Note For Anyone Writing About Me

Guide to Writing About Me

I am an Autistic person,not a person with autism. I am also not Aspergers. The diagnosis isn't even in the DSM anymore, and yes, I agree with the consolidation of all autistic spectrum stuff under one umbrella. I have other issues with the DSM.

I don't like Autism Speaks. I'm Disabled, not differently abled, and I am an Autistic activist. Self-advocate is true, but incomplete.

Citing My Posts

MLA: Zisk, Alyssa Hillary. "Post Title." Yes, That Too. Day Month Year of post. Web. Day Month Year of retrieval.

APA: Zisk, A. H. (Year Month Day of post.) Post Title. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://yesthattoo.blogspot.com/post-specific-URL.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Bisexuality Day

Around the internet I've seen a few different terms: Bisexuality Awareness Day, Bisexuality Visibility Day, Celebrate Bisexuality Day, and probably more that I didn't notice because I am not everywhere.

Whichever. Bisexuality and Today. Also Twitter. There's a hashtag, #MyBisexualityIs, that I'm fairly sure was created by @FeministaJones, and that's embedded below.
I tweeted a couple things to the hashtag too, which I'm embedding and writing more about. Twitter/Blogger combo is great for that, because I say something short on Twitter, then bring it over here to be more lengthly and get to say more things about the things and get kind of meta.

This was my first post to the tag of the day. It's about inclusiveness for those of us who are also asexual. I've written a bit before about the fact that I'm asexual, it's a thing. Sometimes, people think asexual=straight, and therefore not queer. That's... not necessarily the case. There's a lot of different kinds of attraction, sexual is only one of them. It's one that I don't experience, meaning I'm asexual, but any of the other kinds? Not inherently covered by asexuality. Gender identity? Not part of asexuality either.

And as for me. I am bi. There's enough different, overlapping, sometimes contradictory definitions of being bi or pan that I'm not 100% sure which fits me "better" but I can make a case for either or both. The fact that I am also asexual does not change this.
And here is my other tweet. No, no one has ever said that to me when I told them I was bi. It has, however, been said to other autistic people when they state their bisexuality. It's essentially a combination of the idea that bisexuals are "just confused" (false, FYI) and the idea that autistic people are somehow impaired in our understanding of our likes and dislikes (also false), so far as I can tell. We do tend to have some relationship difficulties because any kind of mismatch within any kind of relationship can cause those, but this is a different statement from inherent confusion about gender.

There's also the whole bit where even if we are confused about gender, if that confusion did somehow cause bisexuality, it would... still be bisexuality? (not going to lie, gender stuff does kind of confuse me: not in a "don't understand other people's genders" way or a "don't understand which genders I should be attracted to" way (all of them, clearly), but in a "um there is nothing in my head that looks like gender to me????" kind of way.) Bi because not entirely sure how gender works is still bi, even if it's not how my bisexuality is.

Not so much explained on Twitter because 1) 140 characters isn't much, and 2) My bi(romantic a)sexuality is not a sign of autism making me confused about gender, and the hashtag is MyBisexualityIs. 

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like gendervague to me, i.e. "this neurotypically defined gender concept doesn't make sense within my neurodivergence."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You just explained to me exactly how I feel about my gender. (Before it was "Male because everyone's calling me male," although I was more definitively male when I was younger (and, probably not coincidentally, much less questioning of authority figures...))

      Delete

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