International Friendship Day: A Thank You to Queer Friends
Without you, I may still feel lost and broken
Today (30th July) is International Friendship Day. This is my thanks to those who helped me understand.
I joined Twitter in early 2019 after many years of resisting joining that platform. Over that first year, I connected with many indie authors just like myself. As Twitter was (then) a haven for both indie authors and for queer people, it was perhaps inevitable that many of those early connections would be queer.
I learnt so much from them, listening to their experiences and in turn, becoming a better ally for exposure to their lived experiences. I had no idea about JK Rowling’s transphobia until joining Twitter opened my eyes to it.
Asexuals and aromantics were groups that I’d had zero interactions with. Therefore, my knowledge and understanding of their lived experiences and challenges were very limited back then. While I considered myself an ally willing to listen and learn, I had nobody in my sphere to listen to or learn from until 2019.
First stirrings of my own demisexual awakening
Sometime in late 2019 or early 2020 a friend compiled a multi-post thread on Twitter with a list of common misconceptions about asexual people. It was an eye-opening thread as they dispelled these misconceptions one by one. These misconceptions included sex repulsion, that asexual experience no attraction whatsoever, that all asexual people are that way because of trauma, and most don’t want relationships.
It challenged many of my own misconceptions — some of which I realised later were barriers to previously understanding my own aspec experiences. I wrongly believed that if you’re asexual, you are, at best indifferent to sex.
It never occurred to me that asexual people could still experience romantic and sexual attraction as distinct experiences. It also never occurred to me that asexuals might want sex for other reasons, such as personal gratification or high libido. Both of these are unrelated to sexual attraction.
I mentioned this friend in my very first article after coming out as demisexual.
I came away from that thread not only having my previous misconceptions challenged, but also with the funny thought “I have a lot in common with my asexual friends!” I explained to this friend that I experienced sexual attraction rarely, and sometimes to different people from whom I experienced romantic attraction.
It took several more years to get it
As time went by, I educated myself on asexuality. This was mostly reading threads and lurking on conversations. Being a good ally meant reading and not replying, and Googling stuff rather than asking potentially sensitive or personal questions of strangers.
Over the next 2–3 years I came to understand the experiences of many asexuals — some I considered friends, and many more strangers who were open about their asexuality. I felt I couldn’t be one of them though. After all, I experience sexual attraction, even though it is rare.
But those pennies would keep dropping and the cogs would keep moving until mid-late 2022. I’m not sure precisely what caused it, but I was finally forced to sit up and ask myself “I share so many experiences with these people, so am I actually asexual despite still having areas where we differ?”
In September 2022, another friend retweeted a long thread about the split attraction model. This article explains it in greater detail, but essentially the Split Attraction Model defines attraction types as separate entities (aesthetic, romantic, sexual) and to which gender(s) we experience those attractions.
Most straight people do not feel there is a difference between aesthetic, romantic, and sexual attraction, but to ace people they typically define our experiences. This idea would be pivotal to understanding that I am demisexual — an experience under the asexual umbrella where we experience sexual attraction under the condition of a pre-existing emotional bond.
Finally, I had a word to explain how I can experience a romantic attachment to someone I’m dating but not sexual desire, and also how I could experience sexual attraction from long-standing deep platonic love without romantic attraction developing first.
In the days that followed, many other asexual and other aspec friends DMd to offer a “welcome to a club” and to offer support in what was clearly going to be a confusing time.
Some confessed in private that they also feel they may be on the asexual spectrum but do not feel the time was right for them to come out, or that it wasn’t all that big a deal for them to come out.
To all those friends I say thank you.
Without your openness, those pennies would never have dropped.
Without your support, I would never have come to accept that my experiences of attraction (being noticeably different from most other people) do not make me weird or broken.
Without your support helping me see who I really am, I may never have reached new levels of calm self-acceptance.
On this International Friendship Day, I’m celebrating you.
Want to read more about my demisexual journey?
