asexual

My Updated Stance on the Q Slur

I want to share my current position on asexuals and aromantics identifying as “queer,” because I’ve changed my mind since the last time I wrote on the subject.

I don’t think it’s appropriate for heterosexual aros, hetero- asexuals, or aromantic asexuals to call themselves queer. Queer is historically a slur applied to gay men and lesbians, and if you aren’t gay or bisexual, you can’t “reclaim” that slur because it has never applied to your sexuality.

I’m well-aware that scores of asexuals and aromantics disagree and for some totally baffling reason, desperately want to call themselves queer and feel like they belong in the LGBTQ+ acronym. I’m not here to change your minds. I’m just clarifying my own opinion. You’re going to do what you want no matter what anyone says, and I got better things to do with my time than argue with people who can’t be reasoned with.

I do want to ask all the straight aces and aros and aromantic asexuals (and straight demisexuals, demiromantics, gray-asexuals, and gray-romantics) who feel strongly about IDing as queer this question, though: what’s your motive? Why do you need to be queer so badly? Why do you need to tack yourself onto the LGBTQ acronym?

The only explanation I can come up with goes like this: most aces and aros online are millenials, meaning under the age of 30, many of them teenagers and college kids under 21, and they spend a lot of their time, online and offline, in and around LGBTQ spaces and people. Even the hetero ones don’t feel like they fit in with heterosexuals that experience both sexual and romantic feelings because not wanting sex or not being capable of falling in love does make you very different from the vast majority of straight people. Because they feel different and because they probably have friends and/or acquaintances who are LGBTQ and because they may experience interpersonal challenges due to their asexuality and/or aromanticism, they conclude that they must be queer, because they believe that “queer” covers anything and everything outside the average heterosexual experience of feeling exclusively attracted, both romantically and sexually, to the opposite sex. And even when LGBTQ allo* people make it clear that they have a problem with het aces, het aros, and aro aces describing themselves with a specifically gay slur, said aces and aros hold fast to “queer” because they want validation of their asexuality and/or aromanticism and they want to be included in what they perceive to be a unified community or struggle of all LGBTQ people against heterosexuals.

But let me tell you, there are gay men and lesbians who don’t identify as “queer,” who don’t believe that it’s a slur that can or should be “reclaimed,” and that it is unacceptable and deeply offensive that queer-identified people have progressively erased the gay identity with “queer.” (When did “gay” become a dirty word?) And if these men and women who belong to the sexual category originally branded with the q- slur reject it wholesale and don’t want non-gay people to use it as an identity, your response as a heterosexual aro, hetero- ace, or aromantic asexual should be to listen.

Furthermore, I don’t understand why any asexual or aromantic, including the gay and bisexual ones, would even want to use this particular word to describe themselves when you have the words that specifically describe you already available: asexual, aromantic. I know using “queer” as a vague umbrella term for “not straight” is a super popular fad on the internet and shit, but seriously, if you want respect and recognition for your asexuality or aromanticism, then why don’t you try owning it? “Queer” means nothing, beyond “not straight.” I’m sure that’s one reason why some aces and aros use it–because they want to tell people that they’re “not straight” (meaning, not a heterosexual who experiences romantic attraction in a normative pattern, whatever the fuck that is) but they’re too afraid to come out as asexual and/or aromantic. I’m sorry, but being unwilling to come out as what you really are, doesn’t give you the right to appropriate this gay slur, if you’re hetero- or aro+ace. If you’re hetero- and don’t want to come out as asexual or aromantic, you should just say you’re straight, because technically, you are. You’re not straight the way that straight allos* are, but that doesn’t make you the equivalent of gay.

I figure using the q- slur as a way to validate the sense of one’s own oppression is another motive, for some het aces, het aros, and aro aces. You feel like the world treats you badly for your asexuality or aromanticism, and “queer” is the label descriptive of oppressed sexuality, that you know of. But as I recently explained, oppression and discrimination are two different things, and at this point, asexuals and aromantics are not oppressed for their asexuality and aromanticism. People being mean to you doesn’t qualify as oppression all by itself, and it doesn’t compare to the historically persistent, systemic oppression that gay men and lesbians have lived with all over the world for thousands of years. That doesn’t mean it’s right when people treat you badly for being asexual or aromantic or both, and it doesn’t make your pain and struggle any less real. It just means you do not have the same problems or history as gay and bi people.

I can understand, to a degree, why an aromantic asexual or an aromantic heterosexual would feel entitled to the q- slur if they’re involved in a same-sex intimate relationship, because regardless of the nonromantic and nonsexual status of such a relationship, the world looks at you and sees you as gay. Society doesn’t set up surveillance in your house to make sure that you’re fucking your friend behind closed doors or tap your phones to verify that you speak to each other romantically; if you behave much like a couple, society will assume you’re a couple and treat you accordingly, unless you clarify that you aren’t. Obviously, it’s not always possible or appropriate to make that clarification, and even if you do, there will be people who don’t believe you. So yes, it is entirely possible to be an aromantic asexual or an aromantic heterosexual and get targeted with homophobia, based on your relationships. However, it’s homophobia, not acephobia or arophobia, and out of respect for all the gay, bisexual, and queer-identified people who don’t want aro aces or straight people to use the q-slur, you shouldn’t use your experiences of misplaced homophobia as an excuse to claim the slur when you’re not actually gay or bisexual.

I’ve never identified as queer. Strangers assume I’m gay on a routine basis because of the way I look and because I’m pretty much either alone or with another woman in public, never with a male. I specifically want a female life companion, one who I can eventually live with in a committed way. I want a level of physical and emotional intimacy with her that usually doesn’t exist between heterosexual women or in friendships between allos*. Some queer-identified allo* individuals would say that I have a right to identify as queer if I want to, but I don’t feel any resonance with that word whatsoever and never have. Not just because it’s a slur that can be righteously criticized as an identity, not just because of the queer politics I disagree with, but because being mistaken for gay isn’t the same thing as being gay.

There are so many other words that you could use instead of “queer” to describe yourself, and I just don’t see a good reason to be fixated on that one. As for membership in the “queer community,” I think that’s a moot point. There is no queer community, at least not one that encompasses all LGBTQ people. There are people who ID as queer and there are gay men and there are lesbians and there are bisexuals, some of whom are in same-sex relationships and more who are in opposite-sex relationships. There is no giant, cohesive, unified group of non-heterosexuals that has one set of needs, one set of experiences, one set of political goals, or a level of oppression that’s consistent across the board. And even if you want membership in the group of queer-identified people, because you feel like you don’t fit in with the majority of straight people, why would you ignore the queer people who vehemently reject straights and aro aces from their space and try to force yourself onto them anyway? Do you expect to get something positive out of that? Is it really worth it, to mow over these people and their experiences of oppression, just to use a fucking word?

I’ve always said that I think asexuals need to focus on their own community and aromantics on their own community, and that neither group needs to latch on to any category of allo* people. Each letter in the LGBTQ acronym has done its own work and created its own resources. Asexuals and aromantics should do the same. If you’re a gay ace, gay aro, bi ace, or bi aro, you may feel strongly connected to the gay community or the bi community or the queer community, but there’s also a good chance you have a lot more in common with other asexuals or aromantics than with the allo* people you share a romantic or sexual orientation with. If that latter is true, why not invest your community-participation efforts in the dominant part of your sexuality: your asexuality or aromanticism?

And if you’re an aromantic asexual, like me, I really do believe that you’re best off focusing on the aromantic community and, when possible, on the aromantic asexual sub-group of the asexual community. If you’re totally disinterested in sex and romance and if you’re intentionally, permanently single and celibate, you have nothing to gain from any group of allo* people or from romantic asexuals. Other than validation, which you shouldn’t need in the first place.

So basically, in answer to the question, “Are asexuals and aromantics queer?”, my answer is:

  • Are asexuals and aromantics gay? Some of them are.
  • Are asexuals and aromantics bi? Some of them are.
  • Are asexuals and aromantics trans? Some of them are.
  • Is being straight, sexually or romantically, in any way equivalent to being gay? No.
  • Is asexuality, by itself, or aromanticism, by itself, the equivalent of being gay or involved in a same-sex relationship as a bi person, in a homophobic society? No.

Thus, if you’re hetero-, the q-slur is not for you. If you’re an aromantic asexual, the q-slur is not for you. And more importantly, why do you need or want it to be? What do you gain by it? If your argument is that life or relationships are hard when you’re asexual or aromantic or both, I acknowledge the hardship, but you don’t need a homophobic slur to give credibility to your struggles as an asexual or aromantic.

Meaningless Identity

What is the purpose of identifying oneself as asexual or aromantic?

I’ll tell you mine. I am a person who does not experience sexual attraction, who doesn’t have an innate need for partnered sex, who doesn’t experience romantic attraction, and who does not have an innate need or desire for romantic relationships.

When I started identifying as asexual—and later, as aromantic—I did so because I thought that this was the most reasonable thing to do, that these terms most accurately described who and what I am. I wasn’t just someone who consciously chose not to have sex; I was someone who didn’t feel sexual toward other people at all. I wasn’t just someone who chose to stay single; I was someone who felt no romantic feelings and no involuntary desire for romantic relationships. I am still that person.

