BEEEEEEP~
Saturday, 5 February 2011
Ack.
I've made three posts in January, and all of them have apparently been eaten. Lucky I refrained from posting one of them or I'd have lost that, too.
Friday, 14 January 2011
Asexy Meetups: Redux
Tomorrow I'm going to be going to my second 'official' meetup, which is in the same place and pretty close to the same time -albeit a year on- as the last one. I've also tried my highest to attend a few others and met awesome asexual outside of the official meetup setting.
One of the things that I'm struck with (and was almost put off by last year) is the fact that I'm quite young. Apart from the wonderful world of not being able to get very far under my own steam, I remember looking at the meetup threads on AVEN and seeing people in their twenties worrying that they were too young to attend. Where did that leave me? What would there be to talk about? I was a bit ambitious in fact that I decided to get over the location barrier by hosing my own darn meetup, and I remember feeling sick with worry as I travelled up- I'm pretty you'd now, and this was a year ago! Everyone was brilliant, though, and didn't even mind that I ended up leading them on a wild goose chase, amongst other things (a my two posts from last year show). AVEN's quite a close-knit community, in he sense that even though the membership spans thousands, you see familiar faces and can build up a picture of everything. It's not a forum for people who share love of an obscure hobby, it's where people quite often end up discovering themselves and puzzling out new and shiny things to do with their gender and sexuality how it pertains to them (yadas, step forward, please). It's a lovely experience to meet a small crossection of the people who make all this up, and I've come away with a couple of new friendships I though I'd never have.
One of my resolutions of 2011 was to attend at least one more meetup (which I can cross off tomorrow!) and I'm definitely planning to, age gap or not.
This time around, though, I'm not even pretending to organise the meet, and for that I am very grateful.
What are your thoughts on asexy meetups? Have you attended any, organised any, or bailed out from them? Do you worry you're too young or too old?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, because my Internet isn't safe anymore. Please excuse typos, but feel free to point them out for correction.
One of the things that I'm struck with (and was almost put off by last year) is the fact that I'm quite young. Apart from the wonderful world of not being able to get very far under my own steam, I remember looking at the meetup threads on AVEN and seeing people in their twenties worrying that they were too young to attend. Where did that leave me? What would there be to talk about? I was a bit ambitious in fact that I decided to get over the location barrier by hosing my own darn meetup, and I remember feeling sick with worry as I travelled up- I'm pretty you'd now, and this was a year ago! Everyone was brilliant, though, and didn't even mind that I ended up leading them on a wild goose chase, amongst other things (a my two posts from last year show). AVEN's quite a close-knit community, in he sense that even though the membership spans thousands, you see familiar faces and can build up a picture of everything. It's not a forum for people who share love of an obscure hobby, it's where people quite often end up discovering themselves and puzzling out new and shiny things to do with their gender and sexuality how it pertains to them (yadas, step forward, please). It's a lovely experience to meet a small crossection of the people who make all this up, and I've come away with a couple of new friendships I though I'd never have.
One of my resolutions of 2011 was to attend at least one more meetup (which I can cross off tomorrow!) and I'm definitely planning to, age gap or not.
This time around, though, I'm not even pretending to organise the meet, and for that I am very grateful.
What are your thoughts on asexy meetups? Have you attended any, organised any, or bailed out from them? Do you worry you're too young or too old?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, because my Internet isn't safe anymore. Please excuse typos, but feel free to point them out for correction.
Friday, 31 December 2010
Gender
I know that this has been covered in a lot more depth and with much more eloquence before; but today I'd like to talk about aces and their gender.
I can only really speak for myself and from the experiences I have seen of those on AVEN, tumblr and the yadas, but from what I have seen, a lot of asexuals (and other people who don't use gender to define their orientation, like pan or bisexuals, though that's really only something I have personally observed and is a tenous thing at best) seem to have a much higher of instances of people identifying as in some way being trans(whatever, sometime) or genderqueer in any myriad of ways.
Personally, I have been spending more and more time in the last few months interacting with a set of people on and off of AVEN, and naturally have sort of been sitting back and looking at how I feel about gender. And I really think that in my case at least, it is/was a case of convenience and assumption. Society said that I was a heterosexual girl, a girl who liked boys, the opposite gender.
