Incredibly Ace Moments

[œddy]

Brit, mid 30's. Could be regional or because the subject doesn't come up very often in friendly conversation!

[Amy94]

as someone with Autustic Spectrum Disorder [Asperger's Syndrome] who generally takes things literally, innuendo is somewhat of a minefleld for me. by now I've learned to think about what people say and what I say, but sometimes there's still something that surprises me. one time I said to my friend 'why can't people just say what they mean? why do people have to ruin perfectly good words and expressions?!

this problem has only gotten worse since college.

 

 

another ace moment: my friend and I both joined our college's LGBTQ+ society. the gift bag they gave out came with condoms and lube. I said to my friend 'You can just take mine'  and I just gave her the bag - I didn't even want to touch them.

other than that, looking forward to seeing what happens in the LGBTQ+ society.

[Bronztrooper]

On 9/18/2018 at 12:38 AM, will123 said:

@olivria1 You aren't the first AVENite to get asked for relationship advice...

I've only really been asked for relationship advice once and that was brought on because my friend's boyfriend had become emotionally abusive towards her (putting her down about stuff she liked, criticizing her for doing stuff like writing fanfics and drawing, and telling her to dye her her hair and change her hairstyle to suit his tastes) and she just wanted advice on how to deal with it.  I basically told her that her boyfriend was being an asshole and that she shouldn't have to deal with being treated like that and she agreed with me.  A couple of weeks later, they broke up.

 

Other than that, the only relationships that my friends are in atm are ones that don't end up being discussed other than just casual questions about how their partners are doing (one of my older friends has been married for... about 10 years, iirc?, while one of my friends closer to my age has been in a relationship for the past few years)- though, only about half of them are actually in relationships to begin with.

 

11 hours ago, Amy94 said:

another ace moment: my friend and I both joined our college's LGBTQ+ society. the gift bag they gave out came with condoms and lube. I said to my friend 'You can just take mine'  and I just gave her the bag - I didn't even want to touch them.

other than that, looking forward to seeing what happens in the LGBTQ+ society.

Honestly, that would probably put me off of the group right off the bat.  But then, it's commonly accepted that the 'typical college experience' is parties and sex, so I guess it makes sense?  Still, I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of making that a gift bag.

[CFilipek]

5 hours ago, Bronztrooper said:

Honestly, that would probably put me off of the group right off the bat.  But then, it's commonly accepted that the 'typical college experience' is parties and sex, so I guess it makes sense?  Still, I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of making that a gift bag.

I don't think that's generally accepted as the typical college experience except in movies, nor do I think that's why they give them out. They do it because they want to make sure people know about safe sex, because so many schools &/or parents teach abstinence only education, and because they know it's awkward to buy condoms. While they do erroneously assume that everyone is going to be having sex sooner or later, I don't think the motive behind it is bad.

[Amy94]

well in fairness most of the gift bags for joining societies had condoms in them anyway. my friend ended up with loads of them and she kept taking them out and playing with them in later when we went to a coffee shop. I think she did it just to annoy me. but she was quite supportive other than that so I forgive her.

I remember reading in my college newspaper that over 60% of college students thought 'casual sex' was ok, so I guess it makes sense they have free condoms everywhere - last Valentines Day that had stalls with condoms and bananas for students - my sex education was so bad for a minute I thought they were just giving free food with condoms for no reason. 

Edited September 22, 2018 by Amy94
Spelling mistake

[Fluffy Femme Guy]

59 minutes ago, Amy94 said:

my sex education was so bad for a minute I thought they were just giving free food with condoms for no reason.

[squaggly]

On 9/21/2018 at 5:16 AM, CFilipek said:

Honestly, that would probably put me off of the group right off the bat.  But then, it's commonly accepted that the 'typical college experience' is parties and sex, so I guess it makes sense?  Still, I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of making that a gift bag.

When I went to my first and only pride, there were so many different condoms they were handing out, and I didn't even know what they were. They were talking about the different tastes they had, and it didn't dawn on me that they weren't candies until I picked one up, opened it, and realized it was rubber and not food. Fun times.

