Sometimes you have to face hard truths by stating the painful facts baldly. I am 33, I have never been kissed, and the only guy who ever wanted to hold hands with me was killing time while he tried to find someone hot enough to date. I know this because that’s what he told my housemate when he hit on her.

To the best of my knowledge, no one who has seen me in person has ever been attracted to me. I’m not catcalled or harassed. The only relationships I’ve had have been online. The only boyfriend who met me offline would not do more than give me a hug. I have met potential partners from the Internet, only to watch the interest in their eyes die when they see me.

I often feel like the only woman on the face of the planet who no one is attracted to. And I am ashamed — in part because this is something no one ever talks about.

I often feel like the only woman on the face of the planet who no one is attracted to.
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We turn virginity into a punchline — a sign of misplaced religious conviction, physical grotesqueness, or social ineptitude. We try to escape the reality that sex is a choice that some are never offered, and ignore the fact that trumpeting sexual freedom also has the power to wound deeply. The sexually inexperienced (especially those with no choice in the matter) feel a strong urge to hide this fact, in order to let people assume a common level of sexual history. It’s a lot easier than trying to explain the truth, and it hurts less, too.

I’ve sat through countless conversations with groups of women, praying that the conversation wouldn’t turn to sex, cringing inwardly when it inevitably did, and trying to laugh with the others until the topic changed and I could relax again, my secret safe. For now.

When I was growing up, the conversation was always about how to say “no,” how to not be pressured into sex, how to turn down a date honestly and fairly. My educators, ministers, and youth group leaders never told me what to do when I wasn’t pressured, when I wasn’t asked out on dates. Teenage me was practically quivering with excitement over my first chance to say “no,” because even “no” contained the possibility that I could choose to say “yes.” But the question never came.

I thought that, perhaps, things would get better in college. Surely, the smart guys would at least be attracted to my intellect. Instead, while I made friends with lots of great guys who I’m still close with, I was never once asked on a date. No one ever tried to cop a feel at an event or in the movie theater. There was never the hint of a hookup. Perhaps, if my upbringing hadn’t been so conservative, or if I’d had a few dates in high school, I would have had the courage to ask someone out for myself instead of waiting, but that was unthinkable to me.

I was so confused. This wasn’t how the movies went. This wasn’t how the novels ended. Most of my friends got married right out of college, and those that didn’t at least had dates. I sat down to take inventory: Why wasn’t anyone interested? Was it my appearance? I’ve always been on the large side of curvy, but I knew plenty of girls my size and larger who had found happy relationships. Was it my face? I’ve never been pretty, but again, I knew women who were objectively less “pretty” than me who had found love. Was it my personality? I’m shy and reserved (unless you bring up Star Wars or Dune, then good luck getting me to shut up), but I’m comfortable talking to friends. I was part of several active social groups, and enjoyed spending time with friends. I couldn’t find a persuasive reason why no one was interested in me. And in the decade or so since college, as the disinterest has persisted, I still haven’t.

I was so confused. This wasn’t how the movies went. This wasn’t how the novels ended.
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Over the past few years, I’ve made a certain amount of peace with being single. It took some time, especially since I could find very little to help me. The books I found on being single were almost exclusively geared toward “being single until you get married because of course you will.” The singles activities at my church were rare, and everyone in them was a good 40 years older than me. I eventually realized that I could not rely on a guide to help me; I had to find out what the single life meant for me. I had to build a life of my own, instead of waiting to find my “other half.”

It’s not my preferred choice, but I’m not going to fling myself at someone out of desperation. This sense of acceptance comes and goes. There are days when I’m tempted to run outside and proposition the first man I can find. But most days, I just accept that this is my reality right now, and change will not happen quickly or easily. Regardless, the frustration lingers: I would have liked it to be a real choice, not a matter of mere acceptance.

I’ve tried talking about my story a few times. I’ve pushed back when people assume that certain levels of romantic history are universal; when people make offhand remarks that assume that, given my age, I’ve had several intimate relationships, I correct them. I try to remind people that “virgin” is not an insult, and that sex isn’t the guarantor of adulthood. The rare times I’ve brought up this pain, I’ve been told that I simply didn’t notice guys who were interested, or that I just needed to “be myself” and admirers would miraculously appear.

That’s what hurts the worst: the absolute refusal of others to believe me when I talk about my experience. The insistence that I don’t know my own life. The appropriation of my narrative to turn it into a more palatable story for the comfort of others. I’ve tried to understand why my story makes others uncomfortable. It’s possible that it’s because it introduces an element of uncertainty into all relationships: What if a lot of it comes down to luck? If there’s no real reason behind my lack of relationships, maybe it’s just a coincidence, an accident of chance. And that means they found their partners due to chance as well, and their lives might have been like mine if a few things had gone differently. And so they rationalize and explain my story; if it’s due to something I’m not doing, then they are safe in their relationships. They didn’t make my mistakes.

Female friends try to assure me that I am attractive, but have no explanation for why men don’t seem to agree. They don’t understand why I rebuff their compliments, assuming that I’m only operating from a foundation of low self-esteem, when in actuality I’m just trying to keep my grip on reality. If it were true that I were attractive, then at some point, someone would have acted on said attraction. No one has, and my narrative accounts for the truth better than their perspective does.

That’s what hurts the worst: the absolute refusal of others to believe me when I talk about my experience.
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And yet, my friends seem to think my rejection of their narrative is a personal rebuff; I spend my energy protecting their feelings from the truth of mine. I laugh away the pain that runs deep so they won’t feel sorry for me. I go to their bridal showers, their weddings, and I’m genuinely happy for them. I enjoy dinners at their houses, trying not to be jealous of the cookware that they received when they married. No one throws showers for single women; all my cookware comes from the thrift store or the cheap aisle at the grocery store.

I wish I could talk more about others who have shared this experience. But the truth is, I don’t know of any others within my personal circles. I have many single friends, but all of them have had their share of admirers. According to CDC research conducted a few years ago, 2% of women age 25–44 (and 3% of men in the same age range) have never had vaginal sex. Surely some of these millions of virgins include those like me, who want physical intimacy but have never been offered it.

But we hide our stories, afraid of being judged, laughed at, or worse, pitied. We miss out on the support of others with similar stories.

The question I find myself facing now is whether or not to keep trying. As L.M. Montgomery wrote in The Blue Castle, “Yes, I’m ‘still young’ — but that’s so different from young.” The reality is that if no one has wanted more than a hug from me by now, that’s not likely to change as I age. I don’t want to be single forever. I would very much like to be kissed at least once. Do I keep trying to find someone, or do I accept my situation for what it is, and direct my energies elsewhere? Will other people let me accept being unwillingly single, or will they keep pushing me to believe that I am somehow secretly attractive, in the face of all experiential evidence that suggests otherwise?

I may never stop wanting my story to change, but I will keep fighting to tell it my way. I intend to cling to the truth, even when it’s a painful one. I hope others with more normative experiences will start to understand, and find ways to include women like me in discussions about sex and love, without resorting to alienating comments about what “all women” experience.

We’re all women, we all have our stories, and we all want the chance to tell them with dignity and truth.

On January 10th, 2019 at 5:59pm, I received a text from home: “Where are you?”

