Demisexual Reporting For Duty - Blog Posts
Want to Talk About Ace Community? - Undergraduate Research Study
Hello! My name is Laura, and I’m studying asexual identity and online community for my bachelor’s essay. Tumblr played a huge role in developing my asexual identity, so I am curious about others’ experiences. I am looking for participants who are 18 years or older and identify anywhere on the ace spectrum to interview about the role online community has or has not played in asexual identity development and expression.
I am a student at the College of Charleston undertaking a research study for my bachelor’s essay on asexual identity and online community. The purpose of the study is to promote a more nuanced understanding of asexual identity by exploring the significance of online community in the lives of asexual individuals.
This study will combine qualitative research and journalism, resulting in a final paper that will be accessible to readers outside of academia. I hope that this approach will help raise awareness and increase understanding of asexuality.
I will conduct one-on-one interviews with participants, which will last at least 30 minutes and cover topics related to asexual identity and social network activity.
For more information, please contact me @flyingtothesea or cergoll@g.cofc.edu.
This research study has been approved by College of Charleston Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Research Participants. Approval code: GLFL-10-11-2016
Let's see if I can get this right...
Heterosexual: Fuck that.
Homosexual: Fuck this.
Bisexual: Fuck you and also you.
Pansexual: Fuck everything.
Demisexual: Fuck you in particular.
Asexual: Fuck no.
Asexual Awareness Week: Day 2
[ IMAGE: A 9x9 aesthetic layout; the images are as follows, top to bottom, left to right: A Moon on a dark blue background, A hand dropping stars, A silhouette against the sky with drawings of planets and stars, A purple nebula, A drawn silhouette filled with space with “You only know a part of me. I am a universe of secrets.” above it, A purple Moon as it moves across the sky above a city, A star looking into a telescope that bends in a circle with the words “Discover Yourself” in the middle, A crescent moon on purple clouds, Black and white picture of two hands (palms up) covered in glitter that looks like stars.]
what i say: omg he's so hot i'm gonna die
what i mean: we live in an overtly sexual culture that doesn't recognize sensual and aesthetic attraction as separate from sexual desire and as an ace individual i am incapable of expressing my appreciation for someone's beauty in a simple way that doesn't have a sexual connotation please bear with me
I just read this super sad post about this girl who’s asexual and married and everyone is basically telling her that she doesn’t deserve her husband/she’s just a prude/she should just do it anyway. So I want to tell you all right now that if people tell you this, or if they tell you you’ll never have a relationship, it is BULLSHIT. My husband is asexual and I’m not. He’s sex repulsed, we don’t have sex, we never have. And it doesn’t matter to me. You know what does? He does. His mental health and wellbeing matter to me. Because he is my best friend and he’s one of the smartest, kindest, funniest people I’ve ever met. And he’s had people tel him that he’s broken and it makes me SO ANGRY because they are WRONG. Being different doesnt mean you’re broken. If you don’t like sex/don’t want it/etc. Do not let anyone tell you that you’re inferior because you’re not. Do not let anyone convice you that you’ll never have a relationship because they’re wrong(if you want one). You are not broken, and it will be okay.
Gather around, baby aces, and I shall tell you a tale of ye olde days of 2011
Keep reading
I’m sorry, you were saying something about how asexuality is a “disorder”?
The American Psychiatric Association disagrees with you. Officially. In print.
I’m not ace myself, so I’m coming at the whole acephobia thing from an outsider’s perspective, and as such, it’s not my place to speak to the experience of those on the receiving end of it.
However, as a bisexual dude, I can observe that many of the arguments that are employed to establish that ace folks have no place in the queer community are strikingly similar - indeed, at times practically word-for-word identical - to the arguments that were for many years (and in some circles still are) employed to establish that bisexual folks have no place in the queer community.
It’s enough to make a guy suspicious on general principle, you know?
It’s All A Fucking Joke, Right
In the few months I’ve been modding at fuckyeahasexual and touring ace Tumblr, there’s been a very. Steady. Stream of info that detail horrifically abusive situations and overall poor mental unhealth. Two a week in the inbox if I’m lucky, usually around seven-ten.
