*happy face*
I'm an overweight girl with chronic illness, depression 'n anxiety (I want that to be a diner name now), daddy issues, low libido, and occasional fits of depersonalization. I don't fall in love any more than I fall in lust and I am really not a splendid asexual spokesperson.
Except! With a lot of help from hlbr , I gave the presentation I mentioned awhile back. I explained right at the beginning that, firstly, I am not representative of asexuality because there's a lot of variance and I don't even fall within the majority in many respects (like romanticism), and secondly, that in the context of my asexuality 101 educational presentation they could ask quite literally anything, but don't do this to ANYBODY ELSE EVER, they will probably smack you. Okay? Okay!
So, I talked for forty minutes. My professor hoped there'd be some questions, so he set apart some time for a question and answer session afterward.
An hour later, the class and I finished up a discussion about the DSM's history of pathologizing sexuality, everybody clapped enthusiastically, and the professor shook my hand and asked me to come again next term.
It was pretty much the best thing ever. Of course a lot of the questions came straight off the asexual fail bingo, but I was educating, and they couldn't know any better, and at least they were asking questions rather than pathologizing on the spot. So I'm being all smiley and happy and educate-y, and then:
RANDOM GUY: Um. I'm gay. And I was just wondering how asexuals' experience compares with ours, what with religion and erasure and stuff, because some of what you've said sounds a lot like my life.
Cue three or four other lgbt students chiming in, and we all talked about the similarities and differences, and then somebody asked me about whether I wanted to have kids and we segued into being childfree and the issues surrounding that and how it intersects in many ways with not-being-straight, and a couple of previously quiet girls went "oh! I'm gay and THAT IS MY LIFE OMG." And then this one girl asked about flirtation etiquette, and then explained that she had a few asexual friends, but she was part of the BDSM community and knew them through that and my experience was probably a little different. (Hilariously, it turned out that it wasn't, really.)
Nobody asked me if I masturbated.
Highlight: during the speech, I mentioned that I'd been brought up religious, and that brought with it a whole slew of difficulty and made everything worse. One guy didn't catch the specific religion until I mentioned it in passing when somebody asked if I'd been subject to any religious pressure re: having children.
ME: Uh, my family's LDS. MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH THE EARTH, Y'ALL. Once you're married unless you're gay
GUY: Wait, that religion -- you were brought up Mormon?
ME: Yes.
GUY: Oh, I'm so sorry.
ENTIRE CLASSROOM: *awkward silence* *collectively dies of laughter*
And then the first guy asked if, maybe, the asexual community was kind of where the lgbt one was a few decades ago, what with the your-orientation-is-an-illness thing and all, and we talked about that for a bit. Then another girl looked almost horrified, and said that the questions they'd been asking -- they'd just seemed reasonable, normal things to ask right until this very moment. But she was gay and suddenly it'd struck her that they were the exact same questions that people asked her all the time, only it was incredibly offensive then. So wait, didn't that mean ...
And then they talked about the ways in which their own questions were problematic.
Well, that was a few weeks ago, and it was awesome. (And I promised I'd post my notes, so I'll get around to that In The Fullness of Time.) Today, I got up the nerve to ask my professor if I could list him as a reference, and he responded by saying that my presentation was amazing, and everybody loved me, and several of them wanted to contact me to DISCUSS MOAR and he's going to pass on their e-mails so I can talk to whoever I want to and he'd really really like to write a reference for me, and he wants to meet up with me and talk about it and my résumé and so on.
Some days, dear world f-list, are a lot better than others.
Except! With a lot of help from hlbr , I gave the presentation I mentioned awhile back. I explained right at the beginning that, firstly, I am not representative of asexuality because there's a lot of variance and I don't even fall within the majority in many respects (like romanticism), and secondly, that in the context of my asexuality 101 educational presentation they could ask quite literally anything, but don't do this to ANYBODY ELSE EVER, they will probably smack you. Okay? Okay!
So, I talked for forty minutes. My professor hoped there'd be some questions, so he set apart some time for a question and answer session afterward.
An hour later, the class and I finished up a discussion about the DSM's history of pathologizing sexuality, everybody clapped enthusiastically, and the professor shook my hand and asked me to come again next term.
It was pretty much the best thing ever. Of course a lot of the questions came straight off the asexual fail bingo, but I was educating, and they couldn't know any better, and at least they were asking questions rather than pathologizing on the spot. So I'm being all smiley and happy and educate-y, and then:
RANDOM GUY: Um. I'm gay. And I was just wondering how asexuals' experience compares with ours, what with religion and erasure and stuff, because some of what you've said sounds a lot like my life.
Cue three or four other lgbt students chiming in, and we all talked about the similarities and differences, and then somebody asked me about whether I wanted to have kids and we segued into being childfree and the issues surrounding that and how it intersects in many ways with not-being-straight, and a couple of previously quiet girls went "oh! I'm gay and THAT IS MY LIFE OMG." And then this one girl asked about flirtation etiquette, and then explained that she had a few asexual friends, but she was part of the BDSM community and knew them through that and my experience was probably a little different. (Hilariously, it turned out that it wasn't, really.)
Nobody asked me if I masturbated.
Highlight: during the speech, I mentioned that I'd been brought up religious, and that brought with it a whole slew of difficulty and made everything worse. One guy didn't catch the specific religion until I mentioned it in passing when somebody asked if I'd been subject to any religious pressure re: having children.
ME: Uh, my family's LDS. MULTIPLY AND REPLENISH THE EARTH, Y'ALL. Once you're married unless you're gay
GUY: Wait, that religion -- you were brought up Mormon?
ME: Yes.
GUY: Oh, I'm so sorry.
ENTIRE CLASSROOM: *awkward silence* *collectively dies of laughter*
And then the first guy asked if, maybe, the asexual community was kind of where the lgbt one was a few decades ago, what with the your-orientation-is-an-illness thing and all, and we talked about that for a bit. Then another girl looked almost horrified, and said that the questions they'd been asking -- they'd just seemed reasonable, normal things to ask right until this very moment. But she was gay and suddenly it'd struck her that they were the exact same questions that people asked her all the time, only it was incredibly offensive then. So wait, didn't that mean ...
And then they talked about the ways in which their own questions were problematic.
Well, that was a few weeks ago, and it was awesome. (And I promised I'd post my notes, so I'll get around to that In The Fullness of Time.) Today, I got up the nerve to ask my professor if I could list him as a reference, and he responded by saying that my presentation was amazing, and everybody loved me, and several of them wanted to contact me to DISCUSS MOAR and he's going to pass on their e-mails so I can talk to whoever I want to and he'd really really like to write a reference for me, and he wants to meet up with me and talk about it and my résumé and so on.
Some days, dear world f-list, are a lot better than others.