o no ur totally right asexuals are a recent invention and nobody thought they were fucked up or lumped them in with the rest of us queerz
gosh did u kno that u can search google books for terms like “asexual woman”
From The Westminster Review, a political magazine, in 1907; an essay by Helen Fraser called Women’s Suffrage, on how if women got the vote, butch and ace women were gonna dominate the whole thing and screw it up for all the Real Ladies. Italics are theirs, emphasis in bold is mine:
“Broadly speaking, no man is wholly a man, no woman wholly a woman, every individual has some elements of the other sex much or little developed in his or her nature. So that masculine and feminine, manly and womanly, are not absolute, but relative terms. This is common medical knowledge that has been known for hundreds of years, but only recently understood in its full significance.
“Men may be on this basis divided into three groups.
(1) The type that is characteristic of its sex, the manly or masculine man.
(2) The type that is womanly, or feminine.
(3) The type that is very little sexed, and looks on sexual things either with distaste or an unhealthy curiosity.
“There are three corresponding types of women.
“In each case, it is the first type, the manly man, or the womanly woman, that is characteristic of its sex, and is socially of value. This is so not only for reproductive reasons, but because the fullest sexualised types lead a heathier life, and mentally are more original, healthy, and sane.
“The man’s representative problem is simpler than the woman’s, because the manly man, being combative and strongly individualistic, is self-assertive, and controls the womanly man and the relatively asexual person, and when representation was given to man it was given largely because the manly type of man demanded it.
“In the woman’s problem the reverse tendency exists. The masculine woman is self-assertive, the asexual woman wishes to banish all sex-beauty which she does not feel and understand from life, and both are demonstrative, and tend to dominate the woman who is womanly. Representation for woman is not therefore on the same basis as for men. [Translation: she doesn’t just mean who will want to vote, but who is likely to go into politics and how that is going to change things.]
“The relation of culture to voting capacity presents equal difficulties for either sex. The womanly woman represents womanhood, but she is not self-assertive, is inclined to prefer a private home life to a public one, cares in a private but not in a public manner for political things, and is too fond of her children to desire to spend much of her time at public meetings.
“In all organizations, therefore, that women develop, if they are arranged on this public and masculine plan, the masculine woman, who likes publicity, who is either unmarried or if married often neglectful of her home, will tend to predominate, and she will in most cases be supported by the asexual woman. The control of the committee-room and the platform means also largely the control of propaganda and ideas generally.
“A masculine ideal modified by non-sexual tendencies will, therefore, tend to be voiced and represented, and the womanly woman, by the passing of an unmodified woman’s franchise bill, will be increasingly controlled by the masculine woman to the nation’s permanent loss.
“In the Colonies and the United States, where the franchise movement has gone farther than in Europe, there is much medical and non-medical evidence to support the belief that sex ideals are in a temporarily or permanently decadent condition. [Translation: the suffrage movement has gotten farther, women have more political power, and they are OVERRUN BY TEH QUEERZ OMFG!!ONE!!11!1eleven]
“Further, the whole object of the woman’s movement, which is to emancipate woman as woman, will be defeated. The predominance of masculine and asexual women will strengthen unhealthily the man’s influence and woman’s ideals will be lost…. Prostitution and moral depravity generally are in great part related to the masculine woman and the feminine man, and the same may be said of crime. These facts do not necessarily favour any reactionary spirit, but they strongly suggest that emancipation has not proceeded upon healthy lines, and prove that the healthy sex, friendliness of man and woman, has been in some unfortunate way disturbed.”
i just thought y’all would like yet another a tiny peek through history’s keyhole at how long straight people have known about aces, lumped them in with the rest of the community, and thought terrible things about how we were all going to bring civilization down. ENJOY
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