In my American Sex Ed, bisexuals were also in AIDs.
(I was taught that myth in middle school and continued to believe it, even though it hurt, until someone– who was himself biphobic and yet knew this– mentioned that it was false.)
In my sex ed, that was pretty much the entirety of it. Here’s horrifying pictures of worst case untreated STIs, that’s what will happen to you if you have sex, so never have sex or you will get sick and die.
And we had to wait until 10th grade to get that. I don’t believe we were ever even taught about how the reproductive system works or what even the terms for the parts of the genitals were. For that you had recess talk often at the hands of whoever was the most die-hard toxic masculinity fan who wanted to brag about how “mature” he was because he was allowed to watch R movies and knew totally accurate terminologies for genitals like the c-slur or 4chan made up “porn moves”.
Honestly, looking back, it’s kind of boggling that I didn’t grow up with massive fucked-up ideas about sex. I think it was all just so disconnected that I never bothered internalizing any of it, because it was all so confusing and baffling to my ace ass.
Spaz
what, you didn’t get the “sexuality as band-aid/duct tape” bit, where the the part where the more partners you have, the less useful it is?
Nah, that was seen as too liberal as it would imply that there were some people who had sex with multiple partners in their lives.
Hell, there wasn’t even a “sex is okay in marriage” thing, it was just “here’s the horrific way it will kill you”. I think my 12th grade English teacher was trying to push back against that with a bunch of sex and sexual attraction is a critical part of being a human being stuff she was always preaching. But it just pissed my kid ace mind who felt personally erased and attacked by that.
Spaz
yet another terrifying look into your childhood.
*appropriate gesture of support*
Valerie
I’m glad she tried, but… yeah, she uh, kind of accidentally made it sound like asexuals aren’t human beings. She probably didn’t mean to.
Airyu
There were two kids in my class who moved from the Midwest ki grew up mostly in Southern California, ao way different) sho had been taught that so my teacher pulled out a dollar and passed it around and at the end said who still wants the dollar and that was how he showed us our worth wasn’t tied to who touches us or how many people touch us and i thought it was a great lesson.
Tacos
We never even had sex ed in my high school. Though this was when I was living in the South in Georgia.
Bluewind
That last sentence made me giggle.
I has the opposite problem. My biological mother had a lot of partners before getting with my dad who use to be a hippy and then tricking him into getting her pregnant by going off birth control without telling him. I heard way too much detail about sex including them talking about their sex life. I heard stories like my dad getting an STD from her and having to paint his dick with some kind of blue medicine for a while. Biomom told me about being with several guys at the same time. Dad told me about parties where women would tap on his shoulder, go have sex, go back to the party, and repeat with another girl. I heard about dad getting crabs from a woman he was fooling around with because her husband was a trucker who got them from sleeping with women on the road and bringing them back to her and having to tell his mother (my mamaw) so she would know to clean the place (he had visited). I heard about oral sex, orgasms, using food, how breasts vary in terms of sensitivity, the penis size myth, places not to have sex, circumcised vs regular, and so on. A lot of it was from my dad as my biological mother was dumb as a post (example: asking dad how men had periods. She had already had me!), so her advice was usually useless. She tried to convince my dad to higher a male prostitute for me when I was a preteen because I had waited long enough and it would help my period. Then there was my papaw who was a fountain of dirty jokes even when I was little and his brother who was the same and had a hat with foam boobs on it. The first time I cussed I was nearly 19 and my first relationship (besides the playground boyfriend kind I had at 10) wasn’t until 23 when I got my first real kiss and eventually other stuff. I was the best educated virgin ever XD
Leorale
Goodness gracious, there has got to be a middle ground somewhere, where you don’t have to be forcibly ignorant but you don’t have to hear vivid visual details about your parents’ sex lives.
My parents told us about anatomy and babies starting when I was 3, as they were expecting my baby brother. I specifically recall they described sex as “a special kind of cuddle” which was the perfect amount of non-scary information for a small child. PIV, womb, umbilical cord, baby.
When my older brother and I were like 13 and 10, my folks passed us books about impending puberty, and would’ve been happy to answer any questions. It was around the dawn of the internet. Oddly, the books used old-people words like “necking”, “petting” and “heavy petting” — I think these were intended to mean makeouts, totally touching boobies, and fingering? I definitely imagined people entwining their necks like giraffes, petting somebody’s arm like you’d pet a doggie, and petting somebody’s arm but with stronger pressure, respectively.
