Asexuality, part 1: my coming-out post
May. 26th, 2019 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowscastUsually on this journal I talk about my fannish interests or my fanfic writing, but not about my self. I have a different, friends-locked journal for sharing personal stuff. (Not that "usually" is an entirely applicable concept, since I've barely posted in the past seven-ish years. But back in the distant past when I did post, that was the division!)
But I have a post in mind that I'd like to make about the experience of putting an asexual character into the fic I've been writing. And before making that post, I want to give some context.
The context is: I'm asexual. I've identified as such ever since I first came across the term, which was in a sex-and-sexuality themed advice column in a free urban weekly newspaper approximately twenty years ago.
More specifically, I'm asexual, biromantic, heterosexually married, and polyamorous. It was a bit of a journey, getting here, but now I'm in my 40s and happily comfortable in my own skin, and very content with the life that I'm living.
I guess I'll talk about that journey, a bit, in case anyone's interested!
When I was a teenager, I felt odd and out of place for a lot of reasons—my lack of interest in boys was only one of them. (I was also shy, nerdy, fashion unaware, and oblivious to popular music.) I pretty much just assumed I was a late bloomer, boys-wise. Plus, my parents were very controlling and protective, and they certainly didn't want me to be interested in boys, so I figured I was just being a good girl (I was very dedicated to being a good girl, as a teenager!).
I did occasionally experience crushes, which were wholly emotional rather than sexual (not that I knew the difference at the time), but I never did anything about them and they didn't consume me.
When I was seventeen, I "dated" a guy for a month, and then broke up with him. Dating, in this case, consisted of eating lunch together in the cafeteria (ah, high school! so long ago now!), holding hands in the school hallway, and going to one movie (with two of my female friends as chaperones; I still remember, it was Forrest Gump). I never even kissed the guy; I said I wasn't ready. In retrospect, I realize that he must have found that experience rather perplexing.
When I was eighteen, in my last year of high school, I heard that a girl I knew only vaguely was bisexual—making her the only out queer person at my high school—and I instantly developed a hopeless crush on her. At which point I started to wonder if I was bisexual too, because this feeling was just as intense as any crush I'd ever had on a boy.
When I was nineteen, in my first year of university, I dated another boy for a couple of months. I had my first kiss during a commercial break of an episode of Deep Space Nine that we were watching together. (We stopped kissing as soon as the commercials ended, obviously! Priorities.) We never went past kissing, and I broke up with him because I realized that I had no idea why I was even in the relationship.
In this case, I know that he found the experience rather perplexing, because we talked about it several years later. He mentioned that all of his relationships other than the one with me had become sexual very quickly.
To this day, I remain very grateful that nobody I was involved with ever pressured me to do more than I was comfortable with, even though (in retrospect), I must have been sending a lot of very confusing mixed signals.
After the failure of the second boy-relationship, I decided that maybe the problem was that I wasn't really interested in boys. At that point I still hadn't heard of asexuality as an option, so I hypothesized that I was gay. I joined a gay and lesbian youth discussion group. (I was so nervous the first time I went. It was in an office building downtown, and you had to buzz to be let in. There was a gelato restaurant in the basement. I still intensely remember standing on the sidewalk in front of that building, smelling fresh waffle cones and swallowing my fear.)
When I was twenty, I dated a girl from the gay and lesbian youth discussion group for five months. I enjoyed the experience. She made Ani DiFranco mixtapes for me. I still have them. We walked in the park, shared comics, and kissed and held hands. I thought she was beautiful. We slept together exactly twice (we were both still living with our parents, and closeted), and got to third base. I did not feel ready for more, but I suppose if we'd ever slept together a third time I would have felt pressure to go further, simply because as far as I knew, that's how relationships worked. Anyway, she broke up with me, and I cried and was sad for a while.
I came out to my parents as a lesbian. My dad took it well but my mother took it very badly. Things got uncomfortable. I moved out about four months later.
When I was twenty-two, I unexpectedly tumbled head-over-heels in love with a boy from my kendo club. I was still identifying as a lesbian, so that was confusing. I decided that I must have been bisexual all along. I brought flannel pyjamas in my backpack on our first date, which was a midnight showing of Fight Club at a repertory cinema. I invited myself back to his place afterwards since it was about six blocks closer to the theatre than my place was; I put on my pyjamas and crawled into bed with him, and he said "Um, I've never slept with somebody that I haven't kissed before," and I said cheerfully "Well, now you're going to!"
(We still laugh about it. We've been married for sixteen years, and we have an eleven-year-old kid.)
It took three months of sleeping together and cuddling every night before I was comfortable enough to try sex, but I assumed all along that we would have sex eventually, because doesn't everybody? And when we finally did have sex, it turned out to be not that big of a deal. Just movement and body parts. He liked it a lot, and I wasn't really into the sex itself but I did like feeling close to him and making him happy.
