Carnival of Aces: July 2014 Round-Up of Everything Submitted!!

Hey, everybody! It was my honor to host the Carnival last month. The theme was “Sex-Aversion & Sex-Repulsion”: https://luvtheheaven.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/july-2014-carnival-of-aces-call-for-submissions/

Like when I hosted the Carnival in April, again in July I was extremely impressed by the sheer number of different people who submitted a post.

I think 13 14 different people submitted things, plus Ace Admiral wrote something related during this past month of July (the month of the carnival), even if it isn’t actually submitted, so that brings us to fourteen fifteen different participants. Sometimes I forget the Ace Blogging community is actually even this big. 😉 It’s wonderful to hear from so many different voices and perspectives.

Queenie also compiled a collection (“linkspam”) of posts NOT written for this carnival but that were also about Sex-Aversion/Sex-Repulsion, so you should probably check all of those other links out too! Some of these are really old and many of you have probably read many of these things already… but in case you’ve missed them, they’re certainly worth reading: http://queenieofaces.tumblr.com/post/93122138058/teeny-tiny-linkspam-on-asexuality-and

Ace Admiral’s post that was not written for the carnival is not included in Queenie’s sex-repulsion/sex-aversion linkspam either, I’m pretty sure. So I’m including it right here. AceAdmiral Glossary: Repulsed vs. Averse. http://aceadmiral.tumblr.com/post/92242124558/aceadmiral-glossary-repulsed-vs-averse. You don’t have to read it, but you might find it interesting and relevant to this carnival. 😉 And it was posted on July 19th, 2014, right at the height of this carnival.

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I think I probably should have actually made the theme “Sex-Aversion, Sex-Repulsion, and Sex-Indifference“, now that all of the entries have been submitted. A lot of people, including me, discussed sex-indifference in their posts. Some people also brought up what being a sex-favorable ace means to either them or to others, and all 4 of these categories were heavily discussed topics this month. Actually, Talia over at The Asexual Agenda also wrote about Reflections on the Use and Boundaries of Sex-Favourable Asexual as a Term this month (July 2014) which was not a submission for the carnival, but which had a sub-section: Demarcating Sex-averse, Sex-neutral, and Sex-favourable and I highly recommend you check it out. 😉 It is pretty relevant to our discussion here.

Speaking of the 4 categories (Sex-Favorable, Sex-Indifferent, Sex-Averse, and Sex-Repulsed)… (#1) the first submission that I’ll mention is killerbee13’s post about why xe prefers the term sex-revulsion, yes “revulsion” with a v, and how xe doesn’t like any of those original 4 categories. Xe doesn’t feel any of them fit xyr experiences well. (“Revlusion” is the 5th one that xe came up with, and that xe thinks fits xem better.)

Somewhat similarly, Victrix over at Reflective Ace wrote about Sex-Adversion and Stress Responses (#2) – please note the “d” in the word “adversion”.  He and I had a discussion in the comments over on that post about the use of the word, because when I first read it I saw he only contrasted “Adversion” with “Repulsion” but he clarified for me that he made a conscious decision to use “Adversion”. 😉 However, the heart of his post is actually about the freeze stress response as an alternative to fight or flight and his personal experiences with it. So check it out and read a very interesting point of view on this general “sex-aversion & sex-repulsion” topic.

Third (#3), we will transition to Elizabeth Leuw’s post over on Prismatic Entanglements. Elizabeth wrote The False Dichotomy of Repulsion vs. Indifference and she discusses having been incorrectly assumed to be a “sex-favorable” ace by other ace bloggers who have linked to her old posts, and writes:

…there isn’t a label that fits me. It’s inaccurate to say I’m indifferent, and it’s also inaccurate to say I’m repulsed. I can’t categorize myself on a scale between Averse-Neutral-Favorable, because I range at different points on that scale at different times, depending on my mood. It doesn’t even make sense to me to make it a scale.

Check out the whole post.

Fourth (#4), I’ll link you to Hezekiah the (meta)pianycist’s Claiming a sex-repulsed identity post. Hezekiah discusses how without a clear definition of what is and isn’t “sex”, it’s difficult to decide whether or not to label yourself as “sex-repulsed”. In their post, they discuss various reasons for hesitating to adopt the label and:

It has taken me a long time to come to the point where I don’t think that defining sex in exact terms is necessary in order to call yourself sex-repulsed, and to be okay with claiming a label as an approximation, rather than as an exact thing. It’s completely okay for a label to be an approximation.

Fifth (#5), let me link you to the post I wrote for this month’s carnival, Am I sex-averse? Maybe. I have made a decision to identify as such. I discuss some somewhat similar issues – I discuss how it has been hard to pinpoint if I “count” as sex-averse or not.

