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July 14 - July 17, 2024
engage in challenging conversation with someone are ways to express in...
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Alterous attraction is an attraction to a person or a kind of person that makes you want to develop a deep, connected relationship with them that’s...
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Asexuality is only about an individual’s experience of sexual attraction. It doesn’t speak to one’s relationship to sexual behavior.
People have sex to experience closeness with their partners.
They have sex simply because it feels good, and they enjoy the physical sensations.
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
But I also felt something entirely unexpected: I felt seen. I saw myself in these posts.
My reluctance and discomfort with the act of sex.
My life, which I’d always assumed was just a broken form of “normal,” had a name. I was asexual.
Finding a name for my experience changed my life. It reconfigured how I saw myself and how I related to the world and the people around me.
when we discover the language of asexuality, it’s like turning on a light in a darkened room.
Anyone who identifies among the people who do not experience or rarely experience sexual attraction can call themselves asexual, with many of us using the shortened form: ace.
Graysexual Graysexual (or gray-asexual) is used by people on the asexual spectrum that sometimes experience or rarely experience sexual attraction.
Demisexual Demisexual is used by people on the asexual spectrum who only experience sexual attraction when they develop an emotional bond with someone.
Sometimes the bond formed needs to be strong and intense.
Aceflux Aceflux is used by people on the asexual spectrum who experience fluctuation in their sexual orientation but stay mainly on the asexual spectrum.
It’s up to you. Remember, labels are tools. Use them accordingly.
big umbrella terms are adequate: asexual, graysexual, demisexual, aceflux.
Microlabels make someone’s identity clearer, more specific, more precise.
Microlabels are also community builders. The asexual spectrum is a broad one. There’s no monolithic way to be ace. There are lots of different ways to be asexual.
And in sexual minorities like the asexual community, finding your people is important.
being willing or enjoying having sexual acts performed on you but feeling repulsed about performing sexual acts on others—exists: iamvanosexual.
Finding a microlabel that fits your experience isn’t a necessity.
If one of the umbrella identities fits you and feels right as a description of your experience, then you’re perfectly fine sticking with that.
Sex-favorable Sex-favorable folks are asexual and a-spec individuals who enjoy the act of sex or the idea of sex.
Sex-neutral folks are asexual or a-spec folks who do not experience strong feelings in either direction about sexual activity.
Sex-averse Sex-averse folks are asexual or a-spec individuals who experience some negative feelings toward sex.
Many of us think labels describe who we are.
This view assumes that once we find a label, we stop learning new things about ourselves and the world. We stop becoming. So
we should not think of labels so much as what we are, but we should think of them as descriptors of what we experience.
Experience isn’t fixed and immutable. Experience isn’t something we have to embody with all of our being. Experie...
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We’re human beings. We specialize in change. We grow. We learn. We reassess. We reconsider. We toss out old ideas. We adopt new ones.
You’re not sure if you ever experienced sexual attraction.
You’ve felt pressured to have sex because it’s what you’re “supposed to do.”
Your peers’ obsession with sex makes you uncomfortable.
That’s me, I’d tell myself every time I read it. That’s what I feel.
Awkward and just really bad at sex and intimacy stuff.
Finding asexuality was a relief for me. Finally, here was a word for all the confusing and difficult feelings I’d felt.
I didn’t know how to live it. I still had to figure out how asexuality and I fit together,
Finding a language for who we are is only half the journey.
Jughead in the Archie comics. There’s that one scene in Sex Education on Netflix
good ace books (Alice Oseman’s Loveless and T. J. Klune’s How to Be a Normal Person),
How many of us even know another openly ace person in real life?
One of the ways we understand who we are in the world is by finding reflections of ourselves in it.
Forget the definitions; focus on what you experience
Life is most beautiful when it’s messy and unpredictable, when it’s big, unwieldy, and full of variety.
Instead of focusing on definitions, we should focus on our experience. We should focus on what we feel.
What do you feel when you say, out loud, “I am ace?”
When you’re not sure what you’re feeling, be sure of what you’re not
