[DreadedMartian]

I'm just posting my usual space post now.

Tadpole Galaxy

This picture of the galaxy UGC 10214 was taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which was installed aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in March during Servicing Mission 3B. This spiral galaxy is unlike the textbook images of stately galaxies. Its distorted shape was caused by a small interloper, a very blue, compact galaxy visible in the upper left corner of the more massive Tadpole. The Tadpole resides about 420 million light-years away in the constellation Draco.

[Coda]

I had a larger post typed up here where I recounted my own experience as a teenager as a way to compare changes in social attitudes toward the ace lifestyle over the last 25 years. I thought better of posting it, because I realized that it really didn't help; it just put too much focus on something that doesn't actually matter to what I'm trying to say.

But social attitudes HAVE changed over the last 25 years, and things that would have been shrugged off then have somehow become a big deal now. A lifestyle that was merely innocently misunderstood in my generation is now feeling oppression and discrimination where it didn't exist before. And that's what I've been lamenting.

But I've seen that same thing happen all over the place in that time. When by all rational sense things should have been getting better year-over-year, I instead see things getting worse as everything grows increasingly polarized. And the only people I see actually doing cruel bigoted things are people that have developed a sensitized, knee-jerk reaction against what in truth is only a tiny sliver of radicals.

That's why I hold the belief that ace people have been done a disservice by being lumped in with queer lifestyles: they weren't considered queer (and weren't discriminated against) until comparatively recently. That's not to demean or invalidate anyone's identity; you are who you are and no label or attribute will change that. But I just feel really bad that a group of people that I used to count myself among has to deal with such a negative environment that as far as I can tell really only exists because of the political climate of the last 10-15 years.

[Espy]

1.) It's neither a lifestyle nor a choice.

2.) We're queer.

[DreadedMartian]

Ya know I hate to interject but I'm just exploding with curiosity....
Does anyone here like sex?

[mdom]

of all the two guys I've had in 34 years, I really like with one.
The once a year we meet.
that's... uh, not sure where in the ace spectrum

[DreadedMartian]

Okay I get it. So it's a spectrum? Some aren't totally interested but can do it and enjoy it. Does anybody not like it at all?? Like at all??

[Espy]

Sex-repulsion is a thing. Not exclusive to ace people, but they overlap.

EDIT: For the record, I don’t understand why people would look at someone and go “I want to have sex with them”. That is not a feeling I experience.

[DreadedMartian]

I didn't say repulsed. I only ask because everyone seems very open about it and I'm interested in how everyone's feelings fall on this spectrum. Because I imagine that some enjoy masturbation more, some are like Mdom and so on. I just wanna see the spectrum.

[Espy]

Then I misparsed your previous post, apologies.

As I’ve mentioned, I don’t experience any sort of sexual attraction. I wouldn’t even be able to begin telling you about anything because it just doesn’t exist for me.

Romantic attraction is almost as absent.

Aesthetic attraction, though, that, I get.

[DreadedMartian]

[CENTER]
Please, dont apologize. We were conversing.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Galla has requested I respond here, so here it goes.

I'm not sure that my perspective can offer anything valuable, to be completely honest. I've been calling myself asexual since before the movement even existed as far as I know, and from the little I know of its current state, I don't feel entirely comfortable grouping myself there any longer.

I've honestly always come down on not wishing to be grouped in lbgtq personally, specifically because I've seen the kinds of abuse and oppression people of those identities have to suffer and feel like it's a disservice to hold my own negative experiences with being asexual to that same level of injustice.

Because, for me, it's never been other people bullying me or inflicting their harmful ignorance on me; it's entirely on my end, confined to my own experience: that feeling of complete alienation and dehumanization, to look around at a species that has evolved via and for this one, specific function - and a culture that has layered it with maddening rules and meanings and contexts far divorced from the gross physical fact of mating - and to realize how absolutely alone one is, to be so fundamentally, effortlessly othered by your very nature, a dead-end of evolution, a grotesque mutation that will be autoselected out of its problematic existence.

And it's something everyone else takes for granted, this implicit assumption that we're all playing the same game by the same rules, while I'm here, isolated, wondering how this is possibly all there is to life, why we're even here at all if it's just to grind our bodies into each other and suffer anxiety and self-loathing and agony and fear because we're born being told that this is the metric of a meaningful life, and then, to close the circle, in so many cases it leads to the forcing of another wretched lifeform into this abbatoir of confusion and inescapable torment we call a planet.

...I probably should have mentioned that for me, being asexual is quintessentially entangled with being an antinatalist, which is another reason why I don't feel comfortable identifying with the greater social movement. My aversion to sex goes far beyond merely being physically disgusted by it and having a touch phobia, the entire concept and the realization of its import to the lives of those around me is absolutely crucifying. It is not pleasant to realize how utterly dysfunctional one was born to be. (And that would be reason number three that I don't feel comfortable with the label, because I recognize fully the validity of the identity to other people who see it as something positive, but for myself, it is as baneful as the incurable disease that wracks my body every day).