It's why I was also invisibly told that 'Hey, you like the opposite gender, so you have to be different, and like *insert stereotypically feminine thing here* as opposed to *insert stereotypically masculine thing here*', and I internalised it, the same way that I have heard about so often than gay teens internalise the heteronormative message that they are wrong.
Of course, in your conscious mind you don't want to think that there is something wrong with you, or that social constructs dictate something as personal as your gender, but humans are social creatures. We like to be validated, whether or not the validation is a kind or true one.
On AVEN I likened the feeling to having gender as being two rafts in a river, one cisfemale and one cismale, which the majority of people are tied and/or clinging onto; with other people crossing between the two, or swimming different places in the river between the two or even drifting on the river in their own little vessels. I was saying how I seem to have recently realised that I'm not actually tied to the 'cisfemale' raft, and have rather been clinging on for convenience rather than necessity; as I've taken more and more time to think about it, I seem to be drifting away from the relative safety of the raft and am now at the mercy of the current, a bit.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, because my Internet isn't safe anymore. Please excuse typos, but feel free to point them out for correction.
I can only really speak for myself and from the experiences I have seen of those on AVEN, tumblr and the yadas, but from what I have seen, a lot of asexuals (and other people who don't use gender to define their orientation, like pan or bisexuals, though that's really only something I have personally observed and is a tenous thing at best) seem to have a much higher of instances of people identifying as in some way being trans(whatever, sometime) or genderqueer in any myriad of ways.
Personally, I have been spending more and more time in the last few months interacting with a set of people on and off of AVEN, and naturally have sort of been sitting back and looking at how I feel about gender. And I really think that in my case at least, it is/was a case of convenience and assumption. Society said that I was a heterosexual girl, a girl who liked boys, the opposite gender.
It's why I was also invisibly told that 'Hey, you like the opposite gender, so you have to be different, and like *insert stereotypically feminine thing here* as opposed to *insert stereotypically masculine thing here*', and I internalised it, the same way that I have heard about so often than gay teens internalise the heteronormative message that they are wrong.
Of course, in your conscious mind you don't want to think that there is something wrong with you, or that social constructs dictate something as personal as your gender, but humans are social creatures. We like to be validated, whether or not the validation is a kind or true one.
On AVEN I likened the feeling to having gender as being two rafts in a river, one cisfemale and one cismale, which the majority of people are tied and/or clinging onto; with other people crossing between the two, or swimming different places in the river between the two or even drifting on the river in their own little vessels. I was saying how I seem to have recently realised that I'm not actually tied to the 'cisfemale' raft, and have rather been clinging on for convenience rather than necessity; as I've taken more and more time to think about it, I seem to be drifting away from the relative safety of the raft and am now at the mercy of the current, a bit.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, because my Internet isn't safe anymore. Please excuse typos, but feel free to point them out for correction.
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
Kinks and asexuality
I guess it's odd that I'm posting about kinkiness. For one thing, I'm an adolescent, and for another, I'm asexual. But here I am, posting this - though don't worry, it's not explicit or 'hardcore'.
I've been thinking about kinkiness specifically because I've been thinking about asexuality, and what is is. As in, it may be the absence of sexual attraction, but what about aesthetic and romantic attraction? Romance drives? Sensuality and how it relates to sexuality?
The first two have been discussed and defined at considerable length, but the latter I have only seen talked about through fandom (courtesy of a wonderful essay by saucery at http://saucery.livejournal.com/11578.html ) and another blog written by a highly kinky asexual. I have also seen it acknowledged, at least in passing, by a few others; but definitely nowhere where people have sat down and said "We're here. Now let's talk about this."
And no, I'm not sure why I've taken it upon myself to 'talk' about it, as it were. Maybe because after a year of going 'am I really ace? Yep? Just checking,' I've gone onto a new kind of questioning, the kind where I go 'would I be willing to do this or this? Who can I see myself in a relationship with, if at all? I've questioned my gender, and those other three things- it seems that now my brain is satisfied about my orientation, it has found new things to question. Lucky me.
