My Life As A Sex-Repulsed Asexual: Finding Pride in My Identity Even When It's Hard

Image description: The official Pride background from Microsoft for Pride Month 2021. You can clearly see the asexual flag running across the bottom and up the middle, and yes, that gets me a little emotional.

When sitting down to write this post, I was expecting to find that I have used the term “sex-repulsed asexual” approximately a hundred times across my posts. I was surprised to discover it’s actually only been about a dozen times total throughout the 36 posts I currently have. For as much as being sex-repulsed affects my life and my identity, I haven’t really talked about it on its own much, but I think now is a good time to talk about it – in part because it has had a lot of relevancy in my life lately, but also because it’s Pride Month, and finding pride in this part of my identity has been, and continues to be, a journey.

It’s been wonderful seeing the asexual and aromantic flags included in certain Pride related things this year (I’ll admit I’m not sure if this was true in previous years or if it’s a far more recent addition, but either way, it’s lovely). I know inclusion like this really makes me feel seen, and I imagine it does for other members of the aspec community as well. But for me, the sex-repulsed part of myself still feels like it must be hidden sometimes, which means that even during a time where I should be experiencing pride and visibility, I feel the urge to hide – or sometimes, even the need to hide.

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Being sex-repulsed, as the term so aptly describes, means I am repulsed by sex. I want to make it clear that I have no problem with people’s sex lives or sexuality; what I do have a problem with is hearing about or seeing explicitly sexual things. In a culture where people tend to be very candid about sex, sex organs, or basically anything sexual in nature, this presents a big struggle for me in most of the situations I tend to come across. As such, my experience as a sex-repulsed ace tends to be colored by panic. Whether it was in my most recent job, when I realized the people around me were testing the waters by directing a sex joke at me, or the first time I realized Cards Against Humanity was that kind of game, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to navigate uncomfortable situations.

I’ve had a lot of experience in trying to handle these situations, but that doesn’t mean I’m ever fully prepared for them, nor does it mean I’ve ever gotten better at navigating these moments. Being sex-repulsed in a largely sex-obsessed world often means I approach things with an overly cautious, often somewhat frenetic sense of paranoia and distrust. I never quite feel safe. I never quite feel like I belong. As someone who already suffers from anxiety to start with, the lesson I’ve learned time and time again is to panic and tense up even before a situation actually gives me a reason, because at some point, I know it will.

Even in situations where I don’t go into full-on panic mode, there are still plenty of times when I am left to feel uncomfortable, twitchy, or just plain exhausted. I am lucky to be surrounded by people who know and understand my boundaries, people who are not overly obsessed with sex anyway, and even people who are on the asexual spectrum too, which means I do have some safe havens. However, when it comes to acquaintances who don’t know me well, a huge majority of the media that is available to consume, and just doing something as simple as going on the internet, I frequently find myself trying to navigate things like I’m walking through a minefield, just waiting to step on the wrong spot and find something that will either be a small hit or a large hit to my general overall sense of self-worth and well-being.

In a recent post, I gave an example of this – watching the Grammys and seeing some of the more explicitly sexual performances and songs contained therein. The feeling of alienation that comes from an experience like that – or any time when I’ve unexpectedly come across something very popular that is also very sexual – is incredibly stark and very hard to deal with at times. In that particular post, I described the emotional and mental process I went through, and how it led me to come out stronger, but that is not always the case. Quite often, I feel like a video game character taking damage; I can stand a few hits, I can heal, I can come back stronger, but there’s only so much I can take. Every now and then, a big hit will come along, or several smaller hits that I can’t withstand on top of whatever else might be going on in my life, and I crumble.

These moments lead me into places where personal pride is difficult, if not impossible. Over the years, I have become very comfortable with my asexual and aromantic identities, and wear them proudly; but being proud of my sex-repulsed nature is very much in-progress. Still to this day, there are moments where I interact with a world not meant for someone like me and, although I can be proud of most of my identity, being sex-repulsed nevertheless stands as something I wish I didn’t have to contend with. I would never trade my asexual and aromantic identities for anything, but there are some days where I would gladly erase my sex-repulsed nature if I could.

