As an Asexual, I Find the Idea of Grey(a)sexuality Useful

In Siggy’s piece <a href="http://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/many-ways-to-be-between/"'Many Ways to Be Between', he defines gray-As and demisexuals to be people for whom ‘asexual’ is not an an accurate description, but still find asexuality a useful idea.

In the same sense, I, as someone for whom ‘asexual’ currently is an accurate description, find the idea of grey-(a)sexuality useful.

First of all, I think, from the age of 15-19, it would have been more accurate to label myself as ‘grey-asexual’, and when I first considered self-identifying on the ace-spectrum, I considered calling myself ‘gray-asexual’. However, over the past five years or so, I haven’t really experienced sexual attraction, so for my current state, ‘asexual’ seems to be the more accurate label/identity. However, having a word for my situation as a teenager makes it easier to understand my own experiences, and to see that there was a change.

However, I think the most useful thing about the concept of gray-Aness is that it frees me to be whatever I am.

I haven’t had any encounters with external asexual-police (probably because I’ve never joined AVEN or Tumblr, the two centers of online ace-spectrum communities), but I do have an internalized asexual-police officer, who sometimes questions whether I’m really asexual enough to be ‘asexual’. Did I think about sex for a minute? INFRACTION OF THE ASEXUAL CODE!!!!

Of course, any definition of heterosexual beyond ‘heterosexual unless proven otherwise [with ridiculously high standards of evidence]‘ (aka heteronormativity) does not fit me either – it didn’t even fit me as a teenager. So if my internalized asexual-police officer declared me unfit to be asexual, well then, I would be erased from the map.

Ah, but I can’t be erased from the map, because of the buffer-zone of gray-Aness. If, somehow, I do get disqualified from the asexual-club, but am not still qualified to enter the heterosexual club (and I seriously doubt I will ever qualify for that membership), that’s okay, because it just means I’ve become a gray-A (again).

In short, I don’t have to worry about whether or not I’m ‘asexual’ enough or not because, no matter how my sexuality (or lack thereof) expresses itself, I know that I will always fit in somewhere. So I can just chill, and be myself.

To the extent possible under law,
the person who associated CC0
with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring
rights to this work.

Why do I take a ‘male’ approach to dressing up? Because I’m an ace.

This is a contribution for the May 2013 Carnival of Aces: Appearances.

In both Taiwan and the United States, young women are expected to dress up and look nice and appealing, whereas young men are only expected to dress for comfort and cleanliness (and sometimes not even cleanliness).

As I’ve discussed before, I do ‘femme’ up my appearance for work, but generally participate in fashion like a young man rather than a young woman – I dress for comfort and cleanliness, not for attractiveness.

I even approach the special occasions when I do want to increase my visual appeal more like a man than a woman. Women are allowed to look like they are trying to look more attractive, while men have to look more attractive WITHOUT looking like they are trying.

Take make-up for example. It’s OK if a woman looks like she’s using make-up to improve her appearance, but it’s not OK for a man to look like he’s using make-up to improve his appearance. Therefore, a man has to be much more careful and subtle in his use of make-up.

When I wear make-up, I approach it like a man, even though I know that, as a woman, I am socially allowed to apply make-up more bluntly. I used to say that it was because I enjoyed the challenge of improving my appearance without the make-up being obvious … but that’s not the truth. The truth is that I don’t want people to think that I am using make-up to improve my appearance. Just like a man.

I think this because I am asexual.

In both Taiwanese and US society, it’s men’s job to initiate sexual encounters, and it’s women’s job to be as sexually appealing as possible so they can attract as wide a set of men as possible. I, however, don’t want to get sexual offers from anybody. Therefore, I do not want people to think I am putting effort into increasing my visual appeal, even when that is exactly what I’m doing.

Even when I deliberately make my appearance more feminine for work, my target is to look more feminine, not more attractive. Unfortunately, that’s considered a bit of a contradiction since part of being feminine in the mainstream sense is trying to look attractive, so I often just happen to be more ‘attractive’ just by looking more feminine, but that’s not intentional.

This, by the way, is mostly subconscious for me. I don’t go out thinking ‘I am going to approach fashion more like a young man than a young woman’. It just comes naturally to me. Actually making my appearance look feminine, or deliberately trying to increase my visual appeal, is what requires a deliberate choice on my part. And I think it comes naturally because that is how my asexuality expresses itself.

To the extent possible under law,
the person who associated CC0
with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring
rights to this work.

The Lack of *Public* Sexual Harassment in Taiwan…

Trigger Warning: sexual harassment and rape culture

A few weeks ago, I read “Being in Public While Female, and though Jo says that she doesn’t face nearly as much street harassment as some other women, when she described the harassment she has faced, my reaction was ‘whoa, that’s a lot’ (as well as ‘that’s incredibly messed up’).

During my time in Taiwan, I haven’t seen a single instance of sexual harassment in public, and the only sexually intimidating behavior I’ve observed was committed by foreign men, not local men.

