renaissance

[fahye]

I think...I think I want to replace all of my icons with icons of ANIMATED THINGS THAT BRING ME JOY. I don't know if I will, but that is my current urge.

(Now featuring: the titular character of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, that one anime I went kind of crazy about and still really really want to write fic for...some day.)

I feel a bit weird about this urge because I don't really want to pimp Naruto to anyone on my current flist, because directing people through the quagmire of terrible animation and bad pacing that is the first HUNDRED EPISODES while also making sure they obtain knowledge of plot and character details is a Herculanean task only undertaken by mad people or ryokophoenix. (Which is sad, because Shippuuden is made of sheer unadulterated okay, occasionally-adulterated-by-residual-pacing-issues AWESOME and I love all the characters into little tiny pieces, especially my three favourites.) But I WILL whole-heartedly recommend my other icon sources like Death Note and Ouran and AVATAAAAR and of course the abovementioned Haruhi show.

Right -- I am about to do some notetaking, walk to the shopping centre and back, and then do some more notetaking, but after that I may have some free time, so, here's an interesting meme that I stole from bravecows:

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it*. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.

The thing about me is that I often don't mind talking about personal aspects of myself, but it never occurs to me to do so. So this is probably a good meme. Have at! If I find a question too weird or personal then I'll tell you so, but you should be fine to ask me anything at all.

*Or, you know, talk about it in a comment. Some of these answers aren't very long!

Comments

[not-in-denial.livejournal.com]

Hmmm!

You made a post yonks ago about your sexuality. I cannot be bothered finding it and these things often change, so since it is a topic close to my heart, I ask you to post about your sexuality; how it manifested, how it manifests now, preferences, how it affects (or doesn't affect) you in everyday life, etc etc etc.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Oh man. This is complicated. I'll try to put it in neat sections, because structure makes me happy.

Preferences

I class myself as bisexual because I can be attracted to both men and women, but mostly because I see no difference between then in terms of my willingness to enter a romantic relationship. (I realise that it's a polarising label but I honestly don't know much about my attraction or lack thereof to people whose genders are more fluid or complex.) The people I find attractive are more LIKELY to be girls -- girly girls :D -- and I don't like extreme masculinity, so all in all I lean more to the sapphic side of things I guess. But it's weird making statements about it because of how little sexuality I have overall.

Power dynamics (I knew you'd want this one :D)

Frankly my control-freak issues are such that I could never, ever be 'the submissive one'. It just wouldn't work. Inasmuch as sex goes I guess I wouldn't mind power struggles, but...eh. I don't know. Maybe experience would tell me more. (Relationship-wise I have a massive Utena complex: I like to protect and to give and to fight. I can tell when I like someone because I get the enormous urge to buy them things or make them things or plan silly unique events for them.)

Manifestation

I was slow. Very slow. I didn't work out my sexuality until I was 16, and I think this was because I was a completely asexual being up until that point. My sex drive has increased since then but it's still pretty minimal: there are a couple of days a month where I feel like snogging random people or wondering if I can convey my willingness to be pushed against a wall with just the POWER OF MY EYES, but some days I'll be entirely ambivalent about the whole concept. And on many days the idea of someone touching me, or doing anything involving body fluids, is just WEIRD and enough to freak me out. I don't like people touching me unless I initiate the contact, or unless they are one of about four people.

Effects

Um...it's odd. I am at an age where SOME sexual experience is assumed, and I haven't yet gotten past ONE totally unenjoyable kiss during an unwise game of spin the bottle, during a time when everyone around me had sexualities and mine was still in a little dormant ball somewhere. But I am woefully unused to the IDEA of being in a relationship or sharing a bed or doing sex-things with other people, having spent so long alone. It would take me a long time to adjust and I find so few people sexually attractive (vs. aesthetically attractive) that most days it simply doesn't seem worth the effort.

