’know, I’m aromantically in love with them, so seriously, thank you.)
I have a zucchini - in fact, I have two zucchini and am suddenly feeling as if I’m hoarding the vegetable supply here or something. » However, I’m afraid I don’t have much advice for you because both of my zucchini are asexual and aromantic/WTFromantic, I may be the most romantic out of the lot of us if anything, and the second one I got to know via… having discussions about zucchini and queerplatonic stuff with! (Which, incidentally, to anyone who is looking for *a* zucchini and not trying to develop that sort of relationship with specific people, I think the bits of the ace sphere that are discussing this may be your best bet since not only do you not have to explain the concept from the ground up, a lot of us are there since we want zucchinis ourselves. The blogosphere: like a dating site in a way! ;)) My first zucchiniship (…parsnip?) was sort of… we got to know each other online and started chatting loads, and eventually started joking about living together because we got along so well (she’d had a boyfriend at the start but then broke up early on). Except that it grew to be less and less of a joke on my part, and eventually I screwed up my courage and told her this and she said she agreed! She was also actually iding as pansexual around this point in time, I managed to convert her assimilate her make her aware enough of asexuality and aromanticism that she recognised both in herself!
I have never tried to start a relationship like that with a sexual, romantic person with other life plans - I have squashed hardcore on one before and therefore sympathise with the “oh god am I being creepy and inappropriate” feeling, which I don’t really have an answer for :( - but in any case I wish you the best of luck and that everything goes well.
I guess a place to start would be just, well, what you said about your relationship being important to you and wanting to know that it’s also important to her and not something she’ll toss aside if convenient. Even without knowing about zucchini and queerplatonic stuff I think people ought to understand that, especially if they know you’re asexual - you could maybe try to explain that since you don’t have romantic relationships ones like these are very important to you? idk. feel free to take all of this with a giant grain of salt as I don’t have this experience!
Reblogging because Sci is awesome (and my zucchini!Just so you folks know, this is a marvelous post. Because it discusses the words that I desperately wished exist but don’t, with bonus language geekery.
Also it made me happy.
Just so you all know? This one is going to be depressing.
IIRC, my mother said I shouldn’t limit myself by assuming nothing would happen in the future.
My flatmate asked me if I was sure I wasn’t a lesbian. In fact, multiple people asked this - I remember at one point complaining on AVEN about how *everyone* I had tried to come out to had asked this question and I was starting to feel insulted that they all thought I was so homophobic that a) I’d repress my sexuality to the point where I was coming out as asexual instead and b) they had to ask this question in a hushed voice going “I’m really sorry but have you ever considered…” as if I’d bite their heads off for suggesting it.
My brother went for bingo and suggested that… I was afraid of men (upon my asking him why he was assuming I *wasn’t* a lesbian he said me being straight was statistically most likely), our parents hadn’t hugged us enough as children, I couldn’t be asexual because he remembers that I once touched my genitals as a four-year-old, I couldn’t be asexual because I was saying I hated the idea of sex which meant there was something wrong with me/I was repressing because if I were *really* asexual I wouldn’t care about sex one way or another, aaaand some other stuff which I don’t really care to remember. That was one remarkably unpleasant conversation, and I still have evil half-formed plans of him visiting me and me dragging him to an LGBT society event without warning in vengeance.
Also in the “total WTF” category, my officemate when I came out to her was totally accepting! And mentioned that when she’d been in undergrad her LGBT soc had had a lot of asexual people in it!
There are two issues with that statement:
One, even now I expect LGBT societies with “a lot” of asexual people are few and far between.
Two, I’m several years into my PhD and she’s older than me by a few years because she did some other stuff in between undergrad and uni. I asked to clarify, and she both said that yes, she was sure she knew a lot of asexual people in undergrad, and the time period she was thinking about was late nineties/early 2000s. That is, pre-AVEN.
…which brings me to a question for the tumblr ace folk-
has *anyone ever* heard of some sort of amazing offline asexual community at a UK uni during this time period, or any offline asexual community at all during this time period, or in fact has ANY IDEA WHATSOEVER how to explain this statement?
An Accessory to Rambling: The flame wars
Recently there have been a few heated discussions concerning the validity of asexuality. I understand that some statements have been really upsetting, but that doesn’t mean we should have a shouting competition. I…
In the end it’s your choice how to handle things. But too often do I see people being bombarded by aces because they used the term asexuality too lightly. For them, their first contact with the asexual community is a downpour of snide remarks. Does this one person deserve all that hate that has been building up? In the recent “flame wars” it was clear that respect was lacking on both sides. People were abusing each other emotionally to get their point across.