And when I was a kid who first discovered the asexual identity, when I was a teen and a college student openly identifying myself as asexual to everyone I knew well enough, my goal was to communicate to people that I was not sexually available to them, that I could not and would not feel the sexual attraction they felt, that I was not a potential sexual partner for them because of who I was, not because of an individualized lack of interest in each of them. When I tell people that I am aromantic, I do it to communicate that I am not someone they can date, I am not someone desiring romance, I am not someone who can return their romantic feelings should they develop any toward me, and that this is a permanent situation, not a circumstantial one.

Why not just identify as celibate and perma-single? Wouldn’t that communicate the same information?

Pop asexual and aromantic discourse loves to emphasize that attraction is not behavior, and that attraction is the only thing that matters, when it comes to someone being asexual or aromantic. (Except for all the asexual and aromantic spectrum bloggers who think that you can literally call yourself asexual or aromantic for absolutely no reason at all, other than you feel like it—and thus, asexuals and aromantics could be people who do experience desire for partnered sex or romantic relationships, with or without attraction.) The story goes that asexuals don’t experience sexual attraction but that some of them have sex for external reasons (as opposed to internal desire, attraction, or motive), and that asexuals who have sex are not any less asexual than the ones who don’t because both types lack that involuntary, innate sexual attraction. A lot of self-identified asexuals (and demis and grays) believe that sexual attraction and sexual desire (for partnered sex) are two different, distinct things and that the only qualification for an asexual identity is lack of sexual attraction. They believe that you can desire partnered sex purely for your own gratification, even need partnered sex as much as any allosexual, and still be “asexual” because you don’t experience attraction along with desire. (Of course, nobody in this camp can explain what sexual attraction is, and when sexual people offer their own descriptions, they’re usually ignored or denied, especially if it clashes with self-identified asexuals’ idea of themselves.) The same goes for aromanticism and romantic attraction vs. desire for romantic relationships. The whole cupioromantic identity comes from the belief that you can want romantic relationships specifically and still be aromantic, as long as you don’t experience romantic attraction—another thing no one can define or explain adequately, even as they insist that they don’t experience it. You can spend your life serially dating people and still call yourself aromantic, you can prefer romantic relationships over all forms of friendship and call yourself aromantic, you can even fall in love and call yourself aromantic—and no one has the right to question your identity as long as you maintain that you don’t experience the romantic attraction you can’t define and won’t allow alloromantic people to define for you.

The difference, supposedly, between an asexual and a celibate allosexual person is that the asexual experiences no sexual attraction whatsoever (except when they do), even if they’re out there fucking, while the celibate allosexual person does experience sexual attraction and desire for partnered sex that they can’t turn off but that they choose not to act on. The difference, supposedly, between an aromantic and a voluntarily single alloromantic is that the aromantic doesn’t experience romantic attraction whatsoever (except when they do), even if they choose to date people or dream about romantic partnership, while the voluntarily single alloromantic person does experience romantic feelings they can’t turn off or control and an innate desire for romantic partnership that they can’t help but feel, even if they choose not to act on it for whatever reason.

So again, I ask: what is the point in identifying oneself as asexual or aromantic, instead of celibate or perma-single? Why have I continued to call myself an aromantic asexual, even as I also specify that I am celibate and permanently single?

My own reason for this—which I suspect is a reason shared by many self-identified asexuals and aromantics—is my desire to communicate with people that I am sexually and romantically unavailable independent of external circumstances and the specific others I encounter. Because celibacy is a choice, there’s a built-in implication that the celibate person can choose to stop being celibate, and that given the right conditions, they will—because the assumption is that all people experience sexual attraction and desire and that celibates are abstaining from sex that they do want and can enjoy. Likewise, singlehood is understood to be a temporary and ultimately unwanted status: not only is the single person available but they’re looking for someone to couple with. If I tell someone I’m single, without specifying that I’m aromantic, everyone will assume that I’m fair game for other single people to ask out. They’ll assume that I want to meet someone who will make me not-single; that’s what amatonormativity is.

Celibacy and singlehood are choices or changeable conditions; asexuality and aromanticism are nature. Behavior vs. attraction. The controllable vs. the uncontrollable.

Celibacy and singlehood, in the collective consciousness, imply availability. I’m celibate right now, but you could fuck me, if I decide I want it. I’m single right now, but you could date me or get me to fall in love with you, if the stars align. At the very least, you can feel free to proposition me for sex or ask me on a date and expect that you have some chance of receiving a “yes.” If I’m celibate but capable of sexual desire and attraction, I could be attracted to you. I could want to fuck you. If I’m single but capable of romantic attraction and want a romantic relationship, I could want to date you. I could fall in love with you.

But if I’m an aromantic asexual, I’m not capable of the feelings and desires necessary for successful, satisfying, reciprocal sex and romance. My disinterest in sex and romance with you is not personal, it’s universal and unconditional. If I was only disinterested in you, maybe you could change my mind through seduction or courting, and if not, some other person could come along and pique my interest. But if I’m flat out incapable of returning sexual interest and romantic feelings, you’re never going to get out of me what you’re really looking for, not in the same way you would with a fellow allosexual alloromantic person. And if you’re like most allo* people, your immediate reaction to hearing about my aromantic asexual identity will be to assume that I am sexually and romantically unavailable, permanently.

The asexual and aromantic identities have a direct impact on interpersonal expectations. Asexuality and aromanticism have people starting from an assumption of unavailability, whereas singlehood and celibacy have people starting from an assumption of availability.

Some people who self-identify as asexual or aromantic, despite not meeting the popular criteria of these identities (not to mention my criteria), have picked up on this, and it’s one reason they call themselves asexual or aromantic, despite feeling sexual or romantic attraction. Calling themselves asexual or aromantic gets them out of having to explain why they’re rejecting someone who’s attracted to them. Blogger epocryphal straight up says that claiming the asexual identity can be a “useful way of setting a boundary.” Apparently, no one has to actually learn how to set sexual boundaries in honest, direct ways; the asexual identity is there for you, every time you don’t want to fuck someone. Funny how this is supposed to be acceptable when it comes to asexuality, but nobody besides homophobic straight and bisexual people think that it’s okay for a straight person to call themselves gay to get out of an unwanted come-on. And funny how asexuals who don’t want to have sex, usually end up doing it anyway even when their allosexual romantic partners know they identify as asexual. So much for establishing sexual boundaries with an identity.

What annoys the fuck out of me about asexual and aromantic identity politics is not only the lack of an agreed-upon definition of these identities but the attitude that even if a definition exists, people can ignore it and claim these identities anyway, for no reason other than they feel like it. They can claim to be different from allo* people through their identity label, even if they’re the same as allo* people in their behaviors, feelings, and desires. It’s the most illogical, stupid shit. And you can’t have a productive conversation about this that involves critical thinking because inevitably, it just erodes into people crying about “identity policing” and being exclusionary and how it’s wrong to invalidate someone’s feelings (as if feelings are beyond criticism!), without any actual substantive defense of their philosophy. You don’t have to make sense, you just have to be emotional.

Identity is not sacrosanct. Feelings are not de facto rational or consistent with material reality or compatible with objective truths. If identity is based on feelings alone, then like feelings, identity can be false, illogical, circumstantial, inconsistent with reality, etc. Questioning and criticizing identity is therefore necessary, fair, and reasonable.

Gravity exists. Whether I believe in it or not, whether I like it or not. I can identify as a human capable of flying because I feel like one, but if I throw myself off a skyscraper, I’m going to fall to the ground and die. There are people out there who identify as animals, dragons, vampires, fairies, reincarnated historical figures, etc. Their identity does not make them the things they identify as. Even if they get everyone in the room to play along, anyone still tethered to reality is going to look at the human being crawling around on all-fours meowing and know that they are not a cat.

“My identity can’t be wrong because it’s about describing myself to myself, about understanding my own feelings/experiences and naming them using a word that anyone can use.”

How do you explain the logic of publicly claiming an identity and demanding its recognition and respect, if identity only serves the purpose of self-understanding? If your identity fails to function as a tool of communication in social interaction, if it fails to describe a group of people with common needs/interests that you are part of, if it is purely about the individual, why share it with others at all? What do you accomplish by publicizing a completely unique identity that doesn’t actually tell anyone anything, without additional explanation? Validation? Is that what you want?

You can identify as anything, but I’m under no obligation to suspend my own understanding of what a thing is to accommodate you. In other words, your personal feelings and perception does not change material, objective reality and it does not, according to your own philosophy, override my subjective perception. If you are identical to someone with a different identity, I’m not going to see you as different from them just because you insist that you are with a label. Nor do you, based on your own identity politics, have the right to demand that I change my definitions of identity labels. You can’t call me wrong for not defining an identity the way you do, if there is no objective definition of the identity. I don’t have the authority or the power to force you to change your identity, but you don’t have the power to make an identity mean whatever the fuck you want, unless you’re the only one using it. If we throw identities out the window and look at facts, a person who likes to fuck is identical to a person who likes to fuck. A person who wants romantic relationships is identical to a person who wants romantic relationships. A person who can fall in love, can fall in love, and a person who can feel sexual toward others, can feel sexual toward others. Unless you can prove that the fact of your sexual desire or romantic desire or sexual feelings or romantic feelings is fundamentally different from other people’s, to the point that you belong in a totally different category, you’re the same as they are regardless of what you call yourself and what they call themselves.

