iām gonna get back to antstrange in a minute but i wanna talk about being asexual for a hot second.Ā
the thing about orientations is that they arenāt something you can force yourself to be or force yourself to get over. people tried to do that to queer individuals all throughout history and even today and itās horrible. it sucks. but hereās the thing; you can use a label, you can question it, you can try it on like clothing in a clothing store.
i was never interested in having sex with someone who had a penis so i tried dating people with vaginas. i met nice people; but i never wanted a long standing romantic or sexual relationship with them. that didnāt make meĀ āonce a lesbianā. it meant i was, at some point, questioning whether or not i was a lesbian.Ā
the same thing goes for being ace. people donātĀ āget over itā and people werenātĀ āonce aceā. they questioned it and found out it didnāt fit them which is goodĀ because trying to fit into an orientation that doesnāt fit isnāt healthy but theyāre looking and that matters.
using the languageĀ āgetting over itā andĀ āonce beingā makes it sound like asexuality is nothing more than a stepping stone or just aĀ āphaseā. that all of our āproblemsā are because of 1) sexual trauma 2) simply not being interested in sex at that moment in our lives 3) just not being an incredibly sexual person or 4) hormone deficiencies.
and there are some aces that have all of the above. does that make them any less asexual? no! of course not. i know aces who have suffered tremendous amounts of sexual trauma because of their orientation and have met aces that have not. there are so many different areas underneath asexuality that asking just one person is like studying one strand of grass and saying that everything found was True Facts about all types of grasses.
hereās a nice image from the trevor project to sum most of this up in a handy dandy image:
weāre not some sort of weird science experiment, weāre not all the same. being asexual is an orientation and the label can be tried on for a while but itās not something youĀ āget overā.Ā
iām here, iām queer, and iām definitely not getting over it.
