potato_head | Exclusionary and Divisive Attitudes in the Queer Community

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Exclusionary and Divisive Attitudes in the Queer Community

Sooo I know some of you saw that debacle. In sf_d. A lot of you probably didn't? But that's alright because I'm pretty sure the things I want to say here can stand completely separate from that, but I do have a few words to say on that first, as to why I'm now writing a post on it;

I was really actually very, very angry. That was pretty much the most pissed-off I can be; I was shaking with anger, light-headed, etc. With the main result being, as I said at the time, I couldn't get out everything I had to say. This can actually be pretty good for an actual discussion since as you all know I usually have a tendency to ramble on for PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHS, and when I'm that mad I kind of get straight to the point :P in fact, I'm rambling right now, so let me get to the point: I don't feel like I did justice to the point I wanted to make, and there are some things I wanted to discuss that wouldn't have been appropriate in the context of that um...discussion anyways. So I am going to talk about them now.

And I'd like to remind everybody again that I completely welcome discussion and debate. However, for probably the first time ever, I am also going to request that you stay respectful. I mean I generally trust all of y'all to do so but I feel like this is a topic on which emotions might run high.

Also, I would like to note that I have been struggling with how to write this for a few days now, because the fact is that I can't back up my points with personal experience, because I'm not asexual myself. The things I do know, that I am drawing some of my conclusions from, are very personal stories shared with me by my ace friends and acquaintances, and it's not my place to go telling those experiences to others.

So um, with that in mind, let's talk about this!

Okay, I guess the first and most obvious topic to address is: sexual privilege. Yes, I do think it exists. Yes, I do think queer people who are sexual possess sexual privilege. It is true that there are people, especially conservatives (and religious conservatives) who are much less hostile towards a queer asexual person than a queer sexual person. However, arguing that this negates sexual privilege is completely ignoring the fact that conservative people are not the only people who discriminate. (There is also the fact that 'you're one of the good ones' is not exactly the antithesis to discrimination; and these people would probably still disapprove of queer asexual people being in relationships, even if sex is not involved, because they would not actually believe sex was not involved, because they don't believe asexuality is a valid identity.)

I understand the wish to believe that the liberal set of the population, and especially social justice groups and queer groups, do not discriminate against people. But this is just not true. Anybody who has read wombyn-born-wombyn feminist rhetoric knows that there are groups dedicated to some form of social justice that happily outright hate other minority groups.

Is this oppression?

I would say it is obvious that a social justice group, being composed primarily of minorities and their allies, cannot oppress people, since they don't hold enough power in society to do so.

However, when you also see it coming from liberal people who are in the majority - who do hold power in our society - who are not queerphobic but openly regard being asexual as an 'illness', 'unnatural', etc; then I argue that their actions could be oppression. I think, at the very least, this is something that should be discussed openly, not dismissed because asexual people are not discriminated against enough. What is the point at which you are allowed to discuss how society treats you? Is it only when everybody is against you? Where is the cutoff point where it suddenly becomes ridiculous to discuss these things? I always felt it was when a group of people was obviously a majority with power; and to be frank I think that is where it should be. I think any other attempts to quantify or rank levels of discrimination, oppression or general suffering, and decide who may and who may not discuss these things in the appropriate spaces, is silencing.

Yes, by the way, that's in the appropriate spaces. Obviously I am not saying that every space must now be devoted to discussing sexual privilege? IDK, I think that was clear, but just in case.

Now the question is, okay, so what, exactly, are these sexual privileges? That is, how are asexuals discriminated against?

Well, as I've already said, I frankly can't say much on this point because I am not asexual. However, if you ask somebody who is asexual if they have ever been discriminated against, made to feel unsafe, or verbally or physically assaulted because they were asexual, IME chances are pretty high that they will have a lot of examples for you. We have to listen to what they have to say and stop telling them to shut up. Silencing is a terrible thing.

The one thing I can talk about in this topic is asexual erasure. Some people might argue that there is in fact no such thing as asexual erasure, as there are plenty of, for example, people in TV shows and movies who are not actively shown to be having sex. This is, frankly, ridiculous because most of the TV shows and movies you find this in are meant for young audiences, and the general social assumption is still that if they are an adult, they are having sex or have had sex or will have sex at some point in their life, it is just not discussed. Even if a character is openly stated to be asexual people will completely disregard this. I don't mean shippers, who will generally change the sexuality of a character to suit their needs; I mean most fans. If they even understand what asexual means ('so is he like, a starfish???').