I think it was only a few months later that I came across the mention of asexuality in the free weekly paper. I read the article and had the "oh my god, that explains everything!" experience. The article referenced AVEN, the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network, so I went to the website and read the FAQ, and there I was, every detail of my strange and quirky experience, validated as real!
I told my then-boyfriend (now-husband) right away, and since he'd never heard of asexuality either he didn't really know what to make of it, but I assured him that I still loved him and didn't mind having sex with him as long as he was into it, so that worked out okay. (Nowadays we're poly and he has girlfriends who he has sex with instead of me, and I have a boyfriend of eight years who I don't have sex with but who I enjoy kissing and snuggling and watching TV shows with.)
That all sounds very well-organized and linear, doesn't it? Life is messier than that. Other things happened that I haven't mentioned. And while it's true that I've known that I'm asexual ever since I read that article twenty years ago, it's also true that I've frequently questioned my asexuality. Part of me always resisted the conclusion that I could possibly be such a special snowflake. My life on the surface is ridiculously heteronormative. Who the hell am I to claim a queer identity, when I've been legally married to an opposite-sex partner for sixteen years? And since for the first decade or so I never heard asexuality mentioned outside of AVEN, a part of me never stopped questioning if it was a real identity at all. How could it be real, if nobody had ever heard of it? Maybe it was just an internet thing. I didn't tell people that I was asexual; if the question of my sexuality came up in a context where I felt safe identifying as not-straight, I would say that I was bi. (I justified it to myself mathematically; it's true that I'm equally sexually attracted to both men and women, but did anyone specify that the level of attraction had to be non-zero?)
In the past decade, I have increasingly seen asexuality referenced as something that exists, in discussions of queer identity and politics and human sexuality. I've even encountered a few people in real life who've told me that they're asexual. (The moment has never felt right to say "me too!", though—it always feels like there's just too much explanation required, what with my very visible husband and child. Which isn't to say that I'm totally closeted—some of my friends know. It just doesn't come up very much.) And every time I do see it mentioned, it makes me feel a little bit more like a real human being instead of an odd alien creature watching from the outside.
So I guess that's why I decided to make this post.
Now available: part 2, in which I talk about the intersection of my asexuality and my fanfic-writing, and about my experience of writing an explicitly asexual character for the first time!
But I have a post in mind that I'd like to make about the experience of putting an asexual character into the fic I've been writing. And before making that post, I want to give some context.
The context is: I'm asexual. I've identified as such ever since I first came across the term, which was in a sex-and-sexuality themed advice column in a free urban weekly newspaper approximately twenty years ago.
More specifically, I'm asexual, biromantic, heterosexually married, and polyamorous. It was a bit of a journey, getting here, but now I'm in my 40s and happily comfortable in my own skin, and very content with the life that I'm living.
I guess I'll talk about that journey, a bit, in case anyone's interested!
When I was a teenager, I felt odd and out of place for a lot of reasons—my lack of interest in boys was only one of them. (I was also shy, nerdy, fashion unaware, and oblivious to popular music.) I pretty much just assumed I was a late bloomer, boys-wise. Plus, my parents were very controlling and protective, and they certainly didn't want me to be interested in boys, so I figured I was just being a good girl (I was very dedicated to being a good girl, as a teenager!).
I did occasionally experience crushes, which were wholly emotional rather than sexual (not that I knew the difference at the time), but I never did anything about them and they didn't consume me.
When I was seventeen, I "dated" a guy for a month, and then broke up with him. Dating, in this case, consisted of eating lunch together in the cafeteria (ah, high school! so long ago now!), holding hands in the school hallway, and going to one movie (with two of my female friends as chaperones; I still remember, it was Forrest Gump). I never even kissed the guy; I said I wasn't ready. In retrospect, I realize that he must have found that experience rather perplexing.
When I was eighteen, in my last year of high school, I heard that a girl I knew only vaguely was bisexual—making her the only out queer person at my high school—and I instantly developed a hopeless crush on her. At which point I started to wonder if I was bisexual too, because this feeling was just as intense as any crush I'd ever had on a boy.
When I was nineteen, in my first year of university, I dated another boy for a couple of months. I had my first kiss during a commercial break of an episode of Deep Space Nine that we were watching together. (We stopped kissing as soon as the commercials ended, obviously! Priorities.) We never went past kissing, and I broke up with him because I realized that I had no idea why I was even in the relationship.
In this case, I know that he found the experience rather perplexing, because we talked about it several years later. He mentioned that all of his relationships other than the one with me had become sexual very quickly.
To this day, I remain very grateful that nobody I was involved with ever pressured me to do more than I was comfortable with, even though (in retrospect), I must have been sending a lot of very confusing mixed signals.
