On tumblr, asexuals are talking about enthusiastic consent and “compromising”. I’ll say more about this later, but for now I just think this is cool and needs to happen and is DEFINITELY not a conversation that could happen on AVEN.
Oh maaan yes yes yes. I’ve been pretty torn about the enthusiastic consent question – like, I have spent a *lot* of time in sex-positive feminist spaces that have very little asexual presence (in fact, I have spent so long being the Token Asexual that the asexual community feels kind of weird – if in a good way) which have this nasty tendency to totally uncritically push enthusiastic consent in a form that if taken literally makes it impossible for almost any asexual person to ever consent to sex, and then if the conversation ever turned to mismatched sexual desire all that stuff went out the window and it was all about how the lower-desire partner is cruel and manipulative (which, really?!). Which has left me going pretty :/ about enthusiastic concept on an asexual solidarity basis even though the whole compromise stuff doesn’t apply to me (repulsed and cannot see how I’d ever voluntarily have sex) and in fact there’s a traumatic sexual encounter in my past that having the standard of enthusiastic consent would have avoided. At the same time, I’ve been thinking more and more about how we talk about compromise and how compromise has the potential to be incredibly damaging and go dreadfully wrong, and how we need to have the conversation about consent as more than just “go ahead if you feel you have to” – but this has to happen in the asexual community, and like you I don’t think it could happen on AVEN. In fact, I think AVEN is somewhat guilty of pushing compromise and playing down the not at all improbable possibility of it going horribly wrong (and this is from like 2007-early 2009, so since it’s apparently got loads worse since I shudder to think…)
ARGH I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS. Yes, only hypersexuals get to enthusiastically consent- anyone who doesn’t want sex as much as you do is a HORRIBLE FRIGID BITCH. argh. From frat boys, sure, from feminists?! ….yeah, I’m not surprised about that either.
I have the same thing- I was in a sexually abusive relationship that wouldn’t have happened if the narratives about consent were different. This conversation really needs to happen. I’ve seen people on AVEN talk about (And get immediately attacked) what they called “consensual rape”- saying “yes” (most likely because they felt they had to) then white knuckling, gritting their teeth, praying for it to be over. I do think that AVEN is extremely guilty of pushing compromise without taking the time to think about what that means. There are a lot of asexuals who also talk about how at first they’re fine to compromise, but then over time they can compromise less and less because it’s too much for them. So we also have to take into consideration the fact that compromises have to change just as much as any other aspect of a relationship.
This conversation is long overdo, and I’m really glad it’s happening.
Oh god yeah. And like, this is a serious systematic problem, it seems like anytime I have seen a sex-positive feminist blog talk about low sexual desire issues (which is rarely) even if the post is okay the comments are a flaming mess and seem utterly incapable of applying all of their shiny consent and empowered sex theories to asexual people. Some exceptions, but they are exceptions. And it’s not trolls – like, okay, the person I’m thinking of who made the manipulative comment? Amanda Marcotte. (I have links if anyone wants to verify this.) Or stuff like how there was a post on asexuality on Feministing that was okay but the comments were a complete and utter disaster with bingos all over the place and then over a year later one of the main contributors puts up a post that’s essentially “oh wow look I just found asexuality for the first time.”
Bitter Kaz is bitter. :/
And oh man, consensual rape… this was not exactly what it was like for me but pretty close (although thankfully the guy stopped when I started crying so no actual sex happened), and the idea that people are being attacked for talking about it is horrible. Really, AVEN?
And *nods*. I’m glad it’s happening, because also I’ve been feeling more and more uncomfortable representing the “asexual side” in enthusiastic consent discussions when compromise isn’t actually anything I can talk about from personal experience.
I’ve noticed that a LOT of people act like trolls even if they aren’t. I can understand your bitterness, that’s disgusting. “AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT YEAH! …unless you’re asexual, you manipulative freak how dare someone actually say no to me?!”.
Really, AVEN. Because we don’t want the sexuals to feel bad for putting their partners through hell! I don’t even think there were comments about how actual rape victims would feel about it (or any ACTUAL rape victims commenting on it), just “You said yes so you can’t complain”. Eurgh.
Consent doesn’t just apply to compromise, though. It applies to asexuals who don’t even know they’re asexual who end up relationships coerced into doing things they don’t want, which happens a lot and probably does way more damage than an asexual trying to compromise. The “consensual rape” things, if I recall correctly, only happened when an asexual didn’t know they were asexual and were saying yes out of obligation. I didn’t say anyone who went into a relationship knowing they were asexual talking about it (although it DEFINITELY can happen in that situaiton, I just think that it’s easier for people who are comfortable with their asexuality to navigate that stuff and ACTUALLY work out a compromise). Talking about that is very important.
I think that we can talk about our experiences while acknowledging that all asexuals have different boundaries. There ARE people who can work out a compromise where they get something else that is worth having sex they don’t exactly want, but then there are also people where those boundaries change or where what they can stand isn’t what their partner “needs”. (ugh, let’s not get into THAT discussion…)
Okay I’m trying to reply to your post upthread but it’s not working. Weird threading? IDK. Anyway.
Consent doesn’t just apply to compromise, though. It applies to asexuals who don’t even know they’re asexual who end up relationships coerced into doing things they don’t want, which happens a lot and probably does way more damage than an asexual trying to compromise.
Thisthisthisthisthis. The traumatic situation I ended up in? It didn’t happen after I’d decided I was asexual, or after I’d found the ace community. It happened at a time when my thought processes were so fundamentally fucked due to growing up in a European progressive lefty environment that was aaaaall about not being repressed and embracing your natural human sexual desires that I spent most of the encounter desperately trying to convince myself I actually wanted what was happening but failing and then berating myself for being too stupid to do so. I think if we actually took a look at how many ace people had this sort of sexual experience – maybe one they wouldn’t want to call rape or assault but was a traumatising experience all the same, where they didn’t say no but they didn’t say yes, or they said yes but they didn’t actually want it they just felt they had to, or they said yes because they were trying to convince themselves they actually wanted it – the number would be shockingly high.
This is incidentally one of the reasons I really dislike it when asexual people are so quick to go “oh, of course we’re not violently oppressed”. Just because it happens behind closed doors doesn’t mean it’s not a kind of violence.
And yeah, it must be possible to work out things in such a way that leaves room for everyone – asexuals willing to compromise, unwilling to compromise, where it changes, where they don’t know they’re asexual yet, etc. Er, and sexual people of course, we might be able to fit them in somewhere too.
Thanks for linking to that post. I’m pretty new to the concept of enthusiastic consent (though for years I think I’ve had a higher standard of consent than the norm), but I really like it.
I saw the Amanda Marcotte thing, and oh. my. god. At the time I still read Pandagon, and that was my cue to turn around and walk the hell away from her site and her work. And stay away. Because that was some horrible, horribly commentary right there, and she didn’t even have the excuse of being ignorant since there were very nice people pointing out how wrong she was RIGHT THERE. (Also saw the first Feministing thing. I had just started reading the site about then, this being back in 2008-ish? Again, just turned around and walked away, because the concern trolling in that thread made it pretty clear to me straight off that I wasn’t welcome there.)
Unfortunately that wasn’t the first time at all that I’d seen the whole “romantic asexuals in relationships with nonasexual people are TOTALLY TRYING TO MANIPULATE THE NONASEXUAL PERSON AND THEY ARE EEEEEEEEEEVIL” thing. I’m at the point where I cringe if a discussion of asexuals dating nonasexuals comes up in a nonasexual space, because someone always starts talking about how horrible asexual people are for dating nonasexual people. Bonus points for a heavy leavening of misogyny, too. I’ve seen that as well.
I really think I want to see a hell of a lot more discussion about asexual/nonasexual relationships that talks about different models. I mean, compromise in limited situations apparently does work for some people, yay, but when I was hanging out on AVEN I did not see people talking about things like polyamory or other relationship models very much at all. Or anything besides “try to compromise, if you can’t do that expect nothing.”
And things like… consent models that prioritize checking in on your partner would be awesome. Like, verbally making sure they are doing okay? Actually, you know what, MORE WORDS IN EVERYTHING. Verbal communication, and listening to what people are actually saying, and asking before you touch. And before you change the touch.
The only time it came up in real life while I was around was at an LGBT thing. I talked about how asexuals ahve a hard time finding a romantic partner because most sexuals aren’t okay with that, and someone said “If you’re upfront about it, what’s the big deal?”. I felt really weird about that. On the one hand- yeah, that’s how everyone should be. On the other- er, yeah, tell that to just about everyone else whose ever dated an asexual. Online? Ugh, so much of that. I hate that people feel like they’re entitled to sex.
Check-ins are so awesome. I really like the “red, yellow, green” model clarisse thorn talked about, just like traffic lights (in the US at least, dunno if they’re universal). Green: Everything’s fine. Yellow: I’m not sure how I feel about htis, proceed with caution. Red: STOP.
I definitely like that idea because of the room for people to say “I think I’m okay with this but I may not be, so I want to try it- so everyone involved needs to be more aware than usual of signs that it needs to stop” with yellow. People way too often think that consent is black and white, and it is (if someone doesn’t say yes, don’t do it. If someone says no halfway through- STOP), but humans aren’t binary creatures- there are plenty of things where a person MIGHT want something but isn’t SURE and needs to have the security to know that if they try it and don’t like it, that’s okay.
“I did not see people talking about things like polyamory or other relationship models very much at all.”
It happened, but not very long or very well. The monogamous people took offense at it. A few members, including a sexual, took any mention of polyamory as a personal attack and their contempt was obvious. There were no decent conversations about it because everything was derailed with 101 and bigotry.
And you know, I can get the “I couldn’t make that work, I need sex in a relationship” reaction. But it’s often also coupled with this… disgust, this total lack of empathy for anyone asexual, and that really makes me angry. Also, on disclosure, you do need to be honest but I’ve seen so many people who a) assume asexuals aren’t and b) have absolutely no empathy for the whole “yeah but eventually I would like to date and it would be nice if people did not recoil from the idea of being in a relationship with me before getting to know me” thing.
(I actually had a Psych of Women class wherein the class watched a movie and then were asked to discuss whether or not they would be willing to have a relationship with someone else who couldn’t orgasm or have sex with them. It was really close to “would you date an asexual?” It was not a pleasant experience.)
Oh, I like that also! And yeah, sometimes it’s “I’m actually not sure, I would like to try this with you, but please be ready in case I decide I find this too upsetting to continue.” It’s generally a good idea to be able to warn someone that you’re a bit uneasy.
Well, and a lot of the not-good experiences I’ve seen people talk about having come down to that freeze response, where you might not be able to actually say anything. I’ve personally been very lucky, and not been involved
It happened, but not very long or very well. The monogamous people took offense at it.
Wait, what? How could you find an alternate model offensive? I remember seeing a fair amount of “that couldn’t work for me” either because someone would have jealousy issues or because the sexual partner would feel really badly about it, and you know, fair enough. But seriously, finding it offensive? WTF.
The Feministing thing I’m thinking of was the one in June 2009 where someone sent a question about whether they were asexual to the Feministing advice columnists? I think we’re talking about the same one, though, becaaauuuse if you search for “asexuality” on the Feministing home page the only two things that come up are that and Courtney going “hey wow asexuality exists!” a year later! It did give me my own personal Bizarrest Suggestion For What Asexual Person “Really” Has – diabetes. I applaud you for having the sense to walk away – I didn’t – I commented under the name “Zailyn” for a few months before and after. :/
It’s funny how we deal with these things – I actually tend to bring up the asexual/sexual question myself on consent threads, because… it feels like so much sex-positive discussion on consent happens with the people involved thinking they’re in a shiny happy wonderland where there is no such thing as mismatched sexual desire in a relationship, or if there is the people involved can amicably break up and find partners they’re compatible with, and it galls me, it does. If I bring up asexual/sexual (as the most extreme example of mismatched sexual desire) and then point out that going “well asexual people should only have relationships with other asexuals” isn’t really feasible because of our numbers and diversity then I’ve forced the subject on the table, and if I get truly horrible responses all I’ve done is sort of made the nastiness that was implicit before visible for everyone.
And, ack, I’m sorry for just talking about how sexual people screw up consent talk, it’s just that this is the first time I’ve been able to talk about this shit with asexual people where I’m sure they wouldn’t go “but it was an opportunity to educate!” Back on topic.
It occurs to me that we can view consent as a sort of… spectrum? Which is to say, an at least perceived to be uncoerced yes has to be present for it to be consent, but then you can judge things like enthusiasm and how active the other partner is and such, and the further towards the “just lying there” or so end of the scale you get the more important it is to have communication about what’s going on and whether the other partner actually wants this and so on… and of course any signs of distress should call for an immediate stop to check in and talk about what’s happening. I can envisage a situation where the partner just lying there is perfectly fine with the situation, but that is NOT something that should be taken for granted and something that should be SERIOUSLY hashed out beforehand. And as you say, communication communication communication is really important in general and the more of it the better. Like, I do like enthusiastic consent if it’s not used in a “no other form of consent is valid” way, but I can imagine a situation where someone enthusiastically consents but got carried away and regrets it later that communication would prevent.
And yes, checking in. Consent as a process, not a one-time event.
And also OMG YES to different models. It’s struck me recently that I was prone to this – like, if I want a relationship with a sexual either I compromise or it won’t work out – and would just *assume* that open relationship wouldn’t be an option, even at a time when I was still iding as aromantic and could not possibly have said whether I’d be okay with that. (In fact, I am now actually sort of poly in my weird greyromantic way, I think. I’m in a not!relationship but she’s in another similar relationship and I am free to seek out something similar for myself, and my god if you’d told me what my love life would look like five years ago I would have thought you were on drugs.) I’m also reminded of some of the stuff DJ’s written about changing the way we think about and do relationships which I think is very cool and very radical but doesn’t really seem to have made an impact on AVEN as a whole. There are more options than dating ace people or dating sexuals and then compromising.
That would indeed be the one. The letter to Dr. Foxy? And I suspect I might have had the “walk away” response precisely because at the time, I hadn’t had anything much invested in the community or the site–I’d never commented, for one thing. I don’t know how it is for you, but for me it’s a lot easier to say “fuck this, not worth it” if I haven’t spent much time in a community to begin with.
I think I mentioned on your blog, I only spend a limited amount of time in specifically sex-positive spaces, but I think in general what I’ve observed squares neatly into what you’re saying. People seem so invested in reacting to “sex is bad” or “sex needs controlling” cultural standards that they don’t actually seem to want to think about any of the ways in which sex DOES need to be managed to keep everyone safe. And bringing up tricky consent situations seems to get reacted to badly, and the easiest way to shut up that discussion is to demonize romantic asexuals and more broadly the less-interested half of any couple with a mismatched libido. (Enter here the big problem with HSDD when it’s NOT medicalizing my entire orientation. Sigh.)
Oh my god, I HATE the “but it is an opportunity to educate!” people. No, I am not actually a visibility robot, thanks for asking, and frankly I’d like to have conversations about my experiences once in a while without having to play teacher. (Also, sometimes I think that people do not get that playing educator–especially off of explicit asexual spaces–is exhausting and emotionally draining. ESPECIALLY if there’s any reason to think people are going to react badly, as they generally do if you’re pointing out something problematic they’re assuming.) Oh, and if you espouse a teaching model that isn’t friendly and polite in response to a gaffe, the heads really explode! Apparently we are never ever supposed to lose our tempers.
DJ’s cool relationship stuff is one of the reasons I really wish he was still exerting a really active influence on asexuality discussion rather than taking a step back. You’re right, there is a ton of cool stuff there. Although I sometimes think that DJ does miss… hm. The difficulty it can sometimes take to form relationships like that? He seems to be this really charismatic guy whose immediate circle is also composed of very queer-identified people, and I sometimes think he does not realize that not everyone is quite as good at convincing other people to have queered meddling-with-the-definition-of-romance relationships as he is. Relationships, unfortunately, still take two people, and there’s a lot of cultural emphasis on traditional monogamous romantic relationships which makes it rather difficult to compensate if your model is different.
There’s not actually much discussion of the difficulties inherent in being asexual and seeking long-term intimacy, now that I think of it. And there really does need to be, since the models I seem to see bandied around really do boil down to “romantic asexuals get to have normal romantic relationships!” and if aromantic long-term models are ever mentioned (which I do not see much at all, apparently if you don’t fit into the traditional romantic model well you’re fucked), it tends to be “and they need friends too!” And people usually do not discuss the broader difficulties inherent in being a romantic asexual trying to find a partner, or in not actually fitting the traditional romantic paradigms at all.
Also, I find poly really really cool, but that’s me. There was an incident with my group of meatspace friends a while ago that looks in hindsight extremely similar to some of the things I’ve read about managing a poly triad relationship–sometimes I think I blur the boundaries between “dating” and “friendship.”
@Sciatrix – yeah, that’s the one. And I get that – there are communities some of my friends are in where because my first encounter with them went badly I am never going to spend time there, but I’m much more willing to put up with shit if I feel as if I’ve invested something in the community. Not that I ever got much of a warm fuzzy feeling from Feministing, but… for one, I was just getting into commenting on feminist sites and it was the most active, and for another, I felt as if I could do some good educating because there were a lot of young newbie feminists whose only disprivilege was their gender and were, er, kind of clueless. It… didn’t go very well.
