Saturday 9 July 2011

Days 3 and 4 of 30 Day Asexuality Challenge.

Right, doing two days at once because I spent yesterday at a medieval tournament and then at a party, thus having no time to write a blog post.

3. How old were you when you realized you were asexual? What made you realize it?

I'd just turned 17 when I realised I was Asexual. Before that, I’d known I was different, known that the usual plans of ‘Get a job, find a husband and settle down with 2.5 kids’ weren’t what I was aiming for.* (For a while I actually assumed I was lesbian, mostly because I knew I wasn’t attracted to guys. At that stage it was “don’t want to shag guys, but you’ve got to want to shag someone so I must want to shag girls.” I dropped that idea fairly quickly though, since I could clearly feel it didn’t really fit. I then decided that I'd just live by myself, and fuck what the world thought.) I realised I was asexual because I came across the word, and googled it. The more I read about it, the more I realised “That’s me. That’s me that’s me that’s me, I’m not a freak.”


4. Do you identify as a part of the queer community? What communities do you identify with?

I reservedly identify with the queer community. That is, I identify more with the queer community than I do with the straight.

Other communities I identify with are the Ace community, fandom, and my uni community, particularly the Hive, which is my uni’s games design/animation club.
I identify with the ace community for obvious reasons. I identify with the ace community because there’s a whole bunch of people out there that know what I’m going though, that are probably struggling with the same things I am. There are people out there that, when I say “This makes no sense, wtf are people talking about?” will respond with “IKR? Have some cake** instead***”

 I identify with fandom because, at heart, I am an utter geek. I get excited by geeky things, and I do geeky things (like sew Cthulhu shaped scarves, and bake nyan cat cookies).

 I identify with my uni club because we’re just a bunch of people, studying games design and animation, who like to hang out and have fun together. We also do life drawing, which is a whole lot of fun as well as being required for our courses.


*I can remember a time in primary school where the class was talking about what we wanted ‘when we grew up’. There were the usual things, like what you wanted as a job, and then there was “What do you want your family to be like? What do you want your wedding to be like? How many kids do you want to have?” I can remember answering them with “I want to live either with some friends or by myself, in a house with a big library. I don’t want to get married. I don’t want a husband or wife. I don’t want kids.” I also remember talking with my teacher about my answer, a discussion which went along the lines of “You can’t live with your friends, and you shouldn’t live by yourself. You have to live with your husband. It’s good you want a library. When you grow up you’ll want to have a huge wedding. You can’t have a wife. You will want kids.” To which I responded “Just watch me. You can’t make me do anything.” I was a somewhat belligerent child.

** because I know there's a couple of people reading this who will not understand the significance of giving cake, specifically this one, let me try to explain.  On the AVEN boards many years ago, it was declared that 'Cake>sex'. Since then, cake has been offered as congratulations, in sympathy, when someone has done something particularly ace, when the sky is blue...

It's kinda an in-joke. (This also explains it somewhat.)

***Not to say that I don’t love it when my friends respond to me saying that with “Can we try and explain?” I do, and I thank them so much for doing that. It’s just nice to know that I’m not the only one totally befuddled by things which everyone is expected to know/feel/understand.

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