I Am Not Anyone's Complement

CN: brief mention of transphobia

Sometimes I see people write things like “God made men and women in unique and complementary roles.”

This is usually in the context of some broader debate, about female pastors or submission, or same-sex marriage, so they write it like it's self-evident, as if that argument itself is a piece of evidence in their favor, and move on.

But I'm a scientist, and I like evidence. This statement isn't self-evident, and I'm pretty sure it's not even true.

Sexism and Asexuality, Part Four: "Real Relationships"

 So far in this series, I've written about how sexism kept me from realizing I was asexual, how asexual women don't get a pass from sexism, and how telling women they're not really asexual plays into a sexist narrative where women can't be trusted to know about themselves. This week, I'm going to write about the popular troll phrase, "Asexuals have just never been in 'real' relationships," and how this phrase is simply another way of coercing women into unwanted sex.

I wrote about one problem I have with this phrase back in March, but today I'm going to go deeper. The idea that they're only asexual because they've never been in a "real relationship" is something asexuals hear a lot; it should probably have a spot in the next edition of asexual bingo. So what constitutes a "real" relationship? In the eyes of most of the world, and the people saying it, a romantic relationship, and probably one that includes sex-- which is something many asexuals don't want to have.

Telling people they have to engage in unwanted sex before you consider their desires valid is a form of social coercion. It creates pressure on them to engage in unwanted sex, and it contributes to rape culture. When applied to women, it's a form of sexism as well, since women already face disproportionate pressure to engage in unwanted sex. Women's desires are already invalidated on so many grounds; adding more, telling women they have to check off "x" box before you consider their desires and experiences valid, is misogynistic.

Unfortunately, this phrase is found within feminist communities as well as outside of it. If your idea of feminist activism involves telling women you won't believe them about their sexual orientation until they have sex they don't want to have, you are not being a feminist, you are being a mouthpiece for the patriarchy. Go directly to feminist jail, do not pass feminist go, and do not collect two hundred feminist dollars. Go to your room and rethink your feminism. Women's desires and identities are not something on which you can place conditions. An orientation doesn't need "x" amount of relationship experience to make it valid; romantic desire doesn't need "x" amount of sexual desire to make it valid; platonic desire doesn't need "x" amount of romantic desire to make it valid.

Feminism means trusting women to be the authority on our own identity and desires, against a background of misogyny that tells us women shouldn't have any desires and need men to tell us what we want, anyway. Feminism means listening to women about our own experiences and identities. And feminism means not coercing us into unwanted sex by refusing to believe our own accounts of ourselves until we have it.

Sexism and Asexuality, Part Three

Now, I'm going to discuss the sexism inherent in telling women they're not really asexual.

It's true that the misogyny in which we all exist shapes our choices, and that no choice is made outside its influence. If I said, "I've decided I want to drop out of graduate school and find a nice breadwinner to support me and stay home full-time raising his two point five children while baking every day and putting on heels and pearls to meet my husband at the door with a martini, and this has nothing to do with misogyny because it's my choice," people would be justified in their skepticism; this hypothetical choice (while not a choice that wins, because no choice a woman makes can win in the patriarchy) is a choice that plays right into some very strong stereotypes about women.

It's also true that even our perception of our own sexuality is shaped by the patriarchy, and it can be hard to determine what is a genuine desire and what has been written onto us. For women who have desires that seem to "cooperate with the patriarchy," this can create a lot of conflict about how to embrace their desires in a healthy way.

With these two things being true, however, anyone who wants to tell a woman that her sexuality is false, or unduly shaped by patriarchal stereotypes (because no person escapes this shaping entirely), is treading very near to enacting a misogynistic narrative of their own. Telling a woman that her sexuality is not what she says it is plays along with a narrative that suggests women are never really mature enough to know themselves, and that they need some kindly stranger to instruct them, whether about what to wear or how to smile or what to eat during pregnancy or what their sexual orientation is. Telling a woman she's wrong about her own sexuality plays into a narrative where what women know about themselves doesn't matter, because who they are and what they want are irrelevant as long as they play along with the script. It's possible to do it well… but it's not likely to happen. An outsider might be able to more clearly see the cultural forces to which a woman is subjected than the woman herself, but their potential for more unbiased perception in one area is balanced by an inability to perceive what's in the woman's own mind.

