Ace Community Issues Linkspam

A short linkspam of linkspams (and some individual posts) on ace intersections, including intracommunity issues and problems faced outside the community.  I’m still not all there in the head but, hey, wanted to do a thing, still.

Note in case of tumblrwarp: please visit the original wordpress post in case of future edits/updates.

Gender (Identity and Alignment) – Carnival of Aces November 2011: Gender and Carnival of Aces March 2016: Gender Norms and Asexuality feature posts on being trans, being female, and being nonbinary.

Race and Ethnicity – Vesper’s APoC Resources page has tons of links to content on/by/for asexual people of color, including articles and videos on racism inside and outside of the community, such as The Large Space That White Supremacy Occupies In Conversations About Sexuality.

You can also find some posts on being Jewish in the roundup for Carnival of Aces October 2014.

Gay, Bi, and Queer – On this subject, I’d highlight Living gay (and ace), On “no romo”, and Being asexual, “of the bi-ish persuasion,” and afraid, as well as this post on guilt over desire for representation. For further reading, see Queenie’s so-called teeny tiny linkspam on asexuality and queerness.

Illness and Disability – Carnival of Aces June 2015: Mental Health  and Carnival of Aces October 2013: Disability and Asexuality feature posts on being mentally ill, being disabled, and choices on the part of the ace community, disability activists, and health care providers.

Sexual Violence – Queenie’s Ace Survivors as Rhetorical Devices series explains how to avoid damaging rhetoric about survivors of sexual violence.

The RFAS (Resources for Ace Survivors) Recommended Reading page covers a broader range of topics under the same umbrella of asexuality and sexual violence.

Miscellaneous – Examples of Bad Ace Advice and Hezza’s Asexual identity prescriptivism linkspam address identity-policing and other issues.

notions of absence, alteration, and nonfunctioning

Although I’m not inclined to think of asexuality as a disability, I couldn’t help thinking of the “broken” feeling when I read this passage from this post:

But I think [the main thing to get away from] is [the idea that (“I am impaired” and even “there is something wrong with me”) are equal to (“I am lesser than someone who is not impaired, all other things being equal.”)]

(symbols added by me because the original was difficult for me to parse at first)

…which made me think of asexuality and the “broken” accusation/internalization because it folds into one both 1) a sense of technical impairment/absence of function/not-doing-the-thing-it’s-expected-to-do with 2) a sense of not-doing-the-thing-it-should-do/condemnation/devaluation.  The latter of the two is why the community rejects the language of brokenness to describe us.

But for my own self, I think it’s possible for me to think of my internal “sexuality space” (and whatever nuerological mechanisms that control it) as being at least partly “nonfunctional,” and for me to conceptualize that as aberration without negative value judgement.  As if, when I was dealt my sexuality, so to speak, I was dealt a blank card.  Or the torn corner of a card.  And that’s that.

I don’t know if it’s possible for me to reclaim “broken.”  That may be too far.  But there is another word that conveys biological aberration that, to biologists and X-Men fans, doesn’t carry strictly negative connotations.

And you know what?  I may not want to be called broken, but I think I can be okay with being a mutant.

The Sick Role

Remember that short post I wrote about how health is not morality?

In my rhetoric class this semester, we’ve been assigned some reading that touches on the same subject.  It’s good stuff, but I thought y’all might be interested in this segment in particular, on page 32 of a book on deviance and medicalization by Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider:

As Talcott Parsons pointed out in his classic writings on the “sick role,” both crime and illness are designations for deviant behavior (Parsons, 1951, pp. 428-479)… Parsons further argues that there exists for the sick a culturally available “sick role” that serves to conditionally legitimate the deviance of illness and channel the sick into the reintegrating physician-patient relationship.  It is this relationship that serves the key social control function of minimizing the disruptiveness of sickness to the group or society.  The sick role has four components, two exemptions from normal responsibilities and two new obligations.  First, the sick person is exempted from normal responsibilities, at least to the extent necessary to “get well.”  Second, the individual is not held responsible for his or her [sic] condition and cannot be expected to recover by an act of will.  Third, the person must recognize that being ill is an inherently undesirable state and must want to recover.  Fourth, the sick person is obligated to seek and cooperate with a competent treatment agent (usually a physician).

Sound familiar at all?