I struggled with this feeling somewhat recently, in fact, when I found myself having to face doubts and concerns about something in one of my fandoms. While seemingly everyone else in the fandom got to wait on in eager anticipation for a new release, I found myself extremely fearful that something I actively use as a safe space would be taken away from me. While I’m sure there were other people who shared my opinion or held similar ones, the majority of what I was seeing was blind excitement; some people were even actively rooting for the things I myself was fearing, hoping that the new release we were waiting for would be sexual in nature.

Obviously people (and fans especially) will always have different opinions, and most people don’t have any intention of causing others harm or discomfort with those opinions; they simply want what they want and believe what they believe. But it is nevertheless a very bitter pill to swallow when you are on the other side of it. Most people don’t realize that something that costs them nothing to not get might cost someone else a great deal if it’s realized – in my case, losing something that helps me feel comfortable and at ease, a rare and precious commodity to me. In this particular case, it turned out I was lucky, and the hopes of the more sexually-minded fans in the fandom were not realized, but events like these kick my sex-repulsed panic into overdrive all the same. Just because it did not happen this time, I often tell myself, does not mean it won’t happen next time, or the time after that, or the time after that. Essentially, the lesson my anxious brain tries to get me to believe is “just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean everyone’s not out to get me.”

But this faulty logic doesn’t just extend to how I relate to allosexual people. Rather, being sex-repulsed is also hard because it means I sometimes can’t find fellowship even with other aspec people. There are plenty of aspec people I’ve encountered in my travels who are totally fine with things like smut fanfiction, explicit art, sex jokes, etc., which leaves me in a place of feeling that even other people like me aren’t exactly like me, and which allows the old fears that I’m somehow broken or wrong to come creeping back into my mind. After all, when I am the only person raising an objection to something, even amongst other aspec people, what does it say about me?

Raising objections to things is not something I do lightly. In fact, I hate having to be the person who is uncomfortable in a situation. In some cases, I feel like my own sex-repulsed nature will make people assume this is how all aspec people must be, and that will cause them to view aspec people through a detrimental lens. Additionally, for a lot of people sexual frankness is how they find their freedom to express their own identities, and this is especially true of people who are of other queer identities or who find themselves otherwise marginalized. Therefore, I often hesitate to ask for safe, non-sexual spaces for myself, because it is often perceived like I am asking that sex-positive spaces be taken away from people or groups who need them. Even the act of asking can often be met with reactions on a sliding scale from mockery to cruel derision. I can’t say I blame people for these reactions; our society has made it acceptable and even expected to do these things to non-sexual people, and even worse, there are still plenty of instances in which sexual identities are actively repressed because they make others uncomfortable. As such, I can easily see why people view sex-repulsed individuals such as myself with suspicion, basing their assumptions of us on people they’ve experienced in the past who want to control them. But I know in my case, that is absolutely not true, and I’m certain there are other sex-repulsed people like me who feel the same.

Far from wanting to stamp out the sexuality of other people, I want to live in a world where my identity and theirs can coexist, where my lack of sexuality can be seen and celebrated alongside their sexuality, and deemed just as valid and valuable. I want society to evolve to a place where sexuality can be portrayed, but where those of us who don’t want to see sex can find other avenues and be allowed to keep them, without fear that we will eventually either lose the things we care about or will be subjected to things we struggle with seeing. Rather than be treated like a child for these things and be left to internalize the message that there must be something wrong with me, I want to be able to be proud.

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that it’s Pride Month, and what better time to be proud of my identity than right now? But how can I bring this pride into my daily life? And when I say I want to find pride, what exactly does that mean or what is it that I am searching for? Obviously, I can only speak to my own individual experiences for my own individual identity, but I feel like many people across the LGBTQIAP+ spectrum have gone through similar struggles in their life and have experienced a desire for “normalcy” at least once. I don’t think the feeling necessarily goes away; after all, we don’t tell queer youth “it gets perfect,” but say “it gets better,” because indeed, that’s how life works in general. As I mentioned in that Grammy post, my idea of pride is in the process of shifting from expecting to feel good all the time to embracing the low moments just as much.

