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Visible Diversity and Unity in the Asexual Community

So apparently writing for Carnival of Aces is A Thing I Do Now. This month's Carnival of Aces is about diversity and unity in the asexual community, and you can find the submission post here and the round-up here.

Content warnings: Very brief mention of people trying to "fix" asexuals, asexual erasure, awkward stereotyping

Let me start, as I often do, with a story. One day, while I was living in Japan (one of the most conservative areas of Japan, I should note), I was out with a couple of my (Japanese) friends, enjoying the cherry blossoms. As we were strolling through the park and chatting about this and that, one of my friends asked me, completely out of the blue, "Have you ever watched Glee?"

I replied that I had watched bits and pieces of Glee, and that I liked some of the music.

"Well," she said, dropping her voice conspiratorially, "I think Kurt is adorable, even though he's gay."

"Oh," I said, not entirely sure where this conversation was going. "Uh. Well. I think he sings very well."

"I want to ask you," she said, very earnestly, "as an American, do you think he is an accurate representation of gay people?"

Well. What do you say to that? "Well," I said, very carefully, "there are lots of different kinds of gay people, just like there are lots of different kinds of straight people. I have gay friends--"

"YOU HAVE GAY FRIENDS?" she interrupted me. "FRIENDS? MORE THAN ONE?" Perhaps she thought I had forgotten how to make words plural in Japanese.

"Yes, I have gay friends. In fact, I would say that about half of my friends aren't straight."

The expression of pure shock on her face would have been comical if I weren't secretly terrified that she would start shunning me.

"And all of my friends are different people," I continued somewhat shakily, my language skills rapidly deteriorating in the face of my nervousness, "so I think there are...lots of...different types of, um, gay people and straight people and bisexual people and asexual people in the world. Um. Yes."

Fortunately, she greeted this fact with excitement rather than "ew, you might have gay cooties" (which was, sadly, sometimes the reaction I got when I talked about sexuality in Japan), and we wound up having a fairly long discussion about how people who aren't straight are human beings too and thus can't be shoved into ready-made boxes.

So, needless to say, when I saw that the topic for this month's Carnival of Aces was diversity and unity in the asexual community, I was immediately reminded of my (somewhat stumbling) attempts to get the same idea across in Japanese. Because, although I may be living 11,000 kilometers away from Japan, I am in a very similar situation.

The fact of the matter is, if you are living in Japan (especially in a very conservative area, like I was), chances are good that you won't know any gay people. (Not because gay people don't exist in Japan, but rather because they are closeted.) Maybe you will know that one girl on your softball team who is a lesbian, but chances are better that you'll only "know" gay people through characters in the media, like Kurt on Glee (which is actually fairly popular in Japan). Maybe you'll take the available evidence (the one girl on the softball team or that character from your favorite TV show) and assume that all gay people are somewhat similar. Kurt is a gay person! He acts differently than the other people on the show! That must mean that the differences in how he is acting are part of his Gayness, right?

So here comes the parallel: I am often the first asexual person someone has ever met. Heck, sometimes I am the first asexual person someone has ever heard of. So, of course, some people assume that I am representative of asexuals as a whole, at which point I start internally freaking out. "So all asexuals don't like cuddling people they aren't dating?" "Well, no--" "So all asexuals only date other asexuals?" "Uh, no, there's--" "So all asexuals are obsessed with Sherlock, right?" "Actually, not really--" Even worse is when people say, "Oh yeah, you're totally like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory!" Uh...you mean I'm an asexual nerd? (Well, Sheldon's asexuality is debatable.) ...yeah, we're totally alike. I'm drowning in the similarities.

People seem to want some sort of characteristic to latch onto that is my Asexualness. You know, some sort of way to detect other asexuals; you can be walking down the street and see someone wearing all blue and think, "AHA! Queenie wears way too much blue, and she is asexual, so clearly this person is also asexual!" Well, unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. If it did, it would be a whole lot easier to find other aces. (We could just look for other people who wear way too much blue! "Hey there, I see you like blue clothes, if ya know what I mean. *secret ace handshake*") The fact of the matter is, asexual people are just as diverse as the general population, because asexual people are just people who are asexual. That's it! We don't have any unifying characteristics other than not experiencing sexual attraction.