Okay, I went off on a bit of a tangent there. Back on track.

So the thing is that erasure isn't just bawww hurts my feelings~. It's actually a pretty big problem. First of all, the emotional impact is not something that can be easily dismissed. I know, personally, trans (and particularly FtM) erasure is pretty much the biggest negative influence on me emotionally; being told day after day that basically you are alone, that you are a freak and normal people don't want to have to hear about you or even acknowledge that you exist, realizing that there are huge numbers of people who actually do not know you exist because the world hides your existence like a dirty secret; that can be emotionally devastating at times.

Erasure also has effects beyond the emotional impact. Most people will not believe that there are hate crimes directed at asexual people. If they hear about a personal experience from an asexual person, it is dismissed as a single incident and therefor attributable to something else, such as misogyny. This is because hate crimes against asexuals don't get reported as such. Police and other authority figures do not understand what asexuality is; or they don't believe it's a valid identity. They don't investigate asexual hate crimes as such, either. The very idea of hate crimes against asexuals is just swept under the rug. And this is just accepted by queer people as indicative that they don't happen, as if there was no fight to get hate crimes recognized in the first place, as if we can suddenly expect the majority to recognize hate crimes when they see them.

I would like to believe that the exclusion of asexuals from queer communities is due in most part to naivete; that people honestly believed that if hate crimes were happening, if discrimination was happening, we would hear about it from people in power, that people who are not asexual would start investigating it of their own accord. But I have heard too much from people in queer communities to know this is the case. There are many, many people within the queer community, especially activists, who believe that asexuals are unnatural, basically freak accidents, the result of mental illness or childhood trauma. I have also heard the opinion more than once that asexuals are just liars, or 'virgins who are scared to do it'. I heard a lot of these things while discussing the fact that my partner was asexual; this did not deter them from saying these things to my face. I have seen my asexual friends told they weren't welcome in queer communities; regardless of if they were homoromantic (or even in a gay relationship at the time), or if they were attending as allies in solidarity with me and our other friends, they were shown out with thinly-veiled hostility, or were generally not taken seriously to the point where they, understandably, just left. It seems to me that a lot of the exclusion and silencing of asexual people coming from within the queer community is due simply to prejudice against asexual people.

And I don't fault the queer community at large for that; it happens, and obviously we are not responsible for one another's prejudices. We are not a monolith. What I do find troubling, though, is that nobody wants to discuss these problems. There is a general denial that there could be any problematic discrimination within queer communities. It is an understandable defensiveness; but it has to stop.

I would also like to briefly go back to the fact that a lot of potential hate crimes or discrimination against asexuals are dismissed as being the result of another kind of prejudice, usually misogyny. I am not going to deny that other prejudices may play a part in some, or even many incidences of discrimination or hate crimes against asexuals...but I would argue that the same is true for many cases of discrimination against homosexual people and trans* people. If a lesbian is assaulted by a man for being a 'dyke', does he mean he hates her for being gay, or because she doesn't make herself available to men? If a trans man is verbally attacked for 'pretending to be a man', is it because it's socially unacceptable to be transgendered, or is it because the person feels he is a woman stepping out of 'her' place? I think it could be either; it could be both. Neither of these invalidates the fact that gay and trans* people are discriminated against, or that they suffer hate crimes for what they are; it just means that the causes of hatred are not always black-and-white.

A lot of the things I have said here about asexuals applies to a few other groups as well; notably, bisexuals (and pan- and omnisexuals, even moreso in some cases). There are many gay people who have no problem openly declaring that they think all bisexuals are 'just doing it for the attention' or 'can't decide', and it is not uncommon for bisexual voices to be silenced in the queer community. However, this issue IS being discussed; people are addressing it. In my experience, discussing the exclusion of asexuals from queer communities, and the discrimination asexuals face, has been greeted with nothing but hostility, which is why I wanted to focus on asexual people here.