You asked about sexuality rather than relationships per se, but I think a lot of the reason I don't actively seek out relationships have a lot to do with my sexuality issues. 1) I have zero gaydar so will NEVER approach a girl, 2) despite my best efforts I feel weird about my own total inexperience, and 3) I would be a TERRIBLE girlfriend as far as sex was concerned! I would have no sex drive for most of the month! I would probably be happy with just occasional kissing!

For the record, the sentiments/feelings expressed in this fic (http://mercurial-wit.livejournal.com/42207.html) are pretty much the sum of my sexual attitudes on the days I actually feel something, condensed very tightly until something that resembles a real sexual relationship appears. I don't know how authentic this makes it, but...yeah. Also I am not a boy and know nothing about penises beyond What I Have Learned From, well, porn. And fanfic. WHOO.

I guess the upshot is that I don't think of myself as a sexual person, and when I do, it's much easier to take care of it myself than to act against my own Issues and enter the world of adult relationships, about which I know pretty much ZILCH.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

OH and also: I had a few experiences with people being attracted to me, also in the pre-sexuality stage, and all of them made me feel deeply uncomfortable/guilty for various reasons. I don't really want to go into details, but I think they were formative in both my unwillingness to initiate anything and my inability to recognise/be receptive to people who are interested in me. My default reaction is defensiveness because I have a deep fear of showing more interest than I actually feel. And...I have no positive experiences of interest. Every time it's been shown or (more often) revealed to me at a later date by a third party, it's come with baggage or complicating factors that have made it totally unwelcome.

[sophistry]

Uggghhh, I am going to nose in here and commiserate, just because: YES. GOD. I have had (let us discreetly say) a count-on-the-fingers-of-one-hand number of experiences being the object of someone's affection/attraction/interest, and they were so trainwreckishly awful that the very idea of being in that kind of situation again makes me cringe in horror.

[run-atreyu.livejournal.com]

I haven't read your journal in a while (I'm usually all about the BSG but not at the mo) but just to comment on this. While not entirely the same, you sound similar-ish to me sexuality-wise, and I've in the past few years been self-describing as asexual/homosensual. I identified as gay for a long time before that but it never quite fit, the same way that hetero never quite fit when I was younger. I do actually have a strong sex drive but it doesn't drive towards anyone, to put it in the best way I can. I like making out and occasionally feel very "on the prowl" but when it comes down to it, but ultimately sex just isn't something that's internally directed for me. I do, however, find girls far more attractive and am drawn to them on an emotional/touchy-feely level. Although, of course, when you take actual sexual attraction out of the equation it doesn't matter much to me if I'm pashing a boy or a girl. In general, I'm not interested in any of it, especially not relationships and am happier having an intensely emotional connection with a best friend.

Anyway, I mention this not because I'm doubting your bisexuality - you define yourself, of course - but thought you may not be aware of asexuality and the variations that fall under the orientation's umbrella. There are those of us with a sex drive and those without and those with one a couple of days a month. Those who can't stand kissing and consider it sexual and those who love it and don't tie it to genital sex. The asexual orientation is, at its most basic, about not experiencing sexual attraction to people as a general rule, even if you experience emotional or other kinds of attraction (or, like me, have a sex drive but still don't feel physical attraction to people). There's a community for it on LJ here (http://community.livejournal.com/asexuality/), and I've read lots of posts there that describe what you've described down to a tee (often self-desribing asexual/bi-romantics or bi-sensuals).

It's such a pain that sexuality is set up as such a binary-type construct. It makes it extremely difficult for people who don't quite fit to make sense of their own feelings, even if you're someone who's extremely self-aware generally. I can't believe how long it took me to figure out the missing link, given that I'm usually very clued in to myself. It wasn't till I really found out more about asexuality and found some other people who felt the same that I had a language to describe myself.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, I'm not really talking about BSG much myself at the moment :)

And thanks so much for taking the time to post this -- I've had it suggested to me before that I might be asexual (or, as you say, somewhere under that vague umbrella) and I certainly wouldn't be surprised, although at the moment I'm finding it difficult to untangle my actual sex drive from the more personality/emotional aspects of me that prevent me from being able to make the first move or enter relationships.