You Never Hear About This From The Religious Right

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Emergency Nurses Day
General Pulaski Memorial Day
National Bring Teddy Bear to Work & School Day
National Coming Out Day
UN International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction
Anniversary - Saturday Night Live
Birthday - Eleanor Roosevelt (First Lady)

 

In the spirit of National Coming Out Day, I would like to come out now.

 

Not as gay.

 

Not really as straight, either. For some reason my head doesn’t really have little slots to put sex preferences in. It’s sort of like food. There are all sorts of things you may like, which may be diverse and sundry, but it’s all under the heading of ‘eating.’ I guess that makes me pansexual or something, or just confused.

 

I suppose I could come out as a geek, but y’all knew that already.

 

But here’s the thing.

 

I think I’m sort of asexual.

 

Yes, yes, I know. ‘Sort of asexual’ is like saying ‘almost infinite’—logically impossible. But it sounds better than classifying myself as ‘not really very sexual, you know, like it’s not a big thing in my life.’ I hear all these people going “Women need sex!” and “It’s all about the sex!” and “College kids are so horny,” and “We should all be healthy and enjoy our own personal preference!” and I think, “But my preference is to remain an indifferent do-it-yourselfer!”

 

It’s one of those things that’s difficult to explain to people. Nobody believes that I don’t care that much. My mom is firmly convinced that it’s one of the medications I’m on that’s keeping me uninterested, and everybody else thinks I’m just in some sort of repressive denial. Maybe I am. But the nice thing about either of those is that it doesn’t matter to me very much, so there’s no real reason to change it.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I find lots of things sexy in a lot of different ways. But there’s a big old difference between sexy and sexual. And I never understood the bit where everybody’s obsessed with it all the time.

 

I don’t know what that makes me, so it’s a little hard to come out as whatever it is. Even so, it’s as close as I’ve gotten to a conclusion, so I figured I’d share it.

 

I just love complication, don’t you?

Comments

[nixve.livejournal.com]

woo! yay for complicating things!
Humans don't fit in nice little categories, I'm all for proving that. :)

[gryfindormia.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's weird at all. I myself have been questioning so many things and I don't really know where I belong, and sometimes even I think I don't get the sex hype. I do have sexual feelings, though, but figuring out what to focus my energies on has been more difficult.

I've actually heard about asexual people, if that's how you would strictly define yourself, and one guy from an asexual alliance had an interview on one of the cable news shows a while back I watched somewhere online, they gave the poor guy hell and virtually wrote him off as a weirdo whose opinions are not valid HUMAN opinions. Because the Shiny Judeo-Christian God's only purpose to put us down on this earth is to make the babies, liek, d'uh. If he wanted us to do other things or have complex feelings he would have given them to us. Oh, wait...

[marajade893.livejournal.com]

I too am both pansexual and geeky. Huzzah! I just happen to have a strong preference for chick-type geek stuff and sex with men. Whee!

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

It would be way too easy to say something trite like "You won't know until you try it, but actual sex is miles ahead of 'do-it-yourself'."

So I won't. :P Mostly because that always sounds to me like a guy trying to convince a lesbian that she "just ain't had the raght Mayun yet. Gimme another beer, Earl."
Besides, if the other person sucks at it, that statement could quite easily be false, even if you DID like sex.

Good luck with it. I hope it works out for you, and, at the very least, it's not like it's a one way trip decision of any kind. You always have the option of changing your mind/preferences, etc down the road, if you wish.
I understand this is actually a growing trend these days.

I don't know if I'm in support of it or not, (I suppose that's actually fairly irrelevant,) but it can't be worse than dysfunctional, repressed geeks trying and failing to be decent in bed and causing yet more trauma/neurosis in the world.

If I've been insulting or condescending or just plain tactless at any point here, just blame it on my own dysfunctional youth. T'were not my intention, believe it or not. :D

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that the above is insulting, needlessly, to geeks.

In actual fact, the stereotypical 'jock' who gets laid reasonably regularly is less likely to have invested any time in determining what the other person wants than a geek who may have, in desperation, actually read up on the subject and, although inexperienced, is at least educated.

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

I reread, and realized I left this kind of ambiguous, but I support you in this.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* I caught that.

[bluetara2020.livejournal.com]

you know, that makes more sense than my post.

I don't get why sex is so important either. I mean it's fun and all but so is riding a rollarcoaster. But I wouldn't want to do it all afternoon...

Well, at least, not every afternoon.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

I first heard from AVEN from trikotomy, someone who I don't think it would be an exaggeration to call the most extraordinary friend I've ever had. I used to be "a-curious" (in addition to bi-curious), as he called it, before getting into the relationship I've gotten into which kind of resolved the question.

Without feeling like you have to get in a relationship to satisfy some kind of social obligation, you can actually maintain a lot more control over your own life, and if you're someone who enjoys solitude and friendship the way I do, you can definitely lead a life at least as constructive and fulfilling as anybody else. I don't think of you as repressed anymore than I think it'd be fair for me to think of a gay person as a repressed straight or vice-versa. People, in and of themselves, aren't incomplete.

[dimethirwen.livejournal.com]

You know, I have a friend who recently figured out that she's asexual too. If you'd like, I can see if she'd mind having you contact her to chat, if you'd like someone to talk to about it who's going through the same thing.

I can't say I understand what you're feeling (well, I understand the "having an orientation that few understand, i.e. bisexuality, but not asexuality itself) but I think that it's awesome that you've figured it out.

Complication rocks. :P

[die-monster.livejournal.com]

You sound a lot like my ex, in that respect. Seems pretty reasonable, IMO. :)

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

I do agree with your mom, to some extent, since I myself have been on medication that killed my libido in a really impressive way. But, if the results aren't causing you any sort of problem, then don't worry about it. It is, after all, fundamentally more productive to be able to concentrate on things other than the next time one is going to get laid.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I had a friend go on antidepressants in high school and mentioned that his libido had vanished. "How's that working for you?" I asked.

"It's great!" he told me.

[crazykawaii.livejournal.com]

Sexuality is vastly more complicated than the binary (het, gay, or maybe somewhere both) that modern culture makes it out to be. There's as many sexualities as there are people - and whatever you want, go for it. Even if you don't want anything in particular - good for you!

[viizou.livejournal.com]

Interesting...

I was reading an essay by Gilles Lipovestky, in which he mentions that, given the current quasi-total absence of sexual taboos (group sex, gay sex, swinging, "open relationships", sex changes, strippers, prostitution, kama sutra, "how to do it" manuals, Cosmo magazine, nothing's really hidden or forbidden - save zoophilia and pedophilia, thank God), it's amazing that people aren't living in a state of constant orgasm. But, as he points out, it's just not the case: people aren't moving from sexual partner to sexual partner so much as they are moving from relationship tp relationship. And a lot of people aren't having sex at all.

I can think of several of my friends who, although probably not categorically asexual, haven't had sex in a really long time. Myself included. And personally, I don't really miss it that much. I miss being in a relationship, but sex was never that big a deal to me. I think I see a very wide gap between sex and sensuality, which is probably similar to your distinction between sexy and sexual.

One of my friends claims we're living in a puritanical era, but I disagree. Puritanism is about wanting to, but not giving in to temptation due to moral restrictions. Which is clearly not the case today. Could it be we're all just bored with sex?