r/Relationships: Asexuality Edition #2

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here with my spouse Royce. Together we are The Ace Couple and today we are diving back into the deep dark depths of Reddit for another round of r/relationships. We’ve only done one other episode on this particular subreddit, so we’ve got, uh, much yet to explore. So let’s see what we find today. Our first post today is entitled: I may have accidentally outed myself as asexual to my parents and I have no idea what to do. OP is a 20-year-old woman with a mom and a dad in their 50s. And she says, [reading] “I identify as asexual aromantic and have since learned what those terms— were about 5 years now. I am not officially out to anyone beside my best friend. About a year ago, I told my mom that I believed I was asexual, and she did not seem to believe that was an actual orientation, but that I had not found the right person yet. 3 days ago, I was invited via Facebook to an event at my college that was a panel on asexuality and aromanticism.”

Courtney: [reading] “I checked the box that I may attend, and then forgot about the panel as I became super busy. Yay midterms. The event was about 3 hours ago. 1 hour ago, I received an email from my mom with a snapshot of the event asking what it was. Though the email could have been from my dad as they share a Facebook account and he occasionally uses her email. If the email was from my mom, my dad will no doubt be seeing it at some point, and knowing them, my siblings (15-year-old sister, 10-year-old brother) will probably find out soon. At this point, I have no idea how to respond or what to say. I had been planning on coming out to them both when I went home in December, but right now I have no idea what to say. At this point, I am freaking out because this was not how I wanted any sort of conversation to go. I have no idea what to do at this point.” Good old Facebook!

Royce: Yeah, posting anything on Facebook is dangerous.

Courtney: Facebook has been such a menace to the Ace Community. For a lot of reasons. Not only unintentionally outing people. ’Cause I do— I don’t know what Facebook’s doing these days, and I frankly don’t wanna know what it’s doing these days, but I do remember seeing some of the early evolution of Facebook, and I definitely know as new features were coming out, as more people started using them, like events popping up, even just people you know popping up that you had no intention of adding on Facebook.

Royce: You’re talking about new features. This post was made in 2015.

Courtney: I’m not saying this is a new feature.

Royce: I– I just needed to call that out. Sometimes coming onto these Reddit threads and keyword searching things, we find some old posts.

Courtney: But like, this is, this is the era I’m thinking of–

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Where all of a sudden, like, Facebook no longer felt like your own curated friends group, your own photo albums and people you want to talk to and see posts from. And all of a sudden it’s like breaking containment because Facebook is telling other people your business. I definitely remember that period of time. And it wasn’t too long after this— what, 11 years ago? Yeah, it wasn’t too terribly long after this that a ton of people who were in private asexuality groups or following ace pages started getting all of these horribly invasive ads for, like, the female Viagra. That was a whole thing. So, uh, first and foremost, if you value your privacy, don’t be on social media [chuckles] in general. Particularly Facebook, I suppose. But I do want to call attention to the “tried to have a conversation with my mom about being asexual a year ago.” This is such a common response as an ace person trying to come out to their parents to hear something along the lines of, “You just haven’t found the right person yet,” or “You’ve just gotta try it!”

Courtney: Like, those are things that are really common to hear. So I would love to bring more awareness to that fact because we have more examples of media and pop culture when it comes to other queer identities. So like, we’ve seen media examples of what not to do and what to do if your kid comes out to you as gay. Like, if a parent who’s generally well-meaning but still just doesn’t really understand, has maybe not ever known any queer people, they probably at least have an idea in their head of things they probably shouldn’t say in that situation. We don’t have as many instances of those in the popular consciousness for asexuality. So I would love to bring more attention to that. But also, I want to see this email. I want to know exactly what it said, because all we have is a snapshot of the event and asking what it is. Was it literally just, “What is this?” with the screenshot? Because that would be a terrifying email to receive. It’s terrifying regardless if you’re not ready to fully come out, but—

Royce: It would be funny to just reply with a screenshot of the description of the event.

Courtney: [laughs] I really do— I’ve said this before to you and amongst our circle of friends, and I don’t even think our listeners fully understand the gravity of this. Royce, you are like the reigning champion of theoretically petty things you can do. You don’t ever act on pettiness. You are not a petty person who does these things. But you come up with the funniest possible things you can do if you decide to be petty, and it cracks everyone up because of how non-confrontational you actually are as a person. I really, I really want to set up a hotline service.

