Category: Suggested conversion therapy

Alltag einer Asexuellen
“Du bist doch krank!”

Translation: Every day life of an asexual
“You’re sick!”

The following comments were made in a video about asexuality.


Watch the whole video here.

Translated quote:

“It’s¹ human. It’s na… I’m gonna say it’s natural. Sounds shitty, but it’s natural.”

0:28

¹”It” = having sex.


Translated quote:

“I’ll sort her out. I’ll turn her straight² again.”

0:33

²He uses the term “gerade”, which literally translates to “straight”, not to the sexual orientation, while that’s also implied.


Translated quote:

[Interviewer asks what they think why asexual people are asexual]

“They are ugly. *laughs*”

0:45

“Bad experience…”

0:47


Translated quote:

[Interviewer lists comments made regarding asexual people]

“I’m gonna be able to seduce you. Oh God. Something bad probably happened. Oh well, maybe you could try therapy. “

2:40


Translated quote:

[Interviewer asks asexual woman Nicole’s best friend how he felt when she came out to him]

“I’ve already suspected. It wasn’t a big shock, but it was sad nevertheless, that it is the way I thought it would be.”

[Interviewer asks why]

“Because I’d have hoped differently for her.”

7:20


Asexual Bingo

Sometimes silly, sometimes serious, and always with lots of bad language and inappropriate graphics, here is a capsule view of the kinds of comments I get on my YouTube videos and through other channels regarding asexuality. And keeping track of how much fail I encountered was made easier with the handy-dandy Asexual Bingo card. (Believe me, I’ve heard EVERYTHING on it, but I had to cut a lot of stuff even to make this video.) If nothing else, this should give you an idea of how often certain sentiments are expressed and why these people’s knee-jerk condescending comments are not helping anyone and certainly aren’t doing much but making them look like their anger and frustration toward me for not wanting to have sex is way out of proportion for what people should be expressing about some stranger’s sex life.

The opening song is “Isabella” by the Mediæval Bæbes. And yes, I am really the age I say I am in the video. And thank you, yes my hair is pretty awesome.

Shit People Say to Asexuals

Need more info on asexuality? I have a book out. Buy or borrow a copy of The Invisible Orientation: http://juliesondradecker.com/?page_id…
Want to know more about why these statements/questions are inappropriate? Read the info sheet with explanations:
http://swankivy.com/writing/essays/ph…
If we come out to you, we probably don’t mind discussing our orientation, but pretty much anything recited in this video is probably a bad idea to say to us. . . . Don’t be afraid to talk to us or ask questions, but sometimes on the sensitive topics, you might be better off doing your own research. You may also like these for further reading/watching:
“How to Be an Asexual Ally,” my article:
http://goodvibesblog.com/how-to-be-an…
Asexual Bingo (my video of much more offensive quotes): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncoHJo…
The Asexual Visibility and Education Network:
http://asexuality.org

Thank you to my collaborators Nick, Axx, Kathryn, 65dgs, TungstenEdge, ampersandstringquartet, Dallas, Ace Amoeba, Chel, Rynn, Michael, CocoaPanda, Muffin, Sara Beth, and Raingoddess2040.


Letters to an Asexual #60 (Obsessive Harasser)

This is #60 of a series in which I read correspondence between me and people who have questions, comments, or–more often–misconceptions about asexuality. In this video, I share the harassing messages of a repeat offender who has been targeting queer activists for many years. Did you know asexuality isn’t normal and I need to see a therapist? Unless the therapist would tell me I’m fine, in which case therapists are crazy too? Maybe it would convince me if my harasser were to obsessively pore over my biographical details and try to use facts about my extended family against me? Because that’s something very stable people do to “help” people like me all the time!

13 Stories of Asexual and Aromantic Oppression

Excerpt:

«Some things happened in the asexual and aromantic community this week and for the most part they were positive. I won’t go into detail now because this post is not about that. One thing that did happen was aces and aros getting some attention on the blogging platform tumblr. And not all of it good attention.

What I found particularly disturbing was repeated assertions that asexual and aromantic people do not experience oppression. This is so incorrect.

First of all, let me be clear what I mean when I say oppression. The word doesn’t necessarily mean being locked up or killed. It doesn’t have to mean systematic and deliberate acts by a Government. Oppression, in the context of social justice, means behaviours and words that marginalise and cause harm to a minority. It doesn’t have to be overt and it doesn’t have to be deliberate. All that’s required is that the victims are marginalised and that the behaviour is harmful: physically harmful, emotionally harmful, it doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter whether a person who is not part of the marginalised group in question thinks the act should be considered oppressive. It is up to the people experiencing the harm to say whether they feel oppressed.»


Read the whole article here.

“And Now I’m Just Different, but There’s Nothing Actually Wrong With Me”: Asexual Marginalization and Resistance

Excerpts:

«In response to a direct question about whether they had ever felt stigmatized or marginalized as a result of their asexual identity, more than one half of the interviewees answered “yes,” more than one quarter answered “maybe” or “in some ways yes, in some ways no,” and around 20% answered “no.” In addition, all the interviewees described at least one negative experience attributable to compulsory sexuality. Here I offer a typology of these negative impacts of compulsory sexuality: pathologization, isolation, unwanted sex and relationship conflict, and the denial of epistemic authority. It is important to emphasize that what follows should not be taken as direct evidence of marginalization, stigma, or discrimination but as the interviewees’ interpretations of and narratives about particular life experiences

«In response to a question about their relationship history, almost two thirds of interviewees reported that social norms about sexuality and relationality and the invisibility of asexuality had negatively affected their interpersonal relationships. Ten interviewees (all female) described engaging in consensual but unwanted sex as a result of social pressure and pressure from a partner.6 Explaining why she had engaged in what she considered consensual but unwanted sex, Marcie, 19, said, “there’s not a lot of visibility for asexuality so when you’re young and you don’t really know that that’s a genuine orientation that you can embrace…you have all of society telling you, ‘You should want to be doing these things….’ So, it tended to get a little sexual but I was always trying to avoid that.” Christine, 21, described the following experience:

The guy I lost my virginity to, I had been in a relationship with him for about a year and I guess I just felt like, well, you know, I need to do this…And everybody was like, ‘Oh, you were raped and that’s awful.’ And like yeah, I guess. I should have said no. I could have said no, but I didn’t. I thought that this is what everybody did in their free time, and so I was trying to be like everybody else.

It is important to note that, according to a substantial body of research, a significant percentage of both women and men report engaging in consensual but unwanted sex for some of the same reasons as those given by the interviewees in this study (e.g., Gavey, 2005; Impett & Peplau, 2002; Muehlenhard & Cook, 1988).7 Thus it is possible that the system of compulsory sexuality negatively affects asexually identified and non–asexually identified people in some of the same ways


Read the whole article here.