[squaggly]

On 9/21/2018 at 8:03 AM, Fluffy Femme Guy said:

my sex education was so bad for a minute I thought they were just giving free food with condoms for no reason.

my sex education was so bad that I didn't even know what sex was at the end of it. It was more of a puberty talk.

 

But I did learn what porn was, except that I just thought it was pictures of naked people. Needless to say, not knowing what sex was and seeing what it actually is was pretty scary for 11 year old me.

[will123]

1 hour ago, squaggly said:

It was more of a puberty talk.

I'm pretty that was the gist of my high school sex ed teachings. I'm thinking there was some discussion of of the various STDs at the time (pre-AIDS era).

[Fluffy Femme Guy]

Not really a 'moment' but a trend I've noticed since joining here.

The fact that it's relatively easy (for me) to talk about sex/romance stuff over the internet with 'strangers' who (mostly) have no/little/less desire for such things.

In stark contrast to family or close friends. I do have a few friends IRL I can talk some of this stuff with, but not my parents. My dad is almost a stranger to me, and while my mother would be okay with it, it would be super embarrassing and uncomfortable for me. She's very loving an accepting, but we're really different.

[Neutral nerd]

55 minutes ago, Fluffy Femme Guy said:

The fact that it's relatively easy (for me) to talk about sex/romance stuff over the internet with 'strangers' who (mostly) have no/little/less desire for such things.

That's one of the best parts about AVEN, sex isn't revered or reviled as a whole and we can mention it without it being "scandalous"/misinterpreted. And I can say how I feel about without starting a flame war or some kind of stupidity. 

 

Ace moment whenever I sit next to a boy in class *gasp* and joke around completely platonically. I mean, i really doubt anyone interprets it as more than that and honestly i would be disappointed if that was actually the case 

[will123]

1 hour ago, Fluffy Femme Guy said:

Not really a 'moment' but a trend I've noticed since joining here.

The fact that it's relatively easy (for me) to talk about sex/romance stuff over the internet with 'strangers' who (mostly) have no/little/less desire for such things.

 

57 minutes ago, Neutral nerd said:

That's one of the best parts about AVEN, sex isn't revered or reviled as a whole and we can mention it without it being "scandalous"/misinterpreted. And I can say how I feel about without starting a flame war or some kind of stupidity. 

Love your posts!

 

On the bold, I find it very 'therapeutic' when I post my thoughts. Not meaning to upset anyone with some of my more intimate content.

 

Glad to have AVEN to discuss stuff of this nature. Even though I'm very open with my nudist friend, there are some things I haven't felt comfortable enough to discuss them with him right now.

[Bronztrooper]

8 hours ago, Fluffy Femme Guy said:

Not really a 'moment' but a trend I've noticed since joining here.

The fact that it's relatively easy (for me) to talk about sex/romance stuff over the internet with 'strangers' who (mostly) have no/little/less desire for such things.

In stark contrast to family or close friends. I do have a few friends IRL I can talk some of this stuff with, but not my parents. My dad is almost a stranger to me, and while my mother would be okay with it, it would be super embarrassing and uncomfortable for me. She's very loving an accepting, but we're really different.

Honestly, I'm comfortable about talking about almost anything, but sex is one of those things I don't like talking about- even with my friends (not that the subject comes up much in context other than jokes and innuendos) or with the anonymity of being online.  But here I feel a bit more comfortable talking about the subject, which is probably for the reasons @Neutral nerd mentioned.

[nerdperson777]

13 hours ago, squaggly said:

my sex education was so bad that I didn't even know what sex was at the end of it. It was more of a puberty talk.

 

But I did learn what porn was, except that I just thought it was pictures of naked people. Needless to say, not knowing what sex was and seeing what it actually is was pretty scary for 11 year old me.

People often mention that they have had sex ed classes and I'm like "I don't recall my high school having that."  How can you spend a whole year or half a year on a class like that?  Is there really that much to talk about?

[Ms. Carolynne]

Sex Ed in my school system taught about STDs / STIs, and reproductive organs. It was just the technical stuff.

 

They also taught abstinence and nothing else.

 

It was all taught from a heterosexual perspective as well , so nothing pertaining to LGBT issues, not that it was ever in depth.

 

@nerdperson777 In my case, it got tied into health class. There'd just be a few class sessions dedicated to it. There was never a class on it, per se.

