asexuality

30 Days of Hypnosis Kink: Day 7

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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brin-bellway:

ellaenchanting:

bannableoffense:

Day 7: Are you a trance junkie (short term) or do you prefer a one hypnotist relationship (long term)? Why or why not?

I’m just gonna

stop

and really take apart that term.

“trance junkie”

Really? Someone who likes getting tranced a lot and doesn’t have consistent partners for that… that’s what you call them? A “trance junkie”? 

what a loaded question, comparing people without consistent partners to…

well

you know what, I’ll be blunt. I don’t have consistent trance partners. I’ve never had that, unless my partner was a subject and I played the hypnotist role. So I find enjoyment where I can, when I can, with whom I can, and as time and my schedule permits. I have friends I play with more than others, but, for the most part, that comes down to me, myself, and my tumblr account.

Would I like a long-term relationship with a hypnotist? Of course! It would be absolutely wonderful, for rather self-evident reasons; trust, rapport, and learning are all established with repetition, time spent, and getting to know what the other likes and enjoys and working with that, exploring that. Hell, like I see so many people do here on Tumblr. Why wouldn’t I want something like that?

“trance junkie”

good god…

The usage of “trance junkie” is really weird here- I’ve heard the term thrown around in non-kinky hypnosis communities but only as a slightly self-effacing way to say you really enjoy being hypnotized. So, like, 95% of my tumblr feed (myself included) would qualify. I’ve never heard it used as a way to describe someone who doesn’t have a long-term partner- that doesn’t even really make sense outside of kink and, as @bannableoffense pointed out, is kind of judgemental.  

The first time I encountered the term “trance junkie”–and I wish I could remember who wrote this blog post so I could go check if it’s as bad as I remember; all I know is that it was some Blogspot or maybe WordPress I didn’t read regularly, and I sure wasn’t going to start reading regularly after that–it was…well. There’s “complaining about people who use you for sex and show no indication that they give a shit about whether you enjoy it too”, and then there’s “kinkshaming people who are into hypnosis for the sensations and don’t have control or intimacy kinks”, and it seemed to me they were skirting dangerously far into the latter.

Even if you seem on the surface to share a kink with someone, even if you seem on the surface to like complementary roles, you can still be sexually incompatible on that axis. Furthermore, some people’s kinks are best fulfilled solo, and not all such people have figured that out about themselves yet. I note that from what I’ve seen, it’s fairly common for asexuals who like sex but don’t get anything extra out of it being partnered sex (as opposed to masturbation) to have a troubled sexual relationship in which they find this out the hard way, and the thing that causes them to break up is usually that one or both partners feel like the allosexual is being “used” by the asexual.

And you know what? I was lucky enough to hang out in the asexual community, to hear about that story being played out over and over by different people, before ever having sex myself. Which means if I ever try partnered kink, I get to go into it knowing there’s a chance that partnering might not be for me, and that that’s a valid form of sexuality that wouldn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me, and it wouldn’t make me evil. Not everyone gets that advantage.

So yeah, even without getting into the addiction comparison, I flinch at that term too.

@ellaenchanting replied to this post with:

Brin- This all makes sense to me. I also think people can have needs met in a relationship even if the kinks are different if they’re compatible- for example I have a top who has a huge control kink and I have a huge intimacy kink but we’re both hypnofetishists and somehow it works! :) BUt also- lots of talking.

Tags:

#(May 2016) #conversational aglets #sexuality and lack thereof #asexuality #nsfw text?

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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asexualactivities:

asexualactivities:

[This post is a submission.]

So I’ve been (very slowly, I know) thinking over the post asking for recommendations to share. Yesterday it occurred to me how many trials and tribulations I had in learning to masturbate, and I wondered if maybe I could help people in my past selves’ situations skip over some of that shit.

But honestly, the main takeaway I got from the learning process (other than the outcome) was that the whole thing is a complete mess and it’s a goddamn miracle anyone ever manages to find a technique that works for them.

I used to resent Scarleteen for telling me “masturbation usually doesn’t work the first few times you try it; keep trying, it gets better with practice” and sending me off on a wild goose chase for a while in my late teens. But it turns out that, in a way, they weren’t wrong: while the genital-focused methods they recommended have never done much for me, the method that *is* right for me *also* didn’t work at first and got better with practice.