And there’s been so many, I can officially categorize all 500+ of these kinds of asks and submissions into an extensive bulletlist of Why Asexual Exclusionary Radicalism Is Incredibly Toxic And Shitty;
Coming Out To Family, Friends, And Employers
“My parents keep telling me that I’m something else, and it’s making me doubt my sense of judgement, not just about my sexual identity, but also about everything in general.”
“My family, friends, and co-workers keep referring to me as an inanimate object in a manner that’s clearly meant to humiliate and devastate me. Nothing I say will get them to stop.”
“My parents vocally/bodily forced me to undergo medical examinations, some of them concerning my sexual organs, many of them concerning blood tests and other trauma-centric procedures.”
“My family is intervening with my private life by changing my schedule to include exercise, socialization, friend influences, and whatever they think can ‘change’ me.”
“My friends/co-workers no longer respect my bodily boundaries when I came out to them, because they no longer see me as someone who should be respected. They regularly touch, fondle, grope, and prod me without permission, and/or verbally harass me, and don’t take my objections seriously.”
“My family, friends, and co-workers no longer just harass me, but also anyone I’m currently dating because they view my significant other as pathetic, underserved, or even being abused.”
First Few Days Of Dating
“My date got irrationally angry and confrontational when I came out to them, in a manner that made me fearful.” (SO many of these.)
“My date immediately lost any respect they had for my boundaries, no longer asked for consent, and {tried to} force themselves upon me.” (A lot of these, too)
“My date tried to verbally circumvent any boundaries and issues I confessed to, and it made me feel like I was in danger.”
“I didn’t come out to my date at first, and when they found out, they radically changed their behavior in an attempt to control and manipulate our new relationship to their benefit.”
Long-Term Relationships
“My partner has forcefully and radically changed our long-term relationship after finding out about my asexuality, and I’m now trapped and controlled in a way that I wasn’t before.”
“My partner broke up with me/is fighting with me because of my asexuality, and trying to make it seem like I’m hurting them. It’s made me doubt myself and my ability to trust my own intentions.”
“My partner is slowly changing from what was once supportive of my asexuality, and I’m wondering when I have the right to be worried and when I’d be overreacting. I’m aware of the worst case scenario, but I also worry that I’m being selfish and childish - which are things I’ve been told all throughout my asexual experience.”
Self-Care And Self Development
“I don’t trust my ability to say either yes or no in sexual situations, and this has extended to my life in general. I don’t feel comfortable in my ability to self-determinate.”
“The lack of authority, definition, and schooling of the concept of asexuality has made me very uncomfortable with what I think I am, and that uncertainty haunts me every waking moment.”
“I think it’s too late/too early to tell if I’m asexual, but the longer I hesitate, the worse my mental health and emotional wellbeing gets. I’m effectively stuck.”
“I see no benefit in coming out, or even identifying as asexual. There’s no positivity, role models, or supportive community for what I consider a big and scary part of my overall identity.”
“I think this was sexual abuse, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfish and childish.”
“I think I was treated badly by my parents/friends/partner, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfish and childish.”
“I want to believe that I’m deserving of equal freedom and human respect paid to other, not asexual people, but people tell me I’m being selfish and childish.”
“No one encourages this part of me. And that makes me feel forgotten and abandoned in general.”
Shut the fuck up about your petty beef with tumblr bloggers and youtubers and Archie comics or whatever. I literally do not care, I can’t care. I see these messages every goddamn day - this post was written and drafted a month ago, and I very easily compiled most of this bulletpoint list from scratch, just by eyeing what I see in the askbox and what comes across my dash.
‘Ace discourse’ anger is empty and so meaningless. This is what I see by being part of this one 17k follow asexual ask blog for maybe half a year. I am so Done with all the faux rage posts and all the false positivity about how it’s ok to NOT be ace and all the acephobia that falls perfectly in line with the gaslighting typical of acephobia-101 while also having the audacity to claim it not so.
This is what’s real and I want to bleed it into your goddamn eyes.