To argue that a woman's sexuality is the result of patriarchal forces, you must be able to argue that that sexuality falls in line with patriarchal norms, and as I have previously discussed, asexuality is not a "patriarchy-approved" female sexuality. Applying standard criticisms of choice feminism to a woman's sexuality also runs into the further and larger problem that sexuality is not freely chosen. There's debate about the extent to which sexual orientations are inherent, but most people (at least in my cultural context) who aren't conservative Christians agree that one's sexual orientation is largely or entirely not a matter of choice. You cannot logically criticize a woman for her choice on a matter in which she had little or no choice.

I know that I didn't choose to be asexual. I don't know if I was "born this way," but I was "this way" by the time I was a teenager, and when I discovered the concept of asexuality, many years later, a lot of things from my adolescence suddenly made sense. What I have chosen is to accept my asexuality. I've chosen to accept that there is nothing wrong with me and that I am not repressed or broken. I've chosen to accept and affirm that, even though I live in a patriarchal society and my experiences are shaped by misogyny, I have enough agency to know my own desires; I am as able as a straight woman, a bisexual woman, a pansexual woman, or a lesbian to discern my own sexual orientation. I've chosen to accept that I do not need to have lots of (undesired, unenthusiastic) sex, or violate my own boundaries, in order to discover my "real" orientation.

These are the choices I have made, and on these, I both welcome and defy criticism. If you have a problem with these choices that I have made, or with the similar choices of any other asexual woman, I suggest you consider, deeply, what the alternative would look like.

Note: While I did not end up quoting Cliff Pervocracy in this entry, I want to thank her for putting some vague ideas and feelings I'd been having into very clear and concrete words.

Sexism and Asexuality, Part Two

I've heard it said that for a women to be asexual means for her to conveniently conform to the demands of the patriarchy, but that's very untrue.

Asexuality is a free pass out of exactly zero of the thousands of ways the patriarchy polices female sexuality. My not being sexually attracted to men isn't excused because I'm also not sexually attracted to women. The sex toys in my dresser aren't condoned because I'm only using them on myself. The fact that I want intimacy from people-- from men, even-- without wanting to have sex in return doesn't meet with approval. That I enjoy being attractive, without wanting to attract anyone and without being attracted to anyone, puts me squarely in that illogical category known as "being a tease," just like millions of other women who dare to do something for themselves rather than for a male audience.

Women cannot express our desires, be they romantic or sexual or platonic, without being shamed and belittled, and being asexual doesn't change that. We're not supposed to have desires. We're supposed to be sexualized, and sexy, but not sexual; available to men, but with no desires or demands of our own except for those which serve their fantasies. Asexual women don't get a free pass out of that. Some asexual women, certainly, do have no sexual desires, but I suspect there are very few asexual women who have no desires at all. And asexual women are no more sexually available to men than are women of any other sexual orientation. Therefore, we fail at the two primary components of patriarchially-sanctioned female sexuality: available (no more so than any other women) and without any desires of our own (no). The patriarchy isn't exactly falling all over itself to give us cookies.

As an asexual woman, I am too sexual to be "proper," because I enjoy sexual pleasure (and, even more scandalously, on my own terms and for no one's benefit but mine). I am also not sexual enough, however, because I am not sexually available to men. I do not receive any sort of approval for being asexual; I have not unlocked some sort of magic guide to negotiating through the worst of the patriarchy by being asexual. I put up with the same objectification, fight the same fights, and live in the same fear as the equivalent white allosexual woman of my socioeconomic class. And all this, by the way, is while being celibate. If I were currently sexually active, I would have to wade through the same garbage as my allosexual counterpart.

The thing about the patriarchy is that there is no way to win. It is an obstacle course constructed to be unwinnable. Not everyone loses as badly-- for many women, their race, class, sexual orientation, religion, and/or position on the gender binary clear many obstacles away-- but no one wins. To say that any particular group wins simply means you aren't paying attention. There is no way to satisfy the demands of the patriarchy, because the demands of the patriarchy are conflicting and mutually exclusive. It is literally impossible. None of us win-- not allosexual women, and not asexual women.

Sexism and Asexuality (Part One?)

This is a story about my younger self, and about how sexism (and homophobia, but mostly sexism) affected my identifying as asexual.

I grew up thinking I was straight, because straight was default and everyone was straight until proven otherwise. I wondered occasionally if I were gay, because I realized that I liked women and men about the same, but I decided I wasn't gay because I didn't want to have sex with women. I did wonder if I might be bisexual, but I concluded that I liked guys so that made me straight. I didn't hear about asexuality for years.

