people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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autumnone:

Now that I look at it, it seems such a tiny thing. Without the broader context, the other straws on the camel’s back, it wouldn’t even be noticeable. It almost still wasn’t noticeable.

And yet…and yet there’s that word. “Stimulating”. Sex ought to be stimulating.

It’s a reminder of everything I hate about the kind of sex-positive sex-ed that’s standard in this subculture. I feel bad about hating it. I shouldn’t hate it. It’s the greatest good for the greatest number.

And yet.

And yet I’m sick of being excluded at every turn. I resent the way the kind of sex-ed epitomised by (though by no means exclusive to) Scarleteen stunted my sexual self-understanding, fed me information and advice consisting mostly of stuff that didn’t apply to me (sometimes the exact opposite of which applied to me) and told me it applied to everyone. I hate knowing that they didn’t even do anything wrong, because I’m such a fucking snowflake that I don’t deserve to expect anyone to ever acknowledge my existence.

(It isn’t my sexuality itself that I have a problem with. I like who I am. It’s the way it interacts with who everyone else is that gets to me.)

(Sexual pleasure is not a stimulant. It is a sedative. If I find a sexual act stimulating, that’s a sure sign that something has gone wrong and I need to change course.)

(addendum here)

Tags:

#sexuality and lack thereof #rants #TMI

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~ Brin ~ 5 Comments

polynuclear:

BEING HORMONAL AND HORNY WHEN YOU’RE ASEXUAL IS LIKE GETTING A $200 GIFT CARD FOR A STORE THAT DOESN’T EVEN EXIST

Tags:

#that’s not it at all #(well I expect that’s what it’s like for some people) #(but for me that’s not it at all) #it’s *exhaustion* #it’s taking half again as long to complete your schoolwork #because you’re so tired it’s hard to think about anything but how tired you are and how much you wish you could rest #it’s having trouble even concentrating on *video games* because of that dreary fatigue #it’s that feeling at the back of your eyes like you didn’t get enough sleep last night #even though you did #(except you didn’t) #(not really) #(what use is unconsciousness and forgotten dreams and forgotten dozing) #it’s the catch-22 of a mind screaming for quiet #it’s going to bed that night knowing you almost certainly won’t feel any better in the morning #knowing that you’re just going to have to wait it out #count the days until it wears off #five days can be a very long time #asexuality #sexuality and lack thereof #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #tag rambles #Brin talks about herself for no particular reason #and wonders if she should bother

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

(sort-of-tagged by eponymous-rose)

1. What’s the weirdest thing you did as a child?

That’s the sort of question where you just know you’re going to think of something weirder ten minutes after you hit “post”, but I’ll try.

I used to collect coupons. I didn’t use them, just collected them. I would carefully cut them out, trimming off the dotted lines around the edges while leaving the bar codes and fine print intact (this sometimes required curving the cut, but I tried very hard not to do that). I kept them in the bottom drawer of my dresser.

2. Five things you love about you!

a. I managed to learn how to type 80wpm without looking at the keyboard, despite never putting any effort into it. (Well, I played a little Typer Shark as a kid, but not that much, and I never took a class on touch-typing or anything like that.)

b. I can be very persevering when other people are counting on me.

c. I’m very good at checking expiration dates. I once looked at a juice box’s jumble of alphanumeric code (a code Mom had found impenetrable) and discerned the expiration date at a glance without having to search for it. (Silver lining of a food poisoning phobia.) Back when Canadian Goldfish bags only had production codes and no expiration dates, I even learned how to calculate the expiration date using the production code. (I determined the shelf life by examining an American Goldfish bag, which had both.)

d. My introspectiveness. I like that I can untangle at least some of the layers of weird in my brain, especially when it leads me to practical implications. (How many books of a series do you need to binge on in order to induce perseveration?* Does caffeine act as a short-term libido suppressant?**)

*Four.

**I haven’t had a chance to test this yet, but I have every indication it ought to work. (I suppose I ought to do the test properly, with blinding. Mind you, even a placebo would be useful. It would be nice, about halfway through the 4 – 5 days of post-ovulation tiredness, to have a bit of a break.)

e. I have a pretty good body. Not a beautiful body, which I gather is what people tend to mean when they call a body “good”. (It looks plain, which is exactly how I like it.) Rather, it’s comfortable to live in.

3. Where is the one place you feel most at peace?

Floating in my bathtub. Unfortunately, I am now too tall to float in my bathtub. I’m pretty sure my quality of life noticeably decreased when that happened.

4. Do you have any summer plans?

Learning about geology and computer programming. The last ten days of May are the closest thing I’m getting to a summer break. (I am so taking December off.)

5. What is the most expensive thing you’ve ever purchased?

University education. Those two courses in question 4 alone cost me $1600, and that’s with Canadian subsidising. (Regarding the usual things: I’ve never bought a house or vehicle, and all of my computers over the years have cost less than $500 each, which is probably why they’ve been so crappy.)

(Well, I think part of why this computer is so crappy is because it’s lived too long. When I first bought it it was a five-year-old model: old, but young enough for developers to generally acknowledge that people are going to try to use their products on it. Now it’s an eight-year-old model, and nobody accounts for the possibility of eight-year-old computers. It would be too impractical.)