Royce: That’s just bad advice.

Courtney: Call Royce for petty advice.

Royce: Well, that won’t work. You can’t— I don’t pick up the phone.

Courtney: Call the phone to talk to Courtney, who will then consult Royce about how to be hilariously petty in this particular situation. We’ll have to have a number of disclaimers that this is not actual advice. We’re not telling you to do this. This is for entertainment purposes, just for you to be delighted by the possibilities and theoretical situations that might occur. I think it would be very popular. I think more people need to hear the hilarious things that come out of your mouth that normally only I and our closest inner circle get to hear. But also just the— to be this mother, to have already been told a year ago by your kid, “Hey, I think I’m asexual,” and for you to be like, “No, that’s not real,” and a year later on Facebook to see they’re going to an event pertaining to asexuality. Like, what was going through that woman’s head writing this email? Absolutely baffling.

Royce: But yeah, as uncomfortable as it may be, it sounded like Facebook forced a conversation that was probably going to happen eventually anyway.

Courtney: Yeah, this particular poster at least said, “I had an intention of doing this at some point.” I do unfortunately know a lot of ace people, presently and historically, who have no intention of coming out to family. And that’s sad that we are in a social circumstance where that is a difficult or unfavorable, or sometimes downright dangerous thing to do. But if that is the case, gotta be careful about privacy. And it sounds like— well, it sounds like they don’t currently live in the home, so that should in some ways make it a little easier to keep some privacy. But I– I’ve even heard— I’ve heard from some listeners of ours who have accidentally been outed to family by listening to our podcast.

Royce: Mm-hmm.

Courtney: But then again, we’ve heard from the other side of the spectrum where people will say, you know, “I sat down with my family to listen to your podcast as a means of coming out to them to help with that conversation.” So events, content, things that you can attend or listen to or learn from are all wonderful tools if you— if they can serve you. They aren’t gonna serve everybody, but a vast majority of aces and aros at some point are going to have to answer the question for themself as to how am I going to exist in this world and communicate with the people in my life. What is the level of outness that I am comfortable with? And how do we get to that point. And that answer will be different for everybody. But I do hope that this OP, 11 years later, was able to have a good proper conversation, and hopefully their parents have come to some level of understanding.

Royce: Yeah, there’s no update from this one. I was just scrolling through responses to comments. It seems that someone wrote out some example text for how to explain the meetup, and that was copy-pasted by OP into an email response to quote that, and that they were planning on actually having a conversation soon.

Courtney: Oh my gosh, I just saw that OP’s name is Closeted Ace. I didn’t even see that. I hope you’re doing well, OP. I see they also posted a bit on r/asexual and hasn’t posted on this account in the last 11 years. Hopefully it’s because they’re no longer closeted and the username was no longer applicable.

Royce: Like, well, gotta create a new account now.

Courtney: Yeah, that’s what people do, right? That’s how you internet.

Royce: So this next one is titled: I’m an asexual at breaking point with sexually frustrated girlfriend. OP is a 27-year-old man, his girlfriend is 25. It begins: [reading] “I need to tell someone this, and I need the advice of someone who doesn’t/won’t know this about me. I made a throwaway because I think one person knows my screen name and I’m horrified that this might get out. I’m so sorry in advance for vomiting all of this out to strangers, but I do not know who to talk to or even what to say. I’ve been with this amazing woman for about 2 years now. We’ll call her Kelly. Our anniversary is in a few weeks, but I don’t think I’m going to make it, and it has nothing to do with her at all. I could honestly see myself spending the rest of my life with Kelly. We have one of those impossibly adorable relationships. Perfect meet cute, but we’ve already been through a lot. We’re each other’s rocks. The catch is that I’m realizing that I am massively sexually dysfunctional, as in catastrophically asexual.”

Courtney: [bursts out laughing] Same, OP, same!