Now kids learn from porn and romance is dead.
ArcaneDarkness
I wanted to say that I began looking at hentai when I was 13 years old or before (I’m not 100% sure, I’m only sure that I looked at hentai before I had my first cat, and by her age I had already know hentai before 13) and I don’t think romance is dead for me.
Now I have 25 years, I’m a virgin, and I’m only attracted to girls I share a deep genuine connection (i.e. become close friends before I’m attracted to them) and my main reason for wanting a girlfriend is someone to cuddle and share my life. Wanting to satiate my lust isn’t something that drives me to have a girlfriend because hentai already fills that role perfectly, so the only thing I really wants for a girlfriend is what I can’t get from hentai (the real connection, cuddling and sharing life part). I would not turn off sex with a girlfriend, but she didn’t wanting it would not be a dealbreaker for me.
begbert2
Good lord, Arcane Darkness, you could be me, except that it took me a bit longer to get into hentai/internet porn because I’m now 40 and both of those sort of didn’t exist over here when I was 13.
Oh, and I’ve also never had a cat. That’s probably important somehow.
Krys Brynhildr
See, if you remove the “hentai filling a role part”…thats sort of how things are for me. Since honestly the most appealing part of the idea of dating for me is just that it’d give me a larger portion of their time. Well, that and I maybe have a thing for cheesy romantic stuff that I have noone to be like that towards.
I’m just not sure how the sex end of thing would work out and what if I couldn’t get into it, or what if I couldn’t fulfil their needs in that regard? Its…stressful to think about.
@begbert: Cats are great. Cats are super important. Well, you don’t need a lot of them, cats are best in moderation.
Jeeze, is this, like, a thing all over America? Cause a friend of a friend once upon a time asked me if it was true that having sex = automatic STD and he was like 19-20 at the time and I just thought it was his one school. I was like “Well, your parents had sex to have you, do they have STDs?” (I promise that in the actual conversation I sounded a lot less “you are an idiot, please think”)
Micro-Girl
Could you please define what “toxic-masculinity” is.
Also is there a “non-toxic-masculinity”?
So toxic masculinity is a type of masculinity policing that defines masculinity as avoidance of anything deemed feminine and in doing so creates a self-reinforcing culture of abuse.
Basically, think the way young boys are policed by their friends to “not be a pu**y”, or to avoid any accusation of being gay, or that being an equal partner to their girlfriend makes them “whipped”. Think of the way boys who express feminine traits are beaten and abused.
Think of the way fields and interests are abandoned by too many men and boys when women start liking it in any large numbers. Think of the way other fields are defended from women, enby, or femme/queer boy entry because of scared men’s fears of it being “ruined”.
It’s the logic behind rape and abuse culture where it is better to be seen as “strong” and “putting women in their place” than to be seen as being “done wrong” by them by getting rejected or respecting consent. It’s the logic that demands constant meaningless sexual “success” to be seen as “winning” at being a guy.
And it’s a system that no guy is ever allowed to succeed at and relax. Think “jokes” about “revoking a man card” and the nervous fear groups of toxic boys have that the slightest action deemed by their friends as feminine will result in their expulsion from their groups and being the recipient of violence or abuse. Think friend groups nastily escalating misogyny or homo/transphobia in order to still be seen as “manly” by their friends.
It turns masculinity into a toxic trap where one is discouraged from being a good person or accepting necessary cultural evolutions because of fear that they’ll be treated “like a woman” for it.
It’s basically a toxic parasite on masculinity that we’d be long rid of, if so many people weren’t invested in it and terrified that if they get off, they’ll be abused by the folks who still believe in it.
And to answer your question, there’s tons of non-toxic masculinity. And it’s something that’s becoming more and more common as feminism and fights against transmisogyny is giving young men more freedom to be themselves and seek out their own form of masculinity. We see it in lesbian butch culture, in a lot of trans men spaces, in a lot of feminist and queer men’s spaces, and in cis allo straight men’s spaces where there isn’t the same desperate policing against the feminine.
And it’s something that will become more and more common by continuing to protect boys leaving that toxic culture and forming their own new spaces to find, create and/or join masculinities that don’t define themselves by violence towards women and wholesale reflexive rejection of the feminine.