However, it was not my intent to force anyone to do things that they can’t handle. For that, I apologize. I said some horrible things some time ago, resulting in an emotional breakdown, and have decided for myself not to go down that path again. But I understand completely that you don’t. With the “amazingatheist” debacle I was mainly scared because of the influence he has. But I have decided that if he does end up making a video about it, then I am ready to provide a response.
Once again I’d like to apologize for policing your method of coping. But sometimes we seem to underestimate how the world revolves around sexuality and how that shapes the views of others. Which is surprising to say the least, because most of us have struggled with it or are still struggling. If it was so hard for you, then you have to understand that others might find it hard as well. But of course, that doesn’t mean they can treat you like shit.
It is strange how I went from one stance to another, only to go back to the original one again, but it has been educational. Thank you for your input.I am reading this response as “I don’t want to police your reactions, but I think you should also be polite all the time and not be mean/angry/harsh to people who are failing on asexuality.” Which is frankly missing the point, I think—because you’re still policing, even if you’re being polite about it, and you’re still making that tone argument. You really can’t have it both ways—either my tendency, and others’, to respond to people like this with crankiness and sarcasm when I respond at all is inappropriate (in which case: still policing) or else all kinds of reactions, including harsh, snarky ones, are valid (in which case you aren’t). The entire point of criticizing the tone argument is that you ignore tone and politeness levels and engage with the bones of the argument, and the bones that I am seeing in yours are… very very polite, but still tone policing in a big way.
The thing is, I’ve been paying attention to the various fails, and I emphatically disagree that the disrespect was equal on both sides to the opposing players. Let’s start with the amazingatheist debacle, which is the most fresh one. Okay, so this person wanders into the asexual tag—a space set aside for us, by the way—and starts by saying some pretty offensive stuff, such as that most of us are deluded and lying about our actual orientation. Disrespect: his! Think of this as this guy who amiably wanders into our collective meeting house, nods and smiles at a few people, and pisses on the wall.
And okay, some asexuals get pretty irritated by this and respond with varying levels of anger, as people are wont to do when a stranger metaphorically engages in wall-pissing in their space. Some people are polite—hey, did you notice you’re pissing on our wall, that’s pretty rude—and some people are considerably less so—what the hell, dude, did no one ever teach you manners, get the fuck out!—but the reactions are more or less not thrilled. Okay.
Let me point out—tone is part of that thing about respect I mentioned, but it’s emphatically not the whole of it, and amazingatheist might have started out with a polite-ish, conversational tone, but their actual content was totally devoid of respect for asexual experiences or identities, and in fact was based entirely around disrespecting said identities.
Anyway, the discussion unfolds from there. And the interesting thing, the thing that brings me back to my earlier point about whether the person I’m arguing with is actually engaging, is that amazingatheist reacted to a bunch of people going “…seriously, that’s ridiculously offensive” by escalating the offensiveness.
To extend this metaphor, let’s pretend that amazingatheist had grown up in some sort of magically disgusting culture in which pissing on walls is totally acceptable behavior, and they had somehow never encountered a culture of people who believed in using toilets. Now, usually, when I make a social error and do something rude by accident, without meaning to, I apologize and try to figure out what I did wrong so as not to do it again. If our metaphorical amazingatheist had intended to be polite and then screwed up, they could have always gone “whoa, guys, I am so sorry, I didn’t realize that pissing on your walls would upset you! how can I learn to avoid pissing on walls in the future? Is there anything else that you guys think is really really rude I should avoid doing?”
Instead, amazingatheist did the equivalent of yelling “FUCK YOU AND YOUR STUPID RULES ABOUT *TOILETS*, I’LL PISS WHERE I DAMN WELL PLEASE, AND NOW I’M NOT SMILING AT YOU ANY MORE EITHER.” You know, I am not really equating this as anything along the lines of an innocent person stumbling into a hive of angry asexuals! I am rather reading this as a person who intended to upset people, or at least did not give a shit about engaging with criticism of his behavior and finding out why people were angry about the original commentary. (Also, I’m not weeping that he stopped smiling. The content of his arguments never changed, even if the tone did.)