[nerdperson777]

3 minutes ago, Ms. Carolynne said:

Sex Ed in my school system taught about STDs / STIs, and reproductive organs. It was just the technical stuff.

 

They also taught abstinence and nothing else.

 

It was all taught from a heterosexual perspective as well , so nothing pertaining to LGBT issues, not that it was ever in depth.

 

@nerdperson777 In my case, it got tied into health class. There'd just be a few class sessions dedicated to it. There was never a class on it, per se.

I don't think my school had a health class.  I forgot what class it was, but I just know that there was one that would take all the students' blood pressures once a year as practice in whatever free time each class of the day had.  Also as the nerd as I was, I looked at classes in the whole class catalog.  I don't recall seeing anything remotely sex ed in there, or I skipped through them.  I guess the most I've ever learned about it was in biology class.

 

Teacher: Today, you are making babies.

Student: Sorry, my mom won't let me do that.

[We had some pages of chromosomes that we had to pair up to see what kind of kid each pair got.  My partner and I got a kid with Down Syndrome and my bully laughed at us.]

Teacher: Hey, don't laugh at their (I forgot what word, abnormal? probably r*tarded?) kid.

 

Or the other day when our lecture was on the "male" reproductive system.  That partner mentioned earlier always fell asleep but then she said that she may be able to stay awake for this.  She still fell asleep 10 minutes later when I looked back from my seat.

[Forest Spirit]

11 hours ago, Neutral nerd said:

That's one of the best parts about AVEN, sex isn't revered or reviled as a whole and we can mention it without it being "scandalous"/misinterpreted. And I can say how I feel about without starting a flame war or some kind of stupidity.

^ this! With my peers (20-ish people, and partly also people in general) talking about sex is always this "OMG sex"-thing which doesn't make me feel as if I could talk about it with them in a normal, discussion-like way which is possible here on AVEN. Especially male friends or aquintances are great at making sex jokes and innuendos, using slang words for body parts, but whenever I ask them what they mean (because why the hell should I know these stupid slang words, I really don't understand why they exist) it's like f.e. "well... ahm.. you know, a womans... down there thing" (instead of just saying vagina), but no it's such a bad word ^sarcasm^ Another thing is 'talking around it' as in "well, he slept at my place you know...", leaving me to guess what they mean, which I'm not a fan of!

In the end, I always find it really childish when people can’t talk about stuff normally. If it's a bad thing, something that's a sensitive topic for you (things for which you would use a trigger warning on AVEN f.e.), than that's ok. But a normal conversation about sex is not part of that in my opinion.

(sorry this kind of turned a bit into a rant)

[nerdperson777]

5 minutes ago, Quasar.w said:

^ this! With my peers (20-ish people, and partly also people in general) talking about sex is always this "OMG sex"-thing which doesn't make me feel as if I could talk about it with them in a normal, discussion-like way which is possible here on AVEN. Especially male friends or aquintances are great at making sex jokes and innuendos, using slang words for body parts, but whenever I ask them what they mean (because why the hell should I know these stupid slang words, I really don't understand why they exist) it's like f.e. "well... ahm.. you know, a womans... down there thing" (instead of just saying vagina), but no it's such a bad word ^sarcasm^ Another thing is 'talking around it' as in "well, he slept at my place you know...", leaving me to guess what they mean, which I'm not a fan of!

In the end, I always find it really childish when people can’t talk about stuff normally. If it's a bad thing, something that's a sensitive topic for you (things for which you would use a trigger warning on AVEN f.e.), than that's ok. But a normal conversation about sex is not part of that in my opinion.

(sorry this kind of turned a bit into a rant)

Now that I think of it, I've now played Magicka with two sets of friends.  The first set are sexual trans friends.  The second are mostly cis and at least partly ace, we just don't talk about sex.  When I was playing the game with the first set of friends, we had some sexual jokes flying around.  We would cast shields on ourselves to avoid taking damage.  But then whatever status affliction you have on doesn't go away until you take off the shield and use an opposite element to cure it, like fire on frozen or wet, water for on fire.  So what we end up saying is "I can't stop being wet because I have a shield on."  Then there's probably some insinuation that the shield is a condom.  But lately, I've just been playing with the cis ace friends.  No mention of wet shields.  I didn't even remember it until a few days later.

