Discovering Asexuality
Jan. 30th, 2011 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mystiri_1 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
asexualityLast night, I went to a barbeque to celebrate my Dad's wedding anniversary. And like most such occasions, comes the moment when somebody asks, "So what about you? Why don't you have a partner?"
For the first time ever, my response was, "I'm asexual, so I'm just not interested."
While I have been asexual all my life - I can't ever recall a time when I have felt genuinely attracted to someone else - it's only been maybe half a year since I could put a label to what I am. It's weird, in a way - labels are supposed to be bad, demeaning, confining, whatever - but I remember reading an article talking about what asexuality was and thinking, "That's me," and feeling relief, because it meant I wasn't just weird or somehow defective by today's standards.
It wasn't the first time I have told someone I was asexual - I have talked about it online, spoken with friends about it - but it felt like a huge accomplishment to come out and say it in a purely social setting, where the expectation is that people will come in pairs. Ironically, I think it is the first time I have ever spoken about it around my immediate family: my little brother was sitting next to me at the time. They've never really said anything about the fact that I've never been involved with anybody; I've always been the quiet one, the one who doesn't go out of her way to be incredibly social, and maybe to an extent that is simply taken for granted. But there's something satisfying in being able to assert that no, it's not because I'm too introverted or a bit of a geek, it's just that that's not me.
The woman I was talking to was surprised, but she also congratulated me for being so honest. She told me that, as a hairdresser, people tell her all kinds of things, so she's no longer shocked by anything - but she was curious as to how I dealt with it. Several of her clients were asexual, and it seemed that they had a hard time dealing with it simply because it's not something that people seem to talk about. And yes, this is something I definitely know is true.
These days, homosexuality is talked about, although not everybody is accepting or supportive of those who identify as such. People might admit to being bi-sexual or at least curious, or assert with great emphasis that they are straight. But while I have met plenty of people who are quite happy to openly place themselves within any of those categories, I don't think I've ever met anybody else willing to say 'I'm asexual' anywhere except online. We're the group people don't talk about, and don't really understand.
I told her that most of what I had learned about asexuality, and found in the way of support, came from online communities like Dreamwidth, where different sexualities are already widely accepted. Even if you don't say much, there's a comfort to knowing that there are other people like you out there, that they face some of the same issues you do. Afterwards, I felt that maybe it was time to come out and say some of the things I have thought about these last few months, because of that very reason: it help to know other have similar experiences. So here it is.
I have had two boyfriends. I hesitate to call either of them a relationship, because frankly, calling them' boyfriends' seems like massively overstating the case. The first, I was 11. At the time, having a boyfriend or a girlfriend was something of a coup for my peers, I think; it was less a matter of interest than being able to brag that you were 'dating' someone, preferably someone relatively popular. It was a 'grown-up' thing, and looking back, some of the antics that went on just proved how grown-up we weren't. It lasted approximately 40 minutes.
The short version, when he asked me if I wanted to go out with him, I said yes. I didn't particularly like him, or think that he was good-looking, but that was what you did - getting a boyfriend was a big deal. We didn't even talk all that much during that time, as we were busy with the school play. He mostly hung out with his friends, and I was working with mine, and most of what I remember is thinking that this was weird. I was, essentially, one of the class nerds, and couldn't quite figure out why he'd asked me out in the first place. It was flattering, but now that I had a boyfriend, what was I supposed to do with it? It ended when, about 40 minutes after asking me out, he tried to kiss me. I panicked, and immediately dumped him.
I don't think that that was necessarily a sign of asexuality then. I was 11, and frankly, many of the kids in my class thought kissing was just as gross as I did. We just weren't mature enough, physically or emotionally, for the things we played at. I later found out that it had been the result of a dare - he'd been supposed to kiss me, and that was the reason he'd asked me in the first place. I wasn't particularly heartbroken by this, or even greatly offended, because in retrospect it was the kind of stupid thing he would do. It wasn't exactly a traumatic or emotionally scarring event. I was however, quite happy that I had been the one to dump him, and that half the class had heard me. I know he received a fair bit of teasing for that.
The second time, I was 16. At this point, my sister (two years younger) had already had a long line of boyfriends, with all the attendant teenage angst. She used to wonder how we always knew what was going on in her life, but she held phone conversations, some of which were semi-hysterical, at high volumes, so that we were always up-to-date with the latest drama in her and her friends' love lives. One of the guys I hung out with at youth group asked me out. I liked him, so I said yes.
