I am not sex averse, but please don’t call the ace police
On good days the ace community emphasizes how everything is on a spectrum and how people can have any number of labels and experiences.
On bad days interacting with fellow ace folk just makes me feel doubly excluded. There is the corner that seems to keep screaming in my face that asexuals aren’t robots and can in fact have romantic relationships. As aromantic ace I’m like ‘I see you and I see what you are fighting for’, but my compassion wax and wanes. I understand the importance of your struggle, it’s just not mine.
To make matters ‘worse’ I am not sex averse or repulsed so the whole cake thing doesn’t really speak to me either. I know all these memes mean a lot to you and it’s great that your experience is represented and all but in the meantime I’m just over here trying to not utter the word ‘sex’ in fear of repercussions. I think if I had discovered asexuality on tumblr, or God forbid AVEN I would never have adopted the identity. As it is, I watched Bojack (multiple times) and nothing ever clicked for me.
I want to recount how I actually realized I was asexual, mostly so I can quote the content that made me feel included. Maybe it will be as validating to others as it was for me.
Me realizing I was asexual started by stumbling upon it in a series of books. Namely, ‘Criminal Intentions’ by Cole McCade. He is on the ace spec himself and I want to quote from a Q&A he wrote:
“Asexuality is a spectrum, and different asexual people experience it to different degrees. [...] Some never experience physical desire at all, with or without attraction; some experience desire, physical arousal, etc. but just not in the context of being aroused by physical attraction to another person. Some are sex-repulsed; some aren’t. You can have an active and frequent sex life and still be asexual; you can never have sex at all and be asexual; you can have sex infrequently and only in conditional circumstances, and still be asexual. It’s not about sexual activity or capability unless a specific asexual person wants it to be. […] We’re all different, and our asexuality is generally nuanced and highly specific/personal to us.”
After picking up more novels with ace representation (I wasn’t yet ready for non-fictional research), I finally started listening to the podcast ‘Sounds Fake But Okay’ by two hosts on the aspec. Here is a quote from their website:
“As we mentioned before, sexual attraction is not the same as someone’s sex drive or their libido. Someone’s sex drive is just that — their drive to have sex. If someone has a high sex drive or libido, they may enjoy sex a lot and want to do it a lot. Someone with a low sex drive may think sex is just okay and doesn’t feel the need to engage in it often.
This is not the same as sexual attraction or asexuality. Asexuality and other sexualities deal with which people you are or are not attracted to, not your desire or interest in sex in general.”
(https://www.soundsfakepod.com/what-is-asexuality)
Finally, I picked up the book ‘ACE’ by Angela Chen. I am going to quote something that's in a similar vein to the above quotes because I feel like I have to prove that those perspectives exist. Clearly I am feeling defensive and I might be laying it on thick. But maybe there are others who need to read something like this if they are once again driven to doubt their identity.
“To the best I can tell, sexual attraction is the desire to have sex with a specific person for physical reasons. Sexual attraction can be instantaneous and involuntary: a heightened awareness, a physical alertness combined with mental wanting. My allo friends say they feel sexually attracted to people they have just met, to people whose company they don’t enjoy, to people they don’t like or even find good-looking.[...] Aces don’t experience this. Aces can still find people beautiful, have a libido, masturbate, and seek out porn. Aces can enjoy sex and like kink and be in relationships of all kinds. To many allos, this is unexpected. [...] Sexual attraction is so often conflated with sexual drive and other types of attraction. These things are distinct, but [...] when any two things often go together, people wrongly assume that they must always go together.”
As you might have noticed from the quotes I chose I have feelings about asexuality being equated with not wanting to have sex.
I have encountered a lot of people on AVEN that weren’t sure whether they had the right to claim the asexual label. So many posts by questioning people were answered with ‘If you want sex, you aren’t asexual’.
I am glad I had other resources and perspectives at hand. There is only so many times you can read ‘asexuals don’t want to have sex’ and feel confident about belonging.
At this stage I don’t doubt my identity anymore. Sometimes I even reach this heightened state of mind where I don’t even care what other people say.
I want to plead for more inclusion but I don’t really know how to ask for it. Being a minority means to not be represented. Being a minority in a minority even more so. When I type asexuality into tumblr I don’t expect all the content to reflect my experience. And it’s not like I don’t want people to stop celebrating that they don’t want to have sex and that that is ok....
I am coming to a dead end. Maybe I am just tired. I guess all I wanted to express was my frustration at sometimes feeling not represented and other times downright excluded. Just stating it as is because I know there are people out there who feel similarly. Sadly people drift away from the community. Which of course doesn’t help with more diverse representation.
In the end, I guess what I can ask for is to acknowledge the diversity of the ace spectrum. I see the posts that already do. But I also see aromantic aces and aces that have sex(or are interested in sex) feeling excluded and alienated.
