#internalised negativity

[theinsomniacindian]

Sometimes I wish that people would learn the difference between sex-repulsion and sex-negativity

[lovelessrage]

A lot of people are completely disinterested in creating a safe space for all aros and aces because that would require letting go of being allowed to publicly shame things like sex and romance. There is a stark difference between repulsion/aversion and negativity, and that line stands where you treat those things as disgusting or as a personal fault/flaw. While I'm romance repulsed, I'm never going to go on my blog and call romance disgusting or gross, because it isn't; it's a feeling, neutral in morality, and a way to live your life if you so choose.

I don't think a lot of people get this or what the difference is. Anybody can be negative and anyone can have harmful ideas, favourable or repulsed. It's about how you treat it, how you express about it, and if you seek to demonise or make those things out to be disgusting, perverse, or deviant.

Even small things or "jokes" add up over time; put yourself in the shoes of someone who has to see those "jokes" made about their lifestyle and what's important to them every day, or even every hour. Would you still feel like they're lighthearted after even one day of reading over and over again?

[Not to say anyone who's done this in the past is a horrible, terrible person. You can change and grow as you take in info; that's just the life experience. But, to grow, you need to actively want to, and that means addressing biases and asking yourself "should I say this? Could this affect my peers?"]

[muninnhuginn]

genuinely enamoured by how ugly shima's emotions are as they bubble to the surface.

he's doing better, right? he's taking his fate into his own hands, working hard at his acting after years of shunning it, so surely he should get something back from the world for this? but, well, sometimes it doesn't work out like that. sometimes it's not about him, for better or for worse. he's oscillating between feeling worthless and feeling entitled on a dime.

and that's starting to leak out in ways he's never let it before, risking hurting other people. it's going to be rough, sure, he *will* hurt others, but this is still a necessary part of his journey. he'll be able to get back up *because* he's fallen down

[flowercrowngods]

shit man the internalised aro&demi-phobia is so good at keeping me from writing arospec visibility week ain’t it funnnn

[whatisgoingoninmyhead]

[just-a-small-town-queer]

Y'know. I'm beginning to realize I project a lot. Specifically my own fears and worldview. Kind of an issue.

[cruelsister-moved2]

speaking as an autistic person, the secret to making friends (and meaningful romantic/sexual relationships) is 95% just engaging in a genuine way. if someone doesn't want to be friends with you when you're being yourself, their friendship wouldn't be something you want anyway. the sad irony is that a lot of SELF-consciousness puts ppl off because... they can tell you're thinking about yourself & not them.

people just want to be seen and valued as a human being (and to have fun!). they don't want to feel like you're just using them to fill a need, or their company actually makes you kind of miserable and stressed or you can't be yourself around them. they want to feel like you enjoy their company and are interested in them. if you're autistic use your earnest swag & they love it because it invites them to be genuine and at ease too!!

[entropy-sea-system]

I find it hard to engage with posts about how some people hate or have a hard time accepting their aplatonicism or aromanticism, because I don't want to slip into a self-hating spiral and such content is likely to trigger me towards that. I think for me its also heavily linked to being allosexual and arospec bc my culture is sex negative and romance negative while still expecting ppl to technically be into those things but just abstain from it outside of arranged marriage.

So for me its not just shame over NOT having platonic attraction or tertiary attraction and often not romantic either, its also over liking sexual relationships and feeling sexual attraction without those things. But anyways I hope more ppl can feel better abt being aro or apl. Our orientations shouldn't be a thing seen as making us 'broken' or an inherently negative way of existing.

I think its due to less visibility but I often see ppl more able to accept themself being ace than aro (except some aros who have had bad experiences with aces being sex negative and/or arophobic to them), and more able to accept being aro than apl, I think this is bc ace is more normalised than aro and both are way more normalised than apl.

I'm not out as apl irl to anyone outside my system for obvious reasons. Ive come out as apl to a few ex friends but the other ones wouldn't have understood so to escape friendship as a plato repulsed apl I just stopped making an effort to contact them and this ended most of the past friendships. I had to basically ghost some ppl I was in contact w online by blocking them though.

But thats part of why I prefer to be very open and 'out and proud' about being aplatonic online because irl I can't do that.

(-Rift)

[balestrem]

That constant shift between being in denial about your abusive parent. So often I ask myself: is it really abusive or am I just being ungrateful and asking for too much in life?

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

as someone with an eclectic taste in video games something that’s really fascinated me is seeing that there’s actually a very large amount of the audience for pornographic video games that aren’t perisex cishet men. like, that’s the stereotype right? but it’s just not true. if catered to, the audience ends up being way more diverse than that. if there’s pornography that centres a female pov, women like it. if there’s pornography that allows for all sexualities to be represented, people of all sexualities will like it. if there’s pornography that experiments with gender, gender roles, and binary ideas of such trans and intersex people will enjoy it.

and like, i think that’s something that’s sorely missing in conversations about the ethics of pornography? pornography isn't naturally something that only appeals to perisex cishet men, because you can find pornography that appeals to way more people than that easily if you look outside of the mainstream industry and into indie projects, like video games. because those projects actually allow all people to have a seat at the table and be catered to, not just to exist in ways specifically designed to appeal to perisex cishet men.

our ideas on sexuality are constructed, not inherent. sex and sexuality are normal parts of humanity that everyone can enjoy if they wish. enjoying sex and sexually explicit content is something any group of people can do (and not enjoying it is also fair and valid). but society constructs sexual desire as something that exists to benefit cishet perisex men and objectify anyone who isn’t that. it’s a whole sector of the human experience that is denied to them.

and like. idk i think that’s why the idea that sexuality is inherently violent and oppressive strikes me as inherently conducive to the status quo of oppression itself. culturally, sexual desire and enjoyment of sexuality is something cishet perisex men are granted and everyone else is denied, and bc heterosexual men aren’t into each other it means only one party is permitted to enjoy it, and that is violence and oppression, but it’s not something solved by demonising sexuality. sexuality is a privilege in that it is a basic part of humanity denied to people, instead of being something harmful certain people are granted. and the solution to that is to allow sexuality and desire to be a mutual, fun thing for everyone, not to treat it as inherently bad in and of itself. sex doesn’t need to be exploitative. it should be a positive experience people of any gender, sexuality, and whatever else can mutually engage with if they wish and not do so if they wish not to.