Yeah, it’s, I have this theory that a lot of the nasty shallow parts of sex-positivism come from seeing the way sex and sexuality is extremely restricted in society and there are all sorts of double-binds and in general people’s expression of their sexualities are very much frowned upon and interpreting that as “society is anti-sex”. Which it’s not, as any asexual can probably attest to. But I can see how a sexual person could misinterpret it that way. But as a result, we get this… putting sex onto a pedestal, if that makes sense? and making it into this amazing radical subversive empowering etc etc etc act, and people who attack that notion can expect to get slammed. And it’s very easy to demonise asexuals anyway for them, because under the anti-sex model an asexual person is either lucky enough to have their orientation in line with what society wants from them or actually complicit in oppression. Neither of which nets us a good reaction if we assert our existence or bring up our problems.
And yeeaaah. I have some issues with how things are done in the broader social justice sphere, but the robot-educator stuff coming from AVEN makes me shudder. *And* I’ve internalised some of it which is unpleasant. Never to mention that that teaching model isn’t even necessarily the best way to learn – like, sometimes? showing anger can really wake people up by making it realise that this is *important*, this isn’t just an academic exercise. (Like many white fans I had my consciousness massively raised during Racefail ’09, and I remember some of the posts where I could feel the anger and hurt really, really making an impact on me).
Re: DJ – I admit I don’t know him at all, but I can sort of see why he took a step back. I mean, quite apart from asexuality stuff possibly consuming his life… he sort of ended up *the* figurehead of the asexual movement essentially by accident (by which I mean, that it was AVEN that exploded instead of another ace site), and I can see how that would put someone in a pretty awkward position and how he might want to step out of the limelight so that the community could develop several leaders and groups. I actually have trouble describing to people coming from other queer communities just how centralised the asexual world is, how AVEN is THE community and there is like one person who is THE posterchild for asexuality and THE “leader” of the movement. DJ seems cool and all but that’s not necessarily a good thing. And… hmm, yeah. My problem with his relationship stuff is that, well, the way he describes it it takes a pretty big investment of time and energy and I just don’t have the spoons. Keeping and upholding relationships with people takes energy as well, especially if you’re not around people you feel you can be close to in meatspace and you have communication issues and weird interest patterns that affect you online. I still think it’s incredibly valuable stuff, just not really something I can do the way he does.
not actually fitting the traditional romantic paradigms at all
Ha, yeah. In fact, the more I talk to aromantic people these days the more I hear them talking about stuff like this, and it’s possible that if I were a bit newer to the whole business I’d be iding as aromantic – but when I was trying to work out my romantic identity all my aromantic “role models” seemed to be of the “independence is wonderful! I don’t need anyone to share my life with!” sort which I couldn’t really identify with either. Also, the attracted-to-women component. :/ It’s… well, it’s sort of DJ’s main point, that instead of trying to slot our relationships into friendship vs romance in the standard way we can try something different. And go blurring the lines between dating and friendship! \o/ (although the problem with blurring the lines is that it is possible you will then be unable to find them when you need them – like, I am crushing hardcore on a sexual friend of mine who’s in a relationship and, how do I *stop* myself from forming an attachment that goes beyond platonic, help!)
Oh yes, I definitely feel you about sex being put on a pedestal! I had never considered it from the “asexuality being complicity in what society wants” perspective because, well, that’s kind of unfathomable from an actual asexual perspective, but I suppose under that philosophy it does make a sort of twisted sense. Mostly what I have seen is the disability analogies, like asexuality is analogous to being blind, and… no. Just no.
I think we’ve all internalized it to some extent. I mean, I really don’t see any asexual radicalism at all. The asexual community is REALLY warped around this idea of educating the majority and catering to ignorance. I remember glancing at someone’s dreamwidth blog and seeing them report on an asexuality kerfluffle, and she mentioned saying something like “wow, the asexuality has a REALLY HIGH logic bombers to nukers rate!” and that hit me. (In context this was praise. To me… no.) Because you’re right, nukers make people shut up and take notice. You need to have BOTH to run a coherent movement, and seriously our ratios ARE really skewed. (Also, I had my brain hit a lot during Racefail, although I was mostly sitting back and lurking during that. I tend to lurk a lot on metafandom’s linked posts–I find them a really useful resource for sitting up and taking notice.)
Actually, I think DJ’s taking the place as “figurehead” of the community was neither total chance or without choice on his part. I was reading some discussion of ancient history on apositive a while ago by a user called paranoidgynandroid who founded the LJ community and played a huge role in writing the FAQ, and they were pointing out that DJ in large part stood up while they sort of faded into the shadows because DJ makes a better figurehead. That is, he’s this clearly not repressed, cisgendered, good-looking, able-bodied and -minded, extroverted white guy. Basically, he’s otherwise highly privileged, which means that he fits into “default” mode better than someone who maybe isn’t all of these things, and THAT meant that asexuals are/were harder to invalidate based on other aspects of a person’s identity. So it was harder for media to write off asexuality as, say, a girl thing or a result of disability because there’s DJ who is male and TAB standing right there. I transcripted a podcast he and Swankivy did a while back in which he was talking about media representation of asexuality, and there seems to have been a lot of very conscious manipulation of media in the earlier days of AVEN.
(And it’s probably not a coincidence that AVEN ended up the big site either–mandrewliter has some interesting history posts about the very early asexuality communities, which basically posits that AVEN became the huge community because it was easier to have conversation there.) I don’t know him personally either, I’ve just read some of the stuff he’s written about. And I do totally understand why he wants to take a break already–you’re right, he is sort of the Big Name, and I can definitely get going “okay, I’ve done this for almost ten years now, I’d like a break.”
And right, it does require a lot of spoons. And also a fair amount of luck–not everyone has access to the kinds of people who are going to go “yay, queer relationships instead of plain friendships!” I mean, my meatspace circle is actually pretty awesome in a lot of ways, but I can think of exactly two people I’d be totally comfortable bringing up the relationship-shifting paradigm stuff with. And that, to me, is lucky.
Well, to be fair, a lot of what I have been seeing about aromantic discussion is… SlightlyMetaphysical and me talking back and forth at one another. And other things in the blogosphere. It definitely wasn’t going on much on AVEN, and when I was there I was too busy reacting to people perceiving aromantics as kind of cold and sociopathic to really discuss the relationships I wanted to be having or that I thought I could have. Certainly not making new queered definitions of romance–actually, one of the issues I have with AVEN is that there’s a significant minority who are very very clear that they do not want to be associated with the queer community or have people think they’re queer. So that may also play a role in why alternate relationship models don’t come up much?
(The other worry I have about blurring the lines is that I will creep people out and push them away. And also how do you get people to consent to line blurring, and what if they don’t feel even close to similarly?)
It’s not so much the “oh my god you poor people you are so deficient” folks. It’s… I sometimes get this feeling off people who appear nominally accepting of asexuality, but there is this… undercurrent… of “oh yeah, your desires are in line with social norms, lucky for you” that mainly manifests in apparently refusing to think or write about problems asexuals encounter or even believe they exist. Like, thinking that them accepting asexuality as being real is all we need. And I’ve seen some… oh damn, I’ve seen many… people become utterly furious when they so much as feel as if asexuals have said they’re oppressed. (The reaction of a lot of asexuals to backpedal going “but but we know we’re not really oppressed we just want the world to acknowledge our existence!” is one I am unhappy with in a lot of ways although I can see why people do it.) In fact, I’ve seen a sexual queer person go “asexual is what other people want *us* to be!” which, yeah, no, you’re not getting it.
And. Yes. Come to think of it, I say I’ve internalised it, but thinking about it I am probably pretty radical as asexual folk go. Which is a truly frightening thought. I sometimes feel (tying into asexual history here) that the main discourse on AVEN back in the early days that sort of set the tone for what was to come was driven by people who didn’t have much experience with social justice, and in particular that there was this presumption that all anti-asexual attitudes are rooted in nothing but ignorance so all we have to do is educate and they will vanish into thin air. And they didn’t realise things like the exhausting nature of dealing with bigotry. And now we are left with the resulting culture that just seems so, so *naive* sometimes coming from SJ spaces.
Also, *really* interesting stuff about early asexuality that I knew a bit of but not much, I shall mull this over. Do you still have a copy of that transcript?
Re: aromantic discussion, what I’m sort of basing it on here is what I’ve seen people in asexual_fandom and generally on DW say, I think. And I’ve seen a lot of aromantics who talk about wanting a life partner. I think I sort of hashed out my romantic identity 2008-early 2010 (where by “hashed out” I mean “couldn’t figure out if aromantic or homoromantic, went with ‘somewhere in the middle’ as a stopgap because I was tired of it and then started identifying that way”) and in particular at the beginning I wasn’t talking to that many other asexuals. I think I let glad_to_be_a over at LJ sort of help form my mental image of aromanticism, and by the time I saw aromantic ace folk expressing similar desires to mine regarding life partnerships – mainly this year, I think – I’d got quite attached to my in-between identity. (Although it does mean I’m never quite sure where to stand in the romantic vs aromantic wars, as I sort of identify with both and neither.) And ugh ugh ugh the aromantic as cold and emotionless thing, that is just so fucked up and wrong.
The anti-queer minority has always made me go :/ rather although I don’t see much of them. I mean, I do not want to proscribe to anyone how they want to identify, but so often it feels like it’s very reactionary or there is a whiff of anti-queerdom (LGBTphobia? more general than homophobia, I think, transphobia comes into it somewhere too) about it. And then there’s the people who think we cannot possibly compare our oppression to other sexual orientations’ and it would be coopting. Which, do we really want to make “experiences violent oppression” the litmus test for who’s queer enough?
(Oh man yeah. I’m both worried I’ll destroy my friendship with this person and worried she won’t view it as romantic but I sort of will and I’ll be non-consensually not!dating her which seems highly ethically dubious. But I’m terrified of bringing it up, I mean *I* barely understand what’s going on and don’t know where the line is.)
…and, uh, we appear to have sort of taken over Dreki’s blog, SCORE. Dreki, I’m really sorry, if you want us to take this to e-mail or something just say.
ack, forgot to clarify on a point – my main objection re: anti-queer asexuals is the ones who think asexuals shouldn’t call themselves queer *generally* (or only if bi- or homo- or panromantic) or that the asexual community shouldn’t try to ally with LGBT or get into LGBT (we can dream…). For asexuals who don’t want to identify as queer but don’t make those objections, well, it’s their identity and not my business.
I’m iffy on the LGB because, well, I don’t want the T in there and Id on’t want what happened to the T to happen to an A.
Trans people tend to get ignored, our issues are dropped easily (and we’re expected to support things that have absolutely no benefit for us, while cLGB people aren’t expected to do the same), and our identities will be outright erased if it’s “inconvenient” for the LGB to acknowledge them (a TON of mixed-gender couples who face discrimination get labeled “gay” by the LGB community to make it “easier”, completely erasing the gender of the trans person involved). Most people don’t know what the T actually means or stands for, assume it has something to do with sexual orientation because the other 3 do. And this isn’t getting into the hate crimes trans people have faced in so-called “LGBT” spaces, often by cis LG people, and even if cLGB people aren’t doing it- they allow it to happen, making it clear just how “inclusive” the LGB is for the T.
I’ve seen LG(b) people against asexuals as much as most other sexuals. Thinking that people will point ot us as proof that gay people can be gay wtihout acting on it, calling up all the “laet bloomer” “haven’t met the right person” type tropes, a few years ago there was a big fuss on AVEN because they likened us to pedophiles. IF it was possible for the A to be part of the LGB in a way where our issues and needs are addressed, where our realities are acknowledged and respected and not explicitly invalidated the second it’s “more convenient” to do so, where we don’t face being demonized and attacked in spaces that claim to include us, etc- then, yes, it could be helpful because the LGB community is big and powerful.
I just have no faith in that happening.
However, I completely agree wtih you. The main reason I see most people saying “We shouldn’t be in the LGB” is generally homophobic “we aren’t like THOSE PEOPLE” or naive “if we aren’t associated with the LGB then everyone will accept our sexuality and we can keep straight privilege!” That pisses me off.
…and, uh, we appear to have sort of taken over Dreki’s blog, SCORE. Dreki, I’m really sorry, if you want us to take this to e-mail or something just say.
Hell no, I’m enjoying watching this. It’s a really awesome conversation.
To your concerns upthread, Dreki: Hoo yeah, I totally get that about the LG(b) community. I actually usually assume that bi and trans people are more likely asexual allies than gay people for precisely that reason–they’re more used to being low on the queer hierarchy and ignored a lot, and bisexuals in particular share issues with aces like people assuming that the gender of whomever you’re dating tells what your orientation is and issues of mismatched orientations and things like that. This is not always the case, but… more likely than with plain gay people?
Well, and we have so MANY trans aces, your wonderful self included, Dreki. So, you know, as a community cis aces ought to be paying special attention to how to be good allies to trans people, both because of hopes of getting trans groups to be allies back to asexuals but also because damn, we ought to make sure we’re not hurting trans aces by accident or making them uncomfortable. Because the asexual community should be for all of us. SO FAR THERE HAS BEEN FAIL, but I remain optimistic that yelling at other cis people not to be assholes will eventually accomplish something.
Yeah, I feel weird including the B in the LGB when I talk about that because most of the problems I’ve seen are strictly from homosexual people, bisexual people not so much, I just haven’t seen enough from them to know either way. I remember looking on a thread on a bi forum that was about mismatched sexual and romantic orientation- it seems like a good number of people who are bi”sexual” are either homo/heteroromantic hetero/homosexual or mono/biromantic bi/monosexual or something like that. I definitely don’t think that’s true for all asexuals, maybe not most, but it seems like they’re more likely to be able to understand mismatched sexual and romantic orientation and liking someone in a non-sexual way than monosexuals, which can help understanding asexuality. I knew a guy who was biromantic homosexual who’d only ever dated women (people he wasn’t sexually attracted to), so I imagine he could get being asexual and how sex isn’t the be-all end-all.
And we definitely DO have a ton of trans aces. I think there’s a study that (I have no idea how reliable it is) showed that 1/3 of trans people are asexual. Even if that was off by a bit, that’s still significantly more than the cis population. I liked that, in the interview you linked to, DJ talked about how the trans community seemed like a good ally for asexuals. I don’t know how accepting sexual trans people are of asexuals, but I haven’t seen it come up and get the same response.
Sexuality is a complicated issue for trans people because there’s dysphoria, societal pressure in a fucked up new way, and gatekeepers to navigate- not gettinginto how it can change on hormones for some people. I also think trans people have a higher rate of being sexually abused/raped, which makes it even more complex. I never really thought about it before, but trans communities are pretty comfortable for me because there’s no idea that everyone wants a certain kind of sex or even that everyone can have/talk about it comfortably so the conversations aren’t as bad for me as in sexual cis communities were the assumption is that everyone wants sex the same way and as often as everyone else. It’s really alienating when people talk about sex with the idea that everyone int he room experiences it the same way, and I’ve never seen that with trans people.
I don’t really expect most communities to be good about checking their privileges, especially the asexual one that is set up to deny sexual privilege for sexuals (wtf?). It would be nice, ideally, if there were a way to make it happen, but I’m not really surprised or dissappointed that it hasn’t with the asexual community. I’m more sad that I’m so resigned to every single bloody community kicking another one.
That is an *excellent* point on LGBT. I’ve thought I hadn’t been that optimistic, but… thinking about it, part of me just hoped that getting a letter in the LGBT soup would mean that I could poke my head into LGBT spaces and e.g. my uni LGBT society without having to be terrified of them kicking me out or being asexophobic. And you very rightly point out that that’s no guarantee.
And also, thinking about it, I think I’ve seen more hostility to asexuals from LGB folk than from straight people. Similarly to how I feel a lot of anti-asexual attitudes I encounter come from sex-positivism. It’s, we always *say* that LGB folk are more likely to accept us or are our natural allies or so, but I haven’t seen much sign of that on their part. Same with the sex-positive movement.
I think despite the fact that I knew about some of the issues the T had faced from LGB, as well as biphobia, I sort of figured that trying to ally with the LGBT movement was a natural progression. This is giving me something to think about.
Yeah, having your letter in the acronym guarantees nothing. I don’t think it’d be as abd for asexuals as it can be for trans people, but it definitely isn’t a guarantee. It would be awesome if including the A meant that we could get some safe spaces. But I really don’t think that’s the case at all. I think there’s still biphobia in the LG community… :/
I’ve definitely seen the same, at least with gay people I don’t know about bi people. Even with ones who aren’t acephobic, I’ve heard from some asexuals who went to LG(b) spaces and felt completely out of place because the conversations so often revolve around sex. I remember seeing a partner on AVEN, a gay man, who insisted that his partner had a mental disease that needed to be fixed. I just sat there going “Okay, less than 50 years ago they said the same about your sexuality. Are you really doing the same bloody thing?”. I don’t like the idea of “natural allies” in any situation, because there are too many intercommunity politics that get in the way of that happening. Natural progression only really works out if it’s already happening, but it doesn’t seem to be.
I’m also REALLY worried that if the A did try to join up, it’d be completely swept up in the already established and considerably more powerful LG(b) movement and we’d have no real way to represent ourselves and our publicity would be controlled by sexual people in a way that most helps the LG(b) community and undoes all the work we’ve already did. Maybe that’s me being paranoid, but I could see it happening really easily without the LG(b) people realizing they’re even doing it.
Well, I HAVE seen shit coming from bi people–in fact, I don’t know if you heard about the ontd_feminism brouhaha, but that was heavily bi people being really really shitty to asexual people. Few lesbians in there, if I remember correctly, one really horrible straight woman, but there were a lot of bi women as well. So it’s not all kittens and sunshine, but I do see a little more ground to connect on with bi people than with gay people.
And… yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense with respect to trans communities having a very complicated relationship with sexuality. My experience with trans posters is largely through the asexual community, so that doesn’t tend to come up quite as much. It’s interesting that there’s that kind of “anything goes” attitude with respect to variety in sexuality, also.
I know what you mean about expecting communities to fail and kick each other. I just, you know, wish it didn’t happen that way. And I do want to leverage my privilege on the axes I have it to try and make a better space.
(Also chiming in on your response to Kaz here by the way, Dreki. Sorry, there is not much room!)
I’ve also felt the same thing about asexophobia often coming from the queer community. Some of the worst things I’ve seen on asexuality have come out of the mouths of gay cis men, for instance.
Mostly, I think the LGB community is really too fragmented to get “officially added” to the acronym, and anyway there are already so many letters on it that if we stick to the letter paradigm we’ll just get lost again. Frankly I just want to know if I’m welcome in their spaces to discuss sexuality. I’ve never assumed that the broader LGB movement will spend much focus at all helping asexuals, because… well… reading about biphobia! And transphobia in the GLBT community! I basically just want to know if I can go to the campus queer group and talk about being ace and maybe do some education work without getting the stinkeye. My standards are pretty low.
Bi people being shitty to asexuals is something I’m totally open to believing I just didn’t want to say “They totally do this” until I had hard evidence. Blah, everyone fails. Not that I’m surprised.
I don’t know if there’s an “anything goes” attitude with trans people. It’s just a discussion that’s more aware of everyone’s differences in their relationship to their sexuality and genitals. The trans community is as guilty of kicking other people as anyone else.
I agree with the fragmentation problem- I’ve seen some people who have an acronym that includes “A squared” (allies & asexuals). I wisht here were a way to guarantee that, but there isn’t. You can show up at the campus group and hope. That’s about it. Even asking people doesn’t help because most give the shiny “We accept everyone!” version rather than the realistic “except…” version. I really do wish there was a way to ensure that those spaces are open and inclusive and embracing of asexuals, but there really is no way beyond putting yourself into them and finding out first hand. And that takes a lot if it turns out it isn’t a safe space for you.
Dreki, I apologize, tell us to go away if you want to! Er.
I… wow, wait, “asexual is what other people want us to be?” Yeah, honey, no, what they want is for you to be STRAIGHT. *mutters* That sudden rage if asexuals dare to start talking about our problems in any space that is not, in fact, asexual specific is really, really frustrating in a headdesky kind of way–because they ALWAYS try to silence asexuals by insisting that asexuals experience no oppression, right as they SILENCE asexuals. And yeah, I also feel you about the people who are like “yay asexuals” but suddenly look a bit cross-eyed if asexuals start talking about ways in which X issue affects us specifically, especially if X issue hits asexuals harder than nonasexuals.
I TOTALLY FEEL YOU on thinking “man… as far as our community goes, I’m a radical. Wait, there’s something seriously wrong with that.” And yes on naivety with respect to social justice issues–I really feel like that the board culture was influenced by that idea of “as long as we’re polite and courteous, how could they NOT accept us? ” and that has metastasized since into this… hm, cancer of over-friendliness and over-politeness. And sometimes I think that people in particular who do not do very much SJ work in nonasexual spaces–that is, who maybe don’t come out very often in meatspace or discuss asexuality off AVEN ever–vastly underestimate the emotional drain that goes into the work. Like education is just a fun and interesting conversation, not trying to explain what your life is like to someone who maybe has no interest in understanding.
I do have a copy. I host it in a Google document here. It makes very interesting reading–it’s basically DJ and Swankivy (who has also been around a very long time) talking asexuality to an ally friend on an anarchist podcast run by the friend, and it wanders all over the board in terms of discussion. As I recall, the bits about manipulating the media are near the end. (Also, the bits on why they both got into activism are heartbreaking. Particularly Swankivy’s.)
Sometimes I wonder how useful the aromantic/romantic distinction is, really. I mean, yes, there are people who seem to have clearly defined romantic attractions to one gender, I suppose we need it for them, but… aaaaargh, I find the entire thing so confusing on a bunch of different levels.
Well, and my experience is that they’re rarer on Livejournal and almost nonexistent on Dreamwidth, but that could be self-selection. And yeah, I can definitely get “I personally do not identify this way,” but the ones who are like “but but asexuality isn’t queer” or “stop trying to associate with LGBT groups, people will think I’m gay or possibly trans!” really bug me. (You’re right about the transphobia, I think, which is I suspect part of the reason I saw a lot of people bitching about the transyadas being so active.)
(I never know what’s going on emotionally anyway, I have spent so many years carefully teasing over my feelings for various friends and wondering whether I want to date them, and always coming up with “maybe? but I don’t necessarily want our friendship to change except that she would stick around in my life” which is just confusing.)
Yeah, that made me so angry to read. And there was a ton of “how can heteroromantic asexuals be queer? that’s just like being straight! I, the sexual person, cannot imagine how asexuality would change anything!” and dude, no. And the “asexuals experience no oppression” thing, I KNOW. I saw one thread (…and I am wondering during this conversation oh god why can I remember so many specific instances of people saying horrible shit about asexuality D:) in which asexuals’ answers to people going “but you aren’t actually oppressed!” went from “well, we know we’re not, we just want to have people acknowledge our existence” to “…have you actually read this thread?” because, like, there were rape threats.
And yes yes yes re: overfriendliness and politeness. Which isn’t a bad thing except when it’s getting pushed as compulsory which it is. And re: radicalism… it sort of reminds me of the atheist community? Like, there are all these militant atheists and I don’t agree with them but it sort of comforts me that they exist, because every movement should have its radical side. And then I take asexuality and I look for those types of people and I find no one (discounting antisexuals because that’s different – am thinking of being radical re: asexual acceptance here – and plus I’ve hardly seen them around), and I’m among the extremest portion of the asexual population in my attitudes on asexual acceptance, and it frightens me because I should not be the extreme point. Also, agree about often feeling people are not doing much SJ space in nonasexual spaces. This is actually something I feel I tripped over talking about sex-positivity because I have this background of feeling alienated and marginalised in sex-pos spaces and from the comments and from reading asexual discussion about sex-positivism in ace communities it feels as if a lot of asexuals just haven’t discussed it outside the community. We’re quite isolated, in a way.
With the aromantic/romantic distinction I’m starting to think that, like, because people are defining themselves by *lack* of romantic drive they’re going to be much more diverse than people who define themselves by having one. So under the aromantic banner could theoretically fall people like me, who want life partnerships that don’t quite feel romantic but don’t quite feel like friendship, could fall people who want close friendships, could fall people who get their intimacy via communities (to steal DJ’s language), could fall people who don’t desire more than “regular” friendship and are most interested in independence… reading the transcript I like DJ’s division into partnership vs community vs solitary although it’s still imperfect (e.g. I think I’d like to get a lot more of my intimacy from community than is feasible.) I think an issue is that, like, okay people who want to date others of X gender find the terms Xromantic useful, but the way the community’s evolved it’s sort of got to the point where it feels like any asexual needs to identify their romantic orientation even if what they want and feel is way more complicated than that *raises hand*.
And thank you, that is an incredibly interesting interview! And oho, I hadn’t realised they were so manipulative – although tbh I’m not surprised, thinking about it. Like. It’s very easy to spot the patterns just from watching the interviews, so it’s no surprise that they figured them out and worked out ways to combat that. (Still highly politely, I note – like, I would kill to see someone *actually* ask “wait, aren’t you going to ask me if I’m a lesbian? or if I’ve got out of a bad relationship? because that’s usually next on the list” in an interview. XDD) Not as naive as all that. And yeah, swankivy’s why she got into it? I want to cry, I do. ;_;
and yeah I think I’ve only seen the anti-queer asexuals on AVEN, come to think of it. Definitely not among the aces I know on DW… although, I do find some heteroromantic or sometimes aromantic people who essentially go “I don’t really think we should id as queer because I’d feel as if I were coopting because I’m not oppressed enough.” I often sort of try to be a counterexample there saying, like, actually I *have* same-gender attraction so for them I have a sort of Bona Fide claim to being queer via that and I don’t think that part is necessary, I think heteroromantic and aromantic folk have just as much claim. (Although I suppose I’m not *entirely* homoromantic so the bona fidety is a bit dubious, but wanting a life partnership with a woman definitely puts me in the line of homophobia.)
And oh man the transphobia. I actually went and found that thread on AVEN because I wanted to see what went down and oh god, it was so awful. I wanted to hug P so much for the shit that was being said. Poor transyadas. And it’s… I sort of feel horrible about it because I’ve felt keenly that AVEN wasn’t safe and stayed away ever since awful shit got said by a mod about repulsed folk two years ago. I read the mod thread, saw a mod claiming repulsed folk weren’t actually ace, saw none of the other mods say *anything* about it at all and went – this site is rotten to the core. If I were invested in the community, I would stay and try to fix it, but I wasn’t really so I just got the fuck out. (Incidentally, fun fact! I recently went and looked at that thread, and a) you can really see how AVEN warps you in how I acted – I was totally polite and very “I’m sure you didn’t mean to imply this” and you could not really tell from my posts that I found what had happened so hurtful it made me give up on AVEN as a community period, and b) you commented on it! it feels like we’ve been just barely missing each other for years!) And, anyway, I just look at the people who are being driven off now and I’m… not surprised. At all. And I just feel so awful that they probably joined as nice shiny newbies with no idea of what was going on, happy to have found an asexual community, possibly at a time when I was already avoiding the place. It’s not as if I could have warned them off, but still.
(oh maan yeah. Or like, I want to live with the person, I want to spend more time with them, but I don’t really want the types of things we do to change. /o\ ??)
That was the ontd_feminism clusterfuck, wasn’t it? And yeah, it was seriously just… unspeakable levels of horribleness. (It’s okay, I remember fails, too. Part of me thinks that remembering the really bad horrible things is a useful way to categorize the ways in which asexuals are oppressed, because you definitely see some very strong trends like using ableism and claiming that asexuals totally just want the attention and *magical sparkly privilege* that comes with being queer-identified. Apparently we are horning in on a great thing there!) I know a heteroromantic ace who is actually a student council member for her campus queer organization, so… apparently they are not all faily, at least?
I have Things To Say about that. Because really, it’s not even that not-politeness isn’t encouraged, it’s that it’s actively discouraged when it does occur. I still remember a thread in which this sexual dude–I think he claimed he was a doctor–came in and asked us if we’d collectively seen someone about our asexuality. And I was feeling up on spoons that day and I said “also, dude, this is kind of offensive because X” in that tone–not angry, actually quite relaxed, no swear words–and I got piled on. WTF.
Also, yeah, we are really surprisingly isolated. I know some people working on doing campus queer group outreach, but other than that I really just do not see asexual discussion outside of asexual spaces. I think the one exception I’ve seen is FWD, actually–I’d seen a couple of ace pieces linked there, including that one you did a while ago.
Oh, I really like that way of thinking about it! It… actually, it kind of reminds me of asexuality discussion itself, where we as a group are extraordinarily diverse and tend to come to asexuality through a huge variety of perspectives, but it only gets tied together through not doing the traditional romance thing. Interesting. (Let’s paint around a definition of romance!) And community-oriented… yeah, I feel you on the “but it’s not feasible” thing. I don’t know about your experiences, but mine are that people move every ten years if I’m lucky and every four if I’m not, and I am the sort of person who wants to just… have the same group of people around me for ever and ever. And of course there’s no cultural understanding of that, it’s all about the pressure to pair-bond, and the person you’re in a monogamous relationship with has an obligation to stay in your life but no one else does.
Swankivy’s activism tends to be more the “hang out and talk to people on OKCupid” thing or else making Youtube videos rather than actual mainstream media interviews, and she can actually get quite snarky on occasion. She also wrote a piece which is now on AVEN ages and ages ago entitled “The Asexuality Top Ten” detailing the most common obnoxious responses she gets and why they suck. I love her to bits. She’s mostly on the LJ comm, too.
I’ve seen like… one on LJ. And that’s it. For the ones talking about appropriativeness, I usually use the fact that I spent most of high school being Mistaken for Gay, not exactly in a positive way. Homophobia doesn’t actually only hit people who are actually in same-sex relationships, although that’s a big part of it. (And, y’know, my gender presentation is off enough that I occasionally come in for gender policing as well. I’m not sure how more gender-conforming aromantic asexuals’ experiences go, but my experience is that non-gender-conforming girl + clearly and openly not interested in boys = SCREAMING LESBIAN to most people.) I also usually bring up the whole “in ur relationships, messing with ur definitions of romance” thing and occasionally I’ll talk about specifically asexual losses of privilege.
Oh gosh, yes, I felt so badly for P. And all the yadas–I remember there being a lot of confusion and hurt about then. Especially when the drama queen stuff kicked up on P, because seriously, wtf? He is very much not dramatic at all, not about things that matter. I don’t know what the fuck is the mods’ problem with actively taking a stand on AVEN content beyond “don’t get too angry, guys,” but it’s really gone solidly bad. I thought the new ToS which actually outright said “no, you cannot be a bigot here” might be a step in the right direction, but it’s clear from that incident that it was more about the PR than anything. (I suspect it miiiiight have come from a pretty nasty post involving a fuckton of biphobia/homophobia about lesbians, but I can’t be too sure about that.)
Also, really? I did? Wow, that is weird, because I don’t remember it–I remember personally dealing with lots and lots of other egregious fails, but not that one. I must have just been coming back from my two-year hiatus at the time. Really, I don’t think anything could have driven me off then, since I was flat desperate to talk to asexuals again and find some kind of community at the time. And I don’t remember there being anything else.
I feel bad about poor shiny newbies, but by the time I left I was too busy getting angry about FAIL to do any kind of shepherding. :/ At least there is beginning to be some amounts of broadening going on now.
(OMG YES. And… I want to hang around my apartment with you and cook you food and read books in your company and all that, but I don’t actually want our friends-relationship to change because it’s already good.)
Ahaha, not the ontd_feminism although I remember that one, it was on an anon meme. Um… *searches journal* I know I ranted about it at the time… found it! it was on fandom_secrets. Er, warning for comments. Although don’t get me wrong, the ontd_feminism was ALSO unspeakable levels of horrible. I found that a few weeks after it happened and it left me never wanting to set foot in sexual queer spaces again. :/ Also, lol @ magical sparkly privilege, it does feel like people are thinking that doesn’t it!
And cool! I’d seen swankivy’s Youtube stuff and her Top Ten Responses things but I didn’t actually realise she was still active. Neat.
And *nods*. Although weirdly, considering I’m dubiously homoromantic ish (I am thinking of calling this homoWTF) I don’t believe I’ve ever got mistaken for gay. I actually sort of think in high school my classmates *did* think I was asexual but out of thinking I was too weird to possibly be interested in dating. Like – okay, it’s tough to describe my school years, because I managed to escape without being bullied but that doesn’t mean I was accepted by my classmates. I think they sort of thought I was an alien that had got lost somewhere. Um. And then at uni people just assumed I was straight although I’d never given them the slightest reason to think so. :/ I don’t think I read as gender nonconforming anyway, which is, uh, kind of ironic right now. ._.
Drama queen?! The hell? I mean, reading it I was astounded at how incredibly exquisitely polite P was, even when it was clear that he was devastated by what was going on, even when people were attacking essentially his *existence*. It was one of the least drama queen-y ways I can imagine handling that, and certainly less so than I could’ve managed. And oh man, I can imagine everyone feeling really hurt by that. I have no idea what the hell the mods were thinking allowing some of that stuff to stand.
Well, it wasn’t entirely obvious what was going on in the thread at the time, and you only posted once – I only posted a few times myself, actually. Voila, my last thread on AVEN. (is easy to find since it’s in my last posts in my AVEN profile!) The actual *comment* that made me throw in the towel was this one in the mod thread and, more importantly, the fact that none of the other mods called it out. But anyway, just reading the thread there’s I think some :/-worthy attitudes but nothing that bad.
And yeah, at some point one has to step back and go “taking care of myself comes first.”
(oh yeeaah the cooking! or with my not!GF as that’s an online relationship it’s staying up until ungodly hours of the morning talking about everything and anything, but if she were not on the other side of the planet from me I would totally cook for her. And the just hanging out in the same room together. And <3)
Oh, I have actually seen that one also. Sigh. I was thinking of ontd_feminism because there were SO MANY MORE rape threats in that one, but I remember the one in fandom_wank as well.
Whereas my experiences are weird across the board. I mean, I definitely did not escape middle school without being the target of some serious bullying, and at that point I think some of the comments on my theoretical gayness may have been meant more as a general insult than a specific comment on my sexuality, but then I got to high school and my life turned into a series of delicately worded attempts from parents and the odd other student (I’d shut everyone out at that point) to find out whether I was gay or not. I started coming out when I went to college in large part so people would shut up about it, which seems to have worked–I haven’t had anyone try to find out whether I was a lesbian since I graduated high school.
Oh, yeah. The hell indeed. And I mean, that’s P–I know him really well as someone who handles situations like that with a hell of a lot of grace in general, and who tends to act to minimize drama rather than to create it. But obviously calling him a drama queen was a good way of silencing him, so. :/ I know he was really, really hurt by the whole thing, and rightly so.
I do remember that now! And… hm. Yeah, on the open thread I think there was a bit of problematic content, but otherwise… eh. The mod thread, now… what the fuck is that about people with SAD not being the same as asexual people? That diagnosis pisses me off specifically because it covers every repulsed ace who was ever born, and I don’t think that ought to be a disorder to begin with. And then… no one reacted at all. WTF WTF WTF.