“Just got on the bus.”

The moment I hit send, I felt karma lurking around the corner. I always believed that lying was an unforgivable sin. But, had my mother known I was with a boy in an empty parking lot, she would denounce me.

Adjusting the driver’s seat for the fifth time, Kevin asked, “So, were you serious about the whole kiss thing?”

Three nights ago, I’d texted Kevin that I wanted to kiss him—a meaningless kiss. We were close friends who had previously discussed our lack of feelings for each other, his failed relationships, and my childlike innocence. He responded with “lol,” unable to fathom that I, having never seen or done anything remotely sexual in my life, would’ve wanted a meaningless first kiss.

Had my mother known I was with a boy in an empty parking lot, she would denounce me.
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The trigger of my courageous inquiry was when talk about sex entered my Hindu-Canadian household for the first time, several months previously. In September 2018, India lifted the ban on homosexual acts, liberating many to legally explore their sexuality. Rainbow flags danced across our TV screen and Indians celebrated in the streets with loud music and faces full of happy tears. My mom came out of the kitchen at the sound of excitement.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Other people can do what they want. It doesn’t affect us,” she replied, concluding the conversation.

I couldn’t argue with that. My family was convinced that somehow, someday I would confidently marry some Indian man and create a happy little Indian-Canadian family of my own. But this idea began to scare me. How would I know what satisfied me if I’d never experienced anything at all?

Needing to know the full story, I sat alone in my room, going through the news on the gay-sex legislation in India.

“What happens after decriminalization? What happens after marriage? How do we shift to culture, to acceptance as opposed to tolerance?” said Helen Kennedy, the executive director of Egale Canada in a CTV interview.

Acceptance isn’t possible if we’re constantly worrying about saving face—the concept of upholding a clean reputation by avoiding humiliation. To keep their children away from “unacceptable” sexual exploration, Indian parents change the channel on onscreen romance, take control of their children’s dating life regardless of age, and establish strict rules on going out with friends.

A phone conversation with a friend led to the topic of family and relationships.

“There is so much mistrust even when I wanted to go out to dinner with my girl friends. Didn’t hear the end of it for days,” said Hruti, whispering through the phone. “Sometimes it’s hard to leave the room, you know?”

How would I know what satisfied me if I’d never experienced anything at all?
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I recalled a few times where my mother suspected I had a boyfriend. She’d nearly cry, take my hand upon her head, and make me swear that I wasn’t seeing anyone. Hindus believe that lying under oath is deadly. When I’d confidently sworn to her that I was single, she’d sit in silence, waiting for some impending doom.

“So, how do you manage your friends-with-benefit situation?” I asked her.

“Well, during university I lived on campus, so it wasn’t a problem. Now I just make time after work. Luckily, I have my own car.”

She said lying was easy for her and recalled someone who’d said, “those with strict parents become the best liars.”

“But how do you deal with the guilt and the anxiety that comes with lying?” I asked, wondering if I was the only one who felt it.

“As long as I don’t get caught, I don’t care. It’s the only way to experience life.”

This was hard for me to digest. As a Hindu, we create our own set of beliefs, abiding to a core framework called “dharma” which in the simplest terms means to do the right thing. Personally, doing the “right thing” meant abiding by the values I learned growing up: respect, honesty, and having a positive mindset. This meant focusing on school and saving face, which in my case included not being seen with the opposite sex in public unless you were planning to marry them. “Don’t engage with boys and focus on school” was a famous motto in most Indian households—and my mom’s favorite saying.

After conversing with Hruti, I began to wonder how much a rule was able to stretch before it was considered broken. If I remained a virgin and didn’t date until I was permitted to, I believed that kissing in private couldn’t ruin my family’s reputation.

When I was with Kevin in the car that evening, I felt that was my one and only chance. With an untainted internet search history, a body less explored than the Mariana Trench, and a mind full of dramatic Bollywood dance sequences, I knew I had to start somewhere.

“Yes, I was serious about the kiss,” I said.

“So, do you want to?” he asked, shifting his eyes nervously.

“Sure.” I shrugged. After a few awkward seconds of listening to a Tim Horton’s ad play on the radio, I continued, “You’re going to have to start. I don’t know what to do.”

“Argh, I know. Don’t look away.”

We leaned in toward each other until our lips met. Then we made out for 40 minutes. Contrary to the romanticized descriptions of kisses in novels—of soft lips, gentle tongue, and an all around feel of magic and fireworks—his lips, tongue, and teeth only felt like lips, tongue, and teeth.

I began to wonder how much a rule was able to stretch before it was considered broken.
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My focus shifted from one sense to another. The glowing orange streetlight above. The cars passing by in the distance. The stick-shift forming a bruise on my left knee. Ed Sheeran’s voice ringing clear through the radio, “When your legs don’t work like they used to before...” The roughness of Kevin’s beard under my fingers. I kept imagining what would happen if the police caught us. Were we even allowed to be in the empty parking lot?

Eventually, we stopped. As I rolled back onto the passenger’s seat, I heard a crunching sound under my waist. I’d completely forgot that I’d taken off my glasses during the kiss. Though my frame broke in a way that my glasses still functioned, karma still managed to take $300 for the experience.

We didn’t talk about the kiss as he dropped me off a block away from my house. I wished him a good night and exited the car. The air was cold, and my lips were dry. I rubbed my face to even out my ruined makeup. I didn’t feel excitement, or regret, or disgust, or guilt, or contentment. My body and soul felt empty. I was on autopilot until I got into bed and dropped into sleep.

I kept quiet about my glasses for the night, planning to tell my parents I fell asleep with them on in the morning. I remembered Hruti saying it was easy for children of strict parents to lie, like a survival instinct. It would hurt even more if I found out I was lying to myself—that I knew exactly what I was and what I wanted.

What if it was because we didn’t love each other? But I found him exceptionally attractive. That should’ve been enough. Should I try kissing a girl? There were countless boys I pined over since I was four. Maybe I’ve been mistaking my feelings for good-looking girls as a form of appreciation rather than attraction. A group of guys in sixth grade called me a lesbian while snickering. But what if they had figured out something that I didn’t even know about myself?

I didn’t feel excitement, or regret, or disgust, or guilt, or contentment.
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I imagined all those Indians dancing on the streets, rainbows painted on their faces, knowing exactly who they were and what they fought for. Their fear of being disowned, of receiving death threats, and lying had a purpose. I wanted to know what it meant to feel contentment, disgust—anything besides empty. We Hindus are so caught up in the suppression of sexual discourse that finding where I belong would mean more lies, more sins.

Maybe this whole evening was karma’s well-written joke and nothingness was the ultimate punchline.

When I was 17, I developed an obsession with the actor Chris Evans — or, more accurately, with looking at him. I joined a Facebook group called Chris Evans Is Hot Shit just to let people know I was a subject who looked, not just an object men looked at. I felt power in this looking.

As I got older, requesting NSFW photos from partners became a rebellion of sorts. I knew this was considered too raunchy, too voyeuristic, too aggressive, too active to be “ladylike…and that’s what made it empowering to me. As a woman, I was constantly expected to provide visual pleasure, so it was only fair that I received it, too. But it wasn’t just a feminist statement; it genuinely turned me on.