This is a fundamental contradiction in identity politics: if I have the right to decide and define not only my own identity but the identity category to which I belong (which exists if my identity is one many people use), but so does every other individual on the planet, and if none of us can be wrong, then the minute I run into a person who defines the identity we share differently than I do, I’m either guilty of “identity policing” them by rejecting their identity based on my own definitions, or I’m forced to change my definitions, which are supposed to be just as untouchable as anyone else’s, in order to accommodate this other person. We can’t have two different definitions of the same identity and both be right, unless the identity itself doesn’t exist outside of our individual, subjective realities. And if that were true, no two people would share the same romantic/sexual experience, which would render the categorical difference between “asexual” and “allosexual” (or “aromantic” and “alloromantic”) nonexistent, eliminating the need to name these categories at all. You can’t have collective categories based on differences between those categories if every individual has a unique identity with unique meaning which defies group categorization.

How can asexuals and aromantics lack any experience of sexual or romantic attraction but claim to know better than allo* people what they aren’t feeling or what the nature of their feelings is? How can asexuals and aromantics define themselves in opposition to what allos* are, yet deny the importance of desire in defining asexuality and aromanticism, when desire is essential to the allo* experience? How can anyone claim to be asexual or aromantic when they experience the same desire that allo* people do? Or the same attraction? If “asexuality” and “aromanticism” can be anything that self-identifiers say it is, to the point of including people who are identical in behavior, feeling, and experience to allos*, what is the point of these categories that exist to supposedly describe people who are not allo*? If you can behave any way you want sexually or romantically and still be asexual or aromantic—but you can also feel romantic/sexual attraction and desire and be asexual or aromantic, how the fuck is this not relabeling allosexuality and alloromanticism for the sole purpose of sounding different?

For me, what this all amounts to is that your asexual or aromantic identity means nothing to me, in that it tells me nothing about you. You could swap in “cactus” or “umbrella” or “alien from another galaxy,” and I’d have no less information about your experience of sexual or romantic attraction and desire than if you used “asexual” or “aromantic.” I no longer have any reason or justification for responding to someone identifying as “asexual” or “aromantic” any differently than I do to people who are straight, gay, or bi. I can’t expect anything different from “asexuals” and “aromantics” than I do from demis and grays or from allo* people, in terms of behavior, relationship style and goals, sexual interest and availability, romantic interest and availability, etc. If anyone can identify as asexual or aromantic regardless of their sexual and romantic nature, then I don’t know who you are when you say you’re “asexual” or “aromantic.”

And because we do not, in fact, all have our own unique language, this meaninglessness of the identity words leaves me no choice but to wonder what my own use of them accomplishes. I can just as easily tell the world that I don’t want to fuck or date and refuse to do so, without using the words “asexual” and “aromantic,” and at this point, that would actually be more effective in terms of communication than identifying myself as an aromantic asexual. If I’m going to have to do the exact same amount of explaining to people, whether I use the identity terms or not, why bother using them? And if there is no cohesive community behind those identities where I can expect to find people with the same experiences, the same lack of attraction and desire, the same sexual and romantic unavailability, then the identity fails as a social tool as much as it fails as a communication tool.

It’s strange to think of myself as an unlabeled person, even if my nature and my social status remain the same without the labels. One of the most important things to me, as someone who doesn’t want, need, have, or feel sex or romance, is connecting with people like me—and if it’s hard when I’ve got labels that some of them also use, isn’t it harder without the labels? But then again, in this dominant culture of subjective identity politics, I’m not looking for people who share my labels anymore. I’m looking for people who share my nature and who can verify that through their own explicit statements: I don’t want or need sex, I don’t want or need romance, I don’t fall in love, celibate and single are my defaults. That these facts exist and remain true independently of labels and identity and are the basis of connection, successful relationships, and collective political goals in the real world is worth contemplating.

I’m sure the herd of asexual bloggers who are all generally in agreement with each other on asexual discourse and identity politics would want to argue against my belief in the need for specific, fixed, objective definitions of asexuality and aromanticism, but I’m not interested in discussing the rightness or the wrongness of the definitions themselves. I’m interested in the question I opened with, asked from a perspective of asexual and aromantic identities having no definition and no objective meaning: what is the purpose of identifying as asexual or aromantic?

My Identity is Not an Umbrella Term.

“Asexual” is not an umbrella term.

“Aromantic” is not an umbrella term.

“Ace” is not an umbrella term.

“Aro” is not an umbrella term.

A demisexual is not an asexual. A gray-asexual is not an asexual.

A demiromantic is not an aromantic. A gray-romantic is not an aromantic.

“Ace” is short for “asexual,” not for demisexual or gray-asexual.

“Aro” is short for “aromantic,” not for demiromantic or gray-romantic.

If you are not asexual, you have no right to call yourself by the terms “asexual” or “ace.”

If you are not aromantic, you have no right to call to yourself by the terms “aromantic” or “aro.”

It’s apparently popular online, particularly on that blue hellscape called Tumblr, for demis and grays to go around calling themselves “ace” or “aro,” and sometimes even “asexual” or “aromantic,” and defend this usage with the bullshit argument that “asexuality and aromanticism are spectrums and I’m on the spectrum and ace/aro are shorthand for the whole spectrum, so I can call myself ace or aro even though I’m not!”

I have no idea when this got started, but it needs to stop. It’s bad enough that we can’t even fucking agree on a definition of asexuality or aromanticism, as a collective group of aces and aros, and now we have to put up with demis and grays falsely identifying themselves as ace and aro?

There is not a single good defense for this. Not one. If demis and grays want to try telling me with a straight face that calling themselves asexual or aromantic is “more convenient” for them, all I have to say is that my identity is not here for your convenience. And the problems you create for me and other asexuals and aromantics by using our identities falsely are never, ever an acceptable price for us to pay–us, not you–for the sake of your convenience.

And here’s the other thing that nobody seems to want to acknowledge: if you’re demi or gray, you have another orientation, the one that actually describes who you’re attracted to. You’re straight or gay or bi. Which is why it’s fucking outrageous that you would go around calling yourself asexual or aromantic, because we–the real asexuals and aromantics–are not straight or gay or bi, sexually or romantically, and those of us who are both asexual and aromantic are completely and utterly devoid of the attraction you do experience. Which is the fucking point of the asexual and aromantic identities.

If you don’t want to publicly identify yourself as demi- or gray-, guess what? You can identify as straight or gay or bi, because that’s what you are. And the only people that need to know the details of your sexual or romantic attraction patterns, are the people you actually get involved with sexually or romantically.

And I know you’re going to whine and cry about how you don’t want the world to think you’re alloromantic or allosexual if you’re not and you also don’t want to just tell the truth about being demi or gray because people might make fun of you or blow you off or whatever. But that is not my problem, as an aromantic asexual who already needs to defend the validity of my orientation to allo* people who are predisposed to believe that all human beings want sex and romance at some point in life. If you’re demi- or gray- and you don’t want to actually have sex or date anyone, you can say “No” to people who come onto you. You don’t have to defend the “no” by coming out as demi- or gray-, and you sure as hell don’t get to falsely call yourself ace or aro instead. My identities are not “get out of sex and romance free” cards. And unless you live under a rock, you should know that allo* people do in fact turn down sex and romance when they’re not interested and expect to have that choice respected, despite not being demi- or gray- or ace/aro.

Demis and grays appropriating the asexual and aromantic identities has the same effect as people constantly reminding the world that asexuals can still have sex or that aromantics can still date: it gives allo* people the impression that they can, in fact, get what they want out of us. But the overwhelming majority of asexuals–actual asexual people who never experience sexual attraction or an involuntary desire for partnered sex–do NOT want to fuck anyone, in any context, and the overwhelming majority of aromantics–actual aromantic people who never experience romantic attraction or an innate need for romantic relationships–do NOT want to be romantically coupled and will not be comfortable if they are. And all of you demis and grays who don’t want to admit that you’re demi or gray, to others or to yourselves, make it that much harder for aces and aros to establish their natural boundaries and stand firm in them.

A demi or gray pretending to be ace or aro in between attractions or sex or romantic relationships, who then explains the attraction or sex or romance when it happens by saying that “Some aces can want sex and some aros can feel romantic feelings!” is being fucking duplicitous and disrespectful to asexuals and aromantics, not to mention incredibly inconsiderate. You are not ace, you are not aro, you are demi- or gray-, and that’s fine. If you got hangups about being demi or gray, that’s on you to work out; it is not on aces or aros to give up our identities for you to use. Especially when you are, in fact, straight or gay or bi, and your demi or gray identity describes how you experience attraction, not who you experience it toward.

I’ve heard about bisexuals calling themselves “gay” as if “gay” is an umbrella term too, and actual gay men and lesbians have made it clear several times that this is fucked up and unacceptable. “Gay” is not an umbrella term. If you are an aromantic asexual, like me, do NOT call yourself gay. If you’re a biromantic ace, you don’t get to call yourself gay. A bisexual is not a homosexual. “Gay” and “lesbian” are words denoting homosexuality. Bisexuals, biromantics, aromantic asexuals, and obviously straight people have no right whatsoever to use those identity terms. Period. If bisexuals and biromantics take issue with their own erasure in society, they can fight it by not pretending to be or calling themselves “gay.” Bi people calling themselves gay is harmful to real gay people, and that should be more than enough of a reason for you to not do it.

