Spoilers beyond this point and warning for ace stereotypes and medicalization of asexuality

Here’s a summary of the episode from an AVEN user. There was an eye-rolling-looking emoticon at the end but I can’t copy the animation and don’t know how to type it out. Also if you click the link, you have to click “Show” to show the spoiler text in the comment.

A lady with a bladder infection attracts the attention of House, who tries to prove that she and her husband aren’t really asexual. Watson stops him, so House investigates the husband, who turns out to have a tumor causing his lack of libido. Treating it, which is necessary for him to live, but make him sexual. The wife ends up revealing that she lied about her asexuality because she likes sex (Because all asexuals are repulsed).

I’m amused at the Watson/Wilson mixup but I will also say — I don’t care that Wilson said House was wrong at the beginning of the episode. The final impression left about asexuality isn’t going to be a couple of minutes at the beginning of the episode, it’s going to be how the episode wraps up. The conclusions that the brilliant Dr. House reaches about asexuality. That’s what people will take away. When House disproved the asexual characters, he also disproved Wilson.

There are so, so many things wrong here. The writer of the episode responded to criticism on Twitter. But that doesn’t really make it better.

Kath Lingenfelter (link goes to Twitter), the writer of the episode, responded to AVEN user cleuchtturm via Twitter. It got posted here on AVEN and also here on Tumblr.

Note: On Tumblr this is all one paragraph, on AVEN it’s two, and the second is a response to further communication.

“I did a lot of research on asexuality for the episode. My original intent was to introduce it and legitimize it, because I was struck by the response most of you experience, which is similar to the prejudice the homosexual community has received. People hear you’re asexual and they immediately think, ‘What’s wrong with you, how do I fix you?’ I wanted to write against that. Unfortunately, we are a medical mystery show. Time & again, my notes came back that House needed to solve a mystery and not be wrong. So in THIS CASE, with THESE patients, it was a tumor near the pituitary. But I hoped I could (now it seems unsuccessfully) introduce asexuality to the general public and get them asking questions. All they need to do is one google search and they can see for themselves it’s a real community of great people. Originally, part of my dialog included thoughts about whether as a species we’ve grown past sex. Any time we tackle a subject, we risk the possibility of not doing it justice. I apologize that you feel I did you a disservice. It was not my intent.

Asexuality is a new topic for me and definitely one I find fascinating. It is a subject I would like to continue to explore here or on future shows I write for. I think it speaks to where humans are now and where we are going. I will do my best in the future to do it justice.”

I’m going to address part of this first: Lingenfelter says “Originally, part of my dialog included thoughts about whether as a species we’ve grown past sex” and “I think it speaks to where humans are now and where we are going.”

I’ve seen this pointed out on Tumblr in a few places, and this is really creepy. We are not the next evolutionary stage in human development. Some asexual people are repulsed, some are indifferent, and some are enthusiastic about sex. So I think she might be conflating sexual orientation and libido and personal willingness to engage in sexual activity. Also kind of putting aces up on a pedestal, maybe. Which I never like.

But onto the big issue.

The thing most people are pointing out is that she had two asexual characters to work with and both of them got invalidated. I can understand the pressure from the network that there had to be a medical mystery. But having the medical mystery did not mean that the wife’s asexuality had to be faked. That’s lazy writing. That’s lazy thinking.

I don’t know if Fox forced her to change the second one as well, Lingenfelter didn’t comment on that. I assume, since she said that the network told her to change the husband, that she would’ve mentioned being told to change the wife. But she didn’t. So I’m putting responsibility for the wife’s representation to Lingenfelter.

Two of the biggest responses ace spectrum people get are “You’re sick” and “You’re faking.” This episode chose to play into both stereotypes that prevent people from being accepted and respected. It did not leave an asexual character “alone” to show that ace people are real. Instead it chose to yank the floor out from under both of them.

Honestly I don’t care about Lingenfelter’s intentions. Sometimes a writer’s intentions do matter, but that can’t do a single thing to erase the actual harmful effects they end up producing. Problematic material that was meant to be good does not get an excuse for being problematic. Not at all.

Lingenfelter took a minority and wanted to represent it. The network told her to change it, and the changes they wanted were incredibly problematic. If Lingenfelter had really done “a lot of research on asexuality” she should have known just how problematic. I’m not saying she should’ve stopped writing about asexuality all together, but she should have put more effort into the second ace character. It makes me doubt how much research she actually did, or how much she really understood what she read.

