I’m currently crawling through the beginning of writing a book I want to try to get published. This is something I have wanted to do since I was about three years old, so it’s a long time coming. It’s YA, and because I want to write in YA and I like reading there, I’ve started following a fair number of YA-focused blogs. A little for advice, but mostly for book reviews.

(Obligatory recs: Check out YA Highway for general news, reviews, and advice. Intergalactic Academy is awesome for sci-fi reviews. Seriously. Go read it now. Although their light-text-on-dark-background layout may make it easier to read in a feed like Google Reader.)

One of the blogs I follow is Malinda Lo’s, and she just wrote about YA Pride Month. Basically, taking the US’s general Pride Month of June and focusing on it through a lens of YA lit. The part I found most interesting in her post (and that makes it worth mentioning on this blog) is a footnote about how Lo will be interviewing authors writing YA novels with LGBT main characters. The book I am working on now has queer main characters so it caught my eye.

I decided that in my YA Pride series I wanted to mostly invite writers who identify as LGBT to be interviewed or guest post for my site. While I don’t believe one needs to identify as LGBT in order to write about LGBT people, I also feel that there is value in supporting LGBT writers. In the interests of full disclosure, I have had trouble finding transgender-identified YA writers to participate in this series, simply because there are so few of them. I haven’t finished my search for contributors yet, and I may still be able to find a trans YA writer to participate, but if I don’t, the reason is not because I didn’t attempt to find one; it’s because we need more of them.

I am ambivalent about how to manage my GSM (gender and sexual minority) identity if I ever get published. On the one hand, I have a girlfriend and we both use feminine pronouns, so I could pass as a lesbian. But one of the reasons I use the words asexual and neutrois to describe myself is because I don’t feel that way. I’m not gay. I’m not even homoromantic asexual, because my gender isn’t “female” (neither is my girlfriend’s) and I’m not romantically attracted to women. I’m just romantically attracted more to femininity than masculinity. I don’t have a particular prefix for that and just use “romantic” as a result.

And while I find it more attractive and easier to use feminine pronouns over masculine pronouns, if it would be socially easy to suddenly start going by gender-neutral pronouns and get neutrois printed on all my papers in the gender box, I would do it in a heartbeat. Like I don’t particularly relish the idea of being called a lesbian writer, because I’m not a lesbian and it would be unfair to actual lesbian writers as well as myself, I also don’t relish the idea of being called a woman writer. If, for example, I ever got asked to be on a panel focused on women writers, I honestly don’t know if it would be appropriate for me to participate.

I’ve also already written about my attitude on coming out before, and how I’m generally a private person and reluctant to come out. Partly in not feeling safe doing so and partly in not feeling a need for people to know. I mentioned in that post that if I was ever published, I would kind of feel an obligation to disclose the GSM part of my identity. Or, rather, the asexual part.

Lo’s comment “I also feel that there is value in supporting LGBT writers” reminded me of that. Her added comment about the need for more transgender-identified writers made me think of something I (somehow) haven’t thought of before. While I’ve considered whether to disclose my asexuality, I’ve never really given thought to publicly talking about my non-binary gender.

I’m not quick to use the word transgender in reference to myself. I think this is mostly because when I started looking into things like top surgery in binary transgender spaces, I got wary about people’s reactions to being non-binary. I was given advice from several people not to mention being non-binary because some people would react badly to it or find it offensive. I didn’t want to start a fight and definitely didn’t want to hurt anyone.

As hesitant as I am to use the word, though, I think I am transgender. I definitely don’t identify with the gender I was called at birth, and I don’t ever feel anything but neutral when I start thinking about gender. I’m a partner, not a girlfriend or wife, I’ll be a bridegroom, not a bride, I’ll be a parent, not a mother. (Bridegroom as gender neutral was suggested in a comment on Offbeat Bride and I kind of love it.) Heck, one of the reasons I used to think I didn’t want kids was because I didn’t want to be a mother or father and didn’t know how to articulate that.

But the idea of coming out publicly as neutrois is a lot scarier than the idea of coming out as asexual. Not that people don’t have horrible reactions to asexuality, but it seems like gender variance in general is harder for people to understand than not being straight. It makes me more nervous to imagine putting myself out there on a gender plane than it does on a sexuality one.

I don’t know how any employer would react to learning that I talk about being asexual and/or neutrois. Right now I am hoping to work in Massachusetts after graduation, though, which I believe has anti-discrimination laws for both sexuality and gender when it comes to employment, so it could be a possibility.

Lo is right when she says that there’s worth in supporting GSM writers and specifically transgender writers. So much of the trans YA lit I have read is just not good.. And yet even not-good writing gets a lot of publicity because there is just not much writing with trans characters at all, whether or not their gender is the focus of the plot.

I also realize that this is basically an egotistical exercise considering I have never queried a book, aren’t entirely sure when I’ll finish writing this one (preparing to move is both boring and time consuming), and definitely don’t have an agent or publishing deal. Most of the blogs I read agree, though, that writers nowadays have to be prepared to say what they’re going to do to promote themselves when they get an agent or publisher. If I’m going to be able to say how I’ll put myself out there, I have to consider what of myself I’ll be talking about.