While I have read a lot of stories about women being sexually harassed in public in South Korea and Japan, I have not read such stories about Taiwan.

Does that mean that Taiwanese men are totally respectful of women and their bodily boundaries?

Unfortunately, the short answer is ‘no’.

I think there’s a lack of public sexual harassment because expressing oneself sexually in public is taboo in Taiwan.

Based on my observation, holding hands is the limit to how much physical affection people can display in public places.

One time, I went through ‘breast rubbing alley’ while some young men were inside. I timed my entry into the alley deliberately so that I would encounter them inside the alley, because I was curious as to whether they would actually rub my breasts. What happened? They contorted their bodies so they kept the greatest distance from me possible, and when I pointed out we were in ‘breast-rubbing alley’, one guy replied that he didn’t dare touch my breasts.

In the United States, I think that the young men would have, at the minimum, made lewd comments.

It’s worth noting that most of the ways to say that a man is sexually promiscuous in Mandarin are insulting (though not as insulting as the ways to say that a woman is promiscuous). In Chinese-speaking cultures, it’s something which should be kept private, not flaunted in public. This is quite different from American culture, where bragging about one’s ‘sexual conquests’ is a way for men to show off their status.

I know that, unfortunately, rape culture is alive and ‘well’ in Taiwan. It’s merely less obvious from the outside because of the taboos on displaying sexuality in public. While that spares me harassment in the street, it’s no help to the people suffering sexual abuse behind closed doors.

To the extent possible under law,
the person who associated CC0
with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring
rights to this work.

April 2013 Carnival of Aces ‘The Next Generation’: Round-Up

April is over, and quite a few people shared their thoughts on ‘the next generation’ for the Carnival of Aces.

In chronological order:

Amy Pond has a hope for the future.

I rambled.

Carmilla DeWinter writes about her legacy.

Warren has something to say about education.

Victrix reflects on what increased visibility might do for asexuals.

Barnacle Strumpet has a different take on what increased visibility might do for asexuals.

Ace of Liminal Space discusses what ace activists should do to change the media and education.

Hezekiah the (meta)pianycist comments on how to treat young teens who adopt an ace-spectrum identity.

A big thank you to everybody who contributed!

If there are any mistakes, please leave a comment on this post or email AprilCarnivalOfAces@thenotes.e4ward.com (temporary address).

In the mean time, watch out for the May 2013 Carnival of Aces.

On Privilege and Fraud

I could use racism, sexism, or classism to make my point about privilege and fraud. But today, for Blogging Against Disability Day, I’m going to use ableism/disablism to make my point.

In Anglophone cultures, when somebody says ‘I have a disability’, unless it’s really obvious, the default reaction is that they are lying. Got fibromyalgia? Then you must be making it up because you’re too lazy to work (note: this is sarcasm).

This is why every disability benefit system I know about puts a strong emphasis on finding ‘fraud’. If a single person were to fraudulently get disability benefits, that would be THE MOST TERRIBLE THING EVER, and we should spend lots of money to prevent fraud, even if it costs way more than letting a few people fraudulently get some meager benefits (more sarcasm).

But what about catching fraud among privileged people, such as abled, white, rich men? Such as the abled, white, rich men who run the financial centers in the City of London and on Wall Street?

Not a single financial regulator I know about puts nearly as much effort into catching fraud as disability benefits agencies, in spite of the fact that catching fraud is part of the core mission of many financial regulators. The core mission of a disabilities benefits agency, ideally, is to help people with disabilities.

In fact, many financial regulators try to protect the nice, abled, white, rich men from having their frauds discovered, because it would be a shame if those nice, abled, white, rich men were caught committing fraud, or, *gasp* got prosecuted (more sarcasm). For just ONE example of this, look at the free eBook at Naked Capitalism about the foreclosure review scandal.

This is partially due to corruption – rich men can bribe politicians, people with disabilities who are broke (there is a high correlation between poverty and having a disability) can’t. But the financial oligarchs also exploit ableism/disablism to re-direct anger away from them to people with disabilities.

The current global economic crisis was largely caused by the fraud in the world’s major financial centers – i.e. rich white man fraud. But somehow they have made the case that a major cause of the financial array is all those greedy people with disabilities (I find it incredible how people with high positions in the world’s most powerful financial firms can claim that people who try to get meager government benefits are greedy – it’s the pot calling the porcelain vase black).

And because we live in an abeleist culture, many people buy this nonsensical argument, and direct the anger which should be aimed at the frausters in the major financial centers at people with disabilities instead.

They’ve even managed to use corruption to steal the benefits of people with disabilities by finding ‘fraud’ that doesn’t exist. A big example is ATOS, which makes big profits telling people who are so sick that they are about to die that they are ‘fit to work’.

