#sexnormativity

[shinyasahalo]

No matter your sexual orientation, you do not owe sex to anyone.

You do not have to have sex to be "normal."

You do not have to have a romantic relationship or marriage to be "normal."

[queerascat]

QAC 66 - Split Attraction Model: Opting Out Of Romantic Orientations || Grayromantic | Asexual

i've said this before on Tumblr, but it's time to make it "official" on YouTube: i don't identify as biromantic or panromantic anymore.

in fact, i don't identify as "-romantic" anything anymore.

after years of quietly questioning my experience of so-called "romantic" attraction, all the while trying to navigate spaces which obviously didn't have someone like me-- someone who neither felt comfortable being assumed “[allo]romantic" nor "aromantic"-- in mind, i finally opted to discard romantic orientations (for myself) all together.

rather, i identify as a bi ace. as a pan ace. although if i'm being honest, more often than not as a queer ace or more simply as "queer".

but what exactly is the difference between "biromantic ace" and "bi ace"? after over a year of having identified as the latter, it seems to me that thanks to amatonormativity and the general normalization of romantic orientations in ace communities, people don't see any difference between these two identities.

but there is one, at least for me, and i'd appreciate it if people would pause for a second and take notice of it.

CONTROVERSIAL but not really OPINION: ‘the’ asexual community has a problem with amatonormativity.

and if anyone dares to try and turn this around, using it as an example of how the split attraction model is “wrong” or otherwise harmful, i will hunt you down and slap you silly with a cat toy.

[life-of-an-asexual]

Sex is an important part of allo relationships and I have nothing against that. What does annoy me as an ace person is seeing how someone's personality, interests, and their complicated thoughts about their own sexuality get reduced to whether or not they want to or will have sex with someone or are dismissed entirely as not worth discussing. It feels very amatonormative to me, and I wish allo people were more open to these conversations.

you're absolutely right, anon.

one example that still gets me riled is how aces developed terminology (sex-favorable, sex-averse, sex-repulsed, etc) to help us communicate and discuss our feelings about sex, and it got turned into which aces were "willing" to have sex. blegh.

and of course allosexuals too have complex feelings about sex and have their own boundaries, and the discourse just flattens all that out in an attempt to make clear divisions about who "will" or won't have sex, with the assumption that all allos do want sex.

it's so frustrating and reductive.

~Mod Q

[life-of-an-asexual]

I'm a sex neutral/borderline-repulsed asexual. I’ve been called innocent for being sexually inexperienced. it’s also assumed that I don’t know a lot of sexual things. It irritates me, because being sexually inexperienced does not mean that I am sexually unaware. It feels infantilizing. I’ve also been told that’s it good that I’m sexually inexperienced because I’m still “pure.” I hate that word choice. I feel like I’ll never be able to discuss my feelings properly with anyone if I feel like it.

yeah, that's really frustrating, and it's definitely infantilizing. people really see sex as a landmark of adulthood and maturity, and there's lots of weird ideas around virginity. i've been fortunate enough not to have directly encountered these sorts of people, but these are very common misconceptions about asexual people, and the ideas about sexual maturity and virginity negatively affect everyone. i really hope these are things we'll be able to move on from as a society.

~Mod Q

[queerascat]

Ok. So I got a very flirty personality. My flirting however is I'd say 90% non sexual, and the other 10% is with the people I feel a mutual sexual "connection" with. I know that my friendliness have been confused with sexual attraction before with non-ace people. I love my personality but as I get more involved with the queer and non binary community I get get to know more Ace-people too, and I don't want to come off as overly sexual or make them uncomfortable.Got any thoughts on what I can do?

sorry for taking so long getting back to you. not sure if you even still want to hear my thoughts, but…

i think that the situation that you’ve found yourself in is reflective of an overarching problem within society as a whole rather than being reflective of a problem with flirting or your personality. there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with being flirty, regardless of your experience (or lack thereof) with sexual attraction (or romantic attraction for that matter).

the act of flirting is not inherently sexual, imho, but society tells us all otherwise. people misinterpreting your behavior / words / etc for sexual attraction is a byproduct of the problematic society that we live in and the queer, non-binary, ace etc communities all fall subject to the very same problematic things as the rest of society. they (we) are not except.