More asexuals get irritated here. And here’s where the pseudoscience comes in. Amazingatheist zips up his fly, smiles again, and says “Actually, not pissing on walls is unhealthy because science says that not relieving your bladder whenever you need to can lead to horrible infections. I’m willing to believe that people who don’t need to urinate exist, but I demand that you explain how! Really, I think you piss on walls too, I just think you do it in secret when no one is watching because you’re secretly ashamed.”
More anger. And the thing is, the level of disrespect I observed between the amazingatheist at all points and the asexuals who did choose to engage with him was drastically different. Amazingatheist told asexuals that they were deluded, insulted asexual identities, demanded asexuals to submit to invasive medical procedures to “prove” their reality to them, and repeatedly called asexuals fakers and whiners.
Asexuals? I have been looking for asexual responses to this particular fail for over an hour now, and reading them to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and I got…
-a very angry post saying “I was raped, don’t you fucking use that to invalidate my identity” for which I assume we can forgive a little vehemency, given that we are talking about personal accounts of sexual assault
-sarcasm about amazingatheist’s arguments (very different from actually attacking them as a person, which I noted earlier that they were quite comfortable doing to all asexuals)
-a sarcastic post applying amazingatheist’s arguments to nonasexual people which turned around and made it clear that the author does not actually believe the things she is saying.
Not once did I find an asexual attacking amazingatheist as a person. Granted, I might have missed some things—it’s late and I’m tired and I have to work tomorrow, so you’ll forgive me if I wrap this up now.
Seriously. This is the most hateful shit I found. So, uh, I am not buying the “but asexuals are totally dogpiling this poor innocent person who might eventually be an ally!” thing. If he wants to quit pissing on the walls, I’m sure amazingatheist would be welcome to discuss asexuality in our nice cozy meeting hall. Until he learns to apologize and use the toilet, though, I’m just as happy to throw him outside on his ear.
I’ve been staying out of this argument because to be quite honest I’m of mixed minds on it. On the one hand, sciatrix excellently demonstrates why the tone argument is total bullshit.
On the other hand… I can sort of see where Arne’s coming from, in that I’ve never really seen swearing win an argument. In my experience, swearing just sort of gets people’s hackles up and in the end isn’t really productive of anything other than maybe catharsis for the person who was swearing.
On the first hand again, catharsis can be a good thing, and also people can express anger without swearing, and I’ve seen anger actually produce constructive arguments sometimes (although not usually when I’m the angry one, in those cases then I just flail a lot and am bad at words, but there are people who are very good at expressing themselves while angry, and no they don’t have to be polite about their anger).
So um… I guess I lean more towards the side of the people defending angry reactions? Because yeah, swearing and vitriol won’t win arguments, but that doesn’t mean they don’t serve any sort of useful purpose… in the end I think it’s more important to look at what is being said in an argument than how it’s being said, and I’d really rather have someone angrily dismantle my arguments than congenially dismantle my identity.
I think there’s two aspects to consider when this sort of thing happens.
First, do we *want* to educate in this instance? Because, you know, no is a perfectly acceptable answer. Especially when someone wanders into what is an ace space for having ace discussions and cake jokes and whatever and starts spouting shit. There are places that are oriented towards or even dedicated to educating the ignorant folks. (I’m actually working on a “repulsed ace - what it means, what it doesn’t” Q&A type post right this instant to correct some misinformation I’ve seen floating around; this would be an example.) The asexual tag on tumblr is not one of them, and we should not feel obliged to drop what we’re doing and educate people *here of all places*. Another thing to keep in mind is whether there’s any point to trying - honestly, a lot of the people who’ve started shit they have been *obviously* not interested in learning, and I am highly doubtful that any amount of education is going to make them go “oops, shit, you’re right, I’m really sorry for saying you were all $offensivethinggoeshere because now I can see asexuality is just as valid an orientation as any other.” Which still doesn’t necessarily make it useless - maybe some of it will stick and they’ll end up realising something later on, and maybe there are similarly ignorant lurkers who will learn something from it, but those chances have to be weighed.
And of course, very importantly, we get to prioritise ourselves and our own wellbeing. Honestly, I just scrolled past all of the troll posts, because I refuse to engage with that stuff - it makes me feel sick and attacked, might ruin my mood for the evening or might have a nastier aftershock if the person brings up stuff that’s very painful for me. Sometimes I’ll be willing to make that sacrifice in order to educate, other times I’m not, and nobody gets to tell me it’s my job to always, always put my own mental health and wellbeing last when it comes to this. Or tell other people, some of whom might actually be triggered by some of this stuff.
