Just FYI: Sex-positive IS NOT the opposite of sex-repulsed, which IS NOT a synonym for sex-negative. Sex-positive is a word with a long history outside of the ace community describing an affiliation of political values, not how you would feel about yourself having sex. I think the word you are actually looking for is sex-favorable.
This is a pretty common misconception in the ace community, but it makes it very easy to have miscommunication, so I just want to try to avoid that. Please check out this post for further explanation.
Anyway, to actually answer your question, for me it fluctuates, in a trauma-influenced way. Kinda too complicated to really get into, but I've written about it a bit before here.
Accommodations are, ime, often a big bureaucratic hassle to get, but SO WORTH IT once it's taken care of. If you've already got someone you know who works with accessibility services, it should be easier for you to get them. For me, a lot of the problem was figuring out like... what do I even need to do? I probably should have looked for an advocate to help me through it, but at the time, I didn't really know where to find one or how anything like that worked. Also, there are ways of doing accommodations that I never even thought of back then, like having a signal that I'm having a hard time, and not to call on me in class. I can't remember where I saw it, but I heard of someone using a pink post-it note on their notebook as a signal like that. Most of what I actually used was just like, I would get extensions on deadlines, that sort of thing. But it would've been really nice to have an unobtrusive signal like that, so that I could've had some accommodation during class without having to disclose to classmates. That wouldn't work in all classes (writing workshops include an expectation of participation that isn't there for other classes, so other students would realize something is up), but for some it would've been nice.
I used to think like that, before it happened and honestly? It was probably THE most major reason why I couldn't recognize it for what it was. Because... it was supposed to be "worse," and all but un-survivable. It wasn't like what I expected, and I was able to go on in a way that I didn't expect... so how could it have been that? So yeah, probably a pretty hugely unhealthy way of thinking about things, but I have no idea how it can be changed (broadly, among the general population). It's all from fear, which is a totally normal and expected when thinking about something like that. Maybe the inspiration-porn pedestalization of survivors contributes to it? I don't know. I think there's a sense that, in the way people talk about survivors, that we're the strongest most extraordinary people or something, and I hear things like "I don't know how I could ever be that strong." But actually, the resilience to survive something like that is way more common than people think.
I have more thoughts on this, but they're not really coherent right now. Maybe I'll come back to this later.
I feel like I have to reevaluate every little bit of attraction I've ever had to men to determine if it was real or not
Ughhhh yes, this. Exactly this. It sucks because I even get other people WHO ARE ALSO BI asking me "are you sure you're not a lesbian?" sometimes. Um, yeah, I'm sure, thanks. Even when it's just meant to be a joke it still stirs up all the doubt and anxiety and second-guessing myself.
I haven't been exposed to a whole lot of posts like that one (probably because I deliberately avoid the kind of places where it would be most likely to come up), but this kind of thing in general... yeah, it also kind of feels like gaslighting to me sometimes, or at the very least it reinforces previous gaslighting attempts by other people.
So... yeah, I kinda wanna push back against this kind of talk, introduce some nuance and additional narratives, hopefully make people think twice about framing things this way in the future. Make some space for people this doesn't work for. Probably won't get to it anytime soon though...
Update: she is STILL pouting in the bathroom.
Orrrr maybe the "schedule post" feature doesn't even work at all!
Yeahhhh, PTSD is definitely a major factor in my sleep schedule being crap. Like even when I do sleep, it's usually not really restful sleep, and sometimes I have to be woken up again because I'm loudly having a nightmare. But honestly, it was pretty bad even before. I have RLS too so that's fun, and another big issue is that I have photophobia, so during the daytime I get headaches from everything being too bright for my eyes, and being sleep-deprived already makes my eyes even more sensitive. Then I end up having to nap during the day, which messes my cycle up even more.
Sooo yeah, I'm hoping I can find some meds that actually work soon (I've had some prescribed before that only made me nauseous, not tired), but I still have a month-long wait before I'll even be able to see any doctors. /sigh
Yeah, I've tried it, it didn't really do anything for me unfortunately. :/
Yeah, for me freezing tends to be associated with things I can't really run from (physically) or fight. I've heard it called "mental flight" before but I dunno, I don't think that really helps.
I'm going to try to make it a habit to keep a tab open here and save whatever interesting links I come across, so look forward to more!
Thanks for all of your excellent responses! I'd hoped to be able to reply to them individually, and maybe I'll still be able to get to them this weekend, but in the meantime, thank you all for sharing! :)
[Edit: Now that Imzy is open to the public, I am removing the content of this comment. Sorry!]
Okay, well I'm sort of pressed for time atm, so I won't go into line-by-line stuff. But some of my shorter points would be...