People are not curious. They’re going to say, “Oh, this is what asexuality is.” People who come out as asexual are already told, “Oh, like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory?”, a character who’s mocked in-show for his lack of sexuality along with nearly everything else about him. He’s a character who frequently removes himself from humanity, and has the show comment about how he’s a different species. Not the best reaction for people to get. Now people are going to be told, “Oh, you might have a tumor, like that guy on House.” Or “You’ve got to be faking it. Or sick. Like on House.“

People are already telling aces on Tumblr that we’re complaining too much about the episode. These are people who are sitting at a computer with internet access and the word asexuality right in front of them. These are people who could open an extra tab and search for asexuality information and learn about it and they are not. Why should I expect people not even hearing aces complain about the episode online, with immediate access to search capabilities, to do more than the people who are?

People who are asexual, gray-a, and demi, but have not connected with ace communities, also had a huge road block placed between them and the opportunity to Google and find other people like them. Why would you want to look up asexuality after being told in no uncertain terms that half the people are sick and half of them are faking?

If 13-year-old me had been watching House, I would’ve thought “Oh, so asexuality means broken.” When I web-searched asexuality as a teenager it was because I felt alone. I felt like I was the only person in the world like myself. But I would not have been prompted to find other people from this episode. I would’ve expected any results I found to be “I had X disease” and “I was faking it but I saw the light!” I would’ve felt sick, like I was fooling myself, and even more alone.

And there’s no reason for most of the audience to know who Lingenfelter is, to see her Twitter or anything she was saying on it afterwards. I don’t care about the apology most of the audience will never see.

It doesn’t matter if you try to represent a minority well if you then fill that representation with harmful stereotypes. If you present an obscure minority of people, you have an obligation to not use every minority character to confirm stereotypes about those people. If every minority character is a stereotype, then the stereotype is going to be what people believe. Because people are lazy. They like confirmation of what they already would’ve believed — and widely, people regard asexuality as a disease, a personality defect, a holier-than-thou complex, or faked.

Am I glad Lingenfelter apologized? Yes. Do I think she actually understands the harm she did? No. Not from that apology. Not from reading her twitter feed. This update says “Intention was to tell story for THIS couple, not all asexuals. Apologies that it seemed generalized.”

If a writer isn’t aware enough to realize that representing a extremely small minority of people with numbers around 1% of the population is necessarily going to generalize people’s reactions to them, they are not a very good writer. But Lingenfelter seems to still think she gave people a chance to really learn about asexuality by mentioning a word that might make them curious enough to do an online search. She gave the audience homework. That’s not how writers should write, ever. Writers should not not leave important information vital to understanding something out of the material. They should not expect people to recognize that they’re writing stereotypes about a minority they’ve most likely never heard of before.

Do we say that a show’s given people the opportunity to learn about gay or bisexual or trans people if the characters are all stereotypes? Did we say Glee gave people the chance to learn bisexuality was real, or that Work It gave people the chance to read about gender, sexism, transmisogyny, etc.? No! Because we don’t expect anybody to do independent research and come to conclusions that a show represented characters badly. And that’s what last night’s episode did. So I cannot think that a significant portion of the audience will believe anything but what the episode told them.

And what the episode told them is that asexuality is never real. There’s another explanation behind every asexual person’s assertion of their sexuality. Don’t believe people when they say they’re asexual. Tell them to see a doctor. Ask who they’re faking it for. Help them understand they’re wrong.

That was the show’s message. An apology owning up to that, I could accept.

Community

In 2012 I’d like to see the ace communities I’m involved in be able to spend more time talking to each other, and to people interested in real discourse, and less time fending off attacks.

It makes me anxious to even start thinking of all we’ve been through this year, especially the aces, graces, and demis I know on Tumblr. I realize this isn’t really under our control, since there’s nothing we can do about people who just want to argue and rile us up, or the kind of people who don’t want to have conversations and prefer shouting matches — the kind of people who don’t respect us and refuse to try.

But I do wish for us that we can have a year where we get to have good conversations and nobody has to worry about being deliberately triggered or told horrible things about themselves.

I’d also like to see some more creative writing — original or fanfic — come up around the ace spectrum, because I like reading and being able to relate to or see commonalities in what I’m reading. I did write a fanfic prominently featuring asexuality this year, which was well-received by my small fandom, but not wanting to cross my online names I didn’t really promote it … at all.

Not that I need more projects, but it might be interesting to organize an ace fic fest since the one people had been talking about earlier never came to fruition. If I had the time and enough people were interested, I wouldn’t mind doing that.

Or possibly compiling an anthology of original fic, but I have no idea how I’d distribute it. Maybe a free e-book — but everyone contributing would have to be okay with that format, obviously.

Myself

I started this blog because I wanted to be more connected to the community. Because I felt alone, and I was too shy to be commenting on people’s blogs and I wasn’t involved with Tumblr at all, without having some kind of space to do my own writing.