I don’t know how I feel about talking about being transgender. This is something I only thought about today. I do know that I’ve basically come to the conclusion and talked to a few people, including Sciatrix, that if I wrote a book with an explicit asexual character I should probably also state that I am asexual. (I don’t think anyone else would be obligated to do this — I do not really believe that people can be obligated to come out. That is just the conclusion I’ve come to about myself.)

At some point I do want to write a narrative including a trans main character. It would be great if that got published. But I don’t know how I would feel about showing my “credentials” on the issue in that case. I do think I would be scared to do so. But I also think I would feel horrible about presenting myself as a cis person in that case.

It scares me to think of opening myself up that much. And at the same time I can think how much it could have changed my life if I’d read a book in my early teens where the author bio mentioned, “by the way, I’m not a man or a woman.”

How do I feel? I don’t know. Partly I feel like I’m being ridiculous thinking about it at all at such an early stage in my writing “career,” but I also know that this could take me a long time to come to an ultimate opinion on, so I probably need the early start.

Bare shoulders and a bare collarbone are not neutral. Unlike other items of “women’s” clothing that happen to fit my body, I can’t find neutral/masculine details to tilt me away from an overall feeling of pretending to be a woman that I’m not. Exposing that part of my body in public is unabashedly feminine. Guys may go around with a couple of shirt buttons undone, but unless there’s exercise or sex involved, you don’t see dudes going into events with shirts that show their collarbone from shoulder to shoulder.

You might be wondering why I bothered looking at anything that would leave my shoulders bear. To be honest, I just don’t want to melt, and it was also the more economical option. The wedding is going to be on a hot summer night. Dresses expose skin in a socially appropriate way that also allow for greater cooling capability. Plus, I own no other formal clothes I can wear without a binder, and you would have to pay me a decent amount of money to wear a binder for an entire wedding on a hot Southern night. What can I say, I overheat easily. A dress was also going to be less expensive than finding an entire suit.

So I scoured. I’m plus-sized, so I shopped online. And shopped. And shopped. I swear, the fashion industry has a grudge against the lingerie people. Even in plus-size stores, where people tend to be bigger in the chest region, there are an absurd amount of clothing options that don’t allow for wearing a bra at all because of open or sheer backs.

Finding a dress that was less than $50 and also would let me wear a bra, while being appropriate for an evening wedding, eventually convinced me that it’d be easiest to find something strapless. I’d link to the $30 dress I ended up getting but it’s not on the website anymore. Considering I won’t have the occasion to wear this dress more than a few times, I am thrilled with it — mostly because of the cost, but also because it’s not hideous. I do like how it looks.

But there’s still the shoulders and collarbone issue.

It was in the mail when I started realizing how important that was to me. The idea of wandering around like that leaves me feeling very vulnerable and very aware of my shape and how it doesn’t conform to the body I expect to have when my eyes are closed.

Practically speaking this was solved in about five minutes by finding a cropped sweater to wear that covers my shoulders. But it was still a strange moment, because before that I had never really given a second thought to my collarbone. It’s not really something that I’ve seen people talking about before. Though this is possibly due to me never hanging out in non-binary spaces.

Getting older means that I’m getting into more situations where “t-shirt I got off a thrift store rack” and “jeans” are not really clothing I’m allowed to wear. At this point, my dream job would allow me to wear said t-shirts and sweatpants all day, but we can’t have everything. I am at least lucky enough that Girlfriend is a fashion type and will dress me if I request. (Yes, I’m going go be one of those people. I have no shame.)

Adult clothes are going to inevitably trigger my dysphoria a lot more than the clothes I got away with wearing in school and undergrad. I hope that at this point I’ve finished discovering what body parts make me wary, but I never would’ve predicted my collarbone being one of them, so I can’t say for sure.

It did occur to me, while writing this, that I’ll have a loophole in the fashion industry’s grudge against bras after my top surgery. I won’t have to worry about wearing a bra at all when I want to wear feminine clothing. Take that, nebulous and unknown nemesis.

There were four of us on the panel, all asexual, and then a fair-sized audience. I didn’t count but I’d think there were at least 40 or 50 people? They could raise their hands and ask questions, or text in questions to an internet account that another club member would read out to us. Either the questions were for specific people or we would go down the line and all give out answers.

We introduced ourselves and how we realized we were asexual, and then opened up for questions. I don’t remember them all but I will try to relate the ones I did remember. Overall there was only one person who was a bit … strange … about asking questions, in way they were asking, that was kind of annoying. I got the impression they didn’t know a lot about gender and sexuality minority things. There was a better way they could’ve asked, and kind of a “I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with you” aspect to their tone, but it wasn’t too bad.

My recounting is not the order in which things were asked. I’m sure I don’t even remember everything, so I could definitely not remember what order people asked things. I’m not doing a blow-by-blow but I’ll mention what I remember and what it was like to be answering them.

The masturbation question came up, in which I mentioned my dysphoria, which is aggravated by sexual stimulation and which makes sexual stimulation physically unpleasant for me. Others just said yes, occasionally, or whatever. The sex drive question also came up and I mentioned mine being low and going away with anti-depressants. These were surprisingly not embarrassing to answer. Honestly it was nice to just be able to be straightforward about it.

