More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
April 11 - April 23, 2024
I wanted some kinds of closeness, but I didn’t want sex.
It’s okay not to have it all figured out. We’ve all been there. A lot of us will end up there again. It’s okay to be confused, to feel like you don’t fit in anywhere, to feel like you don’t know yourself at all. It’s okay to take the dots in your life and connect them the wrong way for a while, to put the pieces together the wrong way, or to give your experience the wrong name. It’s okay not to know what to do, to feel like you don’t have the right words. It’s okay to feel broken. We’re all there at some point.
Was I relaxed? Not even close. These moments were four-alarm fires in my brain. I was really into him. I wanted to be here, on this couch and in his arms. Being close to him, touching him, sharing his space was something I wanted, something I maybe craved. But I knew the “whatever” he wanted was sex, and that was something that scared me, that made me want to push away. I couldn’t find sex in all the things I wanted with him, and I didn’t understand why.
Okay, but what about arousal? What’s that? See how this can get complicated really quickly? Arousal is the feeling of your body and your mind being stimulated, awakened, “on.” This is both a physical experience and a mental one, and in this context, it’s the physical and mental experience of being awakened or turned on in a sexual way. Arousal, libido, and sexual attraction can seem like three different words for the same basic idea. That overlap among them can be very confusing for ace folks at the beginning of their journeys. If the terms are all speaking about the same thing, how do you
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Asexual people are believed to be islands within themselves, absent of human connection.
There are lots of reasons beyond sexual attraction that a person would engage in sexual behavior. People have sex to experience closeness with their partners. They have sex to procreate and raise children. They have sex to express other attractions they may feel for a partner. They have sex simply because it feels good, and they enjoy the physical sensations.
In order to survive this journey of self-discovery, you have to give yourself permission to not know. There’s no harm in not knowing. There’s no failure in not knowing. It’s perfectly human to live in your body and experience what you’re experiencing without fully understanding it. The curiosity is what counts. What counts is you acknowledging that you feel something different from the people around you. What counts is that you’re searching for new words and new ideas to explain what you feel instead of shoving those feelings away and just conforming to the rest of the world. What counts is
...more
Aegosexuals might feel comfortable talking about sex, engaging with sexual media and content (like erotic stories or pornography), or fantasizing about sexual encounters. But they won’t necessarily feel comfortable acting on any of those things.
What if I just have a hormone imbalance? What if I just have a naturally low libido? What if I’m just anxious about being intimate with someone? What if it’s just the way my parents raised me? What if it’s unresolved trauma from my past? What if I’m just confusing some other thing for asexuality?
We’ll stick around in relationships that just aren’t working because we fear we can’t do better or we fear being alone.
We put a lot of pressure on ourselves when figuring out our identity and deciding when to share that identity with others to “get it right.” We have to get the language right. We have to get the timing right.
Our parents meet us at a really weird time in our lives, when we’re nothing but a little flesh blob of crying and pooping and throwing up.
When we come out as ace or queer or trans—whatever we end up being that wasn’t part of their original plan—we change their understanding of the person they’ve known and loved for years. When we come out, we’re asking them to meet someone totally new, someone they were not expecting. And that can be hard.
But this microaggression is more than just a play on words. This microaggression is dehumanizing. It paints asexuality as something that couldn’t possibly happen to a living, breathing person. It could only happen to plants or microorganisms or machines. It paints you as someone who’s having an experience that’s less than human. Asexuality is a human experience. Full stop. Period.
Asexuality is real. Asexual people exist. You and your experience occupy space in this world, and no one can take that fact from you.
aren’t going to want sex or if we aren’t going to find others sexually attractive, then we should erase ourselves from the allosexual gaze as much as possible: don’t be attractive, don’t be smart, don’t be kind, don’t be interesting. We can’t be attractive if sex isn’t going to be an option, and if we are attractive in some way, we’re playing the game unfairly or existing in a way that’s incomprehensible.
You can be ace and attractive. You can be ace and fashionable. You can be ace and have an electric personality. You can be ace and be the center of attention in any room you enter. You’re never “too” anything simply because you’re ace.
“Maybe you should see a doctor/see a therapist/get your hormones checked.” Another way people deny the naturalness of asexuality as an experience of the world is to dismiss it as a physical ailment or mental condition. We’re dealing again with the cultural idea that experiencing sexual attraction is a universal human experience, and if you’re not experiencing it, something is wrong with you. This family of microaggressions locates that “something is wrong” in your body or your mind. It pathologizes asexuality.
Identity is fluid and can evolve over our lifetimes.
If you treat your asexuality as a problem or an obstacle, they’ll probably do the same. If you treat your asexuality as something worthy of respect, you stand a better chance of getting that in return.
one facet of our complete story,
It’s aphobia that stands in the way. It’s prospective partners that hold misguided ideas about us that stand in the way. It’s partners who are unwilling to explore, unwilling to think outside of the bounds a little, unwilling to expand and negotiate their relationship expectations that stand in the way. But your asexuality is not the obstacle.
If a partner tells you, “Well, if we’re going to be monogamous, you have to be willing to…,” they’re projecting their wants and not reflecting what’s true.
Relationships should not be designed around the sexual needs of one partner, and no one partner’s needs should dictate the choices of the other.
Find your people. Build your families. Chase the love you want, no matter what it looks like.
He creates space for me to be me. I create space for him to be him.
The same is true for your relationship. It’s up to you to make it work. And this chapter will explore how to negotiate one particular corner of your relationship: intimacy. Intimacy can be one of the most challenging areas for relationships, and for ace folks, this area can be exponentially more daunting.
If something is a hard “no” for you, be confident enough to articulate it. You don’t have to compromise and acquiesce to anyone. Your dealbreakers are an important part of building a relationship that works for you. Don’t ignore them. Don’t sell them short.
Toss out those cultural expectations and demands about what a “good sex life” is and rewrite them to suit us.
If it’s just holding hands and cuddling sometimes…then that’s a satisfying sex life.
If it’s no sexual contact but a hell of a lot of BDSM…then that’s a satisfying sex life. If it’s no physical intimacy but a lot of emotional intimacy…then that’s a satisfying sex life. If it’s any combination of anything across the intimacy spectrum…then that’s a satisfying sex life.
“Hey. I’m into you. And I feel like we’re getting to the point where intimacy is going to come up. You know I’m ace, so I think it’s time we talk about what a healthy, satisfying, consensual sex life looks like for me. And you can tell me about what that looks like for you. And we can see where we go from there.” Notice there’s no apologizing. There’s
You don’t have to apologize for who you are and what you want.
That’s why it’s important to really break down those cultural ideas of what a “good sex life” looks like and really create an expanded menu of intimacy.
Sexual activity does not define or legitimize someone’s sexual orientation. You are who you are, even when you’re not having sex. Gay people are still gay when they’re not having sex. Straight people are still straight when they’re not having sex. And asexual people continue to be asexual even if sex isn’t a part of their lives. We can experience the inequities and injustices of being a sexual minority even if we aren’t having sex.
How we are perceived by the world does not change the truth or legitimacy of who we are.
You can be a person without wanting sex. You can be a person without having sex. Your personhood is complete without either of those things.
Asexuality and aromanticism both tell us that love and sex aren’t central to happiness. Love and sex aren’t central to humanness. They’re one option of many.