Cause at the end of the day, boys frequently want to be read as boys, and frequently have ideal gender performances in the masculine and don’t want to have to be complete fucks to be read as society as being men.
I have a special loathing of it, because being a young trans girl who didn’t know it at the time, toxic masculinity was horrible to me in the attempt of “correcting” my “non-masculine” (by their definition) behaviors. So I saw first hand the worst of how it treats young boys and tries to get them to buy into this awful self-destructive culture.
Pat
Noticeably lacking aspect of my sex education classes:
What is sex?
We learned literally nothing about sex is sex education. Sounds like you didn’t, either.
Well, I mean, in Billie’s experience, every time she bangs a girl, it ends up on Slipshine, so.
BBCC
Not her and Alice, because underage.
Micro-Girl
Dose that really count, it’s not like it’s real people?
thejeff
To Willis it does. He’s stated as much. In reference to Conquest Slipshine requests, I think.
BBCC
In response to requesting Conquest, Billie and Alice, AND an underage Sal losing her virginity (I believe the assumption was she was somewhere from 15-17). Willis does not want to draw minors, even if they’re at the age of consent. Acknowledging it happened and drawing it are two different things and Willis is not interested in the latter.
Valerie
Isn’t it illegal to publish drawings of minors having sex? Maybe not, but I thought it was? (In the US, at least.)
BBCC
I’m not sure – far as I can tell, the jury is out when they’re fictional teenagers, though most porn sites won’t allow it and even if they did, Willis does not want to.
Micro-Girl
I’d think Freedom of Expression protects it, but it dose seem to be a mute point if Willis doesn’t want to draw it.
Is that why Girls Gone Wild has so many different variations on Sexy Schoolgirls?
Not that I ever watched any of them, just shelved them and directed all sorts of people to the section when it was awkwardly requested. Lots of people watch porn, like the variety is pretty out there.
I’ve gotten in the habit of name-dropping asexuality the orientation and what that means when I cover mitotic division (i.e. asexual reproduction) so at least the ace kids in the class will have heard of it and that there’s a word for those feelings.
And also so the allo kids never make that joke against their ace peers, because I treat it like ace the orientation is totes obviously the thing everyone would confuse for this brand new bio concept.
transgressingwaffle
This is a really cool idea. I may steal this for part of my lesson plan. Can you give more detail so I don’t botch it up?
“…We call this mitosis or asexual reproduction. Which is not to be confused with asexuality the sexual orientation. That’s more about not experiencing sexual attraction whereas this is about one cell doubling its material and creating two exact copies of itself…”
Leorale
Wow, that is so great.
begbert2
“…and if you find yourself doubling your material and creating two exact copies of yourself, consult your local physician.”
See, that mitotic division was my first thing I heard the term used for, so when someone first used it to describe themselves I was super confused and wasn’t sure what they meant by it. Like if they just meant they “handled their sexual urges on their own somehow” or something.
StClair
Same here, pretty much.
Blank
I heard about mitotic division first because science, but asexuality the orientation made just as much sense to me since sex clearly wasn’t essential to all organisms therefore a human could easily have no interest or desire and lead a fulfilling life. Now if only i hadn’t picked up so much bs about grey-ace and the ace spectrum, that would have saved a lot of headaches.
EvilMidnightLurker
Allo? That one’s new to me, and I thought I’d known all the terms.
Grethelwvier
Allosexual* is the term used for people who experience sexual attraction. Like the linguistic opposite of asexual, for purposes of distinction.
*not sure about spelling
EvilMidnightLurker
Interesting, thanks. There’s a prefix I’ve hardly ever seen.
(Aside from allosaur, which I suspect is not the same meaning, there’s allotropic, which I know only from the Lensman novels.)
thejeff
“allotropic iron”
Now there’s a blast from the past.
StClair
“allistic” also gets used a lot lately, as a contrast to “autistic”, while avoiding the whole “normal” aspect of saying “neurotypical”.
Roborat
Funny you bring up Allosaur. That was the first thing I thought of the first time I heard the term allosexual, I thought it meant being sexually attracted to those kind of dinosaurs.
Valerie
That reminds me of “allistic” meaning “not autistic.” Is it the same root?
