i really appreciate this response! i wasn’t expecting you to be understanding, since expressing sentiments like this get people even banned on certain subr*ddits, so it’s refreshing. especially because most people tend to be very one way or the other- either us “real” asexuals experience no sexual attraction whatsoever and everyone else is allo, or absolutely anybody who experiences slightly abnormal attraction is asexual. the nuance of “yes i acknowledge graysexuals and such are real and also need support groups, but saying they are specifically asexual feels like it’s muddying the meaning of the label” is very much where i lie and i like getting to have others who agree :)

i do agree that sex favourable aces get fair use for the term and need support for their unique struggles as well. being sexually attractive to your partner is an understandable necessity in relationships for some, and not being able to provide that for your partner or make them feel desired in that way sounds difficult. though i admit i do find it kind of annoying when people get mad at others online for assuming asexual means no sex, though i understand where they’re coming from.

i think the biggest issue that comes with the broadness of the label is that those like me- sex repulsed aces- oftentimes feel unsafe or uncomfortable in asexual spaces, which is a true shame. on top of that, it is exceedingly difficult (speaking from experience) to find exclusively sex repulsed spaces, even when actively searching for them. i don’t struggle so much anymore with being sex repulsed, but in the past it’s been very difficult to deal with, and i haven’t been able to find nearly as much support as you’d think in popular ace communities.

i agree with a lot of what you’ve said :) thank you for sharing

[–] Evergreen5970@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

i think i just don’t see the purpose of differentiation at a point- for example a sex favourable person who both gets aroused by their partner and actively seeks out and enjoys sex on a regular basis could feasibly be labelled as asexual within this community, and i feel like that would be a very misleading term to use to describe them.

Nothing here specifically reads as antagonistic, but when I read this quote I got the impression you didn’t really think sex-favorable aces get fair use and that their use was a mere technicality. Might be why the other subreddits reacted badly. I’m glad to see that you do actually think that sex-favorable aces get fair use.

i think the biggest issue that comes with the broadness of the label is that those like me- sex repulsed aces- oftentimes feel unsafe or uncomfortable in asexual spaces, which is a true shame. on top of that, it is exceedingly difficult (speaking from experience) to find exclusively sex repulsed spaces, even when actively searching for them.

I’ve read something before, where someone mentioned that sometimes two peoples’ completely valid needs conflict hard with each other. Sex-favorable aces want to be able to talk about their experiences with sex as an asexual without feeling suppressed or gatekept from being asexual, while sex-repulsed aces want to have a space free of sex and to talk about and vent about their negative feelings toward sex’s prevalence in society without being told they’re prudes trying to stop everyone from having consensual sex. It’s difficult to manage. And unless we get a big enough asexual community where we can splinter off into spaces for sex-favorables and sex-repulsed, or the community has us tag sexual content and vents about sex so the repulsed and favorable can filter them out respectively, we all live under the same roof and end up stepping on each others’ toes.