Asexual Awareness Week: Day 2
[IMAGE: A 9x9 aesthetic layout; the images are as follows, top to bottom, left to right: A person launching a Chinese lantern, A crumpled up piece of paper with “Don’t Forget Me” written on it, a bed of flowers of varying shades of purple, “You are good enough” written on a purple note, A white neon light in the shape of a realistic heart, A hand covered in purple, blue and white paint, A hand rising out of purple and blue smoke, A notebook and palette of purple paints, A newspaper with “You are born and then you die, but in between you can do anything you want. It’s society that creates rules for us, but you can break out of that” in enlarged text.]
Dear LGBT community members who don’t think asexuality should be allowed “in”:
I’m biologically female, and I’m not attracted to men. Society told me I was supposed to be, but it never happened, and I spent years of my life feeling broken and wrong. The other option presented to me when I was young was being attracted to women. I watched girls closely, trying to figure it out, but that wasn’t working for me, either. Wanting to be sexually close to another person just baffled me. I swore everyone else was making those feelings up. But they weren’t, and I got older, I realized that and it sunk in that I was just one big weirdo. I was in college when I learned the word for it, and had a breakdown of panic and relief. I can’t begin to put into words how it felt to discover I wasn’t broken–that I was a part of a group of people who felt in their hearts and souls the way I did.
Then came the process of coming out. My friends were a mixed bag, but friends you can pick and choose from if they aren’t supportive.The vast majority of my friends were cool about it, even if they didn’t quite understand. There were assholes, and one suggested “showing me” I was wrong (creepy creepy creepy), but mostly my friends were neutral to positive.
After some select friends, I came out to my family.
My parents told me I was wrong.
It was like being run over by a truck. To this day, I can’t talk about my asexuality around those I love most. It caused one of the only serious arguments I’ve ever had with my parents (I love them and they’re wonderful about 99.9% of the things in my life, but this is one place they weren’t). I was told I just had to find the “right person”, and I would change. That I was too young to understand my feelings (I was in my 20s) towards boys. That I shouldn’t put labels on myself that would make men not want to date me. Because god forbid men not find me attractive! Because clearly, from my conversation with them, what I wanted most of all was to find a man who wanted to get in my pants! Yeah!
Yeah.
It’s not really their fault. We live in a world where happiness is defined as falling in love, getting married, etc. Not wanting another person in your life as your “other half” is an alien concept. Media is flooded with messages of heterosexual normalcy, and now in very small pockets (hopefully growing, because it should! <3), a homosexual option for partnered normalcy. It’s shoved in our faces CONSTANTLY. Our society and government have even set things up to benefit couples financially. Which is fun now that I’m in my 30s and trying to save up for a future family, all by myself. And thankfully, even though they still avoid the word, over a decade later my parents do seem on board with the fact that I’m not pursuing relationships and are supportive of my life choices to save for a family by myself.
Listen. I am by no means saying that I am oppressed as a person the way people attracted to same-gendered people are. I’m not saying I’m oppressed the way the trans community is. I’m not saying any of that. But I AM dealing with a world where who I am is just not “okay”. Where who I am is wrong, where who I am needs to be fixed. Or, in many cases (most cases), where who I am DOES NOT EXIST. I don’t belong in the heterosexual world. I’m an outsider to it. But I’m also an outsider to any world that involves sex and attraction. And as a youth, I had NO WORD to use to describe who I was!
So when asexuals advocate for asexual inclusion in the LGBT community, it’s not because we want to weirdly steal thunder from anyone in your community, or because we want false pity for oppression we haven’t faced the way you have. It’s because we don’t want others to have to grow up the way we did.
We don’t want the world to continue not knowing about our existence. We want asexuality recognized publicly–both so asexuals can learn about themselves in an honest way, and so non-aces see us as legitimate humans. The LGBT world seemed like the natural place for us to go to to ask for inclusion. The place where others might understand what it’s like to grow up in a heterosexual world, as someone who is not. It’s who I first turned to when I discovered the word for myself, only to find immediate pain, rejection, and even mockery. I was horrified.
