When I think of myself, I don’t consider such aspects as gender or who I wanted to bone—such shallow considerations, quite frankly, aren’t even things I think about most days. When I think of myself, I list the following: I draw, I write and I watch a gratuitous amount of Japanese Cartoons because without these things my life wouldn’t be worth living. I don’t feel a thing when people call me “this” or “that.” I’m much more interested in what I do rather than my physical anatomy.
This sort of thinking extends well-beyond adulthood.
As a child, my father told me how unfortunate it was that I was “girl.” So, I decided I would be the manliest man—a man among men, a king of kings. I cut my hair short, I wore stereotypically masculine clothing, and started to refer to myself using male pronouns. It never struck me as “odd” or anything. Even as a kid, I had this notion that switching was just a matter
of doing. However, I grew from an androgynous 10 year old to someone feminine in both body and face. The effect was such that my parents believed me a silly tomboy, and most of the people at high school believed me a lesbian.
My persona was much more effective online.Online, I was able to have ambiguous display pictures—various pictures of fish— and names. Out of habit, I continued with the male pronouns. Furthermore, when I roleplayed (collaborative story making), I always created rather effective, convincing male characters. Things were all dandy from then on out. I had friends both online and offline. The very fact that I never brought home anyone was of great convenience to my parents and also my GPA. I was forever a kid to them, sitting alone in the dark drawing and collecting interesting pictures.
Then, as all stories go, the milkshakes melted. The tides turned. People changed. I don’t remember how it happened, but suddenly everyone to bang and I didn’t care.Online, my friends became that much more curious with regard to appearances. After numerous awkward attempts to shrug the inquiries off, I finally caved, took a simple bathroom picture and nonchalantly uploaded the image into the chatroom.
It did not end well.
From my point of view, my gender omission wasn’t ill-intentioned at all because I was the same person as I always was. Yet, there was an outbreak of confusion and anger. Many stopped speaking with me. There was a friend that didn’t leave, and I am glad she didn’t. But, then this person—a lesbian I had known for four years— asked: “Now that you’re a girl, do you want to…?”
Perhaps, I was a lesbian. At that point, my persona was akin to the stereotypically ‘butch.’ Yet, I realized my love for her was purely platonic, and any thought beyond that was almost incestuous. We tried to make it work, but she too eventually left.
The turmoil settled by the time I graduated high school and got a tumblr. Through tumblr, I very gradually dropped my aggressively “dude-ish” persona, opting to embrace not only the masculine or feminine parts of myself. There, I also came across the term “asexual.” It sounded suspiciously like myself. So, I very jokingly brought it up with my new friends at the time. It went something like this:
“I think I’m asexual.”
“What??? Excuse me [NAME OMITTED], you watch porn. You read porn. You even write that kind of stuff, you can’t possibly be asexual.”
“Well I guess you’re right!”
Another few years passed. Then, after some more research, and a moment of clarity, I realized that my Questionable Hobbies had nothing to do with being asexual. I didn’t want to be in any of those situations I watched—I only wanted to watch… people being cute, hot, or dubious. While my life would be much less interesting without porn, I don’t need sex itself to survive. Furthermore, and in my 21 years I have never felt the desire to bang anyone.
I don’t believe I’m immature because of this. I’m no less of an adult and nothing is missing in my life. I am who I am regardless of what I look like and how I want to live my life.