Of course, the side effect of this has been some welcome, unwelcome, and downright weird discoveries about myself. I'm personally of the opinion that if everyone did the same- if everyone was forced/led to explore their a/sexuality, orientation and gender like many queers folks are, there would be a lot less cut-and-dried straight-and-cis folk around (which, as I said, is a personal and frankly rather shoddy theory also vaguely supported by the 'increase' if queer folks, which is again an unreliable source, and... You get the idea). Sexuality (and all it all entails) is, as they say, fluid.
Obviously, the point of this post isn't to ramble on and on about gender and queerness and so forth... Or, it is, but of a different and specific brand.
Thinking about sensuality separately from sexuality is pretty headache-inducing. For a start, most of the time typically 'sensuous' things lead to sex. They're a pretty damn big part of foreplay, and so whilst certain things aren't sexual in of and in themselves, such as a backrub done by a professional (and done right) can be extremely sensually pleasing, but put the same backrub in another context, between 'friend's or partners, and as if by magic it becomes sexually charged. Apparently.
I think it's odd to reconcile the concept of asexuality and sensuality (even without 'proper' kink) without experience. Heck, I sometimes go 'really? This is really how I feel?' on certain days. But like it or not sensuality (as well as aesthetic and romantic attraction; and sexual and romantic drives) are not mutually exclusive. I sometimes worry about how I would potentially deal with sensuality with a partner; it's most likely that I will at any given time (in a relationship, I'm not constantly in the things) I will be in one with a sexual, and there the problems begin.
Of course, cutting straight to the heart of the issue; for me, it's the trust. There are a lot of very sensual things that I would love to share in the future with a partner: these things wouldn't be sexual in my view. I really wouldn't want to be in a potentially compromising situation as long as I trusted them to know that no, I wasn't cured of being ace, or getting carried away, and that I wouldn't like to _______ in the hypothetical situation. I know there's no-one at the moment who I could trait like that, and it's for. I'm a teenager, for goodness' sakes. I just hope that I get older that this still isn't too much to ask (as if being in a relationship with a repulsed asexual wouldn't be hard enough anyway, but that's another discussion). It probably be the worst kind if tease, as well- like I mentioned, sensual play is generally employed in sexual foreplay, and I'm sure it'd be annoying to a good few people- at bit like someone stealing the best part of a dessert. I mean, I myself don't feel it anywhere near as an important part of me as asexuality, but it's definitely an interesting conundrum.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, because my Internet isn't safe anymore. Please excuse typos, but feel free to point them out for correction.
I've been thinking about kinkiness specifically because I've been thinking about asexuality, and what is is. As in, it may be the absence of sexual attraction, but what about aesthetic and romantic attraction? Romance drives? Sensuality and how it relates to sexuality?
The first two have been discussed and defined at considerable length, but the latter I have only seen talked about through fandom (courtesy of a wonderful essay by saucery at http://saucery.livejournal.com/11578.html ) and another blog written by a highly kinky asexual. I have also seen it acknowledged, at least in passing, by a few others; but definitely nowhere where people have sat down and said "We're here. Now let's talk about this."
And no, I'm not sure why I've taken it upon myself to 'talk' about it, as it were. Maybe because after a year of going 'am I really ace? Yep? Just checking,' I've gone onto a new kind of questioning, the kind where I go 'would I be willing to do this or this? Who can I see myself in a relationship with, if at all? I've questioned my gender, and those other three things- it seems that now my brain is satisfied about my orientation, it has found new things to question. Lucky me.
Of course, the side effect of this has been some welcome, unwelcome, and downright weird discoveries about myself. I'm personally of the opinion that if everyone did the same- if everyone was forced/led to explore their a/sexuality, orientation and gender like many queers folks are, there would be a lot less cut-and-dried straight-and-cis folk around (which, as I said, is a personal and frankly rather shoddy theory also vaguely supported by the 'increase' if queer folks, which is again an unreliable source, and... You get the idea). Sexuality (and all it all entails) is, as they say, fluid.
Obviously, the point of this post isn't to ramble on and on about gender and queerness and so forth... Or, it is, but of a different and specific brand.