But I didn’t give up. I couldn’t give up. In 2005, I was in college and gave a talk at my university’s LGBT club. They had never heard of asexuality before, despite being part of a huge liberal university. It was the scariest thing I’d ever done in my life. I had to introduce the concept, and represent the entire community. And then answer a barrage of questions. Personal, personal questions, about my body, my life experiences, everything. And at the end, there was a long period silence. Until one brave person said:
“Wow. You have gone through the same things as us. You said you had some pamphlets about it? Can we put them in our office? People need to know about this. I can’t imagine growing up not knowing about homosexuality. As scary as it was for me, at least I had a word for it.”
I broke down crying and gave them all the pamphlets I had ordered. Many of them started crying, too. We became a blubbering mess in that meeting room. In that moment, I thought I had found a community who understood after all.
Did I? I suppose that’s up to you. But please, take some of this into consideration before you say that asexuals shouldn’t have a letter in your acronym, or should make their “own, separate” community. We’re unknown and invisible in so many ways, but nevertheless hurting in ways I think many of you can sympathize with and understand. It’s not that we’re attracted to the “wrong” sex or gender. It’s that we’re not attracted to the “right” one. And holy crap, the world just isn’t super friendly or understanding to people like that. Like us.
Thank you.
You seem pretty open about this, and I don't know anyone else to ask, but you can ignore this completely if you need to. I think I might be asexual? But I'm not sure. I've never looked and someone and thought sex, and usually sex just sounds meh at best. But I have had it before, and I liked it? Is it possible for me to still be ace, or if not, what am I? Thank you
::puts on Official Asexual hat::
I can’t, despite this fabulous hat, actually make a ruling on your sexual orientation or how you want to identify. But that said: the definition of asexuality, as I understand it, is a sexual orientation that consists of not feeling sexual attraction to anyone. Period. Everything after that is a different question. Your sexual orientation is about who you feel sexually attracted to and if the group of people you feel sexually attracted to is [file not found] then, congratulations, you’re asexual and you are entitled to cake.
I think that a lot of confusion–and especially a lot of the people who basically feel like they want to identify as asexual but don’t qualify–comes from piling two or three different factors onto the identity of asexuality and conflating them, or treating them like the more of those factors you have, the MORE asexual you are, like there is a ~gold star asexual~ class that you only get into if you are attracted to no one, have never had sex, never want to have sex or even think about sex, think sex is totally gross and inexplicable, and never experience sexual urges or sensations. But that’s a whole bunch of other factors getting piled on to a sexual orientation in a way that just demands you fit into a stereotype.
Sexual orientation: What group of people, broadly speaking, do you look at and think: Ooh I want to have sex with you.
If it is people of the opposite gender, heterosexual! Same gender, gay/lesbian/homosexual as applies in your case! Two or more genders, bisexual or pansexual or omnisexual or some other word according to fine gradations of meaning and gender identity and so on! If nobody, ever, asexual! If very few people, very rarely, generally for reasons other than physical/gender characteristics, demisexual or gray-asexual!
Sexual behavior: Do you have sex? Have you ever? Do you masturbate? How?
These are all super prone to be influenced by circumstances! Maybe you’re really young or you have moral/religious/emotional/psychological/etc reasons to refrain from having sex. This doesn’t mean you can’t belong to ANY of the sexual orientations listed above; you can absolutely be gay or straight or bi or pan before you’ve had sex with anybody, or if you’re currently not having sex.
Maybe you are or were in a relationship with somebody, of any gender, who did or didn’t belong to the group of people you find you’re sexually attracted to, and you had sex with them–because they wanted to, because you wanted to for reasons other than sexual attraction, because you thought you would find you liked it once you tried it, because you didn’t really think about reasons and it just seemed like a good idea at the time.
That ALSO doesn’t mean that you automatically belong or don’t belong to any sexual orientation listed above. Gay people experiment or even wind up in lifelong sexual relationships with people of the opposite sex for various reasons; straight people have sex once or many times with people of their own gender; bisexuals do not have to perpetually have sex with people of both genders to still be really bi; asexuals can have sex and still be asexual.
