When life gives you crawlspaces...

something for the Valentine's 🤭

i’ve identified as bisexual for a really long time. like it was one of the first things i told jp (my husband) when we started dating long time. jp has never had a problem with my queerness. but when we started dating in january of 2018, i didn’t have all of the orientation pieces. so i had sex. and i had sex because i thought that’s what i was supposed to do. and i cannot stress enough how consensual all of the sex was. but it didn’t feel fantastic like i was told it would. i didn’t think about it as much as i was supposed to. there was no bliss. my toes didn’t curl and my eyes didn’t roll to the back of my head. i just didn’t enjoy it. and i thought not enjoying it meant there was something wrong with me. and since it was a me thing, and not anyone’s fault, i had sex. i just pretended that i liked it the way that society told me i should.

so me and my husband had sex because it was something he wanted and i didn’t mind doing.

but this past year i realized and came to terms with the fact my disinterest in sex wasn’t a nerve problem like my gynecologist said or trauma based like an old therapist said or any other explanation offered to me by anyone from friends to medical professionals. my disinterest in sex was because because i don’t experience that kind of attraction.

and when i finally figured it out i was kinda devastated. because i was faced with either a) continuing to pretend to enjoy it, or b) coming out to jp. i knew he wouldn’t take it badly because i love and trust him, but i can know something is true and still not believe it. so i was scared but decided to come out even though the thought literally made me sick. i cried and apologized and told him how horrible i felt that i “lied” to him for years and how terrified i was that he was going to think i wasn’t attracted to him anymore or that i wasn’t ever attracted to him in the first place. i had to tell a man that i’d been having sex with for years that i didn’t want to anymore. that i didn’t enjoy it. that i’d never enjoyed it. that i didn’t know if i’d ever want to have sex again.

and do you all want to know what his response was?

he asked if he’d ever hurt me. and then he asked what my boundaries are. and then he thanked me for telling him. and then he said he married me because he loved me, not because i’d fuck him.

so me and my husband used to have sex. and now we don’t because six years into our relationship i realized i was aspec. and we haven’t had sex since i came out to him. he hasn’t even tried, even though i told him that i didn’t mind having sex, just that he would have to be the one to bring it up because i don’t ever think about it. but he hasn’t brought it up. not once. because he knows it’s about like going to the pharmacy for me.

so my husband doesn’t have sex with me because he loves me. because he cares about me. because he wants me to be happy. because when he asked me to go on that very first date it was because he thought i was smart and enthusiastic and funny and “lovely.” because he knew he was in it for the long haul when he watched me shotgun a red bull in a harbor freight parking lot at 7:30 pm on a thursday.

that’s kind of what marriage is about. the whole loving and wanting to take care of and cherishing your significant other thing. sex has never been a big part of the equation.

jp stayed with me the first six months of my sobriety. he stayed even though one time i had three tequila shots too many and yarffed all over him. and then again in his floorboards. he stayed when my grief made me shut down and shut out and for over a year. he stayed with me when that grief made me so depressed i’d spend days at a time just staring at a wall. or hours and hours reading fanfic so the only thoughts i had in my head belonged to someone else. he stayed even though i don’t remember most of 2023. he’s stayed through every good thing and bad thing and in between thing and literally every single think for the past nearly seven years.

like you try to bring it up with a conservative white man and he'll say, "my life wasn't easy. I grew up in a trailer park, raised by a single mom who was also a drug addict, and I have never had things handed to me. I struggled." and it's just. yes! you were subject to classism! your mother also faced misogyny, and institutional medical obstacles regarding addiction/drug treatment. you were disadvantaged compared to people who didn't have to endure any those things, and what happened to you was devastating and real.

all that "white privilege" means is that you were also not dealing with racism on top of that. that's it. that's what it means.

but if you push on this point, the reaction then pivots to: "but i'm not racist. i haven't used that privilege to hurt black people. i don't 'wield' my privilege against them."

great! interpersonal conflict is very much not how privilege largely manifests, it's exercised by systems and institutions that are beyond the reach of you and your friends. you may not have done anything to your black friend, but if you both applied for a loan at the same bank, all other things being equal, there is a historical precedence for you, a white man, being given better terms and resources. that is white privilege. neither of you are the banker, the banker is exercising power over both of you in making this decision.

and so ostensibly progressive people on here, who experience marginalization along one axis, will still reject any assertion that they have certain privileges - "I can't experience white privilege fully because I'm autistic" - there's a word for what you experience alongside white privilege, and it's called ableism. these two things very much coexist, because you are not also experiencing racism's intersection WITH the ableism you face. "I haven't used my male privilege against anyone, I don't oppress the women around me" - I never said you did, now if you and a woman both worked the same job, who is your employer (who wields the power in this situation) likely to pay more?