(Trouble was, I had so much learned helplessness built up around masturbation from previous wild goose chases that for a long while I hardly ever practised. You know how long it took me to reach a skill level where I could reliably achieve effects that were, not just “neat” or “better than nothing”, but actually *satisfying*? *Three years*! And almost all of that time was in making “you know, I *could* masturbate, *that* might help with the sexual frustration” an available thought (instead of reverting to my old habits of distraction and waiting it out); if I hadn’t had to deal with that, I suspect I could have reached a sufficient skill level in a month or three.)

I guess the best I have for actionable advice is to focus your practice on methods with a high prior probability of working (things that are a good fit with what you already know about your sexuality, things that have worked for a lot of other people, or ideally both), and on things that are at least *somewhat* enjoyable even when they don’t satisfy your libido. That second part helps with cultivating a lower-pressure mindset: it’s easier to get the motivation to practice if there’s something pleasant to it (rather than just a gamble at it becoming pleasant *eventually*), and that also makes it easier not to get frustrated and give up too soon. (Although, unfortunately, I still have no idea how to tell how soon is too soon to give up. Hell, for all I know, there’s some trick to making genital-based masturbation work for me that I just never worked out, or never practised that particular trick long enough.)

I wish I could tell you that it gets better, but I know there’s no guarantee that a given person will have *any* method that works for them. Maybe try to make your peace with that idea in addition to the above practising; no individual is capable of the full range of possible pleasures, we’re all missing some stuff. Don’t get me wrong, masturbation *is* a very useful tool to have, and it’s worth trying to obtain that tool, but stressing out about whether you’re ever going to find something won’t help anything and might very well make it more difficult (by loading practice with negative associations).

(this is all assuming you even *have* a libido; I’m not sure which parts are different if you don’t, but I’m guessing it’s probably easier for you to be lower-pressure about it)

I don’t know if it gets better for you; all I can say for sure is, it got better for me. Lately I kind of want to go back, give my twenty-year-old self a hug, tell her it’s gonna be okay, and hand her a guide to self-hypnosis.

Very good points.

“Just keep trying!” is something my advice is often guilty of, as well.  I wish there was a clear distinction between “You just haven’t gotten the hang of it, but you will with a slight modification” and “That just ain’t gonna work, try something completely different”.  Maybe the advice should be more like “Try lots of different things lots of different ways, lots of different times!”

The line “no individual is capable of the full range of possible pleasures, we’re all missing some stuff“ is something important to keep in mind.  I know what works for me and I know some of what works for other people.  When I try what works for other people, it’s a mixed bag.  Sometimes it works for me, but other things work better.  Sometimes it doesn’t work at all and I don’t understand how anyone can do it that way because wow that’s just uncomfortable and I’m going to stop now.  And sometimes it will be so close and maybe it would be great if I can just work out the one missing piece but nope that didn’t work after all but will it ever work and should I keep trying or not.  Maybe the advice needs to suggest all of those things as options.  But that can never catch all of the things that might work, and maybe none of the things suggested will, but something else might.

And so often, “Try something else” assumes that you’re in the right town to begin with, and you just need to find the right street.  But as you found, maybe the ticket to success isn’t in Genitalville, but it’s in the next town over or maybe even on a different continent entirely.  The standard guidebooks fall apart in that kind of scenario.

So, to readers out there:  Do you have any suggestions for telling the difference between “You haven’t gotten the hang of it” and “That ain’t gonna work”?  And how would you recommend finding what works, if what works isn’t remotely close to what everyone suggests?  Ask | Submit

Tags:

#I realised last night that I never reblogged the moderator’s response to my submitted OP back in March #and therefore it isn’t in any of my copious backups #since I often go read it when re-reading my blog #and I’m a bit surprised asexualactivities hasn’t *already* been purged #I figured I’d better fix that ASAP #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw text #asexuality #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #The Last Tumblr Apocalypse #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #conversational aglets

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

asexualactivities:

tumblr_inline_pgz5hgzbz71r06h2e_540

It’s Asexual Awareness Week and this is your chance to ask your NSFW questions about asexuality.  In particular, this week, we’re welcoming questions from non-asexual people.  So, if you have a burning question about how or why ace people experience sex, masturbation, kink, or some other sexual activity, this is your chance to ask!  (And, as always, ace people are welcome to ask questions or talk about what’s on their mind, as well!)