Maybe all this umbrella term bullshit comes from the word “queer,” which is used as an umbrella term and which is conceptualized by a lot of young people as a category that includes anyone who experiences same-sex attraction and/or who is trans. I don’t know and I don’t care. But gay, lesbian, ace, and aro are not umbrella terms. They have never been umbrella terms, and they never will be as far as actual gay, lesbian, asexual, and aromantic people are concerned.

I don’t give a single fuck what bisexuals, demis, or grays have to say about this. It is not their place to decide. They do not get to talk over gay men, lesbians, asexuals, and aromantics. Our identities belong to us. If we tell you that we’ve got a problem with you falsely labeling yourself using our identities, you need to listen.

While we’re here, let me tell you how I define asexuality and aromanticism, so that you know how those terms and their derivatives are being used on this blog.

Asexual – someone who does not experience sexual attraction or an involuntary desire for partnered sex (which cannot be satisfied with masturbation)

Aromantic – someone who does not experience romantic attraction or an innate need for romantic relationships that cannot be satisfied by any other kind of relationship

Someone who fits these definitions but who has a sex drive or masturbates or has participated in sex for an external reason or who has dated for non-romantic reasons is still asexual or aromantic. What makes someone ace or aro is a complete lack of attraction to others and a lack of internal, involuntary need for sex or romance, a need which is independent of other people’s desires or expectations. Basically, being asexual or aromantic means that you don’t have the desires or the feelings that an allosexual or alloromantic person has–which should be pretty fucking obvious, but there are enough aces, gray-aces, and demisexuals, aros, gray-ros, and demiromantics who think that the definitions of “asexuality” and “aromanticism” should be as vague and broad as possible, to the point of meaninglessness. And considering most of them fail to articulate what “sexual attraction” and “romantic attraction” are and refuse to take anything that allos* say about the matter into account, this attitude is a logical result.

Anyone who experiences attraction but not a need for partnered sex is gray. Anyone who experiences desire for partnered sex but not attraction is gray. Anyone who experiences attraction but not a need for romantic relationships (or who is repulsed by romantic relationships) is gray. Anyone who experiences desire for romantic relationships but not attraction is gray. The gray category covers a lot of different experiences, as I’m sure the allo- category covers a lot of different experiences. There is nothing wrong with being gray, and being gray is not less valid or real than being ace or aro.

 

I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince the online ace, aro, gray, and demi populations to adopt my definitions. You want to define these terms some other way, be my guest. But this is my understanding of asexuality and aromanticism, these are the definitions I use on this blog, and these are the definitions by which I understand whether other people are really asexual or aromantic. Sometimes, I’m of a mind to coin new terms that specifically apply to people who are asexual and aromantic, based on my definitions, because I’m fucking tired of seeing people who experience either attraction or desire insisting that they are ace or aro, on the grounds that words don’t have to mean anything or convey any useful or specific information or that words mean whatever the fuck anyone anywhere at anytime wants them to mean, nothing is real, PoMo bullshit blah blah blah. If I do think of some good alternative labels, I’ll post them. I, for one, want to be able to call myself something that clearly communicates to other human beings what I am, and I want to be able to find others like me as easily as possible. I should not have to specify that I don’t want to fuck or date every time I come out as aromantic asexual, and I should not have to wonder whether someone I meet who calls themselves aro or ace is in fact someone who never experiences attraction or desire for partnered sex/romance.  So new terms may be in order.

Alternative Relationship Watch: Ace/Allo Marriage Turns to Friendship

Over at Psychology Today, Anna Thomas writes about “divorcing differently.” She and her ex-husband got divorced and ended their romantic relationship–but they continue to be best friends who live together, raise their kids together, and hang out together. In this situation, the man is asexual, and the woman is not. While this made them incompatible romantically, they’ve transitioned their relationship into what can be called a platonic partnership or maybe even a queerplatonic partnership. Pretty cool.

“Divorcing Differently: Ending the Marriage, Saving the Relationship“

A Vital Resource of Asexual Survivors of Sexual Violence

I want to call your attention to a very important and valuable new website that was just launched by prominent members of the ace community: Resources for Ace Survivors provides resources, guidance, and a support network for asexual survivors of sexual violence. I’ve already added it to my page of helpful links.

Sexual violence is all too common in the asexual population, including and especially in the context of romantic relationships with sexual people. This is an issue that, for many reasons, has been avoided and ignored in asexual visibility and education projects and in the asexual community online itself. It’s time that silence end, once and for all. It’s time that asexual survivors of all types of sexual violence–whether it happens in romantic relationships or not, whether it’s corrective or not, whether it happened before you started IDing as ace or not, no matter what you’re gender or race or romantic orientation–talk about what they’ve been through and receive the help they need.

The nice thing about this resource is that it provides the opportunity for ace survivors to talk to other ace survivors confidentially. While the aces on The List (which is not public) are not therapists, they do know from personal experience what it’s like to be ace, what it’s like to be an ace survivor, etc. You can be confident that it’s safe to talk to them openly and honestly about whatever you’ve experienced and that they will not be at all dismissive or critical of your identity or your trauma, which is a risk in going to counselors/friends/family who are sexual people.

I urge anyone and everyone who reads this and who is asexual or on the ace spectrum and has experienced any kind of sexual violence to make use of this website in whatever way you find useful.

Stay strong.

Nonsexual Polyamory is Totally a Thing

It’s funny to me how often monogamists criticize polyamorous and ethically nonmonogamous people by slut shaming them and claiming that polyamory/nonmonogamy is just “an excuse” to be sexually promiscuous, to avoid commitment, to fuck around with multiple people you don’t actually care about or (romantically) love. It’s funny not because of how totally off base it is, but because in reality, polyamorous romantic-sexual people and poly aromantic sexual people are actually more likely to embrace a totally nonsexual romantic/intimate relationship than monogamous people are. You don’t even have to try hard to find evidence of this; just Google “nonsexual polyamory” and several threads on poly forums and poly blogs will pop up where real poly people talk about their nonsexual partnerships.

Don’t get me wrong, sex IS definitely a big part of polyamory/nonmonogamy for the majority of sexual poly people and for some of them, poly/nonmonogamy is about the sex to one degree or another. And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with even the nonromantic sex that happens in some nonmonogamous people’s lives, assuming they approach it ethically.

But my point is, as an asexual person who has been involved in the ace community for going on 1o years now and who is very familiar with the woes of romantic asexuals who try to date sexual people (usually monogamously), it’s hilarious to me that the very people Romantic Monogamous society blasts for being too sexual, too promiscuous, too sexually uncontrollable or whatever are the ones who are more likely to both accept and succeed at a nonsexual romantic relationship with someone who may be ace or otherwise sexually unavailable. Not all poly people are cool with nonsexual romance, which is fine, but far more of them seem to be in comparison to monogamists.

And it’s logical, isn’t it? If you’re sexual and you need sex to be happy, and you’re also polyamorous/ethically nonmonogamous, you can be involved with someone who won’t have sex with you and get your sexual needs met by another partner or partners, which thus makes it significantly easier to accept the nonsexual status of one of your other romantic relationships. If you’re monogamous, then either you’re going to give up sex for your ace partner and be unhappy or, much more likely, they’re going to have to put up with sex for you.

I’m not saying that people who can only be truly happy in monogamy should try to fix a mixed romantic relationship with polyamory/nonmonogamy–that’s almost certain to end badly–but I am saying that it’s a fact poly aces or poly-friendly aces have much better odds of being comfortably romantically/nonsexually involved with someone who’s polyamorous and cool with a nonsexual RR than they do with a monogamous sexual person.

And let’s not forget that asexuals can also be polyamorous with each other–in which case, it really isn’t about the sex at all. There is no sex.

Monogamous haters of polyamory really should get educated, is all I’m saying. In their ignorance, they just end up looking stupid.

“A” is for Queer?

I thought I was done participating in the debate over whether asexuals and aromantics qualify as queer, but I was recently mulling it over and had some new thoughts. For those who are new to the subject, the last few years have seen an ongoing—and now somewhat subdued—argument between the online asexual community and some LGBQ romantic-sexual people over whether asexuals (and aromantics) can claim the queer identity. Many LGBQ romantic-sexual people welcome aces and aros into the alphabet soup of queer identities, and likewise, some asexuals don’t have any interest in identifying as queer, mostly the ones who are hetero-romantic.

What’s interesting to me about LGBQ allo* people (those who experience both romantic and sexual attraction) condemning the idea of asexuals, aromantics, and specifically those who are both IDing as “queer,” is what their objections reveal about their own understanding of queerness. The most popular reasons cited for rejecting aros and aces from the queer circle are:

a) Asexuals and aromantics have not been systematically and historically oppressed by heterosexual society for their asexuality and aromanticism.

b) There’s nothing non-heterosexual about you, if you don’t have sex and don’t fall in love romantically. (Do you see the ill logic there?)

c) “Queer” is a reclaimed slur that was used specifically against homosexuals and/or people who engaged in homosexual sex; if no one would insult you with the word “queer” for being asexual and/or aromantic, you don’t get to reclaim it as an identity.