Royce: [reading] “I hate this about myself, and I’ve desperately tried to change it. I lost my virginity very late in life, just before I met her, under circumstances that— I don’t know. I never tried to lose my virginity. Went through high school and college without it happening because I never chased after it. Everyone around me was fixated on sex and having sex and getting laid, but it never made sense to me. My ideal relationship is companionship, love between two people that never goes beyond sharing the same bed, handholding, cuddling, and occasionally kissing. When I lost my virginity, my best friend – a woman, we’ll call her Rose – says that I was raped. My girlfriend doesn’t know about that. I only told her that it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I honestly don’t know if it was consensual or not. The idea of having sex with my ex, we’ll call her Pepper, the girl I was seeing before Kelly, was exciting from the vantage point of getting it over with and the fact that no one had ever displayed any sexual interest in me before.”

Royce: [reading] “I should add that Pepper is significantly younger than I am, though I don’t know if that’s important. I bought condoms because one day Pepper said, ‘If you had condoms—’ Because one day Pepper said, ‘If you had condoms, I’d fuck you right now.’ But when the moment came, I was overwhelmed with anxiety and a little bit of fear. I didn’t want to have sex, but she clearly did, so I tried. I couldn’t stay up, I never finished, Pepper berated me about it. We tried a few more times over the next several weeks. She got off, I never did. She continued to taunt me about it. We had a good relationship until all that started, then I noticed that Pepper’s attitude toward me— demeaning, belittling, and emasculating— didn’t stay in the bedroom after a while. So I broke up with her and never looked back. I’m much happier without her. But I still have those same anxieties. Kelly and I did have sex for about the first 8 months of our relationship. Maybe once a week, but I never initiated, and didn’t always finish. I never told her though, so I’m crippled by that anxiety too.”

Royce: [reading] “Over the past year or so, we’ve probably had sex about 6 times, each time at her insistence, sometimes with me being guilted into it. Honestly, sex has become a bit painful because it’s so unpleasant for me to even think about, but I lie and tell her that it makes me feel good. I pretend and make all the right noises. Kelly told me recently that she feels very insecure about her body and how attractive I find her, and that when we don’t have sex, she blames herself for not being attractive enough for me. We had a big blowout a few weeks ago, where we were both in tears about it. I told her a version of what happened with me and Pepper, and about how I’m very anxious and insecure every time we have sex, and that, for me, it’s easier just not to. And now it’s been another couple of weeks, and I’m very stressed out with needing to find a new job. My job will not exist in May, I’ve been told point-blank. And every time Kelly makes an advance on me, I have this instinctual revulsion. Not at her, just at the thought of having sex with anyone ever.”

Royce: [reading] “I can’t fathom it working with someone else, but I’m horrified that it might end up costing me my relationship with Kelly. I just don’t know what to do. I started making excuses not to spend evenings with her because I’m scared she’s going to put the moves on me and this’ll all come out. I just did it tonight. We were supposed to go grocery shopping and watch Doctor Who tonight, but she almost tried having sex with me last night and I just can’t. It’s even at the point where I don’t need to lie because I get so physically ill just thinking about it that I’m on the verge of throwing up. As I am right now. I just don’t know what to do. I know I need to be honest with her, but I don’t know how to even talk about this. I can’t talk to my friends or parents about it because I know they won’t be supportive. My friends will treat me like a freak. I’ve seen them do it to other people who aren’t as sexually active as they are. And my parents will give me the “you haven’t found the right girl yet,” because the last time I felt a mild version of this, that’s what they said.

Courtney: Mm, see? What did I say?

Royce: [reading] “I can’t afford a shrink, though. I probably need one. I just don’t know what to do anymore and I feel like the walls are closing in. I can’t keep lying or making excuses, but I honestly don’t know what to do. I’m sorry for unloading on complete strangers.”

Courtney: Ay, that’s really tough. But the only way through something like this is to start that conversation with honesty. And I wish I could tell OP and people like him that it will be alright and work out if you’re honest, but unfortunately, that’s not always the case. There’s no way to know. But one thing I do know is that aces very frequently decide to self-minimize to either let others break their own boundaries or break them themselves. Based on the wording here, it sounds like maybe we’ve got a little of both happening in this person’s life. But there’s this deep-seated pressure that is put on a majority of us because of the compulsory sexuality that leeches into popular consciousness. And whether it is outright said, or just implied, or passively leaning in that direction, it usually falls on the aces to try to compromise on behalf of everyone else around them.

