☆ﾐ(o*･ω･)ﾉ Asexuals can appreciate good looking people
☆ﾐ(o*･ω･)ﾉ Asexuals are not necessarily sexually repressed or sex-repulsed
☆ﾐ(o*･ω･)ﾉ Asexuals can fall in love and enter relationships
☆ﾐ(o*･ω･)ﾉ Asexuals can have functioning libidos without being sexually attracted to people
☆ﾐ(o*･ω･)ﾉ Asexuality is not necessarily the result of sexual abuse
Hey, people of tumblr.
The first few suggestions on google for “asexuality is…” are pretty nasty.
So. Right now I’m doing my best to change that. Anyone wanna help? When you get time, just google awesome/nice things, like:
- Asexuality is awesome
- Asexuality is okay
- Asexuality is cool with me bro
- Asexuality is not a sin
- Asexuality is not wrong
- Asexuality is totally an orientation
- Asexuality is real
That kind of thing. Good? Good. (Thanks in advance).
Participants Wanted: Asexual Terminology Survey
surveymonkey.comMy name is Andrew Hinderliter, and I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. My dissertation is about online asexual discourse, with particular interest in its development over time. I ran one survey last January, and I am now conducting a survey on asexuality-related concepts and terminology.
To participate, you must be at least 18 years of age or older, be proficient in English, and identify as asexual, gray-A, or demisexual. The survey has a number of language-related questions, and it is asked that you do not look things up while taking the survey.
tw: rape
No, I am going to talk about this and you are going to listen.
Asexuals often receive rape threats because people believe that asexual-identifying individuals cannot possibly not want to have sex; even though the idea that asexuality is defined by specifically not wanting to have sex is a false one. (And I’ve explained that here) It is for this reason why I am tired of the constant oppression game people like to play with the asexual community. Are we oppressed? Are we not?
It doesn’t matter, all these arguments do is mask the fact that this unacceptable thing is happening. People actually think that “corrective” rape will change someone’s sexual identity. It starts with people asserting your orientation does not exist, and asexuality is not the only orientation to face/to have faced this. Then people assume things about yourself that “made you the way you are.” Then people move into threats territory. Then people move into the actions part.
There is a real fear even among the asexual community that people who identify as anything other than heterosexual will be harassed and assaulted. They have a reason to be upset and a reason to be afraid, it has happened to many people before. Many people within the asexual community and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole have experienced harassment and assault.
By denying that asexuals exist despite evidence that they in fact do, solely based on your misconceptions and political agendas that have little to do with our identity, you are perpetuating this dangerous mindset that people who do not fit into your idea of what a human being should be, need to be corrected.
My question to you is why then in situations where asexuals become upset over people harassing them, do asexuals get blamed for sticking up for themselves? Why are we not questioning why people think it’s okay to send rape threats to people who identify as such? Why are we not questioning what their problem is, instead of what ‘our’ problem is?
My right to exist and to be safe should supersede your right to say whatever the hell you want. Your words have consequences and the consequences of them should not result in people like me getting harmed. This is more than about hurt feelings. This is an attack on our entire existence.
You do not belong in our spaces. You need not voice your “opinion” on our orientation, it’s not a debatable topic and it is not a matter of conflicting opinions. The fact that you get defensive when asexuals rightfully become upset when you attack them shows that the problems lie with you and not with them. Furthermore, it is not your job to regulate what the asexual community does or says, that is something people within the community can debate and discuss critically.
- Me: *Is asexual.*
- Me: *Draws a couple.*
- Me: *Draws a sex scene.*
- Me: *Reads fanfiction.*
- Me: *Watches a show with sex in it.*
- Person: I thought you were asexu-
- Me: STOP.
- People don't want to do everything they draw, read, or watch. If they did, you should call the police, because I watch an AWFUL lot of horror movies.