[hidden-highlands]

the. the sheer contrast of my ex telling me "your friends only like the fun drunk you" vs my boyfriend saying "i like sober you the best" 🥺

[loyalhorror]

There's something about the endless frustration of like. Yeah I can post cool aesthetically pleasing pictures of my face and people will find it attractive. But would you feel that way if you saw the rest of me? Will you still think I'm handsome once you know I'm a short, fat person with questionable hygiene standards and a neckbeard and ill-fitting clothes most of the time? Will you still think I'm pretty when other, thinner people come along and show interest in you instead, and I'm no longer your only option? "Your personality attracts me to you" is all fine and well but goddammit sometimes I would like people to look at me like a piece of meat, actually, because the 'personality' people get attracted to is a mask anyway so once that wears off how the hell am I keeping you around?

[whatisgoingoninmyhead]

I feel so bad sometimes for not wanting to take part in sexual situations. I'm perfectly fine with not wanting sex, but when there's sexual jokes in the group and they want me to participate and I can't bring myself to, that's when I feel guilty.

[hardheaded-municipalist]

Undoing sex-negativity blobs

I am asexual. I am sex-averse. I am heteroromantic.

I went to a boys' school... People would make "Your mum" jokes all the fucking time. Jokes about comparing girls (who went to the girls' school next door) based on their faces, based on their asses, based on their tits, etc... Jokes about what matters more pussy or ass or mouth. I never really understood the jokes - thoughts about me having sex were *EXTREMELY* uncomfortable. Having to confront this discomfort every day killed me internally.

Often I'd be around guys having these discussions, and I would put my headphones on or read a book and tune out. Sometimes I would be reading a book like Gone which would imply 2 characters had sex and it was extremely frustrating because I was being reminded of the thing I was trying to escape from.

Couldn't listen to music without having sexual lyrics.

Couldn't listen to a news podcast / read the news without being reminded of sex.

I felt very angry at the world, and I could never articulate WHY. It was always just this subconscious frustration.

Clearly I don't think people should be self-censoring for my benefit, but I began to internalize some anti-sex views (mostly from the perspective of a self-loathing straight person)... I never really viewed gay/trans people as more sexual than straight people... I was extremely NOT homophobic, transphobic, etc... It was crazy to me.

This leaked into being anti-BDSM, anti-nudity, anti-sex scenes, anti-naturism, etc. I would think to myself "those teens who were involved in pregnancies aged 16 should blame themselves"... I was not explicitly misogynistic, but... yeah that was probably a part of it.

In 99% of these cases, I would catch myself before I articulated these thoughts out loud, but I was far from perfect... After learning about asexuality, I undid the dissolved blob of sex-negativity.

After that there were lots of little blobs of being anti-BDSM, anti-nudity, anti-sex scenes, anti-naturism, etc. These were all attitudes I never applied to OTHER people. I was always a believer in bodily autonomy, etc... It was always completely internal. Internal in that I was internally against the concept, but internal also in that I was hostile to any possibility that the concept might apply to me..

But later, I found out I had somewhat submissive tendencies, even in just romance (being kissed, while being pinned down by my hypothetical girlfriend). Very tame tendencies arguably. But I resented them. And it took undoing the anti-BDSM blob to undo the inward resentment.

I realised out that naturism seemed appealing, but it seemed uncomfortable for reasons I could not articulate. It took undoing the anti-nauturism blob to undo that.

Confronting these things is always hard, because I feel angry at myself for even possibly leaking bad sentiments accidentally. I was never judgemental about other people doing these things, but arguably a subtle anti-thing sentiment just hiding beneath my words even accidentally, just because of the self-resentment being so potent.

It's extremely frustrating now, because now I have to go around mopping up these things and it's so ANNOYING.

I hope in the future people

1. Learn a more inclusive sex-positivity that is not so fuckin allo-normative

2. Learn about asexuality

I am actually more optimistic about the second point than the first.

[hauntedselves]

i was wondering, i struggle with the same issues you’re experiencing rn with the trauma episode, ive always wondered why i wished my trauma was worse (if you’re open to explaining)? you mentioned you’re aware of why

ironically, it's actually one of the core symptoms of C/PTSD - avoidance of trauma.

it's a combination of a coping mechanism and denial (if you're thinking about how bad it wasn't, you're not thinking about how bad it was). this article refers to it as "trauma imposter syndrome".

it's why people with PTSD wish they had Complex PTSD and people with CPTSD wish they had DID and people with DID wish they were polyfragmented... because then it would finally be recognised as Trauma, as Bad Enough.

it doesn't work that way, btw. even if you only have "simple" PTSD, or don't meet the criteria for PTSD at all. no matter what you went through, it was Bad Enough.

[byakuyasdarling]

I love how I was finally starting to recover and my dad says that as of next week I’m not allowed to draw anymore between 8am-3pm and can only do “productive things”. Like what? I don’t have a job. It was the only thing that was keeping me productive and happy. I know it’s not taken away from me completely but those are big hours for me.

And I don’t think I need to explain how art is so emotionally important to me.