[There is not a good word for this one–Sexual enjoyment, maybe?]: Quite aside from how skilled you or your partner are, do you basically LIKE the sexual behavior you engage in, if any?
There are a bunch of variations to this–some people just really really like sex even when it doesn’t result in orgasms, some people think sex is gross and unpleasant even when it’s taking place in a loving relationship and technically everything is going great, even when they’re masturbating in exactly the way they prefer. For some people this dislike or discomfort might come from trauma or social conditioning that sex is dirty or wrong, but for lots of people it’s just how they feel! THERE IS NO INNATE REASON WHY THIS SHOULD CORRELATE TO WHO YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO. A person could be attracted to everyone in the world and still think the actual act of sex involving their own actual body is really gross and unpleasant and not desired, or a person could never be attracted to anyone and still find themselves having a rad time when they decide to get it on, and every variation in between. And a person could find sex with other people super DNW but enjoy the hell out of masturbating. We don’t really have a standard word for people who REALLY REALLY ENJOY sex (or not a non-insulting one); people who don’t enjoy sex at all are called sex-repulsed.
Sexual drive: How often do you find yourself wanting to have sex or masturbate?
For some people, ALL THE TIME, for some people, never. For MOST people, this varies with hormonal shifts/age/psychological and emotional factors, etc. And again this is separate from who you are attracted to, separate from whether you act on those urges (or choose to have sex in the absence of any physical urge), separate from how much you enjoy engaging in sexual activity if/when you do. This is the one that people are thinking of when they ask if your asexuality is being caused by your meds/thyroid/whatever. But again, having zero libido could happen to somebody who’s actively attracted to all kinds of people, and having a constant urge to get busy could happen to someone who’s not attracted to anyone–even to someone who’s not attracted to anyone and is sex-repulsed, etc.
SO IN CONCLUSION: sexual identity is complicated! Sexual behavior is driven by lots of factors! But if you’re not attracted to anyone, the word for that is asexual, and there’s no wrong way to be asexual. You just are if you are.
I saw this magazine in a grocery store and I immediately started freaking out. I have no idea what the article is about, because I was leaving checkout and had to rush out of there, but just knowing that asexuals are spotlighted in one that’s carried in stores makes me very happy.
i told my boyfriend i was demisexual so i had to expalin to him that demisexual is the kind of people who feel sexual attraction to someone with an emotional bond, and he said "yeah just like everyone else"... how i am supposed to react to that? i told him that no, because lot of people is alright with one night stands, but he was insisting everyone was like this..
This is a hard one that I’ve struggled with too, because as demisexuals we know that our experience is fundamentally different, but often times harder to pin down than saying we’re strictly asexual. Here’s how I explained it to my mom. I’m not sure how useful this is, especially since it’s about how *I* experience demisexuality, which might be different than how you or others do, but maybe it’ll help.So imagine that sex is coffee right? People love coffee. Coffee is everywhere. There’s a Starbucks on every corner, coffee drinkers in every TV show and movie, and billboards and ad spots about coffee all the time. People who like coffee might be peculiar about how they want their coffee— maybe they like it with sugar or soy milk, or only in the mornings before 10, or only when they’re studying, only from Starbucks or only from their local coffee house, etc. Or they might not care— they might like coffee no matter when or how it’s made. They’ll buy it from anyone and take it in whatever form because they really like coffee. But they all agree that in general they like coffee.
And then there are people who don’t like coffee at all. They can’t stand it. They don’t want coffee at any point of the day, no matter how it’s made or who makes it. Nothing you can do makes coffee in any way appealing to them. Coffee lovers are generally baffled by this, and some might insist that people who don’t like coffee just haven’t had the right cup, but the fact is that people who don’t like coffee simply just don’t like coffee.
And then there are people like us: we don’t generally like coffee, and we wouldn’t choose to have coffee on our own. Like the people who don’t like coffee, we can go years without a cup of coffee and it doesn’t bother us at all.
But we have a friend who loves coffee, and we love that friend. And the longer we’re friends, the more we want to have coffee with them. Not because coffee has suddenly become our favorite drink, but because we love our coffee-drinking friend and THEY make us want coffee. So we go out for coffee with them, and we enjoy having coffee because we’re having coffee with them. If we weren’t with them, we wouldn’t want coffee.