Courtney: And I don’t think that’s right. I feel for every single ace who feels that way currently or has felt that way in the past. But when you’re someone like this who has friends who mock people who are just less sexually active, or you have parents who say, “Your identity isn’t real, you just haven’t found the right one,” that can be internalized. And it can be very difficult for aces who still haven’t comfortably stepped into their own self-acceptance to not feel the sort of self-respect that they deserve, to be open and honest, to not put themselves in uncomfortable or occasionally dangerous situations to try to appease others or to try to behave the way society has told you that you should. Now I don’t love the very first comment here, because they start by saying, “You’re being extremely selfish. You need to tell her what’s going on.” I do think you need to tell her what’s going on. This is so much more complicated and nuanced than being selfish.

Royce: I wonder about— because we’re sorted by top comments, I wonder about this entire conversation and the timeliness of it, because I’ve been scrolling through comments and OP has what seems to be some very deep-seated self-loathing related to a projection of what masculinity is supposed to be. [Courtney hums] And I wonder how much of this back and forth went on with them making excuses or catastrophizing or basically deflecting anything that would potentially help the situation.

Courtney: Yeah, and I do see some comments by OP in back and forth that are also, like, not great.

Courtney: Royce.

Courtney: Yeah.

Courtney: So this is by no means saying like, OP is a great person who has done no wrong. That’s not the case here. But what I do see and recognize is– you use the word self-loathing. That is probably true, but it’s also a profound lack of self-respect, and that’s extremely dangerous in any relationship. Whether or not we’re talking about aces. But this person who says you’re being extremely selfish also goes on to say, “Go to therapy and to a doctor. Explore PTSD and hormone imbalances.” [groans] Therapy can be a good thing to— if you have the right therapist, one can help you start building that self-respect. We know not all therapists are good therapists, and I know many a person, many of them are ace, some of them are myself, who have had horrible therapists who make things worse.

Courtney: Anybody who is grappling with an issue that is in any way related to their sexuality should ideally, if possible, try to find a therapist who is familiar with and affirming of asexuality. Or at least willing to put in the extra time and effort to do their research between sessions so that they don’t use their own preconceived biases to make things worse. But unfortunately, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the commenters saying, “You need to go to therapy,” believe that the asexuality is probably a symptom of past trauma that can be cured, and that’s just how people are. A lot of people think that way. So the nuance of what is the goal of therapy and how to find the proper therapist is so very important, and that is what is always lacking in conversations online when people just say go to therapy.

Royce: There is a comment way, way, way down that received no attention, it’s sitting at a zero, who basically explains that an OP’s response was, “Oh great, now I have to worry about a therapist not taking me seriously.”

Courtney: Yeah, you do!

Royce: Which is accurate, yes.

Courtney: You do actually, like, that’s— that is something very, very real that I would say anyone in any marginalized community needs to be hypervigilant of, when seeking a mental health professional. It’s not exclusive to asexuality, it’s other queer identities, it’s, you know, People of Color. It can at times be very difficult to just find a therapist who is a Person of Color. Or certainly one who shares all of your identities. Honestly, the best therapist I ever had was a Black man. He was, I would say, the only good therapist I ever had. And we were able to relate on some racial issues even though our experiences weren’t one-to-one. But where it came to other elements of my life, like being a young woman, other things that he didn’t have personal experience with, he was still very empathetic about and didn’t give me horrible life-ruining advice like other therapists I had seen previously.

Courtney: But yeah, I mean, the number of comments here, like there’s people saying like, consult your doctors to test your testosterone levels. Comments like these are not helpful. Although– even though this is only tangentially related to the main points I wanted to comment on in this, this goes back to other conversations we’ve had previously about what a lot of allos actually need or want from sex. And how a lot of them are not self-aware enough to identify those things. But there are a couple of commenters here saying, “I’m a woman, and I’m gonna comment on the ‘why is sex so important’ thing.” And she’s saying, “I need sex from my husband. As much as it shouldn’t, it validates me as a woman. His desire for me helps strengthen my own confidence.” And people chiming in saying, “Yes, exactly this. It’s a primal need of being wanted.”

