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I am frustrated by all my WIPs and feeling embarrassingly confessional, so I am going to try once again to pin down and explain my sexuality.
This is always tricky for me, because... okay, let me start at the beginning. These days, when I have to use snap definitions, I say I am asexual. When pressed a little more, I say I am mostly asexual, but insofar as I have a more standard sexuality, it's heterosexual with bisexual tendencies, or bisexual leaning strongly toward heterosexual. But mostly I am just not interested in sex. At all. Ever. And there is nothing wrong with that.
( Unfortunately (from my perspective), I live in a society saturated by sex and romance... )
Having said all this about myself and my... orientation is not quite the right word, but it will do in a pinch, I suppose... I must admit that I don't remember when and where I first ran across the idea of asexuality as a sexual identity. I do remember immediately rushing off to look it up on Wikipedia and saying, "Oh my god, yes, that is me. Right there, that is me."
In general, I am not fond of labels, but finally finding one that acknowledged my existence and said that I was fine and normal and not a freak? That was such an amazingly warm feeling. Because the world is built for sexual people -- the world assumes that all people want sex, whether they act on that drive or not -- and sometimes it is exhausting having to deal with people thinking that I am flirting with them, that I am open to dating them, that I must be unhappy being permanently single, or any of the ways in which people assume I am going to react sexually and then are nonplussed when I don't. It can be nice to have a word to fall back on and say, "Look, I am so normal. Broaden your mind and accept me as I am."
Mostly I do not think about being asexual, because mostly I do not think about sex. But now and then I think I ought to, I dunno, publicize a little, so maybe other people will figure themselves out sooner than I did, and will have an easier time explaining themselves to the rest of the world.
(As an aside, being asexual does put me in an interesting position as a writer, because every time I write a romantic or sexual relationship, I am writing from the outside. This is not an insurmountable issue -- if it were, I couldn't write men, or action scenes, or anything other than white female asocial college drop-out store clerks *grin* -- but it does go a long way to explaining the lack of conventional romance in my work. I find sex easier to manage, oddly enough; I can work by analogy to other physical appetites, cravings, and hobbies. With romance and the sexual aspect of crushes, though, I always feel like I am trying to repair delicate jewelry while wearing oversized rubber gloves, so to speak.)
This is always tricky for me, because... okay, let me start at the beginning. These days, when I have to use snap definitions, I say I am asexual. When pressed a little more, I say I am mostly asexual, but insofar as I have a more standard sexuality, it's heterosexual with bisexual tendencies, or bisexual leaning strongly toward heterosexual. But mostly I am just not interested in sex. At all. Ever. And there is nothing wrong with that.
( Unfortunately (from my perspective), I live in a society saturated by sex and romance... )
Having said all this about myself and my... orientation is not quite the right word, but it will do in a pinch, I suppose... I must admit that I don't remember when and where I first ran across the idea of asexuality as a sexual identity. I do remember immediately rushing off to look it up on Wikipedia and saying, "Oh my god, yes, that is me. Right there, that is me."
In general, I am not fond of labels, but finally finding one that acknowledged my existence and said that I was fine and normal and not a freak? That was such an amazingly warm feeling. Because the world is built for sexual people -- the world assumes that all people want sex, whether they act on that drive or not -- and sometimes it is exhausting having to deal with people thinking that I am flirting with them, that I am open to dating them, that I must be unhappy being permanently single, or any of the ways in which people assume I am going to react sexually and then are nonplussed when I don't. It can be nice to have a word to fall back on and say, "Look, I am so normal. Broaden your mind and accept me as I am."
Mostly I do not think about being asexual, because mostly I do not think about sex. But now and then I think I ought to, I dunno, publicize a little, so maybe other people will figure themselves out sooner than I did, and will have an easier time explaining themselves to the rest of the world.
(As an aside, being asexual does put me in an interesting position as a writer, because every time I write a romantic or sexual relationship, I am writing from the outside. This is not an insurmountable issue -- if it were, I couldn't write men, or action scenes, or anything other than white female asocial college drop-out store clerks *grin* -- but it does go a long way to explaining the lack of conventional romance in my work. I find sex easier to manage, oddly enough; I can work by analogy to other physical appetites, cravings, and hobbies. With romance and the sexual aspect of crushes, though, I always feel like I am trying to repair delicate jewelry while wearing oversized rubber gloves, so to speak.)
