Letters to an Asexual
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
- This is #105 of a series in which I read correspondence between me and people who have questions, comments, or--more often--misconceptions about asexuality. This video has no direct correspondence but outlines a pattern of misconceptions and invalidation that I experienced throughout my life.
I'm sorry for your loss. And thank you for sharing your thoughts - looking back can be painful but I hope it's also a way to move forward.
Obviously I don't know what your family life was like but from this video it sounds like your mom was lowkey emotionally abusive. Probably not in ways she was aware of, maybe she really just didn't understand you at all, and she had some deeprooted issues of her own that she kept projecting on you. But it's unambiguously horrible to tell people about something confidential your child said at the doctor's office, let alone mockingly.
I was very lucky to have a mom who never pried or questioned me. Her philosophy with me and my siblings as teenagers was that moms aren't supposed to know everything. She was adamant that we were entitled to privacy, she just occasionally told us to stay safe (and we did). It's not that we didn't have any discipline or rules, mom just wanted us to have space and autonomy that she didn't get to have in her own youth.
Weirdly enough one of my toughest hurdles was my dad's disapproval of my "childish" interests in scifi/fantasy and other nerdy things. I had a harder time learning to love my nerdiness than my being ace or agender. Thank goodness for my very nerdy, very lgbtq friends. 😅
Yeah, there were a lot of things that happened (especially when I was a kid) that I was kinda gaslighted into accepting as normal (or at least "that just sucked or was unpleasant; it wasn't abusive"). Privacy was definitely something my mom didn't believe in. She read my diary and laughed at it, and went through my trash, often straight up told me I was lying if I told her something really ordinary that happened, moved my stuff and then told me I lost it because I'm very disorganized, etc. When I compensated by, say, making up a code she couldn't read so I could have some privacy, she told me that was a babyish thing to do and shamed me over it. Surprise! A lot of it was about control as I got older, too. There were a lot of very weird attempts to control and influence my behavior when certain things stopped being in her control, and sometimes when direct attempts didn't work she'd insist that people were talking behind my back judging me for not doing what she wanted, or that my friends laughed at my hair because she didn't like my hair, etc. I did eventually realize these were not normal behaviors but it took a long time.
It's really interesting that you also had a parent tell you science fiction and fantasy are childish! My mom used to tell me "nobody" reads those and "everybody" has grown out of them, and that that's the reason I hadn't been able to sell my fantasy trilogy--because I can't "get over" that people just don't read those things. She knew absolutely nothing about publishing trends. And the book series got signed to an agent and was considered by all five major publishing houses--it got relatively close. I just didn't get a book deal out of it. I'll try again with another project. (Guess what? It's also science fiction.)
Again I'm blown away by how identical ace invalidation is to things I've been through.
A lot of this was very familiar. I'm really glad you managed to maintain a positive relationship despite the cost in pain to you. It sounds much better than my perpetually antagonistic mess.
Big affection, Ivy. Don't neglect yourself during this time. 💛🍀
Sorry for her loss. Hope making this video helped bring some resolution for you on these things.
Lots of hugs to you.
Sorry for the loss wish good things to you
Oh god. I do remember that video where you mentioned someone close to you had basically belittled and yelled at you for being a "tease." I never imagined it would have been your mother.
Thank you for sharing. I think it's important for all of us to remember we can love our parents and they can love us, but sometimes they can truly hurt us. It's such a complex thing.
Yeah it really sucks that someone so close to me said something so harmful. I remember when I tried to talk around the fact that it was my mom while mentioning the incident in another conversation and the person was like "well it sounds like just some club bro was saying hurtful stuff to you because they wanted to get laid and felt you teased him, couldn't have been anyone important to you who said that, people just say shit, get over it" and I'm just like . . . bruh. You. Have. ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what this was.
I had to laugh a little at the part about your mom telling the story about the kissing comment, not at your embarrassment but because my mom does the same thing - tells stories about things I did actually say or do, but in an extremely exaggerated way that makes it into a way bigger thing than it actually was. I'm starting to wonder if all moms do this TBH 😅
Wow, so you really know! Haha. I dunno, maybe moms do all do that. Mine used to sometimes try to play a prank on us and we'd react poorly or not fall for it, and then she'd still tell it to other people like HAHAHAHA MY KIDS TOTALLY FELL FOR IT, IT WAS HILARIOUS. And the "prank" is just, like, her being mean to us and us being confused. The exaggeration was really common for my mom too. Like, I don't like looking at veins--I think they're gross and try not to look at them, and if I have to get blood drawn I just look away. My mom has insisted that I'm so disgusted by such things that I refuse to go to the doctor. Meanwhile I've had a normal blood panel yearly like I'm supposed to for most of my adult life. When I was six years old I put my sweater on backwards and tried to go to school like that. My mom would tell people into my forties that I am such a dipstick that I put my clothes on backwards all the time. One time I nicked a store display with the side of a shopping cart when I was a teenager. My mom retold this as me crashing a shopping cart into a display and knocking the whole thing down, and "this is why she should NEVER be allowed to drive." And yeah it was usually told like hahaha we're all joking around, but I wasn't laughing. It just felt really mean-spirited.
@@swankivy Oh my gosh, the thing where you do something ONE time and they tell it like you do it allll the time, so relatable. I never understood what was up with that. 'Cause I would never do that to someone 🫤
this was a letter FROM an asexual 😅 hang in there 🫂❤
i can deff relate to asexual "swankivy"
Sorry for your loss!
On another note, there was something someone said to Steven in Steven Universe: you have so much patience for people, but not everyone deserves that patience.
I liked that line too (from Garnet to Steven) but it did turn out it was about Peridot and she DID end up deserving that patience! Still would have been a true statement if she hadn't, though.
@@swankivy Yeah, I would've preferred if that was said about someone actually *not* deserving that statement. Because everyone's met someone like that.
@@EGV88 What's interesting about it is that Peridot WAS actually betraying the Crystal Gems there (just not in the way they thought); she did want to preserve the Earth, but she wanted the Diamonds to be in charge of it, and was willing to draw their attention to its need for their management until she found out they just wanted to destroy it no matter what. Only at that point did she switch her actual loyalty. So technically it was true that she didn't deserve Steven's patience since she actually was willing to compromise the planet and use its resources for Gems at the expense of organic life. But she did fully commit to the Crystal Gems after that; it just wasn't actually her first choice.
33:22 I like to listen to your thoughts.
Never really had much support. Some religious cult like or cults are like that. It can happen that some religious communities reject individuality including those of the asexual umbrella ... rejecting any respect towards others not pushing into marriage and popping out babies like Quiverfull.
Honestly I can't help but wish that you'd told us earlier that it was your mom. I'd honestly love to confront her about this, since it's not the right thing for her to do.
I shared what I was comfortable sharing and will continue to do that. :)
@@swankivy That's perfectly fine!