When you exist as a disabled person who is Asexual, the historical infantilisation of disabled people can make Asexuality hard to navigate.
It has been said and widely believed throughout history that disabled people are not capable of experiencing sexual attraction. This is of course not true. From experience, the idea that disabled people can have anything to do with sex or intimacy is still a surprise to many.
However disabled people, like myself can still be Asexual. This does not mean that being Asexual is a disability or that all those who are disabled are Asexual.
Asexuality and Disability are simply elements of the human experience that can be experienced as an intersectionality.
My own personal experience of Asexuality and Disability are a little more complex and interwoven than this. But this is not the case for everyone.
Not all disabled people are the same. Not all asexual people are the same.
One thing I like about these prompts is that as someone who is a writer or who wants to be a writer I don’t know what you call me to be honest, they really get me thinking. Sometimes these prompts get me thinking about things that I don’t think they were intended for. Now would be one of those times.
This prompt got me thinking about my sexuality. For me, my sexuality is very important, I know I’ve said it before, but I am asexual. Well, it’s a little bit more complicated than that, but that’s the simplest way to understand it and all that really matters for this post.
Not that anything outside of the binary is easily accepted in society, but asexuality is often treated by those that don’t know what it is as the label people use when they just haven’t found the right person. Honestly, I’m not even sure what that’s supposed to mean, but that’s a different argument for another day and another post.
In reality, someone who is asexual simply does not experience sexual attraction in the way that an allosexual person does. This is the broadest definition of the term and the when I like to go with as it is the most inclusive. I believe that asexuality is a unique sexual orientation in the fact that everyone experiences it differently. So unless I am explicitly talking about my own experiences of asexuality, I like to stick to this broad definition.
But in this post, I kind of am talking about my own experiences of asexuality. And for me, my sexuality is tied into my disability quite a lot. This link between my sexuality and my disability is actually part of the reason why I remained closeted even myself for years.
Historically disabled people have been treated as default asexual. With many people struggling to understand why a disabled person would even have, or have the capability to have sex. This is part of the infantilisation of disabled people. That labels us as children. Therefore society struggles to see us as sexual in anyway.
So I didn’t want to be asexual. I didn’t want to feed into this harmful stereotype. So I tried to convince myself that I was allosexual. And this is where we get the link to this writing prompt, because when I think about what I could try for the first time, I’m reminded of how I thought the answer this question was sex.
I genuinely believed that if I could make myself have sex I would somehow get over not wanting to have it. And without getting in to too much detail for me I was willing to consider this even if this involved drugs. In fact for many years I thought this would be the only way it would even be possible.
And still in this I never considered that I may simply just not desire sex and that was okay. As a disabled person I was so focused on not letting anything stop me from being a ‘normal’ person that I was willing to cause myself harm.
Thankfully I came to my senses, discovered some mirolabels that worked for me, and am now a lot happier. I have now realised that my sexuality is about me and not other people.
So I guess this post is just a reminder that just because you could try doing something for the first time doesn’t mean you have to. Trying things for the first time can be amazing if that is what you want to do. But make sure it is what you want to do and not simply what others are telling you you should want to do.
Also the bonus reminder that it’s okay to live up to a stereotype if that’s simply who you are. Who you are is about you and no one else.
My Inaccessible Life 