Yet later, I started to get shamed for this, both overtly by people who didn’t share my taste and indirectly through all the public discourse surrounding NSFW photos, particularly dick pics. Rather than call out the fact that they’re often sent without consent, which is indeed worth calling out, critics claimed they were misguided because women aren’t visual and/or nobody enjoys looking at men. (Important note before I continue: Not all men’s bodies have penises, and not all bodies with penises belong to men. I’m writing about cis men because they’re typically the ones called out for sending dick pics, typically to cis women. But all sorts of people can enjoy them — or, as is frequently the case when they’re sent without consent, not enjoy them.)

As a woman, I was constantly expected to provide visual pleasure, so it was only fair that I received it, too.
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“In terms of sexy, it’s just a rung below a picture of yourself committing domestic terrorism,” Ryan Reynolds declared of dick-pic-sharing in 2015. That same year, a viral video titled “Women React to Dick Pics” showed women responding to penis photos with comments like “hopefully he has a good personality.” Mic asserted that “the assumption that a penis photo is sexy reflects men’s total misunderstanding of women’s turn-ons,” and anthropologist Helen Fisher told The New York Observer, “A man wants to see a woman’s body and a woman may want to see a man in the picture with … a Rolex watch or a business suit or a pair of cool jeans.”

These responses suggested that women weren’t, in fact, visual subjects — that they were better suited to be objects. That women are designed to be looked at, while men are designed to look — or, more broadly, to do. Elaine summed up this attitude on Seinfeld: “the female body is a… work of art. The male body is utilitarian, it’s for gettin’ around, like a jeep.”

But many women do, in fact, enjoy looking — and, often, at men. Magic Mike, a movie centered on male strippers, raked in $170 million worldwide, and 82% of the audience was female. “Gay male” was also the second-most-viewed category among female Pornhub users in 2015. Research has shown that straight women experience vaginal lubrication in response to clips of gay men having sex (among other things), and even straight men’s eyes dilate in response to photos of men masturbating.

And, believe it or not, many women actively request dick pics. “I’m a very visual person,” says one 27-year-old preschool teacher in Boston, who asked to remain anonymous. “It is usually the videos that turn me on the most, but I do appreciate a sequence of photos. Like if he sends me one before he’s turned on and then sends me some of him touching himself until he’s turned on. I also enjoy a tasteful shot of a guy’s boner through his pants.”

Quinn Rhodes, a 22-year-old student and sex blogger in London, similarly enjoys “receiving [nude] shots from my partners, plus photos of their penises, new sex toys, photos of partners (of any gender) in lingerie, or of marks left on them from spankings/kink scenes, or when they’re tied up in beautiful rope bondage.”

Believe it or not, many women actively request dick pics.
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“When I am attracted to someone, of course I want to see more of him,” says Taylor, a 31-year-old in LA. “If my partner and I are talking and I ask to see it, it’s very exciting.” She adds, “There is a dominant narrative that women are not as visual as men when it comes to sex, and it ends up erasing many other women’s experiences, or we end up feeling like our desires and fantasies are ‘unhealthy’ because they fall outside of the social norm. But plenty of us watch porn and sext with our partners, and we enjoy it because it’s visual.”

“There’s a lot of empowerment in having someone expose themself to you,” agrees CJ Stanford, a 26-year-old college student in Jacksonville, Florida. “I don’t just perform for his pleasure; he performs for mine.”

Why are perspectives like these so often buried? “A common sexual script is that men are more visual,” explains Kathryn Stamoulis, PhD, licensed mental health counselor and adjunct psychology professor at Hunter College. “This myth can be so ingrained that people don’t think to experiment with sexual activities like seeking dick pics because they don’t even consider it. Another sexual script is that men desire while women are to be desired. However, it could be potentially a win-win in straight couples for the man to feel like he is being desired in the request of nudes.”

Not all women are attracted to men, obviously, but the societal reluctance to depict men as sexual objects is connected to the denial of female desire. Most porn, movies, TV, and art highlight the perspective of a stereotypical straight man: cameras zooming in on women’s faces and chests; disproportionate female nudity; women almost exclusively touting hourglass figures and symmetrical features. That’s not necessarily what all straight men like to see, but it’s what they’re taught to approve of. Anything else is deemed unnatural.

Most porn, movies, TV, and art highlight the perspective of a stereotypical straight man.
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If heterosexual men are indeed “more visual,” it’s probably because they’ve been bombarded with sexualized images of women their whole lives, explains Lisa Wade, PhD, associate professor of sociology at Occidental College. Similarly, if people view women as more aesthetically pleasing, it’s probably because we’ve all been surrounded by these same idealized images.

“We’ve made women into ornaments,” Wade explains. “We will put a naked woman in art, and she serves the same purpose as a flower or a design. We have come to see women as ornamental in a way we don’t think of men.”

That could also be why same-sex attraction is often more accepted when those involved are cis women. They’re directing their desire toward the objects society has taught us are natural. Not to mention, lesbians are easier to fetishize for the male gaze than gay men.

The reluctance to depict men as sexual objects may also be connected to a fear of male vulnerability. “Our cultural frame for sexual activity is not a cooperative one; it is more of a predator-prey-type frame,” Wade explains. “If we have this competitive frame of sexuality, you are either the one doing the fucking or the one getting fucked. You’re either the object of the gaze or you’re the gazer. It’s considered disempowering to be the object of the gaze, so I think that’s why men may be uncomfortable in positions where they feel like objects. And we have this idea of women interested in sex as being scary, voracious, hungry in a way that’s dangerous.”

The reluctance to depict men as sexual objects may be connected to a fear of male vulnerability.
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The dynamic of a voracious woman ogling at a man challenges not only the male gaze but also the conception of the male body as inherently aggressive, threatening, and domineering. Penises are sometimes compared to dangerous things like swords or snakes, as if the sight of one is supposed to hint at sexual violence. Treating a penis as something pretty feminizes it, stripping it of this imagined power.

I’m not advocating that we reverse the situation and objectify men. But someone can be an object of desire without being objectified. To objectify someone means to depict them as only sexual objects. Enjoying looking at someone doesn’t do that. What does objectify someone is failing to acknowledge that they themselves look, too — which is what we do to women.

Another crucial difference between an objectifying gaze and a merely desirous one is consent. In fact, what makes dick pics so aversive for many women is that they’ve received so many unsolicited ones. “Dick pics may have gotten a bad reputation because senders were not asking for consent and using them for shock value,” says Stamoulis. But by actively seeking them out to gratify their own desire, women can transform this dynamic, she adds. “If women decide they actually want to see them, from people they are attracted to and from people whom they ask, it could transform the sexual script that men just look and women are just looked at.”

Someone can be an object of desire without being objectified.
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For Hannah Schwartz, a 32-year-old in California, the act of requesting dick pics is part of their appeal. “I want him to know I want it, and then I want him to acquiesce,” she says. “There can be vulnerability in that, and of course there’s power in it as well, which is part of the turn-on.”

“I am used to being the object of the gaze, so it’s pretty powerful to step outside of that and do some gazing of my own,” agrees Taylor. “Even though women are socialized to be passive recipients rather than active participants in our own sex lives, I am not about to surrender all of my power like that. I have desires, too, and I know what it takes to satiate them. To hell with norms.”