So what do these LGBQ people think queerness is all about? Oppression, gay sex, and gay romance. Specifically in combination with each other.

If that’s your personal criteria for the “queer” identity, then you would be right in believing that aromantics and asexuals are not queer for their aromanticism and asexuality. But should that be the criteria for queerness? If you ask me, I think that’s a pretty narrow definition of “queer” that doesn’t accurately express the full spectrum of feelings, desires, relationships, and lifestyles that clearly fall outside of heteronormativity.

Why did the word “queer” even become a slur thrown at homosexuals and gender deviant individuals in the first place? Why that word? It was because originally, “queer” meant strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric, questionable, or suspicious. People and behaviors were called “queer” for being socially inappropriate. The history of queer as a slur for people who had gay sex isn’t about the condemnation of gay sex, so much as it’s about condemning what deviates from the norm. It’s about the age old concept that being different is bad and unacceptable. You’re supposed to behave a certain way, live a certain lifestyle, and if you don’t, the majority will disapprove of you for not being like them. Members of the normative majority insulting deviants with the word “queer” was about pressuring people into conforming to norms or else ostracizing them from society in order to protect those norms.

Having gay sex is only one type of deviation from heteronormativity. The same goes for romantic attraction to someone of the same gender. And even if you do limit queerness to gay sexual attraction and romantic attraction, you run into the question of whether it’s feelings and desires that matter or behavior—because throughout history, people who had same-gender attractions and desires still participated in straight sex and straight romantic relationships, even straight marriages and family life, while others who predominantly lived and felt heterosexual sometimes engaged in homosexual acts, not always because of attraction. Human sexuality has never been clear cut or black and white, and the contemporary insistence of everyone falling clearly into one of only two categories doesn’t even work all the time now either.

So let me specify my personal definition of queerness: to be queer is to be someone who has feelings, desires, experiences, relationships, and lifestyle practices that defy the mainstream normative ideal of a monogamous, primary, romantic, sexual couple relationship between a man and a woman. Anything that contradicts, differs, threatens, or exists outside that realm of sex, intimacy, romance, love, physical affection, social priority, or public identification with, that heterosexual/hetero-romantic framework is queer—meaning different, strange, unusual, deviant, odd, and socially inappropriate or unacceptable in at least some (if not all) circles of heteronormative culture and society.

Now obviously, if you adopt that definition of queerness, almost every expression of aromanticism and asexuality qualifies. I’m not going to suggest that nonsexual hetero- romance is queer based on the sexlessness alone, nor am I going to suggest that nonromantic hetero- sex is queer based on the lack of romance alone. But even if you’re hetero-romantic and asexual or aromantic and heterosexual, it is possible for your behavior, feelings, and experiences to be queer based on my definition of queerness.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: the intersection of same-sex romantic attraction or sexual attraction with aromanticism and asexuality. Aromantic LGBQ sexual people and LGBQ romantic asexuals qualify as queer even if you do restrict the identity to romantic and sexual same-sex attraction, and thankfully, most allo-* LGBQ people don’t argue with that. You can be aromantic and fuck people of the same gender. You can be asexual and romantically fall in love with people of the same gender. While neither case meets the hetero- and homonormative standard of romantic-sexual wholeness, there’s enough attraction and/or activity involved that is undeniably queer. I don’t need to defend aros and aces who have gay sex or gay romantic relationships as queers; their respective sexual and romantic attractions and behaviors speak for themselves.

What I really want to talk about is the inherent queerness of certain expressions of asexuality and aromanticism as extreme deviations from the normativity of sex and romance as “human” universal desires, feelings, and experiences. I want to talk about aromanticism and asexuality being queer even when they’re not packaged with same-gender sex and romance. Sex normativity and compulsory sexuality are present in both straight and gay culture. Amatonormativity—the expectation of romantic feelings, desires, love, and relationships and of their centrality and superiority—is present in both straight and gay culture. The more normalized homosexuality becomes in mainstream society, the more it mimics heteronormative heterosexuality, which is indeed the primary condition for its normalization. Both nonsexual romance and nonromantic sex are considered abnormal or inappropriate to some degree by the heteronormative institution, and the same is true and becomes increasingly so in mainstream gay and lesbian culture.

Does that make aromantic asexuals a new kind of super queer, in the original sense of the word? The 21st century sexual deviants, as homosexuality becomes increasingly accepted and mainstream? If more and more heterosexuals are accepting and embracing gay sex and gay romance as normal, while both straights and gays side-eye aromanticism and asexuality as weird, abnormal, fake, and inhuman, who really is queer now? Who are the queers, not in the context of “queer” being a mere synonym for “same-sex attracted” but in the context of “queer” signifying weirdness and social deviance?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m fully aware that being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or pansexual—whether you’re romantic or not—is still a struggle for many people all over the U.S., in other first world Western countries, and especially in the rest of the world. I’m not suggesting that being LGBQ is no longer queer, and I’m certainly not saying that asexuals and aromantics categorically experience more systematic oppression now than alloromantic LGBQ sexual people. But I am saying that there seems to be a hierarchy of weirdness when it comes to sexual and social behavior, both from the perspective of straight society and within the LGBQ population. I’m saying that the more you match mainstream society’s ideal heterosexual person in your lifestyle, feelings, desires, and behaviors, the more accepted you are by both heterosexuals and LGBQ people. There are now “good” ways of being gay and “bad” ways of being queer.

Whether you’re aro and LGBQ sexual or ace and LGBQ romantic, you are not experiencing and performing sexuality correctly or adequately. You don’t fit into homonormativity or heteronormativity. You’re the new “bad queer,” lumped in with the folks who are too promiscuous, too flamboyant, too femme, too fat, too politically radical, and altogether too troublesome. You’re not going to go quietly into Gay Inc.’s utopia of monogamous romantic-sexual gay marriage, a middle-class or upper-class respectable lifestyle with all the same materialistic trappings as your straight neighbors in your nice suburban neighborhood, where you vote neo-liberal and ensure that the world stays mostly the same as it’s always been. Even if you don’t make a spectacle of your nonromantic sex life or your nonsexual romances, you are going to disrupt other people’s pursuit of the Normal Life—and for that, you will at least be criticized by the people you fuck or the people you date or your friends and family. There is no movement for you. No one’s fighting for your right to fuck without romance or to date without having any sex. No one’s going to put you on a poster or a TV interview and be proud of what you are and how you live. Certainly no one in the mainstream gay rights movement, never mind in the ranks of their straight allies.

Isn’t it ironic that the best and most acceptable way to be queer in the 21st century is to replicate heteronormativity in a same-sex context? To mirror the oppressor? To contribute to the very socio-political system that has tried to destroy queerness in all its forms from the beginning? The more gay men and lesbians mimic monogamous, married romantic heterosexuals, the more heterosexuals approve of and support them. That’s the crux of the entire mainstream gay rights movement: joining the heteronormative system as it is, insisting that gay people are “just like everyone else,” that gay romantic love is just like straight romantic love, that the only thing gay people want is the same right to peacefully fuck, date, get married, buy a house in suburbia, raise 2.5 kids, and live happily ever after. Any queer who isn’t here for that program is silenced, left out, forgotten. Forget about challenging or changing the heternormative system at its roots. Forget about expanding the definition of “family” and “love,” and forget about promoting complete sexual freedom by putting an end to slut-shaming and de facto monogamy.

So where does this leave aromantic asexuals? The people who don’t feel, have, or want sex OR romance? If queerness is supposed to be about same-gender sex and romance, how can aromantic asexuals be queer? Well, they aren’t, if your concept of queerness is sex and romance dependent. But if queerness is simply deviating from heteronormative—which is heterosexual and amatonormative/romantic—norms, then you can’t get any queerer than aromantic asexuality. Especially aromantic asexuality that leads to permanent singleness and celibacy, a secular rejection of romantic-sexual relationships for life. For aromantic asexuals, the queerness—or the weirdness, let’s say—of alternative relationships neither sexual nor romantic, of lifestyles that are community oriented instead of partner oriented, of desiring and creating intimacy (physical and emotional) without sexual or romantic motive, of centering friendship instead of sex and romance, of remaining permanently unpartnered by choice, or of taking a partner that is neither romantic nor sexual is obvious. It has no available cultural narrative adjacent and related to heteronormativity in which to cloak itself, no mask to put on in front of polite society that softens the blow of its bizarre face. There is nothing about this open and authentic aromanticism and asexuality that can balance out or excuse its weirdness. There is no aromantic or asexual normativity that does not ultimately entail behaving romantically and sexually in practice. While it’s possible to be authentically gay and aligned with heteronormative relationship practices, it is not possible to be authentically aromantic or asexual and aligned with those heteronormative relationship practices, because in rejecting romance as an aro or rejecting sex as an asexual, you immediately step outside heteronormativity—and if you’re both aro and ace and living true to your disinterest in sex and romance, you’re even further removed.

