Revisiting Ace Spectrum Ideology

[letusdeleteouraccounts]

For a while now I’ve been completely against the idea that asexuality is a spectrum. I’ve seen asexuality as 0 where if you experience sexual attraction even once, your sexuality is revealed. Ever since joining the community, I’ve wanted to be as open as possible to all ideas no matter how “obsurd” they might seem to the general population or whether they were popular or unpopular opinions. That’s why I went with the notion that asexuality wasn’t a spectrum because it was something that made the most sense to me up until recently. I’ve heard a lot of rebuttals from the ace community on this subject that have actually raised further questions against what I’ve believed on this subject and the only logical answers I can seem to come up with point towards asexuality being a spectrum (on the sexuality spectrum). One thing I believe to be true is the notion that sexuality on a scale from heterosexual to homosexual is fluid since it’s been recorded of people who are attracted to one gender for a period of time but later in life have switched to being attracted to solely the other gender. Sure, this could be seen as a bisexual person but then we get into questions about what the actual purpose of using labels are for. I personally don’t think labels about sexual orientation are meant to be restricting but rather to easily describe your experience as a human being because why call yourself bisexual if you have been (maybe lately) only attracted one gender and that’s the only gender you’re having sexual relations with? This can be compared to race. Race is completely determined by your appearance to other people so they can quickly and efficiently identify you. You can’t really go further into details due to the fact that it’s a flawed concept confused in the midist of underlying genetics on occasion not  “matching” the way your outter features have expressed themselves. I compare this because I think sexuality is confusing too and we don’t need to try to get into all the underlying details when it comes to labeling. I feel the same can be said about asexuality. A strict definition of asexuality complicates things that didn’t need to be complicated and using labels like graysexual and demisexual aren’t going to get the point across of what our community stands for efficiently to people outside of the community like it would if we just kept it as asexuals have a lack of sexual attraction. This is inclusive to anyone who feels like this label properly explains who they are currently or have always been. I’m understanding that there’s people who have been experiencing sexual attraction but then go years without experiencing it feeling as if that attraction will never happen again. I believe this is understandable for someone in their 50s+ but not so much for someone where it stopped as young as in their 20s or 30s which seems to go without explanation. People classified as graysexual or gray ace  also shouldn’t have to micro label to describe their experiences and then confuse other people who don’t know who we are in turn slowing down the education and personal understanding (in a 1 on 1 conversation) process. My exception though is situations like if a person experiences sexual attraction once in their life where that person ends up being their sexual partner and they feel hetero/homosexual feels better as a label for them than asexual. I don’t see a problem with that. Labels are meant to describe you individually as a person and your own personal experiences so I’d say now use what fits you best. But of course you will have people who take advantage of that and decide to identify a certain way just because it’s trendy

 

Edit: I do find that the label of gray can be useful within the community to tell people that you know of that experience (from rarity)

[Galactic Turtle]

Asexuality as a word seems to be more conceptual in its nature. Because of this it's a good starting place for people to figure themselves out but in practice is pretty useless in my opinion since it's not describing actions or desires, it's just describing this ambiguous thing called attraction then making that ambiguous thing super complicated and all encompassing then ultimately (in some cases) irrelevant. I think this is just the way that "blank canvas" terms can tend to be.

[letusdeleteouraccounts]

3 minutes ago, Galactic Turtle said:

Asexuality as a word seems to be more conceptual in its nature. Because of this it's a good starting place for people to figure themselves out but in practice is pretty useless in my opinion since it's not describing actions or desires, it's just describing this ambiguous thing called attraction then making that ambiguous thing super complicated and all encompassing then ultimately (in some cases) irrelevant. I think this is just the way that "blank canvas" terms can tend to be.