Aphantasia is a little-known condition that affects the mind’s “inner eye.” While most people are able to close their eyes and have real-feeling sensory experiences (visual, aural, and otherwise), I am without this ability. When I close my eyes, I see only darkness. And while others dream in full color and hear sounds, I only dream in words and feelings.  

I used to think that my experience of darkness was like that of everyone else. We often use the same language to describe our thoughts and feelings, with there being no differentiation indicating our individual experiences like that in the mind’s eye. Once I learned about my difference of perception, I had vivid conversations with others who thought that my experience was foreign. For a while I felt broken and incomplete because I was missing out on something that was so basic for others, but these days, I do not feel so bad about it. It’s hard to miss what I have never had, and the idea of suddenly seeing pictures in my mind actually scares me.

Aphantasia exists on a broad spectrum. Although aphantasiacs experience a lack of sensory imagery in the mind, many with the condition still dream with full sensory imagery. Others experience face-blindness, struggling to recognize the most familiar of people. It is estimated that about 2% of the general populace are on the aphantasia spectrum. For me personally, I am 100% sensory-blind when both awake and asleep, but I do not have problems with recognizing faces.

It is widely accepted that aphantasia is a congenital condition, manifesting from birth onward. According to a study by Joel Pearson at the University of South Wales in Sydney, those without aphantasia have more activity in the prefrontal cortex in the brain. “The visual cortex is like a sketch pad; it’s where you create images,” said Pearson in New Scientist.

Given that the prefrontal cortex controls the visual cortex, this allows for what we call the mind’s eye, an ability to create visual images. Pearson’s same study found that electronic stimulation can enhance activity in the prefrontal cortex with technology called transcranial direct stimulation (tDCS), which can potentially allow for an aphantasiac to experience imagery instead of darkness. He posits that science’s ability to manipulate the mind’s eye—increasing or decreasing its strength—could affect everything from learning new ideas and making “moral decisions” to potentially decreasing image-based trauma or hallucinations among those who are schizophrenic.

I am definitely a sexual person, and desire sex in my life. However, due to my complete mental darkness, I am unable to have any visual sexual fantasies about future and/or possible sex. I always have known that my approach to desire is different from others, but could never put my finger on it until discovering I have aphantasia.

In my teens, while my peers began discovering their own senses of their sexuality, I remained—quite literally—in the dark. I always wondered how people just “knew” they were gay, or “knew” what they liked sexually. When people talked of having fantasies, I could not relate because I had none of my own.

As a teen, I had my own crushes and senses of attraction as well—albeit in a unique way. I focused on intellectual capacity and creativity, and found people attractive in the way one would marvel at an excellent work of art. While I many pined after handsome faces, I fell in love with a British theater actor from “Topsy Turvy,” a film about the collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan, a Victorian librettist and composer duo who wrote famous operettas such as The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance. For me, creative expression and artistry are the bedrock of my sense of romance and sexuality.

Due to my complete mental darkness, I am unable to have any visual sexual fantasies about future and/or possible sex.
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Yet as years passed, I still felt extreme anxiety because I had no sexual fantasies. I started to fear that I was gay because I did not fantasize about men, but there were never any thoughts about women either. I felt tremendously insecure in pursuing any sort of serious relationship. What if I choose a person of the wrong gender or gender identity?

Regarding my insecurities with sexuality, I have confided in close friends over the years, trying to gain perspective about what I really am. My friends always reassured me that whatever my sexuality is, it is a beautiful thing to celebrate and express. Yet it did not feel beautiful to me—it felt like a scary, gaping hole.

Beginning in 2015, I began browsing the online forums on the website of the Asexuality Visibility & Education Network (AVEN) to try and find answers for myself. It is a great place for me to visit when I have my questions about sexuality, where people are friendly and able to write without being under the influence of sexual excitement. It was not until 2018, at the age of 33, that someone mentioned that my lack of fantasies may be due to me having aphantasia. After briefly investigating the condition, I immediately realized that this was my experience and reality!

I inquired about aphantasia on AVEN, and some members professed having similar experiences to me. A casual poll in 2017 on AVEN asked members about having aphantasia, and 42.5% of 54 respondents said they were on the spectrum. This is far higher than the purported 2% in the general populace.

I then went on Facebook to join aphantasia groups for additional support, writing about how the condition gives me an experience similar to asexuality. Most people vehemently responded that they are absolutely not asexual, but that they experience sexuality in non-sensory ways. It appears there isn’t a reciprocal correlation—while asexuals may be more likely to have aphantasia, those with aphantasia are not more likely to be asexual.

What if I choose a person of the wrong gender or gender identity?
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After discovering that I have aphantasia, I am now investigating ways for me to adapt and adjust. With my boyfriend—whom I find attractive both aesthetically and intellectually—I now keep my eyes open instead of closing them when we’re intimate. Seeing him visually helps me feel in the mood, and now I realize what my sexuality really is. I’m heterosexual, but also feel like I’m on the asexual spectrum by default. The term “demisexual” seems to suit me—I only experience attraction with someone I am profoundly emotionally connected to.

While my experiences are unusual, I do not believe my aphantasia is any sort of deficiency. Instead, I’ve grown to view it as something that makes me unique, and believe that my experience is just as valid as those of others. I also feel that my aphantasia allows for me to have heightened senses in other areas. I find joy in contemplating life and the people around me as philosophical fodder, all describable with florid language. I journal and write constantly, putting these feelings and observations down on paper. I like to imbibe my words with a rhythm and lilt that feels akin to music. I know that I approach writing in a unique way.

As I talk to people about my aphantasia, many people express intrigue about my condition. It can be a mind-bender for non-aphantasiacs to try and fathom my world of darkness, just as their vivid sensory imaginations are equally as foreign to me. Honest conversations allow for us to share our world views with one another, practice empathy, and celebrate our differences.

Imagine that.

*This article has been edited to remove a quote from “sexologist Damian Jacob Sendler, PhD, MD” who was revealed to be a “serial fabulist.“

In October 2013, shortly after I moved to New York, a hot Londoner struck up a conversation with me in Starbucks. We had dinner that night and met up for breakfast two days later, then I followed him back to his Airbnb while he packed.

I didn’t want to get too involved because he was leaving, and I barely knew him. So, when he leaned in to kiss me, I said, “Let’s not go further than this.” When he took off my shirt, I said, “No further, OK?” He didn’t seem to listen, because he then took off my bra and started kissing my chest.

Although I didn’t agree to what was happening, I was physically getting aroused by it. Once it became clear that my attempts to stop it weren’t succeeding, I figured all I could do to make the situation less unpleasant for myself was try to enjoy the arousal I felt mounting in my body.

So I laid back and made little sighs of pleasure. It was only when he grabbed my hand and put it on his crotch that I jumped up and told him to stop. “Sorry,” he said. “I guess it’s a guy thing.”

“At least he apologized,” I thought. I didn’t want to believe I’d been violated. And because of the satisfied noises I’d just made, it was a difficult thing to convince myself of anyway. Telling myself I’d just engaged in a normal, consensual hookup, I made out with him and gave a heartfelt goodbye as he hiked his bags onto his shoulders and caught a cab to the airport.