Note that when I say liked, I don't mean that I was attracted to him. I enjoyed his company, and that was why we hung out at youth group. And I was 16; at this point, having a boyfriend is one of those things that is expected. I think it lasted a couple of weeks. We only saw each other at youth group meetings, and we didn't do anything different during those times. We never kissed, never even tried to. Again I broke it off, because I wasn't comfortable with it. I grew up reading romances, and it seemed rather lacking in that. No drama, no attraction. We spent time together at youth group, but we never sought each other out beyond that. It didn't seem realistic to say that we were dating, when in actual fact, neither of us even tried. We stayed friends. It didn't seem that our 'break-up' affected us any more than our 'relationship' did.
For the record, I'm now 30 years old.
It's not a case of waking up one day and thinking, 'There's something wrong with me.' I finished high school, spent some years knocking around tertiary institutions while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do, and everywhere you look are relationships, straight or otherwise. Even high school friends who hadn't dated while at high school were finding people now, and I still didn't really get it. I always figured that part of it was that I didn't really connect with my own peer group: I was always one of the 'smart ones', and while other teenagers were gushing about cars or sports or movies, we were just as enthusiastic on computer games, our favourite books and writing. But we were a definite minority, the 'unpopular kids'. The people I hung out with were friends, so I didn't think of them as potential partners. The people I didn't hang out with - well, we had nothing in common, so why would I 'fall in love' with one of them? (This was something else I found equally ridiculous and incomprehensible: teenagers who were so much 'in love' with one another, that anything going wrong was the end of their world. Statistically speaking most of these relationships lasted weeks, months at the most. It wasn't like they were really going to end up spending the rest of their lives together.)
Only once we hit university, the things we liked weren't so uncommon, and there was a much wider population to choose from. My friends began to pair up, too. Looking back, I wonder if it wasn't the other way around, if my being asexual created an additional disconnect from my peer group at a time in which emerging sexualities is a large part of daily life.
That's not to say it left me lonely or anything, because I had no real desire for that kind of relationship. I was perfectly happy hanging out with my friends; their partners tended to be people of similar interests, so it wasn't a big deal. Later, I made a lot of friends online, too, some of whom I became quite close to. But as time went on the people I knew in my day-to-day life were pairing up, getting married and having kids. When you went to a social event, everybody else attended as one half of a couple, and I came alone. I still couldn't say there was a single time that I had been genuinely interested in anyone. And I began to feel more than a little self-conscious about it.
I have experimented. I think one of the biggest misconceptions about asexuality is that an asexual person has no sexual thoughts or feelings whatsoever. Anybody who has read my writing can tell you I have plenty of sexual thoughts or feelings, as a large portion of what I write is sexual in nature. I was curious about sex, so I read a lot, tried a few things. I actually considered going out and picking someone up just so that I could say I have lost my putative virginity, that I have actually had sex with another person. But it seemed kind of cheap, and kept coming back to the fact that I have never felt attracted to another person. Given a choice between being a 30-year old 'virgin', and having an awkward sexual experience just so that I could say I had, I finally decided I preferred the first option.
But I think one of the moments that sticks out for me most was at my father's wedding, just a year ago. I met a lot of people, and the usual social chitchat ensued, with the inevitable question of whether or not I was involved with somebody. I replied that I wasn't. And the person I was speaking to said, "Oh, I know some nice boys, I'll have to introduce you."
It took me awhile to realise just how much I resented that remark.
As I said previously, I made a number of friends online, and this was based primarily on our mutual interest in writing. Online relationships can be quite free of preconceptions: they usually start through mutual interests, and everything else comes later. If I want to discuss what I liked about a book or a game, it doesn't matter what I look like, how I dress, if I'm dating someone or married with kids. Should I get to know and like someone, we might discuss such things, but it's almost the opposite of a face-to-face meeting: the small talk comes later.
I started out with a role-play group on Yahoo, and became friends with several other writers there. Because the series we were RPing was a paranormal romance, sex was a feature in what we wrote. We would discuss in chat what we were writing, what we liked from what we had read, and some fairly frank sexual discussions ensued. Among other things, I discovered both kink and yaoi, two genres which came to interest me a great deal. I get some teasing about it from my friends,who are well aware that I have never had sex, but it's good-natured, and as they've read my writing, any jokes about my so-called 'innocence' is just that.