After the failure of the second boy-relationship, I decided that maybe the problem was that I wasn't really interested in boys. At that point I still hadn't heard of asexuality as an option, so I hypothesized that I was gay. I joined a gay and lesbian youth discussion group. (I was so nervous the first time I went. It was in an office building downtown, and you had to buzz to be let in. There was a gelato restaurant in the basement. I still intensely remember standing on the sidewalk in front of that building, smelling fresh waffle cones and swallowing my fear.)
When I was twenty, I dated a girl from the gay and lesbian youth discussion group for five months. I enjoyed the experience. She made Ani DiFranco mixtapes for me. I still have them. We walked in the park, shared comics, and kissed and held hands. I thought she was beautiful. We slept together exactly twice (we were both still living with our parents, and closeted), and got to third base. I did not feel ready for more, but I suppose if we'd ever slept together a third time I would have felt pressure to go further, simply because as far as I knew, that's how relationships worked. Anyway, she broke up with me, and I cried and was sad for a while.
I came out to my parents as a lesbian. My dad took it well but my mother took it very badly. Things got uncomfortable. I moved out about four months later.
When I was twenty-two, I unexpectedly tumbled head-over-heels in love with a boy from my kendo club. I was still identifying as a lesbian, so that was confusing. I decided that I must have been bisexual all along. I brought flannel pyjamas in my backpack on our first date, which was a midnight showing of Fight Club at a repertory cinema. I invited myself back to his place afterwards since it was about six blocks closer to the theatre than my place was; I put on my pyjamas and crawled into bed with him, and he said "Um, I've never slept with somebody that I haven't kissed before," and I said cheerfully "Well, now you're going to!"
(We still laugh about it. We've been married for sixteen years, and we have an eleven-year-old kid.)
It took three months of sleeping together and cuddling every night before I was comfortable enough to try sex, but I assumed all along that we would have sex eventually, because doesn't everybody? And when we finally did have sex, it turned out to be not that big of a deal. Just movement and body parts. He liked it a lot, and I wasn't really into the sex itself but I did like feeling close to him and making him happy.
I think it was only a few months later that I came across the mention of asexuality in the free weekly paper. I read the article and had the "oh my god, that explains everything!" experience. The article referenced AVEN, the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network, so I went to the website and read the FAQ, and there I was, every detail of my strange and quirky experience, validated as real!
I told my then-boyfriend (now-husband) right away, and since he'd never heard of asexuality either he didn't really know what to make of it, but I assured him that I still loved him and didn't mind having sex with him as long as he was into it, so that worked out okay. (Nowadays we're poly and he has girlfriends who he has sex with instead of me, and I have a boyfriend of eight years who I don't have sex with but who I enjoy kissing and snuggling and watching TV shows with.)
That all sounds very well-organized and linear, doesn't it? Life is messier than that. Other things happened that I haven't mentioned. And while it's true that I've known that I'm asexual ever since I read that article twenty years ago, it's also true that I've frequently questioned my asexuality. Part of me always resisted the conclusion that I could possibly be such a special snowflake. My life on the surface is ridiculously heteronormative. Who the hell am I to claim a queer identity, when I've been legally married to an opposite-sex partner for sixteen years? And since for the first decade or so I never heard asexuality mentioned outside of AVEN, a part of me never stopped questioning if it was a real identity at all. How could it be real, if nobody had ever heard of it? Maybe it was just an internet thing. I didn't tell people that I was asexual; if the question of my sexuality came up in a context where I felt safe identifying as not-straight, I would say that I was bi. (I justified it to myself mathematically; it's true that I'm equally sexually attracted to both men and women, but did anyone specify that the level of attraction had to be non-zero?)
In the past decade, I have increasingly seen asexuality referenced as something that exists, in discussions of queer identity and politics and human sexuality. I've even encountered a few people in real life who've told me that they're asexual. (The moment has never felt right to say "me too!", though—it always feels like there's just too much explanation required, what with my very visible husband and child. Which isn't to say that I'm totally closeted—some of my friends know. It just doesn't come up very much.) And every time I do see it mentioned, it makes me feel a little bit more like a real human being instead of an odd alien creature watching from the outside.
So I guess that's why I decided to make this post.
Now available: part 2, in which I talk about the intersection of my asexuality and my fanfic-writing, and about my experience of writing an explicitly asexual character for the first time!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-26 09:50 pm (UTC)would say that I was bi. (I justified it to myself mathematically; it's true that I'm equally sexually attracted to both men and women, but did anyone specify that the level of attraction had to be non-zero?)
I've also started internally considering myself pan for the same reason. I have the same level of attraction for anyone and react similarly to fetish aspects regardless of the gender of the fictional character. Soooo I've been trying out the pan label on myself for about a year now. So nice to hear that someone else is sort of in the same boat in how to explain/justify this.