I didn't date much in high school. I dated more in college, always men. One relationship had a noticeable lack of physical chemistry (even for me), and, while my boyfriend didn't give a lot of reasons for breaking up with me, I was pretty sure it had something to do with him wanting to go farther and faster physically than I did. I don't remember thinking there was anything remarkable about this; I just concluded I was a little weird for not wanting to do that stuff, and that we were incompatible.

I had another boyfriend who told me he wanted me, wanted to have sex with me. I had no idea how to process this. I simply had no framework for understanding a statement like that. I had no idea what it felt like to want somebody. There were people I missed when they weren't around, but I didn't want to have sex with any of them, and my boyfriend was clearly talking about something far more physical. I was taken aback; I had noticed that other people were having much more sex than I was, and that there was something different about them as opposed to about me, but I hadn't thought about what that was very deeply. I was more of a conservative Christian (and more judgmental) then than I am now, so I had put some of it down to different morals, but most of it I had just attributed to different life choices.

But my boyfriend at the time was also religiously conservative, so I knew that couldn't be it. My conclusion was that that tired old chestnut, that men want sex much more than women do, must be true. I was kind of surprised to realize this, but the evidence seemed clear: he wanted me, I had no idea what he was talking about but didn't feel anything like that for him, he was the guy, I was the girl. I couldn't think of any alternative explanation for such a marked difference in our feelings. Not only did I not want him, I couldn't conceive of wanting him or anyone else.

Once I realized that my boyfriend and I had significantly different levels of interest in each other sexually, which was something I thought was gendered, I became concerned about tempting him. After all, if what I thought was a sexist trope about women just not being interested in sex was apparently true, then maybe all that stuff that went with it, about "provocative" women being "bad" women, was true too. I wasn't concerned that my boyfriend was going to pressure me for sex if I was too tempting, but I still didn't like the idea of unintentionally turning him on. I didn't like the idea that something that was platonic to me, like cuddling, could be sexual to him. So I let many of my desires go unfulfilled, and convinced myself that if we could just get to a stage in our relationship where we felt like we "could," morally, have sex, whether that was an engagement or what, then everything would be okay. I focused on sex as the thing that would bring the intimacy I wanted, even though I didn't really want sex.

That relationship ended before engagements or marriage became an issue. I figured out that the tired old chestnut about men wanting sex much more than women want sex was actually a tired old chestnut and not a universal truth-- and what astounds me, looking back, was that I knew a lot of women who were having and enjoying sex. I had them as examples right in front of me. But I had no other way to interpret my experiences than through the lens sexism offered me, because the lives of my friends offered no way to account for my desires, or rather, my lack of sexual desires.

Looking back, I wish someone had sat me down and said, "Aydan, you know how you've never wanted to do anything sexually with any of your boyfriends?" And then, after I had finished sputtering and making excuses, had said, "Have you ever thought about what that means? Aydan, it's not them, it's you."

And I wish someone had sat me down and said, "You don't want what most people want, and that's okay. What you do want, you're probably not going to find in these relationships. Maybe you should stop trying, and figure out a way to get what you really do want." It might have saved me some heartache, and something worse.

Because I'm not saying that I stayed in bad relationships because I didn't know I was asexual and aromantic. But I am saying that if I had realized, had known what those things were, had realized that asexuality and not sexism explained my experiences-- I might have made different decisions.

So, younger self, if you or someone like you is reading this, you should know that it's okay to want what you want, even if it's not what everyone else wants. Your desires are valid whether or not they are sexual. Make decisions based on what you want and not what you think you should want. Figure out what it is you want, and try to figure out a way to get it.

No, We Don't (TW rape culture)

(originally posted on Tumblr.)

D. A. Wolf at the Huffington Post asks, Do We Owe Our Spouses Sex? By “we” she apparently means “women married to men”— a nuanced and less stereotyped discussion of the ways in which differing libidos and levels of sexual attraction affect other groups did not make the cut, more’s the pity. She mentions “rumblings of resentment” from women doing more than their share of housework, childcare, or income-earning, but then mentions that these women just “feel… we’re carrying the greater load” (emphasis mine). She moves on from this point, because apparently redistributing the workload to be more equitable and less gendered is not nearly as easy an answer as pressuring women into having sex they don’t want.