Courtney: So, some people get upset with me, especially allos, when I say a lot of allos don’t actually want the act of sex, period. They want something deeper and more complicated than that, which sometimes is wanting to feel desired. That’s a very common one. I’m not saying it’s the case for everyone, but I think it’s more allos than actually are able to identify that. And that’s something that I do think allos should unpack. If aces have to unpack everything about our sexuality and why we don’t want sex or when we might want sex or if we’d be okay with sex if X, Y, and Z factor were in place, if we have to do all of this mental work, mental calculations before even getting into a relationship, I think allos can do the same, personally. I think even in a relationship with two allosexual people, there’d probably be a lot more healthy communication if both of them went through that process, first independently and then together.

Courtney: We even have a comment here, you know, I’m gonna try to not comment on every shitty comment, but most of them are bad. [laughs] I shouldn’t have come here, the comment section is a dark place. But someone says not only see a therapist, but you need to see a sex therapist, because this person says, “There’s one thing to be asexual and just not care about sex, but it’s an entirely different thing to be repulsed by it.” And people in the comments are actually needing to tell this commenter, like, no, actually, there are some asexuals who are just sex repulsed. So that’s a thing that, you know, people have talked about this as a modern problem, the whole like, sex favorable versus sex repulsed aces thing. Like, certain elements of the discourse were new with the big boom on Twitter a few years back. But like, 11 years ago, here’s an allosexual person saying like, being sex repulsed is not even asexual.

Courtney: It’s also so interesting too, ’cause all of these armchair psychologists, so many people are bringing up PTSD, saying, “Well, clearly from your past relationship you have PTSD and this is why it is—” Lots of commenters over and over are saying PTSD. And even the OP is saying, “PTSD seems extreme for what happened. I don’t think that’s what’s happening to me.” And like, if a psychologist or psychiatrist, if we’re diagnosing here, cannot ethically diagnose someone they’ve never seen, why can someone who doesn’t even have these degrees just diagnose someone based on one post anonymously online.

Royce: Because they don’t know enough about the topic to know what they’re not supposed to do.

Courtney: But what that goes down to is an inherent disbelief that asexuality is an orientation and not just a symptom of some form of illness.

Royce: Yeah, they’re latching on to the wrong parts of this because OP was not interested in that first relationship before it became abusive.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: Yes, there might be some lingering trauma from the emotional abuse or the coercion or something that happened as a result, like after that, but they’re– they’re getting the order wrong.

Courtney: I know so many aces, men, women, non-binary aces, who in their first relationship, not having an interest in sexual activity, then did find that their first, you know, major intimate long-term relationship, what have you, ended up becoming abusive. The lack of desire was already present and then they were sexually abused by their partner. And this is backed up by statistics. The percentage of asexual people who at some point or another are going to be sexually abused, often– often in a case of intimate partner violence, is staggeringly high. And what do aces get when they try to talk about their actual experiences with this? They don’t get people rallying around how we’re disproportionately affected by this kind of abuse. We don’t get awareness campaigns. We get people saying, “Go to therapy.” We get people saying, “Your asexuality probably isn’t real. You just have issues.”

Courtney: Alright, on to the next one. [reading] “Me, 28-year-old female, feels mocked by two good friends, 26 and 27-year-old men. Because they don’t believe I am asexual. I have two good friends I knew in college. Recently, I was at lunch with them. Bryce, 26, and Will, 27, are both still single. I told them someone asked me out, and I turned them down because I wanted to focus on myself. When Bryce went to the bathroom, Will asked me if I had ever considered him romantically. I told him I honestly hadn’t and we were just friends. I thought that would be the end of it, and I didn’t want to end a friendship over a confession. He said it didn’t seem fair and he would not pressure me for sex. He just wanted a chance to be with me. I told him I can’t date people who have high sex drives, it never works out.”