Everyone experiences sexual attraction, it’s a key part of being human. Only messed up broken people don’t. Now let’s read East of Eden and spend several weeks going over in intense detail how we know Cathy is a sociopath and evil because while she has sex she doesn’t experience love or sexual attraction.*
*This might not be the actual characterization in the book, but it was all my teacher went on about so it stuck in my craw somewhat fierce.
Whirlwitch
Wikipedia says your teacher was barking up the wrong tree.
My sex education was very detailed covering all forms of heterosexual activity (I graduated in the late nineties) and use of birth control divided by gender (we got to learn about condoms, the girls got a separate video in the other room). Though everybody got to observe the demonstration with the dowel and the condom. The lecturer also had it and an anatomical model of the female reproductive system passed around in class. Inevitably, the dowel ended up inside the reproductive model, because fourteen year olds are classy.
402 thoughts on “Borderline”
Doctor_Who
I’m sure somewhere on the internet, someone has already drawn it.
Jack Faire
Rule 34
Polaris
No exceptions.
thejeff
And remember, everytime you ask whether some kind of porn is on the Internet, it spontaneously generates if it hadn’t already.
So please stop asking about the creepy stuff everybody.
Ana Chronistic
They both have the weenus! Howard ALSO has the weenus! EVERYONE GETS A WEENUS
ELBOW SKINS ALL AROUND
Kris
Don’t forget to rub lotion on your weenus!
Kris
They don’t grow a weenus….they buy one. O_O
Schpoonman
I mean, if they’re into that.
Tacos
Where would you even buy elbow skin?
Jim Campbell
Some ‘Second Hand’ shops keep a supply out the back.
Kingmonster
This ‘Second Hand’ shop wouldn’t happen to rhyme with ‘Nack Larket’ would it?
All-Purpose Guru
From the excess second hands in inventory?
Janine
JOINT SCROTUMS
Roborat
Hey, I have seen pictures of female bodybuilders who took too much testosterone supplements. They definitely grew a weenus.
Ivy
Billie you are literally a bisexual person
Cerberus
Nah, you heard the American Sex Ed system, that’s clearly only in porn.
Solenoid
Fairly sure for most of the US, said sex ed system’s curriculum is one word. “no”
Well, as far as summary goes, at any rate.
Yumi
In my American Sex Ed, bisexuals were also in AIDs.
(I was taught that myth in middle school and continued to believe it, even though it hurt, until someone– who was himself biphobic and yet knew this– mentioned that it was false.)
Cerberus
In my sex ed, that was pretty much the entirety of it. Here’s horrifying pictures of worst case untreated STIs, that’s what will happen to you if you have sex, so never have sex or you will get sick and die.
And we had to wait until 10th grade to get that. I don’t believe we were ever even taught about how the reproductive system works or what even the terms for the parts of the genitals were. For that you had recess talk often at the hands of whoever was the most die-hard toxic masculinity fan who wanted to brag about how “mature” he was because he was allowed to watch R movies and knew totally accurate terminologies for genitals like the c-slur or 4chan made up “porn moves”.
Honestly, looking back, it’s kind of boggling that I didn’t grow up with massive fucked-up ideas about sex. I think it was all just so disconnected that I never bothered internalizing any of it, because it was all so confusing and baffling to my ace ass.
Spaz
what, you didn’t get the “sexuality as band-aid/duct tape” bit, where the the part where the more partners you have, the less useful it is?
Cerberus
Nah, that was seen as too liberal as it would imply that there were some people who had sex with multiple partners in their lives.
Hell, there wasn’t even a “sex is okay in marriage” thing, it was just “here’s the horrific way it will kill you”. I think my 12th grade English teacher was trying to push back against that with a bunch of sex and sexual attraction is a critical part of being a human being stuff she was always preaching. But it just pissed my kid ace mind who felt personally erased and attacked by that.
Spaz
yet another terrifying look into your childhood.
*appropriate gesture of support*
Valerie
I’m glad she tried, but… yeah, she uh, kind of accidentally made it sound like asexuals aren’t human beings. She probably didn’t mean to.
Airyu
There were two kids in my class who moved from the Midwest ki grew up mostly in Southern California, ao way different) sho had been taught that so my teacher pulled out a dollar and passed it around and at the end said who still wants the dollar and that was how he showed us our worth wasn’t tied to who touches us or how many people touch us and i thought it was a great lesson.
Tacos
We never even had sex ed in my high school. Though this was when I was living in the South in Georgia.