“So let’s talk sex — sex as marital glue, sex as physical necessity, sex as a reminder that we are alive, no matter how complicated our daily struggles may seem.”

Uh-huh.

Physical necessity? Not so much.

Marital glue? Frequently, yes.

Reminder that we are alive? Not going to touch that one.

Moving on, Wolf quotes Dr. Yvonne Fulbright, writing about the recent decision of a French judge that a man owes his wife money for not having sex with her, as saying, “Whether married for two years or twenty, husbands and wives have the right to control their bodies, including abstaining.” Wolf’s response is, “Mulling over her viewpoints, I disagree.” She disagrees that husbands and wives have the right to control their bodies. Really? REALLY. Someone else’s libido and sexual desire trumps my bodily autonomy? Don’t we have a word for that… a phrase… it’s on the tip of my tongue, I think it rhymes with “ape culture.”

She goes on to ask, “What if there is virtually no affection or no sexual contact in marriage— then what?” These two are not the same things. Affection takes a myriad of other forms besides sexual contact— unless we want to argue that the only people who ever show each other affection are those who are having sex with each other? No, thought not.

She continues, “How would you feel enduring one year, three years, five years — without being touched by the person you love?” Again, not the same thing as sexual contact, which I suspect is what she means.

And now we come to the crux of the article! “Might that mean that we owe our spouses sex?” Nope! Not ever!

“In the years since my marriage ended, I’ve become reacquainted with the importance of sex as a fundamental element of loving, and being loved.” Not universally!

“I believe it’s a matter of being caring — and smart — if we want to keep our relationships intact.” Aaaaand ending with a dose of implied “people who don’t have sex with their partners don’t care about them,” topped with a serving of “relationships = sexual/romantic relationships.”

The thing is, I agree that sexual compatibility is important in most sexual/romantic relationships, and a lack of it can cause a lot of unhappiness. It’s important to have open discussions about these things, and to communicate to potential sexual partners your desire or lack thereof. See what I did there? It’s not actually necessary to support rape culture or erase non-sexual intimacy to make that statement. Amazing!

Women are told that we can only express our sexuality in very specific ways— the old sexy-but-not-sexual trap. We’re supposed to desire men, but if we initiate sex, we’re “wild” and “slutty.” We’re supposed to be continually available to men, and receptive to what they want to do, but never have needs of our own. Apparently a history of shaming women who actively initiate or desire sex or even want it too much*, that stretches back to the beginning of written history, doesn’t seem to Wolf like it could have anything to do with the issue she writes about. Apparently the solution to “men feel like they’re not having enough sex with their wives” is not “change the fact that women are condemned for having sexual agency” or “redistribute the workload so women have more energy to engage in sex if they so desire” but “write an article reproving women for not being sexually available and reinforcing the notion that husbands are entitled to their wives’ bodies.” Awesome!

So, to sum up: No, we do not owe our spouses sex. No one ever owes anyone sex. Ever. EVER.

*of course, we’re also shamed if we want it too little.

Ace Stories

One of the difficulties about being ace is invisibility. Our stories aren't out there, not even for each other. I've been wondering for a while what sort of problems asexuals and others under the asexual umbrella face, and, in a rather haphazard way, compiling stories from places like Tumblr and LiveJournal. As I am not a member of AVEN, I hadn't looked there; however, this week I read through some threads at AVEN and was really shocked by what people were reporting had happened to them because of their asexuality/asexual-umbrella identity.

I compiled a rough account of what I read in three parts on my Tumblr. Trigger warning for rape culture, sexual assault/harassment/rape, sexual orientation conversion attempts, and general anti-asexual ideas:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Weasel Words (Trigger Warning, Police Brutality)

(Originally posted at my Tumblr.)

This post, from the NY Daily News: Wall Street protesters cuffed, pepper-sprayed during ‘inequality’ march. This first sentence is, “Scores of protesters were arrested in Manhattan Saturday as a march against social inequality turned violent.”

The relevant bits: “a march… turned violent.” This language implies that the marchers were the ones who turned violent, who initiated the violence. However, reading on, it becomes clear that the violence was almost entirely on the side of the police: the article references “the dramatic mood shift in an otherwise peaceful demonstration,” “80 people carted away in police vehicles and up to five… hit with pepper spray near 12 St. and Fifth Ave., where tensions became especially high,” and “footage of other police altercations.” Multiple witnesses talk about the pepper spraying, police slamming protesters to the ground, and police striking protesters who were already on the ground. In contrast, “one demonstrator was charged with assaulting a police officer.”