On school- I couldn’t have a weird enough gender presentation. My mom, who was in the army, got her school to let her wear pants, rarely wears dresses, and is overall NOT the poster child for genderconformity policed my gender pretty heavily. I think people picked up on my gender & asexuality, but didn’t know what to do with it so they just teased me in general. Or maybe I’m just too weird.
Some of highschool I had a boyfriend because of pressure to be sexual/specifically straight, but I did get the “lesbian” thing a few times because I’m really bad at telling where the line between stuff friends do and stuff partners do is. It’s not even consistent. I’d hug one girl and she’d say it was a good hug. I’d hug another the same way and get called a lesbian. Nothing serious, though.
I think having a normal enough gender presentation helps, but even that is only for awhile- as you get older, people more and more notice you aren’t dating anyone and get suspicious. I’ve seen a few people who are out of college talk about how people htink they must be gay and only don’t talk about sex/relationships to hide their homosexuality.
It is really depressing we can think of so many here, isn’t it.
I have no idea what was going on with my childhood and teenagehood, really. Because I had three things going on that make being bullied extremely likely – I was on the autistic spectrum (although nondiagnosed), I had a noticeable speech disorder and I was either a foreigner (childhood) or had just returned from a foreign country (teenagehood). And… yet, I wasn’t bullied. In some weird way it feels as if they cancelled each other out – that I was just so strange and so clearly not a threat to anyone’s position in the hierarchy that the class sort of adopted me as their alien pet. There was also some other stuff going on – as a kid I’d sort of been allowable-weird, it was only after we returned to Germany that I became really-really-fucking-weird and for most of that time I was in a class that was majority-male. And we sort of did hierarchies separated by gender, I think, so it was only the girls who were allowed to bully me but because there were so few of them I escaped. Or. Something. I DON’T KNOW. /o\ It’s fucked up, but I actually feel guilty I got away without being bullied (not really unharmed – I did develop severe depression due to the social stuff that was going on) when it’s so unusual for anyone with AS *or* anyone who stutters, let alone both. And I was queer, too! Even if I didn’t properly realise at the time!
And then at uni I sort of fell into the “eccentric mathematician” stereotype. I find that there’s a lot more leeway when it comes to social skills in maths – mostly for guys but some for girls as well (one time at lunch during my Master’s, my friends and I sort of had an impromptu “who was most socially incompetent in high school” competition…) and that combined with the scads of work I’d been doing on my social skills sort of moved me from “is she actually from this planet?” over into “normal for a mathematician”. And I think there’s also a desexualisation stereotype going on for maths people that people slotted me in afterwards.
And yeah. I mean, that comment was essentially telling me “you are not asexual”. Period. End of story. (Oh, except for “and you’re bad for visibility”.) And nobody contested it.
What actually annoyed me most about the thread I participated in, apart from some “repulsed people have to desensitise themselves and are immature otherwise”, was that I’d brought up the awful comment and the response it got (admittedly, in retrospect I should’ve quoted it or at least linked it and gone “this shit is not okay and if you don’t do something about it right the fuck now I’m leaving”, but that was when I still had the overpolite friendly AVEN brainworms thing going on and wasn’t comfortable calling out people directly) and only one person said anything about it and everyone else ignored it. I’d HOPED it would cause outrage but, y’know, apparently not. Which said to me that the attitude was widespread, and if that many people in an asexual space thought I wasn’t actually ace but repressing and bad for visibility then I was taking my toys and leaving.
I mean, my gender presentation… I only know it was non-conforming because I got harassed about it and my mother policed me pretty heavily about it, too. I honestly don’t think I would have noticed myself. Even the short hair, I only started cutting my hair gradually shorter and shorter after the bulk of the harassment stopped. So I have no idea how much that does play into it, either.
My experience with bullying was… well, it never happened once in elementary school because by third grade I was in this class of gifted-and-talented kids who had been shipped in from a bunch of different school districts and accelerated together. The class make-up stayed almost identical from year to year, so I had the same kids for three years. And that would have been good in its own right, but it was even better because we actually, in hindsight, had this astonishingly high level of neurodiversity–I knew two or three kids, including myself, being medicated for ADD at the time, in hindsight I heavily suspect both my best friends were on the spectrum, know for a fact that a third was because he contacted me and mentioned it years later, and have suspicions about a fourth. So I actually did not realize I was weird all through elementary school, despite spending most of my childhood in and out of psychiatrists’ offices. After all, in my experience everyone was like that! (The teachers were actually pretty damn horrible, but we had classroom solidarity nonetheless.)
And then I got to middle school and got basically thrown in with the normal kids AND hit puberty and my head sort of exploded. So a lot of that is tied into just… being weird, yeah, and being LOW on the school totem pole, and I don’t know how much of it can be attributed to gender presentation and how much was Asperger’s and how much was just bad luck. (Intersectionality, it’s confusing!)
(And on being fucked up about bullying–hell, I feel fucked up about it because I got violent in an effort to make it stop and I was ALWAYS the one instigating violence per se, if not touching. Because that’s the stereotype of the violent scary autistic kid, you know, the one Gavin de Becker is so fucking FOND of, and in retrospect I am almost pathetically grateful I was born female. Because if I wasn’t, I suspect I would have been targeted as possibly being Columbine, Round Two in the way I’ve seen happen to a couple of other bullied autistic kids who tried the “make ‘em think I’m psychotic and maybe they’ll leave me alone” thing the way I did. I also feel fucked up about the fact that I still have serious touching issues left over from that time in my life, and that over nothing overtly violent or sexual. I think the narratives surrounding being bullied fuck you up in general, really.)
On fitting into the “eccentric mathematician” thing, man, I wish that happened to a similar degree with my field, but I know exactly what you’re talking about. People seem to expect population geneticists to have more social skills, what with how we’re pretty close to ecology. >> I may shift over into neurology for my graduate work, though, we’ll see how stereotypes go then. I think there’s a generic desexualization stereotype going for professorial types, though–maybe not just math people?
Oh, I know. It boils down to “there’s asexuals, who are indifferent, and there’s those icky diseased repulsed people over there. OKAY? And we’d better not let people think that we’re anything like them.” Jesus.
Well, having myself linked to a bunch of ableist/ageist/transphobic posts and gone “WTF MODS? TAKE THE DISCRIMINATION BITS OFF YOUR TOS OR ENFORCE THEM PLZ” I can report that it wouldn’t have done any good if you had linked! You would probably just have been reprimanded for tone or something. Or getting angry! I don’t remember causing any more outrage than was already there either. What I primarily remember is being told I was being “childish” because I didn’t privately go to the mods and report the threads myself. Which is so many levels of missing the point.
On gender presentation, my mum’s presentation is actually pretty nonstandard herself (very short hair, doesn’t wear make-up ever, jewellery and skirts only on special occasions, don’t think I’ve ever seen her in a dress, could not care less about fashion… she says she’s been misgendered male before.) My aunt, who lives with us, is even more extreme – I’m actually the most femininely-presenting member of my family, and that is saying quite a bit. As a result I didn’t really get much presentation pressure from my family, and indeed up to the age of twelve when I stopped growing I mainly wore hand-me-downs from my brother or male cousin. Some feminine stuff (and apparently there was a period I refused to wear anything but skirts due to fear of being misgendered male) but not much. And any pressure I experienced from outside sort of played into larger Screwing Up Wrt Clothes fears. (Although there’s some pretty complicated stuff going on with my head wrt gender presentation and gender but that wasn’t so much due to specifically gender presentation related harrassment, you know?)
Man, that sounds like an awesome group of friends. I had some friends I suspect of being spectrumy but not many, we were still a pretty NT group as things went through all my childhood. And yeeaaah intersectionality is complicated, especially autism because it just pervades everything and anything (at least for me) and so it’s next to impossible to disentangle it from other stuff.
Fucked up re: bullying – yeah, I realised when I was typing my earlier comment that I was about to say “I got away unharmed” but actually that’s not true, I ended up really depressed and have what I think are most likely going to be permanent mental health issues that I think arose from the way I was treated in high school. It just wasn’t bullying, people treated me nicely overall, it was just this – thinking they liked me and thought I belonged and was one of them and then slowly realising that wasn’t the case, and then realising I had no way to tell who actually liked me and who didn’t, it really messed me up. There was a period where I was unable to make RL friends at all because I was so convinced that they didn’t actually like me but were just pretending in order to be kind. And it says something about the world that I consider myself to have been lucky. And also, that’s a really interesting and disturbing thought re: bullied autistic kids becoming violent and it being slotted into this “potential Columbine” narrative if they’re male. :/
You may have a point about general desexualisation stereotype for professorial types, I think it’s just extreme for maths. And lol – there’s always this gradated intra-field stuff, isn’t there? Like, the stereotype is pure mathematicians are more unworldly, lost in their own heads and generally socially incompetent than applied, and I don’t even know what’s going on with the statisticians.
Yeah, you have a good point, I’d probably just have got hit with “you’re not polite!” or “sort it out privately!” (when the problem appears to be that the MODS DON’T CARE how I am supposed to do that pray tell?
I wish it was original–I remember seeing cases of autistic boys arrested or expelled for violent behavior with that rationale. I don’t know when you were in school systems, but I hit middle school in 2001 only two years after the Columbine massacre, and I’ve heard numerous stories of bullied kids (NT and not) finally losing it and fighting back and having school systems punish them severely in an effort not to be another Columbine. And I’ve seen a lot of fearmongering about autistic kids being “violent” and likely to hurt NT kids. And hell, you know, I did hurt NT kids because they wouldn’t leave me alone and I didn’t have the skills to make them stop, you know?
And at least I was spared the not knowing, because I did have a couple of friends and I trusted them then and I still do, ten years after the fact. I’ve been… absurdly lucky in my friends, I think, or else I have a knack for ferreting out people who Get It about mental issues.
I just… totally failed to understand the people asking me to sort it out privately, because I was really not interested in specific cases. I was interested in why the mods appeared to believe a) that they couldn’t do anything if people didn’t report things, when their duties explicitly include reading their forums once every 24 hours and b) that these particular threads didn’t violate the new, shiny, less-than-six-months-old ToS change.
I have very little to add except that I love this conversation, but everything that’s being said and agreed upon feels so historic, it’d be weird if I wasn’t here.
I’ve always felt disrespectful snapping at the people who are like “No, I don’t want any of your queer next to my alternate sexuality,” but I now see that it is out of line. Firstly, I’m sorry, I can’t help my queer. And, if I could, I wouldn’t. And I’m not going to wait outside because it offends you. And secondly, how dare you try and sever asexuals from some of the most vital and consistent real-world support they’re ever likely to get? I’ve never noticed before what a display of privilege that really is.
We need more asexuals in SJ, generally. There’s this model where obscurity needs visibility, while prejudice needs SJ. I still think visibility is our major drawback, but even today, someone who I’m almost certain doesn’t know I’m asexual mentioned asexuality to me as a valid orientation. I’ve lost count of the number of people my age who already knew about asexuality as an orientation. The more we talk about it, the more we need to change our game-plan.
Ha, it doesn’t feel historical so much as it feels as if it’s mainly Sciatrix and me going “hey let’s chat about anything and everything!” and Dreki trying to get an word in edgewise here and there! But yay, more people!
We really really do need more asexuals in SJ. Because yeah, the answer to obscurity is visibility… except that I think it was pretty naive to think that once we became visible we wouldn’t be hit by prejudice, and I’ve seen enough nasty reactions from sexual people that I think it’s pretty obvious some of them are. It feels like that definitely back in the early days and partially now we were sort of assuming that all we had to do was say “hi! we’re here!” and we’d get handed our letter in LGBT, get HSDD rewritten, get asexuality into all the sex ed books and lessons, etc. And obviously it was never going to be that easy, and I sort of feel as if we should’ve been preparing more for prejudice from the get-go.
I do agree that visibility is increasing dramatically. I haven’t really spoken with people in RL much, but the last time I outed myself the person I was speaking to just went “oh, okay!” and come to think of it it’s been a while since I’ve had to do the spontaneous asex 101 thing. And online it’s been a massive increase.
Second on needing more asexuals in SJ discussion. And honestly, I’d like more SJ influence on asexual discussion in general. I think that what you’re saying, Kaz, about the whole naivety that visibility is the only battle, that’s something that really couldn’t have happened if more asexual people doing visibility work had much experience with other SJ movements. And I think that the way the community is set up now, we often internalize this idea that asexuality isn’t a “real” oppressed minority, that we don’t have it “that bad,” that there’s nothing structually oppressing us. Which is actually bullshit on a bunch of different levels–DSM, the fuckery that’s been mentioned upthread, etc. But the idea’s there anyway.
I actually had one person know what I meant back in 2008, which was awesome! And my Human Sexuality textbook last semester did mention asexuality and link to AVEN. Admittedly, it was simultaneously defining asexuality as a physical lack of genitals, but, you know, mentions. (Noticing that was a gotta-laugh-because-it’s-that-or-cry moment.)
Out of curiosity, am I the only one who has friends speculate to me about the possible asexuality of people I don’t actually know? This has happened to me twice now.
I definitely agree with this. The idea that if we’re just nice enough really fucks us over because then we get AVEN forcing us to be as nice as possible and punishing people for calling out bigotry. I’ve seen too many different people saying they’ve heard someone say “Asexuals just need a good rape” to really believe that we aren’t a “real” oppressed minority. I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better (or, at least, people will start acknowledging the things people do to asexuals as wrong so it’ll just seem like it’s getting worse because we’re now hearing about it), and this naivety is not going to help us get through that.
It’s awesome we’re getting more visibility, but visibility isn’t the only thing.
Yeah, sorry, there’s a lot of discussion here, and I’d missed that particular bit until your most recent comment.
I agree with you about something so easy as ‘natural allies’ not existing. I agree with you about having to be very cautious when dealing with the LGBTQ, and the various ways that they could minimise or pollute the asexual message. However, we can be cautious while still accepting the validity of LGBTQ in the ways it can help asexuals. There are groups in pretty much every city (in my country, at least), dedicated to support for people with alternate orientations/gender identities. Yes, some will be full of fail, especially regards asexuality. But some will be useful. The LGBTQ I belong to, for example, has proved very accepting.
And that’s not forgetting the fact that a large number of asexuals are queer in some other way than just asexuality, being homo or bi romantic or trans. They could stand to gain a lot from LGBT.
That’s just true in general though- there are groups of straight people that accept asexuals and those that don’t. There are also LG(b) spaces that are accepting of asexuals but where the conversation doesn’t really revolve around anything that helps asexuals so it’s more of an awkward situation than a safe place. Adding the ‘A’ to the acronym isn’t going to inherently increase the spaces that are safe, nor will it guarantee that the gay and bi asexuals will be more accepted in those spaces than they already are. That some LG(b) people are accepting of asexuals already and some LG(b) spaces are safe for asexuals isn’t a good enough reason why they’re inherently allies or that adding to the acronym will benefit us, because there are also plenty who most decidedly aren’t.
A thought on LGBT spaces – I think there is at least one thing we need from them, and that’s for them to commit to at least doing a bit of ace visibility. Because thinking about it, a lot of asexual people go through an “well, am I gay then?” phrase, and generally when you figure out you’re not straight it’s easy to assume you must fall under LGBT. So a lot of asexuals who haven’t figured it out yet may go to LGBT spaces to try and figure themselves out. And if they at least have like – asexuality leaflets or something, even if the people in that space are asexophobic, or even if they go “asexuality isn’t LGBT, try this place instead” at least there will be *something* there to point a questioning ace person in the right direction.
I also sometimes feel suffocated by the heteronormativity of my environment and find myself ready to do a lot to spend some time around queer people but it’s possible that’s because I’m not very out (I try! It just never really comes up and dropping “by the way I don’t want to have sex” into conversation randomly is something I am not ready to do! /o\). And I dunno how widespread that is, or whether sexual queer people wouldn’t just end up with me feeling suffocated by sexnormativity.
It would be good to have them do that. I think some are. I don’t know who, but someone pinned the definition of asexuality (against the rules) outside my campus’s cisCenter. That’s a good thing to do, I think.
I generally get the sexnormativity from LGB people as well. It’s sometimes worse in LGB spaces because then you can reasonably expect most people are sexually attracted to someone and it’s the only place they can really talk about it freely without fear of homophobia. As I said, even in spaces that aren’t acephobic I’ve heard from a few asexuals that they don’t feel they have a place in LGB support spaces because the talks tend to involve sex, which aces can’t really relate to.
Ok, so firstly, I’m sorry if this ends up in the wrong place, like the last one did. I can’t yet see your comments on the page to reply to them, and it’s very early morning here, and I don’t really have the energy to figure out how this comment section works.
I completely agree with you about LGBT not necessarily being safe spaces for asexuals. I think you’re taking my original comment and reading it as a response to the stuff upthread, which I hadn’t read at the time of writing.
What I meant was that a lot of asexuals might feel like they need a queer community in real life. The place they would find this (unless there are a lot of asexuals in their local area) is the local queer community. While there may be aphobia, the queer community will, in all likelihood, have more people who are accepting of different sexualities than the community in general.
Thus, the queer community could work out as a good support group for some asexuals. My point was that the asexuals who want to keep asexuality away from the queer community are normally privileged by not being the sort of people who need it, and they would like to deprive asexuals who do of a possibly vital resource. Please don’t take that to indicate anything about how suitable the LGBTQ community IS or SHOULD be for asexuals (two very important questions, which I am far too tired to do justice to tonight, but I should very much like to discuss with you soon).