So this makes being the only asexual person someone knows difficult, because in a way I am both trying to get across that, hey, I am asexual and I exist, but also that I am not every asexual person ever. In some ways, I have it easier than most, 'cause my background is already fairly far off from the pre-existing asexual stereotypes (I'm not white, not a social outcast, not a teenager, not aromantic, etc.), so I think that if people have preconceived notions about asexuals, I'm already smashing some of those just by existing. That said, when doing Asexuality 101 (which I do on a fairly regular basis), I take great pains to say, "I'm X way, but other people are Y way or Z way or Q way, so it's not a universal trait."

Okay, so that covers the diversity part. Asexuals are diverse! But then the question becomes, "If the only thing we have in common is our lack of sexual attraction, why do we have an asexual community?" After all, there are a whole lot of single characteristics I have that appear in diverse populations, but I don't feel a need to, say, join a community for people who wear glasses. So why do we have an asexual community?

Well, some people could argue that your sexuality is a more important part of your life than glasses are, and, sure, that might be true for some people. But I think that rather than people saying, "Well, my sexuality is more important than my eyesight, so I guess I better join an asexual community," what binds the asexual community together is stories. Or, to be more precise, trends in stories. When I first began to check out the asexual community, what struck me was how many times I thought, "That is me; I have had that exact experience," while reading blogs, AVEN posts, what have you. Sure, sometimes I would read things and think, "Wow, that is not me at all," but I could identify with the majority of the testimonials, if not in a "I have had this experience" sort of way, then in a "I could see myself having this experience and reacting similarly" sort of way. I've gotten the same reaction from this blog; aside from all the reblogs with #GPOY tags, I have gotten messages from people saying, "What you wrote really struck a chord with me, because I had X experience along the same lines." I think that's one of the things that binds the asexual community together--although we have different backgrounds, life experiences, levels of education, glasses prescriptions, what have you, we can look around the community and say to ourselves, "See? It's not just me. I am not alone in this."

So when people ask about "asexual characteristics," that tends to be what I tell them. I say, "Well, we may be a diverse population, but quite a few of us have X, Y, and Z experiences in common." I talk about how people are treated like late bloomers or confused straight people or special snowflakes. I talk about people who have their asexuality treated like a mental illness, a phase, or a cry for attention. I talk about people who try to "fix" asexuals and fail (although often not before inflicting some serious trauma). I talk about the incredible feeling of relief many aces experience when they finally find the asexual community, how they suddenly realize that they aren't alone, that they aren't broken.

I think that one of the really cool things about a lot of the ace blogosphere, whether it's specifically working toward visibility or not, is that even if you know the standard "ace narratives," you can find a thousand permutations of them. Ever wondered what it's like to be Muslim and ace? Someone's written about that. Transgender and ace? Someone's written about that too. PoC and ace? Autistic and ace? Growing up in a non-Western culture and ace? You can pretty much name any identity or characteristic or what have you, and someone has written something about having that identity/characteristic/what have you and being ace. (If they haven't, they should. Get on that, fellow bloggers!) You can read the same basic narrative ("I didn't know I was ace until I found out I was," just more eloquent than that) a million times, but every single post will be slightly different, because the authors are different people who come from different backgrounds and have had different experiences. I mean, that's what Carnival of Aces is all about, isn't it? Getting a bunch of people to all write on the same topic, but since we are all different people, we all approach it slightly differently? I mean, heck, I could have written my whole post on Carnival of Aces, and how it perfectly encapsulates diversity and unity in the asexual community. (Darn, lost opportunities.)

I really wish that the next time someone asked me what asexuals are like or if I feel Sheldon is an "accurate representation of asexual people," I could just staple together the ace blogosphere and hand it to them with a little post-it note saying, "READ THIS AND YOU WILL UNDERSTAND." Unfortunately, I have neither enough paper for that to be a viable solution, nor do I have a stapler that is up to the task. I guess I will have to do what I normally do and just say, "You know, everybody's different, and being asexual doesn't change that. We may have some similar experiences because of our asexuality, but, when you get right down to it, we're all different people."

And, luckily, this time I'll probably get to say it in English.

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