(no subject)
I posted this long piece of navel-gazing recently under friendslock. Enough people said it resonated with them that I thought I might as well post an open version too. (So if you read that post, there's absolutely nothing new in this one. I haven't changed a word of it except this intro paragraph.) If you want to quote anything or link to this or whatever, feel free, now or later; do with it as you will. Just don't repost it in its entirety and do keep it attributed to me, please.
I wrote this in the wee hours some months ago, and then private-locked it so I could read over it later and see if it was coherent in the light of day, and never got around to unlocking it. A slightly different discussion in another corner of the internet reminded me about it, though. It remains long and rambly, and in some ways very clearly written in the wee hours, because I've only lightly edited it.
See, there's this cultural narrative. I don't know if you all ran into it as such a given, but I sure did. It runs like so: if you're not straight, you know it early -- definitely by the middle of your teenage years. If you're a lesbian, you know it, because you find yourself getting crushes on girls, and fantasizing about kissing girls -- whether they're in your class, or actresses on the tv -- and you've got a pretty clear idea of what you want to do with them. If you're bi, you have the fantasies about girls and guys both. If you don't do this, you're straight.
As a general rule, you're also supposed to be having crushes and fantasies about the opposite gender if you're straight, of course. But if you're not particularly interested -- if you don't really see the appeal of the actors your friends are all sighing over, but you don't really see the appeal of anybody else to replace them, or why anyone wants to put pictures of people they don't know in their lockers or bedrooms -- well, there are late bloomers. Or maybe you're repressed -- you are awfully introverted, and you were teased a lot as a kid, so maybe you've got some issues getting in the way of being properly in touch with your libido. But you're still straight, because you haven't ever had those clear obvious desires for your own gender instead, and in any case sooner or later the right person will come along. Or you'll loosen up, or whatever. You're going to want to date. Really, you should have been wanting it since high school -- everyone knows teenagers are confused bundles of hormones and sexuality, they all want to make out with a vast array of their classmates, in confused desperate ways -- but you were a late bloomer and kind of repressed, so it'll come in its own time.
Of course, by the time you're in your twenties, it's not fair to experiment about your sexuality with people -- you're supposed to know! It's being an unfair, uncertain, muddled tease if you date someone to figure out if you want to date them, or kiss them to figure out if you want to kiss them; didn't you figure this out in high school? -- and you're definitely not supposed to be a virgin after college. (Nobody wants to date a virgin, you're told, sometimes in so many words. Too much pressure, you're told -- talking of hypothetical third parties, of course. What's wrong with you, when everyone else managed years ago?, subtext from culture at large tells you.) Sweet sixteen and never been kissed doesn't age up very gracefully; sweet 24 and never been kissed is just sad, or anyway so you think at 24. Maybe you're doomed to never have a boyfriend, because you missed your window of opportunity for learning. But, well, you'll do the best you can. There's no going back in time -- and anyway, you really didn't want to date anybody who was interested in you in high school or college. You didn't really want to date anyone who wasn't interested in you, actually. (You had some fluttery I want you to think I'm cool feelings now and again, but that's probably not the same, unless it is.) Maybe you're just too picky.
(And then you date a guy, for a few months. He's a good guy, and you like him, and it doesn't work out for too long, although you stay friends once the awkwardness has had time to die down. What you learn from this is that the experience of kissing is mostly okay, that's what someone else's saliva tastes like. Sure, I guess. Holding hands is nice. Hugs go on too long; it's kind of nice, but at the same time you feel awkward, you wonder if you're supposed to be wondering when you're clear to let go. You watch a bad movie that's mostly an excuse for making out, and you think, Oh. I should have expected that; of course, this is what that code is. I guess we can kiss instead, sure. You think, But I'd rather be watching the movie so we can make fun of it, really. You wonder if this means you should date more, and see if you click better with someone else. You wonder if this means you are a lesbian; maybe you should date girls, see if you click with them. Or at least date more people.
You're kind of interested in the idea of kissing people, in the abstract. You like stories about makeouts and sex, sometimes. But every time you think about kissing a specific individual, you're entirely apathetic about the prospect.)
You learn about asexuality, somewhere along the line. (You test out the concept of having a permanently really low sex drive in your brain some years before you learn that somebody else made a word for it.)
You think, but I'm interested in abstract thoughts about sexy stuff, sometimes, so that doesn't fit. You think, but that means I'm doomed to live alone forever. Everyone else wants sex, right? You think no, I'm just repressed, I just have a low sex drive, I just need to date more and find the right person and then I'll want to. (You continue to not bother going on dates. You continue to not sign up for OKCupid. You continue to have no interest in the guys you know full well are interested in you; maybe if you ignore their interest thoroughly enough, it'll go away.) You think, but I want kids. But I want a marriage and maybe even a white picket fence. But I want what my parents have. Wanting to sleep with people comes along with that, doesn't it? Sleeping with someone comes along with that, doesn't it? You think, How much of what I want do I want, and how much was I just trained to assume I wanted? You never quite manage to answer that one. (To be fair, you suspect nobody does.) Sorting out chicken and egg in your own hindbrain is no easier than any other context.