Oh maaan yes yes yes. I’ve been pretty torn about the enthusiastic consent question – like, I have spent a *lot* of time in sex-positive feminist spaces that have very little asexual presence (in fact, I have spent so long being the Token Asexual that the asexual community feels kind of weird – if in a good way) which have this nasty tendency to totally uncritically push enthusiastic consent in a form that if taken literally makes it impossible for almost any asexual person to ever consent to sex, and then if the conversation ever turned to mismatched sexual desire all that stuff went out the window and it was all about how the lower-desire partner is cruel and manipulative (which, really?!). Which has left me going pretty :/ about enthusiastic concept on an asexual solidarity basis even though the whole compromise stuff doesn’t apply to me (repulsed and cannot see how I’d ever voluntarily have sex) and in fact there’s a traumatic sexual encounter in my past that having the standard of enthusiastic consent would have avoided. At the same time, I’ve been thinking more and more about how we talk about compromise and how compromise has the potential to be incredibly damaging and go dreadfully wrong, and how we need to have the conversation about consent as more than just “go ahead if you feel you have to” – but this has to happen in the asexual community, and like you I don’t think it could happen on AVEN. In fact, I think AVEN is somewhat guilty of pushing compromise and playing down the not at all improbable possibility of it going horribly wrong (and this is from like 2007-early 2009, so since it’s apparently got loads worse since I shudder to think…)
ARGH I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS. Yes, only hypersexuals get to enthusiastically consent- anyone who doesn’t want sex as much as you do is a HORRIBLE FRIGID BITCH. argh. From frat boys, sure, from feminists?! ….yeah, I’m not surprised about that either.
I have the same thing- I was in a sexually abusive relationship that wouldn’t have happened if the narratives about consent were different. This conversation really needs to happen. I’ve seen people on AVEN talk about (And get immediately attacked) what they called “consensual rape”- saying “yes” (most likely because they felt they had to) then white knuckling, gritting their teeth, praying for it to be over. I do think that AVEN is extremely guilty of pushing compromise without taking the time to think about what that means. There are a lot of asexuals who also talk about how at first they’re fine to compromise, but then over time they can compromise less and less because it’s too much for them. So we also have to take into consideration the fact that compromises have to change just as much as any other aspect of a relationship.
This conversation is long overdo, and I’m really glad it’s happening.
Oh god yeah. And like, this is a serious systematic problem, it seems like anytime I have seen a sex-positive feminist blog talk about low sexual desire issues (which is rarely) even if the post is okay the comments are a flaming mess and seem utterly incapable of applying all of their shiny consent and empowered sex theories to asexual people. Some exceptions, but they are exceptions. And it’s not trolls – like, okay, the person I’m thinking of who made the manipulative comment? Amanda Marcotte. (I have links if anyone wants to verify this.) Or stuff like how there was a post on asexuality on Feministing that was okay but the comments were a complete and utter disaster with bingos all over the place and then over a year later one of the main contributors puts up a post that’s essentially “oh wow look I just found asexuality for the first time.”
Bitter Kaz is bitter. :/
And oh man, consensual rape… this was not exactly what it was like for me but pretty close (although thankfully the guy stopped when I started crying so no actual sex happened), and the idea that people are being attacked for talking about it is horrible. Really, AVEN?
And *nods*. I’m glad it’s happening, because also I’ve been feeling more and more uncomfortable representing the “asexual side” in enthusiastic consent discussions when compromise isn’t actually anything I can talk about from personal experience.
I’ve noticed that a LOT of people act like trolls even if they aren’t. I can understand your bitterness, that’s disgusting. “AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT YEAH! …unless you’re asexual, you manipulative freak how dare someone actually say no to me?!”.
Really, AVEN. Because we don’t want the sexuals to feel bad for putting their partners through hell! I don’t even think there were comments about how actual rape victims would feel about it (or any ACTUAL rape victims commenting on it), just “You said yes so you can’t complain”. Eurgh.
Consent doesn’t just apply to compromise, though. It applies to asexuals who don’t even know they’re asexual who end up relationships coerced into doing things they don’t want, which happens a lot and probably does way more damage than an asexual trying to compromise. The “consensual rape” things, if I recall correctly, only happened when an asexual didn’t know they were asexual and were saying yes out of obligation. I didn’t say anyone who went into a relationship knowing they were asexual talking about it (although it DEFINITELY can happen in that situaiton, I just think that it’s easier for people who are comfortable with their asexuality to navigate that stuff and ACTUALLY work out a compromise). Talking about that is very important.
I think that we can talk about our experiences while acknowledging that all asexuals have different boundaries. There ARE people who can work out a compromise where they get something else that is worth having sex they don’t exactly want, but then there are also people where those boundaries change or where what they can stand isn’t what their partner “needs”. (ugh, let’s not get into THAT discussion…)
Er, screwed up the link on Amanda Marcotte – she’s the person who runs Pandagon and arguably a Big Name Feminist.
Okay I’m trying to reply to your post upthread but it’s not working. Weird threading? IDK. Anyway.
Consent doesn’t just apply to compromise, though. It applies to asexuals who don’t even know they’re asexual who end up relationships coerced into doing things they don’t want, which happens a lot and probably does way more damage than an asexual trying to compromise.
Thisthisthisthisthis. The traumatic situation I ended up in? It didn’t happen after I’d decided I was asexual, or after I’d found the ace community. It happened at a time when my thought processes were so fundamentally fucked due to growing up in a European progressive lefty environment that was aaaaall about not being repressed and embracing your natural human sexual desires that I spent most of the encounter desperately trying to convince myself I actually wanted what was happening but failing and then berating myself for being too stupid to do so. I think if we actually took a look at how many ace people had this sort of sexual experience – maybe one they wouldn’t want to call rape or assault but was a traumatising experience all the same, where they didn’t say no but they didn’t say yes, or they said yes but they didn’t actually want it they just felt they had to, or they said yes because they were trying to convince themselves they actually wanted it – the number would be shockingly high.
This is incidentally one of the reasons I really dislike it when asexual people are so quick to go “oh, of course we’re not violently oppressed”. Just because it happens behind closed doors doesn’t mean it’s not a kind of violence.
And yeah, it must be possible to work out things in such a way that leaves room for everyone – asexuals willing to compromise, unwilling to compromise, where it changes, where they don’t know they’re asexual yet, etc. Er, and sexual people of course, we might be able to fit them in somewhere too.
er, sorry, tried to quote and it didn’t work – the second paragraph in that comment is mean to be a quote.
…WP really doesn’t seem to like me.
Thanks for linking to that post. I’m pretty new to the concept of enthusiastic consent (though for years I think I’ve had a higher standard of consent than the norm), but I really like it.
I saw the Amanda Marcotte thing, and oh. my. god. At the time I still read Pandagon, and that was my cue to turn around and walk the hell away from her site and her work. And stay away. Because that was some horrible, horribly commentary right there, and she didn’t even have the excuse of being ignorant since there were very nice people pointing out how wrong she was RIGHT THERE. (Also saw the first Feministing thing. I had just started reading the site about then, this being back in 2008-ish? Again, just turned around and walked away, because the concern trolling in that thread made it pretty clear to me straight off that I wasn’t welcome there.)
Unfortunately that wasn’t the first time at all that I’d seen the whole “romantic asexuals in relationships with nonasexual people are TOTALLY TRYING TO MANIPULATE THE NONASEXUAL PERSON AND THEY ARE EEEEEEEEEEVIL” thing. I’m at the point where I cringe if a discussion of asexuals dating nonasexuals comes up in a nonasexual space, because someone always starts talking about how horrible asexual people are for dating nonasexual people. Bonus points for a heavy leavening of misogyny, too. I’ve seen that as well.
I really think I want to see a hell of a lot more discussion about asexual/nonasexual relationships that talks about different models. I mean, compromise in limited situations apparently does work for some people, yay, but when I was hanging out on AVEN I did not see people talking about things like polyamory or other relationship models very much at all. Or anything besides “try to compromise, if you can’t do that expect nothing.”
And things like… consent models that prioritize checking in on your partner would be awesome. Like, verbally making sure they are doing okay? Actually, you know what, MORE WORDS IN EVERYTHING. Verbal communication, and listening to what people are actually saying, and asking before you touch. And before you change the touch.
The only time it came up in real life while I was around was at an LGBT thing. I talked about how asexuals ahve a hard time finding a romantic partner because most sexuals aren’t okay with that, and someone said “If you’re upfront about it, what’s the big deal?”. I felt really weird about that. On the one hand- yeah, that’s how everyone should be. On the other- er, yeah, tell that to just about everyone else whose ever dated an asexual. Online? Ugh, so much of that. I hate that people feel like they’re entitled to sex.
Check-ins are so awesome. I really like the “red, yellow, green” model clarisse thorn talked about, just like traffic lights (in the US at least, dunno if they’re universal). Green: Everything’s fine. Yellow: I’m not sure how I feel about htis, proceed with caution. Red: STOP.
I definitely like that idea because of the room for people to say “I think I’m okay with this but I may not be, so I want to try it- so everyone involved needs to be more aware than usual of signs that it needs to stop” with yellow. People way too often think that consent is black and white, and it is (if someone doesn’t say yes, don’t do it. If someone says no halfway through- STOP), but humans aren’t binary creatures- there are plenty of things where a person MIGHT want something but isn’t SURE and needs to have the security to know that if they try it and don’t like it, that’s okay.
“I did not see people talking about things like polyamory or other relationship models very much at all.”
It happened, but not very long or very well. The monogamous people took offense at it. A few members, including a sexual, took any mention of polyamory as a personal attack and their contempt was obvious. There were no decent conversations about it because everything was derailed with 101 and bigotry.
And you know, I can get the “I couldn’t make that work, I need sex in a relationship” reaction. But it’s often also coupled with this… disgust, this total lack of empathy for anyone asexual, and that really makes me angry. Also, on disclosure, you do need to be honest but I’ve seen so many people who a) assume asexuals aren’t and b) have absolutely no empathy for the whole “yeah but eventually I would like to date and it would be nice if people did not recoil from the idea of being in a relationship with me before getting to know me” thing.
(I actually had a Psych of Women class wherein the class watched a movie and then were asked to discuss whether or not they would be willing to have a relationship with someone else who couldn’t orgasm or have sex with them. It was really close to “would you date an asexual?” It was not a pleasant experience.)
Oh, I like that also! And yeah, sometimes it’s “I’m actually not sure, I would like to try this with you, but please be ready in case I decide I find this too upsetting to continue.” It’s generally a good idea to be able to warn someone that you’re a bit uneasy.
Well, and a lot of the not-good experiences I’ve seen people talk about having come down to that freeze response, where you might not be able to actually say anything. I’ve personally been very lucky, and not been involved
It happened, but not very long or very well. The monogamous people took offense at it.
Wait, what? How could you find an alternate model offensive? I remember seeing a fair amount of “that couldn’t work for me” either because someone would have jealousy issues or because the sexual partner would feel really badly about it, and you know, fair enough. But seriously, finding it offensive? WTF.
The Feministing thing I’m thinking of was the one in June 2009 where someone sent a question about whether they were asexual to the Feministing advice columnists? I think we’re talking about the same one, though, becaaauuuse if you search for “asexuality” on the Feministing home page the only two things that come up are that and Courtney going “hey wow asexuality exists!” a year later! It did give me my own personal Bizarrest Suggestion For What Asexual Person “Really” Has – diabetes. I applaud you for having the sense to walk away – I didn’t – I commented under the name “Zailyn” for a few months before and after. :/
It’s funny how we deal with these things – I actually tend to bring up the asexual/sexual question myself on consent threads, because… it feels like so much sex-positive discussion on consent happens with the people involved thinking they’re in a shiny happy wonderland where there is no such thing as mismatched sexual desire in a relationship, or if there is the people involved can amicably break up and find partners they’re compatible with, and it galls me, it does. If I bring up asexual/sexual (as the most extreme example of mismatched sexual desire) and then point out that going “well asexual people should only have relationships with other asexuals” isn’t really feasible because of our numbers and diversity then I’ve forced the subject on the table, and if I get truly horrible responses all I’ve done is sort of made the nastiness that was implicit before visible for everyone.
And, ack, I’m sorry for just talking about how sexual people screw up consent talk, it’s just that this is the first time I’ve been able to talk about this shit with asexual people where I’m sure they wouldn’t go “but it was an opportunity to educate!” Back on topic.
It occurs to me that we can view consent as a sort of… spectrum? Which is to say, an at least perceived to be uncoerced yes has to be present for it to be consent, but then you can judge things like enthusiasm and how active the other partner is and such, and the further towards the “just lying there” or so end of the scale you get the more important it is to have communication about what’s going on and whether the other partner actually wants this and so on… and of course any signs of distress should call for an immediate stop to check in and talk about what’s happening. I can envisage a situation where the partner just lying there is perfectly fine with the situation, but that is NOT something that should be taken for granted and something that should be SERIOUSLY hashed out beforehand. And as you say, communication communication communication is really important in general and the more of it the better. Like, I do like enthusiastic consent if it’s not used in a “no other form of consent is valid” way, but I can imagine a situation where someone enthusiastically consents but got carried away and regrets it later that communication would prevent.
And yes, checking in. Consent as a process, not a one-time event.
And also OMG YES to different models. It’s struck me recently that I was prone to this – like, if I want a relationship with a sexual either I compromise or it won’t work out – and would just *assume* that open relationship wouldn’t be an option, even at a time when I was still iding as aromantic and could not possibly have said whether I’d be okay with that. (In fact, I am now actually sort of poly in my weird greyromantic way, I think. I’m in a not!relationship but she’s in another similar relationship and I am free to seek out something similar for myself, and my god if you’d told me what my love life would look like five years ago I would have thought you were on drugs.) I’m also reminded of some of the stuff DJ’s written about changing the way we think about and do relationships which I think is very cool and very radical but doesn’t really seem to have made an impact on AVEN as a whole. There are more options than dating ace people or dating sexuals and then compromising.
That would indeed be the one. The letter to Dr. Foxy? And I suspect I might have had the “walk away” response precisely because at the time, I hadn’t had anything much invested in the community or the site–I’d never commented, for one thing. I don’t know how it is for you, but for me it’s a lot easier to say “fuck this, not worth it” if I haven’t spent much time in a community to begin with.
I think I mentioned on your blog, I only spend a limited amount of time in specifically sex-positive spaces, but I think in general what I’ve observed squares neatly into what you’re saying. People seem so invested in reacting to “sex is bad” or “sex needs controlling” cultural standards that they don’t actually seem to want to think about any of the ways in which sex DOES need to be managed to keep everyone safe. And bringing up tricky consent situations seems to get reacted to badly, and the easiest way to shut up that discussion is to demonize romantic asexuals and more broadly the less-interested half of any couple with a mismatched libido. (Enter here the big problem with HSDD when it’s NOT medicalizing my entire orientation. Sigh.)
Oh my god, I HATE the “but it is an opportunity to educate!” people. No, I am not actually a visibility robot, thanks for asking, and frankly I’d like to have conversations about my experiences once in a while without having to play teacher. (Also, sometimes I think that people do not get that playing educator–especially off of explicit asexual spaces–is exhausting and emotionally draining. ESPECIALLY if there’s any reason to think people are going to react badly, as they generally do if you’re pointing out something problematic they’re assuming.) Oh, and if you espouse a teaching model that isn’t friendly and polite in response to a gaffe, the heads really explode! Apparently we are never ever supposed to lose our tempers.
DJ’s cool relationship stuff is one of the reasons I really wish he was still exerting a really active influence on asexuality discussion rather than taking a step back. You’re right, there is a ton of cool stuff there. Although I sometimes think that DJ does miss… hm. The difficulty it can sometimes take to form relationships like that? He seems to be this really charismatic guy whose immediate circle is also composed of very queer-identified people, and I sometimes think he does not realize that not everyone is quite as good at convincing other people to have queered meddling-with-the-definition-of-romance relationships as he is. Relationships, unfortunately, still take two people, and there’s a lot of cultural emphasis on traditional monogamous romantic relationships which makes it rather difficult to compensate if your model is different.
There’s not actually much discussion of the difficulties inherent in being asexual and seeking long-term intimacy, now that I think of it. And there really does need to be, since the models I seem to see bandied around really do boil down to “romantic asexuals get to have normal romantic relationships!” and if aromantic long-term models are ever mentioned (which I do not see much at all, apparently if you don’t fit into the traditional romantic model well you’re fucked), it tends to be “and they need friends too!” And people usually do not discuss the broader difficulties inherent in being a romantic asexual trying to find a partner, or in not actually fitting the traditional romantic paradigms at all.
Also, I find poly really really cool, but that’s me. There was an incident with my group of meatspace friends a while ago that looks in hindsight extremely similar to some of the things I’ve read about managing a poly triad relationship–sometimes I think I blur the boundaries between “dating” and “friendship.”
@Sciatrix – yeah, that’s the one. And I get that – there are communities some of my friends are in where because my first encounter with them went badly I am never going to spend time there, but I’m much more willing to put up with shit if I feel as if I’ve invested something in the community. Not that I ever got much of a warm fuzzy feeling from Feministing, but… for one, I was just getting into commenting on feminist sites and it was the most active, and for another, I felt as if I could do some good educating because there were a lot of young newbie feminists whose only disprivilege was their gender and were, er, kind of clueless. It… didn’t go very well.
