Incident - why a disabled asexual would feel uncomfortable with desexualizing PWDs

[ocelotofdoom]

(This is mostly a personal, rather than a political, post, despite the title.  And yes, I do realize how ironic/WTF/whatever it is to have Tyrion for an icon in a post about asexuality, but I found it slightly more fitting than the Magneto icon, so yeah

Comments

[poto_heart]

It feels a little petty of me to make this kind of distinction

It isn't petty at all. What's happening is others are making the decision for you whether or not you should be a sexual object. The fact that your answers happen to agree on this point doesn't make it any less gross and skeevy.

finding someone who actually likes and wants - isn't just settling for, but actively wants - a geeky, repulsed asexual, Autistic person with visible facial deformities, among other things, for a nontraditional, most likely queerplatonic relationship? Yyyyeah, good luck with that, self

bb don't give up on that. It's much more likely than you think. I would be all over you if we clicked the right way* (also I'm pretty sure you're looking for a monogamous relationship?) and I do rather regret that we don't. Seriously, you're a fantastic person.

*specification: in terms of a few particular interests and also dominance orientations.

[spacehawk]

First, I am sorry to hear you've had such a stressful and emotionally difficult week.

Internally, I'm going into "Am I skeeved out because this is actually sexist, or am I just being a sex-negative asexual hating on regular straight relationships and gender roles?"

I don't have the details, of course, but from what you've described here, it sounds sexist to me. Unless you expressed interest in hearing these things from him, it seems sketchy to do. The rest of what you have told us about him supports a finding of "sketchy" here.

The operative questions to ask yourself, in my opinion, are why he is choosing to tell you this, and what response he wants to get out of you. See below.

It's a similar deal with his "I want a girlfriend" rant -- why is he telling you, and what responses in particular is he looking for from you? Somewhere, in his mind, he is looking for a certain response. He may be saying these kinds of things just to you, or he may be saying them to everyone. I have no idea.

And then he responds with the following

[spacehawk]

It feels a little petty of me to make this kind of distinction, like I'm saying I want something to be offended over, but it bothers me, as a matter of principle and because of what it means for my chances of finding a close non-sexual relationship of any kind (given that most people experience and rely on aesthetic attraction).

No, it's not petty of you, and you're not looking for something to be offended about. You are not asking people to direct unwanted sexual attention at you, you are asking to be respected as a full and valuable human being. You are also expecting that people do not center themselves in their expectations of the sexualities of others (i.e. "You are undesirable to me as a disabled person, so it's a good thing you don't want sex since no one would want, or should want, sex with you anyway").

Have you seen this video? swankivy, who is asexual and "normatively attractive", discusses being expected to be flattered with unwanted attention. Well, no. And when she objects, people say she's "just looking for something to

[ocelotofdoom]

Thanks for your reply, and for spelling it out in words (I was kind of tossing things around myself, but couldn't really make sense of it). I don't know what his deal is... I get the sense that it may be a case of no one else talking to him and I should get a clue and fuck off already