I’m super confused by this but I understand somewhat. I find very few opportunities for an appropriate chance to tell people that I’m asexual/aromantic where as it seems like for gay people, almost any point in the the day is a good opportunity to tell someone they know of their orientation if it hasn’t already been assumed

[Guest]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I can understand where both sides of the argument are coming from. Ultimately, sexuality is a complicated thing - probably too complicated to have a few one word labels that cover everyone. If you boil it down, asexuality should be a binary - you either are or you aren't. It's hard to have a spectrum of zero. Sexuality isn't simple math; however, and Asexuality isn't a number, so I don't think including the grey area, as part of an umbrella of Asexuality, is necessarily wrong.

 

I think it's most important for people to figure out who they are sexually and to find an identity that makes them feel comfortable. If they end up identifying as asexual, despite not meeting the definition to a T, then that's fine. I'd imagine most people who egregiously misidentify themselves end up changing their mind after more reflection anyway.

[Galactic Turtle]

31 minutes ago, Star Lion said:

I’m super confused by this but I understand somewhat. I find very few opportunities for an appropriate chance to tell people that I’m asexual/aromantic where as it seems like for gay people, almost any point in the the day is a good opportunity to tell someone they know of their orientation if it hasn’t already been assumed

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if people say they're gay/straight/whatever, typically you can draw lines from that word to "what they're about." You know they probably have inclinations to be with certain gender(s) romantically/sexually at some point in their lives or at least naturally gravitate in a certain direction. Asexuality doesn't seem to be like that. Instead it's just the introduction to a lengthy conversation. It doesn't really say anything about preferences, it's just talking about this ambiguous internal feeling. It doesn't say anything about your attitude towards sex or your sexual desires, doesn't say anything about the type of non-platonic relationships you're likely to gravitate towards. You say you're asexual and it's still pretty much an open canvas. So at the end of the day whether you think of it as a single point or a spectrum, it's still difficult for me to really determine what any given person calling themselves asexual actually means for how they operate in reality. The only common denominator I can find is the general feeling of "I won't die if I never have sex again" which isn't saying much.

 

Apologies for the tangent. XD 

 

EDIT: Perhaps another way of saying it is that... asexuality seems more like something that works better as a supplemental term rather than a leading term... which isn't what your post was really about.... but it's what I thought of while reading it.

[letusdeleteouraccounts]

9 minutes ago, Galactic Turtle said:

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if people say they're gay/straight/whatever, typically you can draw lines from that word to "what they're about." You know they probably have inclinations to be with certain gender(s) romantically/sexually at some point in their lives or at least naturally gravitate in a certain direction. Asexuality doesn't seem to be like that. Instead it's just the introduction to a lengthy conversation. It doesn't really say anything about preferences, it's just talking about this ambiguous internal feeling. It doesn't say anything about your attitude towards sex or your sexual desires, doesn't say anything about the type of non-platonic relationships you're likely to gravitate towards. You say you're asexual and it's still pretty much an open canvas. So at the end of the day whether you think of it as a single point or a spectrum, it's still difficult for me to really determine what any given person calling themselves asexual actually means for how they operate in reality. The only common denominator I can find is the general feeling of "I won't die if I never have sex again" which isn't saying much.

 

Apologies for the tangent. XD 

No worries but that makes a whole lot more sense and is completely understandable. The ace community is one of the most diverse communities I’ve experienced. There’s so many different types of aces and it feels like I have to explain every single part of myself for someone to completely understand me beyond their misconceptions assumed from the word asexual

[Basrive]

44 minutes ago, Star Lion said:

I’m super confused by this but I understand somewhat. I find very few opportunities for an appropriate chance to tell people that I’m asexual/aromantic where as it seems like for gay people, almost any point in the the day is a good opportunity to tell someone they know of their orientation if it hasn’t already been assumed

I’m not sure if you intended it, but that was pretty rude. There are plenty of people that dread coming out as gay, and personally, I feel like I have to come out twice. It is very draining, and toss in being bi-racial, I am just a little bit over it.

 

It’s also really hard to get into talking about the split attraction model, since people tend to equate being ace with being a celibate brick wall. Then we have some aces talking about how other aces aren’t real aces, and I just wonder why people are so obsessed with defining others. I identified as gay first, and though i’m pretty aro (I have other strong non-romantic attractions that get confusing), you’ll have to pry my gay card from my cold, dead hands. Unless I find something that suits me better later, which is my decision.