#6: Pegasus over at Beyond the Rainbow also wrote about a very similar theme: Sex-Averse or Sex-Indifferent? and it discusses how:

I can of [course] label my feelings towards different types of sex separately – though this would be quite a long explanation, and kind of defeats the point of using a label.

and there is a lot of interesting nuance in this post as well. Please read Pegasus’s contribution to our carnival!

#7 Sara K. over at The Notes Which Do Not Fit wrote a poignant piece for the carnival called Why Are Sex-Indifferent Aces Assumed to Be Open to Sex? and

#8 The Thinking Asexual’s post, On Sex-Indifference vs. Sex-Aversion & Sex-Repulsion, is partially a direct response to what Sara K. said.

There is a good discussion in the comments on Sara K.’s post too, and in general these posts are both worth reading. These two perspectives are both actually quite different from the typical perspective we’ve gotten from sex-averse and sex-repulsed people this Carnival round. They are also quite different from each other though, of course… 😉 A lot of people’s perspectives this round were pretty unique, though.

For instance, another kind of different post is #9 where Ace in Translation over on the tristifere tumblr wrote Sex aversion, asexuality and identifying as bi and explained:

Instead of having a scrutinizing close-up view on the subject, I want to expand it and see how it interacts with other parts of someone’s identity.

and:

I’ve chosen to finally sit my ass down and write about a topic I’ve been meaning to untangle for some time now: my sex aversion, the sexualization of queer women, and bisexuals in particular, and my identification as bi – and more specifically why these intersections made my journey towards identifying as bi so hard.

There is also some discussion of what being averse vs. repulsed means in that post, and just a lot of good stuff worth reading, as there is in all of these posts, so please, try to find the time to check them all out!

#10 Nutmeg discusses being academically fascinated by sex from an objective point of view, socially being sex-averse, and personally being sex-repulsed.

#11 Ace Muslim wrote When the answer is always no: Sex aversion and my sex-negative feminism. Allow me to quote a small section:

I see sex repulsion as being like a live wire that electrocutes anyone who touches it – but sex aversion is a force field that prevents anyone (including me) from even getting near the live wire. Situations trigger the aversion response, and cause me to depart from them, long before the repulsion response might activate.

For submission #12 in our list here… we have Dragon from over at The Dragon and The Fox (a tumblr blog)’s submission on being sex-averse. This is combined with living by a code of internalized pleasure-negative rules and some interesting personal explanations about how Dragon specifically as a person has always felt about these things, and how she came to the realization that she was sex-averse.

Finally, Penultimately, (#13), last but certainly not least, we have queenieofaces’ submission, Not everybody wants to do it. The post is also on tumblr, if anyone prefers that or wants to reblog it over there or anything. 😉 Queenie wrote about a lot of really interesting and unique things in her post. She discussed allosexual people also not necessarily always wanting sex. This was the first sentence of one of the paragraphs:

There are a lot of reasons why a person who experiences sexual attraction may not really be that into sex.

and then it goes into some detail with examples and it is really worth reading the reminder that allosexual people are not all alike either.

She also discusses the prospect of needing sub-spaces for the different types of aces.

Even if it is possible for everyone to get their needs met in a single space, is that the heathiest and most productive way to go about it?  Maybe it would be better to have spaces that are aware of all the possibilities–sex-favorable, sex-averse, sex-indifferent, sex-repulsed, not digging the sex- labels–but are intended to cater to one subgroup (or intersection or interest) within the asexual spectrum.

And there is a ton of good stuff in that post – not to mention the many many wonderful links!! – so please, check it out. Queenie over at Concept Awesome, who wrote this final submission linked to in my list, also is the person who is hosting the Carnival of Aces this month, August 2014! The theme she’s picked for this month is the Unassailable Asexual, which she explains over there. Please check it out and consider submitting for it during this month of August! http://queenieofaces.tumblr.com/post/93501116848/august-2014-carnival-of-aces-call-for-submissions

UPDATE as of August 21st, 2014: Queenie just informed me of an important blunder I made. I  forgot to include:

#14, Stormy’s submission: http://rainbow-after-the-stormy.tumblr.com/post/92583535827/on-sexual-abuse-repulsion-and-aversion-in-the-asexual

She wrote a lot of good stuff about sexual assault, sex-aversion/repulsion, and asexuality. It’s a great piece for the carnival and certainly worth a read. I’m so sorry to have accidentally excluded it.

Thank you, everyone, for all of these wonderful submissions in July!

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If I somehow overlooked your post and didn’t include it in the above post, let me know in the comments, or by emailing me at pemk7@aol.com, or by telling me on tumblr. I’ll be sure to update this post asap to include the link! If you want to submit something slightly late for this July Carnival too, that’s fine. I can add it as submission #14 or something. It’s fine. Just let me know!

• Asexuality
• carnival of aces