That aside, though, in regards to the broader conversation, I honestly remain completely oblivious to any currently active "identity politics" fronted by the asexual community, I'd be curious as to what exactly you're referring to with that, Coda.

[Coda]

I never claimed asexuality was a choice. I'm well aware that it is not, and I would never dream of claiming otherwise -- it would be quite hypocritical of me to do so, given my own fluid identity (which I know we've talked about). It is, however, a lifestyle, inasmuch as it by its nature creates a difference in the way you live your life as compared to the way other people live theirs. That's not meant to be dismissive or denigrating whatsoever. (This is a noteworthy difference from most other identities under the queer umbrella, where there really aren't any meaningful inherent lifestyle differences -- differences in the identity of one's partner has a negligible impact, while not having a partner at all does impose a rather significant difference.)

To be honest, Suze's experience is more or less what my own experience (both personal and observed) says is (or at least was) the typical case. The antinatalist part isn't necessarily widespread, but the sense of not fitting in with a society designed around the idea of romantic partnership is very much a common theme. And your sense that it's not really bullying or harmful ignorance lines up with what I expected to hear. There's (historically) not widespread prejudice against asexual people, just an overall lack of understanding.

I'm NOT aware of any identity politics fronted by the asexual community in particular. Most ace people I've met really just don't try to make a big deal of it. However, the queer community has drawn in the asexual identity under its umbrella, so ace gets included in anything queer-related by association, for better or for worse. And so I've seen "anti-SJW" zealots unleash their ugliness on people who they would have otherwise left alone -- or possibly even supported, absent that association.

[Death by Mirrors]

For the record, it is possible to induce bullying if a 14-year-old tells other teenagers they're too smart to have sex. Of course a hint of snobbery never sits well with the monkeys, especially at a time where asexuality didn't even exist (in the minds of the public, that is). There was asexual reproduction in biology class, which concentrated on the fact one cell split itself into two, and the workbook very much confirmed humans were a sexual species. So, there.

Back then I was that innocent kiddo who would still rather invite friends over to build Lego castles and watch cartoons. Lumped together with a horde of hormone driven wannabe adults prone to catching "the stupid" (as observed whenever one of these other teenagers got a crush on someone, then started acting all weird). Someone once coined the term An Anthropologist on Mars for Temple Grandin, which pretty much sums up how I felt during high school. I meticulously studied the average teenager from a distance to prepare myself for the time hormones would hit me as well. It just never happened; not the way it did for them.

Had I known the term asexual during those years, I might have felt... well, not at home, but maybe at a cool uncle's place who will allow me to nap on their couch every once in a while.

[Gallagher]

So, what I'm stuck on, Coda.

You discuss a history in which celibacy/potential asexuality is lauded, yes. And you discuss a relatively recent political climate in which ace folks get lumped in and hated on for being part of the community.

I'm over here thinking about the things that can and do target ace folks even without an ace label, without being anywhere near connected to lgbt, without anyone even thinking that they're connected to lgbt. I know there are shared senses of feeling other, but I'm also wondering if I've stumbled onto a portion of intersectionality that isn't necessarily translating.

I don't feel like it's only my experience as someone that has lived as a woman that being asexual has been more damaging than merely feeling like an outsider or being lumped in with other queer folk. But I also don't have anyone on hand that I can directly compare situations with that relate to my asexuality that have caused me feelings of legitimate threat and danger. The notion that aphobia could be summed up as primarily identity politics is appalling to me because I've been harmed by reactions to my inclinations, or lackthereof, well before asexuality was on the radar of anyone I'd been around, or myself even. Before there were politics involved, in other words. But it's not prejudice, it's lack of understanding?

I feel like I'm going absolutely insane even dealing with this conversation. Either experiences like mine are isolated incidents, they're not being considered relevant to the conversation, or they're being completely ignored here. And I don't know what the answer is. Maybe it's not relevant. It damn sure feels like it is, though.

[Gallagher]

Originally Posted by DreadedMartian

I didn't say repulsed. I only ask because everyone seems very open about it and I'm interested in how everyone's feelings fall on this spectrum. Because I imagine that some enjoy masturbation more, some are like Mdom and so on. I just wanna see the spectrum.

as far as my experience goes, i'm demisexual, so more of a greysexual that totally ace. elaboration under the cut.

i don't feel physical attraction, but i do have very deep romantic attraction. i'm not against sex and i can definitely enjoy it, but it isn't a driving need in my life. more important for me by far is emotional connection. i enjoy an exploration of sex in the media and stories i consume and create, and it's overall a subject that's far from uncomfortable to me.

it's a game genre. i don't need it in my life, but dipping my toes in now and then, whether that involves actual sexual acts or not, is enjoyable. and, not to peep on your post edits or anything, but when i do indulge, my tastes tend towards things similar to what you mentioned for yourself.

[DreadedMartian]

Welp I definitely feel like some perverted weirdo. I would just like to say that sex isn't always this mindless act of rubbing bodies together. And that's really all I wanted to say. It doesn't matter and changes nothing. But by god the way you guys talk about it, I feel a bit ashamed. And with that I'm outta here.