Second, the point I really want to make: if we decide to educate, then we can figure out what the best way to do so is, and I do NOT think that necessarily means nice and scrupulously polite.
I’ve learned things from people who were obviously angry, who were swearing, who made their frustration and exhaustion and *rage* that this was happening clear. I’ve learned things I wouldn’t have if they’d buried all that. I learned that the topic mattered, that it wasn’t an interesting theoretical exercise, that it HURT PEOPLE. That things like “but do you have scientific proof of your existence?” weren’t just fallacious but offensive. That people were sick and tired of fielding these questions and had their own discussions they wanted to have. That they were willing to answer these questions some times but not others, in some spaces but not in *theirs*. And a lot of the time the answers stuck more and resonated more because it was clear to me that this issue was IMPORTANT and getting it wrong hurt people.
In fact, I also learned that I was allowed to get angry if people were doing that sort of stuff to me, and I am so very grateful for that lesson you have no idea.
Obviously this isn’t always the case and there are times and places for calm education too and there are times and places for a mix of the two styles. And obviously ‘angry’ doesn’t have to mean ‘screaming insults at someone’ - see for instance the distinction Sciatrix makes between insulting or raging about someone’s *argument* and the person. But the ace community especially seems to be following the tack that if we want to change anyone’s mind we must be scrupulously polite and not let a hint of our frustration at offensive questions show, and I honestly think that’s not just not the only way but can actually be counterproductive in certain situations.
Do you believe there should be asexual pride? What do you imagine it being like?
…
*looks at cake, Doctor Who, amoebas, ace flags, ace crafts, black rings, veggie puns, everything ever in the #damn my asexual privilege tag, etc. etc. etc.*
“Should be”? Doesn’t it sort of already exist?
By which I mean: like now, but more, with more stuff offline, and having it be more known - my (lost, sadly lamented, replacement underway) asexual flag keychain isn’t all that useful in terms of PRIDE!!! if nobody I meet knows what it means.
9. What does being asexual mean to you?
It means not being broken.
It means community, it means pride (see above!), it means dissecting the definition of romantic love, it means creating the relationships I want for myself, it means sharing an identity with some amazing people and incredible friends, it means being really fucking queer and loving it. ;)
It means not feeling I have to share the parts of my body which I feel are mine and mine alone and where the thought of someone else touching them makes me want to curl up and hide with anyone (and sometimes I feel like being able to say “no, I am not going to have sex or anything remotely approaching sex, with anyone, ever” is the most wondrous and amazing thing in the world.)
But at the end of the day, it means - I’m asexual and that’s okay, and the fact that I love being ace is also okay, there is nothing wrong with me and I don’t need to try to dig through my soul or medical history hunting for sexual attraction hidden in some cranny somewhere and nobody gets to tell me I ought to.
Okay, so this might also be a bit of unpopular opinion time.
Back during the era that Kon was dead, DC editorial seemed to really push for Robin/Wondergirl (Tim/Cassie) to be a *thing*. And I hated it. I hate hate hated it.
But then…
I am so stealing “z” because a few fandoms ago I was totally queerplatonicallyshipping two characters and was D: at the lack of vocabulary to describe it.
Also, I am trying to think of a better way to express “queerplatonicallyshipping” via the tried and true method of vegetable puns, and the only thing I can think of is “parsnipping”.
7. Who’s your favorite Doctor? (Or, do you have a favorite asexual character?)
My favourite Doctor is Ten (I know, I know, I’m such a sheep), and as for my favourite ace character…
…I was about to answer this question with “do OCs count? :/” because honestly I haven’t found many canonically asexual characters and been not that enamoured by the few I have. but then I remembered!
My favourite asexual character is Fall-From-Grace from Planescape: Torment, which is a video game from the late 90s. I love her because she completely, utterly destroys a lot of the usual stereotypes we see among ace characters: male, socially awkward, emotionally distant, etc. Grace is a friendly, polite, very eloquent and socially deft celibate succubus who runs the “Brothel for Slaking Intellectual Lusts”, in which there are prostitutes with whom you may debate philosophy, trade stories, play strategy games, have insult fights, and generally do all sorts of things with… bar, of course, having sex. (Grace comments about sex: “it is ultimately a trivial and non-productive way for one to spend one’s time here in the multiverse. There is much more to life, wouldn’t you agree?”)
Just so you know, I’ve already claimed her for an ace manifesto at asexual_fandom so you can’t. :P