Bluewind
That last sentence made me giggle.
I has the opposite problem. My biological mother had a lot of partners before getting with my dad who use to be a hippy and then tricking him into getting her pregnant by going off birth control without telling him. I heard way too much detail about sex including them talking about their sex life. I heard stories like my dad getting an STD from her and having to paint his dick with some kind of blue medicine for a while. Biomom told me about being with several guys at the same time. Dad told me about parties where women would tap on his shoulder, go have sex, go back to the party, and repeat with another girl. I heard about dad getting crabs from a woman he was fooling around with because her husband was a trucker who got them from sleeping with women on the road and bringing them back to her and having to tell his mother (my mamaw) so she would know to clean the place (he had visited). I heard about oral sex, orgasms, using food, how breasts vary in terms of sensitivity, the penis size myth, places not to have sex, circumcised vs regular, and so on. A lot of it was from my dad as my biological mother was dumb as a post (example: asking dad how men had periods. She had already had me!), so her advice was usually useless. She tried to convince my dad to higher a male prostitute for me when I was a preteen because I had waited long enough and it would help my period. Then there was my papaw who was a fountain of dirty jokes even when I was little and his brother who was the same and had a hat with foam boobs on it. The first time I cussed I was nearly 19 and my first relationship (besides the playground boyfriend kind I had at 10) wasn’t until 23 when I got my first real kiss and eventually other stuff. I was the best educated virgin ever XD
Leorale
Goodness gracious, there has got to be a middle ground somewhere, where you don’t have to be forcibly ignorant but you don’t have to hear vivid visual details about your parents’ sex lives.
My parents told us about anatomy and babies starting when I was 3, as they were expecting my baby brother. I specifically recall they described sex as “a special kind of cuddle” which was the perfect amount of non-scary information for a small child. PIV, womb, umbilical cord, baby.
When my older brother and I were like 13 and 10, my folks passed us books about impending puberty, and would’ve been happy to answer any questions. It was around the dawn of the internet. Oddly, the books used old-people words like “necking”, “petting” and “heavy petting” — I think these were intended to mean makeouts, totally touching boobies, and fingering? I definitely imagined people entwining their necks like giraffes, petting somebody’s arm like you’d pet a doggie, and petting somebody’s arm but with stronger pressure, respectively.
Now kids learn from porn and romance is dead.
ArcaneDarkness
I wanted to say that I began looking at hentai when I was 13 years old or before (I’m not 100% sure, I’m only sure that I looked at hentai before I had my first cat, and by her age I had already know hentai before 13) and I don’t think romance is dead for me.
Now I have 25 years, I’m a virgin, and I’m only attracted to girls I share a deep genuine connection (i.e. become close friends before I’m attracted to them) and my main reason for wanting a girlfriend is someone to cuddle and share my life. Wanting to satiate my lust isn’t something that drives me to have a girlfriend because hentai already fills that role perfectly, so the only thing I really wants for a girlfriend is what I can’t get from hentai (the real connection, cuddling and sharing life part). I would not turn off sex with a girlfriend, but she didn’t wanting it would not be a dealbreaker for me.
begbert2
Good lord, Arcane Darkness, you could be me, except that it took me a bit longer to get into hentai/internet porn because I’m now 40 and both of those sort of didn’t exist over here when I was 13.
Oh, and I’ve also never had a cat. That’s probably important somehow.
Krys Brynhildr
See, if you remove the “hentai filling a role part”…thats sort of how things are for me. Since honestly the most appealing part of the idea of dating for me is just that it’d give me a larger portion of their time. Well, that and I maybe have a thing for cheesy romantic stuff that I have noone to be like that towards.
I’m just not sure how the sex end of thing would work out and what if I couldn’t get into it, or what if I couldn’t fulfil their needs in that regard? Its…stressful to think about.
@begbert: Cats are great. Cats are super important. Well, you don’t need a lot of them, cats are best in moderation.
Dragon_Nataku
Jeeze, is this, like, a thing all over America? Cause a friend of a friend once upon a time asked me if it was true that having sex = automatic STD and he was like 19-20 at the time and I just thought it was his one school. I was like “Well, your parents had sex to have you, do they have STDs?” (I promise that in the actual conversation I sounded a lot less “you are an idiot, please think”)
Micro-Girl
Could you please define what “toxic-masculinity” is.