I probably had more to say, but I feel out of words for now. So yes, I think that's it. Again, I welcome (and encourage) respectful discussion on the issue...as you (hopefully) realize by now, since that's basically my point; we have to talk about these things, not shut discussions down.

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Thanks for going into this; I'm from the asexuality group, and I for one appreciate that you have a lot of words and tend toward rambling. Me too, me too.

I'm not really sure how to go into the discussion of whether sexual privilege exists, because I think wherever you have a HUGE majority and then one teeny minority it's almost inevitable that the majority gets things the minority is denied. I don't think it's sexual people's fault of course, and I don't think they have to be INTENDING to oppress us in order to still contribute to the existence of the status quo (you know, "but everyone is sexual, and if they say they aren't, they're effed up and/or lying"). But this knee-jerk "OMG how dare you say we are privileged!" reaction from these communities does make me narrow my eyes a bit, since that's pretty much how most entitled people act when their privilege is called into question.

I think that if each queer person in that community sat down with the "knapsack" and looked at the list for heterosexual people, they'd be able to generalize almost EVERYTHING in it to asexual people (if they were being honest). Just like them, we're not represented in culture. Just like them, people in our own family and friend groups can shun us or attack us if they find out. And just like them, we are often made into representatives for our sexuality even if we don't want to be. But unlike them, we don't have counseling centers or therapists devoted to our "genre" of sexuality, and we don't have large amounts of resources or clubs where asexuals can meet other asexuals for romantic dating, and we don't usually get accepted as EXISTING the first time we tell the people important to us. (On that last, of course sometimes gay people have to deal with "being gay is bad" or "maybe you just haven't had the right opposite-sex partner," but in nearly all cases they're at least going to know what you MEAN by gay and believe you actually are, even if they think it's wrong.)

With very little else to do but try to turn to the queer community for understanding, we get this kind of reaction and are told we don't belong there either. And furthermore that we're co-opting people's identities by trying to have it acknowledged that we're not straight and we do experience erasure/oppression. And since most asexual people are probably assumed straight by society, of course those of us not in homosexual relationships are often afforded some modicum of straight privilege, but that doesn't mean for all intents and purposes *we are straight* or don't have our own problems. (Any more than a trans person who "passes" can't be hurt by transphobia anymore.)

If you're interested, I have a published article called "Are Asexuals Queer?" and I can point you to the website if you'd like to read it.

because I think wherever you have a HUGE majority and then one teeny minority it's almost inevitable that the majority gets things the minority is denied.

I agree with this completely. It seems like a no-brainer for me that at the very least, most things in the world are made BY and therefor FOR sexual people...everything from literature to philosophies and religions, down to things like self-help books. That is at least one place to start looking at obvious privilege. Society just isn't structured to automatically include minorities.

You've also mentioned some things I meant to go into but forgot to. Especially the lack of resources and help for asexual people, which is another BIG problem caused by asexual erasure. Also, the idea of 'passing privilege', that so many people in queer communities use to claim that asexual people don't belong because even if they are in a gay relationship, they could pass for straight if they wanted to. It is an interesting discussion, but the fact that it is used to completely invalidate the idea of asexual people suffering any discrimination or oppression, even for being in a same-sex relationship; that is ridiculous.

I would love to read your article C: it's a topic I've thought about myself but I feel like I haven't heard enough opinions on it to talk about it.

That's true--things are made by and for sexual people, which is kind of both a curse and a blessing for asexuals. I mean, we're not going to be manipulated into buying something because the advertising makes us think it will make us seem more sexually attractive (nor is it likely we'll go to a movie just because there are advertisements about a hot actor getting naked), but yeah, it'd be easy to cite a billion examples in media of sexual authors/producers/creators talking to sexual readers/viewers/participants. I remember taking a health test of some kind and it was pretty comprehensive since it was trying to determine all my risk factors, and then at the end there was this HUGE block of text giving me completely bogus advice because it was reacting to me saying I date "almost never or never" and am not married and that my last romantic relationship was over fifteen years ago. It absolutely assumed that this caused great distress in my life, gave me a high stress rating based on it, and gave me advice about how to be more outgoing, how to increase my confidence, how to stop feeing so lonely and how I might treat my depression. This is despite the fact that I always answered the mood questions with positive answers and indicated that my stress levels are low and happiness levels are very high. That one set of questions was given SO much weight. It clearly comes from the point of view that the only and best way to happiness is to be in a relationship, and if you aren't, my god you must be heartsick over it! Even if you say you're not! I've also abandoned many a personality test question or survey when there was no "none" or "other" option on the subject of who I'm attracted to. It's never whether--it's who, when, how.

