A quick note on identities & labels

[kaberett]

Don't ever label me "sexual". Not ever.

Just. Don't.

(I can probably face explaining in comments, but I don't have words to send a post into the void.)

Comments

[liv]

Meh, sorry to hear that you've had to deal with people being judgemental about your sexual choices.

[kaberett]

I bristle really hard every time "sexual" gets used in opposition to "asexual", because there's just so much baggage tied up with that - so much problematic bullshit in describing someone perceived as a woman with that term, even before you get to "are they poly" or "are they of colour" or whatever - that I cannot. even. (I have just been reminded of this again, by an absolutely horrifying "sexual privilege checklist" that simultaneously erased and added to the oppressions of LGBT folk, disabled folk, people of colour, trauma survivors, etc etc etc ad fucking nauseam, while the author sat around in comments claiming that this was okay because it was only trying to address one axis of oppression.)

[liv]

This is why I have a big problem with privilege lists in general. The whole point of the meme is that if you have "privilege" you get plenty of media representation of people like you, you are assumed to be the unmarked default and not compared against stereotypes of your group etc. It's really, really hard to do that in an intersectional way, so you end up with weird assumptions about who counts as "people like you". With sex it's even more complicated because "lots of media representation" and "unmarked default person" actually suck, because we're in a culture that is utterly messed up about just about everything to do with sex.

It may well be that the only plausible opposite of asexual is "not asexual", clumsy though that is. All the baggage around sexual means that even with a prefix it's pretty problematic; funnily enough people don't usually self-identify as transsexual or bisexual or homosexual, but prefer trans, bi or gay. Even asexual itself often mutates to A or ace.