"But everybody feels that way" isn’t true. Coffee lovers still want coffee even when their conditions for having coffee aren’t met. Just because they’re not drinking coffee right now, or because they might have preferences for when & how they drink coffee, doesn’t mean they stop liking coffee. But for people like us, if we’re not having coffee with that specific person, then we don’t care about coffee. It holds absolutely no appeal or value. We have to have that connection before we ever want coffee. Coffee lovers might want that connection when they have coffee too, but they also generally want coffee as a thing in itself.
That’s the difference between being demisexual and being an allosexual who likes to have emotional connections with their partners. An allosexual person still likes and wants sex as a thing itself, even if the conditions for having sex aren’t being met. They think about and desire sex outside of the conditions they set for engaging in the actual act. A demisexual person doesn’t care about sex as a thing in itself, because sex is inherently tied to emotional bonding for them. We don’t think about sex as an act involving us unless it’s under those conditions.
That may or may not be the worst analogy ever, I honestly don’t know, sorry. It seemed to work for my mom, but that might be because she really likes coffee *shrugs*
If anyone following this blog has any resources on how to respond to that type of response they’d like to direct the anon to, please let me know so I can post them!
Hope that helps!
The ‘Asexy’ music video is now out! Well done to Queer Sounds for bringing this song to life, their team of editing monkeys for the great video and to everyone who participated!
As hard as it may be for you to understand how I cannot feel sexual attraction, please respect that it is equally difficult for me to understand how you can.
This is the best single article I’ve ever read on asexuality. Brief, down to earth, and still comprehensive and accurate, and it doesn’t leave you with a million unanswered questions. If you ever need a basic go-to article to give your friends, this one is good!
Daily Affirmation 721.
On this first day of Asexual Awareness Week, remember that you deserve more than awareness. You deserve awareness, and support, and love, and acceptance, and visibility, and safety. You can fight for all of these things without diminishing any of them, without compromise. You deserve this.
I love being Asexual
Because my acethetic is on point.
You're asexual? But...
“but sex is what makes us human!”
in 1916 a French officer in his twenties writes his
doctoral dissertation under
heavy mortar fire.
he sends it by mail, a page
at a time, to his wife.
a week before he’s to step up to the podium and
defend his work rather than hiscountry
he is killed in action.
even as the bullets rip
through him he still wishes he could have become a professor
in French literature and
the university awards him a posthumous Ph.D.
sex is
a woman breaks down in tears on the phone because
a week is not enough time to
get over a breakup.
her sister drives an hour across town,
comes up the front steps with
a gallon of ice cream and somebeer
and together they eat moose tracks and marathon
every
single
Godzilla movie
ever made.
sex is
she’s late for work but her car isn’t
starting and even through her coat and hat she’s cold.
she knows she can’t be late again because she’s missed
one time too many already because her
father’s nurse was sick with the flu and someone
needed to help him bathe.
the clock ticks past fifteen after and she hits
the wheel like it’s a heavy bag as though that will help
steps on the gas like the car will go
and wonders how she will pay rent
and how she will feed her father.
sex is
it takes three people to hold the predator down because
even with the cover over his head
a bleeding eye and shattered wing
he is trying to hurt them.
none of them have seen this bird before in their lives but
they bandage his wing and head and give him a painkiller and
put him in a warm place to sleep and heal because
it is right.
at first he is paralyzed and cannot
fly but soon he is taking steps
and then fluttering, and then soaring, and
six months later he is whole and healed and hunting.
once he is gone they never see him again
which means they’ve done their jobs right.
sex is
in 1969 a girl watches grey-and-white footage on her parents’ tiny television and
can’t quite believe that what she is seeing is not a movie set but
another planet.
the men on the screen look a little like
aliens with bulbous heads and no faces and fat
marshmallow arms
but they are still men.
her mother puffs on a cigarette behind her and declares that
this is progress
even if it was just a small step.
the girl grows up to be not an astronaut but a secretary
and her boss calls her ‘sweetheart’.
but sex is
a boy is taught that real men don’t cry so
he doesn’t.
when his best friend dies from a self-inflicted
gunshot wound, he locks himself
in the shower every day and sobs under scalding
water until it runs cold
so nobody will see him grieving
so nobody will see that tears are just love that
has no place left to go.
he learns to dull love rather than suppress its expression and
soon the owner of the liquor store knows him by name.
three DUIs, two evictions, and twelve steps later,
he is feeding people at a homeless shelter,
and telling them it’s all right to cry.