Majority society has no context for understanding asexuals. All they can think of is themselves not having sex and how they feel if they don't get to. They project onto us a feeling of despair, of loser-ness, of desperation. It all comes down to a lack of ability to empathize, I think. And when you can dehumanize a group by claiming they aren't actually looking for their own proper representation but actually are just out to take glory/rights/righteous indignation away from you, it's easy to stereotype and hate on them. I saw an awful lot of that in those Posts Of Wank.

Regarding the resources/help, I've talked about it in some of my discussions around the 'Net but it was fresh in my mind because another LJ user,

the_vulture, mentioned it specifically in his list of stuff that comes to mind when considering how he might be disadvantaged as an asexual (compared to homosexuals who claim our oppression isn't real or isn't significant).

As for the "passing privilege" which states that asexuals could pass for straight if they wanted to, well, couldn't most gay people do that too if they dated someone as a cover or due to social pressure? Hello. We have no natural inclination to do that if we're aromantic, and yet we're told we don't have it bad because we can just pretend to be straight? So can they! But I am not suggesting they should, and even though heteroromantics and aromantics are probably presumed straight and don't ever chose relationships that make people think otherwise, that doesn't mean the sexual culture isn't stifling for us.

Regarding my article: It's published in Good Vibrations.
Are Asexuals Queer? (http://magazine.goodvibes.com/2011/03/14/are-asexuals-queer/)

I've also written two others that were published in the same place: Asexuality is Not Antisexuality: Sex-Positivity in a Negative World (http://magazine.goodvibes.com/2011/01/24/asexuality-is-not-antisexuality-sex-positivity-in-a-negative-world/) and Sexual Attraction vs. Romantic Attraction (http://magazine.goodvibes.com/2011/02/01/sexual-attraction-vs-romantic-attraction/). I've got a crapton of other asexual-related content on the 'Net (including YouTube videos), but I'll stop there for now.

And I want to say again how happy I am that you've taken such a level-headed look at the subject, and I really like your insights.

All they can think of is themselves not having sex and how they feel if they don't get to.

Definitely. I think this is where a lot of people come from when they first approach the idea of asexuality; and they never move on from that to actually making an effort to understand, because they just don't have the motivation to do so - they don't see it as their problem.

I love your articles! They're very well-written and you raise a lot of really good points. I especially found interesting the thoughts in Asexuality is Not Antisexuality on how growing up in a sex-shaming culture affects sexual people's view of asexuals. I was actually just thinking about it myself, and you covered the topic in a really informative way, it gave me a lot to think about.

Yeah, "they don't see it as their problem" is a good way to phrase it. To tell you the truth, I don't really need them to understand as long as they're willing to give me my space. I'd be happy with "Okay, live and let live." Unfortunately, it's a lot like gay marriage. You ask anti-gay-marriage activists why letting gay people get married would affect THEIR marriage, and they say it somehow takes away from their hetero-marriage significance, even though it doesn't do ANYTHING AT ALL to what they have and what they get if other people get it to. But people with privilege frequently feel that if their privileges are made less *exclusive*--if people who DESERVE them get them too!--then somehow theirs is less special and they have to boo-hoo about it. But it absolutely does not limit their rights at all, does not change how they have to live, and does not imply a change in how they have to see their union.

As for how that ties into asexuals, we're not asking for people to switch to asexuality. We're not recruiting, and we're not campaigning as if we are superior. We don't want anything from them, in fact. What we want is for the pressure to be sexual to lift. We'd like them less involved in trying to determine what our lives should include (sexually) and we'd like them to stop pretending they get to grant or deny legitimacy for our relationships. We don't want to change theirs. We just want them to stop trying to insist that people who aren't sexual are therefore repressed, and stop harassing us in the name of "helping" us.