But I returned home confused about what had just happened. I had not consented to parts of that encounter, but I had gotten pleasure out of it. I didn’t want to go that far for emotional reasons, but physically, I wanted it.

My mind raced back to that infamous line from Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”: “I know you want it.” Perpetrators often justify sexual assault by saying the victim secretly wanted it. But did the fact that part of me desired his touch mean I had consented to it? Even if I hadn’t wanted to act on that desire?

As it turns out, many individuals describe feeling arousal and pleasure during sexual assaults. In one study—“Problems With Sexuality After Sexual Assault”—21% of women said they had a “physical response” to their assaults, and 10% felt attracted to their perpetrators. Additional research and clinical reports suggest that four to five percent of women have reported orgasm during sexual assault, but the numbers could be higher because people may not report this, according to a paper in the Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine.

“I didn’t think of it as sexual assault for years because I had an orgasm, because I didn’t try harder to stop it when it started to feel good,” says Stephanie, a content creator in her 30s. “To this day, I call it ‘nonconsensual sex.’ And I’m a former rape victim advocate. I know what assault is. I didn’t want this to happen, I said no, I was very drunk and past the point of consent—there are so many ways I know this was assault.”

I had not consented to parts of that encounter, but I had gotten pleasure out of it.
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And it’s not just survivors themselves who discount their assaults because of their bodies’ reactions. The professionals charged with the task of helping them often do the same.

The Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine paper quotes a doctor responding to a post in an online forum about a survivor who orgasmed during her rape by her estranged husband:

“For a woman to have an orgasm, she needs to be at least on some level, mentally and emotionally invested in the experience…Fear, repulsion and pain are not conducive to orgasm. Psychological acquiescence or complacency does not mean the woman did not enjoy the experience, and on some level, love her husband.’’

Similarly, male survivors of assault are very often doubted due to the misconception that if their penis was erect enough to have intercourse, they must have consented. I once told a sex educator about how I’d guilted an ex-boyfriend into sex, and she replied, “Guilted? Really? Was his dick hard?” 

“Survivors’ genital response has quite literally been presented as evidence in court that they ‘consented,’ even if they said no, even if they were too young to give consent,” says sexologist Emily Nagoski, PhD tells me. This type of thinking is proffered all over the media as well. In 50 Shades of Grey, Christian claims that Ana’s wetness shows how much she enjoyed a spanking that she wasn’t actually into, Nagoski points out.

Such depictions reflect a widespread myth about how sexual arousal works: that in order to be physically aroused, you have to be mentally and emotionally into the whole experience.

“‘Liking’— pleasure—is one system in our brains, the opioid system; ‘wanting’—desire—is another, mediated by dopamine; and ‘learning’—physiological response to learned cues—is a third,” explains Nagoski.

“Genital arousal is the third—a learned response, the way Pavlov’s dogs salivated in response to the bell. The salivation didn’t mean the dogs wanted to eat the bell or that they found the bell delicious. It just meant that the bell was a cue that was associated with food. Genital response can happen in response to sex-related cues, whether or not those cues are wanted or liked. I’ve been doing work related to sexual violence for over two decades, so I’ve met many, many survivors who’ve experienced arousal and even orgasm.”

In fact, because fear activates the sympathetic nervous system, increasing blood flow throughout the body—it’s possible that it could even facilitate genital arousal, according to the Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine paper.

Sometimes, perpetrators make a calculated effort to turn their victims on. “Pedophiles often groom children for sexual assault by first using ‘appropriate’ pleasurable touching (stroking hair, rubbing a hand) and then pushing and pushing boundaries, working up to sexual assault,” educational psychologist and sex educator Kathryn Stamoulis, PhD, LMHC tells me. “I have heard accounts in which a rapist tried to give their victim pleasure, perhaps as a way to rationalize their crimes.”

It’s even common for people to have feelings for their perpetrators, especially if they’re assaulted by someone within a romantic relationship.

“It is possible for two opposing feelings to coexist: on the one hand disgust, rage, fear, or terror, and on the other, a genuine desire to merge with the assaulter, feelings of desire for them, and even longings to be taken care of by a person who seems more powerful,” psychoanalyst Claudia Luiz, PsyaD says. Sometimes, getting aroused can be a defense mechanism when the painful feelings resulting from the assault are too much to bear.

Many survivors feel as if their bodies have betrayed them for responding to unwelcome stimulation, says Nagoski. Some even view it as a moral failure to get turned on by something so horrific. “Can you imagine, walking around all day, every day, inside something that betrayed you? Needless to say, it comes as a tremendous relief for them to learn that their genital response just means something sex-related happened.”

Many survivors feel as if their bodies have betrayed them.
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Often, people don’t even realize they’ve been assaulted, since they assume their physical pleasure must be evidence of consent.

“[People] have told me about an experience from childhood or college and what they are describing is rape, but they never viewed it that way before because of the physical response they experienced,” Stamoulis explains. “In fact, some straight males have wondered if they were gay because they had a physical reaction during an assault by a male abuser.” Even when people recognize the event as an assault, they may hesitate to report it out of fear that their arousal could be used against them.

This shame, self-blame, and confusion could be avoided if we learned about the complexities of sexual violence: that it doesn’t always involve a morally unambiguous criminal who the victim despises, and the victim can experience emotions other than pure disgust.

“If, while in sex education teaching people about sexual assault, we were taught about all the varied reactions to assaults, both physical and emotional, we would normalize this and people wouldn’t have to suffer in silence,” Stamoulis says..

Sometimes, getting aroused can be a defense mechanism when the painful feelings resulting from the assault are too much to bear.
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Because I hadn’t learned about any of these aspects of sexual assault—physiological or psychological—I, too, thought my encounter that day in New York was consensual. I Facebook messaged with the man who violated my boundaries and felt a mixture of excitement and anger as he talked about potentially moving to New York and seeing me again.

But when he actually got a job offer there and proposed we meet up when he arrived, something clicked inside me. “Actually,” I replied, “what happened at your Airbnb last time wasn’t OK with me, and I’m not interested in seeing you again.”

“You’re joking, right?” he replied, as if my attraction to him made that statement unbelievable. But then, I thought back to his apology after that incident. He knew he’d done something wrong. And I wasn’t going to let him use my physical desire to eclipse that knowledge. I may have been aroused, but arousal is not consent.

No amount of blood flow to someone’s genitals should override what their mind—and mouth—is telling you.

By Dianna Gunn

For a long time, I believed Lai — the main character in my debut YA fantasy novella, Keeper of the Dawn — had no interest in romance. She was too focused on trying to build a life that matched her ideals — to become a Keeper of the Dawn — to think about anyone else.

Somewhere along the way Lai fell in love, and I found myself writing a sweet romance between two women. But she still had no interest in sex. She didn’t feel that kind of attraction.

Keeper of the Dawn sat on my hard drive for three years between drafts, and when I finally returned to Lai’s story, I realized I also had a word for this lack of attraction: asexual.

At the time, everything I knew about asexuality came from the blog of author Amber Skye Forbes. I knew asexuality meant a lack of sexual attraction, and that many asexual people still had a sex drive and enjoyed masturbation, but that was about it.

When I returned to Keeper of the Dawn and realized Lai was asexual, I dove head first into learning more.