The ask box is open and we accept anonymous questions!  Step right up, don’t be shy!

(And here’s what Asexual Activities is all about, if you’re interested.)

Tags:

#signal boost #asexuality #nsfw text?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

This draft’s original set of tags (here left intact) refers to late January 2014 as being nearly three years ago, so that gives you an idea of when it was written.

—

“Even if the risks are small, they are not justified when the evidence indicates no benefit.”

–Steven Novella, on acupuncture

–Also me, on fluid exchange

Tags:

#if I ask myself ”Is kissing this person worth the risk of oral herpes?” #and conclude ”no” #this doesn’t mean that the value I place on not having herpes is too high #it just means the value I place on kissing them is very low #such that even the slightest downside is enough to outweigh it #(I mean I *am* somewhat germophobic and *do* place significant value on not having herpes) #(but I think I would be pretty cautious about who I spit-bond with even if I weren’t germophobic) #(I would still have a mild incentive to be cautious and no incentive *not* to be cautious) #((I suppose non-germophobic!me would have to be less desperate in order to accept a shared water bottle)) #((but that’s about it)) #oh look an original post #tag rambles #illness tw? #asexuality #((yes that post I linked is nearly three years old)) #((I’ve had it sitting around in my quote file for just such an occasion))

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

sinesalvatorem:

Question for the mind control fetishist community that is inexplicably over-represented among my followers:

I’ve recently become curious about the theory I’ve heard that asexual people who have kinks often have an autophilic sexuality. That is, their primary sexual interest is tied to them achieving some specific state. They’d have the same range of sexual response as allosexuals, but in response to achieving their preferred state to varyingly precise degrees.

For example, some asexuals are into amputation, or depictions of amputees. They often are more interested in being amputees themselves than in other people who are amputees. Often they’ll enjoy fantasising about being amputees, and further prefer situations where they can pretend to be amputees, and sometimes even desire actual amputation.

And I just remembered that lots of people who follow this blog are part of the mind control kink community! Which always surprises me, because I don’t think I post any mind control related content, and am honestly really sexually boring. But, like, I’ll totally give you guys more shout outs if you can help me learn about this.

My question is: Are asexual mind control fetishists more interested in being mentally controlled/impaired or in controlling others / the mental impairments of other? The autosexuality theory implies that asexuals should overwhelmingly prefer to be controlled/impaired, or be most aroused by the thought of their own altered mental state.

Also, autosexualities are in general correlated with being transgender. Are asexuals in the mind control kink community more likely to be transgender or feel gender dysphoric?

Right now I’m just curious about whether there’s any anecdotal support for this random thought, in case it’s worth doing a survey of. Would anyone be willing to tell me if their personal impression of the community supports or debunks this hypothesis? @acemindbreaker, @brin-bellway, @bannableoffense, @enscenic and anyone else who might have an opinion on this.

First of all, I would like to give the context in which I became aware of this post:

Me: *switches on Wi-Fi on phone, goes to check weather report*

Phone: *buzzes*

Me: Oh, is that an email notification?

Email notification: “sinesalvatorem has mentioned you in a post!

‘Question for the mind control fetishist community that is inexplicably over-represented among my followers…’”

I was amused by this. (I think because I played a critical part in the original surge in such followers.) (Also, it seems to be a popular kink among rat-Tumblr denizens in general.)

—

I personally am very much autophilic, but when I query my brain for “asexual or asexual-ish hypno-fetishists” I mostly get back switches. I’m not sure in how many cases their switchinesses were deliberately cultivated, though, or what they started off as if so. (I remember @ellaenchanting talking about how her first hypnosis community was aimed at non-sexual recreational users, and that in that community taking a single role was Not Done: everyone was expected to switch. (I think the idea was something like “how are you supposed to experience the full extent of how neat hypnosis is without seeing it from both sides? and anyway, experience with one side of things will help you when doing the other, because you know more about what it’s like for your partner”, plus an assumption that people weren’t going to be especially attached to one role to start with.))

