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30 Day Asexuality Challenge - Day 10

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?

30 Day Asexuality Challenge - Days 8 and 9

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.

30 Day Asexuality Challenge - Day 7

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

The 30 Day Asexuality Challenge - days 5 and 6

(I actually have a legitimate reason for not updating much now, so expect a lot more bundles.)

5. Tell the story of the first person you came out to.

I… cannot honestly remember? Er. Online, trawling my LJ reveals that the first time I mentioned I thought I was asexual was in a big meme post that asked for my sexual orientation which got no comments. I think this may have been the first time I ever mentioned it, and my entire flist could see it, so no idea what that counts as. Offline, since coming out online is kind of… tricky to determine anyway… I alsocannot remember for the life of me. I think it may have been my flatmate, but the only thing I actually remember from that conversation is that she asked if I was sure I wasn’t a lesbian, and trying to remember it I think it’s been mainly overwritten by the conversation where I tried to come out to her as autistic (which went… kind of badly.)

really, the main coming-out-in-RL experiences I properly remember (via their horribleness, excellence or sheer WTFness) are probably getting recounted in later questions anyway.

6. Have you faced oppression because of your asexuality, whether institutional or societal?

Wow, this is a question… yes. Not in the form of anyone beating me up in the street because I’m ace or anything (which I guess makes me ~not really queer~ now, huh?) but in other forms. The two main ones that spring to mind… okay, cutting this because I talk about sexual assault and go into a bit of detail about mindset and what happened, this is your trigger warning right here:

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30 Day Asexuality Challenge - Days 2 and 3

I admit I was not expecting to fail here on the second day, but in retrospect I should probably have expected it. So here - have 2 and 3 together.

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