Thanks for the props on my articles. I'm glad I helped with some insights. I do a couple of YouTube "shows" on asexuality if you ever feel like checking them out--searching for "asexuality top 10" or "letters to an asexual" will bring up my videos, and I do a lot of debunking and whatnot. If that's something you care to listen to. I'm pretty rambly though. :/

I've always found it interesting how many privileged people claim not to see privileges, while at the same time defending the exclusivity of them to the death. It makes me wonder how many are really that socially blind, and how many believe it's their right as a 'normal' person.

I will definitely check out your videos :D I love listening to people talk on queer issues, and I think I still have a lot to learn with respect to asexuality.

I know. In a society where people will openly call it "disgusting" if two guys hold hands and kiss in public, it's hard to imagine that some straight people think they don't have a privilege. We'd have to see what happened if they couldn't go to clubs and dance/kiss/touch/grind with their partners without getting harassed unless it was "straight night" or a specific club organized for their interests. A bit like drinking from a different water fountain if you know what I mean.

>> That one set of questions was given SO much weight. It clearly comes from the point of view that the only and best way to happiness is to be in a relationship, and if you aren't, my god you must be heartsick over it! <<

This is an excellent example of how prejudice causes logical flaws: the wrong assumption leads to wrong interpretations. In a health context, that can be disastrous. Such tests often have a big impact on people's lives. If you rely on pleasing people for a job or access to vital medication or services -- which is common, because a lot of that stuff is restricted to people in a certain field, with very rigid opinions -- and your identity is not something they accept or even acknowledge as existing, the likelihood of harm is high. This still happens with homosexual or transfolk, but used to be a lot more common.

Also, I love your articles and have linked to all three of those.

Thank you for linking to my articles. I hope people who have read them have found some interesting insights and maybe gotten a different perspective on some of the issues.

Yes, *especially* in a health context (including psychological health), these interpretations can be disastrous. I think especially when it comes to finding a therapist . . . I have known several asexuals who want to go to therapy for reasons completely NOT linked to their asexuality, and yet one of the first things the therapists always seem to dig into is what their relationships are like. The predetermined reaction to "has no romantic partner" is "this person is failing" and "this person is sad" and "this person must be frustrated." I doubt ANY of those "conclusions" would have been reached had the therapist not had a predetermined understanding of what emotions those situations must cause for the subjects.

Here's another example. I have quite a few videos on asexuality on YouTube. One of my Letters to an Asexual videos was commented upon by a guy who said this:

"why do all asexuals have that boring look and monotone voice tone? You can say whatever you want against society being oversexed but without sex drive you deprive yourselves of some important vital energy and it REALLY shows."

I hardly even knew what to say. Nobody, ever, EVER, has accused me of looking boring, having a monotone voice, or lacking vital energy. I mean, if anything, people are sometimes shocked by how passionate I am and have even used THAT against me ("haha, you are all hyper like a little kid, maybe THAT'S why you're asexual, you're a child, hahaha"). I guess the point is that you see what you want to see, and the preconceived notions you harbor actually CHANGE what you believe you observe.

>>Thank you for linking to my articles. I hope people who have read them have found some interesting insights and maybe gotten a different perspective on some of the issues.<<

You're welcome. My readers do seem to be enjoying those. You have an unusually good knack for addressing multiple perspectives.

>>Yes, *especially* in a health context (including psychological health), these interpretations can be disastrous. I think especially when it comes to finding a therapist <<

Precisely.

>>I have known several asexuals who want to go to therapy for reasons completely NOT linked to their asexuality, and yet one of the first things the therapists always seem to dig into is what their relationships are like.<<

It's almost impossible to get health care professionals to do something specific, on request. They want to be in control, but they also tend to treat everyone like a textbook, and human beings aren't textbooks. So that's dangerous, and it's worse the farther you are from the middle of the bell curve. Then you either put up with all the wrong guesses, or restrict the information you give to them which pisses them off and maybe makes them refuse you service, or you just say fuck it and quit trying to get service at all. Or some combination of the above. And then they wonder why people hold out on them!