This lead to me asking more questions about my sexuality than just 'Why don't I ever seem interested in anyone?' I questioned my gender orientation. If I notice someone is attractive, it's more of an aesthetic value judgement - I don't feel sexually attracted to them, I just think that they are attractive - so it is something I notice just as often with women as with men. At the same time, I'm not even sure what my physical criteria for such a value judgement is, because often when people talk about a hot actor, I fail to see anything attractive about their features. The interest I had in kink made me wonder if that was the kind of relationship I was looking for, but however intriguing I found certain ideas or scenarios, I couldn't see myself willing to act them out with another person. For the most part, the idea of sex - even kinky sex - with another actual person still didn't appeal. Despite this, it never occurred to me that I might be asexual, because yes, I do have sexual thoughts and feelings.
Although we've stayed friends, we moved on to writing other things. I quite like fanfiction and writing challenges, so I ended up here on Dreamwidth, and signed up tokink_bingo . Not long after the incident at my Dad's wedding, there was a post there that talked about asexuality, which gave a link to another site. And as I've always been quite happy to satisfy my intellectual curiousity about sex and sexuality, I followed it.
There were several things that immediately rang true with me. I am paraphrasing, but here they are:
It took awhile for the idea to sink in. I think I re-read that particular list of questions a few times, and I started looking around for other communities that dealt with asexuality. I read what other people said and wrote, and thought about it. I think it took a week in all for me to say to myself, 'I'm asexual,' and when I did, it was with an amazing feeling of relief. I'm not weird, different or defective, it's just that my sexuality differs from the norm. And there are others out there like me. I don't imagine that we're not all exactly the same, but we share similar experiences of trying to fit in a sexual world while lacking the sexual motivations of those around us.
One of the biggest misconceptions I had about asexuality was the idea that an asexual person lacked any sexual thoughts or feelings whatsoever, and I think that this purely dictionary definition probably stops more people from being able to recognise and indentify their asexuality. Other issues that troubled me were things I had worried about before: never finding myself in a relationship, missing out on a family, being alone. Yet many of these things I'd considered before I realised I was asexual.
Asexuality is fluid, and it's possible that someday I might find myself in a sexual relationship - it's just more likely that if I do, there will be a relationship before there is sex. As this fits quite nicely with my belief that sex should be about more than just getting off, I don't see a problem with this. And while we seem to live in a world where everybody wants to pair up, the truth is slightly different. I know a number of people who, having previously been in a relationship, prefer being single. If I am completely honest, I am very used to doing things my own way. I'm financially independant, with assets of my own. The purely practical side of me is aware that a relationship would compromise both of those things, and that I would have to be very certain before making such a commitment. As for children, I have thought for some years that, as I have a large and supportive extended family, it would be nice to adopt or foster a child who lacks the same. And a sexual relationship is no guarantee against loneliness, or the only way to avoid it.
The more that I thought about it, the more it also helped explain a few things. Take my writing, for example. I will be the first to admit that I live very much inside my own head at times. I always have; I was a voracious reader as a child, and the words on the page created worlds that were far more real than anything on a television screen. Writing was a logical extension of this, that I could create worlds and put them down on paper. And as I said, I pretty much grew up reading romances. The social cues that I know I often miss in real life are so much more obvious in print. When I write, I tend to focus very much on characters' feelings and relationships, and yes, this includes sex.
I like writing yaoi (male/male relationships) in part because it removes certain gender expectations that I simply cannot identify with. This is not to say it's not a genre rife with stereotypes, because it is. And plenty of non-asexual females like yaoi, too - just like some men like to fantasise about two women. But it's a genre that is as much - or more - about relationships as it is about sex.
As for kink, I believe the basis of kink is not even primarily about sex. It's about something that pushes your buttons, that gets a genuine response. It might have definite physical and sexual elements, but there is so much more to it. It's about sensuality and sensation, not all of which is pleasurable. It happens as much on an emotional and psychological level as it does physical. It's about learning what makes another person tick, what they respond to. Do they have reasons for it, or is it simply something they stumbled across? Do you need to step carefully around some things? Are you willing to trust someone with something that you are aware is not generally considered socially acceptable? All of these things make writing and exploring kink very appealing to me, because there is just so much to work with.