 

I just thought about another moment, which is a few years old, so it's possible that I've mentioned it before.  I was doing a presentation in my Chinese class about a famous figure.  I used Google translate on quite a few words so then people probably had no idea what I was talking about.  I did my presentation on a famous eunuch.  The TA said that I should tell the class what I meant by one phrase I said.  I said in some sarcastic playful voice, "castration!"  Then my presentation showed a person with the animation of a knife appearing, cutting vertically around the crotch, knife disappearing, and a sad face appearing on the person.  I think my classmates were mostly girls or even all girls so they started laughing.  Now I think perhaps there's probably an innuendo I didn't see.  That's probably the only thing my classmates got out of my presentation.

[Aloney]

On 9/20/2018 at 10:34 AM, Taylor Lilith said:

I don't know why it's called Big O.  The other two are Big Theta and Big Omega and their lil counterparts.  Big O is where you only care about the largest growing function.  If an algorithm is x^2+x+1 the big O would be O(x^2) whereas little o would be o(x^2+x+1).  This is between Sophomore and Junior level computer science we are talking right now.

 

Big O is slang for orgasm.  So when we are talking about the Big O of heapify in a heap sort and all the children giggle about someone using slang for an orgasm to talk about the efficiency of an algorithm for some reason the entire class giggles.

 

On 9/20/2018 at 11:25 AM, Quasar.w said:

Ah ok, makes sense. We used it for estimating truncation errors and how accurate the methods are, not sure if that's the same as efficiency... it's only been a year and I've forgotten so much ^sigh^ (doesn't help when you can't remember names)

 

Yeah... I get that it's funny once, but usually people just keep on giggling and I'm like "....." ^imagine blank face^

Oh, is there a lot of science folks here at AVEN? I know next to nothing about mathematics, so this sounds very sciencey to me, and I'm a biologist myself 😅 Yeah, we have those annoying "innuendo" names in biology, too. One of the bigger ones is when we are taught about the ecology of Parus family of birds. They... They are called "tits", in English. For example, blue tit, great tit... oh god, don't get me started with the ecology of great tits... even the lecturer can't keep a straight face and I'm sitting there like *sigh*. 

[Guest]

I never got sex ed in school. Well, there was something in Grade 7, but I can't recall what was discussed. I don't think it was too graphic or explicit, though. It's weird. I can't recall it very much, other than feeling EXTREMELY uncomfortable.

 

Years after, I went back to get my ministry file, and it mentioned that incident. Apparently I "giggled" a lot. I can totally see that. Hell, I remember doing that. And I don't mean giggling like an immature twelve year old. I mean giggling because I wanted to DIE OF EMBARRASSMENT. I recall feeling so uncomfortable that crawling under a rock and dying was much more preferable than listening to my teacher talk about such matters.

 

I'm not sure if this was an ace moment or not. Thankfully I don't giggle nervously anymore when sex is discussed. (-_-) 

[Neutral nerd]

Sex Ed/FLE is basically useless in America, I think, because of how cisheteronormative it is. The only way it would apply to me is if it informed me about nonbinaryness/asexuality, but as its taught i didn't learn any of that through FLE. Honestly makes no sense. 

[CFilipek]

4 minutes ago, Neutral nerd said:

Sex Ed/FLE is basically useless in America, I think, because of how cisheteronormative it is. The only way it would apply to me is if it informed me about nonbinaryness/asexuality, but as its taught i didn't learn any of that through FLE. Honestly makes no sense. 

I think it definitely depends on the school. Mine was pretty good, but I was in a very good school district in a liberal enclave of Illinois and I can imagine most schools did not do nearly as good of a job for their Health classes.

[All The Thoughts]

6 hours ago, Ms. Carolynne said:

Sex Ed in my school system taught about STDs / STIs, and reproductive organs. It was just the technical stuff.

 

They also taught abstinence and nothing else.

 

It was all taught from a heterosexual perspective as well , so nothing pertaining to LGBT issues, not that it was ever in depth.

 

@nerdperson777 In my case, it got tied into health class. There'd just be a few class sessions dedicated to it. There was never a class on it, per se.

