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| An image titled "Black Box Testing" which shows a black box with an "Input" and "Output." Image source. |
Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"
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So I've been writing some blog posts reviewing the book The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], and one of my complaints has been that it presents a view on what sex is "supposed to be" which isn't compatible with my experiences as an asexual. But, it occurs to me, that maybe some people would think it doesn't make sense for me to criticize the book for that. Maybe some people would say something like this:
Perfect Number, you're asexual, so why are you even reading the book "The Great Sex Rescue"? It's right there in the title- this book is for people who want to have sex! Why would anyone expect this book to be "inclusive" of aces? It's not reasonable that you're complaining about that, because the book is literally called "The Great Sex Rescue."
This argument only makes sense if all aces feel like, "I know I'm ace, so that means I know I don't want to have sex, so I will just blissfully ignore anyone who tries to tell me about what sex is 'supposed' to be, and that works perfectly fine for me."
This is not reality though. Let me list some of the issues:
- Because of society's general lack of understanding of what asexuality means, many aces (or rather, people who would benefit from IDing as ace) don't know that they're ace
- Because society tells everyone "you want sex" and "sex is great" and so on, many aces (and people who could be ace) buy into these ideas without really being able to question them and figure out what they actually want. They've never been given the space to actually ask themselves the question, "Do I even want to have sex?"
- Some aces are sex-favorable (ie, they do want to have sex)
- Aces who have sex have a different perspective on it than the mainstream allosexual perspective, and this can lead to aces being confused about how sex is supposed to work and/or running into other problems
Basically what all of this adds up to is, there are many scenarios where someone who is ace (or would ID as ace if they knew what it was) tries to have sex, runs into difficulties, and goes looking for help- perhaps because they believe they "should" have sex and haven't considered any other option, or perhaps because they genuinely are sex-favorable. And wouldn't a book called "The Great Sex Rescue" sound like the kind of thing that could help?
When I first started having sex, my initial feeling was being very happy because I had done the one thing that purity culture says is The Worst Thing Ever and will Ruin Your Life- and it had not, in fact, ruined my life, so I was finally free from that fear. But that was all on a very abstract theoretical level, and after a while I realized, "wait, but isn't this supposed to feel good physically?" And then I went looking for answers.
Back then, I had no way to even begin to understand the landscape of what my issues were. Looking back on it now, I see that I had 3 issues:
- Because of my purity-culture background, I had bought into the idea that sex ed is unnecessary. The less knowledge and experience I have, the better, right? I'm so pure, therefore sex will be amazing! No need to learn anything about how it works beforehand, no need to communicate with my partner about what I like or don't like, no awareness that "what I like or don't like" was even a relevant topic. (I knew I should have enough sex ed to know how to prevent pregnancy and STDs, but nothing beyond that.)
- I had vaginismus.
- I'm asexual, but I thought I was heterosexual.
The vaginismus was the real dealbreaker, actually. If it weren't for that, I could have just muddled along, having mediocre sex and not realizing that I didn't actually want that. But the vaginismus made it impossible.
So I asked doctors "why is sex painful?" They all said "just relax" which is not helpful at all- if I wanted to "relax" I would just give up on having sex, because it's just confusing and painful and not at all relaxing. One doctor asked me if the pain was on the outside or deep inside- that was the most explicit question any doctor asked me- and I knew so little about my body that I didn't even know how to answer. None of the doctors had a long enough discussion with me to realize I did not even know that female arousal was a thing. That would have been good information to know!
I looked for answers in a lot of places. I discussed it with friends- floating the idea that "maybe women just don't like PIV sex" but my friends seemed to be saying that women do like PIV sex, so that made me more confused. I found information about asexuality on the internet. And I bought the book "Come As You Are" which claimed it could "transform your sex life"- alas, it did not transform my sex life.
Back then, I imagined that there was some straightforward resource that would explain sex, and this resource should be recommended to everyone, like a one-size-fits-all thing. But now I realize, each of these different books and other resources is intended to address a specific problem related to sex. There's no book that will solve everyone's sexual problems. For example, "Come As You Are" is mainly for women in long-term relationships who want to increase their sex drive in order to have more sex. (This makes me very confused- why don't they just go ahead and have more sex, why do they need to "increase their sex drive" first???) "The Great Sex Rescue" is for married heterosexual women coming from a conservative Christian background, who have been taught an ideology which says that sex is something a woman does for a man- and the woman's pleasure doesn't factor into it anywhere at all.
Yeah, it turns out, books like this, if you just read the title, it seems to be saying the book will help everyone solve their sexual problems- but that's not reality at all. Each book is for one specific kind of sexual problem. For people with that specific problem, it may be useful. For everyone else, not so much.
It turns out what I actually needed was this (and I'm sure this isn't the first time I've shared this on my blog, and it won't be the last): An Asexual’s Guide To … This is literally the best sex-ed resource I have ever read, you guys. It walks through some possible things you can try, in terms of masturbation and sex, and at every step along the way, it stops to field questions like "but why would anyone do that?"
(And, okay, I'm oversimplifying it in this blog post- my journey to finding ace resources and deciding to ID as asexual was more complicated than that, but anyway, my point is, this is the best sex-ed resource I have ever found.)
People talk about sex like it's a black box... like... fade to black because we mustn't explicitly say what's actually happening. And because of that, resources that aim to help people solve problems that come up during sex don't really seem to acknowledge that they are aimed at only one particular type of problem. Is it because people don't talk about it enough, so the authors of these resources just aren't aware of other people having sexual problems that are different than the ones they themselves had? (I mean, this must also be true about some of the blog posts I've written with advice about how to have sex... I have a tendency to assume that everyone naturally would run into the same problems I did, and needs the explanations that I eventually figured out for myself... it's important to stop and remind myself that no, everyone is different.)
But anyway. Why am I reading "The Great Sex Rescue" if I'm asexual? Because back then I really did need help, and this is the sort of book that would have appeared helpful to me- especially because it's for women who have internalized harmful ideas about sex from Christian culture. (Yep, that's me.) As I said in my intro post for this series, this is an ace issue. I really do think that aces would seek out these kinds of books, when we try to have sex and it doesn't work- either because we haven't realized we don't actually want sex, or because we do want sex but our whole approach to it is different from other people's. (Or some kind of reason that's a combination of those.) I strongly suspect that there is overlap between Gregoire's audience and people who would benefit from hearing about asexuality.
So I don't think I'm wrong to complain about this book excluding aces. And, I have a few simple suggestions: How about instead of saying "sex is supposed to be xyz because that's how God designed everyone to enjoy sex," it could say "most women prefer sex that is xyz" or "if you want sex that is xyz, then your partner should care about that- you're not being 'selfish' for expecting him to care about what you want." How about instead of framing it like there are right ways and wrong ways to have sex, we let people figure out what they want on their own? (And not wanting sex at all is also an option.) Knowing yourself, having the confidence to speak up about what you want, valuing yourself and your partner equally- those are the guidelines we should be telling people.
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Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"
Related:
Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality
Bucket List (a post about being a sex-favorable asexual)
I’m Really Really REALLY Glad I Had Sex Before Marriage
And this post from Siggy: 20 narratives of aces who like sex
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