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Doc Impossible

One of the really hard parts about being on the asexual spectrum is once in a while you'll just casually mention a basic fact if your existence, and an allosexual person will tell you with authority & confidence that you're broken. It's always freighted and veiled, but that's the message: your perceptions and feelings are wrong. Be more like us.

And the part that's hardest for me is queer communities are pretty much always worse about it than cishet ones, because queer culture is so sexualized.

It makes it really really hard to get social or emotional support when you need it on ace stuff, because cishet people lack the vocabulary and awareness, and the overwhelming majority of queer folks view your sexuality as a defect implicitly, if not explicitly.

Leaves a girl feeling very othered.

@Impossible_PhD theres something very funny about realizing your demi but didnt notice because you accidentally were surrounded by the Ace, chaste and Demi your whole life...

@Impossible_PhD Strong agree that it's very difficult to talk about wanting affection/cuddling without it coming across as sexual :-/

@woozle or even just parts of life/fashion/whatever that they code as sex-related and are completely uninterested in/unable to consider in any other light.

Or, worst of all, if one of us is uncomfortable with being seen as fuckmeat. Their entitlement to their leering, you know?

@Impossible_PhD Expanding... well. My "local" spaces all started from the seed crystal of "people I met on local discords" and there's a wide variety there... so me being wherever I'm at (TBD?) has been a nonissue when I then meet individuals or small groups I know in person.

(for that matter there's a fair population of what you call altersex folk in one)

I'm a little dreading the idea of expanding my social stuff as "me" to more general "queer" spaces though...

@Impossible_PhD But we have differences in how we present obviously... and I'm starting from being close to a shut-in tentatively building stuff from zero.

And even still... argh, yeah, pulled away from a lot of spaces that were much more sexualized too, now I think about it.

Different sides of the coin now I think... RSD does not leave me comfortable with coping with being othered, so hold myself out of places I would be. Hm.

@Impossible_PhD Sorry, I know I went on there... being othered for that, or anything else, from groups that should know better is so shitty, and they should know better. 🫂

@Dani Don't apologize. Processing these feelings is important.

@Impossible_PhD 💜

Just a reflex to not hit the social failure mode of going from "sympathizing with a friend with comparisons on how I relate from similar experiences" to "oops talking too much" you know? 😅

@Dani @Impossible_PhD Same here. I absolutely love to meet up with fedifriends when they come through. Some of those have been better than others but I have yet to have one of those meet-ups go truly sideways. My experience just showing up to local groups, though, has been really mixed.

(To be fair, some of that is just general social awkwardness.)

@Impossible_PhD It's very frustrating to find a community that you finally resonate deeply with, but then there's this one rather significant part of it that's still as alien as ever... Nothing to do but keep searching, I suppose. :blobfoxheart:

@Impossible_PhD ooof, this resonates. But perhaps I'm being unfair. A lot of it is simply lack of comprehension I believe. It's just as hard for an allo to comprehend things from my point of experience as it is for me to comprehend theirs. Perhaps harder, because I have society telling me pretty detailed what I'm meant to be feeling on this topic. But yeah. Outsider.

@anyia Given that we're the vanishing minority, why is it always on *us* to be fair to *them*?

@Impossible_PhD 🤔 Well first of all I'd like to claim that we're definitely not vanishing, minority though we are. Second, I have personal morals, one of which is to try real hard to not be a damn hypocrite because I can't stand those (and I'd very much like to stand myself, especially now that I'm finally making friends with myself).

But I see your point. As often the case, a disproportionate responsibility lands on the minority.

I guess... we need to be louder?

@Impossible_PhD

There's not enough people who just accept someone else's personal interpretations of their own feelings. Too many times we have to mold someone else's experience into what we can relate to. This just confuses the issue. It diminishes the person relating their facts.

Instead of lovingly accepting an experience that they can't relate to they tell you your interpretation is wrong.

Sorry that this keeps happening to you.

Your reality and thoughts are valid.

@Impossible_PhD
Perhaps I'm lucky. With any queer people I know, online or off, either the topic of sex hasn't come up or they've been understanding of me being ace, even if they aren't.