Free thought, unless you’re asexual, apparently

I know this was posted a while ago, but it’s so well written and I agree so hard, that I feel compelled to reblog it.

sidneyia:

So I decided this and this deserved a better takedown when I’m not so fuming. No, I won’t be going back to the original thread because I think it will probably make me throw up. Yeah, I’m chickenshit, whatever.

What we have is a helpful third-party informing me that I’ve missed the point - and am apparently physically incapable of grasping the point - of what the anti-ace commenter was saying. Except I didn’t, and I’m not. I know full well what she said: that asexuals are pathological, and that we refuse to accept it because we’re ~special snowflakes~ and, what’s worse, we coerce sexual people with low libidos into forgoing important medical treatment in order to validate our own special-snowflake-ness. That’s a hefty accusation, so excuse me if I take exception to it. 

She then goes off on a tangent describing situations in which sexual people in a relationship might lose interest in each other sexually. Asexuals, she says, would jump at the chance to pull someone in any of those situations into our hivemind community. The thing is? Nope, we wouldn’t. When I used to hang out on AVEN there were a ton of threads that began that way: “I’ve been married for a number of years, and then [x] happened/changed, and now I’m not sexually interested in my spouse anymore. Am I asexual?” And the majority of commenters would say no, probably not, you should look into other factors. Why? Because asexuals can tell the difference between losing interest in something and never having any in the first damn place. Something that people who make strawmen of us really, really don’t want to understand. 

And really, so what if someone who’s struggling with low libido/lack of interest wants to claim an asexual identity for the time being while they sort their shit out? Why is that any of your damn business, Daisy? Are you really so concerned with losing a member of the sexual people’s club? Because I’ll let you in on another secret that we only discuss in private in the huge fucking asexual blog community at our top-secret cell meetings in our hollowed-out volcano lair: if someone in our midst decides to take on a new label, to re-evaluate their identity, to stop calling themselves ace and switch to demi or grace or even just plain sexual? We’re completely fine with that. We’re not Scientologists. We don’t thwart people’s attempts to leave the fold. We understand that that person who was asexual last week who now identifies as sexual is the same fucking person who was and is our friend. We understand that labels shift and that people explore. You apparently don’t. You want to police people’s label usage in order to protect them from us predatory special snowflakes, and I don’t understand. 

Likewise, we’re okay with people getting themselves checked out medically for underlying conditions that might cause low libido. Seriously. We might gripe about how we don’t think anyone should have to assume a medical basis for something we view as a natural variation, but we’re not going to kick someone out of the asexual cabal for having their fucking hormones checked. I’ve jumped through all the medical hoops myself and never once met an asexual person who was anything but supportive. 

Lastly, helpful third-party commentator: “Aha! I’ve caught you saying the same things in more than one place and now I have proof that you have an agenda!” is a really weaksauce derailment attempt. Nevertheless, though: fine. You got me. I have an agenda. You want to know what it is? (No, but I’m going to tell you.) I want to see the skeptical and atheist communities stop writing off asexuality and asexual experiences, and to demonstrate some of that precious critical thinking when it comes to the social attitudes that dictate asexuality can’t exist, or is a sickness. We tend to be a fairly skeptical, science-minded bunch (for instance, over 50% of us ID as some form of nonreligious), and I feel like the two groups are natural allies. And it makes absolutely no sense for a group who’s as concerned with fostering tolerance and diversity, and mixing newfangled social justice in with their stodgy old-school skepticism, as the Freethought bloggers are, to continue shutting us out.