Having this blog has helped me form some connections in the ace community that I never would’ve had otherwise, has introduced me to new contacts, and has shown me that I can actually make some physical transitions to get my body more aligned with my gender.

But you may have noticed I haven’t been updating as much recently.

Trigger Warning for depression and anxiety under the cut.

My living situation, with school and family and finances, is very stressful for various reasons, and over the summer my mental health started taking a downturn. I can’t afford to go to a doctor to get diagnosed, but people in my life who know depression well have backed me up on this.

It’s hard to motivate myself to do even the basics sometimes, so the blog’s suffered some. On a good note, it’s also been months and months since I’ve felt the urge to self-harm, or had intrusive/obsessive thoughts about it.

On a … not so good note… The past week, I’ve identified some mysterious physical symptoms that have been cropping up as anxiety attacks. I would like to have none of those in 2012, but I do not suspect my body will listen to me. At least I know what the uncontrollable weeping, defensiveness, and skyrocketing body temperature is all about now.

What this has to do with my asexuality is that this blog, and writing about myself and my life, is the reason I have a connection to the ace community. I am on Tumblr and I do talk to people through that, but I don’t update Tumblr much. Updating Tumblr makes me feel awkward. I don’t know what to say here. The blog is easier for me to write on — if I can just get the motivation to finish any of the dozen unfinished posts lingering in my writing folder. And writing on the blog is why I feel comfortable enough to engage other people in the community.

So in 2012, I really, really want to get back to it. I want to be a part of the community I’d like to see. I want to contribute to it, in my small way. I don’t want my health to put me on the sidelines.

But first I have to talk about how being asexual tied into my identification as neutrois. And I can see this post getting rather sprawling, so I’m going to attempt to use headings. I’m also going to put a cut, because this is kind of a long post.

(Warning: I talk about physical sex and sex drive in here, though not in much detail.)

Identifying

Honestly I believe that identifying as asexual is what made it so easy — relatively speaking — to come to the conclusion that I was neutrois, after I discovered that being neutrois was a thing.

There are a lot of non-cisgender people in ace umbrella communities. 10.2% of people in a recent census said they identified as transgender, and 9.4% said they were unsure. There’s also a lot of non-binary people. 21.8% of the responses identified with genders other than just male or just female. There’s no breakdown on whether anyone selecting male or female also selected other options, but that’s still a huge number to me.

What I mean to point out is that there is a lot of talk in ace circles about gender, and there are a lot of ace people who don’t consider themselves the gender that was on their (first) birth certificate, and a lot of people who don’t identify on the binary.

In a lot of issues-focused ace spaces, talking about anything is a big deal. There’s a lot of talking. A lot of puzzling things out. Gender’s no exception. So I really think that, since I started reading ace blogs before I started reading about being neutrois, there was something in my head that said ‘it’s not that strange to be trans*’ and made it easier to question my gender. I was exposed to thinking about gender in a way that made questioning, assessing, or examining your gender — even just presentation, or the way you felt female or male because other people had questions — seem incredibly normal and routine.

So my asexuality, in my mind, helped ease me into my gender. Maybe when you question one thing it’s easier to question another. Although with how little USian culture at large talks about gender, it took me a lot longer to realize I could examine my gender and separate it from male and female. Selecting ‘none of the above’ for sexuality was a lot more self-evident by comparison.

Physical sex

I’ve read some trans* writing about reclaiming your body and using terms for yourself a medical textbook wouldn’t use, because your perception of your gender is your own, and that makes your body your own. An idea that lead to me being slightly more comfortable in my body despite not having transitioned with more than a haircut.

I consider myself neutral-sexed. Non-sexed, maybe. I haven’t thought about the language much. With some recent dust-ups over the word ‘repulsed’ and a lot of non-ace people’s misunderstanding of the use of the word, it occurred to me that I can’t conceptualize my body as sexual. If I could design my own anatomy from scratch, I can’t think of a single way to incorporate physical receptors for sexual stimulation.

Though I have a sex drive that I occasionally have to deal with, I find sexual stimulation unpleasant. I don’t think it’s the shape of my anatomy that determines that reaction: I think it’s a combination of my own personal sexuality and my gender. There are aces who find sexual stimulation pleasant. There are neutrois who do as well. I’m just not one of either.

I think my asexuality primarily feeds my dislike of sexual stimulation, and my gender gives me a way to conceive of my body without the weight of the idea that any particular body parts were designed for sexual stimulation. I don’t have to think, “Oh, that organ is for orgasms.” I can just ignore it.* Which is comfortable both sexuality-wise and gender-wise.

*Unfortunately, despite the mental peace this brings me most of the time, it also inadvertently feeds my fear of the gynecologist. Also I really don’t want to run into one of those doctors who goes and orders blood tests behind my back because I accidentally mentioned being asexual.

