forum The LGBTQ+ Community Chat :)

Started April 21, 2018 by @Tylerrr-M-P

tune

Zoom calls are scary woow

happy birthday!!

happy birthday!!!

Thanks guyyys

does anyone want to see the pride house i built in minecraft?

heck yeah!!

of course!!!

okie
https://streamable.com/ge4q91
it has pets now but i added them after i screen recorded it

Hi, I was wondering if there are any ace people here that would be willing to share how/when they realised they were ace? I’ve been questioning whether or not I’m ace and I feel like maybe seeing other people’s stories might help me figure it out.

Hi @StevenUniversefangirl! I'm not exclusively asexual, but I am on the asexual spectrum, so I consider myself ace or ace-spec.

I'll be honest- up until just a few years ago I thought I was straight. I didn't pay any non-platonic attention to boys, or anyone for that matter, so when people started getting crushes (serious ones started around 3rd grade for most? I think) I thought they were just faking it to play grown up. I'm sure some of them were. Others seemed very invested and attracted to their crushes. This lasted all throughout elementary school, friends getting one crush after another, while I watched them blush and pass notes. Still, I thought I would like boys by high school or something, when relationships and hormones kicked in.

Middle school rolled around and most everyone started dating- some even lost their virginity, which made no sense to me. I thought sex with any gender would probably be gross, and holding hands in the hall seemed awkward. I told myself in a couple more years I'll start to have what they had- maybe not a relationship, but definitely the attraction and want for one, eventually.

So by now I'm in high school. People use adjectives like "hot" and "sexy" to describe their partners and their peers. Relationships become deeper. This was around the time I started looking into the LGBTQ+ community. New identities were made aware to me by queer friends and google searches. I came across the terms bisexual and pansexual and, for a very very short time, thought one of those might've been me (they aren't). My reasoning was this- I found boys pretty, but I also found girls and non-binary people pretty too. I was confusing aesthetic attraction (thinking someone is pretty or has a cool vibe) with sexual (seeing someone as sexy) and romantic attraction (wanting a romantic relationship with someone). Learning the difference between those three really helped me discern my actual orientation.

Anyway, back to the story-
I made this friend, a male friend, around middle school times but we weren't really close. I always thought he was pretty, but never crushed on him. At this point we had a really fun class together and sometimes we'd have to stay after school for it. We grew close then, and pretty quickly became best friends. We spent a lot of time together.

Eventually, I think as he became more flirty and deep, I was feeling something new. It was like a switch flipped on. And it was freaking scary. It was like a flutter through the whole body and every time I saw him I became so much more aware of everything about him. It was impossible not to look at him, and I couldn't pin down why. Everytime he'd lean towards me I'd get hot and flustered. In every class we had, I just couldn't not look at him. I started to want to hug him, to floof his hair, and just lay down with this person. I wanted to be in a relationship with him, to call him "boyfriend" and such. And, even though I'm a Christian and would never do it before marriage, I thought engaging in coitus with this person wouldn't be so bad. At first these feeling were gross, and because they were new I thought they were bad, but over time I was able to put a name to this experience- this is what a crush was. A crush involves romantic and/or sexual attraction (I was feeling both). Not merely thinking someone was pretty. I include that lengthy description because I think it's good for you to have a good idea of what a crush is if you've never had one. If you can relate to that, you probably have had one.

I was happy to have had a first crush, but something still bothered me. Why did it take so long? Was I just a late bloomer? And why only him and no one else? I wasn't a late bloomer, I didn't lack the maturity or hormones- I lacked the attraction. Around that time of questioning I came across the term demisexual, an identity on the asexual spectrum.

Demisexual: someone who can only experience sexual attraction with someone else once they have a close emotional bond.

And that's me. I like to describe it as being asexual until you're not. I simply didn't and don't experience any attraction to strangers, celebrities, friends, acquaintances or others- for some odd reason, attraction is only possible within ride-or-die friendship for me, which happens to be very rare.

Here's some other identities to know that might help you-

Grey-sexual: someone who experiences limited sexual attraction; someone who experiences attraction, thought it's uncommon

Quoisexual AKA WTFsexual: someone who can't pin down what sexual attraction is, or feeling it's impossible for them to comprehend

Asexual: someone who experiences no sexual attraction

You might be ace-spec if…

• You can count on your fingers how many people you've found attractive

• You don't pay special attention to sexual features on a person (boobs, bulge, etc)

• You wonder at those who engage in coitus

• You're not sure what "sexy" and "hot" mean to you

• You'd rather have cake than have sex

Other words

Romantic attraction: desiring a romantic relationship with someone

Aesthetic attraction: being attracted to someone based on how they look

Sensual or physical attraction: wanting to touch, hold, or cuddle someone

Platonic attraction: wanting to be friends with someone

Emotional attraction: wanting an emotional connection with someone

Hope that helped 💜🤍🖤

Not going to lie, this also helped me out on a lot. Even though I'm not the one who asked.

Aw yay! I just woke up so it's kinda rambley, but I'm glad it helped.

