There is no vocabulary for what I am.
I grew up believing this. My high school wasn’t particularly unaccepting, and if home was another story it still didn’t really matter either way - sex and sexuality were, for me, other people’s problems. I wasn’t interested. That was that.
Slowly, though, they became my problems. “Why haven’t you got a boyfriend yet?” anxious relatives would ask. Or the cold whispers in the hallways between class: “You mean… she’s still a - ?” The questions would follow me, catching in the lines of my nervous palms: stop. Please. Yes, maybe, I don’t know.
Our culture is obsessed. For all its claims of openness, where sexuality is concerned, our society hasn’t a clue what to do. It spends its time hand-wringing in a contradictory between that says, “Have sex. No, no, don’t have sex, having sex makes you a slut.” It says, “Straight is the norm. Okay, but if you’re gay, but you must fit into this understanding of homosexuality.” On a broader scale it says, “I’m going to laugh at you when you don’t know This Certain Thing, but discourage the healthy curiosity that might help teach and guide you into an emotionally developed adulthood.”
I am all for the pull of paradoxes, for the cleverness of contradiction - but our habit of constantly thinking in terms of binary, of this dichotomy and this black-and-white opposition, is getting us into trouble. When we class things in terms of this or that it is not only divisive, but it often prevents us from engaging in the dialogue necessary to understand one another, and to mature in an understanding of ourselves.
Because what happens to people who don’t fit? What happens to those of us on the outskirts or trying to muddle along through the middle? They’re questions we refuse to examine, and that’s a problem precisely for the reason that no one fits.
I am not a one-size-fits-all sweater on a rack at the mall, I am not the Terms & Conditions you never read. There is nuance to me. I, I am the best paradox of all, and I am just learning to fill in the gaps. I am becoming.
Part of that becoming was discovering exactly why it was important for me to examine those questions and problems. Not just on the worldly scale that decrees, "I am human and I am concerned for what affects my fellow creatures," but on the much smaller, more intimate level of knowing myself.
For I was one of the shadows caught in a pale between. It wasn’t until the later years of high school that I even heard about asexuality. That, that seemed to fit, at least better than all the other labels I’d tried and ripped off later when they began to itch and scratch in the wrong places. But when I crossed paths with an understanding of demisexuality, when it told me that desire is the product of the mind and can only be found in the is-ness of another person, in the emotional connection shared between two people, that resonated more than anything.
I respect the desire of some people to live without labels. Especially on a campus as welcoming as the one here at WM, it’s easy to remain a firm believer in the fluidity of sexuality, and our ability to constantly question ourselves - and the world around us.
I did live what seemed a long time with my own lonely growing pains, though, wishing for an easier way to explain this part of myself. It can be frustrating to the extreme. In the process I learned how frightfully little literature there is concerning the asexual spectrum and how lacking a worldwide understanding - it’s a struggle that is very private and very personal, but everyone thinks they have a right say something about it. And often, that something isn’t helpful at all. At worst, people will tell you you’re broken. A little better are the blank stares, and at least humorous: “Hey, yeah, isn’t that the thing where plants and bacteria and stuff reproduce by budding?”
But sometimes, the world surprises you in the best of ways.
At the diversity session for my orientation here, I had the opportunity to step forward and for the first time in my life savor the freedom and safety of the words ringing honest on my tongue: “I am queer. I am demisexual. This is important to me, but this is not all I am.”
It was nothing, however, compared to the elation of a brave hand rising and a voice asking, “Sorry, can I just ask - what is demisexuality?”
William & Mary is a staunch supporter of education. There is almost nothing clearer. It has been a blessing to discover that this education does not skim over the difficult issues, and that - greater still - it encourages their open, healthy discussion in such a welcoming environment. There is always room for improvement, just as there is always room to grow myself, but here, I feel for the first time as if I’m in a fine position to be able to do both.
There is no vocabulary for what I am. At times, knowing that has been sad. I have been alone in a struggle that often leaves me out of my own fight for civil rights (the A, for instance, in our acronym, does not stand for ‘ally’ - but it’s something often quickly forgotten in this movement). I don’t even know anyone else, personally, who identifies the way I do. I still worry that my fingers will tremble and my voice will shake the next time someone asks me to explain and I don’t have something simple to say in reply.
But it has encouraged me to cry out for awareness. And, more often than not, doing so leads to my own awareness, especially the very special knowledge that there will never be a vocabulary for what I am or what anyone is.
I am not a ‘what.’ I am a ‘who.’
And as I should have known from my very words in that diversity session: who I am goes beyond a sexuality, beyond a gender. It goes deeper than my precious words can ever hope to delve. Rather, I am a work in progress. I rewrite, I rebuild and I grow and I flourish. My beauty is in my becoming: here, I am at last in bloom.
- Elaine Edwards, 2017