which isn’t to say that people who are uncomfortable with flirting and / or things of a sexual nature are the problem or are otherwise at fault in any way. far from it. the very same problematic, sexually charged society that makes them uncomfortable is the very same problematic, sexually charged society that has made you less comfortable with your own personality. we’re all navigating this shit together and no one person or group of people is at fault.

you said yourself that you love your personality, so don’t change it. keep being you. it’s possible to be more conscious of the things that you say / do and refrain from doing / saying a certain then if and when someone has explicitly requested you do so (or when you notice someone’s discomfort, whether they explicitly state it or not) without changing yourself or your personality into something that you are not. i’m sure there’s a lot more to you and your personality than just your flirtatiousness, but even that flirtatiousness can be tweaked to suit the occasion or person without discarding it entirely.

speaking of which, it’s worth noting that what is considered “flirty” or even “sexual” differs from person to person and while a person may feel that X behavior / word / etc is uncomfortable, that doesn’t mean that they feel the same way about Y or Z. similarly, while some aces are uncomfortable with flirting or behavior / words / etc considered to be “sexual”, not all of us are.

tl;dr: instead of trying to solve what may appear to be (but actually is not) a problem with your personality all by yourself by contorting yourself into knots for someone else’s comfort, talk to the person in question. talk to them about what they’re okay with, what they’re not okay with and what you can do to help and remember that that talk– these questions– should go both ways. relationships, conversations– any kind of interaction requires effort from everyone involved; everyone needs to communicate with each other if things are going to work out without anyone getting hurt. be it a friendship, a  collaboration, an intimate relationship or anything else, talk with the people involved on a person-by-person basis so you can navigate these things together.

there shouldn’t be a need for personality contortions, be it on your part or the other person’s (/persons’) and if for some reason there is such a need… then it’s hard for me to consider such a relationship a healthy one.

[queerascat]

….you know, considering how much talk there is in the ace community about how asexuality and aromanticism exist on a spectrum– of “grayness” and differing types of attractions with occasional attention paid to diversity of one kind or another– it both amazes and frustrates me how so many of the same people who speak of these things still seem to operate based on the very same assumption that exists within society at large: that everyone is (allo)romantic and / or (allo)sexual by default unless explicitly stated otherwise.

while i understand that aces (and aros) internalize and subsequently have to unlearn amatonormativity and sexnormativity (and heteronormativity) just the same as everyone else and that there’s also likely an element of self-defense / self-preservation involved, it is beyond frustrating every time i see or am subjected to microaggressions from aces who adhere to the very same “______ by default unless otherwise stated” mindset that exists within society at large– except, in my humble opinion, that assumption has now been compounded upon within the asexual community à la the split attraction model and subsequent prevalence of “asexuals have a (a)romantic orientation by default".

but that’s a post for another time.

“spectrum”, “grayness”– nothing but empty lip service when the very same people who speak of such things simultaneously attempt to draw lines in the sand where there ought to be none, only acknowledge said grayness when it is explicitly stated or embraced as an identity and / or make assumptions about a person’s experience with attraction based solely on the lack of a particular identity– or conversely, based on the explicit presence of an identity that is assumed to mean something that it very well may not thanks to the existing dichotomy and yet simultaneously inseparable nature of amatonormativity and sexnormativity (and heteronormativity) and its continued influence upon and within the asexual community.

i am tired of navigating various fissures in the asexual community and ending up worse off for it, time and time again becoming more and more disgruntled to the point of feeling the need to distance myself from the “community” all together. The Thing that continues to motivate me, apart from sheer stubbornness, is the thought of others who find themselves navigating these fissures with me.

[magnetmite]

You ever listen to somebody complaining & think "maybe if you didn't see romance &/or sex as the be-all end-all of human connection you might actually be happy"?

[shinyasahalo]

GH thoughts

I don't like how they referred to Victor's medical condition that makes him unable to have sex as "taking away his power." Saying something like that ignores the existence of asexuals and treats sex as something that is about gender roles.