We were also asked about whether we (and ace people in general) had experienced traumas or if we had hormone imbalances. Expected and sort of understandable, but mildly unpleasant. I can’t remember if it was a specific question or in our introductions but we also talked about coming out to people. Oh, someone asked about the whole cake joke thing.

We got asked, too, about whether we identify with the LGBTQIA community. And mentioned in various ways how anti-ace stuff from certain sections of the internet affected us. The subject of how Christianity treats aces also came up. I didn’t have personal experience to share but I did relate some anti-ace things I’d read people writing or having related from their own experiences with churches, and Sciatrix talked about the fetishizing aspect that sometimes goes on.

I got a few questions for me in particular because I was the person on the panel in a romantic relationship with a *sexual person. I had kind of prepared myself for that. It also just kind of made me happy to talk about my girlfriend.

People asked what the difference between a romantic relationship and a friendship is, when we’re not using the sex distinction, and that is something I’ve actually thought about a lot. I’ve been trying to write a post on it, but couldn’t get the words together… I kind of have an answer but I think it’s not really an answer a lot of people would want it to be.

Basically I said that I’ve come to think that wanting a romantic relationship is mostly being happy with the idea of labeling a relationship as romantic. When I was going over my feelings for my girlfriend before we started dating, I asked myself, “Would it make me happier to call her my best friend or to call her my girlfriend? To say this is a friendship or a romantic relationship?” And my conclusion was that girlfriend and romantic felt better. I can’t easily define why it felt better, but it did.

So the panel talked some about “romance” being a particular headspace. That if the label makes somebody happy, then that’s the label they can use for their feelings. And if the label makes them unhappy, then that’s a sign that that’s not a good word for their feelings. (I should at some point do a post just on that, probably.)

The only odd question I got based on my romantic relationship was from that one person I mentioned up to, who asked whether I felt my asexuality affected my confidence (the whole panel ended up answering it). It was odd because I wasn’t sure what they meant and was like, “No, they have nothing to do with each other,” which is what the rest of the panel said as well. But in retrospect I wonder if the asker meant my confidence in sexual situations. Oh well.

In response to the panel being asked about aces in general having sex to have children, or if they preferred other reproduction methods, I also ended up saying the line “Well, neither my girlfriend or I make sperm, so at some point we’ll just have to buy it from someone.” I didn’t intend to make it sound like we’d walk around the block and ask the first sperm-producing person we could find for some but I realized that’s how it sounded right after I said it, ha. The panel overall talked about people’s ages in online ace communities trending younger and it really depending on individual people’s preferences.

The other questions asked specifically of me were related to my gender, because I mentioned being genderqueer and experiencing dysphoria. And then I had to spell and explain being neutrois and agender what that meant to me. I mentioned that I wanted top surgery and what my ideal body would be and how there’s no bottom surgery to achieve that. And that laser hair removal is really expensive.

I have to say it was really nice to be in a space where I could just talk about my girlfriend. I didn’t make all my answers about her or gush about her the whole time, but it was nice to be able to mention her freely without worrying about people’s reactions and to be able to say that she has an important place in my life. The rest of my friends either know both of us or already know I’m dating her, and something about telling “new” people about our relationship just felt good.

It was also nice, of course, to be in a space where there were other ace people. I’ve never had a conversation about being ace with people in an offline space. There’s something about the speed and tenor of offline conversation that can make it different than online conversation, and unique. It was also such an isolated space that I knew people wouldn’t wander in and derail or anything like that.

And it was a lot of fun to meet Sciatrix in person, too. :)

Today I finally had an appointment with a psychiatrist to get on an antidepressant. I’m hoping that it’ll work and I won’t have to try another drug, but I go back in a month to assess how things are going. We’ll see around then whether things have kicked in or not. My main goal for treatment is to be moderately less of a slug than I am now, and to generally not be so sad.

One thing I was delightfully relieved about was that neither the counselor I spoke to nor the psychiatrist asked me how I was feeling sexually. Over the past few months, I read a lot on depression and tried to see if that fit me, and I ended up repeatedly taking self-scoring depression assessments to evaluate how I was feeling over time. A frequent question was something along the line of “have you had a decreased interest in sex?” and once or twice there was even “I do/do not enjoy spending time around and looking at attractive people.”

The frequency of those questions on the screening tests made me nervous, because I didn’t want to talk about that. Before my appointment I was worried that in the middle of feeling vulnerable and embarrassed* about going into the doctor’s, I’d also have to come up with a cover story to avoid a lot of probing questions about my sex drive. Because, while I have one, I strive to ignore it as much as possible because sexual stimulation and even abstract arousal is very unpleasant for me. But that is not something I needed or wanted to talk about.

It was a relief not to be asked about that, then, since “I pay so little attention to my sex drive I don’t know if it’s the same as it usually is” is not the kind of answer that moves the conversation onto a new topic. I was glad that I got to talk about what my problems were and not have the conversation steered through a bunch of other stuff.

