Wearing Ace!

Photo by C. Kellam Scott

I'll cut to the quick on this one, this is a post about asexual visibility. It's also about coming out, not just to friends but to the world. Our culture displays tribal and cultural allegiances with our clothing. I'm not just talking about style, although that too. Every subculture has it' s standards of appearance. Its how we identify our own kind. For instance, I know that if I'm ever lost or in need of a cigarette, that I can get help if I spot another punk rocker. If I'm lucky I can even find one who listens to the same bands as me. And that is the other use of clothing, displaying names and logos. Some people choose to wear corporate logos or ironic images, t-shirts to make people laugh or think you shop at expensive stores. But more importantly, we use t-shirts specifically, to share what we feel, our causes and the things close to our hearts.

When I first found out about the online asexual community I sprang to it and it welcomed me with open arms. In my befuddled excitement I couldn't figure out how to use the Aven site (the hub of the Ace community) so I kept looking and found Apositive.org. It was a much smaller site but no less welcoming and reassuring. In one of my early discussions there with a young woman from the mid-Atlantic states (I'll call her Polly though that's not her name), the topic of Ace pride clothing arose.



The previous night I had been watching swankivy's videos on youtube, Letters to an Asexual. I was only a few days out of the closet, I had told my family, and I was swelling with a sense of belonging that I had never expected to feel. I was proud to be asexual! As I watched and laughed and cried I pulled out my three favorite care-worn t-shirts and a Sharpie. I wrote AVEN across the fronts in different fonts and various little slogans on the backs. "No means, no thanks!" was the best I could come up with off the top of my head. But then I realized that it was just a rip off of the old anti rape slogan "No means No!", I'm still not sure if that appropriation was appropriate or offensive. I don't want to offend or denigrate survivors of rape. Polly and I started blathering about making shirts but then the conversation faded, the action on Apositive can be slow. So I drifted over to Aven, I had figured out how to join, and found out how many shirts and slogans there already were. Unfortunately for me, they didn't fit my personal sense of style. But I liked the slogans, particularly David Jay's "Nobody Knows I'm Asexual". It makes sense that the founder of asexuality.org would have a good head for slogans.



That same week I had, at long last, seen the back of a young punk rocker roommate. He had finally left our house and couch for Portland, Oregon. I live in a classic punk house, its been in the hands of a rotating cast of roommates for over a decade, sitting in one of the punkest neighborhoods in the Greater Boston area. I have around six roommates, half of whom are like me, in their 30's and semi-responsible. The other half are in their early 20's and still learning. Eddie (not his real name) was the least respectful housemate, but he was also a nice kid and I could forgive him his trespasses, I'd been a young punk once myself. He did skip out on some of his bills when he left, and some of his rent. This ended up working out for my part of his debt because he left behind a bunch of t-shirts. Eddie is a screen printer and I finally got a Ramones shirt (my first after 20 years of fandom), a couple shirts for local bands, a Leftover Crack hoodie that was so offensive that no-one would wear it and best of all, a couple blank black t-shirts.



I got out my old stencil making supplies and my spray paint and house paint. I designed a more dynamic Aven logo for the fronts of the shirts and re-arranged the "nobody knows" slogan for the backs. One shirt was too small so I cut it up into a punk tank top. The Leftover Crack hoodie had its logos and offensive imagery obliterated and I replaced it with my much healthier slogans.



As I started to wear these shirts I began to feel real pride in my appearance. That's something that has never really happened to me before. I've enjoyed my clothes before, their colors and textures, but the experience was mostly tactile. Only when I was young and had anti-racist slogans on my back did I get anywhere close to what I was now feeling. But the shirts did have purpose. I don't want to have to tell everyone I know that I'm asexual, but I'd like for them to know. Basically, I don't want to have to go into some long discussion about the subject, I just would like to be treated as I am, not as a heterosexual. I'm not, I'm aromantic and asexual. Part of my discomfort in life has been the assumption that if I'm not gay then I must be attracted to women, I don't like being included in that universal. Straight men say, "we're like this, we like this, we think this" and I just want it known that I don't. Being included in that way is in fact, alienating. I want to cool off someone's crush before it happens and stop people trying to set me up with friends of theirs. The old cotton blend billboard seems tailor made for that purpose.



The best result for the shirts is that people notice and figure things out on their own. Of course some folks are bound to just ask, and those are often the people whom I know best or spend any decent amount of time with. The first questions came from co-workers when I was wearing my care-worn marker shirts. They'd ask "What's Aven?" And I'll be honest, in those first couple weeks I chickened out. The two co-workers who inquired did so when I was already blabbing about something else so I just pretended not to hear and kept blabbing. But that was in the first couple weeks after coming out, I was still feeling a bit shy about the whole thing. I had been thinking about some of the folks I'd talked to at Aven about the subject of coming out and when it was appropriate, I wanted to be bold but I couldn't help being a bit reticent.