The fact that sex and romance are used as the measuring stick of queerness—particularly, as a package deal in the form of a homonormative couple model—actually suggests that aromanticism and asexuality, especially in combination with each other, are even more subversive than romantic homosexuality within the heteronormative system. This is especially true when aro aces seek to form their own relationships outside the romantic-sexual framework and its binary of traditional romantic relationships vs. traditional friendship. Tell me what’s weirder: a gay couple falling in love, getting married, having sex, living together, and being a monogamous primary couple or two aromantic asexuals not fucking, not having romantic feelings for each other, not getting married or having kids, but becoming partners after being friends for a long time and living together for the rest of their lives while they don’t date or fuck anyone else?

Aromantic asexuality gives no opportunity for assimilation into heteronormative society and culture, unless it is closeted. It’s not possible for an aro ace to be out, to reject sex and romantic relationships, form queerplatonic friendships and/or partnerships, and pass as “normal” in our heteronormative world. The same goes for aromantic sexual people and LGBQ romantic aces who choose to pursue nonromantic primary partnerships, permanent singleness and sex, and nonsexual romance—particularly while being out as aromantic sexual people and romantic asexuals.

Whether same gender or cross gender, queerplatonic and other nonromantic partnerships are not heteronormative. Thus, they are queer in the literal sense of the word: strange, unusual, weird, outside of the norm. In fact, these relationships are so weird, that most romantic-sexual people—straight and LGBQ—never fathom them as possibilities and live in complete ignorance of them unless and until someone, usually an aro or ace, brings them up. And even once romantic-sexual people encounter the concept of queerplatonic friendship and nonromantic partnership, often their reaction is to dismiss these culturally invisible relationships either as “just friendship” (akin to their own normative, insignificant friendships) or as covert romantic-sexual relationships. That’s how close-minded and stuck in their own personal social paradigm they are.

This blind spot that romantic people have, particularly romantic-sexual people, brings me back to the issue of whether non-LGBQ aromantics and asexuals qualify as queer. Deniers of aromantic heterosexual queerness and aromantic asexual queerness forget one very important fact: aromantic heterosexuals and aromantic asexuals can choose same gender intimacies. Aromantic heterosexuals may fuck people of the opposite sex but center a nonromantic partnership with someone of the same sex. Most of the aromantic asexuals I’ve encountered who have or want a queerplatonic partner are with someone or want to be with someone of the same sex. Don’t mistake this point as an argument for aros in same-sex partnered friendships being read as gay and having a right to queer identity on those grounds. Passing as romantically and sexually interested in the same gender is neither the point nor the goal. It simply must be acknowledged that being aromantic and heterosexual or aromantic and asexual does not automatically or even frequently lead someone to live a lifestyle identical to your average hetero-romantic heterosexual. Not only is there an inherent weirdness to the aromantic heterosexual and aromantic asexual, particularly the ones who completely reject romantic-sexual relationships, but there can be same-sex intimacies—both physical and emotional—in their lives that disqualify them from heteronormativity.

So if I, an aromantic asexual genderqueer individual, become queerplatonic partners with an aromantic asexual woman one day, and our friendship involves emotional intimacy, mutual prioritization, mutual rejection of sex and romance, eventually living together long-term, cuddling/caressing/light kissing, commitment, making decisions together, etc, it may not be gay or queer-in-the-gay-sense but it sure as hell isn’t straight. The outside world will either misinterpret our friendship as homosexual or, upon hearing us come out as aromantic asexuals in a QP partnership, will find it even weirder than if we were lesbians in a standard romantic-sexual couple relationship.

And let’s say I have the same kind of queerplatonic partnership with an aromantic asexual man. Again, we’re both aro, both ace, both permanently single and celibate. Marriage, children, monogamy, and romantic labels are all off the table. We openly identify ourselves as aro aces in a QP partnership whenever we can. Even if most people were to look at us together and see man and woman (misgendering me, a nonbinary FAAB person), what about that relationship is heteronormative? It’s not gay, no argument there, but it’s just about as far away from the conventional romantic relationships of heterosexuals as the QP friendship I would have with my female partner.

I personally don’t feel the need to identify myself or my relationships as “queer,” mostly because I don’t want my aromanticism and asexuality to be erased in a queerness that’s still understood to be romantic and sexual, but I am quite obviously and proudly weird. You will never, ever hear or see me insisting to romantic-sexual people that I’m just like them. I have no interest in being accepted for my identity and my friendships on the grounds of passing as “normal” by heteronormative, romantic-sexual standards. Maybe that’s the word that people like me can and should freely claim as ours: weird. A synonym of “queer” that is still usually considered a pejorative label, the opposite of “normal,” devoid of any specific socio-political history and available for use by anyone who is, in fact, outside the norm.

The Outlier

February’s theme for Carnival of Aces is “cross-community connections.” I wasn’t planning on writing a contribution for it, but now I’m inspired to write a very informal and largely personal post that happens to qualify.

I’m an asexual who is committed to lifelong celibacy, despite having an active libido and (as far as I know) next to no sex-repulsion. I don’t understand or empathize with asexuals who have sex they don’t want to have, who think that they should be willing to get fucked for romance and love, who buy into sexual society’s message that wanting/having/and liking sex is the only way to be normal and liberated. I’m of the opinion that if you’re at all uncomfortable with sex, even if you aren’t repulsed, you shouldn’t do it. I think there should be far more sexual people going celibate in mixed romantic relationships with aces than there are. I think there should be far more aces who challenge sexual people they date to become celibate, instead of folding to the expectation that it’s the ace who’ll be making the sexual sacrifices without question. I think there oughta be more romantic aces who choose to stay single until they meet someone willing to have a nonsexual romantic relationship than there are and an active, community-wide interrogation of the idea that romantic relationships are the end goal into which aces should be pouring all of their social energy into.

I’m aromantic. I’m romance-repulsed. But I also want long-term, domestic friends I can have committed, intentional relationships with—friends who don’t date other people because they too are perma-single aromantics. I’m an aro who wants a lot of sensual, affectionate, physical intimacy in my close friendships: someone who loves to cuddle, who would like to kiss my passionate friends sometimes, who likes skin to skin contact and hugs and general physical closeness with people I’m emotionally attached to. I’m an aro who is capable of very deep, intense love and emotion, however rarely it happens.

I refuse to date romantic people in order to access love, intimacy, affection, attention, and value. I don’t see anything appealing about romantic relationships at all. Romance and people whose lives revolve around it are irritating at best. At their worst, they make me want to buy an island in the Caribbean and live there alone. It doesn’t matter if they’re sexual or asexual. It doesn’t matter if they’re monogamous or poly. It doesn’t matter if they’re fucking or not. Romance supremacy is romance supremacy, and nothing is more repellant to me. I don’t feel the need to play nice with romantics, whether in ace spaces or the world at large; I’m not going to tip toe around them to keep them comfortable in their assumption that they’re the normal ones and their way of organizing and creating relationships is the default because it’s natural or objectively the best. I’m never going to let them rest easy in their shitty friendship practices or their narrow-minded worldview concerning the nature of human relationships, behavior, and feelings.

I’ve seen romantic aces demonstrate romance supremacy in their words and actions, in education and visibility efforts as well as in online ace spaces. I’ve seen them express beliefs and feelings about romantic relationships as compared to friendship that are no different than what I typically expect of romantic-sexual people. Aromantics may make up one quarter of the asexual community—a pretty damn high number—but we’re still ignored, dismissed, misunderstood, and disrespected. In the end, it doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is, when it comes to being an asshole in the name of romance. And even putting the assholery aside, there just doesn’t seem to be much about romantic aces that I can relate to. I’m years past figuring out the complexities of sexuality and making peace with my own asexuality, so all the basic level shit that new asexuals often talk about isn’t personally relevant to me. And all the noise romantic aces make about dating, living in dysfunctional or challenging romantic relationships, breaking up with romantic partners over sex, longing for their dream romance isn’t just irrelevant to me, it’s annoying. As annoying as it would be coming from sexual people.

Even politically speaking, I’m at odds with most of the asexual community once we get past the message that asexuality exists. For a long time, I’ve observed in the asexual visibility movement a certain degree of wanting sexual society to validate us, wanting to be accepted as “normal,” wanting to assimilate into their world without changing it much. I realize that once romantic aces get basic education about what asexuality means out of the way, their goals amount to finding romantic relationships that work for them, often with sexual people. They use romance as a way to normalize themselves in the eyes of sexual people, just as some try to win acceptance by reassuring sexual people that aces can still fuck (for “love”). I’ve got absolutely no stake in any of that shit, nor am I on board with the messages themselves.

I’m a relationship anarchist who doesn’t fuck or do romance. If polyamory is a lifestyle on the margins of American society, relationship anarchy is in the margins of polyamory—especially my nonsexual, nonromantic relationship anarchy. I’m happy to report that some polyamorous romantic-sexual people acknowledge the validity of nonsexual love and include nonsexual relationships in their own polycules. Some romantic asexuals are poly, and some aromantics (sexual and ace) are poly. But it seems that most poly people are very sex-centric. Furthermore, my relationship anarchy is a far cry from polyamorous romantic-sexual couples in open marriages who often practice a kind of hierarchical poly and categorize their romantic relationships vs. friendships just as normatively as monogamists do. Romance and sex are still the king and queen of most poly people’s lives, and nonromantic/nonsexual friendship is still an afterthought.

