CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@h3mmy That's a great answer, thank you. I don't think it's simple for anyone, given how society prioritizes and emphasizes sex in so many ways. I appreciate hearing some of your story behind it.

One thing I need to work on, which you have already done, is stepping back from using the label where it's going to be misinterpreted. I don't know how to do that yet, as most of my ace discussions are online, where it's all text, and I end up saying ace as a way to shortcut a lot of explanation, often to my detriment.

@alicemcalicepants @cali Absolutely. Being ace is not being broken. That's one of the big positives I've gotten out of it, is finally understanding that I don't have to mask this thing where I just don't care much about sex. The validation that this is actually pretty common, and not a big deal, has been very helpful for me. I hope you are able to get the same benefit out of it.

@caraplayingstuff Well, I suppose correlation is not causation. It could be they dropped away for other reasons that just happened to coincide with my exploring my aceness more vocally.

I suspect that one of my problems may also be that I'm letting the label define me instead of the other way around, which is something I'm prone to if I'm not careful.

@sophiesometimes I had this, for sure: I thought I was allo for a long time, switching to demi around the mid 2010s as I realized there was Something Going On, but not being sure what it was.

After I switched to E, it became clear that T was driving my sexual behavior, for the most part. My body was into it, and my mind kind of never was. It explains an awful lot about my sex life in the past, which was occasionally quite active, but never had the draw so many other people seemed to experience. It also seemed to be very focused on fulfilling a body need, like needing to eat.

I recall watching a Wes Anderson movie about a train ride, where two characters meet, have sex in a bathroom, and part ways, and thinking to myself "this must be a completely fictional thing." It was simply incomprehensible that such a thing could happen in reality. I felt the same way about one-night stands, but I've been assured they're a real thing.

Of course, I ultimately realized that the entirety of my "sexual" attraction was actually just gender envy, which I still feel, but can clearly classify as a "want to be her" reaction now.

@cali That makes perfect sense, and is kinda how I'm feeling as well. I dislike that this seems to be Yet Another Thing separating me from others. I already have a bunch, so I didn't welcome having another one.

And yeah, I don't care much whether I'm ace or not for myself. It just means I'm me. But in the context of a world obsessed with sex, it's quite othering.

I was thinking about this last night, and realized I should actually ask the question. Poll time!

So, I decided a year or two ago that I was probably asexual, based on the evidence I had at the time. Since then, it's become clearer that this is the case.

However, this has not done anything particularly good for me, aside from giving me information to pass to any theoretical new relationship partners. I feel worse about myself, I think because I'm no longer getting the flirty interaction I was enjoying, even if sex was never the object. Like, everyone heard me talking about being ace and decided, probably out of respect for me, to knock off the flirting. No flirting means no deeper relationships, or so it seems, as most of my trans femme friends are somewhere between very and deeply sexual, so it feels like there's this invisible barrier between us.

That got me to wondering, do my ace friends feel similarly? Obviously it is now poll time.

Ace friends, how does the fact of your aceness impact your life? How do you feel about it? (I realize this is a very simple poll and cannot possibly encompass how you feel; I'm just looking for big trends, please comment for more nuance.)