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It is so very easy to be confused about Asexuality because it is about finding something that isn’t there, it is again defined by a lack of something. Sex repulsion on the other hand is very intensely defined by the presence of something, it is defined by a feeling that is not only easy to find and understand, but one that is pretty hard to ignore. The sense of repulsion that we as sex-repulsed people feel makes it pretty easy for us to identify as sex-repulsed, provided we have access to that terminology. In my experience, it is much easier to notice an active negative emotional association than an absent sexual orientation. So, I think that sex-repulsed people are led to think that it is less important to talk about.
Compared to the often long and confusing process of identifying anywhere on the Asexual spectrum, noticing that sex is something that you don’t like seems less interesting. And why exactly should we talk about something that most people are perfectly capable of discovering on their own?
I think this is a really interesting commentary. In one of my comments on Sciatrix’s post at the Asexual Agenda, I wrote:
One thing that I’ve come to realize about myself is that as an aromantic asexual, I have basically no positive preference for any gender, not even in terms of aesthetic attraction, but my aversion is definitely strongest in regard to men (I’m a cis woman) so that it’s kind of a “negative preference”, and that does affect when I think about having even a queerplatonic relationship and what kinds of people I might or might not want to have it with. It’s very curious.
I thought of this again when reading faustianfantasy’s argument that sex-aversion or repulsion is a presence of feeling whereas asexuality in itself is an absence.
To explore this a bit further, I didn’t know about the concept of asexuality until I was 31; I knew what I was, but I thought it was just something about me, not that it was an actual sexual orientation that others shared.
When I thought about myself previously, I tended to define it as “not interested in sex” or “non-sexual”. I never singled out lack of sexual attraction as the distinctive characteristic. I suppose this is similar to how many allosexuals may conflate sexual orientation and sexuality.
Thanks to the reductionism of the asexual community, I’ve started to be able to tease apart the different aspects of my “not interested in sex”, determining which parts are due to lack of sexual attraction, which parts are due to not having a sex drive, which parts are due to being aromantic, and also which parts are due to being sex-averse (and there may be other aspects that I haven’t yet separated out!).
What I’m saying in my comment excerpted above is that I’ve got an absence on so many aspects (asexual, aromantic, non-libidoist) that my sex-aversion seems to literally be the only presence or preference that I have.
But I feel like it’s really difficult to try to feel my way around by what I strongly don’t like when everything about sexuality seems to be defined by what you do like (this of course gets back into positive and negative definitions of asexuality and the role of doubt and absence).
From my perspective, then, sex-aversion isn’t really any less confusing than asexuality itself and that’s why I’ve focused more on what I perceive as some societal pressures against talking about sex-aversion, because to me that seems the more obvious explanation for the relative lack of discussion. Obviously, others will have different perspectives.
Oh, I completely agree with what you’ve said about the pressures against writing about it, I might have been a little too quick on moving past that. But I do understand and agree, writing and posting the thing was difficult, and I imagine if I were more aware of the bigger Asexual community I probably wouldn’t have.
I’ve also thought about your last paragraph, I didn’t mean to imply that sex aversion/repulsion was any less confusing to think about or rationalize, it confuses me to think about quite a bit honestly. And I do believe that there is more to it that we just haven’t developed the language to discuss yet.
What I meant that it is more obvious to notice, I haven’t heard of anyone having a revelation about their repulsion besides having a name to ascribe it. And with so much of the discussion in the Ace community being about how to recognize various aspects of your sexuality, that might have discouraged discussion. If we somehow manage to apply the reductionism to sex-aversion, I will be as happy as anyone to have a chance to understand more deeply.
I haven’t heard of anyone having a revelation about their repulsion besides having a name to ascribe it.
I did. I would have been much better off throughout childhood and adolescence if the idea had existed in the cultural milieu that thinking sex is squicky could be both permanent (a valid opinion held by mature people, not just young children) and effortless (not a vow of chastity that took large quantities of willpower to uphold). Those were the two closest concepts to repulsion I was given, the first with a time limit, and it didn’t occur to me to look outside that before getting to know the asexual community and their ideas.
Once I hit puberty, I had two options: take the abovementioned vow, or accept the “inevitability” of wanting sex (which I was not willing to do; it seemed too not-me). So I ended up wasting a lot of effort on chastity that would’ve maintained itself just fine on its own. (Well, there are the kink fantasies, but the only reason I tried to suppress those is because I was worried they’d be a gateway to having vanilla intercourse. Now that I know that isn’t true, I’m fine with it.)
(Needless to say, I can’t identify with the common young asexual’s narrative of “wanting to want sex” at all. Or the “but abstinence is easy, why are you making such a fuss over it” one, for that matter, though in that case it’s much harder to tell what was different that caused those people to take that path while I took this one.)
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#asexuality #reply via reblog #possible TMI
Brinens and Things 