Asexual Liberation – Vignette for Carnival of Aces March 2022

A/N: Prompt: “Which is the most urgent demand we need as asexuals to be protected?” The Carnival of Aces submissions post can be found here. CW: discussion of compulsory sexuality and a bad divorce.

Asexual Liberation

“Mrs Grimhaus?”

The summons froze Cassie in her seat. Ms! She didn’t say out loud. It’s Ms! The old, dead title from her old, dead life slipped like slime down her neck and spine and felt like it dripped into her shoes and left her feet cold, wet, sweaty. The old, hated name from her old, dead life made that old, hateful laugh of that wish-he-was-dead man resound in the back of her mind. When would the corpse of her past no longer be dragging along behind her? She had tried so many times, so many ways to cut the rope around her neck.

When she turned, Olga’s cornrows hung over the shoulder of the young man who’d called her. The relief of not having to correct anyone herself this time flooded her system, flushed out the ice clogging her veins. She trudged over to accept the intake paperwork. New specialist, same form.

She paused over the block asking for her marital status. She wavered between “single” and “divorced.” It felt wrong to be so defined by her past on a piece of paperwork. Ticking “single” was almost as bad. It felt like a lie, when she woke up to Peter’s smile and cuddles and stupidly tasty breakfast on the weekends, when she went mini-golfing with Minnie’s arms around her every other Friday. She swallowed, gave in, ticked the least-bad box.

Near the end of her visit, she sighed when that question came up. She knew testing for STDs was helpful for most people, but she hated where the question led. Every time. “No, I am not having sex.” Now, or ever again.

The psychiatrist frowned up at her over his glasses “It’s been quite some time since your divorce…?” The inquiry trailed off, more delicate than most about suggesting she needed to jump into bed with someone for her own health, or revenge, or proof of sexual freedom. “If you wish, I could give you a prescription?”

“It’s not…” She swallowed. Started again, going for something less defensive. “I’m asexual, it’s an orientation. There’s nothing wrong with my libido.” Hoped it was enough. Her sort were included in awareness training these days, weren’t they? They must be.

Oh no, not the pitying look. “I read in your file that the grounds for divorce were related-“

He stopped when she slammed both hands on his desk. Would she ever be free from that man? He could have gone for a no-fault divorce, but oh no, not mister ‘I put up with you so fulfill your conjugal duties.’ “Doctor Singh, would you tell a gay man to fuck women?” she asked, officially done with being polite.

He blanched. “Of course not, ma’am-“

“Then don’t tell me to fuck. Capiche?”

He apologised, asked her a few questions, and then he asked her for some resources, which was more than the last guy had done. She decided not to try for another specialist quite yet. Arguing with her insurance had been difficult enough to change to this one. Because it couldn’t be discrimination. There was no A in LGBT.

He shook her hand. “I’m so sorry,” he said again, “I can relate, even if not precisely. I’ll do some studying and be a little more prepared next time, hm? I’d never heard of it before.” He waved at himself, five feet of handsome Indian-American man, and at her tall, pale chubby self, while he talked.

She blinked in confusion, for a moment. Then, oh, right, racism. She felt very ashamed and very, very white, stuttered out a flustered and probably over-the-top thanks and sprinted out of the office. Had to hover awkwardly in the waiting room for her after-visit paperwork. Olga, with her pride-flag pin, handed it over with a wide smile and a wink. “I’ll talk to him and get him hooked up, alright? He’s a good egg.”

In the summary, her orientation read “Other*” with “Asexual” in the space for notes at the end of the section. Her eyes felt warm and her mouth as sweet as if she’d taken a big bite of red velvet cake. Her body floated out of the office, light and free, that man and her bad memories firmly in the past, where they belonged.

She started typing a new message to Minnie as she walked out of the hospital, into the Spring sunshine.

Carnival of Aces April 2021 Roundup Post

That’s a wrap for the April edition of the Carnival of Aces. Please check out Bring On The Pigeons where it will be hosted this May!

Ettina writes about how her plans for an lovely, unusual family have been further impacted by the pandemic in Elephant Family.

stephen-deadalus collaged thoughts in New Normal.

Feel free to add submissions, if you still have them, to this post in a comment!

Carnival of Aces, April 2021: Queering, Or Acing, a New Normal

March’s Carnival of Aces was hosted by Constance Bougie, on Dreams, the festival’s masterpost may be found on the Asexual Agenda.