As time has moved forward though, any worry has faded, I know that I won't be shunned for coming out now so, that shy response has all but evaporated. I use my shirts as an opportunity, as discussions that I could insert the subject in are rare. It feels freeing to share with my friends what my true feeling are and to say sorry for having let them think of me as anything but what I am. The more out I am, the more like myself, the more free and happy I feel.



I've met with allot of confusion when coming out, and it has made me realize just how well I had adopted that hetero veneer I had chased for so long. The only people from my past who seem to have had an inkling were the three women I dated, they seemed to be clued in to my lack of attraction or romantic thought, that's why all three relationships ended. But I had been seen with them so my friends assumed I wanted to be, a partner was proof enough even when I hadn't had one for years. Most of the resistance has been in the form of "you don't want to label yourself", to which I have responded "it's the label that is giving me a strength I didn't even know I could have". That usually answers that one. I have had good friends suggest that I might be gay too, or if not, then bi. Or perhaps "you're just bored with sex, you need to wait a bit". My response to that is fairly simple, "I've always been bored with sex, totally disinterested." It does go beyond that, in that I think sex is a bit gross and participating in it was nearly impossible for me to do sober. In the end, even just being in the day to day of a relationship became such a tension filled burden for me that inebriation became the only solution I could find. Most of my good friends have really been there for me as I have struggled to get sober these last couple years. So, when I tell them that part of my closeted story they tend to accept my asexuality, at least outwardly.



I brought all of this back to Apositive and my discussion with Polly. In my absence she had gotten worked up about the idea, not just wearing shirts and sharing that way but a further expansion. She came up with the idea of trying to set up a blog to discuss the subject. I shot back with the idea of a facebook page or a youtube channel. We both got really excited until we realized that the two of us had separately made so many other commitments that we couldn't get those ideas off the ground in any kind of quick or organized sense. I did mention to her that I had gotten on here, at Freedom Requires Wings, so I could promote whatever we did come up with. In the end all we had was the idea, things have slowed over at Apositve and I am way to distracted by work at the moment. But I thought I would share the idea here anyway.



Polly and I still shoot ideas for new slogans back and forth over email, and that's sort of what I'm driving at here. Creating further discussion in the asexual community about making shirts, and wearing them. The back and forth of shared experience has been so crucial to my current sense of peace, and I see that feeling in other recently out Aces, that it can only be good to expand on that. We need to share the responses we get from the rest of the world to our slogans and logos. Funny, sad, difficult or insulting. New ideas come from the hashing out of old ones, sometimes you have to beat your dead horse to realize you need a new one.



The best I can think of is making youtube videos on how to make Ace shirts. Instructional vids that discuss materials and methods. I'm still working on my first one. Punk rock instilled in me a very strong sense of independence. "Do It Yourself" is as classic a punk ideal as anarchism and hating work. If there is anything to be learned from that its that anyone can make anything. Even the dumbest amongst us know how to work a marker.



I do realize that this isn't for everyone either, some folks don't wear their hearts on their sleeves. Some people are more private, less social or they simply don't want to foist themselves on others. But there are people in every community that are bold, brash, extroverted exhibitionists. Every movement needs its signposts. There is balance to everything as long as we remain aware of both sides of the scales and never tip in any one direction. The only argument I can think of for pushing forward comes from the beginning of the Gay Rights movement in the 1960's. The movement began with folks who considered themselves "normal gays". On sight alone you couldn't differentiate between them and the other square or straight members of society. That was their point, that they were like everyone else, except sexually. When the more extroverted and queerer folks tried to jump in they were rebuked. No drag queens or obvious dykes were to be tolerated, the "normal gays" thought it would only drag down and denigrate the movement to include the more audacious members of the community in the protests. In the end they couldn't say no of course, any community is strengthened by the inclusion of all of its members. The gay squares could win over government and straight squares. The freaks could get everybody else. By the time AIDS had ransacked a generation of people, gay men and women were already more unified and the tragedy of disease brought them together with the hetero world in new and unfortunate ways. It also helped legitimize the spectacle of a Gay Pride parade. Now, in cities across the globe, queer folks of every sort have the joy of gathering together in public for massive celebrations of who they are. There is still hate and fear directed at them but for the most part Pride parades are just a beautiful party. The best part is that the gauntlet that the gay community has run to reach even the level of acceptance they now have, including amongst themselves, has led to an openness of spirit that extends beyond their own community. They have opened the ranks of Pride parades to let the Ace community march along. We need to embrace that space and run with it. But what are you to do when Pride is only once a year? Wear your Ace pride, share it with your community, and keep building our foundation in the world at large. The only way toward long term acceptance is by being open and honest and to never go away. Cement your place in the world by wearing Ace!