saint-dionysus:

As of recently I’ve been seeing a lot of posts trying to define asexuality to a specific definition. Which I find counterproductive and reactionary. The main reasons that ace exclusionists exist is because asexuality opens the door to queerness for a great deal of people. (This is likewise, why they often reject the term queer).
Asexuality is a vast spectrum and that’s a good thing. It may now be controversial in the asexual community to state this, but anyone can be asexual for any reason. An innate non attraction to people, is not the only definition of the asexual identity.

• You can be asexual because you have never felt sexual attraction.
• You can be asexual because you never want to have sex.
• You can be asexual for trauma related reasons.
• You can be asexual because you find the identity best suits the way you experience sex or attraction.
• You can be asexual because you are aromantic, even if you still experience attraction to others - because yes, aromanticism falls under the asexual spectrum.
• You can be asexual because you are celibate, whether that’s because of personal or yes, even religious reasons.
• You can be asexual because you lack a sex drive or because you have lost your sex drive.

Asexuality is not a monolith or a single experience and people have the right to self identify for any reason they feel the need or want to.

welcome-to-the-petting-zoo:

welcome-to-the-petting-zoo:

Asexual and aromantic polyamorous people are pretty neat

Okay so this post seems to have sparked both curiosity and controversy, so I’d like to explain it a bit. @aggressive-swan and @wlwpml (@because they both asked nicely for clarification)

First of all, to those who can’t read the text easily, it reads “Asexual and aromantic polyamorous people are pretty neat”.

I stand by this statement for a couple reasons. 

I both meant to imply that asexual polyamorous people and aromantic polyamorous people AND aroace polyamorous people are cool. I don’t believe that I need to argue the point that ace people can be polyamorous, as sex is far from being a necessity in any relationship, but let’s talk a bit about the overlap of aromanticism and polyamory.

I agree that on a surface level it seems like the two concepts couldn’t be further apart. However, as most things in human life, it is not that simple.

At risk of being called out, I am going to use my own situation as an example. I am in a polycule, and I am in a relationship with four people. Three of these are romantic, two of those are sexual, and the last one is queerplatonic. I have talked about what queerplatonic means to me here.

I consider myself as being on the asexual and aromantic spectrum, in the dark grey area. What does this mean? It means I don’t experience much in the way of sexual or romantic attraction. In practice, it’s all a big mush to me. Friendship? QPP? Romantic partner? To me the label is insignificant, and I define each relationship on an individual basis, taking into account the needs of me and my partners. The labels are irrelevant to the level of commitment..

This brings me back to the point that aromanticism and polyamory actually have a paradoxical connection with each other. A lot of aromantic people are turned off by the idea that romantic love trumps all other kinds of love, and the normative ideal that you need to find A Lifepartner, who is your one and only, somehow making your other relationships less worthwhile.

Not surprisingly, this feeling is shared by many polyamorous people, who are known to value non-romantic relationships highly as well. In my case I think of my close friends, partners and partners’ partners as my family, and just like in any family, I am closer to some than others, but they are all important and valid relationships.

But why Cat, you may ask, why are you in three committed romantic relationships if you aren’t romantically attracted? That doesn’t make any sense.

The answer is simple: To me it does. I love these people to the moon and back, and even if I can’t vouch for that love being of a romantic nature, the relationship is of a romantic nature. Why? Because we said so. That’s the relationship we decided to cultivate, and these people have romantic emotions towards me. And as I am far from being romance-averse, this works out pretty neatly for us.

I agree that this is a paradox, but I believe the paradox is born of the limits of language, not of any real inherent contradiction.

Just like some asexual people like to have sex, there are aromantic people who like to be in romantic relationships. 

I hope this helped :)

Cat