(I hope that in a few weeks my prescription will kick in and I will have enough energy to write more, as well.)

*I don’t think going to the doctor’s is embarrassing, at all! I just personally have a lot of guilt about it because for a long time I’ve had people depending on me, and I’ve always been “the strong/healthy one,” so losing that status has been hard on my “I must be USEFUL!!!” issues. I hover so much my mom now jokes that I’ve turned into our old dog, who used to follow her everywhere.

Spoilers beyond this point and warning for ace stereotypes and medicalization of asexuality

Here’s a summary of the episode from an AVEN user. There was an eye-rolling-looking emoticon at the end but I can’t copy the animation and don’t know how to type it out. Also if you click the link, you have to click “Show” to show the spoiler text in the comment.

A lady with a bladder infection attracts the attention of House, who tries to prove that she and her husband aren’t really asexual. Watson stops him, so House investigates the husband, who turns out to have a tumor causing his lack of libido. Treating it, which is necessary for him to live, but make him sexual. The wife ends up revealing that she lied about her asexuality because she likes sex (Because all asexuals are repulsed).

I’m amused at the Watson/Wilson mixup but I will also say — I don’t care that Wilson said House was wrong at the beginning of the episode. The final impression left about asexuality isn’t going to be a couple of minutes at the beginning of the episode, it’s going to be how the episode wraps up. The conclusions that the brilliant Dr. House reaches about asexuality. That’s what people will take away. When House disproved the asexual characters, he also disproved Wilson.

There are so, so many things wrong here. The writer of the episode responded to criticism on Twitter. But that doesn’t really make it better.

Kath Lingenfelter (link goes to Twitter), the writer of the episode, responded to AVEN user cleuchtturm via Twitter. It got posted here on AVEN and also here on Tumblr.

Note: On Tumblr this is all one paragraph, on AVEN it’s two, and the second is a response to further communication.

“I did a lot of research on asexuality for the episode. My original intent was to introduce it and legitimize it, because I was struck by the response most of you experience, which is similar to the prejudice the homosexual community has received. People hear you’re asexual and they immediately think, ‘What’s wrong with you, how do I fix you?’ I wanted to write against that. Unfortunately, we are a medical mystery show. Time & again, my notes came back that House needed to solve a mystery and not be wrong. So in THIS CASE, with THESE patients, it was a tumor near the pituitary. But I hoped I could (now it seems unsuccessfully) introduce asexuality to the general public and get them asking questions. All they need to do is one google search and they can see for themselves it’s a real community of great people. Originally, part of my dialog included thoughts about whether as a species we’ve grown past sex. Any time we tackle a subject, we risk the possibility of not doing it justice. I apologize that you feel I did you a disservice. It was not my intent.

Asexuality is a new topic for me and definitely one I find fascinating. It is a subject I would like to continue to explore here or on future shows I write for. I think it speaks to where humans are now and where we are going. I will do my best in the future to do it justice.”

I’m going to address part of this first: Lingenfelter says “Originally, part of my dialog included thoughts about whether as a species we’ve grown past sex” and “I think it speaks to where humans are now and where we are going.”

I’ve seen this pointed out on Tumblr in a few places, and this is really creepy. We are not the next evolutionary stage in human development. Some asexual people are repulsed, some are indifferent, and some are enthusiastic about sex. So I think she might be conflating sexual orientation and libido and personal willingness to engage in sexual activity. Also kind of putting aces up on a pedestal, maybe. Which I never like.

But onto the big issue.

The thing most people are pointing out is that she had two asexual characters to work with and both of them got invalidated. I can understand the pressure from the network that there had to be a medical mystery. But having the medical mystery did not mean that the wife’s asexuality had to be faked. That’s lazy writing. That’s lazy thinking.

I don’t know if Fox forced her to change the second one as well, Lingenfelter didn’t comment on that. I assume, since she said that the network told her to change the husband, that she would’ve mentioned being told to change the wife. But she didn’t. So I’m putting responsibility for the wife’s representation to Lingenfelter.

Two of the biggest responses ace spectrum people get are “You’re sick” and “You’re faking.” This episode chose to play into both stereotypes that prevent people from being accepted and respected. It did not leave an asexual character “alone” to show that ace people are real. Instead it chose to yank the floor out from under both of them.

Honestly I don’t care about Lingenfelter’s intentions. Sometimes a writer’s intentions do matter, but that can’t do a single thing to erase the actual harmful effects they end up producing. Problematic material that was meant to be good does not get an excuse for being problematic. Not at all.

Lingenfelter took a minority and wanted to represent it. The network told her to change it, and the changes they wanted were incredibly problematic. If Lingenfelter had really done “a lot of research on asexuality” she should have known just how problematic. I’m not saying she should’ve stopped writing about asexuality all together, but she should have put more effort into the second ace character. It makes me doubt how much research she actually did, or how much she really understood what she read.

People are not curious. They’re going to say, “Oh, this is what asexuality is.” People who come out as asexual are already told, “Oh, like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory?”, a character who’s mocked in-show for his lack of sexuality along with nearly everything else about him. He’s a character who frequently removes himself from humanity, and has the show comment about how he’s a different species. Not the best reaction for people to get. Now people are going to be told, “Oh, you might have a tumor, like that guy on House.” Or “You’ve got to be faking it. Or sick. Like on House.”