Ableism (and racism and sexism and classism) shields privileged fraudsters from accountability. And because they face less accountability, it is they, not the oppressed people who are assumed to be lying until proven otherwise, who have much more incentive to cheat.

And I think that is one reason why ableism (and racism and sexism and classism) persist – it is very useful to the people in power.

To the extent possible under law,
the person who associated CC0
with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring
rights to this work.

The Amazing Chain of Human Reproduction

Human reproduction truly is the irresistable force meets the unmovable object. The ‘irrestistable force’ is ‘survival of the fittest’, and the ‘unmovable object’ is ‘reliably putting together something as complex as a human being’. There are so, so, so many things which can go wrong in human reproduction, that it’s astonishing that it is so frequently successful.

Here a partial list of the links in the chain of human reproduction:

- Sexual attraction
- Sex drive
- Sexual attractiveness
- Fertility
- Potency
- Supporting the growth of a fetus …
- … without killing the mother
- Childbirth
- Romantic attraction (to keep people together long enough to care for a child for a few years)
- Romance drive
- Breastfeeding (or altenatives)
- Intent to biologically reproduce (this is more cruial when effective birth control is available)

Many people who want biological children do run into problems in at least one of these links … because complex processes have high rates of failure.

At the same time, evolution pushes reproduction pretty fiercely, so that many people who don’t want biological children sometimes end up with a pregnancy. The only birth control method that comes with a 100% guarantee of no pregnancy is castration (though interuterine devices, vasectomies, and in some circumstances, abstinence, come pretty close to 100%). Most birth control methods try to weaken or interfere with the chain – only castration breaks it.

It is suspected that men in my father’s family tend to have low sperm counts, and my own father was declared infertile as a young man. The fact that men in my father’s family tended to have few or no children even without birth control is evidence. Yet some men in my father’s family obviously managed to have biological children, including my ‘infertile’ father – low sperm count does not mean zero sperm count. Even with that loose link in the chain, the other links in the chain kept biological reproduction happening – for example, according to the comments of various people, handsome looks (i.e. sexual attractiveness) also run in my father’s family.

Based on the history of the women in my family, I most likely have at least an average level of fertility, possibly higher, and right now, my level of sexual attractiveness is high. In my case, the loose links are my lack of sexual and romantic attraction, as well as low sex and romance drives. I can, if I want to, compensate for this link with willpower (i.e. use the ‘intent to biologically reproduce’ chain) … but most people don’t have to use so much willpower to get the biological reproduction process started.

Looking at the system in abstract, it is a marvel. The chain compensates for the links which will inevitably come loose in a complex system by pushing for as many strong links as possible.

Of course, this isn’t entirely abstract for living people. It shapes our society, our relationships, our bodies, and our feelings, in short, our existence.

To the extent possible under law,
the person who associated CC0
with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring
rights to this work.

Can we reserve ‘sleep with’ for when we literally mean ‘sleep with’?

Open Letter to Users of the English Language,
CC: Users of Mandarin (every point in this letter applies to Mandarin, and I suspect it also applies to other Chinese languages)

Dear Users of the English Language,

I know that I can’t seriously ask over a billion people to change the way they use English just to please me, but I still wish to make a little request.

How about we say ‘sleep with’, ‘get in bed with’, etc. … when we LITERALLY mean it.

As it, let’s stop using it mainly as a pseudo-euphemism for sex.

I have never had sex with anybody. I have, however, slept with people. Those are two distinctly different actions.

I have to be careful about how I talk about sleeping with people so that people don’t assume that I mean that I did something sexual with them. By itself, that wouldn’t be a big deal, and if that was all that was going on, I wouldn’t bother writing this letter.

However, this idea that ‘sleep with’ almost always means ‘have sex with’ ties into sexual supremacy, and as an asexual, I am not on the priveleged end of this specific hierarchy. It erases and discounts non-sexual interation, such as sleeping next to somebody else.

In addition to being asexophobic, ‘sleep with’ as a pseudo-euphemism is also, ironically, sex-negative. It supports the idea that sex is so shameful that you can’t actually say ‘have sex with’. This cocktail of sexual supremacy AND sexual shame is precisely why ‘sleep with’ is assumed to mean ‘have sex with’ – if either the sexual supremacy OR the sexual shame were absent, most people would assume that ‘sleep with’ is meant literally unless otherwise indicated.

The fact that the default meaning of ‘sleep with’ is ‘have sex with’ also ties into rape culture. Part of rape culture is that, if men and women sleep together, there must be sex, and that by consenting to sleep with a man, a woman is automatically consenting to sex. As a woman who has slept with men, will probably sleep with men in the future for convenience, but has no intention of having sex with them, this particular wrinkle is very disturbing.

From now on, aside from potential poetic metaphors, I will only use ‘sleep with’, ‘get in bed with’ etc. in the literal sense. When I mean ‘have sex with’, I will say ‘have sex with’. I request that you do the same.

Thanks,
The Notes Which Do Not Fit