#noetisexuality

In honor of national coming out day, here is more info about a term (coined by Michon Neal) I have come to highly identify with. Mental attraction is something that I think the Queer community overlooks a lot but can be so central, especially to some neurodivergent folks.

Latest book I've begun reading is #PleasureActivism, and it brings up one point that I discussed most recently with Skye, who misinterpreted my longing to be in #communitiesofcare with Black women and other Black and indigenous nonmen, with romantic and or sexual intent, or on par with asking them for an emotional affair. While there is a highly erotic and healing aspect to my desires for Black nonmen, it is not sexual nor ever romantic. While I am willing to engage in sex if my #noetisexuality makes it possible, that is not my primary intent in any relationship. I may not mind romantic feelings toward me, but given my #aromanticism, #romancerepulsion, and the fact that romantic people continue to be decent friends to me, I will continue to never form romantic bonds. But in reading about these Black women and realizing anew that there is such real Sisterhood, I wonder again why those like myself have been marginalized further, isolated, maligned, and abused instead of taken in. Where are our communities of care? Where is the inclusion? Where is that sense of belonging? Trans women are very often included or there is great effort to include them. But us not-quites, us sexually variant, us agender or partially masculine enbies seem to have a similar experience of being forgotten and left out. There is this commonality to the experiences of Black womanhood that still fail to account for or address our Othergender being. This narrative of Sisterhood dominates discussion, and leaves nothing that touches upon the isolation and lack of care for the disabled and intersex and autistic and aro and Other. We may be mentioned in passing, but there is still a sense of disconnect and disorientation; we are liminal, not quite encompassed. They can name the Black women that held them up, inspired them, pushed them on. There are no such possibility models apparent for us. While we are joyful for their bonds and their long legacy of interconnection, creation, it is bittersweet, in that our search often ends up fruitless, our encounters so rare. It is so beautiful that this exists, these feminine ebony ties. But I can't still help wondering: what about the rest of us? https://www.instagram.com/michon_the_gentleman_goddess/p/BwQiNnGAJVb/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=rwq9psiti9ef