Content warnings: sexual violence, abuse, suicide mention, homicide mention, coercion

In my last post, I mentioned the conflation of sex-favourable aces with aces who have sex (and the related pressure for aces who have sex to identify as grey-ace). Siggy also recently posted about the pressures of compulsory sexuality on and risk of sexual violence towards sex-favourable aces, which in part seems to fit with a post of Queenie’s, back in 2015, talking about the grey areas of sexuality.

Queenie’s post sparked various discussions around the blogosphere about grey consent, which in part tended to inadvertently move the goalposts on what could ‘count’ as sexual violence and what was ‘just’ grey consent. This is obviously not something that we want perpetuated within ace community discussions; I think it could also be looked at as an interpersonal version of the grey-area deflections that Coyote discusses here. That is: if aces who have sex are assumed to be sex-favourable, and if sex-favourable aces are assumed to always be ‘sexually available’, always ‘down to fuck’, then it is easy to extrapolate that aces in this triangle of experience cannot really have been assaulted; what did they expect, after all? (This is almost reminiscent of the 2013 consent-shaming debacle; the assertions that someone can never consent and that someone is always consenting lead to the same conclusion in the end: that assault isn’t meaningful or possible.)  And if these aces cannot frame their experiences as assault or question whether that framework would apply, but have nevertheless had experiences that they feel unsure about, experiences that might ‘count’ as assault for other people but obviously can’t for them, then they’ll invent in-between categories where they can carve out some small precarious place for their experiences to exist - just as Coyote describes in zans post, because of course this isn’t a situation that exists in isolation. (And of course this is accompanied and worsened by all the usual suspects.)

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An Aromantic Asexual Reviews Sex Therapy Books

I’m an aro-ace therapist who’s been reading a lot of sex therapy books for my work. These books play a big role in the treatment ace and aro people get from our therapists. But if you’re ace or aro, are they inclusive of people like you? And if you’re a therapist, how do you know which books will help you work with ace or aro clients–and which ones perpetuate harmful myths? To save you time, and hopefully make it easier to identify books that are useful or useless to you, I’ll be posting in-depth reviews of each sex therapy book I read, with both their positives and negatives, and how supportive they are for aro and/or ace folks. This post will be updated below the cut as I read more books and write reviews for them.

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Hi folks, this is a sensitive subject but please have a look if you’re interested in the ace perspective on coercion, sexual assault and #MeToo. It should be obvious from the title and description that there could be sensitive content here, so please take care.

I was interviewed for the story, and the writer is also an asexual person–wonderful to have someone writing our stories with an insider perspective.

Also see these interactive visualizations:

“¿Por qué es necesario ofrecer servicios de salud competentes en asexualidad?

Debido a que la falta de deseo sexual es parte del criterio diagnóstico de muchos trastornos físicos y mentales, y al desconocimiento general que existe sobre la asexualidad, muchxs profesionales de la salud responden a la misma diagnosticando erróneamente a personas asexuales con algún trastorno sexual, así como sugiriendo o exigiendo la realización de exámenes y tratamientos innecesarios —y en ocasiones perjudiciales.

Por esto, muchas personas asexuales evitan ir a consulta de médicos y terapeutas, especialmente cuando se trata de salud reproductiva y salud mental, pues temen que si hablan honestamente sobre su asexualidad se les ridiculice o patologice.

Es por estas razones que lxs profesionales de la salud necesitan saber qué es la asexualidad y el espectro asexual, y cómo generar espacios afirmativos que reconozcan nuestras vivencias y necesidades específicas.”

Esta página es una introducción a la asexualidad dirigida a profesionales de la salud, e incluye recomendaciones y recursos sobre el tema. Es parte del sitio Asexualidad en Breve, que busca ofrecer información clara y concisa sobre esta orientación sexual.

This page is an introduction to asexuality for healthcare professionals, and includes recommendations and resources on the subject. Is part of the website Asexualidad en Breve, which seeks to offer clear and concise information about this sexual orientation.

@resourcesforacesurvivors @nextstepcake

Put me in the category of people who think #MeToo doesn’t go nearly far enough.

For some survivors, the flood of stories is only horrifying. But for others, there is some satisfaction in seeing the scope of the problem made public, getting real proof that they’re not alone, and watching experiences that might have been downplayed, denied, or ignored in the past get some degree of recognition.

“Different individuals are experiencing this very differently,” says Beth Enterkin, a trauma therapist and clinical training specialist at Rape Victim Advocates in Chicago. Some are “glad that it’s happening but they’re also feeling overwhelmed by it and experiencing a real increase in their general level of anxiety,” she says, while others are having a much more severe reaction, including experiencing PTSD and trauma symptoms.

Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis, a Los Angeles-based psychologist, associate professor at Pepperdine University, and author of Surviving Sexual Violenceis seeing something similar in her practice. “There can be a sense of empowerment, a sense of community because you realize you’re not alone and how pervasive it is, but it’s also depressing and can make people angry. And there’s a healthiness to that outrage because it is outrageous. Not only that there are predators, but that we as society support predators with our silence. And worse than the silence is the shaming, blaming and disbelief that often confirms for people their decision not to tell their story.”

Lee adds that because the majority of the media coverage is focused on the experiences of young, cis-gendered white women, some survivors aren’t feeling the same sense of support and community. Instead, she says, they’re feeling downplayed, denied and ignored once again. “There’s a huge group of people who just don’t fit into the narrative that gets attention, and for people who are traditionally at greater risk—trans women and women of color—it’s very isolating and that creates another layer of harm.”

“I tell survivors the need for self compassion is essential,” say Bryant-Davis. “And some people will be very hard on themselves and say, ‘I thought I was over it,’ but there’s an additional layer of pain in not just being reminded of it but also in seeing the lack of response that other people received.”

The myth of sexual violence is that it is largely perpetrated by strangers who strike and then vanish. But as the recent coverage shows, Bryant-Davis says, “most of the time this isn’t the case, and most of the time the offenders were known to [the victims] and the people around them, and these bystanders did or said nothing, and that brings back to the surface the disappointment and anger of not having been protected or given the care that they deserved.”

Whether you’ve been in therapy in the past or never gone, if sexual abuse is impacting your daily life—your state of mind, health, relationships, job or all of the above—now is the time to seek help. Yes, even if you’ve already gone through a therapeutic or healing process, or if the abuse you suffered happened many years ago. “Seeking therapy is not a sign of weakness, says Enterkin. “There’s no timeline or expiration date on healing from trauma and nobody has to go through it alone.” Just as serious physical injuries need multiple interventions in order to ensure complete recovery, so do psychic ones. “There’s the myth that time heals all wounds,” says Bryant-Davis. “There is this assumption that you should be over it. With other forms of trauma we have more compassion, but when it’s sexualized violence or partner violence or child abuse, the response is very different.”

My reaction to “#metoo” was, “You mean, not everyone works on a community survey that forces them to internalize how common this is?”

Another related post

The summary results from the 2015 Ace Community Census have been released, including data on sexual violence.  I recommend giving it a read if you have the time, energy, and mental space to do so.

(As usual, I do not recommend using this data in ways that might put ace survivors at elevated risk for harassment.)