Courtney: [reading] “When I said, ‘You know I’m asexual,’ he just scoffed and said it’s an excuse. Bryce came back and we went to our cars. Bryce asked if I was coming back with them to his house. I said no. I was meeting with Tim, 30. Will got upset and said, ‘Oh, so you will see him but not me?’ I had dated Tim for about 3 weeks, but it didn’t work out. Bryce said that if I was going to turn down Will, I should use a better excuse than being asexual, especially because I do date people. He also said he doesn’t believe me when I say I am, and no one would believe me because I don’t look like I have given up. I am really offended by this. I understand Will is likely hurt I turned him down, but to have someone say that to me feels really hurtful. I don’t go around waving a banner telling people sex is evil. I just happen to be content with the way my life is. I feel like it’s best to end the friendships if it will always be ‘but she dated him,’ but what can I do?” Uh, end the friendships. All of them. Never talk to any of these horrible, horrible men again.

Royce: Yeah, they’re not just friendships if one of them is saying, “You not dating me is unfair.”

Courtney: Yeah, first of all, not only is this acephobic, it is extremely misogynistic. There is a lot of dangerous patriarchal entitlement here. That is dangerous. These are red flags, early warning signs for danger. Remember last post when I said aces face a higher rate of sexual assault, sexual abuse, intimate partner violence? It’s because of entitlement like this. Scoffing at your asexuality, saying it’s an excuse? Awful. Saying they don’t believe you’re asexual because of the way you look? That’s just a repackaged ‘what was she wearing’ or ‘clearly she was asking for it.’ Even if with these particular men it doesn’t get to a point of violence, this is still profoundly unhealthy and deeply offensive individuals.

Royce: Comments are just a wall of, “These people are not your friends.”

Courtney: Good, good! Finally, a comment section I can agree with. The thing is, for all the education we have now about consent and sexual assault, and it has gotten better over the years, of course, I don’t think there’s quite enough attention paid to early signs of coercion. And this is exactly what this is. These are coercive tactics. And if you hear shit like this, you should run in the other direction. There is nothing to be gained from friendships with people like this. And there is everything to potentially lose.

Royce: So this next one: “My boyfriend says my asexuality makes him anxious. How do I calm his anxiety?” OP is a 25-year-old woman. Her boyfriend is 24. [reading] “I’ve been dating my boyfriend for 10 months, and we’ve been friends for a year prior to this. Before we started dating, I was upfront about my asexuality and how I was still navigating it even after I started identifying as ace at 15. I told him I was sex neutral, but that that might change in the future to sex repulsed or positive. I also told him about how past partners have treated my sexuality like a challenge, and that I’m not interested in anyone who sees me as a thing to fix. He said he was completely fine with my sexuality, and we started dating a few months later. The first few months I was head over heels, so I admit I didn’t see anything wrong when he’d say how lucky he was, quote, ‘to be dating/kissing me’. I thought it was cute.”

Royce: [reading] “But when I asked him what he liked about me, it was always very surface level— my legs, my face, my ass. And when we’re out together, he’d always make sure we were touching. Normally I don’t hate that, but it always felt a tad too much. I figured that touch was his love language and that he was just not used to this type of relationship yet. 3 months ago, he wanted to check in and ask how I was feeling about the relationship and my asexuality because that night at dinner I had made a joke about sex being gross. It was after someone else made a gross sex joke, so I figured it was fine. He said the joke bothered him and that us not having sex made him anxious that I didn’t find him desirable. Plus, he says sex is the way he feels the most intimate with someone. So he’s been compensating in other ways, like the excessive touching. I told him I’d work on showing him that I was invested in our relationship and told him we can be intimate in other ways, but he seems skeptical of that.”

Royce: [reading] “I also reminded him that when I told him about my sexuality, there was always a possibility it would change to sex repulsed. We’ve done other things, but I simply wasn’t comfortable going that far. But last week we went to one of his friend’s birthday parties, and I couldn’t help but notice that I couldn’t sit without being pulled into his lap or stand without him holding me against him. None of the other couples are being this touchy, and when everyone was saying goodbye, he tried to make out with me in front of his friends, but I kind of pushed him off, so it was more like an uncomfortably long peck. I laughed it off as him being drunk, but I was very uncomfortable and embarrassed. I’ve tried being more attentive, but it feels like it’s not working. I don’t know how to fix this because I’m not going to give him sex to calm down his anxiety. The thought just makes me feel grimy. But at the same time, his behavior makes me uncomfortable and feel like he resents me. How do I show him I want him without having to do something I simply refuse to do? Or should I end it to save any future friendship?”

