#'so they didn't distinguish gay and straight as identities or internal experiences like we do they saw it all as a choice' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blackwoolncrown · 5 years

Note

This is so interesting. Much of what I know about Asexuality is from my (ex) best friend who told me that by having crushes and telling her about them, I oppressed her in a sense. At the time I didn't realize how toxic she was in my life but ultimately my knowledge about Asexuality comes from her. That she is inherently queer and has always identified w the community, stuff like that. Some things she said that kind of pierced me hurtfully was that she considered all allosexuals stupid and oppres

“and oppressive, which made me wonder why we were friends. I did understand that she felt incredibly pressured to have sex and that it was lumped into our society and thrown everywhere. I also knew she was dealing with pressures of marriage from society and she was worried about having to have sex with someone bc our society expects that in relationships. I mentioned once that after a trauma I experienced (murder of a close friend) I was ace for a while (wrong wording) bc I couldn't feel any (2)“

“(3) i couldn't experience any sexual urges anymore much less imagine that as a good thing. I was completely dead inside for a bit. She tried not to offend but she did mention that Asexuality isn't something that can come and go in phases like the effects on your libido after a trauma, that being ace is an identity defined from your being and isn't negotiable. Kind of like being gay, where it's not something that can be separated from yourself or you can change if you wanted to. I stopped saying“

“(4)stopped saying it that way. I kind of understood what she meant and honestly shouldn't have used the word ace to describe that year for myself. She was right, I knew that feeling that way wasn't normal for me and so probably couldn't use that word as a verb or adjective, it's more an identity. What do you think? That's as far as I'm familiar with the term. We're no longer friends. One thing I'll never forget is how after I came out to her @ 19, she said, Well You'll always be straight to me.“

First off, I think Ace as an identity and ‘Asexuality’ as a biological occurrence need to be understood as interlinked but still somewhat separate, because ‘Asexuality’ as a state/phenom happens for a lot of reasons, at different durations of people’s lives. And I think the most troublesome dialogue out of the Ace community recently is that ‘all forms, durations and conditions of Asexuality are ‘Ace The Identity’.

I think that Ace activism should be a thing because when someone lacks sex drive or sexual activity in their life there’s a damaging, unnecessary narrative that tells them they’re damaged, or lame, or somehow lacking, and that’s really toxic. I also think that our hypersexual and exploitative society has inundated people with itself that unless they have experience otherwise, they view ‘sex’ and sexuality through the lens that’s been shown them, and logically recoil from that-- but in some cases cannot distinguish ‘sexuality the human behavior’ from ‘sexuality as it’s depicted socially/in media’.

I also think that the experience you had is an interesting example. Because there are two facets of the working definition (in general) of Ace that are there as the discourse evolved (both manipulatively and honestly) to move away from MOGAI spaces which have been criticized for, among other things, convincing people that ‘Ace The Identity’ included things like trauma, paranoia, depression etc - again IT IS HARMFUL TO IDENTIFY *AS* ONE’S TRAUMA OR MENTAL ILLNESS. Anyway those points are now:

1. All durations (lifetime, changing, fluctuating) of Asexual behavior qualify one as Ace The Identity

and to make that ‘real’,

2. All persons exhibiting Asexual behavior are Ace The Identity, even in cases where they know the reason has to do with illness or trauma.

and conflictingly,

3. Aceness **does not mean sex repulsion**

This raises multiple questions. How often an interval are we measuring against to determine someone’s aceness as real? At that point, what is the assumed interval/amount of sexual desire assumed of an ‘allo’ (this is not a real thing, literally everyone has different amounts of sex and varying levels of sexual desire, also at different times in life)? You see, when they started to say you could be Ace but still experience attraction ~under certain conditions~ (aka many extended MOGAI identities) that means that both ‘no sexual attraction’ and ‘some sexual attraction’ qualify as Ace. That...kind of makes everyone ace. If Asexuality is a spectrum, then there has to be a bar somewhere where it ticks over to ‘Not Asexual’. Kind of how sexuality is a spectrum, but Cis and Het is where it ticks back over to ‘not LGBT’. So where is that point?

Back to the example though, what I want to point out is that your friend basically suggested that just hearing about sex was oppressive--why would that be, unless she’s not sex repulsed? Being sex repulsed is a symptom of trauma, so by my personal opinion she has PTSD- she’s not Ace The Identity. However, again now the definition has expanded to include Mental Illnesses which is laughable because at that point that’s a Neurodivergence issue, which is a different community (yep, they overlap bc we’re human but again not all marginalized communities is the same!!). All that aside, that would make her argument that you’re not Ace oppressive.

Before any of the recent discourse back when I was more involved in the community it was stated and agreed on that actually, yes, Aceness can fluctuate like any other identity can fluctuate. So here we are again. It’s Ace if you’r always Ace or if you’re only Ace sometimes and Ace if it’s ‘completely no to sex’ or ‘sometimes if you really like someone’ or even if ‘you’re romantically attracted to the same sex but still have internalized homophobia’.This is just messy and way too broad. I think social justice clout and the goodheartedness of people just trying to be inclusive have muddied what is a co-opting of LGBT dialogue that covers up a total lack of intersectional understanding, a history of general messiness and a LOT of unresolved trauma being covered up as an ID as a coping mechanism, which is very understandable but honestly kind of a huge issue. It truly tricked a lot of people out of exploring their inner issues or past or just figuring themselves out, and continues to do so. I absolutely believe there are people who are just Ace, but I also believe there are a lot of children (teens) and juvenile, not-fully-developed (!! BRAIN DEVELOPMENT DOESN’T EVEN END UNTIL YOU’RE ABOUT 22-25 PEOPLE !!) adults who think that if they don’t feel attraction constantly-like-on-tv and or at all at their age that they’re Asexual which just...no.

#Anonymous

8 notes · View notes