>> "why do all asexuals have that boring look and monotone voice tone? You can say whatever you want against society being oversexed but without sex drive you deprive yourselves of some important vital energy and it REALLY shows." <<

Asexuals have different emotional patterns, and some of those are different than what most sexual people have. Some asexuals have a very level emotional baseline, but not all do. And some are ordinarily level, but are passionate about some particular thing -- which passion isn't visible in other contexts. Others have a more typical patterns with highs and lows in the same places as sexuals, excepting only that they aren't interested in sex.

I'd guess overgeneralization. If you've seen two or three examples of a rare instance, and they happen to be similar, and you don't have any other examples because they're rare to begin with, it's easy to assume that the rest are going to resemble what you've already seen. But just because some asexuals have a neutral-buffered personality doesn't mean they all do, and "boring" is unnecessarily negative as a description. It has its pros and cons, like any other personality.

>> I mean, if anything, people are sometimes shocked by how passionate I am and have even used THAT against me ("haha, you are all hyper like a little kid, maybe THAT'S why you're asexual, you're a child, hahaha").<<

Tch. Just because someone gets excited doesn't mean there's something wrong with them. It just is. Some people's personality is exuberant, or partly so. For that matter, even if someone is not-fully-developed, ragging on them is a very bad idea and likely to do more harm than good. There's nothing wrong with being a late bloomer, as long as it's not due to some specific illness or injury that could be improved.

>>I guess the point is that you see what you want to see, and the preconceived notions you harbor actually CHANGE what you believe you observe.<<

True. We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

*ponder* Which may be part of why I think in tendencies more than absolutes. I'm a shapeshifter at heart; it keeps me aware of the fluid nature of reality and probability. That annoys the daylights out of people who see the world in black and white.

I'm glad you think I did a good job addressing multiple perspectives. I don't feel comfortable "speaking for people" (as you might imagine), so I try to phrase the ideas that belong to other people (especially the ones I am challenging) in neutral language. Not so much "people in THIS group think THIS!" as "I have heard some people from THIS group say THIS and cite THIS as their reasoning."

Yes, it's true that therapists don't necessarily just "treat you for what you came for," though I guess to some extent that's okay because when you come to a therapist for help you're admitting that there's a part of your life you want to change and that you need help doing so. If someone I counseled (if I was a counselor) insisted that she did not have X problem but I had seen other cases of X problem affecting the problem she DOES claim to have, I don't think I would automatically take her word for it, but at the same time it wouldn't be constructive to just say "nope, we have to treat you for X problem because you represent a series of dots I'm connecting, not a person." But I think being a therapist is SO much more about listening and considering perspective than most people realize. Many people who need therapy have all the tools to help themselves if they just have someone to bounce it off of.

And yes, an armchair psychologist told me I was a "textbook case" (of what, I'm not sure), but it didn't really matter that he didn't support his statement. He felt he did not have to, and told me if I went to any psychiatrist's office they would diagnose me immediately (again, with what, he did not say). Though he also seemed to think that I could get an MRI which would "conclude whether I was asexual or not" based on WHETHER MY BRAIN SCANNED AS FEMALE. What.

The video where I review that guy's communication, by the way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AhkihhJGb4

And yeah, some people find it important to withhold from therapists because they know the b.s. they'll say. You can only go through so many time-consuming and expensive trial visits before you realize the majority of people are going to make dumb assumptions, and that therapists are not immune to doing so.

Regarding asexuals' emotional patterns, I have nothing to say except they're as varied as sexual people's. Though the rates of autism/Asperger's tend to be higher among asexual people who self-identify. I think that's largely because more people on the autistic spectrum are touch-averse and/or less socially aware than in the normative population. It certainly doesn't make their asexuality less authentic, but it also doesn't suggest that asexuality is caused by autism. As far as I can tell there's not a "cause" or at least not one cause.

As for your comments on ragging on people who are immature, you're right that there's not really a constructive way to make that comment. What is it going to prove or help if you tell someone they're immature and insist that asexuality is a symptom of that? Even if you were right you'd look like a jackass and accomplish nothing, though I've never heard of anyone who identified as asexual for over ten years and seemed to simply be "immature."

>> Not so much "people in THIS group think THIS!" as "I have heard some people from THIS group say THIS and cite THIS as their reasoning." <<

It's a good approach.

