TSF Asexual Interview Series: When Did You First Know?

foreign [Music] I think I first started realizing there I was a little different growing up when I was way less way crazier than my twin sister probably for like a long time like like ever since childhood I knew that I like thought about sexuality different from other people in fifth grade when we were supposed to take a sex ed and we were all sent home with permission slips and all my classmates were very Giddy and very excited about it and I took it home I said it gave it to my mom and I said when you signed me out of this I don't need this and I'm sure I didn't say this out loud but I was like I'm never gonna have sex I figured out I was Ace when I was like 19 going on to 20. about when I entered my first relationship at 19 or 20 years old I first knew around 12. uh maybe like 12 or so I didn't really have the word for it but I knew like I said everyone else is really into puberty and kind of sexuality entertainment all that part and I was like this is kind of gross and I didn't really find anything fun or enjoyable or funny about it I feel like I've always kind of had like the feeling that I was but I didn't actually have the term for it until I was 18 and I Google searched it I think I heard about it from a few different places but the one that really stuck out to me was there was a character in The Magnus archives just like just like horror podcast the main character actually is canonically asexual people made me notice because of their reactions to just me being me so basically I didn't think anything of it I wasn't thinking really deep about it I was just living my best life and then it was around me who was like what the what's wrong with you and I'm like you know what's wrong with you because I didn't have to like self-reflect about myself but they made me self-reflect even though I was already confident in who I was so then I started thinking okay I understand where they're coming from but I also feel great with who I am and even though there were negative emotions from a lot of family and fake friends I still stood true to you know who I was and am I grew up in the competitive dance world so around a lot of young boys and young girls that were beautiful and very attractive and all that um and especially with like the young boys I I saw like the transition that they had at least some of them um where they were finding the girls attractive sexually and I realized pretty early on like that's not me um and for me at that time it was like in the early 2000s um sexuality felt pretty binary where it was either straight or you're gay and since I knew I wasn't straight I just assumed that I must be gay and I spent a lot of years trying to force myself into that box and like trying to test the waters um sexually and it never really felt right like I would say that like it like I never felt like I was enjoying any of this it felt like I was just kind of following the script of like what I thought was supposed to happen or how was how I was supposed to feel and that didn't feel good I was one of those people who stereotypically drank a little too much during the pandemic and uh one day I just decided this is no longer serving me also I'm a mom of a four-year-old and um so I started reading quit lit for inspiration and they listed all the benefits which are clear skin more energy but the one that kept coming up that bothered me was a better sex life and I kept going I don't know what sex without alcohol no matter what I did or what I how much I wanted to and try I could not feel attraction whatsoever and so it wasn't until after college that I actually found the word asexual and it truly was like a light bulb moment where like all of my past experiences just started to like be recontextualized into a story that made and I remember reading like the definition for the first time and finding like Aven for the first time and like crying because I was like oh my God I finally have like a word to describe how I'm feeling I I researched more and more uh asexuality because I felt like I wanted to understand myself why I wasn't interested I didn't know about the term asexuality and so I had just kind of accepted like oh this is something that I will have to do eventually and I just thought oh maybe I'm a late bloomer you know once I get to College you know once I get to high school you'll be fine and then nothing happened in high school once I get to College I'll start to feel something didn't feel anything basically once I graduated I finally came to terms with my sexuality and and came to own it um back when I was in high school there was like a lot of my friends and a lot of peers around me that were always talking about sex and hookups and stuff like that and I just really felt left out because I didn't have the same experiences and uh basically I just started feeling like I should have those experiences in high school and I did end up hooking up with a few people in high school but I didn't like it and I just kind of brushed it off because I didn't know about asexuality and then after I graduated high school I got with my first boyfriend and it took us like almost half the year to even have sex but I knew him for a really long time which was great so we had like a really good connection and stuff but after we had sex I still didn't feel right about it like it just felt wrong and I started Googling all these questions about myself and I ended up finding like stuff of that I have low libido I'm stressed out I have a negative body image of myself and it just didn't feel right and then I came across the term asexuality and it made me feel really comfortable with myself and I didn't have to feel like I was broken or there was something wrong with me and that I actually I was watching BoJack Horseman which was recommended to me by a friend not because of the asexuality but because it takes place in La and when Todd described asexuality I was like wow that sounds a lot like me and I could see myself using that label and it finally felt like exactly how I was feeling where I was having romantic feelings but not any sexual attraction to anyone so Bojack really helped me figure that out but what really solidified it was actually just life experience and partners very like communicating their interest and just recognizing in myself there was nothing there for me um and that that was that was a part of who I was [Music]

Channel: Tr(ace)y - Asexuality Education

Views: 9,062

Keywords: asexual, asexuality, asexual interview, asexual people, asexual people answer questions, ace, asexual explained, asexual tiktok, asexual person interview, what is asexuality, graysexuality, demisexuality, greysexuality, asexual spectrum, interview with an asexual person, am i asexual, asexual advice, how do i know if I'm asexual, asexual test, asexual quiz, asexual education, asexual info, asexuality education

Id: 0FMKDXJSpns

Length: 7min 25sec (445 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2023