You think, Does this mean that everything I've always felt about cultural narratives, about how romance is overvalued and friendship is undervalued in our culture, everything about why I like to write gen fiction, is just because I'm repressed or my libido is broken? Am I just missing out on something fundamental to other people? You hate that thought.
You tell yourself that you'll sign up for OKCupid, go on some dates with girls and guys both, see if you're interested in any of them. You continue to never get around to it.
You settle gradually into well, maybe someday I'll meet somebody I do want to make out with, or maybe I'll start to want to date. Whenever that happens, I'll give it a go, I promise. Until then, I'm not going to fret about it. You continue to not feel any real need. It sounds like it'd be kind of fun to try out, see if you're interested, see if it's fun after all -- but, man, sitting on the couch reading is so much more compelling today. Maybe next week. Maybe next month. Maybe next year.
You wonder: you've always had mostly female friends. Everyone you're most physically comfortable with is female, immediate family aside. If you're asexual -- or asexualish, very low sex drive, somewhere in that hazy area -- does that mean you're homoromantic? Biromantic? (Heteroromantic and/or repressed heterosexual, so girls are your comfort zone?) So many labels, and the more specific they get the more lost you feel in the tiny gradations and opaque, community-specific jargon. What are romantic feelings that make them different from close friendship? What does romance even mean, really, if you're not one of the asexuals who likes to make out with people sometimes? What's the difference between "homoromantic asexual" and "asexual who happens to gravitate towards female friends"?
You're still not totally sure about some of that even in the abstract, to be honest. You've never been much good at quantification even when it's less messy.
You've always known -- you've always been incredibly lucky to know -- that you could come out as gay to your family, and they'd support you. You could bring home a girlfriend; they would do their earnest liberal darnedest to not treat her any different than the girls your brothers have dated. Your (male) cousin has a (male) partner, other cousins have (different-gender) spouses, and they're all treated the same as far as you've ever known or heard. But you've also never really wanted to hash out deep-seated questions of sexuality with your parents. How do you come out as "I dunno, I'm not sure I'm really anything, but you probably shouldn't expect me to bring home a boyfriend or girlfriend any time soon -- well, I guess maybe a platonic girlfriend, sometime?" Presumably like that, but you've never been in a hurry to broach the subject, especially when you're still figuring out your own thoughts. And your parents have never broached it for you. It's an earnest liberal blind spot, you guess, when your parents are straight products of the 50s and 60s. Your mother every couple of years inquires very delicately about boys, but never about girls. You start to sort of hint around the subject. You explain the term "Boston marriage" to your mother, and you mention the term "asexual" and some of its modern cousins; "Goodness," she says, not critical but bemused, "people want to label everything these days!" You shrug.
You'd come out to your parents, awkward explanations and all, if you felt a label really, totally fit enough that you wanted to slap it on yourself and identify with it and explain it to them. You still want to apply "maybe, kind of, ish" to everything.
(And you still want kids, and do not want to be a single mom. And you still want, someday, to have somebody you can come home to and cuddle on the couch with. You're just pretty sure that's all you want.)
You're not really sure why you're still writing this in the second person.
Except that for some reason it was easier to write it that way, and I didn't want to edit that away. Maybe it's another layer of hedging my bets, qualifying my identification with labels.
Well, it's still qualified. There's a lot of maybe and ish still applied. But it's feeling increasingly wrong to keep all this locked silently inside my head, so that I feel as if to explain it to any of my friends I'd have to backtrack and give the whole explanation, and work around to "maybe I'll have a girlfriend someday, or maybe a boyfriend, but I'm pretty sure a girlfriend, but I'm pretty sure it'll be platonic, but anyway this is just a long FYI so I don't feel like I'm lying by omission, except none of you are probably going to be all that surprised, but uh anyway."
And even then... If I did have a girlfriend (or, heck, a boyfriend), it'd be no one else's business what we do or don't do in bed -- but at the same time, it feels like a lie and a self-erasure when I think about being in an asexual romance but pretending that yes, I'm totally interested in sex, I'm just being coy about the sex I and my hypothetical SO are having. Which is another way in which I'm conflicted about the labels.
But here you go: I'm pretty certain I'm somewhere on the asexual end of things, and I'm pretty sure that if and when I date somebody, it'll be mostly or entirely platonic-romantic and she'll probably be a she. (Predictions are a chancy business. But odds seem good.)
If you read all this, thank you for listening. If you've known me for a while, you're probably not much surprised. But I wanted to put it into words, for you and for me. So there you go, and there I go too: it's in words, at least how I feel at this point in my life.
