Key Conversations: Aces & Attitudes About Sex

This is a compilation of links to online conversations about aces and attitudes toward sex, demonstrating intracommunity tensions about how asexuality is defined and how best to talk about the diversity of the community. More than once have I referred back to these conversations as a basis of comparison, so I’ve decided to create this as reference post on how these conversations have unfolded before.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image created with The Keys To It All by Alan Levine, Public Domain.]

on sexual abuse and the direction of imperatives

Hi, folks. If you don’t mind, let’s sit down and have a talk.  An actual, honest talk, if you will.

This is a post about the target audience of imperative grammar (i.e. command words) in the context of talking about abuse in relationships. It’s also a post about making moral-grounds proclamations about sexual violence. It’s also a post about the internalized obligation to have sex. It’s also a post about that thing that we usually call victim-blaming. It may even be a post about rape culture in the guise of fighting rape culture? And, basically, yelling at abuse victims to stop getting abused.

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Examples of Bad Ace Advice

A brief collection of examples of advice you shouldn’t give and advice you shouldn’t listen to.  Perhaps illustrative of why I have my concerns about ace advice blogs.

Trouble with the Trichotomy: sex indifference, repulsion, & elsewise

A linkspam on discomfort with, uncertainty about, objections to, and otherwise contesting various uses, applications, and interpretations of the current model of sex-adjectives (i.e. sex-indifferent, sex-averse, sex-repulsed, and sometimes, sex-favorable), featuring: aces who aren’t sure how to label themselves, aces with murky/inconsistent/imprecise experiences, aces who don’t like the way they’re being labeled by others, and aces who don’t like the way others are interpreting the labels they identify with.

on being arcflux

While I can’t directly respond to the call for more sharing on the subject of sex-favorable asexuality, Talia’s post reminded me that I don’t think I’ve seen many essay-style posts on personal experiences of being arcflux, at least not lately, so that’s what this’ll be.  My goals here:

• a handy post for linking if I want to use this term & preempt “what’s that mean?”
• introspection, sorting things out in words, public talking to myself (because others may get something out of it)
• articulate why I’m drawn to this word & what I mean by it

How Not to Do 101 on Asexuality, Sex Repulsion, and Sexual Activity

Are you an ace activist, educator, or content-creator?  Are you in the process of making (or have you already made) asexuality visibility and education materials?  If so, you’re this post’s target audience.  Keep reading for a brief overview of common mistakes to avoid in ace vis/ed with regard to the topics of sex and sex-repulsion, with explanations and links to further information on what to keep in mind as you create or edit your project.

Fluctuating Repulsion, Indifference, and Appeal

The current, established, consensus-approved terminology in the ace community for a given individual’s personal disposition toward sex includes sex-repulsed, sex-averse, and sex-indifferent.

For myself, I am partial to all of them and none of them, despite not meeting the criteria for “normal” sexuality’s attitude of enthusiasm either. 

On Sex-Repulsion and Analogies

One thing I’ve noticed, among other things, is that analogies for not wanting sex are usually geared toward a sex-indifferent perspective that’s simply an absence of desire, no strong feelings involved either way.  Just “not feeling a particular need” for something, usually some kind of desert food.  That can describe some people’s experiences, certainly, but those kinds of analogies don’t carry over well for explaining what it feels like to be sex-repulsed.

cw: body horror

Reminder: Being Scared is Okay

Saw another one of those run-of-the-mill posts recently — the kind that talks about ace erasure and stereotypes in a brief, cursory way, and there was a part of it that went, “I’m not scared of sex, I’m uninterested.”

Granted, I don’t know how much of it was general and how much of it was personal.  That is an entirely valid experience.  However, in context, it could be mistaken for a broad-strokes statement about what asexuality is/what all asexual people are — which echoes a fairly standard, albeit not the most common, invalidation variant: that you’re not asexual, you’re just afraid of sex.

Presumably, the implication there is that people who are “just” afraid of sex are also allosexual (and, presumably, need to get over that fear).  I don’t think the people who talk like this have thought it through much, anyway, but if they did, it would just come down to one of those “there’s something wrong with you” accusations that are determined to define fear of sex as a psychological disorder, one that either comes with personal judgement or an imperative that it be altered.

While being thrilled about sex is valid, and being in the dislike/disinterested range is valid, what I want to see more of is affirmation and recognition that having strongly negative feelings about sex is just as valid.

Sex can be scary.  It can be overwhelming.  It can be awful and nasty and disgusting.  That’s okay.  If you’re scared of sex, that’s okay.  If you’re grossed out by sex, that’s okay.  You are not hurting people by being celibate; you are taking care of yourself.

To the sex-enjoying and sex-indifferent asexuals: you are not the key to asexuality’s legitimacy.  Don’t act like it, and don’t attempt to fork over sex-repulsed aces and all sex-averse people in exchange for your redemption in society’s eyes.