Also is there a “non-toxic-masculinity”?
Cerberus
Totally!
So toxic masculinity is a type of masculinity policing that defines masculinity as avoidance of anything deemed feminine and in doing so creates a self-reinforcing culture of abuse.
Basically, think the way young boys are policed by their friends to “not be a pu**y”, or to avoid any accusation of being gay, or that being an equal partner to their girlfriend makes them “whipped”. Think of the way boys who express feminine traits are beaten and abused.
Think of the way fields and interests are abandoned by too many men and boys when women start liking it in any large numbers. Think of the way other fields are defended from women, enby, or femme/queer boy entry because of scared men’s fears of it being “ruined”.
It’s the logic behind rape and abuse culture where it is better to be seen as “strong” and “putting women in their place” than to be seen as being “done wrong” by them by getting rejected or respecting consent. It’s the logic that demands constant meaningless sexual “success” to be seen as “winning” at being a guy.
And it’s a system that no guy is ever allowed to succeed at and relax. Think “jokes” about “revoking a man card” and the nervous fear groups of toxic boys have that the slightest action deemed by their friends as feminine will result in their expulsion from their groups and being the recipient of violence or abuse. Think friend groups nastily escalating misogyny or homo/transphobia in order to still be seen as “manly” by their friends.
It turns masculinity into a toxic trap where one is discouraged from being a good person or accepting necessary cultural evolutions because of fear that they’ll be treated “like a woman” for it.
It’s basically a toxic parasite on masculinity that we’d be long rid of, if so many people weren’t invested in it and terrified that if they get off, they’ll be abused by the folks who still believe in it.
And to answer your question, there’s tons of non-toxic masculinity. And it’s something that’s becoming more and more common as feminism and fights against transmisogyny is giving young men more freedom to be themselves and seek out their own form of masculinity. We see it in lesbian butch culture, in a lot of trans men spaces, in a lot of feminist and queer men’s spaces, and in cis allo straight men’s spaces where there isn’t the same desperate policing against the feminine.
And it’s something that will become more and more common by continuing to protect boys leaving that toxic culture and forming their own new spaces to find, create and/or join masculinities that don’t define themselves by violence towards women and wholesale reflexive rejection of the feminine.
Cause at the end of the day, boys frequently want to be read as boys, and frequently have ideal gender performances in the masculine and don’t want to have to be complete fucks to be read as society as being men.
Cerberus
I have a special loathing of it, because being a young trans girl who didn’t know it at the time, toxic masculinity was horrible to me in the attempt of “correcting” my “non-masculine” (by their definition) behaviors. So I saw first hand the worst of how it treats young boys and tries to get them to buy into this awful self-destructive culture.
Pat
Noticeably lacking aspect of my sex education classes:
What is sex?
We learned literally nothing about sex is sex education. Sounds like you didn’t, either.
John
Well, I mean, in Billie’s experience, every time she bangs a girl, it ends up on Slipshine, so.
BBCC
Not her and Alice, because underage.
Micro-Girl
Dose that really count, it’s not like it’s real people?
thejeff
To Willis it does. He’s stated as much. In reference to Conquest Slipshine requests, I think.
BBCC
In response to requesting Conquest, Billie and Alice, AND an underage Sal losing her virginity (I believe the assumption was she was somewhere from 15-17). Willis does not want to draw minors, even if they’re at the age of consent. Acknowledging it happened and drawing it are two different things and Willis is not interested in the latter.
Valerie
Isn’t it illegal to publish drawings of minors having sex? Maybe not, but I thought it was? (In the US, at least.)
BBCC
I’m not sure – far as I can tell, the jury is out when they’re fictional teenagers, though most porn sites won’t allow it and even if they did, Willis does not want to.
Micro-Girl
I’d think Freedom of Expression protects it, but it dose seem to be a mute point if Willis doesn’t want to draw it.
Krys Brynhildr
Is that why Girls Gone Wild has so many different variations on Sexy Schoolgirls?
Not that I ever watched any of them, just shelved them and directed all sorts of people to the section when it was awkwardly requested. Lots of people watch porn, like the variety is pretty out there.
Grethelwvier
Don’t forget
Teen: “What if I’m not attracted to anyone?”
“Educator” with unnaturally sweet voice: “That’s called ‘celibacy‘, child!”
Teen: “…I don’t think that’s right.”