This entry is also posted at http://genarti.dreamwidth.org/161581.html. You can comment on LJ or DW, whichever you like.
comments at DW.
I wrote this in the wee hours some months ago, and then private-locked it so I could read over it later and see if it was coherent in the light of day, and never got around to unlocking it. A slightly different discussion in another corner of the internet reminded me about it, though. It remains long and rambly, and in some ways very clearly written in the wee hours, because I've only lightly edited it.
See, there's this cultural narrative. I don't know if you all ran into it as such a given, but I sure did. It runs like so: if you're not straight, you know it early -- definitely by the middle of your teenage years. If you're a lesbian, you know it, because you find yourself getting crushes on girls, and fantasizing about kissing girls -- whether they're in your class, or actresses on the tv -- and you've got a pretty clear idea of what you want to do with them. If you're bi, you have the fantasies about girls and guys both. If you don't do this, you're straight.
As a general rule, you're also supposed to be having crushes and fantasies about the opposite gender if you're straight, of course. But if you're not particularly interested -- if you don't really see the appeal of the actors your friends are all sighing over, but you don't really see the appeal of anybody else to replace them, or why anyone wants to put pictures of people they don't know in their lockers or bedrooms -- well, there are late bloomers. Or maybe you're repressed -- you are awfully introverted, and you were teased a lot as a kid, so maybe you've got some issues getting in the way of being properly in touch with your libido. But you're still straight, because you haven't ever had those clear obvious desires for your own gender instead, and in any case sooner or later the right person will come along. Or you'll loosen up, or whatever. You're going to want to date. Really, you should have been wanting it since high school -- everyone knows teenagers are confused bundles of hormones and sexuality, they all want to make out with a vast array of their classmates, in confused desperate ways -- but you were a late bloomer and kind of repressed, so it'll come in its own time.
Of course, by the time you're in your twenties, it's not fair to experiment about your sexuality with people -- you're supposed to know! It's being an unfair, uncertain, muddled tease if you date someone to figure out if you want to date them, or kiss them to figure out if you want to kiss them; didn't you figure this out in high school? -- and you're definitely not supposed to be a virgin after college. (Nobody wants to date a virgin, you're told, sometimes in so many words. Too much pressure, you're told -- talking of hypothetical third parties, of course. What's wrong with you, when everyone else managed years ago?, subtext from culture at large tells you.) Sweet sixteen and never been kissed doesn't age up very gracefully; sweet 24 and never been kissed is just sad, or anyway so you think at 24. Maybe you're doomed to never have a boyfriend, because you missed your window of opportunity for learning. But, well, you'll do the best you can. There's no going back in time -- and anyway, you really didn't want to date anybody who was interested in you in high school or college. You didn't really want to date anyone who wasn't interested in you, actually. (You had some fluttery I want you to think I'm cool feelings now and again, but that's probably not the same, unless it is.) Maybe you're just too picky.
(And then you date a guy, for a few months. He's a good guy, and you like him, and it doesn't work out for too long, although you stay friends once the awkwardness has had time to die down. What you learn from this is that the experience of kissing is mostly okay, that's what someone else's saliva tastes like. Sure, I guess. Holding hands is nice. Hugs go on too long; it's kind of nice, but at the same time you feel awkward, you wonder if you're supposed to be wondering when you're clear to let go. You watch a bad movie that's mostly an excuse for making out, and you think, Oh. I should have expected that; of course, this is what that code is. I guess we can kiss instead, sure. You think, But I'd rather be watching the movie so we can make fun of it, really. You wonder if this means you should date more, and see if you click better with someone else. You wonder if this means you are a lesbian; maybe you should date girls, see if you click with them. Or at least date more people.
You're kind of interested in the idea of kissing people, in the abstract. You like stories about makeouts and sex, sometimes. But every time you think about kissing a specific individual, you're entirely apathetic about the prospect.)
You learn about asexuality, somewhere along the line. (You test out the concept of having a permanently really low sex drive in your brain some years before you learn that somebody else made a word for it.)
You think, but I'm interested in abstract thoughts about sexy stuff, sometimes, so that doesn't fit. You think, but that means I'm doomed to live alone forever. Everyone else wants sex, right? You think no, I'm just repressed, I just have a low sex drive, I just need to date more and find the right person and then I'll want to. (You continue to not bother going on dates. You continue to not sign up for OKCupid. You continue to have no interest in the guys you know full well are interested in you; maybe if you ignore their interest thoroughly enough, it'll go away.) You think, but I want kids. But I want a marriage and maybe even a white picket fence. But I want what my parents have. Wanting to sleep with people comes along with that, doesn't it? Sleeping with someone comes along with that, doesn't it? You think, How much of what I want do I want, and how much was I just trained to assume I wanted? You never quite manage to answer that one. (To be fair, you suspect nobody does.) Sorting out chicken and egg in your own hindbrain is no easier than any other context.
