I keep seeing these posts about how sad or upsetting it is to see CHILDREN who identify as ace. So this is a friendly reminder to all my ace minors who may need to hear it today.
1. You are NOT sad, and no one has a right to be upset by your identity.
2. You do not need to explain, to an adult person or anyone else, what you consider sexual attraction, or why you think you are not experiencing it. No one has the right to ask you to question your own identity.
3. You do not need to listen to anyone trying to convince you you are probably more gay or more straight, or anyone trying to change the way you identify in any other way.
4. Asexuality is not about whether you have had or are having sex. If you self-identify as asexual, that is not you sexualizing yourself, and you are not harming yourself by taking on a label that MIGHT change in the future. and don’t ever let anyone convince you otherwise.
5. You are not required to keep an open mind that your orientation may change. It MIGHT change, and if it does, i hope you can welcome and enjoy whatever you are feeling when it arrives. But you aren’t required to participate in the rituals of dating, crushes, or experimenting just to prove that it’s really NOT what you want.
I am a firm believer in self-exploration, and obtaining self-knowledge through questioning what we know about ourselves, and the world. But the way ace kids are constantly expected to provide answers for how we are the way we are, and what it means, and how we’re really really open to being something else, is just disgusting. It does more to turn kids AWAY from relabeling or reexamining themselves.
If you’re a minor, and you ID as ace, then you’re ace. You’re not broken, or alone, you’re not wrong, and you don’t need to answer for it.
Actually if anything, the adults are sexualising you for being so meddly with what you do with your own junk.
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