I’m really not sure how gender tends to go.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw text? #asexuality #gender

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

asexualactivities:

[This post is a submission.]

So I’ve been (very slowly, I know) thinking over the post asking for recommendations to share. Yesterday it occurred to me how many trials and tribulations I had in learning to masturbate, and I wondered if maybe I could help people in my past selves’ situations skip over some of that shit.

But honestly, the main takeaway I got from the learning process (other than the outcome) was that the whole thing is a complete mess and it’s a goddamn miracle anyone ever manages to find a technique that works for them.

I used to resent Scarleteen for telling me “masturbation usually doesn’t work the first few times you try it; keep trying, it gets better with practice” and sending me off on a wild goose chase for a while in my late teens. But it turns out that, in a way, they weren’t wrong: while the genital-focused methods they recommended have never done much for me, the method that *is* right for me *also* didn’t work at first and got better with practice.

(Trouble was, I had so much learned helplessness built up around masturbation from previous wild goose chases that for a long while I hardly ever practised. You know how long it took me to reach a skill level where I could reliably achieve effects that were, not just “neat” or “better than nothing”, but actually *satisfying*? *Three years*! And almost all of that time was in making “you know, I *could* masturbate, *that* might help with the sexual frustration” an available thought (instead of reverting to my old habits of distraction and waiting it out); if I hadn’t had to deal with that, I suspect I could have reached a sufficient skill level in a month or three.)

I guess the best I have for actionable advice is to focus your practice on methods with a high prior probability of working (things that are a good fit with what you already know about your sexuality, things that have worked for a lot of other people, or ideally both), and on things that are at least *somewhat* enjoyable even when they don’t satisfy your libido. That second part helps with cultivating a lower-pressure mindset: it’s easier to get the motivation to practice if there’s something pleasant to it (rather than just a gamble at it becoming pleasant *eventually*), and that also makes it easier not to get frustrated and give up too soon. (Although, unfortunately, I still have no idea how to tell how soon is too soon to give up. Hell, for all I know, there’s some trick to making genital-based masturbation work for me that I just never worked out, or never practised that particular trick long enough.)

I wish I could tell you that it gets better, but I know there’s no guarantee that a given person will have *any* method that works for them. Maybe try to make your peace with that idea in addition to the above practising; no individual is capable of the full range of possible pleasures, we’re all missing some stuff. Don’t get me wrong, masturbation *is* a very useful tool to have, and it’s worth trying to obtain that tool, but stressing out about whether you’re ever going to find something won’t help anything and might very well make it more difficult (by loading practice with negative associations).

(this is all assuming you even *have* a libido; I’m not sure which parts are different if you don’t, but I’m guessing it’s probably easier for you to be lower-pressure about it)

I don’t know if it gets better for you; all I can say for sure is, it got better for me. Lately I kind of want to go back, give my twenty-year-old self a hug, tell her it’s gonna be okay, and hand her a guide to self-hypnosis.

Tags:

#crosspost #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw text #asexuality #oh look an original post #(I wrote it so it counts)

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Permission to be Sexual

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

asexualactivities:

Do you feel like you have permission to be sexual or to have sexuality or to do things considered sexual in nature?

Who or what is granting this permission or denying it?

Does this tie into your asexuality?

(Related to this post.)

It depends on what you mean, but for the most part I do.

Personally, I feel like being ace actually makes it *easier* in some ways to feel like I’m allowed, because my sexuality is not interpersonal. People don’t get as many *opportunities* to forbid me from doing things, because I don’t do acts that require cooperation from others (I need very little of even the indirect, logistical kind of cooperation).

Being kinky *sounds* like it would make feeling permitted more difficult, and in some ways it can, but in other ways it makes things easier. Notably, my masturbation generally looks non-sexual when seen from the outside, out of context, and so getting caught is less bad. (The level of privacy at which I start to feel comfortable is “nobody else is on the same floor of the house”.) Fluid containment and lubricant sourcing are also complete non-issues.