I’m a butch, but not a lesbian. I’m also a genderqueer nonbinary person who’s trying to sort out my complicated feelings about my chest while deconstructing any internalized femmephobia I may have. I’ve recently started to think about the fact that I, like so many others, have been attempting to break out of the gender binary while continuing to observe its rules. I want to be read and respected as masculine, as butch, as nonbinary, but I don’t think I want to have to bind my chest or make all feminine markers off-limits on my body. I don’t want to buy into the farce of masculinity as the neutral default. I don’t want that to be my androgyny, but I don’t know if any other androgyny can exist in the world at large where the gender binary is everywhere. Mostly, I’ve decided that this conundrum is less about my gender identity and more about learning how to let go of the desire for other people’s validation. Good to know that’s still something I have to work on.

Whether or not asexuals and aromantics belong in the LGBTQ community for their asexuality and aromanticism (not their corresponding romantic and sexual orientations) is a question that people still debate and fight over. I’ve long felt like asexuals specifically don’t need to latch on to an LGBTQ community that is sexual at its core, made of people who aren’t much different than heterosexuals in this regard. I acknowledge that there are homo-, bi-, and panromantic asexuals, many of whom will date LGBTQ sexual people and even fuck those people or marry them. But the way I see it, asexuals as a group have very different needs, experiences, and goals than queer sexual people do as a group. I acknowledge that there are aromantic queer sexual people, but how welcome they are in the LGBTQ community that is dominated by romantics remains to be seen on a grand scale.

I was around to witness the firestorm of anti-asexual hate explode out of the LGBTQ community online during its first wave, and I guess that encouraged and solidified my own aversion to unifying the asexual community with the LGBTQ community. I know that there are plenty of LGBTQ sexual people who welcome asexuals and aromantics into their own lives, personal communities, and spaces as fellow queers, and that’s cool of them. But I’m still not sold on the idea of lumping aces and aros in with the LGBTQ romantic-sexual people of the world. When sex and marriage are increasingly centralized in the mainstream LGBTQ/Gay Inc. political movement and in the lives of the more privileged (read: white, cis, middle and upper class) romantic-sexual queers, it’s hard for me to see what the average asexual or aromantic person has to gain from inclusion in that movement and the queer community itself.

Furthermore, I’m never going to allow anyone to forget that LGBTQ sexual people, the same as their heterosexual counterparts, are the abusers and rapists of asexuals who try to connect with them romantically. They are also fueling the engine of amatonormativity in our culture, drinking the Kool-Aid of romance fantasy no less than straight people and abandoning the truly queer family configurations and lifestyles that used to be all LGBTQ people had as a source of love and support, before they had the option to get on the straight path to the nuclear family. They can herald the empowerment and liberation to be found in fucking freely as queer people (disguising compulsory sexuality as sex positivity), then in the same breath turn around and slut shame aromantic queers who don’t want to date them, marry them, or fall in line with the homonormative image of the monogamous, romantic same-sex married couple that puts straight people at ease.

On a personal level, I’m in a strange position because the world and even my own queer friends usually look at me and see someone queer. My gender makes me queer, my relationship style makes me queer, my sexuality makes me queer, my politics and beliefs make me queer. It’s not even so much a conclusion they reach after running an in-depth analysis. It’s more instinctual: even if strangers can never guess that I’m an aromantic asexual genderqueer person, they can often tell I’m not heterosexual. There’s something very not-straight about me, even just visually. I think that they usually just mistake me for gay; after all, most people only know about straight and gay as categories, forgetting about other queer sexualities, being ignorant of asexuality and aromanticism and gender identities other than cismale and cisfemale.

But I don’t feel queer. I don’t see myself as queer. Not really. Queerness seems to be all about sex and romance, about desires and dramas that I will never experience, about lifestyles that don’t include people like me and relationships like the ones I want. In my eyes, the world is divided into people who center romance and people who center friendship, and most queer sexual people, being romantic, fall into the first group no less and no differently than the vast majority of heterosexuals. Friendship doesn’t factor into heterosexuality or homosexuality, into being straight or being queer. Even friendship that goes far beyond what it’s supposed to be relative to romance. Even friendship that is physically intimate and emotionally passionate.

In terms of my queer qualifications, it doesn’t matter who I love, who I live with, who I make commitments with. It doesn’t matter if I kiss, cuddle, and caress people I love, and it doesn’t matter who those people are or what their genders are. It doesn’t matter that I reject monogamy, marriage, and the nuclear family. It doesn’t even really matter that I’m a nonbinary butch that can confuse strangers regarding what my gender is. If I’m not fucking and falling in love, if I’m not claiming the labels “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual,” if I’m not taking steps to change my body into one less gendered or at the very least doing everything I can to hide my assigned sex, I’m not queer enough to be queer.

And beyond the fact that I don’t need or want partnered sex to be part of my life, I also don’t have much in common with other asexuals, 75% of whom are romantic. In fact, I feel closer to aromantic sexual people than I do to romantic aces, even the aro sexual people who need to be sexually active pretty much all the time. It’s funny: I don’t relate to most asexuals who spend most of their time in ace spaces moaning about romance and how hard it is to date when you don’t like sex, and I also can’t personally relate to aromantic sexual people when it comes to the particular difficulties of having a sex life while avoiding romantic relationships. Fortunately, aromantics seem to share a lot of common feelings about friendship as the most important and appealing thing in life, regardless of sexual orientation, but the fact is, in aro spaces, there is a certain division between aces and sexual people. In many ways, it’s easier to be aro and ace, than it is to be aromantic and sexual. There are struggles that sexual aros live with that I will never have to deal with. And there are some sexual aros who would still like to center sexual relationships, even if nonromantic, in their lives rather than nonsexual friendship. It’s easier for me to feel connection with aros generally, including aro sexual people, than it is with romantic aces….. But ultimately, it’s only other aromantic asexuals who I fully belong with. And even there, it’s the aro aces who aren’t dating, who embrace their aromanticism, who want queerplatonic friendships and won’t bother trying to masquerade as romantic.

I’m the asexual in a world full of sexual people, and I will not fuck you. I’m the aromantic in a world full of romantics, and I will die before submitting to normative romantic relationships as a way to access love and priority. I’m the genderqueer person who doesn’t fall into the male-female binary, the butch with big tits who occasionally wears nail polish or leggings or eyeliner. I’m the relationship anarchist who centers friendship in my life.

I’m an outlier, any way you slice it. And to some degree, it’s the intersection of all these different identities—asexual, aromantic, genderqueer, butch, relationship anarchist—that places me in the margins of each individual community. It’s easy for me to see the fractures in these communities, easy for me to recognize that there isn’t any cohesion or unity across the board, that there’s more internal rifts than anyone wants to own up to. I do feel a sense of kinship with people who are LGBTQ and people who are asexual and people who are polyamorous. But ultimately, the community I want for myself is a community of permanently single aromantics whose lifestyles and value system reflect the same prioritization of friendship that I feel. Their sexual orientations and gender identities don’t matter much to me, in comparison to their singleness and their aromanticism.

I feel like an ally, a supporter, of all these different groups of people that I share certain traits with. But I don’t feel a sense of complete belonging with any group, except the aromantic asexuals who are like me.

Carnival of Aces January 2015: Nonbinary Asexual

January’s theme for the Carnival of Aces is “nonbinary gender,” so I’m going to quickly write a submission. I think most of my gender-and-asexuality-intersection thoughts have already been explored in my post about femmephobia, but I’ll see what I can say here.

I identify as a nonbinary butch. What this means is, I fall under the genderqueer umbrella as a person who doesn’t fit into the “male and female” binary of gender. I am neither male nor female. I’m also not both or a combination of the two. Being nonbinary really does mean that I feel located completely outside of that “male or female” framework. The butch part of my identity is about my masculinity: I strongly prefer to have a masculine gender presentation, which encompasses my clothing, my hair, my makeup or lack thereof, my body’s appearance, etc. However, even when I’m presenting in a more gender neutral or even feminine of center way, internally, I feel more masculine than feminine or neutral. The “butch” term originated in the lesbian community, describing very masculine women who identify as women and who have sexual and romantic feelings for other women (often, but not always, their femme counterparts). But butch is also a gender identity unto itself that doesn’t have to be connected to lesbianism. I use it to describe my gender because it feels right and also necessary. “Nonbinary” is a very broad concept, like genderqueerness. Specifying that I’m butch is an acknowledgement of my feelings and preference for masculinity, which is important to me.

(That said, I do use she/her/hers pronouns. I might like they/them/their, but I’m so used to she/her and don’t have much of a problem with them, that I don’t think I’m going to start asking the world to switch over to they/them/their anytime soon.)

As for being a nonbinary asexual–and a butch nonbinary asexual in particular–I’ve already jumped into a detailed analysis in my femmephobia post, but I will say a few new things:

1. When it comes to my body, being both nonbinary and asexual makes me feel like my sexual and reproductive organs are very much pointless and useless. I do have an active libido and appreciate feeling genital pleasure on my own, but being someone who doesn’t identify as either “man” or “woman” and who also doesn’t want to have partnered sex or care whether other people find me sexually attractive gives me this sense that any body parts that exist solely or mostly for sexual and/or reproductive purposes shouldn’t really be part of me at all. If I could snap my fingers and have any body I want, I would choose to be a Ken doll, basically: a really fit cisgender man with no genitalia. Obviously, that isn’t possible, but it would be kinda nice to have a body that’s as similar to that model as possible.