Stereotypes

Something I find curious is that apparently there’s a stereotype of agender/neutrois people being ace, and also that there’s a stereotype of ace people being agender/neutrois. (Existing alongside a lot of other stereotypes, of course.)

I find this curious because on the “main” neutrois site — that is, a site dedicated to nothing else but defining neutrois, providing some resources for neutrois people, and establishing the existence of neutrois people, and is the first result in Google — there is not a single mention of the ace spectrum. They mention that some are abstinent, some are sexually active, and that they can be “bisexual, gay, lesbian, or straight.” (I put this in quotes because I find it odd that the site mentions being pangendered but doesn’t include pansexual in this list.)

Asexuality, demisexuality, and gray-asexuality are not even mentioned. So the stereotype is puzzling to me. I guess it’s because in a lot of people’s minds, gender and sexuality is so wrapped up together that not being sexually attracted to people must mean not having a gender. See: femininity in men and masculinity in women automatically signaling, in USian culture, that those people are not adhering properly to heterosexuality.

For some reason, fitting this stereotype doesn’t particularly bother me. Maybe because I’ve only heard about it and never actually encountered it. That’s not to say I think it’s a good stereotype — it just doesn’t fill me with awkward, irrational guilt like my fitting some other stereotypes does. (Guilt is, after all, my superpower.)

I don’t entirely know what to do about this stereotype. Other than culture-wide reconceptions of gender and sexuality, which individually I’m not in much of a position to influence, I don’t know that there’s much to be done. I think for the time being all I can do is not reinforce gender and sexuality stereotypes. Write, if I ever get published and to the best of my ability, things that don’t reinforce stereotypes.

But the thing is that it’s not necessarily bad to fit a stereotype. My first semester in my master’s program, I remember getting upset over how 20 out of 20 posts on our discussion topic about stereotypes of librarians talked about how bad the stereotype of the elderly (white, cis, straight all implied) woman with the tight bun at the back of her head was. And then I stopped myself and edited my post to say, “But we can’t say that this person is a bad person. There are women out there who look like that and who work in libraries. They’re not bad. They’re not hurting people.”

So I guess what I mean is, when I talk about getting rid of stereotypes, I also have to remember that fitting a stereotype doesn’t automatically make you a bad person. (And not just because I also fit my fair share of stereotypes.)

Presentation

Ily has written about her asexual presentation before: some way of communicating that you’re asexual. There’s the black ring on the middle finger of the right hand. I don’t have one of those. I suppose I might present asexually because I’m pretty lazy about clothing, prefer comfort over looks, and don’t prefer enough feminine expression to appear ‘sexy’ to anyone. I assume.

Mostly I prefer to dress neutrally. Neutrally in this society means, to a degree, masculine. Femininity is often read sexually, which is not a way I want to be read — both because of my sexuality and because of my gender. Although with my gender it’s not “I’m not sexual” so much as it is “I’m not a sexual woman.”

Gender-wise I own two men’s shirts, which are much more comfortable to wear with my binder. I very much like to wear these out with a pair of boots I got — the boots are women’s, but are kind of masculine.

I wrote recently about my presentation anxiety, as it relates to my gender, and uncertainty about incorporating the feminine details I find aesthetically pleasing into my clothes. Fortunately I have a girlfriend who sits around designing clothes for fun, so about an hour after I posted that I had several custom-drawn outfits that, while they won’t materialize in my closet tomorrow, it does make me feel better about eventually assembling a wardrobe that I can be comfortable with.

I don’t know if I’ll ever pick up a black ring, since it’s been a long time since I’ve worn something on my hands and I’m not sure how much the black ring symbol means to me, if anything.

But overall, my comfort with presenting asexually (in my own way, because obviously, different aces will want to present different ways) and presenting with my gender go hand-in-hand. Satisfying one can satisfy the other, which makes it easier to keep my whole self in step.

Conclusion

I don’t have one, I just felt like there should be some sort of ending to the post. I guess overall this was just a space to talk about where my asexuality and neutrois gender combine. (Not, unfortunately, to summon Captain Planet.)

In place of a better conclusion, here is a picture of a basset hound with an owl on its back. Apparently they cuddle together while watching television. Their favorites are nature programs and soaps like Coronation Street. I am not making this up.

But there’s always going to be the issue of clothes. Lately I’ve been trying to figure out how to comfortably incorporate the feminine details I enjoy in clothes into my wardrobe. I’m in the awkward situation now of almost never being able to go to the store; if I buy clothes within the next year, it’s going to have to be online. (Look at the confidence I hold in my ability to learn how to drive!)