People are already telling aces on Tumblr that we’re complaining too much about the episode. These are people who are sitting at a computer with internet access and the word asexuality right in front of them. These are people who could open an extra tab and search for asexuality information and learn about it and they are not. Why should I expect people not even hearing aces complain about the episode online, with immediate access to search capabilities, to do more than the people who are?

People who are asexual, gray-a, and demi, but have not connected with ace communities, also had a huge road block placed between them and the opportunity to Google and find other people like them. Why would you want to look up asexuality after being told in no uncertain terms that half the people are sick and half of them are faking?

If 13-year-old me had been watching House, I would’ve thought “Oh, so asexuality means broken.” When I web-searched asexuality as a teenager it was because I felt alone. I felt like I was the only person in the world like myself. But I would not have been prompted to find other people from this episode. I would’ve expected any results I found to be “I had X disease” and “I was faking it but I saw the light!” I would’ve felt sick, like I was fooling myself, and even more alone.

And there’s no reason for most of the audience to know who Lingenfelter is, to see her Twitter or anything she was saying on it afterwards. I don’t care about the apology most of the audience will never see.

It doesn’t matter if you try to represent a minority well if you then fill that representation with harmful stereotypes. If you present an obscure minority of people, you have an obligation to not use every minority character to confirm stereotypes about those people. If every minority character is a stereotype, then the stereotype is going to be what people believe. Because people are lazy. They like confirmation of what they already would’ve believed — and widely, people regard asexuality as a disease, a personality defect, a holier-than-thou complex, or faked.

Am I glad Lingenfelter apologized? Yes. Do I think she actually understands the harm she did? No. Not from that apology. Not from reading her twitter feed. This update says “Intention was to tell story for THIS couple, not all asexuals. Apologies that it seemed generalized.”

If a writer isn’t aware enough to realize that representing a extremely small minority of people with numbers around 1% of the population is necessarily going to generalize people’s reactions to them, they are not a very good writer. But Lingenfelter seems to still think she gave people a chance to really learn about asexuality by mentioning a word that might make them curious enough to do an online search. She gave the audience homework. That’s not how writers should write, ever. Writers should not not leave important information vital to understanding something out of the material. They should not expect people to recognize that they’re writing stereotypes about a minority they’ve most likely never heard of before.

Do we say that a show’s given people the opportunity to learn about gay or bisexual or trans people if the characters are all stereotypes? Did we say Glee gave people the chance to learn bisexuality was real, or that Work It gave people the chance to read about gender, sexism, transmisogyny, etc.? No! Because we don’t expect anybody to do independent research and come to conclusions that a show represented characters badly. And that’s what last night’s episode did. So I cannot think that a significant portion of the audience will believe anything but what the episode told them.

And what the episode told them is that asexuality is never real. There’s another explanation behind every asexual person’s assertion of their sexuality. Don’t believe people when they say they’re asexual. Tell them to see a doctor. Ask who they’re faking it for. Help them understand they’re wrong.

That was the show’s message. An apology owning up to that, I could accept.

Community

In 2012 I’d like to see the ace communities I’m involved in be able to spend more time talking to each other, and to people interested in real discourse, and less time fending off attacks.

It makes me anxious to even start thinking of all we’ve been through this year, especially the aces, graces, and demis I know on Tumblr. I realize this isn’t really under our control, since there’s nothing we can do about people who just want to argue and rile us up, or the kind of people who don’t want to have conversations and prefer shouting matches — the kind of people who don’t respect us and refuse to try.

But I do wish for us that we can have a year where we get to have good conversations and nobody has to worry about being deliberately triggered or told horrible things about themselves.

I’d also like to see some more creative writing — original or fanfic — come up around the ace spectrum, because I like reading and being able to relate to or see commonalities in what I’m reading. I did write a fanfic prominently featuring asexuality this year, which was well-received by my small fandom, but not wanting to cross my online names I didn’t really promote it … at all.

Not that I need more projects, but it might be interesting to organize an ace fic fest since the one people had been talking about earlier never came to fruition. If I had the time and enough people were interested, I wouldn’t mind doing that.

Or possibly compiling an anthology of original fic, but I have no idea how I’d distribute it. Maybe a free e-book — but everyone contributing would have to be okay with that format, obviously.

Myself

I started this blog because I wanted to be more connected to the community. Because I felt alone, and I was too shy to be commenting on people’s blogs and I wasn’t involved with Tumblr at all, without having some kind of space to do my own writing.

Having this blog has helped me form some connections in the ace community that I never would’ve had otherwise, has introduced me to new contacts, and has shown me that I can actually make some physical transitions to get my body more aligned with my gender.

But you may have noticed I haven’t been updating as much recently.

Trigger Warning for depression and anxiety under the cut.

My living situation, with school and family and finances, is very stressful for various reasons, and over the summer my mental health started taking a downturn. I can’t afford to go to a doctor to get diagnosed, but people in my life who know depression well have backed me up on this.