2. Which brings me to the fact that physically, it’s kinda obvious and unmistakable that I’m female-assigned-at-birth. I’m average height, my facial features are definitely more feminine than masculine, and I’m very, very busty. I feel ambivalent about my chest: part of me wishes I were completely flat so I could look more masculine/androgynous, and part of me wants to challenge the bullshit idea that the only way to be genderqueer or gender neutral is to lean heavily toward traditional masculine images. That rebel side of me wonders why we should see breasts as “feminine” at all. I do what I can to minimize the appearance of my chest, mostly by wearing compression sports bras and masculine or neutral clothing loose enough not to hug my curves, but at this point in time, I’m not anywhere near sold on the idea of having top surgery just so I can appear more traditionally masculine or less traditionally feminine. It would be really nice to have one less physical feature that straight men or sexual people who are attracted to women can sexualize, and it would also be great to have a body that looks and feels more masculine….. But like I said, there’s a part of me that’s very aware of the gender binary and masculinity-as-default and doesn’t want to buy into that framework at all. I’m also aware of cultural femmephobia that I’ve probably internalized to some degree, and I want to make sure I do what I can to disengage from that, even while continuing to embrace my masculinity and butch identity.

So I’m not going to put my tits on display or go around wearing super feminine clothes that accentuates them, but I also have no plans or even any strong desire to have them removed. I know I can feel masculine with the chest I have, because I’ve felt it before, many times. I think I’d like to find a place inside myself where I always feel completely myself, where I am fully expressing my masculine energy, where I feel as butch as I can possibly be, while having the chest nature gave me.

Genderwise, my chest is somewhat at odds with my identity, but sexually speaking, it’s just plain useless. I’m never having partnered sex, and I have no wish to attract sexual attention from others because of my chest, nice as it may be. I’m also never having children, so the only real purpose that breasts serve–feeding said offspring–is also never to be realized by me. I don’t experience body dysphoria, but many times, I’ve looked at my chest and thought about what a total waste my breasts are. They look great filling out a cocktail dress, but I may never wear one of those again, or if I do, not for years to come.

3. Is there a causal relationship between my gender identity and my asexuality? I don’t know. It’s possible. There’s a very high number of genderqueer people in the asexual community, particularly people who ID as agender, neutrois, androgyne, or just plain genderqueer/nonbinary. Then again, there are plenty of aces who are not genderqueer at all, who are either cisgender or binary transgender. And there are a lot of sexual genderqueer people out there too. So there’s definitely not an interdependent link between asexuality and genderqueerness.

If we’re talking specifically about my identities: I figured out my own gender identity years after I started identifying as asexual. Going from a feminine cisgender female to a butch nonbinary person was a process for me, something that happened over time and is still happening. I’ve grown into it, rather than discovering the identity fully-formed in one moment, the way I did with asexuality. I don’t think I’ve become more asexual over time, nor do I think it’s possible to do so. I have, however, become more masculine over time and I’ve traveled further away from the gender binary over time.

I think being celibate actually serves my nonbinary gender identity quite well, by reducing the amount of gendered attention I receive from others. Getting naked in front of someone else and letting them touch the parts of you that tether you to one of the two binary genders must be likely to cause some degree of cognitive or emotional dissonance for a genderqueer or nonbinary person like me. It’s harder to ignore how the other person perceives your gender, when they’re fucking you or you’re fucking them, and gender obviously has something to do with their attraction to you in the first place. I have no idea how I’d feel about my body or sex, if I were a nonbinary butch person and sexual. I feel like being asexual smoothes out the experience of being nonbinary, by default, at least for me.

4. If my gender and my sexual identity share anything in common, it’s the fact that they are more about me and my feelings and my way of being in the world, than they are about other people interacting with me or viewing me in a particular way. I’ve been loudly coming out as asexual (and aromantic, more recently) for years, but I’ve been quieter about my gender identity, not because I’m uncomfortable being open about it but because I don’t feel any great need to convince people of it. If I stop and imagine what other people see when they look at me, then of course, I can say I would prefer it if they all saw a nonbinary butch person instead of a woman, but usually,  I don’t think about what other people think or see when they look at me. My gender identity is a very personal, internal, emotional, psychological, and yes, physical thing for me–and I care much more about how I experience it from the inside out than I do about how or if it comes across to other people.

And when we’re talking about my asexuality and aromanticism, it’s still more about how I feel and what I do and how I move through the world, than it is about what other people think or believe or want from me, regardless of the fact that my sexuality has a greater impact on my social interactions than gender does. I think that spending so many years living as an asexual–and a celibate asexual, no less–prepared me to embrace my nonbinary butch identity in a way that doesn’t concern other people. At this point, I’m a pro at ignoring the world’s expectations, ideas, desires, and opinions, and I got most of my practice through asexuality. Adding on genderqueerness has just given me one more place to get comfortable with being apart from most of the species and with feeling totally confident and rooted in who I am, without looking for others to validate me.

I know that there will always be people who read me as a woman, no matter what I do or say. I know that when strangers look at me, they assume I’m sexual and romantic, and even people who get to learn about me may be skeptical of my asexuality and aromanticism–either because they don’t believe in these identities at all or because I don’t fit into their idea of what an aromantic asexual is. And I’m cool with that. I feel no need to convince anyone to see me the way I see myself. My identity is not for you. My identity is for me. These labels I’ve chosen to pick up are a way of naming myself, for myself. They are tools I use to better know and understand who I am and my feelings and how I experience my body, my relationships, the psychic space where I am a distinct and individual entity. I’m not here to make you understand or accept me. I’m here only to understand and accept myself, to know myself as deeply as I can, to express my freedom and uniqueness with honesty.

That’s why I don’t feel strongly motivated to ask people to use gender neutral pronouns when addressing me. I recognize that I don’t need anyone to see me the way I want to be seen, in order to see myself as I am. The reality of my feelings is not dependent on outside confirmation, and it’s how I feel that is everything.

How Many People Are Aromantic?

Based on the 2014 Asexual Community Census data provided here:

25.9% of asexuals are aromantic.

If we run with the studies performed on self-reporting asexuals currently on the books, approximately one percent of the human population is asexual.

This means that in the United States alone, there are approximately 3,161,000 asexuals.

The number of aromantic asexuals in the U.S. should be about 818,699.

There are 73 million asexuals in the world, which would be 1% of the 7.3 billion+ global population.

Given the 25.9% stat we have representing aromantic asexuals, this means that there are roughly 18,907,000 aromantic asexuals worldwide.

(The one dilemma we have in arriving at accurate numbers is that we can’t know if the 1% of people who are asexual includes demisexuals and gray-asexuals or not. The 2014 Asexual Census reports that 25.9% of asexuals are aromantic; 9.1% of gray-asexuals are aromantic and 3.5% of demisexuals are aromantic. When dividing the entire asexual spectrum by romantic orientation, aromantics make up 19% total, so if gray-asexuals and demisexuals would be part of the 1% of “asexuals” in the human population, then the number of aromantics would be lower than what I listed above. But if they aren’t part of that 1%, then the numbers would actually be higher.)

 

Now, the data collected through the 2014 census from sexual people (anyone who isn’t asexual, demisexual, or gray-asexual) is obviously tough to accept as accurately representative of the real sexual population because sexual people who completed the census would obviously be a specific type who has exposure to the asexual community online and therefore is aware of romantic and sexual orientations and information that most people in the world at large don’t have. But just for the hell of it, let’s consider the numbers that come of the data.

Of the sexual people who took the census, 4.3% identified as aromantic.

So if 4.3% of sexual people are aromantic (which might at first seem high but then again, maybe not), that means there should be around 13,456,377 aromantic sexual people in the United States.

Add that to the more reliable stat we have for aromantic asexuals, and there are roughly 14,275,076 aromantic people currently living in the U.S.

Again, this is assuming that 99% of human beings are sexual, excluding demisexuals and gray-asexuals. If we were to lump in demisexuals and gray-asexuals as part of that 99% of everyone who is not asexual, then the number of aromantics rises because we add the 9.1% of gray-aces who are aro and the 3.5% of demisexuals who are aro to the 4.3% of sexual people who are aro.

These numbers do not include anyone, asexual-spectrum or sexual, who are demiromantic, grayromantic, or WTFromantic. Those are just the aromantics.

So the bottom line is, even though aromantics are a small minority in the human population, there are quite literally millions of us, in the United States and all over the world. We may not all use the aromantic label, there are certainly many aromantics who don’t actually know that they’re aromantic, but even so, there are possibly more aromantic Americans than there are people living in countries like Cuba, Bolivia, Belgium, or Greece. If we talk about just aromantic asexuals, worldwide the number of us is about equivalent to the entire population of Chile, and we outnumber the individual national populations of the bottom 186 countries in the world (listed here).

 

So when I say that you, individual aromantic person, are not alone–it’s an understatement.