The short version of the above few paragraphs, of course, is that I have a very rich fantasy life. But I still have no desire to carry any of these things out with another person. As I said to one friend, sex is far more appealing to me as a purely mental exercise.
Then there's the question of orientation. Looking back, those people I thought were attractive were all people that I knew something about, something that made them 'real' to me. Something that I could identify with, that provoked some sort of empathetic response. Otherwise, it was just how they looked, nothing extraordinary. And thinking that they were 'attractive' still didn't translate to actual sexual attraction. I can see the same bias in the characters I prefer within a fandom. Until I find something to like about a character or a person, something that I relate to, they're not of any real interest to me, and that includes their appearance.
This doesn't strike me as a bad thing.
At the end of the day, introspection aside, the biggest change in my life is being able to say, when somebody asks about my relationship status, "I'm asexual." That remark that made me so instantly and inexplicably angry, the backhand and likely unintended implication that I couldn't have gone out and found someone by myself if I really wanted to, isn't something I have to put up with just because I don't fit in with other people's preconceptions of what is 'normal'. I don't want to. I'm not involved with anybody because I am not interested in being involved with anybody. It is not a defect or a social flaw of any kind, it's just who I am. For the first time since I was a teenager, I feel like I can accept this in myself and not feel like I'm some kind of late-bloomer or social outcast.
And if saying 'I'm asexual' makes somebody stop and think, makes them curious, causes them to ask questions about just what does that mean, I don't think that that is a bad thing, either.
Like I said, we're the ones people don't talk about, the ones they don't even seem to realise exist, so here I am. I have chosen to share this here, unlocked, because if nobody else is going to talk about it, then we should. I think this is probably the most personal information I have ever shared online in one go, and it's taken me hours - and a few tears - to get it all out, but the truth is, I feel better for it.
I am 30 years old, female, and asexual. This is my experience; yours may be different. Feel free to share.
For the first time ever, my response was, "I'm asexual, so I'm just not interested."
While I have been asexual all my life - I can't ever recall a time when I have felt genuinely attracted to someone else - it's only been maybe half a year since I could put a label to what I am. It's weird, in a way - labels are supposed to be bad, demeaning, confining, whatever - but I remember reading an article talking about what asexuality was and thinking, "That's me," and feeling relief, because it meant I wasn't just weird or somehow defective by today's standards.
It wasn't the first time I have told someone I was asexual - I have talked about it online, spoken with friends about it - but it felt like a huge accomplishment to come out and say it in a purely social setting, where the expectation is that people will come in pairs. Ironically, I think it is the first time I have ever spoken about it around my immediate family: my little brother was sitting next to me at the time. They've never really said anything about the fact that I've never been involved with anybody; I've always been the quiet one, the one who doesn't go out of her way to be incredibly social, and maybe to an extent that is simply taken for granted. But there's something satisfying in being able to assert that no, it's not because I'm too introverted or a bit of a geek, it's just that that's not me.
The woman I was talking to was surprised, but she also congratulated me for being so honest. She told me that, as a hairdresser, people tell her all kinds of things, so she's no longer shocked by anything - but she was curious as to how I dealt with it. Several of her clients were asexual, and it seemed that they had a hard time dealing with it simply because it's not something that people seem to talk about. And yes, this is something I definitely know is true.
These days, homosexuality is talked about, although not everybody is accepting or supportive of those who identify as such. People might admit to being bi-sexual or at least curious, or assert with great emphasis that they are straight. But while I have met plenty of people who are quite happy to openly place themselves within any of those categories, I don't think I've ever met anybody else willing to say 'I'm asexual' anywhere except online. We're the group people don't talk about, and don't really understand.
I told her that most of what I had learned about asexuality, and found in the way of support, came from online communities like Dreamwidth, where different sexualities are already widely accepted. Even if you don't say much, there's a comfort to knowing that there are other people like you out there, that they face some of the same issues you do. Afterwards, I felt that maybe it was time to come out and say some of the things I have thought about these last few months, because of that very reason: it help to know other have similar experiences. So here it is.
I have had two boyfriends. I hesitate to call either of them a relationship, because frankly, calling them' boyfriends' seems like massively overstating the case. The first, I was 11. At the time, having a boyfriend or a girlfriend was something of a coup for my peers, I think; it was less a matter of interest than being able to brag that you were 'dating' someone, preferably someone relatively popular. It was a 'grown-up' thing, and looking back, some of the antics that went on just proved how grown-up we weren't. It lasted approximately 40 minutes.