Sex is
the broken man tells the comedian
that he didn’t mean to step in front of the car but the rain
made it hard to see.
he seems okay but his leg
does not.
the comedian clutches a grubby receipt with the driver’s
plate number scrawled on the back
in pink pen, stands out in the rain so the broken man
can have his umbrella,
and gives him the comedy routine that ruined his career
so the man doesn’t think about the pain in his leg.
once he’s out of the hospital, the fixed man sends him a thank-you card
with kittens on it.
what makes us human
yawning is contagious,
and there is a species of bird whose young we call “pufflings”.
melodic collections of sound, spaced by silence,
can move us to tears.
the tallest building in the world is
two-thousand seven-hundred and seventeen feet tall.
in less than eighty years we went from our first powered flight
to touching the moon,
and in one-hundred from the first phone call
to instantaneous connection between thinking machines of our own creation.
we make pies out of tree organs
and let cow’s milk ferment until it hardens and then
we put them together, because apple pie with cheddar cheese is delicious.
what makes us human is
the earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans are
two-hundred thousand years old .
we have had pet dogs
for sixteen-thousand of those years, longer
than corn
or the wheel.
the steps we take are part of
one of the most energy-efficient gaits the
animal kingdom has ever seen.
we invented the concepts of love
and hate
and justice, and mercy
and we invented the language to convey them.
we sharpened rocks, then metal, to convince other people
who don’t hold the same idea of those things as we do
because we think
it’s right.
we are two hundred millennia of love and disappointment and
sorrow and innovation and
mercy and kindness and dreams
and failure
and recovery.
but sex is what makes us human.
Daily Affirmation 682.
Having sex does not make you human. Wanting sex does not make you human. Feeling sexual attraction does not make you human. You can have, want, or feel some of these things, or all of them, or none of them, and still be human. Humanity is an intrinsic part of your existence. Nobody gets to take it away from you because of your asexuality, regardless of what that means you do and do not want.
Asexual Sexual Orientations 101
Sex Positive: I don't feel sexual attraction but I do enjoy the physical sensation of sex. (Maybe even crave it!)
Sex Neutral: I can have sex but I don't need it. To be honest I have no strong feelings about sex. But a slice of pizza would be better.
Sex Repulsed: I don't like sex. I don't want to have sex. I'm not going to have sex with you. I understand that people enjoy sex but I do not.
The presence of a libido does not invalidate any of these orientations. Dicks jokes and sexual humor do not invalidate these asexuals. These orientations are a SPECTRUM and are very fluid. Asexuals can and do exist in between theses definitions.
“Taking The Cake” is an illustrated zine and 101 about asexuality, created by Maisha in 2012. It includes the basic definitions, some of the nuances of asexuality, explains the types of attraction that exist (not all attraction is sexual), dispels myths, includes resources and takes on the topic of whether asexuality is included in the queer community or not. Some say no, some say yes. Anyway, very helpful information and the artwork is exquisite. You see that Black woman on the cover! ♥♠
Okay, I realize this hilariously late for Asexuality Awareness Week (which was last week), but due to unforeseen stressors, it didn’t really get done in time.
Anyway! I’ve wanted to do something like this for a while, and I’m proud of myself of actually getting a six page comic done within a week. (Not that it’s really anything super fancy, but it’s better than nothing lol) I do apologize for the massive ugly text wall that is page four but I had a hard time figuring out how to convey it visually while being kind of pressed for time. oh and the occasional copy/paste, I’m sorry for that too
Enjoy! Click on the separate pictures if the text is hard to read.