I look forward to your thoughts on writing an asexual character. About the time I realized I was asexual, I realized one of my characters I'd been writing for 10+ years was as well. "Ooohhhhhh! THAT'S why he'd been wanting me to write him like that. NOW I get it!" I've written ace!Sherlock when it comes to fanfic, and I have an ace character in an unfinished YA novel (and maaaaybe an ace fetishist character in an unfinished BDSM erotica novel; she seems to be presenting as ace, but I don't know her well enough yet to know for certain). It's been interesting writing each of them, figuring out what their preferences and comfort levels are, figuring out how each of them relates to the world and the romantic or sexual elements in it that might present themselves.
Also, I don't know Once a Thief, but congrats on writing again! I think I reread Before the Time of Dawn at least once a year :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-26 10:42 pm (UTC)*Hugs* right back at you!
I mean, that's a big part of why I decided to make this whole long post, instead of just saying "btw, I'm asexual" and jumping into the fic discussion. Because it's so reassuring to realize that other people have similar experiences!
I have the same level of attraction for anyone and react similarly to fetish aspects regardless of the gender of the fictional character.
Haha, yeah. The fetish aspect is one of those "other things" that I didn't mention in my neat, linear narrative. I thought about including it, but it probably would have doubled the length of the post! But it's true, as far as the fetish is concerned, for me it doesn't matter if the character is a man, a woman, or an anthropomorphic flower. One of the things in the AVEN FAQ that was really important for me to see was that being asexual doesn't necessarily mean that you don't experience sexual arousal, and that some people who are asexual do nevertheless have kinks or fetishes. ::checks the current FAQ:: It's still there! "Asexual people can still have libidos or experience arousal, but do not experience any intrinsic attraction or desire to engage in sexual activities with other people. This may include kinks or fetishes – activities or sensations that arouse a person sexually, but have nothing to do with wanting sex with another person."
I've written ace!Sherlock when it comes to fanfic
About eight years ago I met someone in RL who turned out to be fannish, and on my first coffee date with her I did end up coming out as both asexual and poly (because in the context of our fanfic discussion, these points were pertinent). She immediately said "Oh, I just read a great Sherlock fic in which Sherlock is asexual and poly!" and sent me a link. The memory still makes me smile (and I'm still friends with her!). That was actually a really important moment in the validation of my identity, for me!
I think I reread Before the Time of Dawn at least once a year :-)
Oh my gosh, that makes me so happy to hear! :-D
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-26 11:32 pm (UTC)Life's a funny thing, isn't it? I was born in '67, and so *much* is different now, about...everything. Things i never imagined are just....passe for my daughter, for instance, who has LGBTQ friends and who identifies as LGBTQ herself, and it's all just...life. How it is. Nobody cares.
Pretty damn awesome, if you ask me. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-27 04:59 am (UTC)That's so sweet of you to say!
Things i never imagined are just....passe for my daughter, for instance, who has LGBTQ friends and who identifies as LGBTQ herself, and it's all just...life. How it is. Nobody cares.
Pretty damn awesome, if you ask me. :D
Yes indeed!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-27 12:15 am (UTC)This makes a lot of sense for me. I remember hearing of asexuality some time ago -- I'm not clear exactly when -- but it definitely seemed like a rare thing, and easily confused with a diminishing of sexuality generally that happens when we age. By contrast, I think that the visibility of discussions surrounding asexuality and people identifying as asexual has grown very rapidly in the last 10 years, much like the discussion of trans experiences.
And it is definitely a generational thing. A niece has transitioned in the last three years and the daughter of a friend is unsure how she wants to identify but prefers they/them as pronouns. There's just a much wider awareness, which I expect can also be confusing because there are so many identifying labels now for people to decide to identify with, but at least there are fewer straightjackets.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-27 05:04 am (UTC)Yes, definitely.
Although, many of the TV shows and movies that I love (*ahem* I'm looking at you, Marvel Movieverse) have still barely managed to realize that gay people exist, let alone trans or asexual people! So representation-wise, there's still some distance to go.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-27 09:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-27 05:33 pm (UTC)Haha, it really was!
Sounds like you have a great arrangement.
Yes, it all worked out quite well in the end. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-27 06:45 pm (UTC)I don't fully identify as "asexual" but put myself "on the asexual spectrum," more as I get older, but I've really always been there. Today I identify as a friendship-bonder because that best sums up how I form partnership attachments, i.e. based on friendship, not sexual attraction.
In any case, thank you for sharing. It is good to hear about other people's experiences and get that reinforcement that you're not alone.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-28 02:16 am (UTC)It is good to hear about other people's experiences and get that reinforcement that you're not alone.
Yes indeed—so thanks for taking the time to reply, and to share a little bit of yourself as well!