Yeah, it’s, I have this theory that a lot of the nasty shallow parts of sex-positivism come from seeing the way sex and sexuality is extremely restricted in society and there are all sorts of double-binds and in general people’s expression of their sexualities are very much frowned upon and interpreting that as “society is anti-sex”. Which it’s not, as any asexual can probably attest to. But I can see how a sexual person could misinterpret it that way. But as a result, we get this… putting sex onto a pedestal, if that makes sense? and making it into this amazing radical subversive empowering etc etc etc act, and people who attack that notion can expect to get slammed. And it’s very easy to demonise asexuals anyway for them, because under the anti-sex model an asexual person is either lucky enough to have their orientation in line with what society wants from them or actually complicit in oppression. Neither of which nets us a good reaction if we assert our existence or bring up our problems.
And yeeaaah. I have some issues with how things are done in the broader social justice sphere, but the robot-educator stuff coming from AVEN makes me shudder. *And* I’ve internalised some of it which is unpleasant. Never to mention that that teaching model isn’t even necessarily the best way to learn – like, sometimes? showing anger can really wake people up by making it realise that this is *important*, this isn’t just an academic exercise. (Like many white fans I had my consciousness massively raised during Racefail ’09, and I remember some of the posts where I could feel the anger and hurt really, really making an impact on me).
Re: DJ – I admit I don’t know him at all, but I can sort of see why he took a step back. I mean, quite apart from asexuality stuff possibly consuming his life… he sort of ended up *the* figurehead of the asexual movement essentially by accident (by which I mean, that it was AVEN that exploded instead of another ace site), and I can see how that would put someone in a pretty awkward position and how he might want to step out of the limelight so that the community could develop several leaders and groups. I actually have trouble describing to people coming from other queer communities just how centralised the asexual world is, how AVEN is THE community and there is like one person who is THE posterchild for asexuality and THE “leader” of the movement. DJ seems cool and all but that’s not necessarily a good thing. And… hmm, yeah. My problem with his relationship stuff is that, well, the way he describes it it takes a pretty big investment of time and energy and I just don’t have the spoons.
Keeping and upholding relationships with people takes energy as well, especially if you’re not around people you feel you can be close to in meatspace and you have communication issues and weird interest patterns that affect you online. I still think it’s incredibly valuable stuff, just not really something I can do the way he does.
not actually fitting the traditional romantic paradigms at all
Ha, yeah. In fact, the more I talk to aromantic people these days the more I hear them talking about stuff like this, and it’s possible that if I were a bit newer to the whole business I’d be iding as aromantic – but when I was trying to work out my romantic identity all my aromantic “role models” seemed to be of the “independence is wonderful! I don’t need anyone to share my life with!” sort which I couldn’t really identify with either. Also, the attracted-to-women component. :/ It’s… well, it’s sort of DJ’s main point, that instead of trying to slot our relationships into friendship vs romance in the standard way we can try something different. And go blurring the lines between dating and friendship! \o/ (although the problem with blurring the lines is that it is possible you will then be unable to find them when you need them – like, I am crushing hardcore on a sexual friend of mine who’s in a relationship and, how do I *stop* myself from forming an attachment that goes beyond platonic, help!)
Oh yes, I definitely feel you about sex being put on a pedestal! I had never considered it from the “asexuality being complicity in what society wants” perspective because, well, that’s kind of unfathomable from an actual asexual perspective, but I suppose under that philosophy it does make a sort of twisted sense. Mostly what I have seen is the disability analogies, like asexuality is analogous to being blind, and… no. Just no.
I think we’ve all internalized it to some extent. I mean, I really don’t see any asexual radicalism at all. The asexual community is REALLY warped around this idea of educating the majority and catering to ignorance. I remember glancing at someone’s dreamwidth blog and seeing them report on an asexuality kerfluffle, and she mentioned saying something like “wow, the asexuality has a REALLY HIGH logic bombers to nukers rate!” and that hit me. (In context this was praise. To me… no.) Because you’re right, nukers make people shut up and take notice. You need to have BOTH to run a coherent movement, and seriously our ratios ARE really skewed. (Also, I had my brain hit a lot during Racefail, although I was mostly sitting back and lurking during that. I tend to lurk a lot on metafandom’s linked posts–I find them a really useful resource for sitting up and taking notice.)
Actually, I think DJ’s taking the place as “figurehead” of the community was neither total chance or without choice on his part. I was reading some discussion of ancient history on apositive a while ago by a user called paranoidgynandroid who founded the LJ community and played a huge role in writing the FAQ, and they were pointing out that DJ in large part stood up while they sort of faded into the shadows because DJ makes a better figurehead. That is, he’s this clearly not repressed, cisgendered, good-looking, able-bodied and -minded, extroverted white guy. Basically, he’s otherwise highly privileged, which means that he fits into “default” mode better than someone who maybe isn’t all of these things, and THAT meant that asexuals are/were harder to invalidate based on other aspects of a person’s identity. So it was harder for media to write off asexuality as, say, a girl thing or a result of disability because there’s DJ who is male and TAB standing right there. I transcripted a podcast he and Swankivy did a while back in which he was talking about media representation of asexuality, and there seems to have been a lot of very conscious manipulation of media in the earlier days of AVEN.
(And it’s probably not a coincidence that AVEN ended up the big site either–mandrewliter has some interesting history posts about the very early asexuality communities, which basically posits that AVEN became the huge community because it was easier to have conversation there.) I don’t know him personally either, I’ve just read some of the stuff he’s written about. And I do totally understand why he wants to take a break already–you’re right, he is sort of the Big Name, and I can definitely get going “okay, I’ve done this for almost ten years now, I’d like a break.”
And right, it does require a lot of spoons. And also a fair amount of luck–not everyone has access to the kinds of people who are going to go “yay, queer relationships instead of plain friendships!” I mean, my meatspace circle is actually pretty awesome in a lot of ways, but I can think of exactly two people I’d be totally comfortable bringing up the relationship-shifting paradigm stuff with. And that, to me, is lucky.
Well, to be fair, a lot of what I have been seeing about aromantic discussion is… SlightlyMetaphysical and me talking back and forth at one another. And other things in the blogosphere. It definitely wasn’t going on much on AVEN, and when I was there I was too busy reacting to people perceiving aromantics as kind of cold and sociopathic to really discuss the relationships I wanted to be having or that I thought I could have. Certainly not making new queered definitions of romance–actually, one of the issues I have with AVEN is that there’s a significant minority who are very very clear that they do not want to be associated with the queer community or have people think they’re queer. So that may also play a role in why alternate relationship models don’t come up much?
(The other worry I have about blurring the lines is that I will creep people out and push them away. And also how do you get people to consent to line blurring, and what if they don’t feel even close to similarly?)
It’s not so much the “oh my god you poor people you are so deficient” folks. It’s… I sometimes get this feeling off people who appear nominally accepting of asexuality, but there is this… undercurrent… of “oh yeah, your desires are in line with social norms, lucky for you” that mainly manifests in apparently refusing to think or write about problems asexuals encounter or even believe they exist. Like, thinking that them accepting asexuality as being real is all we need. And I’ve seen some… oh damn, I’ve seen many… people become utterly furious when they so much as feel as if asexuals have said they’re oppressed. (The reaction of a lot of asexuals to backpedal going “but but we know we’re not really oppressed we just want the world to acknowledge our existence!” is one I am unhappy with in a lot of ways although I can see why people do it.) In fact, I’ve seen a sexual queer person go “asexual is what other people want *us* to be!” which, yeah, no, you’re not getting it.
And. Yes. Come to think of it, I say I’ve internalised it, but thinking about it I am probably pretty radical as asexual folk go. Which is a truly frightening thought. I sometimes feel (tying into asexual history here) that the main discourse on AVEN back in the early days that sort of set the tone for what was to come was driven by people who didn’t have much experience with social justice, and in particular that there was this presumption that all anti-asexual attitudes are rooted in nothing but ignorance so all we have to do is educate and they will vanish into thin air. And they didn’t realise things like the exhausting nature of dealing with bigotry. And now we are left with the resulting culture that just seems so, so *naive* sometimes coming from SJ spaces.
Also, *really* interesting stuff about early asexuality that I knew a bit of but not much, I shall mull this over. Do you still have a copy of that transcript?
Re: aromantic discussion, what I’m sort of basing it on here is what I’ve seen people in asexual_fandom and generally on DW say, I think. And I’ve seen a lot of aromantics who talk about wanting a life partner. I think I sort of hashed out my romantic identity 2008-early 2010 (where by “hashed out” I mean “couldn’t figure out if aromantic or homoromantic, went with ‘somewhere in the middle’ as a stopgap because I was tired of it and then started identifying that way”) and in particular at the beginning I wasn’t talking to that many other asexuals. I think I let glad_to_be_a over at LJ sort of help form my mental image of aromanticism, and by the time I saw aromantic ace folk expressing similar desires to mine regarding life partnerships – mainly this year, I think – I’d got quite attached to my in-between identity. (Although it does mean I’m never quite sure where to stand in the romantic vs aromantic wars, as I sort of identify with both and neither.) And ugh ugh ugh the aromantic as cold and emotionless thing, that is just so fucked up and wrong.
The anti-queer minority has always made me go :/ rather although I don’t see much of them. I mean, I do not want to proscribe to anyone how they want to identify, but so often it feels like it’s very reactionary or there is a whiff of anti-queerdom (LGBTphobia? more general than homophobia, I think, transphobia comes into it somewhere too) about it. And then there’s the people who think we cannot possibly compare our oppression to other sexual orientations’ and it would be coopting. Which, do we really want to make “experiences violent oppression” the litmus test for who’s queer enough?
(Oh man yeah. I’m both worried I’ll destroy my friendship with this person and worried she won’t view it as romantic but I sort of will and I’ll be non-consensually not!dating her which seems highly ethically dubious. But I’m terrified of bringing it up, I mean *I* barely understand what’s going on and don’t know where the line is.)
…and, uh, we appear to have sort of taken over Dreki’s blog, SCORE. Dreki, I’m really sorry, if you want us to take this to e-mail or something just say.
ack, forgot to clarify on a point – my main objection re: anti-queer asexuals is the ones who think asexuals shouldn’t call themselves queer *generally* (or only if bi- or homo- or panromantic) or that the asexual community shouldn’t try to ally with LGBT or get into LGBT (we can dream…). For asexuals who don’t want to identify as queer but don’t make those objections, well, it’s their identity and not my business.
I’m iffy on the LGB because, well, I don’t want the T in there and Id on’t want what happened to the T to happen to an A.
Trans people tend to get ignored, our issues are dropped easily (and we’re expected to support things that have absolutely no benefit for us, while cLGB people aren’t expected to do the same), and our identities will be outright erased if it’s “inconvenient” for the LGB to acknowledge them (a TON of mixed-gender couples who face discrimination get labeled “gay” by the LGB community to make it “easier”, completely erasing the gender of the trans person involved). Most people don’t know what the T actually means or stands for, assume it has something to do with sexual orientation because the other 3 do. And this isn’t getting into the hate crimes trans people have faced in so-called “LGBT” spaces, often by cis LG people, and even if cLGB people aren’t doing it- they allow it to happen, making it clear just how “inclusive” the LGB is for the T.
I’ve seen LG(b) people against asexuals as much as most other sexuals. Thinking that people will point ot us as proof that gay people can be gay wtihout acting on it, calling up all the “laet bloomer” “haven’t met the right person” type tropes, a few years ago there was a big fuss on AVEN because they likened us to pedophiles. IF it was possible for the A to be part of the LGB in a way where our issues and needs are addressed, where our realities are acknowledged and respected and not explicitly invalidated the second it’s “more convenient” to do so, where we don’t face being demonized and attacked in spaces that claim to include us, etc- then, yes, it could be helpful because the LGB community is big and powerful.
I just have no faith in that happening.
However, I completely agree wtih you. The main reason I see most people saying “We shouldn’t be in the LGB” is generally homophobic “we aren’t like THOSE PEOPLE” or naive “if we aren’t associated with the LGB then everyone will accept our sexuality and we can keep straight privilege!” That pisses me off.
Hell no, I’m enjoying watching this. It’s a really awesome conversation.
To your concerns upthread, Dreki: Hoo yeah, I totally get that about the LG(b) community. I actually usually assume that bi and trans people are more likely asexual allies than gay people for precisely that reason–they’re more used to being low on the queer hierarchy and ignored a lot, and bisexuals in particular share issues with aces like people assuming that the gender of whomever you’re dating tells what your orientation is and issues of mismatched orientations and things like that. This is not always the case, but… more likely than with plain gay people?
Well, and we have so MANY trans aces, your wonderful self included, Dreki. So, you know, as a community cis aces ought to be paying special attention to how to be good allies to trans people, both because of hopes of getting trans groups to be allies back to asexuals but also because damn, we ought to make sure we’re not hurting trans aces by accident or making them uncomfortable. Because the asexual community should be for all of us. SO FAR THERE HAS BEEN FAIL, but I remain optimistic that yelling at other cis people not to be assholes will eventually accomplish something.
Yeah, I feel weird including the B in the LGB when I talk about that because most of the problems I’ve seen are strictly from homosexual people, bisexual people not so much, I just haven’t seen enough from them to know either way. I remember looking on a thread on a bi forum that was about mismatched sexual and romantic orientation- it seems like a good number of people who are bi”sexual” are either homo/heteroromantic hetero/homosexual or mono/biromantic bi/monosexual or something like that. I definitely don’t think that’s true for all asexuals, maybe not most, but it seems like they’re more likely to be able to understand mismatched sexual and romantic orientation and liking someone in a non-sexual way than monosexuals, which can help understanding asexuality. I knew a guy who was biromantic homosexual who’d only ever dated women (people he wasn’t sexually attracted to), so I imagine he could get being asexual and how sex isn’t the be-all end-all.
And we definitely DO have a ton of trans aces. I think there’s a study that (I have no idea how reliable it is) showed that 1/3 of trans people are asexual. Even if that was off by a bit, that’s still significantly more than the cis population. I liked that, in the interview you linked to, DJ talked about how the trans community seemed like a good ally for asexuals. I don’t know how accepting sexual trans people are of asexuals, but I haven’t seen it come up and get the same response.
Sexuality is a complicated issue for trans people because there’s dysphoria, societal pressure in a fucked up new way, and gatekeepers to navigate- not gettinginto how it can change on hormones for some people. I also think trans people have a higher rate of being sexually abused/raped, which makes it even more complex. I never really thought about it before, but trans communities are pretty comfortable for me because there’s no idea that everyone wants a certain kind of sex or even that everyone can have/talk about it comfortably so the conversations aren’t as bad for me as in sexual cis communities were the assumption is that everyone wants sex the same way and as often as everyone else. It’s really alienating when people talk about sex with the idea that everyone int he room experiences it the same way, and I’ve never seen that with trans people.
I don’t really expect most communities to be good about checking their privileges, especially the asexual one that is set up to deny sexual privilege for sexuals (wtf?). It would be nice, ideally, if there were a way to make it happen, but I’m not really surprised or dissappointed that it hasn’t with the asexual community. I’m more sad that I’m so resigned to every single bloody community kicking another one.
That is an *excellent* point on LGBT. I’ve thought I hadn’t been that optimistic, but… thinking about it, part of me just hoped that getting a letter in the LGBT soup would mean that I could poke my head into LGBT spaces and e.g. my uni LGBT society without having to be terrified of them kicking me out or being asexophobic. And you very rightly point out that that’s no guarantee.
And also, thinking about it, I think I’ve seen more hostility to asexuals from LGB folk than from straight people. Similarly to how I feel a lot of anti-asexual attitudes I encounter come from sex-positivism. It’s, we always *say* that LGB folk are more likely to accept us or are our natural allies or so, but I haven’t seen much sign of that on their part. Same with the sex-positive movement.
I think despite the fact that I knew about some of the issues the T had faced from LGB, as well as biphobia, I sort of figured that trying to ally with the LGBT movement was a natural progression. This is giving me something to think about.
Yeah, having your letter in the acronym guarantees nothing. I don’t think it’d be as abd for asexuals as it can be for trans people, but it definitely isn’t a guarantee. It would be awesome if including the A meant that we could get some safe spaces. But I really don’t think that’s the case at all. I think there’s still biphobia in the LG community… :/
I’ve definitely seen the same, at least with gay people I don’t know about bi people. Even with ones who aren’t acephobic, I’ve heard from some asexuals who went to LG(b) spaces and felt completely out of place because the conversations so often revolve around sex. I remember seeing a partner on AVEN, a gay man, who insisted that his partner had a mental disease that needed to be fixed. I just sat there going “Okay, less than 50 years ago they said the same about your sexuality. Are you really doing the same bloody thing?”. I don’t like the idea of “natural allies” in any situation, because there are too many intercommunity politics that get in the way of that happening. Natural progression only really works out if it’s already happening, but it doesn’t seem to be.
I’m also REALLY worried that if the A did try to join up, it’d be completely swept up in the already established and considerably more powerful LG(b) movement and we’d have no real way to represent ourselves and our publicity would be controlled by sexual people in a way that most helps the LG(b) community and undoes all the work we’ve already did. Maybe that’s me being paranoid, but I could see it happening really easily without the LG(b) people realizing they’re even doing it.
Well, I HAVE seen shit coming from bi people–in fact, I don’t know if you heard about the ontd_feminism brouhaha, but that was heavily bi people being really really shitty to asexual people. Few lesbians in there, if I remember correctly, one really horrible straight woman, but there were a lot of bi women as well. So it’s not all kittens and sunshine, but I do see a little more ground to connect on with bi people than with gay people.
And… yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense with respect to trans communities having a very complicated relationship with sexuality. My experience with trans posters is largely through the asexual community, so that doesn’t tend to come up quite as much. It’s interesting that there’s that kind of “anything goes” attitude with respect to variety in sexuality, also.
I know what you mean about expecting communities to fail and kick each other.
I just, you know, wish it didn’t happen that way. And I do want to leverage my privilege on the axes I have it to try and make a better space.
(Also chiming in on your response to Kaz here by the way, Dreki. Sorry, there is not much room!)
I’ve also felt the same thing about asexophobia often coming from the queer community. Some of the worst things I’ve seen on asexuality have come out of the mouths of gay cis men, for instance.
Mostly, I think the LGB community is really too fragmented to get “officially added” to the acronym, and anyway there are already so many letters on it that if we stick to the letter paradigm we’ll just get lost again. Frankly I just want to know if I’m welcome in their spaces to discuss sexuality. I’ve never assumed that the broader LGB movement will spend much focus at all helping asexuals, because… well… reading about biphobia! And transphobia in the GLBT community! I basically just want to know if I can go to the campus queer group and talk about being ace and maybe do some education work without getting the stinkeye. My standards are pretty low.
Bi people being shitty to asexuals is something I’m totally open to believing I just didn’t want to say “They totally do this” until I had hard evidence. Blah, everyone fails. Not that I’m surprised.
I don’t know if there’s an “anything goes” attitude with trans people. It’s just a discussion that’s more aware of everyone’s differences in their relationship to their sexuality and genitals. The trans community is as guilty of kicking other people as anyone else.
I agree with the fragmentation problem- I’ve seen some people who have an acronym that includes “A squared” (allies & asexuals). I wisht here were a way to guarantee that, but there isn’t. You can show up at the campus group and hope. That’s about it. Even asking people doesn’t help because most give the shiny “We accept everyone!” version rather than the realistic “except…” version. I really do wish there was a way to ensure that those spaces are open and inclusive and embracing of asexuals, but there really is no way beyond putting yourself into them and finding out first hand. And that takes a lot if it turns out it isn’t a safe space for you.
Dreki, I apologize, tell us to go away if you want to! Er.
I… wow, wait, “asexual is what other people want us to be?” Yeah, honey, no, what they want is for you to be STRAIGHT. *mutters* That sudden rage if asexuals dare to start talking about our problems in any space that is not, in fact, asexual specific is really, really frustrating in a headdesky kind of way–because they ALWAYS try to silence asexuals by insisting that asexuals experience no oppression, right as they SILENCE asexuals. And yeah, I also feel you about the people who are like “yay asexuals” but suddenly look a bit cross-eyed if asexuals start talking about ways in which X issue affects us specifically, especially if X issue hits asexuals harder than nonasexuals.
I TOTALLY FEEL YOU on thinking “man… as far as our community goes, I’m a radical. Wait, there’s something seriously wrong with that.” And yes on naivety with respect to social justice issues–I really feel like that the board culture was influenced by that idea of “as long as we’re polite and courteous, how could they NOT accept us?
” and that has metastasized since into this… hm, cancer of over-friendliness and over-politeness. And sometimes I think that people in particular who do not do very much SJ work in nonasexual spaces–that is, who maybe don’t come out very often in meatspace or discuss asexuality off AVEN ever–vastly underestimate the emotional drain that goes into the work. Like education is just a fun and interesting conversation, not trying to explain what your life is like to someone who maybe has no interest in understanding.
I do have a copy. I host it in a Google document here. It makes very interesting reading–it’s basically DJ and Swankivy (who has also been around a very long time) talking asexuality to an ally friend on an anarchist podcast run by the friend, and it wanders all over the board in terms of discussion. As I recall, the bits about manipulating the media are near the end. (Also, the bits on why they both got into activism are heartbreaking. Particularly Swankivy’s.)
Sometimes I wonder how useful the aromantic/romantic distinction is, really. I mean, yes, there are people who seem to have clearly defined romantic attractions to one gender, I suppose we need it for them, but… aaaaargh, I find the entire thing so confusing on a bunch of different levels.
Well, and my experience is that they’re rarer on Livejournal and almost nonexistent on Dreamwidth, but that could be self-selection. And yeah, I can definitely get “I personally do not identify this way,” but the ones who are like “but but asexuality isn’t queer” or “stop trying to associate with LGBT groups, people will think I’m gay or possibly trans!” really bug me. (You’re right about the transphobia, I think, which is I suspect part of the reason I saw a lot of people bitching about the transyadas being so active.)
(I never know what’s going on emotionally anyway, I have spent so many years carefully teasing over my feelings for various friends and wondering whether I want to date them, and always coming up with “maybe? but I don’t necessarily want our friendship to change except that she would stick around in my life” which is just confusing.)
Dreki I grovel at your feet in apology.
Yeah, that made me so angry to read. And there was a ton of “how can heteroromantic asexuals be queer? that’s just like being straight! I, the sexual person, cannot imagine how asexuality would change anything!” and dude, no. And the “asexuals experience no oppression” thing, I KNOW. I saw one thread (…and I am wondering during this conversation oh god why can I remember so many specific instances of people saying horrible shit about asexuality D:) in which asexuals’ answers to people going “but you aren’t actually oppressed!” went from “well, we know we’re not, we just want to have people acknowledge our existence” to “…have you actually read this thread?” because, like, there were rape threats.
And yes yes yes re: overfriendliness and politeness. Which isn’t a bad thing except when it’s getting pushed as compulsory which it is. And re: radicalism… it sort of reminds me of the atheist community? Like, there are all these militant atheists and I don’t agree with them but it sort of comforts me that they exist, because every movement should have its radical side. And then I take asexuality and I look for those types of people and I find no one (discounting antisexuals because that’s different – am thinking of being radical re: asexual acceptance here – and plus I’ve hardly seen them around), and I’m among the extremest portion of the asexual population in my attitudes on asexual acceptance, and it frightens me because I should not be the extreme point. Also, agree about often feeling people are not doing much SJ space in nonasexual spaces. This is actually something I feel I tripped over talking about sex-positivity because I have this background of feeling alienated and marginalised in sex-pos spaces and from the comments and from reading asexual discussion about sex-positivism in ace communities it feels as if a lot of asexuals just haven’t discussed it outside the community. We’re quite isolated, in a way.
With the aromantic/romantic distinction I’m starting to think that, like, because people are defining themselves by *lack* of romantic drive they’re going to be much more diverse than people who define themselves by having one. So under the aromantic banner could theoretically fall people like me, who want life partnerships that don’t quite feel romantic but don’t quite feel like friendship, could fall people who want close friendships, could fall people who get their intimacy via communities (to steal DJ’s language), could fall people who don’t desire more than “regular” friendship and are most interested in independence… reading the transcript I like DJ’s division into partnership vs community vs solitary although it’s still imperfect (e.g. I think I’d like to get a lot more of my intimacy from community than is feasible.) I think an issue is that, like, okay people who want to date others of X gender find the terms Xromantic useful, but the way the community’s evolved it’s sort of got to the point where it feels like any asexual needs to identify their romantic orientation even if what they want and feel is way more complicated than that *raises hand*.
And thank you, that is an incredibly interesting interview! And oho, I hadn’t realised they were so manipulative – although tbh I’m not surprised, thinking about it. Like. It’s very easy to spot the patterns just from watching the interviews, so it’s no surprise that they figured them out and worked out ways to combat that. (Still highly politely, I note – like, I would kill to see someone *actually* ask “wait, aren’t you going to ask me if I’m a lesbian? or if I’ve got out of a bad relationship? because that’s usually next on the list” in an interview. XDD) Not as naive as all that. And yeah, swankivy’s why she got into it? I want to cry, I do. ;_;
and yeah I think I’ve only seen the anti-queer asexuals on AVEN, come to think of it. Definitely not among the aces I know on DW… although, I do find some heteroromantic or sometimes aromantic people who essentially go “I don’t really think we should id as queer because I’d feel as if I were coopting because I’m not oppressed enough.” I often sort of try to be a counterexample there saying, like, actually I *have* same-gender attraction so for them I have a sort of Bona Fide claim to being queer via that and I don’t think that part is necessary, I think heteroromantic and aromantic folk have just as much claim. (Although I suppose I’m not *entirely* homoromantic so the bona fidety is a bit dubious, but wanting a life partnership with a woman definitely puts me in the line of homophobia.)
And oh man the transphobia. I actually went and found that thread on AVEN because I wanted to see what went down and oh god, it was so awful. I wanted to hug P so much for the shit that was being said.
Poor transyadas. And it’s… I sort of feel horrible about it because I’ve felt keenly that AVEN wasn’t safe and stayed away ever since awful shit got said by a mod about repulsed folk two years ago. I read the mod thread, saw a mod claiming repulsed folk weren’t actually ace, saw none of the other mods say *anything* about it at all and went – this site is rotten to the core. If I were invested in the community, I would stay and try to fix it, but I wasn’t really so I just got the fuck out. (Incidentally, fun fact! I recently went and looked at that thread, and a) you can really see how AVEN warps you in how I acted – I was totally polite and very “I’m sure you didn’t mean to imply this” and you could not really tell from my posts that I found what had happened so hurtful it made me give up on AVEN as a community period, and b) you commented on it! it feels like we’ve been just barely missing each other for years!) And, anyway, I just look at the people who are being driven off now and I’m… not surprised. At all. And I just feel so awful that they probably joined as nice shiny newbies with no idea of what was going on, happy to have found an asexual community, possibly at a time when I was already avoiding the place. It’s not as if I could have warned them off, but still.
(oh maan yeah. Or like, I want to live with the person, I want to spend more time with them, but I don’t really want the types of things we do to change. /o\ ??)
That was the ontd_feminism clusterfuck, wasn’t it? And yeah, it was seriously just… unspeakable levels of horribleness. (It’s okay, I remember fails, too. Part of me thinks that remembering the really bad horrible things is a useful way to categorize the ways in which asexuals are oppressed, because you definitely see some very strong trends like using ableism and claiming that asexuals totally just want the attention and *magical sparkly privilege* that comes with being queer-identified. Apparently we are horning in on a great thing there!) I know a heteroromantic ace who is actually a student council member for her campus queer organization, so… apparently they are not all faily, at least?
I have Things To Say about that. Because really, it’s not even that not-politeness isn’t encouraged, it’s that it’s actively discouraged when it does occur. I still remember a thread in which this sexual dude–I think he claimed he was a doctor–came in and asked us if we’d collectively seen someone about our asexuality. And I was feeling up on spoons that day and I said “also, dude, this is kind of offensive because X” in that tone–not angry, actually quite relaxed, no swear words–and I got piled on. WTF.
Also, yeah, we are really surprisingly isolated. I know some people working on doing campus queer group outreach, but other than that I really just do not see asexual discussion outside of asexual spaces. I think the one exception I’ve seen is FWD, actually–I’d seen a couple of ace pieces linked there, including that one you did a while ago.
Oh, I really like that way of thinking about it! It… actually, it kind of reminds me of asexuality discussion itself, where we as a group are extraordinarily diverse and tend to come to asexuality through a huge variety of perspectives, but it only gets tied together through not doing the traditional romance thing. Interesting. (Let’s paint around a definition of romance!) And community-oriented… yeah, I feel you on the “but it’s not feasible” thing. I don’t know about your experiences, but mine are that people move every ten years if I’m lucky and every four if I’m not, and I am the sort of person who wants to just… have the same group of people around me for ever and ever. And of course there’s no cultural understanding of that, it’s all about the pressure to pair-bond, and the person you’re in a monogamous relationship with has an obligation to stay in your life but no one else does.
Swankivy’s activism tends to be more the “hang out and talk to people on OKCupid” thing or else making Youtube videos rather than actual mainstream media interviews, and she can actually get quite snarky on occasion. She also wrote a piece which is now on AVEN ages and ages ago entitled “The Asexuality Top Ten” detailing the most common obnoxious responses she gets and why they suck. I love her to bits. She’s mostly on the LJ comm, too.
I’ve seen like… one on LJ. And that’s it. For the ones talking about appropriativeness, I usually use the fact that I spent most of high school being Mistaken for Gay, not exactly in a positive way. Homophobia doesn’t actually only hit people who are actually in same-sex relationships, although that’s a big part of it. (And, y’know, my gender presentation is off enough that I occasionally come in for gender policing as well. I’m not sure how more gender-conforming aromantic asexuals’ experiences go, but my experience is that non-gender-conforming girl + clearly and openly not interested in boys = SCREAMING LESBIAN to most people.) I also usually bring up the whole “in ur relationships, messing with ur definitions of romance” thing and occasionally I’ll talk about specifically asexual losses of privilege.
Oh gosh, yes, I felt so badly for P. And all the yadas–I remember there being a lot of confusion and hurt about then. Especially when the drama queen stuff kicked up on P, because seriously, wtf? He is very much not dramatic at all, not about things that matter. I don’t know what the fuck is the mods’ problem with actively taking a stand on AVEN content beyond “don’t get too angry, guys,” but it’s really gone solidly bad. I thought the new ToS which actually outright said “no, you cannot be a bigot here” might be a step in the right direction, but it’s clear from that incident that it was more about the PR than anything. (I suspect it miiiiight have come from a pretty nasty post involving a fuckton of biphobia/homophobia about lesbians, but I can’t be too sure about that.)
Also, really? I did? Wow, that is weird, because I don’t remember it–I remember personally dealing with lots and lots of other egregious fails, but not that one. I must have just been coming back from my two-year hiatus at the time. Really, I don’t think anything could have driven me off then, since I was flat desperate to talk to asexuals again and find some kind of community at the time. And I don’t remember there being anything else.
I feel bad about poor shiny newbies, but by the time I left I was too busy getting angry about FAIL to do any kind of shepherding. :/ At least there is beginning to be some amounts of broadening going on now.
(OMG YES. And… I want to hang around my apartment with you and cook you food and read books in your company and all that, but I don’t actually want our friends-relationship to change because it’s already good.)
Ahaha, not the ontd_feminism although I remember that one, it was on an anon meme. Um… *searches journal* I know I ranted about it at the time… found it! it was on fandom_secrets. Er, warning for comments. Although don’t get me wrong, the ontd_feminism was ALSO unspeakable levels of horrible. I found that a few weeks after it happened and it left me never wanting to set foot in sexual queer spaces again. :/ Also, lol @ magical sparkly privilege, it does feel like people are thinking that doesn’t it!
And cool! I’d seen swankivy’s Youtube stuff and her Top Ten Responses things but I didn’t actually realise she was still active. Neat.
And *nods*. Although weirdly, considering I’m dubiously homoromantic ish (I am thinking of calling this homoWTF) I don’t believe I’ve ever got mistaken for gay. I actually sort of think in high school my classmates *did* think I was asexual but out of thinking I was too weird to possibly be interested in dating. Like – okay, it’s tough to describe my school years, because I managed to escape without being bullied but that doesn’t mean I was accepted by my classmates. I think they sort of thought I was an alien that had got lost somewhere. Um. And then at uni people just assumed I was straight although I’d never given them the slightest reason to think so. :/ I don’t think I read as gender nonconforming anyway, which is, uh, kind of ironic right now. ._.
Drama queen?! The hell? I mean, reading it I was astounded at how incredibly exquisitely polite P was, even when it was clear that he was devastated by what was going on, even when people were attacking essentially his *existence*. It was one of the least drama queen-y ways I can imagine handling that, and certainly less so than I could’ve managed. And oh man, I can imagine everyone feeling really hurt by that.
I have no idea what the hell the mods were thinking allowing some of that stuff to stand.
Well, it wasn’t entirely obvious what was going on in the thread at the time, and you only posted once – I only posted a few times myself, actually. Voila, my last thread on AVEN. (is easy to find since it’s in my last posts in my AVEN profile!) The actual *comment* that made me throw in the towel was this one in the mod thread and, more importantly, the fact that none of the other mods called it out. But anyway, just reading the thread there’s I think some :/-worthy attitudes but nothing that bad.
And yeah, at some point one has to step back and go “taking care of myself comes first.”
(oh yeeaah the cooking!
or with my not!GF as that’s an online relationship it’s staying up until ungodly hours of the morning talking about everything and anything, but if she were not on the other side of the planet from me I would totally cook for her. And the just hanging out in the same room together. And <3)
Oh, I have actually seen that one also. Sigh. I was thinking of ontd_feminism because there were SO MANY MORE rape threats in that one, but I remember the one in fandom_wank as well.
Whereas my experiences are weird across the board. I mean, I definitely did not escape middle school without being the target of some serious bullying, and at that point I think some of the comments on my theoretical gayness may have been meant more as a general insult than a specific comment on my sexuality, but then I got to high school and my life turned into a series of delicately worded attempts from parents and the odd other student (I’d shut everyone out at that point) to find out whether I was gay or not. I started coming out when I went to college in large part so people would shut up about it, which seems to have worked–I haven’t had anyone try to find out whether I was a lesbian since I graduated high school.
Oh, yeah. The hell indeed. And I mean, that’s P–I know him really well as someone who handles situations like that with a hell of a lot of grace in general, and who tends to act to minimize drama rather than to create it. But obviously calling him a drama queen was a good way of silencing him, so. :/ I know he was really, really hurt by the whole thing, and rightly so.
I do remember that now! And… hm. Yeah, on the open thread I think there was a bit of problematic content, but otherwise… eh. The mod thread, now… what the fuck is that about people with SAD not being the same as asexual people? That diagnosis pisses me off specifically because it covers every repulsed ace who was ever born, and I don’t think that ought to be a disorder to begin with. And then… no one reacted at all. WTF WTF WTF.