Some things would be easy to buy. T-shirts, which already comprise 85% of my closet. I either measure myself, probably already own a t-shirt from the company, or can measure a t-shirt that fits comfortably to figure out what size to buy. Unisex t-shirts are also easy to find with masculine, feminine, and neutral designs and details.

When I wear my binder, I can wear men’s shirts without them gapping in the front. But I don’t want to wear my binder every day. I worry about long-term binding and I don’t like to bind for more than five hours at a time, although that might be partly because my binder isn’t broken in yet.

So while I’m working and until I have surgery, I’ll need women’s shirts. I understand this. In some situations, I prefer the women’s shirt. (For example, the other day I wanted a warm long-sleeved shirt to wear around the house in the winter. I ruled out the men’s because they didn’t have the pink flannel I liked best.) The surgery will just give me more options, and I’ll be able to buy women’s shirts because I like the design, not because I need the cut.

Obligatory momentary pause while I go all starry-eyed imagining never buying a bra again.

But then there’s … dresses. And skirts. I don’t know how to feel about these.

I used to hate them. I haven’t bought a dress since middle school — my grandma made me wear one to my uncle’s wedding. I’ve donated all my old Sunday dresses. I can’t remember if I wore skirts as a child or not. In undergrad, I never bought them, but I rarely bought clothes at all, and I blanched at the idea that I was expected to wear them. Now that I’m more comfortable in my gender, and at asserting control over what I wear, I … don’t know. And since I don’t own any anymore, I can just try one on for a day and see how I am.

It’s been causing me a bit of anxiety lately, not having any idea of how to express myself in clothing. I don’t want to be stuck in the men’s section of the store any more than I want to be stuck in the women’s section. I like things people consider masculine and I like things people consider feminine.

At the end of posts I like to come to some kind of resolution, but I don’t have one here. I don’t know how to fix this feeling I have, this anxiety that I’m going to get trapped into another box that I don’t want to be stuck in.

I don’t identify with masculinity any more than I identify with femininity. I just pick and choose the things I like, and I’m not in a position now where I can go and things on. So I’m just stuck … wondering, and fretting. I don’t know what my wardrobe will look like over the years, or whether skirts or dresses would help me feel better, help me feel less boxed in. I don’t know how I’m going to pick out clothes or makeup or accessories that let me look the way I feel when I wake up not wanting to be very masculine or very feminine.

Probably, I’m lucky that overall I don’t really care about fashion: if I could wear sweatpants and unisex t-shirts every day I’d probably be fine. But I can’t do that. So I have to … I don’t know. I have to wait, and see. And waiting is hard.

But I know that I don’t want to be trapped in another box.

Note: this post discusses writing porn, although in general terms instead of anatomical ones. But because people scrolling through this blog are more likely to be repulsed than in other areas of the Internet, I’m putting the rest of it under a cut.

Unfortunately I can’t once remember to put “please don’t ask me to write porn” in my prompt calling — it’s not that I can’t, it’s just that I can’t without a beta reader and about five times as much time as it takes to write a regular story, and honestly it’s an incredibly boring process for me. I’m not against writing it now and then — though I mostly do it for gift challenges — but it takes so much effort and I don’t get much of a reward out of it because it’s not something I find enjoyable.

It’s kind of like writing an essay when I haven’t read the topic material that happens to be in another language that I’m not very good at translating. You flip through the book or whatever, cherry-pick a few quotes, and attempt to make it sound like you definitely read and comprehended the material. Usually I have to go read porn in order to write porn, because I don’t have an intrinsic sense of what is “sexy.” I am extremely bad at reading sexually-focused body language, so I have no idea how to write it, and hope that whatever I come up with will be read in a way that the story achieves the prompter’s goal.

While my fandom has a healthy kink meme with a lot of well-written stories (a lot that I enjoy just on their own, too) and finding reference material is not difficult, applying those concepts to something I’m writing is… like watching paint dry. Yes, the feedback that inevitably results from the stories is nice. But the actual process of writing it bores me to tears. In short, it’s a ton of work, but not work that connects to me personally, so it’s not a fulfilling work experience.

My conversations with my porn beta readers usually go like this: “How long exactly does this have to go on? When are people going to be satisfied? When can I fade to black? How much dialogue can I use for filler? Can I stop now? Wait, what do you mean that character’s orgasms aren’t realistic? Orgasms aren’t fireworks displays like in the KY commercials? I’m so confused.”

The reason I can’t remember to ask people not to prompt me for porn is genuinely just that I forget that people will ask for porn. I don’t usually read it, aside from trawling the kink meme, so I forget that, well, people like reading porn. And then I get a porn prompt and the guilt kicks in and I flounder trying to think of something suitable.

