Hello again people. You might have noticed that Acanthus was offline recently. Actually, those of you who pay enough attention to your address bar might notice that it still is. Blogger decided I was spam. I’m creating this as a backup blog, so everything that’s on here will go up on Acanthus if it ever goes back up. Annoyingly, the archives on acanthus will probably say that I didn’t post anything in October 2011. Like I said before, this annoys me.
Why did I create a backup blog now? It’s asexual awareness week. So I’m going to try to do a post every day for the next week. Which would be rather hard if I didn’t have a blog. I probably won’t manage it, but I’ll try, and everything will go up eventually.
First of all, why on earth does asexual awareness matter? There isn’t that much discrimination against aces – don’t get me wrong, it exists, with the general assumption that anyone who doesn’t want sex is somehow ‘broken’, but it’s hard to discriminate against a group you don’t know about. We can fit into normal society without discrimination fairly easily. Surely increasing visibility is just going to put us at risk of more discrimination.
Well, it’s actually rather hard to tell if someone’s asexual without them telling you about it, even if you do know that we exist. I wasn’t 100% sure I was ace until... a few week ago, actually. A sex-neutral, romantic asexual is pretty much indistinguishable from a normal sexual, unless they choose to be. Even a sex-negative romantic’s going to have a pretty easy time hiding the fact from anyone who isn’t their significant other. And the significant other is going to have to know about, and understand, the ace thing anyway. So there’s no increase in discrimination there. The only people who it might be a problem for is aromantics. And frankly, no matter how much visibility we do, the assumption is probably going to always be the same as it is now – that they’re closeted gays. Discrimination against aces is definitely a problem, but all an ace has to do to avoid it is just not say anything. We don’t even really have the LGBT problem of having to actively hide who we are. And I don’t think there’s likely to be an increase in institutionalised ‘anti-ace’ attitude if people know about us. We’ll probably just be lumped in with LGBTQ, the same way we are now, no matter how much some aces might object to the idea. Frankly, I don’t think there’s going to be much immediate change to the way people who know what we are perceive aces. That’ll come later.
So that’s why visibility isn’t a bad thing. But why does it matter? Why isn’t it just entirely indifferent? Well, let’s say you’re asexual. Coming out is hard. Even for me, saying those words is difficult, and I’ve been out for quite some time now. That’s why I write about it so often – it’s much, much easier to publish an article or a Facebook status on the subject than to tell someone directly. Once you’ve gone to all that effort, the last thing you want is someone to tell you aren’t really, to say it’s just a phase you’re going through, or even ask ‘what does that mean?’*.
Then there’s the ‘support network’ thing. Anti ace discrimination exists. Don’t get me wrong. Mostly it’s in the ‘you don’t really exist’ category, but I believe that according to some denominations of the Christian Church, we don’t have souls**. And people who’d get absolutely furious if you said the same kind of thing about homosexuals or transsexuals will let it go if you say it about aces – both because they don’t know about us, and because even if they do, we’re obscure enough that just denying our existence really isn’t that hard to do, or to justify doing. Yeah, it’s rock stupid to do so with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever, not even having looked up any of the research on the subject, but sexuals seem to have such a difficult time understanding the concept of someone who genuinely doesn’t care about sex that it’s probably understandable (although still absolutely unacceptable).
And one last reason why it’s good for people to know about us: for all those aces who don’t know what the word means. People who think there’s something wrong with them because they don’t want to have sex with random strangers. There’s no handbook that gets sent out to all us asexuals***. We have to find out about the orientation, same as anyone else. There are plenty of aces who were having sex for years before they found out about the orientation. There are even ones who only found out in the course of seeking medical treatment for the obvious problems with their sex-drive. Frankly, I think that’s the most important thing of all – that the ace themselves knows about their orientation. That they know that there’s a group they can go to who understands how they feel. Frankly, I don’t care if the United Nations signs a resolution officially reclassifying us as nonhuman****, so long as I know who I am, and how I feel, even if I have to hide it, that’s better than not knowing.
And that’s why asexual visibility matters to me. If you asked another ace, you probably wouldn’t get the same answer. We’re all individuals, and I don’t pretend to speak for the asexual community. Tomorrow, I should be talking about sex. See you then.
*The last is totally understandable, don’t get me wrong. It’s just annoying to repeatedly have to explain your orientation to people, and rather undermines the whole ‘coming out’ thing.
**The Bible, incidentally, does arguably make a brief reference to asexuality. It’s fine. You can even make a case that one of the profits (Paul, I believe, but don’t quote me on that) was asexual.
***Random tangent: it’s really quite annoying that asexuals isn’t recognised as a word by Word, but homosexuals, heterosexuals and bisexuals all are.
****Actually, I totally care, but bear with me, I’m trying to make a point here.
No comments:
Post a Comment