- I think it's important to remember that people who are in abusive/manipulative relationships do not necessarily know that the relationship is abusive. Abusers work hard to make everything seem completely normal.
- Verbal and emotional abuse is more difficult to recognize as abuse.
- "if it would put you in danger" is going to be interpreted the VAST majority of the time as ONLY referring to physical danger, not emotional/verbal abuse.
- And, honestly, even when there is physical danger, it may not happen right away. I would suspect that it probably doesn't most of the time. Abuse happens in cycles, and escalates into the physical. Sometimes physical danger related to coming out may take months to actually get to that point.
- Look up some guides on recognizing and dealing with emotional/verbal abuse. Look up the cycle of abuse. Look up gaslighting specifically. Read about it a lot, and then come back to this and try to integrate that.
- Incorporate affirmations of identity. Because the way the section that starts "Expect confusion or disbelief or pushback" is written now is... um, wildly inadequate to deal with gaslighting attempts. There are a lot of people who would respond to a person coming out as ace with a concerted effort to convince them they are not over months and years. They will pretend to be respectful for the purpose of one conversation, and then bring it up later to subtly attack, dismiss, discredit.
- And telling people to "make it clear" that it isn't a matter for debate/discussion... I mean, that's not something that abusive people are going to listen to at all. For a long time, my abuser specifically made it out like I was just Bad At Communicating. He was intentionally sabotaging conversations, redirecting everything I was trying to explain, and then telling me that I didn't make things clear. So... I don't know specifically how you should change that, but "make it clear" puts the responsibility on someone who is potentially a victim, without actually saying what specific steps you can take to reasonably expect that it should be clear. And not recognizing that there are potentially unreasonable expectations of "clarity" for manipulative people to latch onto as an excuse.
All right, I gotta get going. I'm sure I'll have more later.
"you probably don't want to go searching for really obscure ones for something that's supposed to be newbie-friendly."
Well, the more obscure ones are part of the point. Plus, it's interesting to me to see what people come up with. The post won't be totally newbie-friendly. That's not really the goal, but I wanted to at least make it somewhat more accessible.
"Why are people not talking about this all the time oh wait they were and it was annoying."
Lol. And yeah, that sense of difference when people talk about aesthetic attraction is part of why I make disctinctions between aesthetic attraction and aesthetic appreciation. Those are pretty distinct from one another for me, although that may be because actual attraction nearly always comes bundled with more than just aesthetics for me.
I'm pretty much with you on attraction types being inadequate for both introspection and public use.
Hmm... Maybe a thick ribbon might work for you? Like 1-2" wide, not pre-tied in a bow or anything but like... sewn fabric in a similar pattern and weight to match your ties? You could potentially even reuse tie fabric from a tie that has a small stain/damage on part of it or something, if you can sew or know someone who can help. I think it'd look nice to use something like that to tie some of your hair back in a half-ponytail, and wouldn't be overly feminine. I mostly associate that kind of hairstyle with (historical, not modern) men, but it works for anyone.
If a half ponytail is still too thick for that, you could twist (or braid if you have time) two sections on either side of your head and tie those back instead.
I'm imagining the ends of this ribbon to end in a > shape to match ties, too.
I haven't seen social attraction used much, just here but I get the impression it's more of a thing in the Spanish-language community?
Well okay, now I'm really confused because I see there's a post with 14 likes and only 5 participating... but I have seen posts with no comments where the participants are based on likes, so ???????
This site is mysterious and I'm starting to think there's a bug.
I think maybe there's a limit to how many participants will be displayed? Or maybe if you participate in a poll before you have chosen a name to use in the community, it won't actually list you as "participant"? I dunno, I don't get it either.
But, I can confirm that, if you click the heart you will be listed as a participant, if you comment you will be listed as a participant, and if you vote after having chosen a name, you will be listed as a participant regardless of whether you have liked or commented (and your avatar will appear).
Hmmmm, there should be an option for polls on this site to turn off "participants" listing, that would help for sensitive things like this.
Words cannot even begin to express how much I hate the over-reliance on facebook for everything. sigh I'm sorry you have to deal with all of that.
Okay, I just looked around and found this thread which might help.
I'm in the same boat! Also, I know this site is very much in-beta, and I know there are planned features that haven't been implemented yet, but I haven't found any way to easily figure out the status of what's planned for the future yet. So any help there would also be appreciated.
I've seen a LOT of different therapists. 5 counting individual sessions only, and 7 if you count group, which I will in this case because asexuality was relevant there too. Brace yourself, this will be LONG.
Therapist #1 was still getting certified and only somewhere between 5-10 years older than me. At the time asexuality was much less known, but she had no issues with it, and was queer herself so she understood a lot of the issues I was having with coming/being out to my family. However, because she was a university counselor, I could only have a very limited number of sessions with her per semester (I think it was 6?). I saw her off and on for a few years.
