proudly nothing
Like a lot of us here on LiveJournal, i sometimes poke my head into our most famous English-language community ohnotheydidnt. I care precisely zero about celebrities and never even flicked through a gossip mag in my life, but after most everyone from fandom and the various alternative subcultures that used to hang out here left, ONTD singlehandedly kept the spirit of LiveJournal communities alive. So i feel a bit like i'm one of the gang, even though i can count on one hand the number of times i've posted over there.
Anyway, there was some article on ONTD over the weekend about some celeb who i have no idea who it is who came out. First he came out as gay, then he thought perhaps he might be bi, and now he's accepted he's not really very interested in sex at all and he might be asexual.
And it's like... Yes. I feel you, bro.
This is basically my own trajectory too.
When i was a kid i considered myself straight, because i was a boy, and i thought girls were attractive. But even though i found girls attractive, i also found that i was uncomfortable with performing any kind of intimate acts with them. So then i got the idea that perhaps what made it so uncomfortable for me wasn't the interaction itself but the fact i had to do it as a boy, so i took hormones and got surgery and became a girl.
After the sex change i sort of accidentally became a lesbian. Except there is a certain brand of lesbian that does not feel very comfortable around trans women, and there is (or was, at the time) some tension in the scene around whether trans women should even be a part of it. That's how i ended up with the broken black triangle tattoo on my wrist. It's not supposed to just be an Adidas logo, although i don't mind if people think so. It's also a black triangle for being a lesbian, but broken into three pieces because i was never able to be a real lesbian - i was a broken lesbian.
And, let's be honest, the women who i got in relationships with usually turned out to be bi anyway, or i suppose nowadays they would be referred to as "pan", which from what i understand is a more trans-inclusive version of bi.
Eventually i just soured on the idea of relationships altogether. That's around the time i got divorced. I realized trying to be in a relationship was more trouble than it was worth. Relationships suck all the joy out of life, everything becomes about this weird codependent structure of you and another person and that complicated shared experience instead of a simple celebration of you as an independent human being in the world.
So i became single and i became free, and it was grand. Then i started having the odd brief sexual interaction at night clubs. And usually it's gay men (or at least bi men) who are the ones who are out there looking for a bit of action, and hard gay bods are pretty sexy, so i played up my masculinity and gave the odd man a quick tug. I mean, was i bi now, or did i just like doing drugs with strangers in bathrooms? God knows i'd never take any of those men (or women) home. And i'd certainly never let any of them put any part of their body inside me. It was all just a quick make-out sess, like i suppose what kids do behind the bike sheds when they're not smoking. And that's when it all clicked for me.
Sex is just as pointless as relationships are. I don't really feel any emotional connection to it. It's just meat slapping meat, and i'm a fucking vegan. All of this soul-searching over am i gay, am i straight, am i a man, am i a woman, am i trans, should i get married, should we have kids, bla bla fucking bla... It's so incredibly exhausting. And for what? An orgasm? To have someone there next time you hit rock bottom? That's a spectacularly poor return on investment. You can have so much more fun, you have so much more free time, you can have such a more rewarding life when you are alone. I've reached the point now where the idea of being in a relationship - or even thinking about sex at all - seems quite alien.
Yes, i am now the person who rolls my eyes at sex and romance scenes in television shows. I'll just quit watching altogether if there's too many of them. Relationship melodrama is so tedious. I can barely recognize the younger me, the one who expended so much fucking energy worrying about their gender or their sexuality or their current belle. That's like a whole other person to me now. How could i have been so stupid? What a waste of the best years of my life.
So, am i asexual now? Or am i just emotionally stunted? Did my sexuality change, or was it the same all along?
This is why i don't really like this idea of "Pride Month", or sharing my pronouns, or boldly declaring myself a part of the LGBT+ community, or whatever.
My identity is i opt out of all that identity bullshit. I don't want to be identified as gay, or trans, or ace, or whatever. I don't want to be a man or a woman. I don't give a shit about any of that stuff and it annoys me if anyone else tries to shovel it onto me. I don't want to be a he or a she or a they, or a Mr or a Mrs or a Mx. I am so fucking not interested.
I really dislike the modern trend of trying to get people to identify as a thing, as some kind of way of promoting diversity. I absolutely and utterly hate the whole "born this way" narrative, because i wasn't fucking born this way. I was one thing, then i was something else, then i was something else. You know. Like human beings do. We shouldn't be ashamed of the fact that we change. That's a part of life, it's part of getting older. I don't buy this thing that sexuality or gender or whatever is innate and immutable. It is whatever it is. And who cares what it is? In the greater scheme of things, it so doesn't fucking matter.
But, i also know that some people do identify very strongly with their sexuality, or gender, or whatever other attribute or property of their self. And i don't want to take away from them expressing that, especially if it's something that historically has caused them to be oppressed. So, let your freak flag fly, be out, be proud, i mean, more power to y'all.