The short version, when he asked me if I wanted to go out with him, I said yes. I didn't particularly like him, or think that he was good-looking, but that was what you did - getting a boyfriend was a big deal. We didn't even talk all that much during that time, as we were busy with the school play. He mostly hung out with his friends, and I was working with mine, and most of what I remember is thinking that this was weird. I was, essentially, one of the class nerds, and couldn't quite figure out why he'd asked me out in the first place. It was flattering, but now that I had a boyfriend, what was I supposed to do with it? It ended when, about 40 minutes after asking me out, he tried to kiss me. I panicked, and immediately dumped him.
I don't think that that was necessarily a sign of asexuality then. I was 11, and frankly, many of the kids in my class thought kissing was just as gross as I did. We just weren't mature enough, physically or emotionally, for the things we played at. I later found out that it had been the result of a dare - he'd been supposed to kiss me, and that was the reason he'd asked me in the first place. I wasn't particularly heartbroken by this, or even greatly offended, because in retrospect it was the kind of stupid thing he would do. It wasn't exactly a traumatic or emotionally scarring event. I was however, quite happy that I had been the one to dump him, and that half the class had heard me. I know he received a fair bit of teasing for that.
The second time, I was 16. At this point, my sister (two years younger) had already had a long line of boyfriends, with all the attendant teenage angst. She used to wonder how we always knew what was going on in her life, but she held phone conversations, some of which were semi-hysterical, at high volumes, so that we were always up-to-date with the latest drama in her and her friends' love lives. One of the guys I hung out with at youth group asked me out. I liked him, so I said yes.
Note that when I say liked, I don't mean that I was attracted to him. I enjoyed his company, and that was why we hung out at youth group. And I was 16; at this point, having a boyfriend is one of those things that is expected. I think it lasted a couple of weeks. We only saw each other at youth group meetings, and we didn't do anything different during those times. We never kissed, never even tried to. Again I broke it off, because I wasn't comfortable with it. I grew up reading romances, and it seemed rather lacking in that. No drama, no attraction. We spent time together at youth group, but we never sought each other out beyond that. It didn't seem realistic to say that we were dating, when in actual fact, neither of us even tried. We stayed friends. It didn't seem that our 'break-up' affected us any more than our 'relationship' did.
For the record, I'm now 30 years old.
It's not a case of waking up one day and thinking, 'There's something wrong with me.' I finished high school, spent some years knocking around tertiary institutions while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do, and everywhere you look are relationships, straight or otherwise. Even high school friends who hadn't dated while at high school were finding people now, and I still didn't really get it. I always figured that part of it was that I didn't really connect with my own peer group: I was always one of the 'smart ones', and while other teenagers were gushing about cars or sports or movies, we were just as enthusiastic on computer games, our favourite books and writing. But we were a definite minority, the 'unpopular kids'. The people I hung out with were friends, so I didn't think of them as potential partners. The people I didn't hang out with - well, we had nothing in common, so why would I 'fall in love' with one of them? (This was something else I found equally ridiculous and incomprehensible: teenagers who were so much 'in love' with one another, that anything going wrong was the end of their world. Statistically speaking most of these relationships lasted weeks, months at the most. It wasn't like they were really going to end up spending the rest of their lives together.)
Only once we hit university, the things we liked weren't so uncommon, and there was a much wider population to choose from. My friends began to pair up, too. Looking back, I wonder if it wasn't the other way around, if my being asexual created an additional disconnect from my peer group at a time in which emerging sexualities is a large part of daily life.
That's not to say it left me lonely or anything, because I had no real desire for that kind of relationship. I was perfectly happy hanging out with my friends; their partners tended to be people of similar interests, so it wasn't a big deal. Later, I made a lot of friends online, too, some of whom I became quite close to. But as time went on the people I knew in my day-to-day life were pairing up, getting married and having kids. When you went to a social event, everybody else attended as one half of a couple, and I came alone. I still couldn't say there was a single time that I had been genuinely interested in anyone. And I began to feel more than a little self-conscious about it.