I found the Asexuality Archives, home of the book Asexuality: An Introductionand an extensive glossary of terms related to asexuality. I learned the difference between asexuality and aromanticism, the latter term being used to describe someone who isn’t romantically attracted to anyone. I even interviewed a series of asexual authors on my blog, The Dabbler. Those authors taught me that asexuality is a spectrum, and that the asexual community encompasses many more people than I originally imagined.

Including myself.

The realization came about when I watched Sally Le Page’s “Coming Out” video, and she used a term that had come across my radar before but never really clicked: graysexual.

According to the Asexuality Archives, a graysexual (sometimes referred to as gray-asexual) person “may infrequently experience sexual attraction, may be unsure if they have, or may experience low sexual desire, yet will generally identify as being close to asexual.”

The term immediately felt right to me. I’ve never been attracted to many people (I like to joke that it’s about 0.005% of the population), and my sex drive tapered off significantly when I hit my twenties. But, I still love sex with my fiancé, and I am attracted to enough people that “asexual” never felt right either.

On The Beautiful Futility Of Writing

Now I had a new word, one that fit me perfectly, and with that realization came a deeper understanding of my character. I can’t say for sure if Lai’s asexuality was a subconscious expression of my own identity, but I do know that it would have taken me many more years to stumble upon the term “graysexual” without researching her identity.

My story is far from unique. Most of the asexual authors I’ve interviewed had similar experiences; many believed there was something inherently wrong with them for decades before they discovered and embraced the term asexual. Asexuality is so ignored by the media it seems they don’t even know it exists.

Most people have never been exposed to anyone who explicitly identifies as asexual, not even in the fictional media they consume. At best, they’ve read the only well-known list of books featuring asexual main characters — “Five Books With Asexual Protagonists,” at Tor.com — assumed there weren’t any more, and moved on.

But the problem isn’t a lack of asexual characters in fiction. It’s that most of those characters can be found in indie published books, and most readers, even those in the asexual community, don’t know how or where to find them.

So I gathered three of the incredible asexual #ownvoices authors who participated in my original series of interviews — Claudie Arseneault, Sophia Beaumont, and Lynn O’Connacht — and brought them to The Establishment to shed some light on all the wonderful asexual characters already waiting to be discovered.

It’s easy for people to read your bios, but your novels are much more than a series of titles. How would you describe your overall body of work?

Sophia Beaumont: I was just talking to a friend about this, and we decided that if my work had a tagline, it would be “Using rock bottom to build a foundation since 1992.”

I write about people–women, mostly–at their lowest point, and have to find some way to save themselves and often their loved ones and the world.

Lynn O’Connacht: Oooh, that is beautiful, Sophia. Stealing Sophia’s phrasing, I write about relationships, mainly, and the ways that people can (and do!) support one another.

I aim to write stories that, while they may have darkness in them, are about compassion at their core, stories that leave readers feeling good and happy. The first word I associate with my own work is “cozy”.

Claudie Arseneault: I write science fiction-fantasy stories with large queer ensemble casts and stories that lean towards politics and conspiracies. My work often centers non-romantic relationships, whether they are mentors, friends, family, or queerpatonic partners, and as a consequence, the aromantic and asexual characters often lead.

What drives you to tell these particular stories?

Claudie: A lot of the media offered to us presents really narrow definitions of what constitutes a strong, deep bond. Too often, sexual and romantic relationships take the center stage and are presented as the most meaningful relationship you can have — the one that must take precedence. I wanted something else. I wanted to explore other connections and the life-saving ways friends and families can support and care for each other, and I wanted those stories to center people like me.

Sophia: I have anxiety and depression. When I wrote my first book, I was alone in a new city in college. I felt like I should be having the time of my life, but I couldn’t. And like a lot of introverts, I looked at my fave fictional characters for answers, but none of them were like me. The hero was usually male, almost always a confident extrovert, and here I wanted to hide in the closet and give up. I didn’t have anyone to talk to or the vocabulary to express what I felt, so I wrote about it. I made a heroine who is afraid and sad and stillsaves the day.

Too often, sexual and romantic relationships take the center stage and are presented as the most meaningful relationship you can have.
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Lynn: I think I started telling these stories because I really needed to read and see more of them when I was a child. Especially since in the last few years we’ve seen such a rise in grim, dark narratives. We need stories that tell different relationships, that remind us that people aren’t all bad to the core, that things can get better, that everyone can be a main character.

Do you think being self published gives you more freedom to be true to your characters’ asexual (and other queer) identities than you would at a big publisher?

Claudie: Oh, absolutely. I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of friends or fellow writers who had editors tell them friendship wasn’t strong enough to carry a book (meaning, romance was needed) or that characters uninterested in sex were boring. I don’t have to deal with that. My characters don’t need to fit into a pre-ordained format and there are no “good for marketing” checklists I need to hit. I hire editors who understand my vision and help me get there, instead of hindering it.

Lynn: I’d like to think not, but I suspect that it’s really dependent on the story in question. Some are easier to pitch than others to a traditional publisher, definitely, so being able to publish them myself or through small presses is really great. Plus, I can include representation how I want it, without worrying that I’ll have to tone it down.

I made a heroine who is afraid and sad and still saves the day.
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Sophia: I do in some ways — there are a couple of books I have on the docket that I’m not even going to try to query. But for other things, I think the big 5 (the five major corporate publishing houses) have enough connections and opportunities to compensate for the freedom I’d have to give up.

I love books with a good strong friendship. One of the books I’m shopping around now really emphasizes that. The main character isn’t aromantic (aro) or asexual (ace), but she just lost her husband on page one. I had an editor flat out tell me it wouldn’t sell because it’s historical fiction without a romance. That is a book that I really want with a mainstream publisher, because I think it would do really well, but I may end up self publishing it.

Claudie: This is so infuriating. We absolutely need these stories to hit the mainstream, too.

Self publishing is still the most welcoming option for queer stories, but we’re starting to see a lot more queer identities in mainstream fiction, as well. Have you noticed this shift affecting asexual representation in mainstream publishing?

Sophia: I’ve been seeing a lot more rep in general in YA and middle grade books, but I feel like in adult fiction it’s still very lacking. It’s still seen as necessary or normal that if you’re an adult, you’re supposed to be in a sexual relationship.

Claudie: Sophia, I think in adult fiction, it is still very confined to indie books, whereas traditional YA fiction is already putting out canon asexual characters.

Sophia: I feel like one of the reasons it’s more accepted in YA is because it falls under “Oh, you’re experimenting and learning about your sexuality. You’ll grow out of it, eventually.”

It’s still seen as ‘necessary’ or ‘normal’ that if you’re an adult, you’re supposed to be in a sexual relationship.
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And that idea is rooted in the ageist belief that teenagers can’t truly know what they want, which is incredibly harmful. Lynn, any thoughts on recent shifts in mainstream asexual representation?

Lynn: If by “shift” you mean “exist at all,” then yes. I’ve seen it shift. I have mixed feelings about it, because much of what I read seems to be by allosexuals (i.e. not on the asexual spectrum) and they don’t really acknowledge that there’s a lot of ace representation in indie publications. I really hate the sense that this handful of (mainstream) books is the only representation asexual readers have because it’s. Not. True.