6. What is your sleep schedule like, if you have one?

I’ve found myself drifting back and sleeping less during my break from school, which probably says a lot about me. Right now it’s about 11:45 PM – 8:30 AM, give or take fifteen minutes on each. It’ll probably return to 12 – 9:10 once I start school again.

7. If you could relive one moment of your life, what would it be?

Well, my favourite memory is probably the time I went out dolphin-watching in the Atlantic (off Cape May) when I was about eleven or twelve. I felt…what do you call the opposite of sea-sickness? Sea-wellness, I suppose. The rocking of the boat made me euphoric rather than nauseated. And though I was having fun, time did not fly. I thoroughly enjoyed each and every second of those two hours.

The nice thing about having a favourite memory like that is that I might well be able to do something like it again.

(We did see dolphins, but as far as I’m concerned they were just a bonus.)

8. Do you have any secret talents? If so, what?

If I told you, they wouldn’t be secret anymore, would they.

(I suppose you could count some of the things in the “five things I love about me”.)

9. What do you hope gets invented before you die?

I have to agree with Rose on this one and say immortality. Failing that, a sufficiently effective and reliable treatment for Alzheimer’s soon enough that I need never worry about getting it myself. (An outright cure or a thyroid/HIV-style “you’ll be fine as long as you take your meds, but you can never go off them without becoming symptomatic”, either way.)

10. If you could have a super power, what would it be?

Wolverine-level healing factor (see also question 9). If it were only a milder healing factor on offer (does not extend lifespan, fatal injuries will still kill you), I’d probably rather go for unbreathing (in the Nethack sense), despite the potential for annoying side effects regarding consensual inhalant drugs. The number of water sports that I have seen people play on Daily Planet and thought “I would love to do that, if only I were immune to drowning”…

11. They say a friend will help you move and a best friend will help you move a body. Do you have a best friend?

I don’t think I know anyone who cares more about me than they care about not being an accomplice to murder/not allowing a murderer to go free. That’s probably for the best.

If we take a broader interpretation of “body”, I expect Mom, Brother, and possibly Dad would assist me in being someone’s caretaker (which would likely involve moving their body at some point). Not sure about non-relatives.

Tags:

#oh look an original post #(you may have noticed I talked about tiredness and heightened sex drive as if they were the same thing) #(that is because they are) #(and let me tell you once you figure *that* out there are all *kinds* of practical implications) #(caffeine is just the first one that came to mind) #meme #Possible TMI #you can be sort-of-tagged too if you like

Blogs Wanted!

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

asexualityexists:

As some of you may know, I have links to other asexual blogs and asexual-identifying individuals on several pages of my blog. However, many of those blogs are no longer active, and I’m looking to replace them.

If you identify as:

  • asexual
  • demisexual
  • grey-asexual
  • aromantic
  • demiromantic
  • grey-romantic
  • heteroromantic
  • homoromantic
  • biromantic
  • panromantic
  • any combination of the above, (asexuality-related identity I may have left out)

and are willing to answer questions/be listed as a resource, please let me know! Message me with how you identify, and I’ll add your blog to the appropriate page.

I’d also like to add blogs of individuals on the asexual spectrum with kinks/fetishes. They seem to be few and far between (or, at least, I haven’t come across many) but I’d still like to include some kind of resource for other aces.

Anyways, I’m always looking to update resources, and I’d really appreciate your help!

Thanks a bunch!

Are you checking reblogs, or does it have to be an ask?

>>I’d also like to add blogs of individuals on the asexual spectrum with kinks/fetishes. They seem to be few and far between (or, at least, I haven’t come across many) but I’d still like to include some kind of resource for other aces.<<

I think we generally stay pretty quiet. Fear, maybe, of how people will react. Embarrassment. I know I personally have always had a kind of instinctive sense of privacy about this (ask me about the Girl Scouts and the yo-yo sometime), even before I realised it was a sexual thing. (And I do consider it a sexual thing. I’ve seen several kinky aces say they don’t, but that’s not how I see it. I just don’t think it’s sexual in a way that precludes me being ace. I am not sexually attracted to anyone; what I am attracted to doesn’t matter ace-identity-wise.)

Thing is, it’s…I’m not sure what would be the best word here. Comforting? Powerful? To know you’re not the only one, that there are other people like you out there. And in order to know that, somebody’s got to speak up.

At first, the previous paragraph didn’t quite outweigh the one before it, and I nearly didn’t reblog this. Then I saw a post of that Shel Silverstein poem. I don’t think it was supposed to be a sign–the universe generally doesn’t work that way, in my experience–but I choose to interpret it as one.

So. This is me, being a hypnosis fetishist. I exist.

(I’m also aromantic, but those aren’t very hard to come by.)

{{archivist’s note: the Girl Scouts and the yo-yo}}

Tags:

#asexuality #kind of nervous about making this post #helps that as it happens this is the third time this week #(not *closeted* exactly) #(just shy) #(also not actually entirely comfortable with the term ‘fetishist’) #(I think L’s got some good points about ‘paraphile’) #(but it’s useful for communication) #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #but it gets lonely being surrounded by them all the time #I do wonder if there are others #surely there must be #(culture tells you what’s restful) #(brain wiring tells you that ‘restful’ and ‘sexually satisfying’ are the same thing) #tag rambles