It’s hard to motivate myself to do even the basics sometimes, so the blog’s suffered some. On a good note, it’s also been months and months since I’ve felt the urge to self-harm, or had intrusive/obsessive thoughts about it.

On a … not so good note… The past week, I’ve identified some mysterious physical symptoms that have been cropping up as anxiety attacks. I would like to have none of those in 2012, but I do not suspect my body will listen to me. At least I know what the uncontrollable weeping, defensiveness, and skyrocketing body temperature is all about now.

What this has to do with my asexuality is that this blog, and writing about myself and my life, is the reason I have a connection to the ace community. I am on Tumblr and I do talk to people through that, but I don’t update Tumblr much. Updating Tumblr makes me feel awkward. I don’t know what to say here. The blog is easier for me to write on — if I can just get the motivation to finish any of the dozen unfinished posts lingering in my writing folder. And writing on the blog is why I feel comfortable enough to engage other people in the community.

So in 2012, I really, really want to get back to it. I want to be a part of the community I’d like to see. I want to contribute to it, in my small way. I don’t want my health to put me on the sidelines.

But first I have to talk about how being asexual tied into my identification as neutrois. And I can see this post getting rather sprawling, so I’m going to attempt to use headings. I’m also going to put a cut, because this is kind of a long post.

(Warning: I talk about physical sex and sex drive in here, though not in much detail.)

Identifying

Honestly I believe that identifying as asexual is what made it so easy — relatively speaking — to come to the conclusion that I was neutrois, after I discovered that being neutrois was a thing.

There are a lot of non-cisgender people in ace umbrella communities. 10.2% of people in a recent census said they identified as transgender, and 9.4% said they were unsure. There’s also a lot of non-binary people. 21.8% of the responses identified with genders other than just male or just female. There’s no breakdown on whether anyone selecting male or female also selected other options, but that’s still a huge number to me.

What I mean to point out is that there is a lot of talk in ace circles about gender, and there are a lot of ace people who don’t consider themselves the gender that was on their (first) birth certificate, and a lot of people who don’t identify on the binary.

In a lot of issues-focused ace spaces, talking about anything is a big deal. There’s a lot of talking. A lot of puzzling things out. Gender’s no exception. So I really think that, since I started reading ace blogs before I started reading about being neutrois, there was something in my head that said ‘it’s not that strange to be trans*’ and made it easier to question my gender. I was exposed to thinking about gender in a way that made questioning, assessing, or examining your gender — even just presentation, or the way you felt female or male because other people had questions — seem incredibly normal and routine.

So my asexuality, in my mind, helped ease me into my gender. Maybe when you question one thing it’s easier to question another. Although with how little USian culture at large talks about gender, it took me a lot longer to realize I could examine my gender and separate it from male and female. Selecting ‘none of the above’ for sexuality was a lot more self-evident by comparison.

Physical sex

I’ve read some trans* writing about reclaiming your body and using terms for yourself a medical textbook wouldn’t use, because your perception of your gender is your own, and that makes your body your own. An idea that lead to me being slightly more comfortable in my body despite not having transitioned with more than a haircut.

I consider myself neutral-sexed. Non-sexed, maybe. I haven’t thought about the language much. With some recent dust-ups over the word ‘repulsed’ and a lot of non-ace people’s misunderstanding of the use of the word, it occurred to me that I can’t conceptualize my body as sexual. If I could design my own anatomy from scratch, I can’t think of a single way to incorporate physical receptors for sexual stimulation.

Though I have a sex drive that I occasionally have to deal with, I find sexual stimulation unpleasant. I don’t think it’s the shape of my anatomy that determines that reaction: I think it’s a combination of my own personal sexuality and my gender. There are aces who find sexual stimulation pleasant. There are neutrois who do as well. I’m just not one of either.

I think my asexuality primarily feeds my dislike of sexual stimulation, and my gender gives me a way to conceive of my body without the weight of the idea that any particular body parts were designed for sexual stimulation. I don’t have to think, “Oh, that organ is for orgasms.” I can just ignore it.* Which is comfortable both sexuality-wise and gender-wise.

*Unfortunately, despite the mental peace this brings me most of the time, it also inadvertently feeds my fear of the gynecologist. Also I really don’t want to run into one of those doctors who goes and orders blood tests behind my back because I accidentally mentioned being asexual.

Stereotypes

Something I find curious is that apparently there’s a stereotype of agender/neutrois people being ace, and also that there’s a stereotype of ace people being agender/neutrois. (Existing alongside a lot of other stereotypes, of course.)

I find this curious because on the “main” neutrois site — that is, a site dedicated to nothing else but defining neutrois, providing some resources for neutrois people, and establishing the existence of neutrois people, and is the first result in Google — there is not a single mention of the ace spectrum. They mention that some are abstinent, some are sexually active, and that they can be “bisexual, gay, lesbian, or straight.” (I put this in quotes because I find it odd that the site mentions being pangendered but doesn’t include pansexual in this list.)

Asexuality, demisexuality, and gray-asexuality are not even mentioned. So the stereotype is puzzling to me. I guess it’s because in a lot of people’s minds, gender and sexuality is so wrapped up together that not being sexually attracted to people must mean not having a gender. See: femininity in men and masculinity in women automatically signaling, in USian culture, that those people are not adhering properly to heterosexuality.