Thinking about sensuality separately from sexuality is pretty headache-inducing. For a start, most of the time typically 'sensuous' things lead to sex. They're a pretty damn big part of foreplay, and so whilst certain things aren't sexual in of and in themselves, such as a backrub done by a professional (and done right) can be extremely sensually pleasing, but put the same backrub in another context, between 'friend's or partners, and as if by magic it becomes sexually charged. Apparently.
I think it's odd to reconcile the concept of asexuality and sensuality (even without 'proper' kink) without experience. Heck, I sometimes go 'really? This is really how I feel?' on certain days. But like it or not sensuality (as well as aesthetic and romantic attraction; and sexual and romantic drives) are not mutually exclusive. I sometimes worry about how I would potentially deal with sensuality with a partner; it's most likely that I will at any given time (in a relationship, I'm not constantly in the things) I will be in one with a sexual, and there the problems begin.
Of course, cutting straight to the heart of the issue; for me, it's the trust. There are a lot of very sensual things that I would love to share in the future with a partner: these things wouldn't be sexual in my view. I really wouldn't want to be in a potentially compromising situation as long as I trusted them to know that no, I wasn't cured of being ace, or getting carried away, and that I wouldn't like to _______ in the hypothetical situation. I know there's no-one at the moment who I could trait like that, and it's for. I'm a teenager, for goodness' sakes. I just hope that I get older that this still isn't too much to ask (as if being in a relationship with a repulsed asexual wouldn't be hard enough anyway, but that's another discussion). It probably be the worst kind if tease, as well- like I mentioned, sensual play is generally employed in sexual foreplay, and I'm sure it'd be annoying to a good few people- at bit like someone stealing the best part of a dessert. I mean, I myself don't feel it anywhere near as an important part of me as asexuality, but it's definitely an interesting conundrum.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, because my Internet isn't safe anymore. Please excuse typos, but feel free to point them out for correction.
Friday, 10 December 2010
Asexuality Acceptance Bitch part 2- or, finally getting around to that title
All right, then, it's time that I got around to finally drawing the title to my rather large bitch (sssh, it's my blog and I shall do what I like). Now that I've fixed the issue of safe-ish and secure Internet that I can blog from (blog in your pocket! I'm waiting for a robot manservant now, hehe) I even have some meta/bitches/posts queued up, which is a massive luxury.
As I have said before, I'm currently having trouble with a second wave of ignorance. It's been over a year since I came out to basically the entire school, and I foolishly thought that, what with the unexpected allies and my conversations, I was all okay. Although I'd been told that people would forget, would stop the ether hurtful gossip, I didn't think that it would be quite so... Cold-shouldered.
I also, foolishly, thought that I had for the most part escape the ruder responses, but apparently I haven't - apart from the various unsavoury comparisons to all sorts of things, it's almost as if people have been affronted by my other-ness and retaliated the only way they know how, by determinedly ignoring me when I despair of being told to find a nice man, or just outright using a thinly veiled metaphor to tell me I'm fucked up; passive aggressive aggression at its British best.
There, that ties the title in nicely to my whole whiny mess, doesn't it?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, because my Internet isn't safe anymore. Please excuse typos, but feel free to point them out for correction.
As I have said before, I'm currently having trouble with a second wave of ignorance. It's been over a year since I came out to basically the entire school, and I foolishly thought that, what with the unexpected allies and my conversations, I was all okay. Although I'd been told that people would forget, would stop the ether hurtful gossip, I didn't think that it would be quite so... Cold-shouldered.
I also, foolishly, thought that I had for the most part escape the ruder responses, but apparently I haven't - apart from the various unsavoury comparisons to all sorts of things, it's almost as if people have been affronted by my other-ness and retaliated the only way they know how, by determinedly ignoring me when I despair of being told to find a nice man, or just outright using a thinly veiled metaphor to tell me I'm fucked up; passive aggressive aggression at its British best.
There, that ties the title in nicely to my whole whiny mess, doesn't it?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, because my Internet isn't safe anymore. Please excuse typos, but feel free to point them out for correction.
Thursday, 9 December 2010
Passive aggressive bull (aka 'Yay for British Non-Confrontationalism)
Until recently, I've been one of the lucky asexuals who has avoided many of the cliched responses to their coming out. Sure, I've had ignorance, but I Went Forth and Educated, and all was well.