>> If someone I counseled (if I was a counselor) insisted that she did not have X problem but I had seen other cases of X problem affecting the problem she DOES claim to have, I don't think I would automatically take her word for it, but at the same time it wouldn't be constructive to just say "nope, we have to treat you for X problem because you represent a series of dots I'm connecting, not a person." <<

When someone has a problem they want to work on, that's the place to start unless some other issue is causing an emergency. It's important for both parties to be aware that life issues interweave with each other, so starting in one place may lead you somewhere quite different. But it's rarely helpful to go haring off into the underbrush after something that isn't causing misery when something else is. It's challenging enough to figure out what's going on in someone's life, without leaping to conclusions. (I've done my share of helping people deal with issues, mostly spiritual and magical issues, but also general life stuff. Being a spiritual leader is a lot like being a grease trap.)

>>But I think being a therapist is SO much more about listening and considering perspective than most people realize.<<

Agreed. It's also important to match the style to the person's needs. Different types of therapy are better at addressing different problems, or work better for different personalities. And almost nobody puts any effort into pointing that out or helping people figure out who to go to.

>> Many people who need therapy have all the tools to help themselves if they just have someone to bounce it off of.<<

They do if they're lucky enough to have a semi-functional life background. Some people have whole swaths of skills missing, which they have to acquire from scratch. One of the important steps is checking to see what people know and can do vs. what they haven't learned or learned wrong that needs to be added or replaced. But it is helpful to find things that people can do for themselves, so they can take an active part in problem-solving. *sigh* If you can get them to do the work, that is.

>>Though he also seemed to think that I could get an MRI which would "conclude whether I was asexual or not" based on WHETHER MY BRAIN SCANNED AS FEMALE. What.<<

Science FAIL. Exit stage left!

>> Though the rates of autism/Asperger's tend to be higher among asexual people who self-identify. I think that's largely because more people on the autistic spectrum are touch-averse and/or less socially aware than in the normative population.<<

I think it's not just that, but rather, their whole system is wired differently. They don't think the same way as most humans think; their patterns have more in common with some other species. (Some have found this advantageous, like the lady who designs human animal handling systems for slaughterhouses.) So they may not have the same priorities or respond to the same signals.

Interestingly, some aspies don't respond to neurotypical people in a sexual way but will respond to another aspie with just the right match of traits. Almost like a lock and key. Which is nice for forming relationships, but the genetics are nasty, as Silicon Valley has discovered. It's one of those genetic arrays where a little bit can be an asset, but the bits add up if you get some from both parents, and the more there is the worse it gets. Doesn't happen much in a random population because aspies rarely breed heavily -- until you put a bunch of them together in a small area. People only realized what was happening when the number of children with autism spectrum disorders spiked in that area. The details still aren't all known, but some of the patterns are coming clear.

>> It certainly doesn't make their asexuality less authentic, but it also doesn't suggest that asexuality is caused by autism.<<

No, just tells you to keep an eye out for asexuals among aspies, and vice versa. The two traits are more often found together, but not necessarily correlative.

>>As for your comments on ragging on people who are immature, you're right that there's not really a constructive way to make that comment.<<

A better way to phrase the concern, if it's a real concern and not an excuse to snipe at someone, is: Don't jump to conclusions. Explore your options. Think about what you want. Understand that sexual interests can change. You don't have to be sexually or romantically active until you feel like it, and if you never do, that's okay. But don't block off your options on the assumption that you never will be interested, especially early in life. The farther you get from puberty, the more likely that your sexual makeup will stay put; but there are no guarantees.

Oh yes, autistic people's mental landscape is wired differently, but it seems that if some of the defining and/or most common factors associated with autism also have to do with interpersonal interaction and touch, there would be some overlap and also some non-asexual relationships that LOOK like asexuality from the outside.

And regarding advice for teens, what you said is very similar to what I've said. I tell them to keep their options open and do not "decide" on a label which you then have to adhere to. I like to say labels are descriptive, not prescriptive. You should know that growing up and becoming mature DOES NOT require becoming sexual for all people (and if people are pressuring you to be sexual because they insist you can't be mature if you don't, don't listen), but at a young age when your body and mind are growing and changing a LOT, the most important voice to follow is the inner one. A little intuition, teens.

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Exclusionary and Divisive Attitudes in the Queer Community

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