Living alone, in the liminal space between hope and grief, I have found my principles and beliefs deeply challenged. The media keeps talking about a new normal, usually an exhortation not to expect the good old days to come back. Well. Not all was good. We are not the same. And our future does not happen to us, this is the rest of our life, not some stranger’s. So I wanted to take this month, at the start of the rush to open society back up, to take stock of where we may want to go. We have lived in strange times, which may have brought new experiences, or led your mind down odd paths, things for which you may not even have words, they are so… out there, other. Queer, one might say.

The asexual community contains a wide variety of lives and experiences, generates more new words for new experiences than I’ve ever seen. So, how has your unique perspective impacted you in the darkest year of our lifetime, and what does it mean for the life you mean to live?

This month’s theme: queering, or acing, a new normal.

Some questions to prompt you, feel free to add your own:

What is one thing that will not be part of your ‘new normal’?

Did your (a)sexuality have an impact on your life this past year that you’d like to keep up?

Has grief, loneliness and other emotions during this year had you to reconsider some aspect in your life?

How did you find your experience of your life, body and sexuality diverging from others and what do you plan to do with that?

What does coming out of lockdown mean for your life as a person on the asexual spectrum?

What plans or wishes have you made for the ‘new normal’, considering your (a)sexuality?

Feel free to leave (a link to) your contribution, in your preferred format (and pronouns please!), at the bottom of this post or email it to demiandproud@gmail.com.

Space For This Ace

This was (belatedly) written for the February 2021 Carnival of Aces: “Comparing Ace Spaces” by Ace Film Reviews.

Asexuality meant liberation for me. First, from compulsory sexuality in the shape of an ever-felt male gaze. My body felt so much more my own after that. Second, from needing to be heterosexual. I could go find out how my sexuality actually worked, and all that we associate with that in the broadest terms, how we touch each other, how we love each other, how we are intimate with each other.

Asexuality has also meant loneliness for me. No library held any books or articles about me. The internet held a handful of interviews in Dutch and Belgian women’s magazines. The women’s history centre in Amsterdam, Atria, was the only one I ever found some physical copies of articles. In its absence from Dutch, I was quietly taught to experience my asexuality in English. In its sole, marginal presence being in queer and feminist spaces, it taught me I needed to seek like-minded people there, only to be dismissed as a lesbian still half in denial. I find limited welcome in queer spaces.

Asexuality has also meant silence for me. When I discovered we were empowering ourselves by making up words for our experiences as we go along, I glommed onto that. If English words exist and are accepted, they are easily enough borrowed by Dutch. Queer, gender and nonbinair are now Dutch words, after all. There is not yet a good space for me in my language.

Asexuality has meant erasure for me. Several times have I come out to people who then forgot that I did, even after good, deep and long conversations. It’s like a word needs to be powered by belief, needs to be accepted enough, before it – and what it means – sticks in people’s mind. This is how I have known erasure, such effective wiping of queerness from mainstream society that people reflexively forget such an alien thing. Not maliciously. Not ignorantly. Just… I am too alien to comprehend. Too queer to contain, to retain, in the regular mind. I have a hard time making space for myself in my social circle, sometimes.

Asexuality has been almost solely online for me. Forums at first, but mostly I have ventured in and out of the English-language asexual blogosphere. Here, I’ve had most of my education. Here I’ve found some representation. My asexual space is online, in my second language, when I need it there.

I’m grateful what it has given me, but I would wish for more. I have recently started looking into expressing my ace self more, again, now I’ve also figured out more about my gender and romantic orientation, and am more at peace. I’m ready to try again to create space, where I find welcome. It’s just sometimes I’m sad that it needs to be created as I go along. It’s tiring and lonely work, sometimes, to be one of the first, in any space.

Albus Dumbledore, J.K. Rowling’s Ex-Gay

TW: Homophobia, transphobia, conversion therapy, purity culture.

J.K. Rowling’s 2008 proclamation that Albus Dumbledore was gay is usually contrasted with her trans-exclusionism, in the video essays and articles I have consumed on the topic, though her resistance to showing him as such in the Fantastic Beasts is seen as part of her journey to the dark side. In hindsight, I think rather the tragic celibate gay man should have been foreshadowing of her queerphobia, given the parallels with homophobic propaganda in conservative christian spheres.

Let us use this character as a magical introduction to the key role queer people are made to play in their own oppression, within purity culture. And why asexuality may serve as a long-awaited Finite.