Also, there’s a good handful of people in my community who know that I’m ace, so for some reason I always expect that to mean no one’s going to ask me for porn. But of course I have written porn in the past, for gift challenges, and I guess I write well enough that people remember that and want more of it. Which I know is a compliment.

The end result, after everything is posted and people have read it, is usually that I feel like a big ol troll even though quality fic is probably not something a troll aims for.

Overall, it seems like there’s a long way to go and a lot to be desired from the media in terms of ace umbrella representation. But people are also thinking about it a lot — and that makes me think that the future media landscape will be a lot better for all of us.

You can still submit! I’ll add things to the round-up as long as you give me the link.

eowynjedi unearthed an original piece of writing about the character Silfren Aesculeus, who reflects on not falling in romantic love.

Carmilla DeWinter wrote about the concerns involved in writing H, an asexual aromantic character. Also in German/Deutsche here. (TW for instance of ableist language.)

Sciatrix laments how the creators of characters perceived as asexual react badly to others talking about the character being asexual.

veerserif discusses asexual fandom (not asexual_fandom, the DW community), interpreting characters, and awareness. (TW for instance of ableist language.)

Norah talks about the Dragon Age games, interpreting ace characters, and regrettably automatically-sexual romances.

nami_roland wants media that lets aromantics in from out of the cold, and esteems non-romantic love and non-romantic relationships.

pippin wrote Love and Punch, an aromantic retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

Emily rewatches and muses on Fruits Basket, and thinks there’s room in it to easily see a queerplatonic relationship or two. (TW for animated icon.)

psyche2332 wrote about aromantic media representation and the question, “Why is it not okay to not want romance?”

Elizabeth talks about asexuals in non-fiction, specifically creative non-fiction, and the beginning of a memoir.

And I picked apart a plot device (which involved glowing based on your sexual/romantic orientation) and its many unanswered questions.

Recently I read a fanfic where people start to glow blue if they like men, pink if they like women, and purple if they’re bi or pan. The plot device made me think for a far longer time than was probably intended.

For bi and pan people, there was no indication that people would be a redder or bluer purple if they leaned more heavily in one direction, especially if that direction was nonbinary. Could you be a purpler purple? If you were solely attracted to nonbinary individuals, or agender/genderless people, would you glow an entirely different color?

But, aside from that, I wondered mostly about how asexual spectrum people and/or aromantics would glow.

If it’s based on romantic attraction, it could map out for some asexuals, but that leaves aromantics with either no glow or maybe a colorless glow.

Would demiromantics and grey-romantics only glow a little? Would their glow be more transparent? Would it ebb and flow? I think it’s implied that it would show up regardless of whether they were currently attracted to someone, because I assume that romantically inclined sexual people do not walk around in a constant state of attraction, and also think about things like lunch or advanced mathematics. Also, if it’s based on romantic attraction, people aren’t always romantically attracted to someone.

If it’s based on sexual attraction, it still leaves the question of demisexuals and grey-sexuals, and also provides no answer for asexuals. I suppose the glow could ebb and flow for demi and greys, or be more transparent, or be weak (as posited above). Asexuals could have a colorless glow or no glow at all.

Really this storytelling device always just makes me think, besides worrying about how terribly it could actually go in reality, “Well, that could help out a lot of questioning people.” (If you knew whether it was romantic or sexual, which you’d need someone with mismatched but concretely identified orientations, plus the willingness to discuss it, to figure out.) Does the glow know more than the glower?

There’s also the possibility that it only works for people with matched orientations. In which case, there’s a significant section of the populace outta luck.

Overall it’s not a device I’m fond of — because it leaves too many questions that I would never be able to puzzle out to my satisfaction in order to actually write it, and because I think it oversimplifies things, and there’s the issue of questioning people — but was interested in picking apart. If I had been able to take an English class called “What fanfiction have you read this week and what did you think about it?” I would’ve been so happy.

Honestly I didn’t mind being the invisible man. Though I’m absolutely positive that not everybody identified me as straight, it was smoother to shop for somebody who wasn’t there than to tell them that tie was for me. (One guy was clearly thinking “Look at the baby gays!” when trying to get me to open a store credit card account, though.)

I was wearing the binder (Underworks’ 988 XL in white, and I first wrote about it here) but it didn’t completely flatten me out, of course, and then I was also carrying a purse. So they identified me as a woman hanging out with another woman, which was safer than being identified as a lesbian. If I had wanted to get read male I think layering my shirts, wearing guy’s jeans, and … attempting to present male would have helped. Though layering my shirts would have presented heat-related problems, I think.