“Educator”: “Stupid child. I’m the teacher! I think I would know your thoughts better than you!”
Cerberus
I’ve gotten in the habit of name-dropping asexuality the orientation and what that means when I cover mitotic division (i.e. asexual reproduction) so at least the ace kids in the class will have heard of it and that there’s a word for those feelings.
And also so the allo kids never make that joke against their ace peers, because I treat it like ace the orientation is totes obviously the thing everyone would confuse for this brand new bio concept.
transgressingwaffle
This is a really cool idea. I may steal this for part of my lesson plan. Can you give more detail so I don’t botch it up?
Cerberus
“…We call this mitosis or asexual reproduction. Which is not to be confused with asexuality the sexual orientation. That’s more about not experiencing sexual attraction whereas this is about one cell doubling its material and creating two exact copies of itself…”
Leorale
Wow, that is so great.
begbert2
“…and if you find yourself doubling your material and creating two exact copies of yourself, consult your local physician.”
bigbigtruck
“Or hone this ability and become Hokage”
Krys Brynhildr
See, that mitotic division was my first thing I heard the term used for, so when someone first used it to describe themselves I was super confused and wasn’t sure what they meant by it. Like if they just meant they “handled their sexual urges on their own somehow” or something.
StClair
Same here, pretty much.
Blank
I heard about mitotic division first because science, but asexuality the orientation made just as much sense to me since sex clearly wasn’t essential to all organisms therefore a human could easily have no interest or desire and lead a fulfilling life. Now if only i hadn’t picked up so much bs about grey-ace and the ace spectrum, that would have saved a lot of headaches.
EvilMidnightLurker
Allo? That one’s new to me, and I thought I’d known all the terms.
Grethelwvier
Allosexual* is the term used for people who experience sexual attraction. Like the linguistic opposite of asexual, for purposes of distinction.
*not sure about spelling
EvilMidnightLurker
Interesting, thanks. There’s a prefix I’ve hardly ever seen.
(Aside from allosaur, which I suspect is not the same meaning, there’s allotropic, which I know only from the Lensman novels.)
thejeff
“allotropic iron”
Now there’s a blast from the past.
StClair
“allistic” also gets used a lot lately, as a contrast to “autistic”, while avoiding the whole “normal” aspect of saying “neurotypical”.
Roborat
Funny you bring up Allosaur. That was the first thing I thought of the first time I heard the term allosexual, I thought it meant being sexually attracted to those kind of dinosaurs.
Valerie
That reminds me of “allistic” meaning “not autistic.” Is it the same root?
Inbar Fink
That’s so great
Maybe it’s a bit weird, but as an ace girl, I feel really thankful people like you exist and do that sort of thing (:
Grethelwvier
Me, or…?
Grethelwvier
Yeah, probably not me.
Cerberus?
Grethelwvier
Ignore me.
I’m a dumb.
Grethelwvier
And I haven’t slept. I should do that…
Cerberus
Could be both of us, threading here is sometimes weird.
Pablo360
If only there were some sort of service that would make threading more intui— *is shot by David Willis*
BBCC
WE DON’T MENTION THE D WORD HERE.
Aletheia
Or, instead of “celibacy”:
“Educator” with unnaturally sweet voice: “Everyone’s attracted to someone. You just haven’t found the right person yet.”
Cerberus
That was my 12th grade English teacher.
Everyone experiences sexual attraction, it’s a key part of being human. Only messed up broken people don’t. Now let’s read East of Eden and spend several weeks going over in intense detail how we know Cathy is a sociopath and evil because while she has sex she doesn’t experience love or sexual attraction.*
*This might not be the actual characterization in the book, but it was all my teacher went on about so it stuck in my craw somewhat fierce.
Whirlwitch
Wikipedia says your teacher was barking up the wrong tree.
Grethelwvier
That too.
Smiling Cat
My sex education was very detailed covering all forms of heterosexual activity (I graduated in the late nineties) and use of birth control divided by gender (we got to learn about condoms, the girls got a separate video in the other room). Though everybody got to observe the demonstration with the dowel and the condom. The lecturer also had it and an anatomical model of the female reproductive system passed around in class. Inevitably, the dowel ended up inside the reproductive model, because fourteen year olds are classy.
Plasma Mongoose
The simple fact is that porn is real so therefore bi is real, problem solved!
Toad