(Fair warning: I have a LOT of feels about the way traditionally published authors speaking about ace representation just…ignore or erase our existence.)

My Path To Becoming A Third Parent

I’d love to hear a bit more about your feelings on that, Lynn. How do you think that misrepresentation damages the indie community, and how can we challenge those perceptions?

Lynn: I think that the way it damages indie communities isn’t that different from how any ignoring of indie authors damages us. What it does damage, badly, is the asexual community, because it keeps asexual readers from finding representation they sorely need. I have yet to see a mainstream “ace fiction recommendations” list that doesn’t contain some variant of “This handful is all that’s out there!” when a five-minute google search will net you 20 times the number of books.

But because there’s such a strong sense of “This is all there is,” I imagine that a lot of asexual readers take that at face value and don’t run their own searches.

I’ve definitely seen those lists proclaiming “these are the few books with asexual rep,” but when I put out a call for #ownvoices authors to interview I spoke with dozens of indie authors publishing books with asexual characters. And it’s clear that the asexual community (especially in the Twitter space) is starved for this representation, but there’s a scarcity mindset that keeps them from finding the right authors.

Let’s see if we can break that scarcity mindset. Who are some indie authors you’d like to give a shout out to, and how can readers support them?

Sophia: Confession: I am really bad about reading indie books. I get most of mine from the library, and our library system won’t stock indies. But I should probably give a shout out to my partner in crime, Missouri Dalton, since our books are set in the same world.

And the best way to support indie authors is by spreading the word! I know a lot of indie authors through Twitter and have great relationships with them (they all have books on my TBR — To Be Read — list!). But I know for me, with only one book and some short stories out, it’s really hard to connect with readers.

Claudie: First I’d like to mention Shira Glassman, who writes the Mangoverse — delightful queer Jewish fantasy — and now self-publishes. Next is Kiran Oliver, who wrote Daybreak Rising, which was set to release two weeks after Torquere Publishing went under. He quickly turned around and released it.

Kiran is part of the Kraken Collective, which is a tiny group of indie queer science fiction/fantasy writers Lynn and I both belong to. The others are RoAnna Sylver, B R Sanders, and Lyssa Chiavari. All three are absolutely amazing.

Lynn: Becca Lusher. Becca is a dear friend of mine who writes epic fantasy and historical romance. She’s up there with the best authors I’ve ever read.

A.M. Blaushild is an up-and-coming author. I had the pleasure of working on their latest release, Good Angel, which is a lot of fun and has an ace-spectrum character questioning where exactly she fits. It’s a kind of rep I’ve never seen before and I really, really liked it.

Do you think readers can play a role in pushing larger book blogs and/or magazines to review more indie authors?

Claudie: Yes. Indies that really take off can get traditional book deals and even movie deals. Honestly, the best marketing indies have are their fans. When these fans start recommending indies to book bloggers, requesting them at the library, talking about it to others, that’s when the magic happens.

Sophia: Ask and ye shall receive. Usually just leaving a comment is enough. I actually watch Booktube (YouTube for book reviewers) more than I read book blogs, and they’re usually happy to respond to comments like “Have you read X? What did you think of it?” Some of them also have request forms or do Q&As.

All right. Final question! We’ve already spoken about how people can find and support indie authors in general, but how can they find and support YOU?

Claudie: I am on Twitter @ClH2OArs, and my website is claudiearseneault.com! I would highly encourage people to keep an eye on the Kraken Collective, on Twitter @KrakenColl, and with a newsletter here.

Lynn: All of my books are on Amazon and various other retailer websites. I’m also on Patreon and mirror the public posts to my blog a month later. And, of course, I’m on Twitter @lynnoconnacht.

Sophia: All of my books are on Amazon, and I’ve also got a Wattpad where they can find free reads. The next Evie Cappelli book is coming out next month, and they can find more info on that on my blog. That’s where all of the latest news goes. I can also be found on Twitter and Instagram as @knotmagick.

Want even more asexual fiction? Check out these resources:

Aromantic and Asexual Speculative Fiction Database (maintained by Claudie Arseneault) –

Goodreads Asexual Book Lists

Ace Characters List

When We Body-Shame Sexual Abusers, We Shame All Those Who Look Like Them And Did Nothing Wrong

If we keep acting like sexual abuse is wrong because the abuser is physically unattractive, abusers deemed attractive will get away with it.

modified from wikimedia / flickr | peabody awards

“That’s just not a good move,” my father snickered. “I mean, maybe if you’re Ryan Gosling. But that is not a good look for Charlie Rose.”

I t was only a matter of time before one of the recent sexual abuse allegations came up over Thanksgiving; my father chose to focus on the Charlie Rose “trick” of surprising women at the door by greeting them naked, straight out of the shower.

His choice is a common, but problematic way of criticizing Rose and the groundswell of sexual predators filling our collective newsfeeds right now.

I can’t lie; it’s been vengefully satisfying to see powerful men like Harvey Weinstein, Louis CK, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey, and of course Charlie Rose, fall from grace over the past few weeks. Hearing victims speak out about their aggression, manipulations, and perversion of power—and hearing others who wield comparable power openly criticize them on national stages (what’s up John Oliver!)—gives me hope that things are changing.

Instead of discounting what sexual abusers have done or making excuses for them—President Trump’s open support of Roy Moore stands out as an egregious anomaly right now—people are finally holding some of these men, as well as the deeply embedded patriarchy that supports them, accountable.

What’s not as heartening or progressive is the way they’re gleaning that accountability, however.

In October, Samantha Bee came out swinging in a video addressed to Harvey Weinstein, insisting, “Your dick is ugly.” Seth Meyers said in an “A Closer Look” segment about Rose, “Usually when someone that old is walking around naked, a couple of male nurses lead him right back to his room.” Meanwhile, commenters are calling “men jerking off in front of women” an overwhelmingly “gross” act.

But why should we care about someone like Harvey Weinstein being body shamed? Because body shaming him body shames everyone else who looks like him, but did nothing wrong. It also detracts from the problem with what he did, which perpetuates rape culture.

As long as we keep acting like sexual abuse is wrong because the abuser is physically unattractive or sexually deviant, abusers deemed attractive and “normal” will get away with it.

People are criticizing sexual abusers’ body types and sexual preferences rather than the abuse itself, as if it’s these things that made what they did abusive.

And they’re not. What made these acts abusive is the lack of consent.

The problem is—in part—that many people still have trouble understanding what “lack of consent” even means. Eighteen percent of college students in a 2005 Washington Post poll said that if someone hasn’t said “no,” they’ve consented to sex. Thirty-two percent of college men in a survey published in Violence and Gender said they’d “force a woman to have sexual intercourse” if they knew they could get away with it, compared to 13.6% who said they’d “rape a woman.”

It’s difficult to have productive discussions around sexual misconduct when hosts of people don’t even see what’s wrong with it (besides, apparently, unappealing bodies and acts).

What made these acts abusive is the lack of consent.

The way we’ve been talking about the recent sexual misconduct allegations isn’t helping matters. For all the articles being written—more than 65 million Google page results appear when searching Weinstein’s name alone—there’s actually been very little discussion in the media about what exactly is wrong with what these men did.