This was the second day I had worn my binder, and I wore it for most of the first day, probably seven hours. This day I was actually walking around a lot, and moving in different ways (trying on clothes). Mostly I was walking inside with air conditioning but there was some outside walking in the heat. My breathing felt pretty good all day, even when I was getting tired of wearing it.

Actually I had planned to wear it to dinner, which would’ve put me closer to nine or ten hours, as dinner took longer than expected, but by the time we headed back to the hotel the straps were biting my shoulders and we both thought it would be a good idea if I took it off. For the next day or two I had a small red welt on one shoulder where the strap was. Luckily the binder straps and my bra straps sit in two different locations so the bra didn’t irritate the welt.

From what I’ve read this isn’t weird and is just part of breaking the binder in. Since it’s so new the fabric is still really stiff, and I remember reading a guy reviewing Underworks saying that he tucked tissue paper around the armholes of his binders for the first couple of weeks. It’ll probably take a few washes and another month or so before mine is really broken in (since I won’t be wearing it that often).

So… that is the addendum to my review. Oh! I did feel like the binder gave me a pudge around the middle, but Girlfriend was confused when I said that, so I think if you’re not wearing clingy clothing it’s not noticeable. And I am really glad that I didn’t get a full-torso binder, because I feel like it would’ve been too much for me.

My recommendation would basically be to take it slow the first several times you wear it and not wear it for too long, because you’ll need to break it in some.

Welcome to the fifth edition of A Carnival of Aces! This is actually being published on a queue because I’m going to have limited time with the Internet until Sunday the 7th. So hopefully it works.

For the unfamiliar, a blog carnival is an event which collects blog posts (or, in this case, other types of submissions) centered on a specific theme. Carnivals can be one-time events or can continue on a periodic basis, like this one, which has been going on a once-a-month schedule. The Carnival of Aces focuses on material related to asexuality, demisexuality, and grey-asexuality. Your submissions need to deal with these in some way, as well as the current theme.

Betraying my book geek origins (my superhero identity was born in a library), the theme for this month is literature and media representation. I’ll post the round-up of submissions on or just after September 1st.

Submitting

You can submit things in the following ways:

- Leave a link in a comment on this post, in my Tumblr askbox, or PM me at my Dreamwidth.
- E-mail me a link to your submission at aceeccentric@gmail.com
- If you have nowhere to post, contact me through e-mail and we’ll see where we can put it. I will not host guest posts on Tumblr or YouTube/Vimeo, but I could do the WordPress site or my Dreamwidth.

Rules

- Submissions must in some way relate to the theme and asexuality/demisexuality/gray-asexuality/something under the ace umbrella.
- I’ll accept submissions at any time. The deadline for getting onto the first draft of the round-up post is September 1st, which is when most people will see it, but I’ll keep adding things to the post if you submit after that date.
- Your submissions need to have been created before September 1st (sorry for the typo earlier).
- I’ll accept pretty much any form of communication. Read the accessibility concerns if you’re submitting or linking to non-text items.
- Let me know if you want to remain anonymous.
- Please provide trigger warnings in your submission if you discuss or feature potentially triggering materials.

Accessibility Concerns

- If you’re submitting or linking to an image, include an image description. If you’re hosting your image somewhere that doesn’t allow image descriptions, or linking to an image without one, put the image description in the comment/e-mail you send to me, or elsewhere in the text of your submission.
- If you’re submitting a video, provide a useful description or transcript of the video contents. Captions or the option to use auto-captioning is nice as well, but auto-captioning is not always successful, and even with captions video is still inaccessible to some people.
- If you submit a song, submit the text of the lyrics as well.

Ideas for posts include (I use “ace continuum” to refer to asexual, demisexual, and grey-asexual people):

- What kind of media you want to see the ace continuum in
- Things you find to be anti-ace continuum in current media
- Where you’ve seen good representations before (so, yes, I’ll accept rec lists of fanfic, or book reviews)
- Your head canons for characters you like to interpret as being on the ace continuum
- A wish list of what you want to see in ace continuum characters (as I’ve asked Sciatrix already)
- Specific concerns you have about people portraying the ace continuum or characters within it
- What thoughts and troubles you have when writing ace continuum characters (ex. my posts on being concerned about how to talk about asexuality and my own experience in writing)
- Fanfic and fanart
- Original stories or artwork
- Why media representation is important to you

Binding is something I’ve been thinking about, I guess, for around a year. Until now I’ve held off on it because I’m already pretty indecisive about buying clothes, and because I have a few assorted worries about it. I haven’t worn the binder much but since in my search for one I realized there are extremely few reviews from bigger people in the plus size range, I want to chronicle it in case someone needs the resource.

