i’m gonna get back to antstrange in a minute but i wanna talk about being asexual for a hot second.
the thing about orientations is that they aren’t something you can force yourself to be or force yourself to get over. people tried to do that to queer individuals all throughout history and even today and it’s horrible. it sucks. but here’s the thing; you can use a label, you can question it, you can try it on like clothing in a clothing store.
i was never interested in having sex with someone who had a penis so i tried dating people with vaginas. i met nice people; but i never wanted a long standing romantic or sexual relationship with them. that didn’t make me ‘once a lesbian’. it meant i was, at some point, questioning whether or not i was a lesbian.
the same thing goes for being ace. people don’t “get over it” and people weren’t “once ace”. they questioned it and found out it didn’t fit them which is good because trying to fit into an orientation that doesn’t fit isn’t healthy but they’re looking and that matters.
using the language “getting over it” and “once being” makes it sound like asexuality is nothing more than a stepping stone or just a “phase”. that all of our ‘problems’ are because of 1) sexual trauma 2) simply not being interested in sex at that moment in our lives 3) just not being an incredibly sexual person or 4) hormone deficiencies.
and there are some aces that have all of the above. does that make them any less asexual? no! of course not. i know aces who have suffered tremendous amounts of sexual trauma because of their orientation and have met aces that have not. there are so many different areas underneath asexuality that asking just one person is like studying one strand of grass and saying that everything found was True Facts about all types of grasses.
here’s a nice image from the trevor project to sum most of this up in a handy dandy image:
we’re not some sort of weird science experiment, we’re not all the same. being asexual is an orientation and the label can be tried on for a while but it’s not something you “get over”.
i’m here, i’m queer, and i’m definitely not getting over it.