Therapists #2 and #3 were group therapy facilitators, rather than individual therapists. They were both accepting of asexuality, as was everyone else in the group (at least as far as I'm aware). They were also part of the university counseling center, and I saw them at the same time as #1. But per university policy, when I wasn't registered for the current semester, even if I was already registered for the following semester (i.e. during summer break), I couldn't see any of these therapists. So I had to try a local community clinic instead.
[tw: sexual assault, victim-blaming, coercion/pressure, focus on relationships to the exclusion of issues I was there to treat, general lack of trauma-competence] Therapist #4 was awful, awful, awful. Straight cis man from a sliding scale clinic, who just stared at me for ~10 minutes with this "I'm trying to be accepting" face (after him being 20 minutes late already, that was half the session gone). Pressured me to tell him the entire story of my sexual assaults on the very first visit. Then said "Well, let's work on being proactive so that won't happen again." WTF. He completely blew off asexuality when I mentioned it, he didn't even acknowledge it at all. He just started in with this victim-blaming BS. And he just... decided on a treatment plan without any input from me about what I was looking for at all. He was not even remotely trauma-competent, forget ace-competent. So I didn't go back.
There was another therapist in there after that guy, but I don't remember anything about them, other than mentioning asexuality and them going "Oh, what's that?" Then I found out I could see therapist #1 again, so I went back to her... until she moved away.
I decided not to risk therapy again for another few years, because a bad therapist can do so much more harm than just not having one at all. But... well, things eventually got bad enough that I felt I needed to try again (and not only that, but I was pressured to do so by my partner, since we were going through a rough spot at the time). So, I went to a local crisis center and had them get me an appointment (paid for by them) with...
Therapist #6. Also a bad experience, and I saw her for way longer than I should have, but I ignored my better judgment. She was an older straight cis woman who was roughly my mother's age. There were a lot of problems with her, but as far as asexuality goes, she seemed kind of okay? At first. At least overtly, she pretended to be okay with it even though she was kinda clueless. But she just... never seemed to really support me or help with what I was there to see her for. She kept interpreting everything as being about (as far as I can tell?) fixing my relationship. Once when I asked about ways to deal with anxiety, she spent the entire session ignoring anxiety and talking mainly about my partner instead, and then remembered anxiety at the end and just printed out some sheet with meditation techniques. She also pressured me to tell the whole story of my sexual assaults, saying that "just talking about it helps" (spoiler: it doesn't). The last straw came when I went to her one day after having had a fight with my partner, which I didn't want to focus on, but she started digging about it and wouldn't let go. By the end of the session I was convinced that she saw me as "the bad one" in my relationship and was trying to change me to fit what she thought my partner needed. She phrased it like I was "the one who is lashing out." I... really do not understand what that was about, because it does seem like it might have been connected to my asexuality, but the fight I'd had with my partner that day had nothing to do with any of that. SO ANYWAY, that ended with me crying in my partner's car (she picked me up after the session) and having her talk me down. [end tw]
I decided to give therapy ONE MORE SHOT. I went back to the crisis center and had them arrange an appointment with a different therapist.
I'm glad I did, because Therapist #7, my current therapist, has been ridiculously accepting and positive, and very experienced with/good about trauma. She had no idea about asexuality when I first went in there, but I've been able to educate her about that more extensively than any other therapist. She like, REALLY ENTHUSIASTICALLY wants to learn about it, to the point of arranging time out of session for it, and trying to teach other therapists/nurses/health professionals. Which is nice, but also unfortunately still a huge amount of emotional/mental labor for me, and I'd really rather not be in that position. But, I'm glad I can at least lessen the load for other aces. I think part of the reason she is so enthusiastic about learning about asexuality is that she recognized that some of her other clients might potentially be ace-spec as well, along with at least one of her friends. She's realized some of the things she used to do with her clients were really heteronormative, so she's adjusting how she does things.
My main issue with her is that she's really bad at understanding atheism, and often mentions stuff that I would consider woo, like astrology or essential oils or dog chiropractors (because apparently that's a thing?). And she has little understanding of scientific concepts like evolution (she once called asexuality "more evolved"). So it's definitely not a perfect fit... but in terms of both treating my trauma, and being accepting of asexuality (a prerequisite for treating the trauma), she has done better than any other therapist I've had (because while #1 was better about asexuality, she wasn't very experienced with trauma). And, she's also okay with poly stuff, which is another barrier I tend to have with therapists. The New Age stuff is annoying but considering the alternatives, I'll take it.
tl;dr: Very mixed bag.



Asexuals and Aromantics![Post deleted by author]Nov 22, 2016 at 2:56 PM