By saying “a march… turned violent,” the article takes a supposedly “balanced” look at the facts that, in this case, obscures what really happened and makes it sound like the protesters were the ones who became violent. This is, in my opinion, poor journalism; it’s not terribly surprising, however, since the supposedly liberal media is… not particularly liberal.

Telling People How To Identify

I am reblogging this from my Tumblr since I think it's a point that's getting lost in the acrid, vitriolic arguments happening on Tumblr right now.

It’s not okay to tell people what their identity is. It’s insulting, belittling, condescending, arrogant, and dehumanizing. There’s a difference between policing the borders of your own community, and policing someone else’s identity. One is your right. The other is none of your business.

For example, it’s not okay to tell a homoromantic asexual woman that she’s a lesbian— that’s up to her to decide. It’s not okay to tell a man who’s sexually attracted to men and women that he’s bisexual— off the top of my head, there are at least four common labels that include this definition, and which one he wants to identify with is his business, not yours. It’s not okay to tell a woman of mixed African and European heritage that she’s white, whether she likes it or not. It’s not okay to tell someone questioning his gender identity that, since he’s not trans, he must be cis. It’s not okay to tell a woman with depression that, since she’s “clearly” not abled, she must identify as having a disability. It’s not okay to tell a man that he’s “x” religion since he’s not “y.” And it’s not okay to tell a heteroromantic asexual person that zhe must be straight, no matter what your opinion on whether or not asexuality is inherently queer. Even if you think heteroromantic asexuals are not queer, queer and straight are not the only options. No matter what the other options are, it’s not your business to tell someone which one applies.

These are not perfect analogies. I am not arguing that the problems asexuals face are the same as the problems people of color or members of ethnic or national minorities face, the problems that people who aren’t cis face, the problems that people with disabilities face, or the problems that religious minorities face. I am giving other examples of telling someone what their identity is to illustrate how problematic it is in general. If someone comes by my blog and says, “I’m asexual, and I experience sexual attraction to this person and this person,” I’m within my rights to say, “Actually, you don’t sound like you’re asexual*, because asexuality is not experiencing sexual attraction to people.” I have no right to say, “You’re not asexual. You’re grey-a,” or, “You’re not asexual. You’re gay.”

So if you have a horse in the “are asexuals inherently queer” race, and you want the asexual community to listen to you, don’t try to tell people what they should identify as. (Also, please stop using “attraction” if you specifically mean sexual and/or romantic attraction, and “relationships” if you specifically mean sexual and/or romantic relationships, but that’s a different issue.)

*This is an instance where we need better terminology— I don’t mean to erase people who identify as on the asexual spectrum but are not asexual in the strict sense.

In Which Gendered Roles and Rape Culture Help Screw Over the Planet

I wanted to draw your attention to this article in Grist about why fewer women than men, in the US, use biking as a form of transportation. Some of the reasons listed include because employed women perform significantly more housework than their employed male counterparts, leaving less time for a commute that takes longer; women are responsible for more childcare and household errands than their male counterparts, and it's hard to run diverse errands and/or haul children and groceries on a bike; because poverty is feminized, and women are more likely to live in areas where it's not safe to commute; or because women don't think they can bike to work and still look professional when they get there (because it's not like there's a double standard, appearance-wise, or anything...)

Hmm, paging the kyriarchy, would you know anything about this? Most of the points are obvious as elaborated in the article, but I wanted to add that women's bodies are considered objects and even public property in a way that men's bodies never or rarely are; as a result, biking to work (or anywhere else) for a woman can be significantly more stressful than for a man. Not only do they have to deal with all the traffic hazards like men do, but they're more likely to be catcalled, harassed, or assaulted. Women are taught from a young age to be careful when we go out in public, because of all the rapists hiding in the bushes-- the corollary being that, if we are raped or assaulted, it's our own fault for being out in public at all. (The Dominant Kyriarchal Narrative, of course, ignores that most rapes and sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone known to the victim.)

To sum up, a safer world with less policing of gender roles, where women weren't considered objects or targets and men and women split domestic responsibilities more equally, would be a better world entirely in its own right. It would also allow more women to choose to bicycle to work or to run errands, if they wanted, and reduce our collective carbon footprint.