Just... I mean, i feel like i can't be the only person, though, who is basically over it. I'm tired, you guys. I don't want to be any particular thing, i'm quite okay just being nothing.
Anyway, there was some article on ONTD over the weekend about some celeb who i have no idea who it is who came out. First he came out as gay, then he thought perhaps he might be bi, and now he's accepted he's not really very interested in sex at all and he might be asexual.
And it's like... Yes. I feel you, bro.
This is basically my own trajectory too.
When i was a kid i considered myself straight, because i was a boy, and i thought girls were attractive. But even though i found girls attractive, i also found that i was uncomfortable with performing any kind of intimate acts with them. So then i got the idea that perhaps what made it so uncomfortable for me wasn't the interaction itself but the fact i had to do it as a boy, so i took hormones and got surgery and became a girl.
After the sex change i sort of accidentally became a lesbian. Except there is a certain brand of lesbian that does not feel very comfortable around trans women, and there is (or was, at the time) some tension in the scene around whether trans women should even be a part of it. That's how i ended up with the broken black triangle tattoo on my wrist. It's not supposed to just be an Adidas logo, although i don't mind if people think so. It's also a black triangle for being a lesbian, but broken into three pieces because i was never able to be a real lesbian - i was a broken lesbian.
And, let's be honest, the women who i got in relationships with usually turned out to be bi anyway, or i suppose nowadays they would be referred to as "pan", which from what i understand is a more trans-inclusive version of bi.
Eventually i just soured on the idea of relationships altogether. That's around the time i got divorced. I realized trying to be in a relationship was more trouble than it was worth. Relationships suck all the joy out of life, everything becomes about this weird codependent structure of you and another person and that complicated shared experience instead of a simple celebration of you as an independent human being in the world.
So i became single and i became free, and it was grand. Then i started having the odd brief sexual interaction at night clubs. And usually it's gay men (or at least bi men) who are the ones who are out there looking for a bit of action, and hard gay bods are pretty sexy, so i played up my masculinity and gave the odd man a quick tug. I mean, was i bi now, or did i just like doing drugs with strangers in bathrooms? God knows i'd never take any of those men (or women) home. And i'd certainly never let any of them put any part of their body inside me. It was all just a quick make-out sess, like i suppose what kids do behind the bike sheds when they're not smoking. And that's when it all clicked for me.
Sex is just as pointless as relationships are. I don't really feel any emotional connection to it. It's just meat slapping meat, and i'm a fucking vegan. All of this soul-searching over am i gay, am i straight, am i a man, am i a woman, am i trans, should i get married, should we have kids, bla bla fucking bla... It's so incredibly exhausting. And for what? An orgasm? To have someone there next time you hit rock bottom? That's a spectacularly poor return on investment. You can have so much more fun, you have so much more free time, you can have such a more rewarding life when you are alone. I've reached the point now where the idea of being in a relationship - or even thinking about sex at all - seems quite alien.
Yes, i am now the person who rolls my eyes at sex and romance scenes in television shows. I'll just quit watching altogether if there's too many of them. Relationship melodrama is so tedious. I can barely recognize the younger me, the one who expended so much fucking energy worrying about their gender or their sexuality or their current belle. That's like a whole other person to me now. How could i have been so stupid? What a waste of the best years of my life.
So, am i asexual now? Or am i just emotionally stunted? Did my sexuality change, or was it the same all along?
This is why i don't really like this idea of "Pride Month", or sharing my pronouns, or boldly declaring myself a part of the LGBT+ community, or whatever.
My identity is i opt out of all that identity bullshit. I don't want to be identified as gay, or trans, or ace, or whatever. I don't want to be a man or a woman. I don't give a shit about any of that stuff and it annoys me if anyone else tries to shovel it onto me. I don't want to be a he or a she or a they, or a Mr or a Mrs or a Mx. I am so fucking not interested.
I really dislike the modern trend of trying to get people to identify as a thing, as some kind of way of promoting diversity. I absolutely and utterly hate the whole "born this way" narrative, because i wasn't fucking born this way. I was one thing, then i was something else, then i was something else. You know. Like human beings do. We shouldn't be ashamed of the fact that we change. That's a part of life, it's part of getting older. I don't buy this thing that sexuality or gender or whatever is innate and immutable. It is whatever it is. And who cares what it is? In the greater scheme of things, it so doesn't fucking matter.
But, i also know that some people do identify very strongly with their sexuality, or gender, or whatever other attribute or property of their self. And i don't want to take away from them expressing that, especially if it's something that historically has caused them to be oppressed. So, let your freak flag fly, be out, be proud, i mean, more power to y'all.
Just... I mean, i feel like i can't be the only person, though, who is basically over it. I'm tired, you guys. I don't want to be any particular thing, i'm quite okay just being nothing.