I'm baaaaaaaaaack

Kind of. I don't really know when or if I'll be making a lot of posts in the future, but I do, in fact, have some ideas, so... maaaaaybe. But I did write this up on my phone in the wee hours of the morning!

Today marks my 20th birthday, as you probably did not know and the world could care less about. However, I mark this as a special occasion, not simply for the enthralling fact that that is not one, but two decades, but also because it marks approximately three years since I began identifying in various circles as asexual. Since many in this world have taken it upon themselves to dismiss that there are, in fact, asexual people in this world, and I have already devoted all nine minutes of my birthday to contemplating this matter, I decided it was time to try to think up another story detailing how I came to settle upon asexuality and perhaps a clever metaphor to accompany it.

First off, it has always appeared to me, from the moment that the idea of different sexualities made itself apparent to me, that any discrimination or denial thereof is absolutely absurd. As unappealing as the idea of sticking various things in various holes and the fluids involved therein was to me at the time, I didn't see why anything any consenting adults did with each other in their spare time should be anyone else's business. I just preferred scrabble. It didn't occur to me until later in high school that my disinterest in the Great Pursuit could be in itself a sexual orientation. I actually first learned about asexuality about two years before I began to identify as such--not so much because I had reason to believe that I was not asexual, but because I honestly didn't think my own orientation strange or important enough to identify as anything. It wasn't until my increased knowledge of sexual practices and people's insane concern over sex later on in high school that I began to take my (a)sexuality seriously.

Things have changes greatly since then. Almost immediately after I began identifying, I stopped being repulsed by the idea of sex--even the idea of trying it myself in some strange future. Even so, I recently gave up identifying as heteroromantic after many a year of aromatic sentiment. I still am asexual as ever though. My outlook on sex has changed completely and I still can't conceive of myself being sexually attracted.

It's not that I think it would feel bad (though it would still he painfully awkward); it's just that even if I did greatly desire sex, I would be out in the cold trying to identify the proper person to partake in said act with. I don't have anything, physically or mentally, that perks up and pays attention when someone I find "sexy" is nearby. I can "oh" and "ah" over how pretty someone is, but I don't have an impulse to get that person into my bed (it is a pretty small bed, after all).

This is where your lovely little metaphor comes into play. Let's say that having sex is like listening to music. For the sake of our metaphor, let's say that people typically only acknowledge two kinds of genres: pop and rock. There's actually a whole lot of genres out there, and things that don't fall into any genre, but for the most part, people dismiss that weird stuff (HAHA I AM MAKING A GENDER REFERENCE DID YOU NOTICE). Anyone that's lived in the world long enough tends to hear enough little snippets of music to get an idea of what genre if music they like by the time they grow up. In magical-metaphor land, people start really getting into music at a certain age. They start doing all sorts of things, like buying albums and going to concerts and all that. Most people are into pop music, and while a lot, if not most people are understanding of those heathenistic rockers, there are still many that think anything other than pop is just heinous (and why do rockers have to be so flamboyant?). As for those other genres--those are right out!

However, there are a few in the crowd that never really got all that into music at all. They grew up thinking it was kind of weird that people made such a big deal out of it. Some of them were actually tired of hearing it so much on the radio--it was like it had been shoved down their throats since birth! If these people told the music lovers, though, they would be told all sorts of things, like "You just haven't heard the right band", "You're just a repressed rock star", or even "You just haven't heard ME yet". But these people wouldn't even know where to begin if they wanted to get into music! Why did people like Miley Cyrus so much, and why were only a certain odd crowd into Mindless Self Indulgence? Most would end up buying a little music and even going to concerts because they felt pressured to, though they considered concerts to be mostly loud, sweaty and uncomfortable. But honestly... Why was it anyone's concern what bands people liked, or whether or not they liked bands at all?

Sadly, this metaphor breaks my heart because I really love music.

Asexual Tastes

Okay, first of all notice that I am probably going to step back the updates to once a week or so now that school's started back. I could probably do more than that but I'm afraid writing these posts will give me more of an excuse to procrastinate. >_>

Anyways, back to the post. So last night I got one of these statements again, after Liz made a risque joke and be-boggled one of my friend's minds. He said, "Why do the asexuals in our group have the dirtiest minds?!" And Liz quite summed up my feelings on the matter: "Because we're more objective about sex. So we don't care."

Now, this is not true for all asexuals. I think it tends to have a more polarizing effect than other sexualities--you're either fantastically dirty-minded or fantastically sex-disgusted. But being asexual does not necessitate being totally averse to the idea of sex, or even the idea of having sex. This leads right into what asexuals like.

I won't go too much into the specific little icons the asexually community has latched on to--Ily already has a nice series of posts on that. In general, though, asexuals do tend to like things that are (potentially) asexual--Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, etc. But if those were the only things asexual people could like, we'd be hard pressed find our interests. This is why I bring up the dirty-minded part--that asexuals can be dirty minded, or at least like sexual things.

Take my musical tastes, for instance. Of course there's some classics, like Pink Floyd and the Who, and then my new fancy for old prog-rock band Yes. But one of my VERY favorite bands is Of Montreal. Readers, I LOVE Of Montreal, and Of Montreal is 80% sex and 20% crazy. It's kinky and fun and glorious and musical and other descriptive terms. But how can I like something that is so much sex? The simple answer is that it's not like I have to be sexually attracted to this music. To me it's still just music--so what if the lyrics are alllll about sex? Hell, I love Pink Floyd's The Wall and it contains such wonderful things as cheating on your wife and then running the girl that you cheated with out of your apartment but completely trashing your apartment and throwing stuff at her. Not something I can really relate to, but still one of my favorite albums. Oh, and another song I really like: "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails. If you're not familiar, you might want to look up the lyrics.

So point being, tastes /= sexual preference. And I will continue to rock on.

Oh, also, does anyone have any bands or performers that appear to be somewhat asexual? I was thinking that Sufjan Stevens has very non-sexual lyrics, but this may be more of an 'innocence' thing that permeates his lyrics. Yes also has fairly non-sexual lyrics, but I don't know that they're completely devoid of this.