*tw: discussion of sexual assault*
One of the questions I get a lot when I come out as asexual is whether or not it has to do with some sort of sexual trauma. Notwithstanding the fact that that’s actually none of anyone’s business, it also points to a common misconception about asexuality and sexuality in general. See, sexuality is not actually caused by a person’s history. People aren’t caused to be one sexuality or another, they just are. But the fact that this is a common question points to the fact that asexuality is especially seen to be the product of an environment--so much so that even I started to believe it.
I started wondering if maybe I was asexual in high school. I was definitely a “late bloomer,” though, so I chalked it up to that, for the most part. I figured that someday I would reach a point where I was experiencing sexual attraction, which I still saw as “normal.” I had heard of asexuality on the internet, but it wasn’t something I really understood by any means, and although I considered the possibility that maybe I could see myself in that word, I avoided it like the plague. You know those coming-out stories that are often published in mainstream media outlets that start with “I should have known I was gay when…?” Yeah, that was me. I really thought that I was wrong, that I would grow out of it, that I would, at some point, change.
When I was sexually assaulted in the first few days after arriving at college, everything changed, as you can probably imagine. Like many survivors, I took a long time to come to terms with what had happened to me, took a long time to see what had happened to me as sexual assault, even took a long time to characterize it as wrong. And when I did, everything changed for a second time. The trauma was extreme, of course, and took me years to work through, and maybe it gets easier, but it’s not easy.
I don’t think it’s surprising, in light of the years it took me to feel in control of myself, that I attributed my lack of sexual attraction to that trauma. I don’t think it’s unusual that I still thought I would grow out of it. And I definitely don’t think I was alone in blaming myself for “not feeling ready to move on” yet.
When I finally came to the realization that something wasn’t right about the way I was thinking, my first thought was “wait a minute...I’ve felt this way forever.” This wasn’t new, it was a part of who I am. So I did research, I put my feelings into words, and I started to slowly talk about it. Was I still feeling my trauma? Absolutely. Did that contribute to my sexuality? Definitely not.
The thing is, trauma can make a person less likely to want to have sex, but--at least to my knowledge--it doesn’t change who a person is sexually attracted to, or whether they experience sexual attraction at all. My sexuality is a part of who I am. Nobody made me this way, and nothing anybody could do will change it. This is not a part of my healing.
- 21:31
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