THIS

 

This is exactly what my school did; they even called it an abstinence class (which is understandable given the fact that the days we had it were in middle school). Even then though, my high school didn’t  have anything in place related to the issue so it’s rather confusing

[squaggly]

7 hours ago, nerdperson777 said:

People often mention that they have had sex ed classes and I'm like "I don't recall my high school having that."  How can you spend a whole year or half a year on a class like that?  Is there really that much to talk about?

My sex ed was about half a day.

[Bronztrooper]

6 hours ago, Ms. Carolynne said:

Sex Ed in my school system taught about STDs / STIs, and reproductive organs. It was just the technical stuff.

 

They also taught abstinence and nothing else.

 

It was all taught from a heterosexual perspective as well , so nothing pertaining to LGBT issues, not that it was ever in depth.

 

@nerdperson777 In my case, it got tied into health class. There'd just be a few class sessions dedicated to it. There was never a class on it, per se.

I bounced between a few schools and ended up with 'health class' and sex ed in 2 different schools in separate school districts.  The health class was basically a sort of 'pre-sex ed' course and it mainly dealt with pregnancy, puberty, and stuff like that (was in 7th and 8th grade, so still middle school years).  The thing that annoyed me about it was that it was literally the same exact course for 2 years.

 

As for sex ed, it was the standard 'the only way to prevent STDs and STIs is to not have sex' mindset, though the teacher did make sure to teach about condoms, so I guess that made it marginally better than a lot of other schools/teachers.  Both were purely heteronormative, though, so no mention of LGBT+ at all.

[Bronztrooper]

7 hours ago, nerdperson777 said:

People often mention that they have had sex ed classes and I'm like "I don't recall my high school having that."  How can you spend a whole year or half a year on a class like that?  Is there really that much to talk about?

Considering how teachers and schools (mostly schools, though) can end up stretching out stuff that could be taught in a couple weeks into being lessons that take a couple of years to be taught, I'm surprised that sex ed only lasts, at most, 1 school year.

[Forest Spirit]

5 hours ago, Aloney said:

 

Oh, is there a lot of science folks here at AVEN? I know next to nothing about mathematics, so this sounds very sciencey to me, and I'm a biologist myself 😅 Yeah, we have those annoying "innuendo" names in biology, too. One of the bigger ones is when we are taught about the ecology of Parus family of birds. They... They are called "tits", in English. For example, blue tit, great tit... oh god, don't get me started with the ecology of great tits... even the lecturer can't keep a straight face and I'm sitting there like *sigh*. 

Oh... man... As I said somewhere before, I see it being funny once but then it just gets... boring, immature, "why am I here"😅 BUT, now I have a question: which meaning or usage of the word "tit/s" was there first? I'd guess the one for birds, it sounds sciency and "lets give this new family of birds we just discovered a name"... Do you know that by chance?

[Aloney]

21 minutes ago, Quasar.w said:

Oh... man... As I said somewhere before, I see it being funny once but then it just gets... boring, immature, "why am I here"😅 BUT, now I have a question: which meaning or usage of the word "tit/s" was there first? I'd guess the one for birds, it sounds sciency and "lets give this new family of birds we just discovered a name"... Do you know that by chance?

Unfortunately I don't, I would actually like to find out, too 😅 I'm very interested in the etymology of names and words  

[Aloney]

53 minutes ago, Bronztrooper said:

Considering how teachers and schools (mostly schools, though) can end up stretching out stuff that could be taught in a couple weeks into being lessons that take a couple of years to be taught, I'm surprised that sex ed only lasts, at most, 1 school year.

Oh, it must be different in different countries! Where I'm from the biology of human production was covered in science class in fifth grade=we were 11-12-year-olds. The recreational part was taught somewhere around eight grade, I think? It was one or two classes, where we were shown educational videos, taught about... if I remember correctly, the consent stuff, birth control, and to... be gentle about touching sensitive parts of your partner or something..?

[Hermit Advocate]

1 hour ago, squaggly said:

My sex ed was about half a day.

So was mine, and the teacher couldn't actually say the word sex without getting horribly flustered. She taught us a recipe to make meth rather than go into an in depth discussion about  how sex works/the repercussions of sex (no I'm not joking).