Sunday 25 September 2011

This is a rather blatant rant

This might come off as just a tiny bit bitter, but I mean it in the nicest possible way. Would you please just shut up. Seriously. It is really annoying. It's annoying when people drone constantly on and on about the human reproductive system - a subject which, really, isn't that interesting. You cannot imagine how annoying it is to be constantly surrounded by people who periodically break into discussion of a subject which not only are you not interested in, but which you can't even understand - which it's probably impossible for you to ever understand. Like if people periodically started speaking Ancient Swahili*. And you can't just opt out of these conversations either. People all assume you'll be as fascinated by it as they are. When you say you're not, they either stare at you like a particularly rare zoo exhibit, or flatly refuse to believe you.But that's not even the most annoying thing. I have to be constantly checking everything I'm about to say, jusst to check that it won't be accidentially giving the wrong impression. Which would be a lot easier if I had a clue what exactly it was I was trying to avoid. A lot of the time it seems like I can't even be nice to/about a female without people thinking I must be madly in love with them.

And it hurts, too. It hurts when people go on and on about how bloody brilliant sex is. It hurts when our entire culture, from music to TV, from advertising to comics, makes abundently clear that sex is the most brilliant thing ever, and anyone who doesn't experience it on a regular basis has a grey and pointless compared to everyone else's. It hurts when people say that if you don't like sex, then there must be something wrong with you. It hurts when people tell me that my feelings aren't really valid. That they know much better than I do what my own feelings are - when they say that I'm really secretly gay, when they say that I'm not really asexual becuase I'm heteroromantic. When they say that it's just a phase I'm going through. Basically when I'm told anything along the lines 'you don't really know what you're thinking, let me explain it to you'. And when I'm just told that I'm straight up lying. It's also incredibly annoying. Seriously. Don't do it***.

OK, rant over. I don't really feel that way about being ace (most of the time), and I'm certainly not asking you to stop talking about sex. I am asking you to stop trying to talk to me about sex, but that's different. Just needed to get out some of the frustration. I apologise for the high levels of italics in this post.

And if you're going to take just one thing, not just from this post, but from all of Acanthus, let it be this: In future, do try to think about things. Don't assume everyone feels the same way as you. Trust that people probably have a better grasp of what their feelings are than you****. When you think of that oh so original witty comment, consider for a second the idea that the person you're talking to may have heard it several hundred thousand times.

*I'm sure that's not what it's actually called, but you get my point.
**For the curious, the second one is the more annoying.
***To the people who think I'm talking to them: Yeah. Probably. But take comfort: it is definitely not just you.
****And that doesn't just apply to aces. It applies to gays, transexuals, and even people who just have tastes that are a little out of the ordinary. Telling people that they're wrong to have different tastes from you, saying that a male isn't allowed to like Meg Cabot or Glee - that's not very nice.
For the record, criticising someone for liking Twilight is completely different, since some of the messages in there are actively harmful (Also, it's objectively bad).

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