so here i guess we're gonna exploit twitter's manner of treating threads to talk about things people may not want popping up randomly on their timelines. everyone but the queers, feel free to mute this. i just need to work things out in my linear fashion, cement them in my head.

so sex, right.

i don't like this topic. it makes me cry, and not happy tears. there's so much built up in and around this, that hurts and scares me to examine. it's fortunate, sort of, that being aroace means i don't have to actively contend with it much, except in my own head.

as i've unraveled in another thread, there are a couple ways to frame the distinction and relationship between my aceness and what has become clear as my pansexuality. one is more granular and is about modes of attraction. the other is an innie/outie thing, sorta like gender.

you know, identity versus presentation. that's an inexact parallel, but it gets at the idea of the outer practical awareness and expression versus the theory and fantasy and inner life that never thinks or wants to cross into real behavior. doesn't make it any less a part of me.

the aroace angle is easy enough for me to manage. that was just a matter of identifying, oh that's why my interactions have always gone this way. that would explain these other things that never added up. okay, cool, so that's just how i'm wired and there's nothing wrong with me.

the inner modes of attraction are harder, for so many reasons. there are so many layers of shame and fear and bad memories and past violence and trauma and blame and accusation. and it is weird and difficult to realign my feelings with my current understanding of my gender.

i grew up ostensibly male in the 1980s and '90s in a rural area. it's not just that "gay" was the ultimate cutting insult; it's that it was a pathology for those with power over one's life to be concerned with. you're not one of *them*, are you? do we need to send you somewhere?

i had all this other stuff going on as well of course. i was neurodiverse and i was badly, reluctantly playing out the wrong gender. basically everything about me was wrong and i could never betray a word of my thoughts or feelings on any subject without putting myself at risk.

but the most terrifying shame out of all the things i shouldn't be thinking and feeling, and here we get to the point of this thread, was my fixation with dicks. which i always tried to dance around and not dwell on, but it would always surface. i have always liked dicks, okay.

now in our current nuanced understanding of gender and sexuality, and all the discourse and controversy about genital preferences, there's sort of a different world to be breaking this down in. but at the time masculinity was super not appealing to me—which made it more confusing

flipping back the channels, i know now that i am pan. my block against attraction to dudes on principle has to a large degree melted with time and hormones and understanding of my own gender in particular, though it feels so fucking strange and triggering to wrangle with still.

with that dam down, it's clear that my attraction to people (in theory if not in real life, where it simply doesn't happen at all) has everything to do with who they are as people and that gender doesn't really enter into it meaningfully. trauma-based hang-ups aside, of course.

but it's also clear that, on a personal level, though i can appreciate any equipment based on it being a part of the person who's sporting it, all things equal i have an obvious preference and fascination for the penis. and that this ties into a lot of other things about me.

i am of course passive as hell in most things, even the topics that engage me. and the aroaceness sure as heck indicates a lack of active engagement with sexuality or attraction. it's more that sometimes, ideas come to me. and then, there they are for me to manage somehow.

and in all this ideation...

a thing i have observed a few times recently, with increasing clarity, is the possibly strange way i have always engaged with porn. i tend to see the central figure as the protagonist like any story, and to identify with (usually) her on her journey.

not to cross lines between porn and reality, but, well, again reality doesn't much enter into my sexuality. it's all in my head, all the time.

anyway, i am so clearly a bottom, right. almost exclusively. it's all about navigating things done to me, rather than seeking to do them

which, whee, sheds so much light on my history. which has exclusively been with cis women who insisted on perceived gender roles, and so expected me to take on the behavior of a presumed passionate male, growing more and more frustrated with my timidness, reluctance, confusion.

it had nothing to do with attraction to them or otherwise. in each case they were at that time the center of my life and my attraction was proportionate to my all-encompassing love. that's the only motivation that matters, right. it's the performance that freaked me out.

like, if they had initiated rather than always expecting me to anf growing furious when they felt forced to lower themselves to ask me, and if they had taken the lead, i would have let them carry me anywhere. but there was this tangle based on assumed roles they would not discuss

to equate the penis with action is of course reductive. i have a dick, and i like my dick, and we're having this discussion here. but there are connections going on with all of this, right. it's not binary black-and-white objective label material, as we're talking about people.

and likewise not everyone with a dick is male, not everyone with a vagina is female, and it's all complicated and that's great and weird and as it should be. again, case in point: me.

but my preference for dick, it makes a kind of sense that wends through every part of my being.

it is perhaps messy to be pan, but to have a clear and unambiguous preference for one mode of genitalia. but we're messy, right. and of course attraction isn't based on what's in a person's pants, and even if it were, a preference isn't exclusive. once you get that far, who cares

it's messy in the same way i can be pan but more importantly aroace, and that it all makes a sort of sense because people aren't math problems. there is only so much external logic you can apply. it's not about the outside, about all these boxes and labels. that is just death.

but yeah, this is all me coming to terms that i'm a girl who dreams about getting railed by hypothetical dicks. and, like. i shouldn't feel shame about who i am, right. that's what i am trying to get past, so i can just fucking live here, goddamn.

i like dicks.

i have talked about this all a little, in bits and and pieces and behind ciphers and in private conversation that has unintentionally gotten weird, for which i feel i hope appropriate chagrin. but here's me thinking it straight through, finally. coming to terms with it all.

final tweet