I have experimented. I think one of the biggest misconceptions about asexuality is that an asexual person has no sexual thoughts or feelings whatsoever. Anybody who has read my writing can tell you I have plenty of sexual thoughts or feelings, as a large portion of what I write is sexual in nature. I was curious about sex, so I read a lot, tried a few things. I actually considered going out and picking someone up just so that I could say I have lost my putative virginity, that I have actually had sex with another person. But it seemed kind of cheap, and kept coming back to the fact that I have never felt attracted to another person. Given a choice between being a 30-year old 'virgin', and having an awkward sexual experience just so that I could say I had, I finally decided I preferred the first option.
But I think one of the moments that sticks out for me most was at my father's wedding, just a year ago. I met a lot of people, and the usual social chitchat ensued, with the inevitable question of whether or not I was involved with somebody. I replied that I wasn't. And the person I was speaking to said, "Oh, I know some nice boys, I'll have to introduce you."
It took me awhile to realise just how much I resented that remark.
As I said previously, I made a number of friends online, and this was based primarily on our mutual interest in writing. Online relationships can be quite free of preconceptions: they usually start through mutual interests, and everything else comes later. If I want to discuss what I liked about a book or a game, it doesn't matter what I look like, how I dress, if I'm dating someone or married with kids. Should I get to know and like someone, we might discuss such things, but it's almost the opposite of a face-to-face meeting: the small talk comes later.
I started out with a role-play group on Yahoo, and became friends with several other writers there. Because the series we were RPing was a paranormal romance, sex was a feature in what we wrote. We would discuss in chat what we were writing, what we liked from what we had read, and some fairly frank sexual discussions ensued. Among other things, I discovered both kink and yaoi, two genres which came to interest me a great deal. I get some teasing about it from my friends,who are well aware that I have never had sex, but it's good-natured, and as they've read my writing, any jokes about my so-called 'innocence' is just that.
This lead to me asking more questions about my sexuality than just 'Why don't I ever seem interested in anyone?' I questioned my gender orientation. If I notice someone is attractive, it's more of an aesthetic value judgement - I don't feel sexually attracted to them, I just think that they are attractive - so it is something I notice just as often with women as with men. At the same time, I'm not even sure what my physical criteria for such a value judgement is, because often when people talk about a hot actor, I fail to see anything attractive about their features. The interest I had in kink made me wonder if that was the kind of relationship I was looking for, but however intriguing I found certain ideas or scenarios, I couldn't see myself willing to act them out with another person. For the most part, the idea of sex - even kinky sex - with another actual person still didn't appeal. Despite this, it never occurred to me that I might be asexual, because yes, I do have sexual thoughts and feelings.
Although we've stayed friends, we moved on to writing other things. I quite like fanfiction and writing challenges, so I ended up here on Dreamwidth, and signed up to
kink_bingo . Not long after the incident at my Dad's wedding, there was a post there that talked about asexuality, which gave a link to another site. And as I've always been quite happy to satisfy my intellectual curiousity about sex and sexuality, I followed it.There were several things that immediately rang true with me. I am paraphrasing, but here they are:
- Asexual people do not feel sexually attracted to other human beings.
- Asexual people may experience sexual arousal. They may masturbate, because this produces pleasurable sensations, but they are not interested in actual sex.
- Asexual people may experience sexual thoughts and feelings, but not in the context of being sexually aroused by another person. They may fantasise about sex with another person, but giving the opportunity to actually do so, would not be interested.
It took awhile for the idea to sink in. I think I re-read that particular list of questions a few times, and I started looking around for other communities that dealt with asexuality. I read what other people said and wrote, and thought about it. I think it took a week in all for me to say to myself, 'I'm asexual,' and when I did, it was with an amazing feeling of relief. I'm not weird, different or defective, it's just that my sexuality differs from the norm. And there are others out there like me. I don't imagine that we're not all exactly the same, but we share similar experiences of trying to fit in a sexual world while lacking the sexual motivations of those around us.
One of the biggest misconceptions I had about asexuality was the idea that an asexual person lacked any sexual thoughts or feelings whatsoever, and I think that this purely dictionary definition probably stops more people from being able to recognise and indentify their asexuality. Other issues that troubled me were things I had worried about before: never finding myself in a relationship, missing out on a family, being alone. Yet many of these things I'd considered before I realised I was asexual.
