You know what? I don’t think I even have a safe space to be asexual in, not any more. I love, so hard how these people keep talking about how we are destroying their safe spaces by fucking existing and maybe using a word to describe ourselves that they don’t want to share, and yet they come into one of our desperately few places for us—one of the tiny, limited, Internet-only spaces we have—and feel the need to vent their vitriol here over and over again, well past the point that anyone in our community believes they are arguing in good faith. 

One of the big things that was playing a role in destroying that relationship I mentioned earlier this week* was that I apparently can’t talk about asexuality to non-asexuals anymore without getting suspicious and waiting to be hurt. And that is, given the work I do in the asexual community, given the amount of time I have spent discussing asexuality here and in other spaces, given the fact that I have two partners and I am currently trying to figure out how to move across an ocean to be closer to both of them—given that, there is so much that is important to me that I can’t talk about. I can’t talk about my own sexual orientation to people who don’t share it, because I am so fucking used to those people coming in and trying to hurt me, and I can’t calmly discuss my orientation without getting touchy and looking for where the hurt is going to come from this time. I am so used, you see, to anyone who isn’t asexual saying the most fucked-up things about us when they speak about us at all that I have stopped even pretending to trust people that don’t share those experiences. 

I expect people to tell me I am frigid or cold if I talk about my sexuality. I expect them to say that all asexuals need is a good raping to cure them of this asexual business, or that we’re all repressed. I expect people to say to me that people with my orientation are ~*~special snowflakes~*~ for… not fitting into straight, gay, or bi, or perhaps we’re ~*~special snowflakes~*~ for talking about it and not remaining closeted and desperately trying to pretend enough. 

I expect people to tell me that I will die alone, that I need to get my hormones checked, that my sexuality is caused by my disability. I expect people to tell me that before I can really identify as asexual, I should get a physical work-up just in case it’s really a disease. I expect people to ask me whether I was raped, whether I am broken mentally or physically, what my genitalia look like. I expect people to tell me that I am somehow internalizing my homophobia or repressing my essential gayness, which is really fucking amusing given that one of my partners is female and one identifies as somewhere between female and neutrois. 

And most of all, I expect people to tell me that I am inhuman, because I am told that every fucking day, told that I am inhuman both explicitly and implicitly, told that I cannot be a real, healthy, functioning adult if I do not experience sexual or romantic attractions. 

All of these things are things that I have been told, that I have seen every single time sexual people feel the need to comment on my sexuality. I see allies once in a fucking blue moon—findingsherlock just posted a fantastic ally post here, and bittergrapes has made himself vocal, but they are massively outweighed by the constant influx of people who feel the need to tell me and others like me how we have no problems and should shut up at the same time as they feel the need to tell me that I am not fully human.   

I know asexuals who automatically assume that anyone who speaks kindly about us must be asexual themselves, because why else would people talk about us without hatred? I know, myself, that I care all the more about my community because I feel like no one else, ever does; that we must care about each other because the rest of the world hates us with varying level of severity; that we have to band together and support each other, because no one else ever will. 

Is it any wonder that I have stopped trusting people with the information about what my sexual orientation actually means to me? 

*Speaking of that—still fucked up over it, have been fucked up about it for a while now, but. I want to say how freaking awesome everyone who responded to me was when I posted about it, even just the little that there was. It meant a whole lot that people cared enough to say something to me about it.