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 don’t even understand aceslutshamers.

pond-put-some-trousers-on:

What is going on? 

Everything on that blog is really convoluted.

A troll? A real person? With real opinions?

So confused.

SO.

CONFUSED.

I have no idea, and honestly enough I don’t want to know - I just blocked them straight off because there is shit I do not need to see.

(Source: subvriska)

“Scientifically prove that asexuality exists…”

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.

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