Asexuality is fluid, and it's possible that someday I might find myself in a sexual relationship - it's just more likely that if I do, there will be a relationship before there is sex. As this fits quite nicely with my belief that sex should be about more than just getting off, I don't see a problem with this. And while we seem to live in a world where everybody wants to pair up, the truth is slightly different. I know a number of people who, having previously been in a relationship, prefer being single. If I am completely honest, I am very used to doing things my own way. I'm financially independant, with assets of my own. The purely practical side of me is aware that a relationship would compromise both of those things, and that I would have to be very certain before making such a commitment. As for children, I have thought for some years that, as I have a large and supportive extended family, it would be nice to adopt or foster a child who lacks the same. And a sexual relationship is no guarantee against loneliness, or the only way to avoid it.
The more that I thought about it, the more it also helped explain a few things. Take my writing, for example. I will be the first to admit that I live very much inside my own head at times. I always have; I was a voracious reader as a child, and the words on the page created worlds that were far more real than anything on a television screen. Writing was a logical extension of this, that I could create worlds and put them down on paper. And as I said, I pretty much grew up reading romances. The social cues that I know I often miss in real life are so much more obvious in print. When I write, I tend to focus very much on characters' feelings and relationships, and yes, this includes sex.
I like writing yaoi (male/male relationships) in part because it removes certain gender expectations that I simply cannot identify with. This is not to say it's not a genre rife with stereotypes, because it is. And plenty of non-asexual females like yaoi, too - just like some men like to fantasise about two women. But it's a genre that is as much - or more - about relationships as it is about sex.
As for kink, I believe the basis of kink is not even primarily about sex. It's about something that pushes your buttons, that gets a genuine response. It might have definite physical and sexual elements, but there is so much more to it. It's about sensuality and sensation, not all of which is pleasurable. It happens as much on an emotional and psychological level as it does physical. It's about learning what makes another person tick, what they respond to. Do they have reasons for it, or is it simply something they stumbled across? Do you need to step carefully around some things? Are you willing to trust someone with something that you are aware is not generally considered socially acceptable? All of these things make writing and exploring kink very appealing to me, because there is just so much to work with.
The short version of the above few paragraphs, of course, is that I have a very rich fantasy life. But I still have no desire to carry any of these things out with another person. As I said to one friend, sex is far more appealing to me as a purely mental exercise.
Then there's the question of orientation. Looking back, those people I thought were attractive were all people that I knew something about, something that made them 'real' to me. Something that I could identify with, that provoked some sort of empathetic response. Otherwise, it was just how they looked, nothing extraordinary. And thinking that they were 'attractive' still didn't translate to actual sexual attraction. I can see the same bias in the characters I prefer within a fandom. Until I find something to like about a character or a person, something that I relate to, they're not of any real interest to me, and that includes their appearance.
This doesn't strike me as a bad thing.
At the end of the day, introspection aside, the biggest change in my life is being able to say, when somebody asks about my relationship status, "I'm asexual." That remark that made me so instantly and inexplicably angry, the backhand and likely unintended implication that I couldn't have gone out and found someone by myself if I really wanted to, isn't something I have to put up with just because I don't fit in with other people's preconceptions of what is 'normal'. I don't want to. I'm not involved with anybody because I am not interested in being involved with anybody. It is not a defect or a social flaw of any kind, it's just who I am. For the first time since I was a teenager, I feel like I can accept this in myself and not feel like I'm some kind of late-bloomer or social outcast.
And if saying 'I'm asexual' makes somebody stop and think, makes them curious, causes them to ask questions about just what does that mean, I don't think that that is a bad thing, either.
Like I said, we're the ones people don't talk about, the ones they don't even seem to realise exist, so here I am. I have chosen to share this here, unlocked, because if nobody else is going to talk about it, then we should. I think this is probably the most personal information I have ever shared online in one go, and it's taken me hours - and a few tears - to get it all out, but the truth is, I feel better for it.
I am 30 years old, female, and asexual. This is my experience; yours may be different. Feel free to share.
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Date: 2011-08-09 01:15 am (UTC)I don't know what the hell I am, truthfully. Beyond ace, I mean--I've got that much figured out. I don't identify as "queer" because the meaning for "queer" that's engraved on my brain is "insulting term for a male homosexual." That was the definition when I was growing up. Well, I'm not a male, and I'm not homosexual, and I don't like the insulting part, so that identification gets scrapped right there. I know that's not what it means to most people nowadays, but I have to say that when I hear people identifying as queer, I wince. Because to me it sounds like they're putting themselves down, and I HATE the idea of people doing that.
