wait it's Ace Awareness Week? i'm Ace and i was not even Aware of this. oops.

either way i'm too... something to actually use the hashtag,

but i could definitely tell stories about my experiences as an asexual person

the long and short of it is:

for basically my entire life i've felt like i don't fit in because everyone else was more interested in sexual things than me.

once i got to college, i kept running into professors who were like that too, and not just my peers.

in english classes, professors and students would interpret everything in literature sexually.

in creative writing, one professor forced the class to write a sex scene to "get us out of our comfort zones."

in psychology, a lot of information was presented in a "men are like this, women are like this" kind of way,
and the evolutionary psychology professor i had believed that the only explanation behind ALL human traits and behavior was the desire for sex and reproduction.

in addition to all that, the vast majority of psychology studies were written from a very heteronormative, cisgender, neurotypical perspective.

as someone who is transgender and asexual, and someone who has depression, anxiety, ADHD and possibly other mental conditions...

...i got very worn down by everything, for a long time. it took me a while to realize that all this stuff counted as trauma.

the end result is that basically *anything* sexual, or that i can somehow connect to something sexual, has the potential to make me very uncomfortable.

this includes my own sexual feelings (rare though they may be) and remarks that many people would consider harmless jokes.

it kind of makes every day a struggle. most people i talk to these days try their best to understand and accommodate, which i'm very thankful for, but...

...i can't help but feel very alone and isolated still, sometimes.
and sometimes people slip up and say something that will upset me anyway, because it's very easy for me to be bothered by these sorts of things.
i'm glad they're willing to apologize and talk about it.

i guess what i'm trying to say with all of this is...

asexual awareness is important. not everyone who's ace will have experiences like mine, but i'm sure some others will. please keep us in mind, and keep in mind that not everything has to be about sex. thank you for listening.

might as well tack on the actual hashtag at the end here, because i feel like this thread might be worth something.

#AceAwarenessWeek