Baby me was Big Dumb and thought "this person is pretty" meant a crush. I was always pretty sex repulsed but I didn't really realize that being ace was a thing until last year (don't @ me, I was dumb and didn't even realize that some people were gay until the eighth grade), and I saw it and was like "oh snap, that's me"
And then the same thing happened with aromanticism a few months later when I thought about it and was like you know what, I haven't actually wanted to date anyone in a very long time (I suspect I'm grey-romantic, but honestly it's easier to just say aro when I talk about it)
Also a thing that I always feel the need to say, more so now that our resident super sex positive demi is gone, you can be ace and not be repulsed at the thought of sex. It's about attraction to the person, not whether you do or are interested in it. You can still be ace and have and/or enjoy sex
It's just that to me the yiffy is very gross and I don't want it near me.

Also people are pretty and they make me nervous. aesthetic attraction is a pain in the ass, stg

Honestly my story's not too interesting. I just read "asexual" somewhere and it sort of clicked for me. I was…thirteen, maybe? Everyone else in my class was discussing crushes, and my idea of a crush was like "they seem nice, we would be friends" as opposed to "fuck me like one of your French girls" the way it seemed to be for other people. I notice aesthetic attraction but I don't really develop real crushes easily, most of them have been either on people I know well (or really want to know well) or on fictional people who I feel like I know. Personally I have a hard time sorting out romantic and platonic attraction, I want a future with someone but I don't really see myself getting married or having some grand, epic love story.

I just realized that from seventh grade to half of tenth, I went through a not like other girls phase for crushes where I just thought I was cool and quirky for not wanting to have sex and I thought my friends were dumb for it. Like. Wow Pickles you're a dumbass.

Also a thing that I always feel the need to say, more so now that our resident super sex positive demi is gone, you can be ace and not be repulsed at the thought of sex. It's about attraction to the person, not whether you do or are interested in it. You can still be ace and have and/or enjoy sex

^^^
Here are some more words. These have nothing to do with your attractions, rather your attitude towards sex-

Sex-repulsed: Repulsed by sex. Makes you sick, disturbed, uncomfortable, etc. A whole slew of negative feelings.

Sex-averse: Generally a lesser degree of sex repulsion - or, someone who isn’t necessarily repulsed by sex, but would rather not see/hear/talk about it.

Celibacy: the choice to abstain from all sexual activity, regardless of attraction. Celibacy is not the same as asexuality. Celibacy is a behaviour and a choice, not an orientation.

Sex favourability: someone who may engage in sexual activity even if they do not have any desire for sexual activity, for example to please a partner.

Sex indifference: someone who is neutral towards engaging in sexual activity.

Sex negativity: a moral aversion towards sexual activity as a whole, regardless of one’s own participation or abstinence from sexual activity.

Sex positivity: harbouring positive attitudes towards sex, regardless of one’s own desire or lack of desire for sexual activity.

Personally, as a demisexual, when I'm in asexual mode I'm in between sex indifferent and sex averse. Kind of would rather not see/hear about it everyday, but if we must have that conversation then whatever. When I'm in attraction mode, AKA when I have a partner and am experiencing sexual attraction, I'm very sex positive and favourable, though I choose to practice celibacy and abstain from sex until marriage.

I’ve always been more sex-positive/sex indifferent, so it was hard to pin myself down as ace-spec, since I had no obvious repulsion. Like I never really felt full-on attracted to anyone in that way, save 2 or 3 people: one who was my crush for years, and we were friends for a while first, and then my current fiancé. And sort of a woman that me and my fiancé dated for a while, but it was complicated tbh.
But yeah, I always knew I eventually wanted sex, I just kind of lacked that attraction towards anyone. I never considered myself ace necessarily, but I stumbled across the label “demisexual” and it clicked. It was just like “oh, that’s me.”
It’s funny because I crushed on fictional characters and stuff, but real life crushes were fewer. However, I am also biromantic, and I don’t think I’m demiromantic or anything, so it just adds to the confusion. Like I crushed on people but never got the “wow, that person is so hot” factor. God, listening to other girls talk about sex and hot people in the locker rooms was not great. I think being part of those conversations made me realize I didn’t feel things the same as they did because I just couldn’t relate. Even though I was sexually active, it just… didn’t feel like I had experienced the same thing as the other girls there. And I guess I hadn’t.

God, listening to other girls talk about sex and hot people in the locker rooms was not great.

Reason #162 on why I hate the girl's locker room

I didn't like girls locker rooms for the reason of , they would usually judge you if you had stretch marks and scars.
Also for the Undergarments you'd wear. God I hated my middle school.

I cheated the system.
I wore my gym clothes to school.

We had literal separation in the changing rooms. All of the “populars” would be nearer the front, then there was a section in between where the toilets and showers were, then all of the “common folk” would be nearer the back.
I got changed in the toilets with some of the populars because believe it or not, no matter what your body type was or what underwear you wore, you weren’t always comfortable changing around others.
The PE uniform was the same as the normal uniform, only, in the summer, the girls had to take an extra pair of leggings if they wore them for both PE and normal lessons.

Don’t even get me started on the shit show that was the guys changing room. It was… fruity

The girl's locker room at my school was tiny
I had maybe 10 girls in my class and we barely fit
There was a single toilet and it always smelled
The guy's locker room was a lot bigger (I went in for a band thing, the drums were kept there) and had a long hallway to get there as opposed to a tiny door

we never had locker rooms

I cheated the system.
I wore my gym clothes to school.

that's what everyone at my school did…was mine the only school that did that?