I have read Harry Potter more often than I’ve read the bible. As a teen, I could quote the books the way serious bible-thumpers could pull out a verse for every occasion. It is our choices that make us who we are was the millenial confession of self-determination in the face of our elders’ overwhelming expectations. I bought paper and printer cartridges with pocket money so I could print out my favourite epic slash fiction to read on vacation, back when wireless internet was rare and smartphones were for adults. So my heart soared, along with millions of others, when Word of Rowling came down that, yes, canon contained a gay character, our beloved quirky mentor.

But on the threshold between 2020 and 2021, Albus Dumbledore reads like a conservative gay young man who fell for charismatic fascist Gellert Grindelwald. His ‘weakness’, same-sex attraction, led directly to the tragic death of an innocent maiden, his sister Ariana Dumbledore. After failing his family, he repented, too late, and forever after led the life of an eccentric celibate bachelor who guides bright young minds to lead a better life than he did. He denounced all sexual activity in order to focus on working for the greater good.

At the end of his life, he personally mentors a promising, powerful young man, Harry Potter, who was mistreated because he was different, because a similar young man, Tom Marvolo Riddle, that he ignored, became an evil terrorist like his one-and-only love. So he guides Harry Potter into a life of heroic sacrifice that will kill the evil inside of him. Harry survives to live in middle-class bliss with a wife and children. Harry himself mentors his son Albus Severus Potter who is also, y’know, different, away from his best friend in the whole world, Scorpius Malfoy, in the sequel. Albus’ legacy lives on.

A queer person who grows up in purity culture today will be told they aren’t evil. No! Instead, God gave them a great challenge to overcome, same-sex attraction or maybe the feeling of being born in the wrong body. They might hear Jackie Hill Perry, (a queer woman of colour, sarcastic exclamation mark!) from Gay Girl, Good God give the testimony of how she chooses to live a heterosexual life. An older queer christian might point them towards therapy or offer informal counseling that, yes, is indeed a form of conversion therapy.

As Albus Dumbledore guided Harry Potter to nobly sacrifice his life to kill the horcrux inside of himself, that evil embodied by Tom Riddle, queer Christians only need to sacrifice their queer selves so they can live happily-ever-after. Every church will tell a queer person they are welcome. Most say so in the belief that welcoming the queer person is the first step in changing them ‘for the better’. This approach is codified in the doctrine Love the sinner, hate the sin. The repentant queer person has the starring role, as both road map and trojan horse. Save the person, kill the gay (or trans), and be granted the blessed living death of never coming out and never transitioning.

Looking back, Albus Dumbledore reads a lot like J.K. Rowling’s trying to give an ex-gay man a redemption arc like he needs it. He even kills the innocent white woman in his care, the capital crime in western literature. He – as the sole queer character from Harry Potter – sure looks like a precursor to Rowling’s transgender serial killer in that light. The difference being that Dumbledore was portrayed as (debatably) redeemed, and saving other ‘different’ young men from a life of evil. Finally victorious, posthumously, in Harry.

In all this, note that celibacy, or the not having (queer) sex, has become the crowning mark of salvation for the queer person, to modern purity culture. Note, too, that virginity, the not having of sex, is the more traditional mark of the virtuous young white woman. Abstinence, the not having of extra-marital sex, is the gold standard for the heterosexual person. The central conceit of purity culture is that lust is the most powerful force of evil and thus controlling it, by strict rules, lifestyle and yes, choice, leads to the eponymous purity. The intra-marital sex is the (heterosexual) reward this side of heaven.

Asexuality undermines that central conceit. It queers sexual attraction – lust – by making a spectrum of orientations for it. It centers consent and attraction in the choice to have sex. One’s attitude towards sex becomes a matter of feeling favour, indifference or aversion. Sexual ethic is framed as being positive or negative towards sex happening in general. Sexual activity is based on whether you choose to engage in that intimacy, on what feels good, on whether you’re trying to have children, on what you’d like to try, to see how it feels. Y’know, while safe, sane and consensual. Sexual violence is just violence, no excuses or titillation. It even questions the necessity and quality of that holiest-of-holies, intra-marital sex. People cannot be pure or fallen, only agents of good and evil. Our choices make us who we are.

Us asexual transgender people sure make a lie out of J.K. Rowling’s idea that we’re predators chasing after them innocent white ladies. I only wish for queer-platonic cuddles with consenting ladies. And other persons. Of all skin tones.

Finite incantatem. The illusion is broken.

Ariana was never the virginal victim of Albus’ sin, but a young woman whose life was cut short before she could become sexually active. Albus’ implied celibacy, after his one crush on Gellert, is only the mark of a deeply closeted conservative gay man who had a deeply traumatic experience, but who ought not get to dictate how we live our lives.