I've since come to realise that not only were most people ignorant, they obviously didn't absorb or listen to a word I had said, and to be honest I'm not in the mood to play educator to each and every one of them a second time. Although I never saw the problems with AVEN regarding this as others did (not that they weren't there; I suck at seeing subtle things like that), I've started encountering the issue in meatspace pretty much all of the time now- it was all right when my asexuality was novel and interesting and I was explaining and educating and people got to nod and ask invasive questions, but when I start to 'flaunt' m sexuality and people are called upon to actually absorb and understand what I was talking about, it's back to being called a baby/animal/robot/pervert and being told to be checked for hormone problems.
I'm really tired of my 'jargon' not being understood (this also applies to gender, though that's a story for another blog) when I really want to do is have a casual conversation where I'm not repressi or stifling myself. I'm a teenager. I live for communication. I like to chatter, and whine and bitch and moan, and it's beyond frustrating that the only people that I can talk to about this are fellow asexuals.
--
Oh, hey, this post has completely derailed itself (damn you, yadas). Sorry for the misleading title, and I will get on to the subject next time.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, because my Internet isn't safe anymore. Please excuse typos, but feel free to point them out for correction.
I've since come to realise that not only were most people ignorant, they obviously didn't absorb or listen to a word I had said, and to be honest I'm not in the mood to play educator to each and every one of them a second time. Although I never saw the problems with AVEN regarding this as others did (not that they weren't there; I suck at seeing subtle things like that), I've started encountering the issue in meatspace pretty much all of the time now- it was all right when my asexuality was novel and interesting and I was explaining and educating and people got to nod and ask invasive questions, but when I start to 'flaunt' m sexuality and people are called upon to actually absorb and understand what I was talking about, it's back to being called a baby/animal/robot/pervert and being told to be checked for hormone problems.
I'm really tired of my 'jargon' not being understood (this also applies to gender, though that's a story for another blog) when I really want to do is have a casual conversation where I'm not repressi or stifling myself. I'm a teenager. I live for communication. I like to chatter, and whine and bitch and moan, and it's beyond frustrating that the only people that I can talk to about this are fellow asexuals.
--
Oh, hey, this post has completely derailed itself (damn you, yadas). Sorry for the misleading title, and I will get on to the subject next time.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, because my Internet isn't safe anymore. Please excuse typos, but feel free to point them out for correction.
Location:England
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Pride
I'm quite an aggressive asexual, as you may have noticed.
I'm big on visibility, and I really enjoy fucking with people's stereotypes - although I try to be careful not to be boring (though I do like Lego's cartoon from the most recent version of AVENues, which illustrates the whole 'only straight people get to assert their orientation' thing beautifully).
I carry my homemade keyring on my bag everywhere, with the playing card on one side and the "Asexuals: there's more of us then you think" slogan on the other and wear my black ring everywhere, too, despite my school jewellery code (freakishly flexible fingers come in handy, there).
However, I'm a bit of a coward when it comes to other sorts of visibility - being in the closet to my family, for example. I know that some AVENites have gone down as saying that they're happy to answer personal questions in interviews, but as soon as it's more close to home, they get worried.
Does anyone else feel the same confidence/secrecy dichotomy to do with pride as it concerns strangers, family and friends?
I'm big on visibility, and I really enjoy fucking with people's stereotypes - although I try to be careful not to be boring (though I do like Lego's cartoon from the most recent version of AVENues, which illustrates the whole 'only straight people get to assert their orientation' thing beautifully).
I carry my homemade keyring on my bag everywhere, with the playing card on one side and the "Asexuals: there's more of us then you think" slogan on the other and wear my black ring everywhere, too, despite my school jewellery code (freakishly flexible fingers come in handy, there).
However, I'm a bit of a coward when it comes to other sorts of visibility - being in the closet to my family, for example. I know that some AVENites have gone down as saying that they're happy to answer personal questions in interviews, but as soon as it's more close to home, they get worried.
Does anyone else feel the same confidence/secrecy dichotomy to do with pride as it concerns strangers, family and friends?
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