Courtney: Seems to me like he’s maybe got some insecurity and he’s trying to overcompensate with some of the touching. Because–

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: The way this reads, it sounds like he only does this in public around other people.

Royce: That’s at least what was mentioned.

Courtney: So it seems very “Even though we aren’t having sex, I want the world to think we are having sex. What will the world think if they know we aren’t having sex?” [Royce hums in agreement] I’d also be curious because the joke about sex being gross was at dinner with other people. Would he have been just as bothered if she said the same thing when it was just the two of them in private? I wonder. ’Cause there is a lot of gender performance that is baked into— I would argue a vast majority of human sexual behavior. At least for those who haven’t taken the time to unpack it, which most people have not. And it does make me wonder, ’cause there could be a couple of different things going on here. It could be that in private, when it is just the two of them, he genuinely does feel like this is okay and a thing he could live with.

Courtney: But then in public around people, he has this deep insecurity so as soon as she says something about a sex joke, he’s like, “Oh no, they can’t know that we don’t have sex, because that will either, you know, undermine our relationship or undermine my masculinity.” And then he is overcompensating by just trying to do the public performance of the making out, pulling her into his lap, touching excessively more so than any of the other couples. Or he’s genuinely just lying to her in the instances where— I guess he said how lucky he was to be dating and kissing her. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s in this guy’s mind. Sounds like they did have some private conversations where he’s now skeptical about other forms of intimacy, so maybe they are having more of these problems one-on-one also. But at least with this snapshot we have, it seems like a lot of the insecurities are coming specifically in public, which I find interesting.

Courtney: Reading the comments, there’s a good mix of actually very good comments and some flippant bad comments. But the comments are making me look a little harder at the fact that when this relationship started, she said, “I’m sex neutral, but that might change in the future to sex repulsed or positive.” A lot of people who seem to be, you know, either ace themselves or allies, and people who seem to have the really hard stance like, “Aces should only date other aces, you’re bad for even trying to date an allo.” Both sides are saying that she was wrong for saying that. And because both sides are saying she’s wrong for that, I want to think about that a little harder.

Royce: No, what she said makes perfect sense for me. It can take a long time to unpack habits and expectations. [Courtney hums in agreement]. And sometimes particularly early on in your, you know, self-awareness or self-discovery, it can be difficult to determine definitively why you do the thing you do. And so if you’re thinking you’re more neutral at one point, but then you get more comfortable with being asexual, some of the pressure might lift and you might find, no, I’m actually a bit more repulsed, I’ve just been forcing myself. [Courtney hums in agreement] Or you could find the opposite. You could find that I’ve been feeling all of this pressure, and now that I’m in a comfortable place I don’t feel the pressure and it’s a bit freeing and I don’t have, you know, whatever negative wrapped up and I could see it swinging in the other direction as well.

Courtney: I think it makes perfect sense. I think it was honest. A lot of people, whether they seem to be on— I, I don’t want to say side, like on OP’s side— whether they seem to be an ace ally or an acephobe, because I’m seeing both in the comments here, both are coming to the conclusion that she shouldn’t have said that. And I disagree. Because the people who are being less kind are saying, like, you’re stringing him along, you shouldn’t have done that to that poor guy because he’s thinking it might change. And then the people who are a little more kinder to OP’s side are still saying it was a mistake to say that because I’m sure he’s latching on to ‘Oh, that might change.’ So he’s just hoping that that will change, or he’s thinking of your asexuality as a challenge that can be overcome. And if OP is totally honest and upfront, all cards on the table, why is it her responsibility if he takes away the wrong message from that, or if he decides to be misogynistic about it?

Royce: Yeah, it– it was a risk that OP’s partner or prospective partner at that point in time would not understand it, but it doesn’t mean that she was wrong to do so. There was potentially other ways to word that that might have mitigated her boyfriend…

Courtney: Well, we don’t know exactly how it was worded. I mean, in a recap, it’s not going to be verbatim.

Royce: Yeah, yeah, but just thinking about the spirit of things, like, there are potentially ways that you could word things to try to preempt misunderstanding, but it’s still like, not really your responsibility to do that.