The reasons I held back were that I worry maybe excessively about hurting my ribs after all the reading I’ve done. Also, it’s hot where I live, and I don’t imagine heat making binding easier. It’s averaging 94 Fahrenheit (34.4 Celsius) during most of the day right now, about to crank up a few degrees this week, and typically it doesn’t cool down until October. Sometimes it’s still hot by Halloween. A couple of years ago I wore shorts on Christmas. You get the picture.

After a lot of discussion with Girlfriend (and being talked out of a last-minute reversal on the decision of getting one), I ordered a binder off Underworks a week or so ago. It took a lot of review-reading and deliberating but I settled on a 988 XL in white. A coupon saved me a few dollars (I Googled ‘Underworks coupon’). ETA: It cost $38.24 with shipping and the coupon, promo code under10, saved me $3.50.

Under the cut: description of the binder and its effects, and also some brief description of my size, which probably not everyone wants to read about.

[Image description: Photo of a white man from the shoulders down, wearing a 988 model binder. White. It mostly looks like a tank top. It's sleeveless. He's also wearing some kind of tight white short that may have a packing pocket in it.]

988 website description: Inside a regular looking cotton spandex tank top are double reinforced powernet panels of 30% Spandex and 70% Nylon. But these panels are only present on the chest and the upper back leaving your mid-section with minimal compression and very relaxed. This is the perfect solution for one looking for very strong chest binding without discomfort of tummy compression. Made in the U.S.A.

The main reason I chose the 988 was because I didn’t want a full-torso binding effect. I was too worried about the possible damage I could incur from wearing that (probably an over-worry, because tons of people wear other models), I didn’t want something that restrictive. The shape of things from the bust down isn’t something I feel as dysphoric about, so I thought I could skip it.

Also, I’ve read enough reviews that I think the white and black are somewhat different fabrics and have different feels, but I figured white would be less visible under clothing and it isn’t uncomfortable to the touch now that it’s here. I don’t think I could wear it as a tank top by itself because you can tell there’s extra material under the top, and also the cotton/spandex part on the bottom half clings, but I don’t know if the same would go for the black version. I don’t plan on wearing it by itself, either.

I’ve only worn it for one day, but I wore it for about seven and a half hours. I’m fortunate enough to fall towards the middle of a size range* (though on the smaller side of middle), which means it wasn’t hard to pick a size. That also meant it was snug but not too tight. I didn’t feel uncomfortable or in pain, though my breath was slightly restricted. And I was very aware of how my heart felt — but as you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m particularly worrisome over this.

That day I didn’t exactly test a full range of motion, as I was just hanging out with a friend, but I was able to bend over to pick things up, and flop around on her bed attempting to get comfortable enough to quiz her from a book while she took notes at her desk. I could also go up and down stairs in the regular course of moving around her house.

It did take some wrangling to get into. I did some interesting funky-chicken like movements with my elbows. Stepping into it was much easier than putting it over my head, and was recommended by a lot of reviews.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the presence of mind to change into it anywhere near a mirror, so by the time I was in it my brother had overtaken the bathroom and I had nowhere to examine myself except a hallway mirror. Also, I didn’t think about looking at myself in a bra first for comparison purposes.

I can tell you that neither my mother nor my best friend said anything about me looking different, but they weren’t expecting it, either. The binder didn’t leave me flat-chested but did make me smaller. I’d guess I looked, in a shirt that wasn’t snug, something like a B or C cup? I wear a DDD so I don’t exactly know.

One thing I had read about was the “uniboob” effect. I did think that the binder did that to me — but I also thought that you couldn’t really tell that if you were looking at me from the outside. Yes, I could tell looking straight down, but no one else is going to be physically capable of achieving that perspective. In a shirt that’s not too snug, and also not cut for women, I don’t think it’ll be an issue.

And that’s another thing, the weirdest thing was definitely how my shirt fit me from the bustline down. Of course, the binder just pushes things around, it doesn’t actually flatten. I don’t know how to describe it, but it felt like my weight was more along my torso than my chest. So my shirts were touching my stomach, which they normally never do, since my chest usually pushes my shirts out. I don’t know if that made my shirts fit badly or not since I haven’t had shirts fit like that since before fifth grade. It’ll probably freak me out after surgery. “What do you mean, my shirt can touch my stomach? I don’t understand!”

Consequently, I can’t actually figure out if I like it or not. I guess I’ll see.

I have no pictures right now and don’t know if I’ll take any, but if I do I’ll write up another post. And I may get Girlfriend to give her impression of me in and out of the binder, since she’s about to visit and I don’t plan on wearing it every day.

*From all the reviews I read about Underworks products, it seems that ordering up a size if you’re on a border is the best way to go at first. You can exchange it for a smaller size if you feel it doesn’t bind enough, but going smaller than you need carries a big risk of damaging your body, so you don’t want to try that first.