Honestly… I’m glad Dumbledore’s homosexuality is never portrayed in the Fantastic Beasts movies. Considering our luck, his making moon-eyes at Grindelwald would immediately be followed up by Ariana’s dying, with a clear causal relation. Representation as good as Castiel’s instant trip to Superhell after coming out, with none of the meme potential.

Queerness Quarantined

For the May edition of the Carnival of Aces: Quarantine.

It seemed, one day to the next, the queer spaces I used to go in various personas had been taken away in one fell swoop. At home, at home I was private. What did I have to express there?

I forgot, for two months, I need to express gender to myself, as well. As much as thoughts sometimes need writing down in a journal to take their full form, though they already existed inside my head.

As the shade of the plague shows the first signs of waning, I start with jewelry. Only what is ambiguous, chunky or functional I keep out. All femme decorations I pack up for the year.

Clothes are selected to leave me only what is comfortable and what crosses gender lines in my eyes. The rest I put into boxes. I corner myself on the queer end of my gender spectrum, where I’ve been hesitant to go.

For the pièce de resistance, a proper binder. It arrives in the mail on the tailcoat of May. I unroll its not-quite-too-much tightness over my shoulder. It suits me ill, a too-short crop top, until I discover I need to do some repositioning for an even distribution of squashing across the chest.

Just to try, I button a shirt over it. Perfect. I can at least experiment with this while all I can do is zoom.

It’s a highlight in what has been a dark time. While it’s hard to be horny when I’m both on the asexual spectrum and indifferent to the having of sex, my skin has ached since the first press conference announcing we needed to keep a metre and a half distant from one another.

This time has shown the sharp contrast between the fulfillment of aesthetic attraction – that draw towards a person that is assuaged by the sight and sound of them – and the more sensual, which I have no way to indulge with anyone, platonic or romantic.

It has also revealed the importance of a desire – sometimes attraction, sometimes not – for which I have no name – for the actual company of those I like and love. It is a desire that is no respecter of relationship categories. More than ever, I see why love is mostly just… love. From the first inkling for new persons to the bedrock it’s for those I hold most dear.

Lingering Among Lingerie

My cross purpose
Among the padding
To seek the opposite
For the days when less
Is right

We are guided to think
I discover, by selection
If a majority shouts pretend
To have larger breasts
Women will

I can’t forage for bargains
Choice is no longer spoilt
Instead you are precious
I, a treasure hunter. New
Role to play

Revealed in the practice
A body chafes, sweats, itches
Needs care in the fabric
That dresses her in their
Other form

I feel freshly apprenticed
Finished the introduction
This shopping trip only
Chapter two of much
Studying

Gender expression, even
Broken into body parts
Is scales, not binaries
I seek to buy inbetweens
Today

Days curves displease
Flesh resists the binding
Form and comfort meet
In layers of cotton
Compromise

I happen upon you
One department over
Advertised as sportswear
But I will buy you to sleep
Easier

On A Roll

A/N NOT comfortable.

I do this in parts
On the quiet days I can fall apart
It’s the weekend. It’s the morning
It will be hours until the dawn

My face can drip dry
As dishes do
In dark of night

I sit in tailor’s pose
Call it cross-legged
Knees and elbows out
The impression of a man

Belly up
Crotch exposed
Back curled over them
Gaze starts at the navel
Down

Roomy underwear
In washed-out black
Faded cotton that forgives

Sweat runs down saturated cotton
Dampens even the place I sit because

This roll of socks?

No.

Time for a heel-turn
Back to the drawing board
Toss these tainted things out
To be purged in a hot white wash

What Masculinity?

I come across a mental barrier in my exploration of gender. Namely, that when I ask myself “how about exploring masculinity?” my brain comes back with “what masculinity?” and throws up a handful of examples of toxic instances of masculinity I do not even wish to touch. Yet, this is the road I see before me, to pick up elements of masculinity to see if they suit.