You think, Does this mean that everything I've always felt about cultural narratives, about how romance is overvalued and friendship is undervalued in our culture, everything about why I like to write gen fiction, is just because I'm repressed or my libido is broken? Am I just missing out on something fundamental to other people? You hate that thought.
You tell yourself that you'll sign up for OKCupid, go on some dates with girls and guys both, see if you're interested in any of them. You continue to never get around to it.
You settle gradually into well, maybe someday I'll meet somebody I do want to make out with, or maybe I'll start to want to date. Whenever that happens, I'll give it a go, I promise. Until then, I'm not going to fret about it. You continue to not feel any real need. It sounds like it'd be kind of fun to try out, see if you're interested, see if it's fun after all -- but, man, sitting on the couch reading is so much more compelling today. Maybe next week. Maybe next month. Maybe next year.
You wonder: you've always had mostly female friends. Everyone you're most physically comfortable with is female, immediate family aside. If you're asexual -- or asexualish, very low sex drive, somewhere in that hazy area -- does that mean you're homoromantic? Biromantic? (Heteroromantic and/or repressed heterosexual, so girls are your comfort zone?) So many labels, and the more specific they get the more lost you feel in the tiny gradations and opaque, community-specific jargon. What are romantic feelings that make them different from close friendship? What does romance even mean, really, if you're not one of the asexuals who likes to make out with people sometimes? What's the difference between "homoromantic asexual" and "asexual who happens to gravitate towards female friends"?
You're still not totally sure about some of that even in the abstract, to be honest. You've never been much good at quantification even when it's less messy.
You've always known -- you've always been incredibly lucky to know -- that you could come out as gay to your family, and they'd support you. You could bring home a girlfriend; they would do their earnest liberal darnedest to not treat her any different than the girls your brothers have dated. Your (male) cousin has a (male) partner, other cousins have (different-gender) spouses, and they're all treated the same as far as you've ever known or heard. But you've also never really wanted to hash out deep-seated questions of sexuality with your parents. How do you come out as "I dunno, I'm not sure I'm really anything, but you probably shouldn't expect me to bring home a boyfriend or girlfriend any time soon -- well, I guess maybe a platonic girlfriend, sometime?" Presumably like that, but you've never been in a hurry to broach the subject, especially when you're still figuring out your own thoughts. And your parents have never broached it for you. It's an earnest liberal blind spot, you guess, when your parents are straight products of the 50s and 60s. Your mother every couple of years inquires very delicately about boys, but never about girls. You start to sort of hint around the subject. You explain the term "Boston marriage" to your mother, and you mention the term "asexual" and some of its modern cousins; "Goodness," she says, not critical but bemused, "people want to label everything these days!" You shrug.
You'd come out to your parents, awkward explanations and all, if you felt a label really, totally fit enough that you wanted to slap it on yourself and identify with it and explain it to them. You still want to apply "maybe, kind of, ish" to everything.
(And you still want kids, and do not want to be a single mom. And you still want, someday, to have somebody you can come home to and cuddle on the couch with. You're just pretty sure that's all you want.)
You're not really sure why you're still writing this in the second person.
Except that for some reason it was easier to write it that way, and I didn't want to edit that away. Maybe it's another layer of hedging my bets, qualifying my identification with labels.
Well, it's still qualified. There's a lot of maybe and ish still applied. But it's feeling increasingly wrong to keep all this locked silently inside my head, so that I feel as if to explain it to any of my friends I'd have to backtrack and give the whole explanation, and work around to "maybe I'll have a girlfriend someday, or maybe a boyfriend, but I'm pretty sure a girlfriend, but I'm pretty sure it'll be platonic, but anyway this is just a long FYI so I don't feel like I'm lying by omission, except none of you are probably going to be all that surprised, but uh anyway."
And even then... If I did have a girlfriend (or, heck, a boyfriend), it'd be no one else's business what we do or don't do in bed -- but at the same time, it feels like a lie and a self-erasure when I think about being in an asexual romance but pretending that yes, I'm totally interested in sex, I'm just being coy about the sex I and my hypothetical SO are having. Which is another way in which I'm conflicted about the labels.
But here you go: I'm pretty certain I'm somewhere on the asexual end of things, and I'm pretty sure that if and when I date somebody, it'll be mostly or entirely platonic-romantic and she'll probably be a she. (Predictions are a chancy business. But odds seem good.)
If you read all this, thank you for listening. If you've known me for a while, you're probably not much surprised. But I wanted to put it into words, for you and for me. So there you go, and there I go too: it's in words, at least how I feel at this point in my life.
This entry is also posted at http://genarti.dreamwidth.org/161581.html. You can comment on LJ or DW, whichever you like.
comments at DW.