For some reason, fitting this stereotype doesn’t particularly bother me. Maybe because I’ve only heard about it and never actually encountered it. That’s not to say I think it’s a good stereotype — it just doesn’t fill me with awkward, irrational guilt like my fitting some other stereotypes does. (Guilt is, after all, my superpower.)

I don’t entirely know what to do about this stereotype. Other than culture-wide reconceptions of gender and sexuality, which individually I’m not in much of a position to influence, I don’t know that there’s much to be done. I think for the time being all I can do is not reinforce gender and sexuality stereotypes. Write, if I ever get published and to the best of my ability, things that don’t reinforce stereotypes.

But the thing is that it’s not necessarily bad to fit a stereotype. My first semester in my master’s program, I remember getting upset over how 20 out of 20 posts on our discussion topic about stereotypes of librarians talked about how bad the stereotype of the elderly (white, cis, straight all implied) woman with the tight bun at the back of her head was. And then I stopped myself and edited my post to say, “But we can’t say that this person is a bad person. There are women out there who look like that and who work in libraries. They’re not bad. They’re not hurting people.”

So I guess what I mean is, when I talk about getting rid of stereotypes, I also have to remember that fitting a stereotype doesn’t automatically make you a bad person. (And not just because I also fit my fair share of stereotypes.)

Presentation

Ily has written about her asexual presentation before: some way of communicating that you’re asexual. There’s the black ring on the middle finger of the right hand. I don’t have one of those. I suppose I might present asexually because I’m pretty lazy about clothing, prefer comfort over looks, and don’t prefer enough feminine expression to appear ‘sexy’ to anyone. I assume.

Mostly I prefer to dress neutrally. Neutrally in this society means, to a degree, masculine. Femininity is often read sexually, which is not a way I want to be read — both because of my sexuality and because of my gender. Although with my gender it’s not “I’m not sexual” so much as it is “I’m not a sexual woman.”

Gender-wise I own two men’s shirts, which are much more comfortable to wear with my binder. I very much like to wear these out with a pair of boots I got — the boots are women’s, but are kind of masculine.

I wrote recently about my presentation anxiety, as it relates to my gender, and uncertainty about incorporating the feminine details I find aesthetically pleasing into my clothes. Fortunately I have a girlfriend who sits around designing clothes for fun, so about an hour after I posted that I had several custom-drawn outfits that, while they won’t materialize in my closet tomorrow, it does make me feel better about eventually assembling a wardrobe that I can be comfortable with.

I don’t know if I’ll ever pick up a black ring, since it’s been a long time since I’ve worn something on my hands and I’m not sure how much the black ring symbol means to me, if anything.

But overall, my comfort with presenting asexually (in my own way, because obviously, different aces will want to present different ways) and presenting with my gender go hand-in-hand. Satisfying one can satisfy the other, which makes it easier to keep my whole self in step.

Conclusion

I don’t have one, I just felt like there should be some sort of ending to the post. I guess overall this was just a space to talk about where my asexuality and neutrois gender combine. (Not, unfortunately, to summon Captain Planet.)

In place of a better conclusion, here is a picture of a basset hound with an owl on its back. Apparently they cuddle together while watching television. Their favorites are nature programs and soaps like Coronation Street. I am not making this up.

But there’s always going to be the issue of clothes. Lately I’ve been trying to figure out how to comfortably incorporate the feminine details I enjoy in clothes into my wardrobe. I’m in the awkward situation now of almost never being able to go to the store; if I buy clothes within the next year, it’s going to have to be online. (Look at the confidence I hold in my ability to learn how to drive!)

Some things would be easy to buy. T-shirts, which already comprise 85% of my closet. I either measure myself, probably already own a t-shirt from the company, or can measure a t-shirt that fits comfortably to figure out what size to buy. Unisex t-shirts are also easy to find with masculine, feminine, and neutral designs and details.

When I wear my binder, I can wear men’s shirts without them gapping in the front. But I don’t want to wear my binder every day. I worry about long-term binding and I don’t like to bind for more than five hours at a time, although that might be partly because my binder isn’t broken in yet.

So while I’m working and until I have surgery, I’ll need women’s shirts. I understand this. In some situations, I prefer the women’s shirt. (For example, the other day I wanted a warm long-sleeved shirt to wear around the house in the winter. I ruled out the men’s because they didn’t have the pink flannel I liked best.) The surgery will just give me more options, and I’ll be able to buy women’s shirts because I like the design, not because I need the cut.

Obligatory momentary pause while I go all starry-eyed imagining never buying a bra again.

But then there’s … dresses. And skirts. I don’t know how to feel about these.

I used to hate them. I haven’t bought a dress since middle school — my grandma made me wear one to my uncle’s wedding. I’ve donated all my old Sunday dresses. I can’t remember if I wore skirts as a child or not. In undergrad, I never bought them, but I rarely bought clothes at all, and I blanched at the idea that I was expected to wear them. Now that I’m more comfortable in my gender, and at asserting control over what I wear, I … don’t know. And since I don’t own any anymore, I can just try one on for a day and see how I am.