[Sally]

2 hours ago, Basrive said:

I’m not sure if you intended it, but that was pretty rude. There are plenty of people that dread coming out as gay, and personally, I feel like I have to come out twice. It is very draining, and toss in being bi-racial, I am just a little bit over it.

 

It’s also really hard to get into talking about the split attraction model, since people tend to equate being ace with being a celibate brick wall. Then we have some aces talking about how other aces aren’t real aces, and I just wonder why people are so obsessed with defining others. I identified as gay first, and though i’m pretty aro (I have other strong non-romantic attractions that get confusing), you’ll have to pry my gay card from my cold, dead hands. Unless I find something that suits me better later, which is my decision.

Why do you feel  you have to come out -- i.e., explain to other people exactly how you feel about everything?  I don't  mean that as a challenge; I  sincerely wonder why coming out seems to be so  important.  From what I've seen, most people don't really care about the details of who is what; they're mostly concerned with themselves.  

[Iam9man]

I’m sort of in the middle on this: I see asexuality as a binary yes/no (“do you experience sexual attraction/desire partnered sex?”), but asexuality itself (i.e. anyone who answers “no”) as a spectrum. @Star Lion and I discussed this on a recent thread, but to summarise both a touch-averse sex-repulsed asexual and a hypersensual sex-positive asexual are asexual, but their experiences almost couldn’t be further from each other (whilst still meeting the definition of asexual). I get the argument that this isn’t actually an ace-spectrum but a touch/sex-positivity spectrum, but I think it makes sense to refer to this as the ace spectrum. If the concept of an inclusive ace spectrum with huge variance wasn’t presented on AVEN when I first stumbled across it I would not have worked out I’m asexual (incidentally, I’m at the hypersensual/sex-positive end).

[letusdeleteouraccounts]

8 hours ago, Basrive said:

I’m not sure if you intended it, but that was pretty rude. There are plenty of people that dread coming out as gay, and personally, I feel like I have to come out twice. It is very draining, and toss in being bi-racial, I am just a little bit over it.

Definitely wasn’t my attempt. What I’m saying is that if you were to feel comfortable with coming out as gay, you have pretty much every opportunity to do so. Coming out as asexual or aromantic, a lot of situations are like “why are you telling me this?” for the person you’re coming out to (at least when it comes to people who aren’t involved in your personal life such as your parents or partner)

[Basrive]

5 hours ago, Sally said:

Why do you feel  you have to come out -- i.e., explain to other people exactly how you feel about everything?  I don't  mean that as a challenge; I  sincerely wonder why coming out seems to be so  important.  From what I've seen, most people don't really care about the details of who is what; they're mostly concerned with themselves.  

It is less important to me as I have gotten older. When I was younger, pretending to be straight caused a lot of issues, and I probably had a period of arrested development where the fake mask I put on had friends, but I was not really... living? Hard to explain over text. Are your friends really friends if they have gotten to know a pretend version of you?

 

15 minutes ago, Star Lion said:

Definitely wasn’t my attempt. What I’m saying is that if you were to feel comfortable with coming out as gay, you have pretty much every opportunity to do so. Coming out as asexual or aromantic, a lot of situations are like “why are you telling me this?” for the person you’re coming out to (at least when it comes to people who aren’t involved in your personal life such as your parents or partner)

Oh, I definitely get that. Thanks for explaining!

[letusdeleteouraccounts]

6 hours ago, CBC said:

I've never seen asexuality as a spectrum. Don't understand that at all. Either you want to have sex with people with any degree of frequency or you literally never do. I can see people who've not yet experienced that desire (and aren't, like, 12) identifying as ace (and then changing that label if someone comes along), and I can see adopting it if you experienced it once or something and never did again for a long period of time (and there was nothing medically/psychologically wrong), because in those instances, you'd be functionally asexual. But I don't get the spectrum thing.

You actually do have a point. I might still be missing the point on this whole thing 😂 I have to give it just a little more thought