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:
Love is Love is Love
When I kiss her for the first time,
I am too busy hating myself to enjoy it.
Her hips are so small in my palms
that I suddenly feel dangerous.
Later I cry about this in the bathtub
while imagining my loving her is
some great heist I have pulled off,
somehow cracked her body open like a safe
and emptied it of value. I will be arrested
once they dust my fingerprints off her skin.
The fifth time I kiss her, it all begins
to come together in my head.
I realize I am not harming anyone;
I kiss her harder.
After the thirtieth or so kiss,
I stop regarding love as something
of a social interest. I stop accounting
for what other people might think.
The hundredth time, I do it in public
and enjoy it so much, I do it again.