Courtney: Yeah, it’s– it’s disappointing because if OP has the self-awareness to know either this component of my sexuality might be a little fluid, or I haven’t quite figured it out yet and I’m exploring it, like she had the self-awareness to explain what she currently knows and what she doesn’t know, and that being, will it change, or how will it change in the future. So she had the self-awareness to say, this is how I am now, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I do think in a reciprocal relationship, it is his job to be self-aware enough to decide if he can handle that, if he is actually okay with that set of circumstances. And if he is not fully accepting of where she’s at and what she’s reporting to him, and his only reason for pursuing this relationship is the one thin hope that, oh, we— this will turn into a, you know, booming sexual relationship someday, it will change, and that’s what I’m waiting for, or that’s what I’m gonna try to force or make happen… he’s being predatory.

Courtney: And I don’t know why there are people in the comments saying, “If he’s being predatory, it’s your fault ’cause you gave him false hope.” That’s— that’s bad. That’s not good. That’s not good. That’s acephobic misogyny right there. That said, if you are an ace woman who is dating allosexual men, I do agree that you shouldn’t have to be this hypervigilant, but we do live in the world that we do. It probably wouldn’t hurt to use this as a data point for next time you do try to enter a relationship like this, and you can try to tweak your preface ahead of time to be even more abundantly clear of, like, I don’t want you to enter this relationship if you’re just going to be waiting for that day that we have sex, ’cause I want to be very upfront that that might not happen. Y— if you do need to be that much more explicit about it, probably couldn’t hurt. It might not necessarily help, but it probably couldn’t hurt.

Courtney: And I think based on the information we have, OP was not wrong. OP was honest. But we do live in a patriarchal society. We do live in a world of compulsory sexuality. We do live in a world where women do have really high rates of intimate partner violence and even higher if you are an ace woman compared to the general population. So should we have to be hypervigilant and try to do absolutely everything in our power to not put ourselves in a situation where a predatory man might be waiting to fix us? No, we shouldn’t have to. But I would say, if this is a concern of yours that you are trying to mitigate as much as you can within your power, do it for yourself, and don’t let commenters like this think that you have to do this to be fair to the allo man. ’Cause that is the wrong takeaway here. And I think that is enough Reddit for today.

Courtney: So as always, I’m gonna leave you all off with today’s featured MarketplACE vendor: Broeckchen’s Shop, a hub for all the different lovely things offered by a neurodivergent demipan artist, from adoptables and commissions to merchandise. As always, these links are gonna be in the show notes on our website as well as the description box if you happen to be listening on YouTube. Where you will find some of this lovely artwork available for commission. We got a couple of different styles. We got bust, waist up, or you can get chibi if you want something a little more stylized. Or if you don’t have a commission that you need done at the moment, you can head over to the merch shop where you can find all kinds of nice things. If you’re looking for queer merchandise, we’ve got a lot of Pride flags. I got an ace Jolly Roger sticker because it tickles me. It’s the Ace flag with a lovely little Jolly on it. Which is very— I don’t know, I want to say very like 2012 Ace Community. I saw a lot of Ace flags with Jolly Rogers. And it, it does predate that.

Courtney: I recall seeing like 2009, 2010 comments on AVEN during the period of time where the community was discussing prospective, community colors and Ace flag designs. I know there was someone who, like, proposed a Jolly Roger, probably in jest. But even though obviously that has not become our flag, it was— it’s gotta be like 2012, 2011 maybe, where I was seeing a bunch of artwork online of like an Ace flag and a Jolly Roger that would say like “ace pirate. don’t want your booty.” [laughs] And I remember being quite tickled by that at the time. So when I saw this in the merch shop, it was in my cart before I even knew it. It’s so good. But if you are not ace yourself, or if you identify with other Pride flags, there are all kinds of things. We got some transgender Jolly flags, we’ve got some intersex Jolly flags. Or if you’re not looking for Pride merch, we’ve got some animals, we’ve got some mythological creatures, we’ve got peacocks, griffins, unicorns, some artwork based on creepypastas, all kinds of things. So definitely check out this shop and support your fellow ace artists. As always, thank you all so much for being here, and we will talk to you all next time.