(title is not serious, it's a reference to a manga1)
reading a bunch of the recent ace posts2 made me want to talk about my own experience. for me it’s easier to wrap my head around queer identities by hearing stories from people directly, so i wondered if writing everything i could think of from my life that pertained to my asexuality would be helpful to someone who was unsure about it just by reading definitions alone.
will be a lot of talking about sex/sexuality broadly, with the touchier parts contained in click-to-unfurl blocks.
i first learned that asexuality was a thing by stumbling on AVEN’s website. i was 12 or 13 years old, so this would’ve been like… 2004. i don’t know how i got there, but once i read about it i was like “omg there’s a word for it!!!” (as you do, haha). to some people, 12 might feel young to “decide” such a thing, but ever since learning what sex even was, i was pretty dang sure it wasn’t for me!
i was very sex-repulsed throughout my teenage years, but i also tended to seek out edgy adult content full of sexual shit (whether it was just jokes/innuendo or fully explicit scenes—whatever they could get away with on cable tv). i would just look away if there was any nudity. i’m more okay with nudity nowadays, but it took a lot of time to get over this, and i’m still personally uncomfortable with ever being naked. i don’t like it.
cw: talking about porn and genitalia
i’m still extremely averse to penises, though in recent years i’ve made an active effort to overcome that… the current state of things is that i’m okay if there’s a 2D dick on my screen for a second, but i still never want to draw one. i don’t want to look at them. i’m not interested in drawing visually explicit porn anyway, but it’s depressing to me that i can’t really draw porn of my characters who have dicks. i don’t think i can overcome this, even though the ships i’m most passionate about involve a penis or two. i’m sorry i can’t do it…! i genuinely wish that this was not the case!! i have to settle for imagining them having a nice time together without having to know any of the details.
on that note, i don’t ever look at porn of real people. it feels invasive to me, like i shouldn’t be seeing it (even if the person does want their body to be seen). 2d art is fine, but not animation (too real). static images feel the most safe to me, which is why i like comics. i can go at my own pace and it’s ok to glance over the panels that are too overwhelming. i’m most interested in the emotions of the characters while they’re doing intimate things because i think it’s sweet. i don’t get that invasive feeling when it’s a story about fictional anime characters…
so, yes, i read porn comics sometimes. and i draw porn comics sometimes. (i might make an eroge if i’m brave enough…)
in japanese there’s an expression among BL fans, 「壁になりたい」(tl: i want to be a wall. there's even a manga about it). it’s the idea that you want to be an inconsequential presence/disembodied witness in the room where the characters you like are having an intimate moment. to become an existence that can watch over their happiness forever without being involved. from what i understand, this is aegosexuality (formerly/alternatively autochorissexuality). i really identify with this.
i don’t want to have sex, i want nothing to do with it, but i’m interested in sex as a topic. i like reading about it because i think it’s interesting. i tend to like stories where the characters feel very intense emotions (positive or negative), and fictional sex is uhhh extremely good for exploring those things!
i’m not aromantic in the slightest. i’m obsessed with love stories, and i’ve pursued romantic relationships throughout my life. the real life aspect is where we get into tricky waters. i like to do things that make others happy, and grew up in a culture where it was expected that romantic couples have sex. so when i was a lot younger, i put myself in a lot of uncomfortable situations to try to gain the romantic attention i wanted.
cw: SA (to be clear i don’t interpret any of this as SA but it’s enough to possibly be triggering, so flagging to be safe)
when i was 14 i had my first boyfriend. i had various crushes in the past but they never went anywhere until this one. i didn’t get crushes on girls at the time, because that wasn’t an option in my mind.
i liked the idea of having a boyfriend. he liked making out, and i just kinda went along with it because it’s nice to have physical contact right?? there’s a scene at the beginning of the movie but i’m a cheerleader where the main character’s boyfriend is making out with her and she’s just like, putting up with it. that was me. i felt so seen by that movie (even if i don’t like making out with anyone of any gender).
we broke up, probably because he could sense that something wasn’t right. but i still wanted to hold onto the relationship in some form, so i turned it into a friends-with-benefits situation. there wasn’t a lot that really happened, but i still think about that stuff because of how uncomfortable i felt during it.
and then i just like… kept trying to do that??????? because i thought of sex as this sacrifice the girlfriend/wife is supposed to make for the boyfriend/husband. so if i wanted to get married, this was an activity that i would have to let happen to me, otherwise i would need to make some other kind of arrangement with a third party. that was my plan at this age. because my sex education was so bad that i thought men (this was before i understood trans stuff) needed sex or they’d get blue balls and die or something. i didn’t know women (again, not understanding gender yet) could enjoy sex, i thought it always felt bad to them (what with all the blood and pain people talk about), i thought that they were always performing pleasure for the guy’s benefit (all those jokes in media about women faking it), and i didn’t know what orgasms were!!! i didn’t know sex was supposed to feel good????????? i just thought it was weird…
when i was 19 i “lost my virginity”. it was another briefly-boyfriend turned friends-with-benefits, and it was mostly long distance due to college. but i went over to his house a bunch of times and tried really hard to pretend to be straight. i remember being told things like “it’s too bad you’re asexual because you’re really hot” lol. there were a couple times i got so stressed out about what was happening that i just started crying. i know this is making him sound like a villain or something, but he was just normal. i don’t hold it against him, and again, i don’t think of any of what happened as SA, because i signed up for all of it. and it’s not like he was looking to hurt me. we’re still friends. it was just a bad time, because i didn’t know anything else was possible—i thought it was the only choice.
in my early 20s i finally accepted i was gay. i had a brief period of confusion because if i DO feel some level of sexual attraction, am i not asexual anymore? was i just a repressed lesbian all along??? but i still wasn’t seeking to participate in sex stuff with anyone. i think the difference between me and an allosexual person is too stark to suddenly be put in the same category… i have never thought “i want to have sex with that person” i have only ever thought “i want to be close to that person”. and it turns out you don’t have to have sex to be close to someone! thank god!!!
going back to the subject of aegosexuality, i’ve always enjoyed getting absorbed in relationships between fictional characters that have nothing to do with me. i don’t need to do things with a partner to feel satisfied (in fact, the thought of it is still much more stressful than fun, even though i love my wife dearly). i’m happy and fulfilled just holding hands and cuddling, and i’m glad that my current relationship is one where i don’t feel any pressure whatsoever to do more than that.
that’s all, i guess! this was a little taxing to write, but i think it’s worth it if other people can identify with/relate to some of my experience. ace stuff matters a lot to me, although i wasn’t really present for any of the discourse i’ve seen people talk about. i just make art lol.
thank u for reading, feel free to use this tag to post about your own ace experience (if you're comfortable sharing of course). i'd love to read :)