If you’ve read a very specific subsection of my posts, you know I’ve been on a journey to embrace what it means to love myself, and this lesson came back around because of these recent incidents. Beyond just loving myself – the parts that are good, productive, or endearing – part of this journey has been learning to love the parts of myself that aren’t always convenient. An excellent quote by a poet named Rudy Francisco says, “I’m still learning to love the parts of myself that no one claps for,” and that summarizes my own journey perfectly. How can I be proud of even the things that make life a bit harder for me than for others around me? How can I learn to love even a part of myself that is easy to hate and blame for my struggles?

I know it’s a bit of a cliché in most media to imagine how your life would be different without one specific trait, event, or part of yourself, but as someone who loves history, it’s something I often find myself doing effortlessly. Imagine how the world would be different without one tiny event. Like the butterfly effect, imagine how one small moment or choice could alter things the way ripples travel outward from a stone in a pond. Recently, I did that when looking at my own life and personality. For example, if I wasn’t a sex-repulsed ace specifically, would I be the person I am today? As a storyteller, would I be able to tell stories that are as unique, that deal with issues in ways that reflect my own personal story, identity, and struggles? As an asexual geek, would I have as much perspective on these issues, and would I even have enough motivation to continue running this blog as I am? In general, I don’t think I would be truly me if I wasn’t sex-repulsed – I might not have the same friends, the same likes, the same hobbies, and the same hopes. For as much as I struggle with shame regarding my sex-repulsed identity, without it, I don’t think I would have the things I’m proud of and the things I love the most. It’s hard, but it’s valuable. It’s part of what makes me who I am.

Therefore, the challenge to myself is to realize that not every moment has to be met with panic. In the words of the wise Newt Scamander, protagonist of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, “when you worry, you suffer twice,” and I tend to make myself suffer twice in many situations, if not make myself suffer over and over again. There are times when it has cause, but there are many times when it doesn’t. Rather than treat every day, every situation, and everything as an ordeal to overcome, the key to finding my true pride will be to look at them as opportunities instead – opportunities for personal growth, opportunities to make my voice heard, and opportunities to take moments where I would otherwise fall into the trap of dissatisfaction and self-loathing and turn them into moments of self-love and affirmation instead.

But I can’t do this entirely on my own. I can evolve to a better place within my own process of self-acceptance and learn to embrace the hurt, but what about overall for other people like me and for people in general? Circling back to an earlier point, how can we help society to evolve? How can we take even a few small steps to true coexistence? In my last post, I discussed a few tips for being a good ally, and I think those dovetail nicely with this topic as well. While reading this post, my best friend made an excellent point about exactly that, discussing how being a good ally means arming yourself with knowledge about the diversity around you, not just buying rainbow-colored merchandise and calling it a day.

I know, of course, that not everyone will understand me or my story. Not everyone will respect me, and I don’t expect people to cater to me or pander. These are things I accept about being in an extremely small section of an already very small minority group. But I would like to imagine that someday I can live in a world where ace-friendly things I love won’t get taken from me and made sexual because other people decide they deserve them more than I do, or where I can stick up for myself and my identity without people assuming I’m being judgmental, prudish, or puritanical.

Whether you are aspec or not, whether you can understand my sex-repulsed tendencies or they are completely foreign to you, I hope you can find some inspiration in my story and my examples of how I plan to harness my pride this month and every month. I know that I will not always succeed. I know that these struggles will not vanish overnight or get magically easier to face. But if I learn to change how I see these things – to see them less as struggles and more as opportunities – then I hope too I will be able to speak up for this, the hidden part of my identity, the way I speak up for the other parts of myself too.

Happy Pride Month

- The Asexual Geek