Content Note: Reference to sexual assault, but no specifics
The moral of the story in the previous post is that people tend to confuse compulsory with necessary.
There were other students at my high school who found ways to work around compulsory classes, but we were a minority. Most students only made limited attempts to challenge any compulsory classes which were giving them problems.
This extends into life, in which most people accept the pre-existing patterns they observe and don’t want to change them without a very compelling reason. For example, in my first story, my aunt observed that no ordinary person seems to ever get through to those bureaucrats, and thus gave up on trying to reach them before she even tried.
The tendency to accept the status quo is not necessarily bad. It probably plays an important role in maintaining social stability. Unfortunately, once something harmful gets fossilized into status quo, the tendency to support the status quo entrenches the harmful habit.
So I ask again … what reason do you have to NOT climb up a tree at 1 AM?
I’m guessing the reason is it’s simply not a habit for you (though you might have other reasons).
However, some things which has been fossilized into the social status quo is that “everybody” has sex, “everybody” everyone is going to be in a “committed relationship”, and “everybody” in “committed relationships” have sex with each other.
This is harmful to asexuals (as wells as plenty of other people).
Because it’s been fossilized into the status quo, people who don’t want sex look for reasons to not have it, instead of people getting reasons to have sex before having sex, and not feeling any inclination to have sex before there are compelling reasons. As I said it in this surprisingly popular post, having sex has become something people have to opt out of not, not something which people opt into in the first place.
Sometimes people force another person to have sex against their will. Sometimes people (unintentionally or intentionally) put another person into such a position that it becomes difficult for them to refuse sex they don’t want, even if said person thinks compulsory sexuality is bullshit. And, based on reading a lot of writing by ace-spectrum people, quite a few people who don’t want sex internalize the idea that they are going to have sex anyway because that’s what “everyone” does.
The victims of the first and second scenarios shouldn’t have to – and probably can’t – save themselves. It’s the perpetrators who ought to change, not the victims.
However, the people in the third scenario – the ones who have internalized compulsory sexuality – can get out of this themselves. For those people – as well as people who might become perpetrators in scenario 1 or 2 for that matter – I offer this…
If you don’t need a reason to justify not climbing up a tree at 1 AM, why should people need a reason to justify not having sex?
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And yes, I did climb a tree at 1 AM in the morning when I was 15 years old. Sleep deprivation impairs my judgement, and sometimes makes me giddy as well. Somebody else had already climbed up the tree, and invited me to join them, and I thought it was a swell idea. I stayed up there for about an hour.
The Notes Which Do Not Fit 