Hello there! Welcome to asexual awareness week day 2. Today I'm going to be talking about why we need asexual awareness.
Personally I found out that asexuality was a thing in my senior year of high school, so
2011 and the only reason I found that out is because I got onto tumblr and
found out that there were a lot of different sexual orientations I'd known for many years before that, but the way I
experienced or rather
didn't experience sexual attraction
was different than other people but I didn't have a word for it and I didn't realize that it was something that other people
experienced. I just thought I was weird and other people thought I was weird too.
They were correct just not because I was asexual. I would have had a much easier time
accepting who I was and figuring out my different identities if I'd known asexuality was a thing before I was practically a legal adult,
for example, if they included asexuality in sex education.
That would have been super helpful. In our current society
sex and sexual relationships are all over mainstream media. Hookup culture is at its finest, and if you don't share the same thoughts and
experiences as the majority of the population when it comes to such a big part of our culture, it can be really
isolating. A lot of asexual people have said they felt broken and like something's wrong with them because they don't feel sexual attraction.
This can be helped somewhat by realizing that there are other
asexual people out there and it's a perfectly normal and valid experience, but with mainstream society as it is a lot of people still feel
broken after they realized they're asexual, because people just don't know about it. If you're part of the asexual or bisexual communities, you may have
seen some of the jokes going around that were invisible and on awareness days
we have to be careful, because people can actually
see us then. But seriously the point of raising awareness about
asexuality is to let people know that they're not alone and to let allow-sexual people,
non-asexual people know that asexuality is a real thing, it's a valid sexual
orientation, is not something to be cured or fixed, because asexual people aren't broken and of course
asexual awareness isn't just for asexual people.
Obviously it'll help ace people find each other
and realize they're not alone, but it can also help everyone realize that there's a more broad spectrum to human sexuality and
experiences of sexual orientation than you might think.
Asexual awareness can also shed light on other
types of relationships that are just as valid and important as sexual ones. Also a lot of people are assumed to be heterosexual by default,
so if someone is asexual, but they don't know what that is, they might think okay maybe I'm gay, because
I'm not attracted to the opposite gender
"opposite gender", but then they often realize they're not attracted to the same gender either, so that can lead to a lot of confusion.
It's not uncommon for asexual people to be bullied for having a non normative sexual
orientation, whether that's because people assume that they're gay and bullied them for that or they do identify as asexual
and people don't see that as a valid
orientation. Another big part of asexual awareness is the fact that asexual people can and do have sex. I see a lot of YouTube
comments whenever someone brings up being asexual and interested in sex or having a sex drive or being
even somewhat curious about having sex, they're like' oh!
clearly you're not asexual and you don't know your own sexual orientation I
a YouTube commenter must know you better than you know yourself. You know that's a rant I will go on in a different video, but
that's another reason why we need awareness. Also, and this is a major point, there is a huge issue
with a lack of awareness and visibility of people who are asexual and also have other marginalized
identities. This includes aces of color, aces of different ethnic groups, aces with different physical and mental disabilities,
aces who are trans, non-binary or gender non-conforming,
intersex or not hetero-romantic, not to mention aces in non-western countries or countries that don't speak English. As you can clearly see
I'm white. I do speak English and I also live in America, so those are my experiences
and that's what I can speak to personally. All of the marginalized groups that I belong to are ones that you can't see,
So if you want to take a look at my other videos to see my
experiences, you could go ahead and do so, but also I can't speak for a lot of people and I can't
speak to their experiences, because I haven't lived them.
Intersectionality is a real thing and members of these different groups all have unique issues that need to be addressed when considering the effectiveness of
any awareness campaign including asexual awareness week. It's arguable whether or not an asexual community
actually exists, but online it's often a lot of white people, a lot of white cis-women, and a lot of people who are hetero-romantic.
So that leaves a lot of people and a lot of identities that may not relate
to the main narratives being talked about when we're talking about asexuality. I'm not going to pretend like I have a solution for this issue,
but I think it's important
to bring up. And that's all I have for this topic I hope you enjoyed this video, if you did give it a thumbs up
And consider subscribing if you haven't already for more asexual videos this entire week. Also if you have any suggestions for people who talk about
asexuality and their other marginalized identities, please leave their links in the comments below I would really appreciate that and I will see you tomorrow.
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