Riley J. Dennis mentions in her “Everyday Feminism” series* that the word ‘gender’ comes from the same root as ‘genre’. This was a productive thought for me, one that I brought me a little further in this dilemma. Genres, after all, have some characteristics that would be well-suited to helping me understand genders as non-binary:

• They are distinct, but not mutually exclusive
• They are based on, but not limited to, a set of tropes
• They are suited to telling, and classifying, particular stories or experiences
• New ones may be introduced
• Existing ones often evolve
• These categories are constructed for the market, the classroom and to talk about sets of stories
• They can be subverted or critiqued
• They have gatekeepers

If masculinity, or rather masculinities, is a genre with a set of subgenres, then one may be found that I am comfortable exploring and it would add to, rather than contradict, the rest of my sense of gender. However, I think about gender as genre and complications immediately come to mind:

• Stories often present a rigid binary
• Essentialism prevails
• Classifications are prescriptive, not descriptive of lived experiences
• Modern masculinities seem not to exist, in stories
• Existing masculinities do not seem allowed to evolve
• Gender is presented as ‘natural’ and conflated with biological sex
• Any subversion or critique is met with hostility and violence
• Online, the alt-right is setting itself up as the one true gatekeeper

Note that the above describe my personal experience through the lens of this particular conceit, not fact. But I do believe it is sufficient to illustrate a trend. One that I find singularly counterproductive, dammit.

The irony is that I have started to see surprisingly parallels between what’s prescribed for ‘woman’ and ‘man’, among self-proclaimed defenders of binary gender roles, especially that of ‘man’. It’s perhaps most easily illustrated by their attitude towards sexuality. The campaign for control over women’s bodies is matched by a campaign for control over men’s bodies by other men. Centred on forbidding masturbation and forcing sexual conquest, rather than forcing reproduction and forbidding sexual activity. Hatred of the other, whether that’s women, queer persons, persons of other countries or religions, is matched by self-hatred.

Can you see the inversion of the great commandment (love others as you love yourself), or the golden rule, if you will?

This leaves me hesitant to even enter that politicised poisoned mental minefield.

Feminist thought isn’t much help, since it seems more concerned with circumscribing traditional masculinity than proposing a new masculinity.

Neither does circumspectly asking men what being a good man is like, since the answer often boils down to “I grew up and became less of an impulsive idiot.” A surprising problem with straight, white men (which all of the ones I can ask are) being the default is that they regard their lived experience as just that of people, not men. Which means it doesn’t tell me much about where their stories may be distinct.

So here I am, the trailing end of the spectrum of my gender in hand, unexplored territory ahead of me, with no good map for guidance. I cannot leave these thoughts alone because I have first-hand stake in this now, even if it’s only with a part of myself, even if it’s new, even if it’s small and secret and private.

So I keep asking, what masculinity?

*I do not remember the particular video, but it’s an educational series: https://everydayfeminism.com/author/rileyd/

A Private Performance

You sit on your bed, stalling
Here, here is the line
You have swung, before
Across the full spectrum of womanhood
Found it wide and wild and good but
An end, trailing
Of the spectrum that is you

Do I cross to follow?

Butler and you were wrong
You were bound up in performance
Clothes according to the feeling of the day
Manners and fantasies and thoughts
Did you disregard the start
The feeling
From inside, calling

Do I cross to follow?

I am woman, have been
Forever settled, yet unsettlingly
Not full
The moon she is not full
She is gibbous
After first quarter, growing

Do I cross to follow?

You sit on your bed, stalling
It’s so small in your hands
Will it even fit over your head
Wrestling hook by hook by hook
A minute later, familiar
A sports bra without foam triangles
Instead, one panel across the front

I pause

You sit on your bed, breathing
Let your belly blow up, balloon
And hold and let it smooth out
Deep. Your feet on the floor, rooted
Deep. To the bottom of your lungs
Down. The exhale streaming
Shoulders sag

I wobble

You stand beside your bed, breathing
Today seemed like a good day
Home sick, the rain unceasing
If you were going to be miserable
You were already miserable today
It’s not a vest, not a corset
Familiar elastic cradles your ribs
Until

I cross my arms

No soft round flesh presses down, oh
So odd, this space above your forearms
You mimic drawing a bow and arrow
Amazonians bubbling to the surface
Mind collecting new connections
For new sense memory, new
Excuses and disguises, the enabler
If you dare go outside at all

I cross the hallway to the bathroom

Far enough today, the sight
Amusing all of the sudden, pecs
When you have never worked out
The gym the slim woman’s domain
Clothes, chosen with ritual care
As you do for formal occasions
Jeans, a unisex T-shirt you hate
Normally, no good on a woman

This is as far as I cross

You do not look at your face today
But your shoulders are fascinating
Broader, bracketing a flat surface
Below the fat distribution’s a bit…
That’s work for another day
No constriction. Deep breath

I back down

In the bedroom you undress
Pyjamas and blankets pressing down
You burrow. It was fine. Surprisingly
Familiar. Surprisingly fine.