Asexuality: where are we now?
A year (ish) in to knowing I'm asexual...how do I feel about it now?
In part 2 of 3 of Ace posts, after revisiting my ‘Coming Out Again’ yesterday I ask myself where am I now…
It’s Asexuality Awareness week, and in all honesty, I’ve struggled with what to write about. A mixture of Ace imposter syndrome and a general feeling of ‘well, nobody cares what I have to say anyway.’ has stopped me from writing. But that is the reason to write.
I look at the ‘cool kids’ of the Ace community posting this week and realise I’m different from a lot of them. Lots of them are younger and exist in a different sort of queer community than I do. So no wonder I don’t feel part of it. I grew up without Asexuality in my life, without much of the queerness that’s part of their lives. So no wonder I spend a lot of time feeling alienated from that community.
So this is for my elder millennial Aces. The ones who didn’t grow up in a queerness that allowed them a dozen micro labels and the freedom to express them. Those who barely got labels like pansexual are struggling now when they realise there’s a whole bunch of labels…or who maybe don’t want a bunch of labels. Maybe ‘Ace’ as a banner is enough, but the younger generation makes it feel like that’s not enough.
This too is for my Elder Millenials (and Gen X, heck, even the Boomers, I see you) who grew up in ‘normal’ relationships, whose lives look regular Het or Queer but who are Ace. Maybe the world doesn’t know; maybe you only know. And you feel not ‘Ace Enough’ because you don’t look like the younger guys online. This is for you too.
Because we’re all valid and important, there are not enough spaces online where the older Aces get to share their different experience. (it’s not that I’m not grateful to those younger folks for sharing theirs because it all helps all of us).
For those new around here, my story is this; I wrote a fanfic where someone described the character as demisexual, which started a journey of investigating what that meant. Because I identified with that character, in that light (Patrick from Schitt’s Creek), and it was just how I read his experience and felt it was similar to my own. So a fair bit of reading later, I realsied yes I was asexual. You can read my coming-out blog here. And also my analysis of Patrick as Demisexual here. (I got, and get every time I share it, a lot of hate for that…but it’s worth it).
So it’s been about a year of being Ace for me (or at least of knowing it, obviously, I was always Ace). So how does that feel? Where am I now with all of it?
In all honesty, it's up and down. From the relief of knowing that’s what it is, that’s who I am, to feel sad or angry that I didn’t know sooner. To wonder what all that means for the future. To still question myslef, to wondering, ‘am I Ace enough’ or ‘do I fit in’ even in the label that I finally felt fit me enough.
To start with the negative end, am I sad and angry that I went so much of my life not knowing I was asexual? Of course. In the same way, I’m angry my teenage years were of a time when it wasn’t ok to be queer, and I resent that time being taken from me too. I hate that the world, the conversations we don’t have, have meant a huge chunk of my life was spent not knowing I could be this thing, that I was this thing as a result. But in the same way, I can’t turn back time and make the 80s and 90s more queer-friendly; I can’t magic myself knowledge of a thing I didn’t know existed. So I make peace with it. Just like an ‘out’ teenage years wasn’t to be, neither was an Ace 20s and 30s.
Can I say I never had Ace Imposter Syndrome? Of course not. I don’t know if it’s an Ace thing if other sexualities grow up knowing they are who they are…I never had that certainty. And even now, I think about my Ace-ness and question myself almost weekly. I’ll catch myself admiring how someone looks or or thinking how much I like a particular hockey player or remembering my crush on David Tennant, and a voice goes, ‘Ha! See you’re not Ace you’re faking it!’....I later inevitably realise that I’m aesthetically admiring someone’s looks, not sexually drawn to them, that I’m a fan of a guy’s puck action (no, an actual puck), or that my crush is really more on the fictional, Asexual themselves, Doctor so much like Paul McGann, it doesn’t count. Bad and niche Doctor Who jokes aside, it’s a hard negotiation in my head. Because we’ve all grown up in a sexualized society and understanding the nuances where my brain deviates is hard, as is situating ourselves within the Ace community. This is why micro labels don’t work for me- I don’t fit firmly enough in any of them, so I’d rather not use them. They make me feel like a fraud because I can’t tick all the boxes. When in reality, I’m a person, I’m not meant to tick boxes; I’m just meant to be.
Do I wonder what the future holds? Absolutely. Knowing you’re something doesn’t fix society’s preconceptions, prejudices, and pigeonholing. It doesn’t fix the incompatibility with heternormative systems or the hugely sexualised society we’re in. I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t worried about being alone forever or isolated from friends as everyone couples off and leaves the single folks behind. I don’t even know, I’ve never known, if coupled life is for me…but I’d like the option to still be on the table, regardless of my sexuality. But most folks aren’t going to ‘swipe right’ on an asexual person, and an already difficult dating landscape becomes even more so. It doesn’t keep me up at night, but it’s also something always there.
What’s also always there is a question of where I belong. While I personally maintain that being Ace makes me feel more queer than ever, it’s no secret that the queer community isn’t as embracing of anything outside straightforward ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ at times. Equally straight society struggles with even those some days…so it’s not hard to feel like an outsider.
Added to that, I don’t even know where to put this is the idea that coming out as Ace is ‘easy’ or ‘easier’ than being gay. Firstly, a lot of us are both, so that doesn’t even hold up. Secondly it’s not a competition, coming out is hard, end of sentence. But what I will say as someone who has had either the misfortune or the audacity to come out twice, is maybe it’s not twice as hard the second time, but you both relive old wounds, and make new ones. All the fear of the first time, relived, that trauma, the anxiety, the fear, comes back. Not only that I now sit with the fact my first coming out was a lie. Not a lie per se but also not right. All that anxiety, and yes trauma, was almost for nothing…because I had to do it again. While when doing it again I was an adult, with a better understanding of myself and in a place where I knew I’d be more accepted…it’s still a lot. Nobody has ever said ‘oh it must be easy’ or ‘it’s not as hard as…’ but I felt it was important to say; coming out is hard. Coming out again just as much.
All that said, there are also positives. Which hugely outweigh the negatives. Because really knowing yourself is more valuable than all of that exterior noise.
I understand how I think better. Labels aren’t necessary, but explanations are. And I can finally explain how I feel, more to myself, which makes a huge difference.
In the last year, I’ve realised why I never truly settled into my previous labels; they were never quite enough to describe who I am. Ace is broad enough and nuanced enough to capture it all. It’s a true spectrum identity, and that fits how I feel. I’ve deliberately avoided talking online about my specific orientation because some things are better kept personal, especially when they’re forever in flux. But I will say that the spectrum of orientation the Ace label allows feels like what was missing. Pan/Bisexual still also applies in terms of labeling any gender orientation, but even they felt like too limiting a label, Aceness for me is freedom.
It’s almost freedom from expectation too. That in being Ace, I already subvert what everyone expects as ‘normal’ (what is normal, etc) but it also means I’m free to do and be…whatever I choose to be. And I’ve stopped feeling like I have to explain myself. I appreciate that not everyone- not even queer friends- appreciates or understands the label, but I feel free from the mainstream queer communities idea of what I should be doing.
It also brings me more of a sense of ‘peace’ with the ‘shoulds’ of our life path. Pre-Pandemic I was surrounded by a lot of very heternormative people, even the queer people were super ‘date-marry-babies’ in their outlook, and my ‘failure’ on this front was like a neon beacon. The combination of shifting who I surround myself with and realising my Ace identity has been huge (and not mutually exclusive). I can now confidently say ‘that isn’t me and that is not a failing whatever you think.’ I’m lucky that in life and work, I’m no longer surrounded by people with intrusive opinions on my personal life. Still, if I ever am, I feel confident in saying I choose something else, another way, and that’s ok.
But also being Ace feels more ‘Queer’ than any other label did. Because, after all in a world governed by sex, what’s more ‘queer’ and subversive than defying that? But also in acknowledging that, I feel again like I’m subverting the norms the world laid down and said I should follow and finally realising it’s ok to follow my path. It also means I’ve become more ‘queer’ in my outlook. In moving away from the ‘why aren’t I…’ elements of trying to conform to allosexual (that’s non-asexual) ways of thinking about sex and relationships, I realised I don’t conform in my beliefs to so many of them, and that is radical and yes…truly queer. I also know what I truly value in relationships- romantic and otherwise- now, which is a blessing to have in your life and mind.
More than all that, I feel peace. I feel without pressure to be and do things that I am not/do not want to do. Is the pressure there? Of course, you can’t dismantle the patriarchy just by knowing you’re Asexual. But you can separate yourself from those expectations and understand who you are. It’s not easy; some days, the pressure feels more intense than before I knew I was asexual- to conform, to be ‘normal’...but other days, it feels wonderfully peaceful to be on the outside, in my asexual bubble knowing all the pressure I previously put on myself has been taken away by knowing who I am.
So that’s where I am. But actually, I’ve got here through something very specific; writing. Not just blogs like this but creative work. I’ve spent most of the last year working on a novel (s) with Ace characters…and in the next blog I’m going to talk about how they really, finally gave me a sense of my Ace identity (and share an extract from them).