It’s been causing me a bit of anxiety lately, not having any idea of how to express myself in clothing. I don’t want to be stuck in the men’s section of the store any more than I want to be stuck in the women’s section. I like things people consider masculine and I like things people consider feminine.

At the end of posts I like to come to some kind of resolution, but I don’t have one here. I don’t know how to fix this feeling I have, this anxiety that I’m going to get trapped into another box that I don’t want to be stuck in.

I don’t identify with masculinity any more than I identify with femininity. I just pick and choose the things I like, and I’m not in a position now where I can go and things on. So I’m just stuck … wondering, and fretting. I don’t know what my wardrobe will look like over the years, or whether skirts or dresses would help me feel better, help me feel less boxed in. I don’t know how I’m going to pick out clothes or makeup or accessories that let me look the way I feel when I wake up not wanting to be very masculine or very feminine.

Probably, I’m lucky that overall I don’t really care about fashion: if I could wear sweatpants and unisex t-shirts every day I’d probably be fine. But I can’t do that. So I have to … I don’t know. I have to wait, and see. And waiting is hard.

But I know that I don’t want to be trapped in another box.

Note: this post discusses writing porn, although in general terms instead of anatomical ones. But because people scrolling through this blog are more likely to be repulsed than in other areas of the Internet, I’m putting the rest of it under a cut.

Unfortunately I can’t once remember to put “please don’t ask me to write porn” in my prompt calling — it’s not that I can’t, it’s just that I can’t without a beta reader and about five times as much time as it takes to write a regular story, and honestly it’s an incredibly boring process for me. I’m not against writing it now and then — though I mostly do it for gift challenges — but it takes so much effort and I don’t get much of a reward out of it because it’s not something I find enjoyable.

It’s kind of like writing an essay when I haven’t read the topic material that happens to be in another language that I’m not very good at translating. You flip through the book or whatever, cherry-pick a few quotes, and attempt to make it sound like you definitely read and comprehended the material. Usually I have to go read porn in order to write porn, because I don’t have an intrinsic sense of what is “sexy.” I am extremely bad at reading sexually-focused body language, so I have no idea how to write it, and hope that whatever I come up with will be read in a way that the story achieves the prompter’s goal.

While my fandom has a healthy kink meme with a lot of well-written stories (a lot that I enjoy just on their own, too) and finding reference material is not difficult, applying those concepts to something I’m writing is… like watching paint dry. Yes, the feedback that inevitably results from the stories is nice. But the actual process of writing it bores me to tears. In short, it’s a ton of work, but not work that connects to me personally, so it’s not a fulfilling work experience.

My conversations with my porn beta readers usually go like this: “How long exactly does this have to go on? When are people going to be satisfied? When can I fade to black? How much dialogue can I use for filler? Can I stop now? Wait, what do you mean that character’s orgasms aren’t realistic? Orgasms aren’t fireworks displays like in the KY commercials? I’m so confused.”

The reason I can’t remember to ask people not to prompt me for porn is genuinely just that I forget that people will ask for porn. I don’t usually read it, aside from trawling the kink meme, so I forget that, well, people like reading porn. And then I get a porn prompt and the guilt kicks in and I flounder trying to think of something suitable.

Also, there’s a good handful of people in my community who know that I’m ace, so for some reason I always expect that to mean no one’s going to ask me for porn. But of course I have written porn in the past, for gift challenges, and I guess I write well enough that people remember that and want more of it. Which I know is a compliment.

The end result, after everything is posted and people have read it, is usually that I feel like a big ol troll even though quality fic is probably not something a troll aims for.

Overall, it seems like there’s a long way to go and a lot to be desired from the media in terms of ace umbrella representation. But people are also thinking about it a lot — and that makes me think that the future media landscape will be a lot better for all of us.

You can still submit! I’ll add things to the round-up as long as you give me the link.

eowynjedi unearthed an original piece of writing about the character Silfren Aesculeus, who reflects on not falling in romantic love.

Carmilla DeWinter wrote about the concerns involved in writing H, an asexual aromantic character. Also in German/Deutsche here. (TW for instance of ableist language.)

Sciatrix laments how the creators of characters perceived as asexual react badly to others talking about the character being asexual.

veerserif discusses asexual fandom (not asexual_fandom, the DW community), interpreting characters, and awareness. (TW for instance of ableist language.)

Norah talks about the Dragon Age games, interpreting ace characters, and regrettably automatically-sexual romances.

nami_roland wants media that lets aromantics in from out of the cold, and esteems non-romantic love and non-romantic relationships.

pippin wrote Love and Punch, an aromantic retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

Emily rewatches and muses on Fruits Basket, and thinks there’s room in it to easily see a queerplatonic relationship or two. (TW for animated icon.)

psyche2332 wrote about aromantic media representation and the question, “Why is it not okay to not want romance?”

Elizabeth talks about asexuals in non-fiction, specifically creative non-fiction, and the beginning of a memoir.

And I picked apart a plot device (which involved glowing based on your sexual/romantic orientation) and its many unanswered questions.