It is probably relevant that my sex ed was pretty liberal (it *was* terrible for me, but only because I was an outlier who slipped through the cracks; unlike the “masturbation is for losers” kind of stuff that other people in the conversation are describing, the messages I received *would* have been good if I had been the intended type of recipient). It probably also helps that I’m not firmly attached to asexuality: the idea (regardless of how likely it is) of getting kicked out for having too much of a sexuality doesn’t really scare me, I kind of just shrug and figure “well, I could probably convince the bisexuals or somebody to take me in”.

I can’t relate to the thing in the linked post about not feeling like one’s sexuality really belongs to one: my sexuality definitely feels like it belongs to me, and that’s a lot of what I like about it.

Tags:

#sexuality and lack thereof #reply via reblog #nsfw text #asexuality

Anonymous asked: would be good if individuals could just easily adjust their own sex drives up or down as wanted, really. I mean, I know there are medications with either effect, but I don’t mean like that, I mean like you’d adjust a setting in a piece of software.

~ Brin ~ 4 Comments

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theopjones:

brin-bellway:

argumate:

it would indeed be very handy!

I think like most emotions it would be kind of self-reinforcing, in that once you’re at one end of the scale the other end seems unappealing, but it would still be good to have the option available.

…do people normally find a given level of libido self-reinforcing?

Only middling-libido!mes want to stay that way long-term; I get sick of high libido after ~1 day and of low libido after ~1 week. (Unless I’m too distracted by other things to notice the vague sense of being incomplete that happens when my libido is too low for too long, which is how I spent the month of April. But even that is more “being sufficiently fucked up that your damage-assessment mechanism is also damaged”, rather than actually being okay with it.)

Mind you, when I see other people complaining of loss of libido, they’re almost always talking about practical effects and not the inherent badness of having an ego-syntonic part of your psyche go missing, which makes me wonder if maybe ego-neutral libidos are more common than typical-minding would lead me to believe.

Kind of my feeling is that I often get the feeling of IQ reduced by 25% around hot woman + weird effects on inhibitions (both reduced and increased. Which is sort of self-reinforcing. 

But is also why I agree with the anon that I don’t really like a lot of my sex drive. 

I would kind of like it if I could turn off my feelings of sexual and romantic attraction 2/3rds of the time. And thats a lot of the reason. I often don’t like a lot of the effect that it has on me.

And I also wish I could shut off a lot of inappropriate times I’m attracted to someone or a lot of the feelings of unrequited crushes and such.

…okay, in hindsight I guess I should have figured my other divergences would imply divergence here as well. I had…kind of forgotten that sex drives could have interpersonal effects, since mine doesn’t really.

(I wish you good luck and good coping.)

Tags:

#god I love being ace #(fun fact: when I typed ”god I love being”) #(the ”popular tags” section recommended ”god I love being bi”) #(you almost got it recommended tags! you’re in the right general area!) #nsfw text? #sexuality and lack thereof #reply via reblog #asexuality #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

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Are you missing out?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

asexualactivities:

Ace/grace/demi respondents only, please!

[Asexual Activities Open Question Weekend! | Audience Participation!]

I’m missing out on everyone else’s experiences of sexuality, but everyone else is missing out on mine.

Tags:

#the reasoning behind naming the kink tag #sexuality and lack thereof #(and now for some other category tags:) #reply via reblog #the wondrous variety of sapient life #asexuality #there is probably some warning tag I should put on this but I am not sure what

Take the 2016 Ace Community Census!

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: https://asexualcensus.wordpress.com/2016/10/24/take-the-2016-ace-community-census/ }}

nextstepcake:

The ace community census is an annual survey by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network which collects valuable information on the demographics and experiences of members of the ace community. It is the largest survey of ace communities and creates a valuable pool of data for future ace community activists and researchers.

The survey is open to anyone: ace, non-ace, or still questioning, as long as you are over the age of 13 we want to hear from you! We want to get a wide variety of responses from as many parts of the community as possible, so we encourage you to share this link with any other ace individuals you know or any ace communities you participate in.

Click here to take the 2016 Ace Community Census!

For answers to common questions about the survey, please see the FAQ here.

You will be able to view any published results from the survey at asexualcensus.wordpress.com.

Tags:

#signal boost #survey #asexuality