When I was growing up, I would have identified as straight. However...when I was growing up, there weren't a lot of choices about what you could be. There was straight...which was DEFINITELY the default setting. There was homosexuality--which was for men only; our teachers kept telling us that lesbianism was nothing more than an ugly slander imagined by twisted minds. Two women couldn't do anything with each other, the teachers claimed, because they didn't have the right equipment.
And there weren't any other choices. Bisexuality was interpreted by so-called "experts" as "male homosexual who's massively in denial." The notion that a woman could be bisexual or that a person could genuinely prefer both sexes simply didn't occur to me. I'd heard of sex change operations, of course...but the term "transgender" and the concept of "gender identity" just weren't being talked about by people who weren't part of that community. Also, I'd never heard of anyone transitioning from female to male, so a sex change operation, like being gay or being bi, just seemed to be one more thing that was For Men Only.
Under the circumstances, it's probably not surprising that I identified as straight. I knew I didn't want to date or have sex with women, so I clearly couldn't be a supposedly nonexistent lesbian. I didn't want to date or have sex with guys either, but I did know that there were male actors that I thought were cute or handsome and that I liked looking at. Based on this, I figured that I was straight but that I either had a low sex drive or I was just slow in developing. Sooner or later, I figured, I'd meet the right guy and I'd want sex with him all the time.
I got older. I had sex with guys. (And with one girl.) Didn't much care for either, frankly. It wasn't psychedelic bliss, which was the way novels always described sex. It wasn't even pleasant. It was meh with a side of uncomfortable and HORRIFYINGLY PAINFUL. And the people I was with thought that the sex was good, so evidently it was just me. Maybe there was something physiologically wrong. I doubted very much that it could be fixed, so I figured I'd just have to live with it.
My family, meanwhile, got after me for YEARS for not trying to attract guys and for not flirting. I kept trying to tell them that I didn't know how to attract guys and that I didn't know how to flirt. And I didn't really want to get involved with anyone because I didn't want to get into the whole sex thing. While I did get into a relationship with a guy at law school, we weren't on anything close to the same page. I wanted something akin to a romantic friendship. He was into sex and wanted to get married and have scads of kids. Obviously, we were not compatible.
I first heard about asexuality in a sporking comm over on LJ. One of the participants mentioned that she was asexual and said she'd answer any questions I had. I had plenty of questions. She was patient. She also pointed me in the direction of AVEN, where I read the same words that the original poster did:
* Asexual people do not feel sexually attracted to other human beings.
* Asexual people may experience sexual arousal. They may masturbate, because this produces pleasurable sensations, but they are not interested in actual sex.
* Asexual people may experience sexual thoughts and feelings, but not in the context of being sexually aroused by another person. They may fantasise about sex with another person, but giving the opportunity to actually do so, would not be interested.
And, like the OP, I read this and thought, "This is ME!"
It was kind of a relief. I'd always felt like a failure for not reacting sexually to...well, anything. (And if you divide your time between LGBT authors who publish m/m fiction and fandom--fandom, which ships EVERYTHING, including Hogwarts Castle/Giant Squid--you can see why I felt like a failure. Everyone was insisting on sex and sexuality being the be-all and end-all of the immediate universe, and I couldn't seem to get with the program.)
Now I knew. I didn't react the way everyone else did because that wasn't a part of me.
It also occurred to me that my definitions of "shipping" and "attractive" might not be everyone else's. My idea of shipping is "there are two people who seem to connect well emotionally. They may or may not be having sex, but they are interesting people, and the emotional connection may be worth writing about." "Attractive" is, well, conventionally handsome or pretty. I can generally make a fair guess about whether or not an actor or actress might be considered attractive, but...that's it. I can see that they're pretty, but it doesn't have anything to do with me. Which is okay.
I've mentioned to a few online friends that I'm asexual, and their response has been, "Uh-huh." I get the feeling that everyone figured it out ahead of me. THAT'S embarrassing, seriously. It makes me feel stupid. And yet...how could I have identified as something I'd never heard of?
Oh, and it might say something that, aside from one exercise in f/f (which, given the characters, was less about sex and more about power), the only kind of sex I ever depict in writing involves m/m pairings. It's a kind of sex that I can never have, so I can imagine that it's enjoyable. And even then, my focus is more on the emotion...if I'm not writing slightly slashy genfic to begin with.