“Back in grad school I did a talk on bisexuality with the GLBT student organization. One of the gay undergraduates said to me, “I think that when homosexuality is fully accepted, there will be no bisexuals.” And I said “I think when homosexuality is fully accepted, there will be more bisexuals than anything else.” I don’t know if that’s precisely true, but I do know that when someone tells me what their internal experience is, I believe them. When someone tells me they’re gay or lesbian, I believe them. When someone says they’re attracted to people without reference to gender, I believe them. When someone says they’re not interested in sex with anyone, I believe them. And I don’t think it takes a PhD in sex to recognize that each individual is THE ONE AND ONLY EXPERT on that individual’s sexuality. Asexuality is just another variation on human sexuality. We’re all made of the same parts, just organized in different ways. And if somebody says that’s their internal experience, well they’re the only ones who knows that. But why would gay people deny the existence of bisexuality, or fear and shun asexuals? Another experience from grad school: I had my first formal training about trans* stuff. We were talking about discrimination and hate crimes, and I asked, “Why does anyone feel threatened by transpeople? Why would anyone waste energy hating someone who isn’t doing anything to hurt anyone else?” (This was before the moral foundations research.) And my supervisor said, “How do you feel about your gender?” I thought about it for a minute and said, “Pretty good!” And she said, “People who hate trans people often don’t feel pretty good about their gender. Seeing someone else living their gender according to their own rules feels threatening because it means the rules about gender may not be worth following.” I do wonder how much of that dynamic goes into the fear and shunning that some gay folks express about bisexuals and asexuals. I wonder if they feel like there isn’t room in the tent for such diversity, when they’ve had to fight so hard for something as relatively simple (in its easy analogy with heterosexuality) as homosexual relationships. I can understand it, if that’s what’s going on. But I’m really, really ready for the world to move past that.”
—the dirty normal
Even among people who are strictly asexual there is a spectrum. Some asexuals are completely sex repulsed and do not even wish to hear about sex. Others may be interested in having sex, despite not feeling any sexual attraction.
There is not just one way to be asexual, so why is it so hard to fathom the existence of grey-asexuality and demisexuality. The defining characteristics of these sexualities is that they are, for the majority of the time, functionally asexual. THAT is why they are included in the asexual spectrum; not because they are trying to take over, but because for the most part they identify better with asexuals than with any other group.
Why Asexuality Needs Visibility
Asexuality is under the LGBTQ umbrella, though not many people actually know what it is. Many people may be asexual, and still battling with themselves trying to figure out why they’re different, what’s my sexuality, why can’t I understand when people are talking about this?
Asexuality is a sexual orientation, of not feeling sexual attraction.
It’s not a choice. You cannot choose to be asexual, just like you cannot choose to be gay or straight. But people wonder, why are people talking about their asexuality? What’s the big deal about somebody not wanting sex? Nobody cares about that!
It’s true that asexuals do not have as many hurdles to overcome as other people in the LGBTQ community, but we have to face our own problems, that mostly stem from people not knowing what asexuality is, denying that it’s a real thing, thinking said person just needs to have awesome sex, and that will fix them, that said person needs to go to a therapist, that’ll fix them too. That it’s not a real thing, and instead, a sickness, or simply repressed sexual feelings. Nobody takes it half as seriously as they do being gay or bi. Because there is no visibility in the matter.
It’s already strange living in a world obsessed with sex, and you can’t understand it. People who think that love is sex.
But Asexual Visibility is important to me, because of the people who would like to physically fix me with themselves. And nobody takes it seriously. And this is not right.
Hello!
I’m doing a survey about asexuality for my honors project. it could potentially be published in a research journal, so please please take a few minutes and fill it out.
if you could complete the survey/reblog it I would be eternally grateful
it’s for anyone who currently or at some point identified as being under the ace umbrella
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1J7gxsFzHQEFgPFjWmNme7dQAavX8jIS0VgUgSnTDwYs/viewform
“Taking asexuality seriously is a very big deal. To document a sizable number of people who do not experience sexual attraction is to challenge one of the most fundamental assumptions of contemporary society - that sexuality is pervasive, a given, an essential part of what it is to be human.”
—from Bella DePaulo on Psychology Today. [link]
They have some good and interesting articles on asexuality :).
The asexual community is a terrible place to hide from your sexuality
This post has been cross-posted to The Asexual Agenda.
A while back there was this big kerfuffle on tumblr* about how aces are secretly harmful to LGB folks. One of the main arguments was that LGB folks have internalized heterosexism, and thus use the asexual community to hide from their sexuality. Now, I’m not really interested in getting into the whole “are aces harmful to LGB folks” debate, because that thing is a can of worms—a can of flesh-eating, fire-breathing, radioactive worms, that is. But the idea of hiding from one’s sexuality in the ace community had me raising my eyebrows so far that they were practically flying off my face, and all I could think was, Have you ever spent any time in the ace community? If I wanted to hide from my sexuality, the asexual community is the last place I’d go. Here’s why:
