/u/jessdot on Sex-Shaming in the Subreddit?

I think, as others have noted, that a lot of it comes from growing up around ideas and expectations that are very anti-asexual, that take it as a given that everyone will have sex, likely sooner rather than later.

I'm a 30 something sex-repulsed aro ace person, and growing up was in many ways terrible, because you think there's no one out there even remotely like you. It's not just your personal experience not matching up to the norm. It's that you're so outside such a ubiquitous, pervasive norm that it's like you don't even exist. Also, the idea of growing up and being a *gasp* virgin as an adult was such an anathema I couldn't even bear thinking about it.

This is not to belittle anyone who wants to have sex (for whatever the reason) whether they're ace or not, or to diminish how ace people who have higher libidos and/or who have sex have struggled with their own identities. It's just.. I get that a lot of people need to find a community where they can be like "wait... I'm normal just the way I am? Not everyone wants this? Really?!" And that in no way means it's okay to completely generalize what being ace is to the exclusion of others who identify as ace. Aces who don't have sex are in no way superior to anyone else. Just like ace people who do have sex aren't superior (or more 'normal') than aces who don't have sex. But I also don't think it's wrong to talk in a community about your own experience, which might in fact be a story of a sex-repulsed, no-libido asexual person. Or a story of a sex-favorable ace person. There's room for both.

I think there's a lot of potential (and that potential is sometimes borne out) for hurt feelings on both sides. Aces who have no intention of ever having sex might feel (I know I do) like they have a more obvious difference; something that separates them or isolates them even more from the allosexual world (especially in terms of dating, but not solely in that way). But that gives them (me) no right to not be inclusive. I get the impulse to say 'but I had it worse!' But it doesn't matter who had it worse. In many ways it mirrors the way aces are seen in the larger LGBTQ+ community, with the same potential for gatekeeping, and the same need to work against that.

I won't lie; it's sometimes difficult for me to hear about someone who seems to have a fairly 'normal' heterosexual life (now and in the past) and compare that to what I went through growing up, but a) I can't get inside their head and know what their life has been like and b) we don't need to be the same to both be here, in this community because communities are inclusive, full-stop. We're not here to shame people for what they do or don't do or what they feel or don't feel. That's kind of the whole point.

December 04, 2019 at 12:13AM