The Charlie Rose scandal, for example, could have been an opportunity to talk about how you can sexually harass someone without saying a word, because nudity without consent is harassment.

Louis C.K.’s apology could have been a chance to discuss how “asking first” doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t actually feel comfortable enough to say “no”—power dynamics are everything—or if you don’t wait for a reply.

Beyond that, openly disparaging masturbation in front of a partner, displaying a dick, or simply the thought of older people being sexual shames those who are into these acts or possess these traits. This paradigm contributes to sex negativity and ironically props up some of the very things it’s aiming to take down.

Why Should You Become An Establishment Member For $5 A Month?

Body-related insults perpetuate the idea that the only acceptable way to have sex involves a conventionally attractive cis heterosexual married couple in the missionary position with the lights off.

And that’s not progress at all.

“It troubled me greatly to hear journalists and educated people revert to this language that doesn’t have to do with the problem with these assaults,” Good Vibrations staff sexologist Carol Queen told me. “The notion of sex positivity doesn’t demonize any sexual desire except non-consensual. Why it would be any more problematic for someone to masturbate in front of a person than any other non-consensual thing is ridiculous.”

This shaming tendency existed long before the Weinstein allegations, however. In 2015—when it became popular to deride the act of sending dick pics—a video with 8.5 million views featured women looking at dick pics and saying pitying things like, “Hopefully he has a good personality,” or, noses wrinkling, “is that foreskin?!”

Not long after, Ryan Reynolds took to Conan to say this of dick pics: “In terms of sexy, it’s just a rung below a picture of yourself committing domestic terrorism.”

Those Trump Statues Aren’t Funny, And They Sure Aren’t Progressive

These criticisms focus on the supposed, objective ugliness of dicks—a body part many, many people possess and actually like to look at and engage with—rather than the inconsiderate way they’ve been thrust (look, a pun!) into people’s inboxes.

But it doesn’t matter how “sexy” or “unsexy” something is—two monikers that are entirely subjective anyway—when it’s not consensual. Regardless of the specific act, this derisive tactic aimed at humiliating the accused party shames the folks who consensually participate in it and excuses people who non-consensually do something considered more appealing or are deemed more attractive. Like, say, a thin, young, blond women sending unsolicited topless photos to her students.

Who would ever mind that, right?!

It’s a dangerous double standard. If men were mocking the wrinkles and folds and colors of the vulva on late-night television—faux-gagging at Judy Dench’s maybe-pendulous breasts that she sent to a gaffer on set—people would be (rightfully) freaking out. Apoplectic.

Inverting a hierarchy isn’t the same thing as dismantling it.

We’ve collectively bought into a fallacious binary that says women are the “fairer sex”—fundamentally gentler, less sexually aggressive, and threatening—while men are ever and always poised on the cusp of violence and sexual depravity. So, sexual harassment at the hands of a woman is deemed not only more forgivable but almost laughable.

Aside from viewing people through the lens of a heteronormative male gaze, this idea promotes the belief that the severity of a sexual violation is proportional to the violator’s attractiveness or gender—both of which are irrelevant.

So. During my future family dinners, I’ll being using the recent allegations as a jumping off point to talk about consent. I’ll point out that many couples enjoy mutual masturbation, but that masturbating in front of someone requires them to be into it just as much as having sex with them does.

I’ll explain that what makes Charlie Rose’s shower trick an unforgivable violation is not his age or the color variation of his penis, but that he’s using his power to deprive people of their consent before his nudity even entered the picture; when you can’t say “no,” you can’t say “yes.”

And that’s wrong—even if he looked like Ryan Gosling.

Looking For A Comments Section? We Don’t Have One.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/writer-of-the-week-tina-horn-5a843626307e/ Mon, 02 Oct 2017 22:17:53 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=2919 Read more]]> ‘The dichotomy between erotica and porn is classist and fake.’

Tina Horn is one of those humans where you find yourself wondering how the hell she does it.

She is an author—she’s written books on sex work (Love Not Given Lightly) and sexting (A Guide To Dirty Digital Ethics And Etiquette Called Sexting), and of course, she pens a brilliant column here on the Establishment (Why Are People Into that?!), a companion piece to her eponymously named podcast.

She teaches, she makes dirty feminist films, and she spreads the good word on sex worker rights and the glorious joys of kink lifestyles, then wraps it all up in an incredible queer punk aesthetic that leaves your head spinning and your heart racing.

She is relentlessly honest, self-probing, and takes aim at complicated social mores—like the the tangled dialogues between persona and privacy on social media:

“Digital communication has always seemed like the opposite of sex to me. In a room, I feed off the sexual energy of another person. Without that nervous system interaction, I grow exhausted and burn out quickly. Twitter makes me feel that way, too. It doesn’t give me anything I want…

Sometimes I get the impression that people feel entitled to what to say because of what I am — which is a whore — and what I do‚ which is making money by working hard at the words and sex I love. I feel as if the world expects me to outsource my imagination, and every ounce of my gut screams at me to stop. After all, my imagination is my livelihood.”

She takes you on journeys into the hot hearts of marginalized communities—like what it’s like to judge a women’s leather contest:

“For different people I spoke with, leather was a church, a hobby, a sport, a ‘second skin,’ a sexual proclivity, a signal of cultural affiliation, or the only social group they had ever felt a part of.

Yes, Leather is about sex, but it’s also about an expansive idea of intimacy. It’s a tradition that refreshingly undermines the nuclear idea of family values.”

. . . and she weighs-in on socio-cultural stand-offs, leading discussions like “Why Do We Care Whether Trump Is Into Pee? A Sex Workers Roundtable,” essentially eviscerating American hypocrisy around morals, sexuality, shame, and whorephobia.

It’s beautiful to bear witness to her mind at work. And sexy as hell.

Here Tina talks Twin Peaks, tart apples, tawdry poetry, and the glory of intersectionality.

You can generally find me writing in a backyard on a picnic table while drinking a damn fine cup of coffee.

The writers that have most influenced my life are Lester Bangs, Samuel R Delany, Tristan Taormino, Ellen Willis, Gayle Rubin, Grant Morrison, Verlyn Klinkenborg, and Eileen Myles.

The TV character I most identify with is…I’m a Mulder/Scully bisexual switch.

If I could share one of my stories by yelling it into a megaphone in the middle of Times Square, it would be probably the one about how the dichotomy between erotica and porn is classist and fake.

Let’s Dismantle The False Dichotomy Between Porn And Erotica

I like writing for The Establishment because the editors care about craft and content, and they don’t waste my time with edits that are ignorant about sex work, porn, queer identity, or anything else I write about. They provide a platform for a lot of vital sex work discourse to reach intersectional feminist readers and they don’t ask us to shoehorn it into redemption narratives or Happy Hooker cheerleading.

If I could only have one type of food for the rest of my life it would be tart crispy apples right off the tree.

My most listened to song of all time is “Rock & Roll” by The Velvet Underground.

If I could give the amazing people who sponsor stories anything in the world to express my gratitude, it would be custom sex advice.

The story I want to write next is an examination of the difference between the role of power in ethical BDSM compared to cult abuse.

If I could summarize writing in a series of three GIFs, it would be…I’m cheating and including my favorite meme of all time: