[ID: Aspec Voices - Masturbation and Libido Part II. “I think this for me is a powerful stance as an asexual, being able to engage with sexual content/activity without being bound by attraction or allonormative pressures.” - Duncan. “I have recently realized I am autosexual, and masturbation has helped me realize that I experience attraction to myself, that I’m not just performing an action.” - Kaira. “My bodily functions and how I care for them have no impact on my aspec identities. I shouldn’t have to hide my libido and masturbation habits to avoid being invalidated.” - Anne.
Aspec Voices - Masturbation and Libido Part II. “In past relationships, because I said I masturbated, it was assumed that I would do more sexual things. And that made sense to me, unfortunately, so I would do more and then question my sexuality because of it.” - Evren. “At first, I disregarded the asexual label for myself specifically because I knew I had a libido, and thought the two were mutually exclusive.” - LR. “It has been a bit harder to resonate with a lot of “classic” ace experiences. I do want sex, and this has sometimes made me feel like an outsider to a lot of ace communities.” - Alex. End ID.]
With prevalent sex negativity and essentialist ideas of orientation & sexuality, aces often face invalidation and stigma for their sex drives and/or sexual behaviour. Check out these ace perspectives on sex and kink: https://taaap.org/2021/10/28/ace-week-21-aces-sex-kink/
[ID: Anakin and Padmé in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones staring at each other. In panel 1, Anakin, labelled “my body,” says “you’re asexual.” In 2, Padmé, labelled “me,” smiles and says “that means I won’t be horny, right?” Panel 3 zooms in on Anakin’s staring face (still labelled “my body”). In 4, Padmé’s smile falls and she repeats (still labelled “me”), “that means I won’t be horny, right?” End ID.]
I’ve “joked” before that I know that it’s Pride Month, because as soon as June 1 comes around, I suddenly get to see a wonderful flood of aphobic bullshit on my dash.
Sometimes the people who reblog this shit aren’t themselves exclusionists. At least I’d like to think they aren’t, given that they’re mutuals who follow me, but out of ignorance, they join in on mocking what they don’t understand.
My block button gets a nice workout during Pride.
Anyway, since I do think (hope) that some of the people reblogging this nonsense do so because they are genuinely clueless, I’m inspired to write this post.
–
It’s very common, during Pride and otherwise, to see people mock the idea of aspec identities. For example, “fraysexual”, in which people only experience sexual attraction to people they don’t know very well, for example, celebrities.
It’s very common to see otherwise well-meaning people mock this idea. “I’m attracted to Chris Hemsworth! Does this mean I’m suddenly LGBTQ?!”
I don’t want to attack their reading comprehension, of course, but they’re missing something obvious in that definition: the word “only”.
If you are a woman and you are attracted to Chris Hemsworth, then you’re probably straight. Or bi. But if you’re ONLY attracted to Chris Hemsworth and NO OTHER MEN in the world…then maybe something else is going on.
Lesbians will often talk about compulsory heterosexuality and that’s a thing that asexual people experience too. Society has an expectation of allo-straightness and it’s very hard to define a negative, so it’s very common for a young person to express attraction to a fantasy, someone safely out of reach. Most of us will never meet Chris Hemsworth in real life, certainly we’ll never get invited to have sex with him, so we don’t really have to parse through whether this is something we really want to do. And well, if we’re not interested in the real life men that we know, it’s probably because they just don’t measure up.
Now, I think lesbians have one advantage in this case that asexual people don’t have. And that’s that they do feel attraction to women. It’s suppressed, and it may take a lot of time to realize it, but it’s there. And once you feel the real thing, I think that it makes it easier to see the “attraction” to Chris Hemsworth for what it is.
Most asexual people don’t have a “real thing” to put the fantasy and cultural programming into perspective. It’s very hard to define a negative, and often you end up doing that by defining everything else around out. That blank space is what’s left.
And that’s why aspec identities exist: because society has a really complicated relationship with sexuality in general. A physical sex drive can complicate matters too. Because that’s a thing that most people have. Hormones and gonads and all that. And if you think growing up with all those impulses are confusing already, try it when you don’t have a sexual orientation to direct it.
So that’s, I think, where a lot of these identities come from. Identities like fraysexual and lithsexual (sexual attraction ONLY if it’s not reciprocated) sound weird to an outside observer, until you understand that the end goal is not to have sex! The end goal is to process what we’re feeling and not feeling and define it for ourselves.
As a young person, I didn’t know I was asexual. I thought there was something wrong with me. I’d grasp at straws and think to myself that I must be straight, because I liked slash fanfiction. Because I liked erotica. Clearly I just never really had the opportunity to have sex. I have very specific trait preferences.
And then the invitation came! From someone who was objectively very attractive. He* was beautiful, a live action and real life version of the characters I’d read about, amazingly smart, great sense of humor. I’d fantasized about them for a long time before this moment. (More accurately, I should say “They” as later, they came out as non-binary. At the time though, I’d believed them to be male, just as I’d believed myself to be female. People are complicated.)
The fantasy was real! There was no better time! And….all I could feel was a resounding “NO.” I liked them a lot. But…no. No. (They took the refusal with good grace, they were really great!) The aftermath was rough on me though, because I no longer could fool myself.
I don’t consider myself lithsexual or fraysexual because in my case, the attraction wasn’t so much to the person as to the fantasy of being straight. But people come in all variations, and we can only really define ourselves.
Ultimately, aspec identities aren’t about you unless they apply to you. But for us, they can be a literal lifesaver. I spent a long time thinking I was broken. Why could I feel a sexual response when reading erotica but not want to have sex?! Obviously I can’t be asexual if I feel SOMETHING, right?
And then, and then, at the age of thirty or so, I stumbled across the concept of autochorissexuality. The idea of a disconnect between self and sexual desire. And I realized, wait. There I am. You can’t imagine the sense of relief.
THAT’s why these identities exist. It doesn’t MATTER if you understand them. It doesn’t MATTER if you think they’re valid. They’re for US, not you. And it costs exactly 0 dollars to shut the fuck up about something that has nothing to do with you.
DEAD. ASS. same situation here mate! though with mine it ended up with me dissociating through every subsequent attempt until i was like you know what im going to stick with single-player the payout is not worth the dissociation and crying breakdowns
as a note tho, i tend to lean more towards using “aegosexual” nowadays because autochorissexual originated as the psychiatric diagnosis for our identity. not as a “you should id as that instead” more like “there’s also this word to describe what we’re feeling if you like that better!”
i mean peoples’ eyes tend to glaze over no matter which one i tell them so it doesnt much matter and i’ll often flip between the two but yeah
(as a note for anyone still unsure what autochoris/aego is, it’s basically removing yourself from the equation – you experience attraction so long as you are not involved. it’s different from voyeurism in that even voyeurism relies on your knowledge and presence in the situation, while autochorissexuality/aegosexuality is more like attraction to fictional characters/celebrities with the knowledge that There Is Literally No Way You Would Actually Be Involved either because the person doesn’t know you exist (ex. real-life celebrities) or because the person you’re attracted to doesn’t exist. alternately just think of it as only experiencing attraction while not being perceived or being one with the void or something but it’s not a kink/fetish i promise)
(i know it sounds weirdly specific but let me tell you the day i realized there were other people who would go horny on main over a pretty anime boy but don’t want anything to do with multiplayer mode was the day i stopped feeling completely fucking broken)