On school- I couldn’t have a weird enough gender presentation. My mom, who was in the army, got her school to let her wear pants, rarely wears dresses, and is overall NOT the poster child for genderconformity policed my gender pretty heavily. I think people picked up on my gender & asexuality, but didn’t know what to do with it so they just teased me in general. Or maybe I’m just too weird.
Some of highschool I had a boyfriend because of pressure to be sexual/specifically straight, but I did get the “lesbian” thing a few times because I’m really bad at telling where the line between stuff friends do and stuff partners do is. It’s not even consistent. I’d hug one girl and she’d say it was a good hug. I’d hug another the same way and get called a lesbian. Nothing serious, though.
I think having a normal enough gender presentation helps, but even that is only for awhile- as you get older, people more and more notice you aren’t dating anyone and get suspicious. I’ve seen a few people who are out of college talk about how people htink they must be gay and only don’t talk about sex/relationships to hide their homosexuality.
It is really depressing we can think of so many here, isn’t it.
I have no idea what was going on with my childhood and teenagehood, really. Because I had three things going on that make being bullied extremely likely – I was on the autistic spectrum (although nondiagnosed), I had a noticeable speech disorder and I was either a foreigner (childhood) or had just returned from a foreign country (teenagehood). And… yet, I wasn’t bullied. In some weird way it feels as if they cancelled each other out – that I was just so strange and so clearly not a threat to anyone’s position in the hierarchy that the class sort of adopted me as their alien pet. There was also some other stuff going on – as a kid I’d sort of been allowable-weird, it was only after we returned to Germany that I became really-really-fucking-weird and for most of that time I was in a class that was majority-male. And we sort of did hierarchies separated by gender, I think, so it was only the girls who were allowed to bully me but because there were so few of them I escaped. Or. Something. I DON’T KNOW. /o\ It’s fucked up, but I actually feel guilty I got away without being bullied (not really unharmed – I did develop severe depression due to the social stuff that was going on) when it’s so unusual for anyone with AS *or* anyone who stutters, let alone both. And I was queer, too! Even if I didn’t properly realise at the time!
And then at uni I sort of fell into the “eccentric mathematician” stereotype. I find that there’s a lot more leeway when it comes to social skills in maths – mostly for guys but some for girls as well (one time at lunch during my Master’s, my friends and I sort of had an impromptu “who was most socially incompetent in high school” competition…) and that combined with the scads of work I’d been doing on my social skills sort of moved me from “is she actually from this planet?” over into “normal for a mathematician”. And I think there’s also a desexualisation stereotype going on for maths people that people slotted me in afterwards.
And yeah. I mean, that comment was essentially telling me “you are not asexual”. Period. End of story. (Oh, except for “and you’re bad for visibility”.) And nobody contested it.
What actually annoyed me most about the thread I participated in, apart from some “repulsed people have to desensitise themselves and are immature otherwise”, was that I’d brought up the awful comment and the response it got (admittedly, in retrospect I should’ve quoted it or at least linked it and gone “this shit is not okay and if you don’t do something about it right the fuck now I’m leaving”, but that was when I still had the overpolite friendly AVEN brainworms thing going on and wasn’t comfortable calling out people directly) and only one person said anything about it and everyone else ignored it. I’d HOPED it would cause outrage but, y’know, apparently not. Which said to me that the attitude was widespread, and if that many people in an asexual space thought I wasn’t actually ace but repressing and bad for visibility then I was taking my toys and leaving.
I mean, my gender presentation… I only know it was non-conforming because I got harassed about it and my mother policed me pretty heavily about it, too. I honestly don’t think I would have noticed myself. Even the short hair, I only started cutting my hair gradually shorter and shorter after the bulk of the harassment stopped. So I have no idea how much that does play into it, either.
My experience with bullying was… well, it never happened once in elementary school because by third grade I was in this class of gifted-and-talented kids who had been shipped in from a bunch of different school districts and accelerated together. The class make-up stayed almost identical from year to year, so I had the same kids for three years. And that would have been good in its own right, but it was even better because we actually, in hindsight, had this astonishingly high level of neurodiversity–I knew two or three kids, including myself, being medicated for ADD at the time, in hindsight I heavily suspect both my best friends were on the spectrum, know for a fact that a third was because he contacted me and mentioned it years later, and have suspicions about a fourth. So I actually did not realize I was weird all through elementary school, despite spending most of my childhood in and out of psychiatrists’ offices. After all, in my experience everyone was like that! (The teachers were actually pretty damn horrible, but we had classroom solidarity nonetheless.)
And then I got to middle school and got basically thrown in with the normal kids AND hit puberty and my head sort of exploded. So a lot of that is tied into just… being weird, yeah, and being LOW on the school totem pole, and I don’t know how much of it can be attributed to gender presentation and how much was Asperger’s and how much was just bad luck. (Intersectionality, it’s confusing!)
(And on being fucked up about bullying–hell, I feel fucked up about it because I got violent in an effort to make it stop and I was ALWAYS the one instigating violence per se, if not touching. Because that’s the stereotype of the violent scary autistic kid, you know, the one Gavin de Becker is so fucking FOND of, and in retrospect I am almost pathetically grateful I was born female. Because if I wasn’t, I suspect I would have been targeted as possibly being Columbine, Round Two in the way I’ve seen happen to a couple of other bullied autistic kids who tried the “make ‘em think I’m psychotic and maybe they’ll leave me alone” thing the way I did. I also feel fucked up about the fact that I still have serious touching issues left over from that time in my life, and that over nothing overtly violent or sexual. I think the narratives surrounding being bullied fuck you up in general, really.)
On fitting into the “eccentric mathematician” thing, man, I wish that happened to a similar degree with my field, but I know exactly what you’re talking about. People seem to expect population geneticists to have more social skills, what with how we’re pretty close to ecology. >> I may shift over into neurology for my graduate work, though, we’ll see how stereotypes go then. I think there’s a generic desexualization stereotype going for professorial types, though–maybe not just math people?
Oh, I know. It boils down to “there’s asexuals, who are indifferent, and there’s those icky diseased repulsed people over there. OKAY? And we’d better not let people think that we’re anything like them.” Jesus.
Well, having myself linked to a bunch of ableist/ageist/transphobic posts and gone “WTF MODS? TAKE THE DISCRIMINATION BITS OFF YOUR TOS OR ENFORCE THEM PLZ” I can report that it wouldn’t have done any good if you had linked! You would probably just have been reprimanded for tone or something. Or getting angry! I don’t remember causing any more outrage than was already there either. What I primarily remember is being told I was being “childish” because I didn’t privately go to the mods and report the threads myself. Which is so many levels of missing the point.
On gender presentation, my mum’s presentation is actually pretty nonstandard herself (very short hair, doesn’t wear make-up ever, jewellery and skirts only on special occasions, don’t think I’ve ever seen her in a dress, could not care less about fashion… she says she’s been misgendered male before.) My aunt, who lives with us, is even more extreme – I’m actually the most femininely-presenting member of my family, and that is saying quite a bit. As a result I didn’t really get much presentation pressure from my family, and indeed up to the age of twelve when I stopped growing I mainly wore hand-me-downs from my brother or male cousin. Some feminine stuff (and apparently there was a period I refused to wear anything but skirts due to fear of being misgendered male) but not much. And any pressure I experienced from outside sort of played into larger Screwing Up Wrt Clothes fears. (Although there’s some pretty complicated stuff going on with my head wrt gender presentation and gender but that wasn’t so much due to specifically gender presentation related harrassment, you know?)
Man, that sounds like an awesome group of friends. I had some friends I suspect of being spectrumy but not many, we were still a pretty NT group as things went through all my childhood. And yeeaaah intersectionality is complicated, especially autism because it just pervades everything and anything (at least for me) and so it’s next to impossible to disentangle it from other stuff.
Fucked up re: bullying – yeah, I realised when I was typing my earlier comment that I was about to say “I got away unharmed” but actually that’s not true, I ended up really depressed and have what I think are most likely going to be permanent mental health issues that I think arose from the way I was treated in high school. It just wasn’t bullying, people treated me nicely overall, it was just this – thinking they liked me and thought I belonged and was one of them and then slowly realising that wasn’t the case, and then realising I had no way to tell who actually liked me and who didn’t, it really messed me up. There was a period where I was unable to make RL friends at all because I was so convinced that they didn’t actually like me but were just pretending in order to be kind. And it says something about the world that I consider myself to have been lucky. And also, that’s a really interesting and disturbing thought re: bullied autistic kids becoming violent and it being slotted into this “potential Columbine” narrative if they’re male. :/
You may have a point about general desexualisation stereotype for professorial types, I think it’s just extreme for maths. And lol – there’s always this gradated intra-field stuff, isn’t there? Like, the stereotype is pure mathematicians are more unworldly, lost in their own heads and generally socially incompetent than applied, and I don’t even know what’s going on with the statisticians.
Yeah, you have a good point, I’d probably just have got hit with “you’re not polite!” or “sort it out privately!” (when the problem appears to be that the MODS DON’T CARE how I am supposed to do that pray tell?
I wish it was original–I remember seeing cases of autistic boys arrested or expelled for violent behavior with that rationale. I don’t know when you were in school systems, but I hit middle school in 2001 only two years after the Columbine massacre, and I’ve heard numerous stories of bullied kids (NT and not) finally losing it and fighting back and having school systems punish them severely in an effort not to be another Columbine. And I’ve seen a lot of fearmongering about autistic kids being “violent” and likely to hurt NT kids. And hell, you know, I did hurt NT kids because they wouldn’t leave me alone and I didn’t have the skills to make them stop, you know?
And at least I was spared the not knowing, because I did have a couple of friends and I trusted them then and I still do, ten years after the fact. I’ve been… absurdly lucky in my friends, I think, or else I have a knack for ferreting out people who Get It about mental issues.
I just… totally failed to understand the people asking me to sort it out privately, because I was really not interested in specific cases. I was interested in why the mods appeared to believe a) that they couldn’t do anything if people didn’t report things, when their duties explicitly include reading their forums once every 24 hours and b) that these particular threads didn’t violate the new, shiny, less-than-six-months-old ToS change.
I have very little to add except that I love this conversation, but everything that’s being said and agreed upon feels so historic, it’d be weird if I wasn’t here.
I’ve always felt disrespectful snapping at the people who are like “No, I don’t want any of your queer next to my alternate sexuality,” but I now see that it is out of line. Firstly, I’m sorry, I can’t help my queer. And, if I could, I wouldn’t. And I’m not going to wait outside because it offends you. And secondly, how dare you try and sever asexuals from some of the most vital and consistent real-world support they’re ever likely to get? I’ve never noticed before what a display of privilege that really is.
We need more asexuals in SJ, generally. There’s this model where obscurity needs visibility, while prejudice needs SJ. I still think visibility is our major drawback, but even today, someone who I’m almost certain doesn’t know I’m asexual mentioned asexuality to me as a valid orientation. I’ve lost count of the number of people my age who already knew about asexuality as an orientation. The more we talk about it, the more we need to change our game-plan.
Ha, it doesn’t feel historical so much as it feels as if it’s mainly Sciatrix and me going “hey let’s chat about anything and everything!” and Dreki trying to get an word in edgewise here and there! But yay, more people!
We really really do need more asexuals in SJ. Because yeah, the answer to obscurity is visibility… except that I think it was pretty naive to think that once we became visible we wouldn’t be hit by prejudice, and I’ve seen enough nasty reactions from sexual people that I think it’s pretty obvious some of them are. It feels like that definitely back in the early days and partially now we were sort of assuming that all we had to do was say “hi! we’re here!” and we’d get handed our letter in LGBT, get HSDD rewritten, get asexuality into all the sex ed books and lessons, etc. And obviously it was never going to be that easy, and I sort of feel as if we should’ve been preparing more for prejudice from the get-go.
I do agree that visibility is increasing dramatically. I haven’t really spoken with people in RL much, but the last time I outed myself the person I was speaking to just went “oh, okay!” and come to think of it it’s been a while since I’ve had to do the spontaneous asex 101 thing. And online it’s been a massive increase.
Wait, historical? *boggles* Cool.
Second on needing more asexuals in SJ discussion. And honestly, I’d like more SJ influence on asexual discussion in general. I think that what you’re saying, Kaz, about the whole naivety that visibility is the only battle, that’s something that really couldn’t have happened if more asexual people doing visibility work had much experience with other SJ movements. And I think that the way the community is set up now, we often internalize this idea that asexuality isn’t a “real” oppressed minority, that we don’t have it “that bad,” that there’s nothing structually oppressing us. Which is actually bullshit on a bunch of different levels–DSM, the fuckery that’s been mentioned upthread, etc. But the idea’s there anyway.
I actually had one person know what I meant back in 2008, which was awesome! And my Human Sexuality textbook last semester did mention asexuality and link to AVEN. Admittedly, it was simultaneously defining asexuality as a physical lack of genitals, but, you know, mentions. (Noticing that was a gotta-laugh-because-it’s-that-or-cry moment.)
Out of curiosity, am I the only one who has friends speculate to me about the possible asexuality of people I don’t actually know? This has happened to me twice now.
I definitely agree with this. The idea that if we’re just nice enough really fucks us over because then we get AVEN forcing us to be as nice as possible and punishing people for calling out bigotry. I’ve seen too many different people saying they’ve heard someone say “Asexuals just need a good rape” to really believe that we aren’t a “real” oppressed minority. I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better (or, at least, people will start acknowledging the things people do to asexuals as wrong so it’ll just seem like it’s getting worse because we’re now hearing about it), and this naivety is not going to help us get through that.
It’s awesome we’re getting more visibility, but visibility isn’t the only thing.
Yeah, sorry, there’s a lot of discussion here, and I’d missed that particular bit until your most recent comment.
I agree with you about something so easy as ‘natural allies’ not existing. I agree with you about having to be very cautious when dealing with the LGBTQ, and the various ways that they could minimise or pollute the asexual message. However, we can be cautious while still accepting the validity of LGBTQ in the ways it can help asexuals. There are groups in pretty much every city (in my country, at least), dedicated to support for people with alternate orientations/gender identities. Yes, some will be full of fail, especially regards asexuality. But some will be useful. The LGBTQ I belong to, for example, has proved very accepting.
And that’s not forgetting the fact that a large number of asexuals are queer in some other way than just asexuality, being homo or bi romantic or trans. They could stand to gain a lot from LGBT.
That’s just true in general though- there are groups of straight people that accept asexuals and those that don’t. There are also LG(b) spaces that are accepting of asexuals but where the conversation doesn’t really revolve around anything that helps asexuals so it’s more of an awkward situation than a safe place. Adding the ‘A’ to the acronym isn’t going to inherently increase the spaces that are safe, nor will it guarantee that the gay and bi asexuals will be more accepted in those spaces than they already are. That some LG(b) people are accepting of asexuals already and some LG(b) spaces are safe for asexuals isn’t a good enough reason why they’re inherently allies or that adding to the acronym will benefit us, because there are also plenty who most decidedly aren’t.
A thought on LGBT spaces – I think there is at least one thing we need from them, and that’s for them to commit to at least doing a bit of ace visibility. Because thinking about it, a lot of asexual people go through an “well, am I gay then?” phrase, and generally when you figure out you’re not straight it’s easy to assume you must fall under LGBT. So a lot of asexuals who haven’t figured it out yet may go to LGBT spaces to try and figure themselves out. And if they at least have like – asexuality leaflets or something, even if the people in that space are asexophobic, or even if they go “asexuality isn’t LGBT, try this place instead” at least there will be *something* there to point a questioning ace person in the right direction.
I also sometimes feel suffocated by the heteronormativity of my environment and find myself ready to do a lot to spend some time around queer people but it’s possible that’s because I’m not very out (I try! It just never really comes up and dropping “by the way I don’t want to have sex” into conversation randomly is something I am not ready to do! /o\). And I dunno how widespread that is, or whether sexual queer people wouldn’t just end up with me feeling suffocated by sexnormativity.
It would be good to have them do that. I think some are. I don’t know who, but someone pinned the definition of asexuality (against the rules) outside my campus’s cisCenter. That’s a good thing to do, I think.
I generally get the sexnormativity from LGB people as well. It’s sometimes worse in LGB spaces because then you can reasonably expect most people are sexually attracted to someone and it’s the only place they can really talk about it freely without fear of homophobia. As I said, even in spaces that aren’t acephobic I’ve heard from a few asexuals that they don’t feel they have a place in LGB support spaces because the talks tend to involve sex, which aces can’t really relate to.
Ok, so firstly, I’m sorry if this ends up in the wrong place, like the last one did. I can’t yet see your comments on the page to reply to them, and it’s very early morning here, and I don’t really have the energy to figure out how this comment section works.
I completely agree with you about LGBT not necessarily being safe spaces for asexuals. I think you’re taking my original comment and reading it as a response to the stuff upthread, which I hadn’t read at the time of writing.
What I meant was that a lot of asexuals might feel like they need a queer community in real life. The place they would find this (unless there are a lot of asexuals in their local area) is the local queer community. While there may be aphobia, the queer community will, in all likelihood, have more people who are accepting of different sexualities than the community in general.
Thus, the queer community could work out as a good support group for some asexuals. My point was that the asexuals who want to keep asexuality away from the queer community are normally privileged by not being the sort of people who need it, and they would like to deprive asexuals who do of a possibly vital resource. Please don’t take that to indicate anything about how suitable the LGBTQ community IS or SHOULD be for asexuals (two very important questions, which I am far too tired to do justice to tonight, but I should very much like to discuss with you soon).