Breaking Down the Aspec and Gender Norms That Never Made Sense

Regardless of your gender identity and sexual orientation, chances are that you didn’t ascribe much to many traditional gender norms in dating if you wound up coming out somewhere on the aspec.

In my Demiromantic Chronicles for The Ace Space that specifically examines grey and demiromantic experiences, I delved into how many aspec folk always knew we were different — but couldn’t quite articulate which axis of our lives MADE us different.

Whether your life choices and proclivities are more “normal” or you were always on the outside and the margins in numerous ways like I was, you knew there was something different about you that you just couldn’t put your finger on.

In fact, let me dredge up the handy infographic I made for that piece because it’s time to reference it again!

I touched upon how we often confuse the outcomes of these eight factors with realizing we’re somewhere on the aspec, though independent of the aspec they’ll still impact your life.

For instance, neurodivergence causes many people to have trouble with social cues. It makes you wonder why neurotypicals don’t just say what they actually think. I definitely thought just saying what you actually think was simply a cultural norm in NYC and the northeast in general, later reinforced as a subcultural norm in the punk scene of the late 90s and early 2000s. Apparently, this kind of bluntness is more common with neurodivergent people. Neurotypicals and their exhausting bullshit enforce eight million confusing little rules for daily life, with another billion when it comes to dating and sex.

But if you’re on the aspec, a lot of romantic and sexual norms don’t make sense to you either. Especially the highly-gendered aspects.

And you might confuse this confusion with not realizing you’re somewhere on the aspec.

Once you’ve finally parsed this, it can take even longer to peel back that there’s actually a term for you on the aspec if you still feel left out from other ND people who managed to find a partner.

Of the many signs I didn’t interpret as being demiromantic over the years, not even knowing of this term until my late thirties, I’ve been thinking about a lot of the gender-specific ways the confusion mounts and various norms get enforced that don’t make sense. Now that I have closure in coming out, it feels like the defoggers on my windshield finally work after years of having to squint while driving in storms and hoping to fuck I don’t hit someone.

Of course, these inane gendered norms can and will overlap with things on that infographic like neurodivergence, childhood trauma, the culture you come from, how you were raised, and the positive and negative interactions you’ve had in dating.

As a cishet woman who’s mostly dated cishet men in more countercultural spaces like the punk scene and pinko indie game developers, I’m obviously going to have that frame of reference so your mileage may vary. So yes, get ready for more references to NYHC bands of olde and various subcultural mentalities of the Web 1.0 era!

Here’s signs throughout my life that I was demiromantic all along based on gender norms! You might find that the norms for your gender made little or no sense either.

I virtually never fell in love with men I hooked up with.

So I’m starting a separate piece about this, because there’s chuddery that needs debunking. But a lot of people tend to think that women need a romantic or spiritual connection to a man to want to have sex with him, while men don’t need this.

Not barring demisexuality, where you do need to feel a connection to have sex, this is not true of demiromantic women.

Fucking men I have no connection with was one of my greatest pastimes. I say “was” because I have the catch-22 of being less interested in casual sex these days, while being demiromantic means I rarely feel romantic attraction but need that ultra-rare emotional connection to desire a relationship rather than sex.

In writing this with 2022 about to wrap up, I had a momentous year of some major life changes. I met some men I was attracted to sexually and had to fend off a few predators I was not interested in this way at all. I’m not interested in being hit up on adult friend finder apps either, because even if it’s just a casual or one-time thing I need to suss things out in person. My ADHD also says, “If I have to put that much work into figuring out whether this guy is already married and/or about to leave my hacked up carapace in a dumpster under the 110, I may as well have an actual date with someone I know I like, or just put that time into something more enjoyable like hanging with friends!”

Still, while I do need to bond with a man as a friend or sex partner before I feel romantic attraction, normies who think I must’ve fallen in love with every guy I ever had sex with just because I’m a woman are ludicrous.

When I think of my body count I refuse to be ashamed of, I can only think of two instances where I felt romantic attraction after we fucked. One I developed a half-assed relationship with. The other is VHS Tape Guy if you read my other essays: the one who I dismissed as an amazing one-time thing, but he purposely kept himself on my radar the entirety of the Trump administration without ever saying anything until I moved to California and I finally broke the ice. I’m pretty sure the whole thing is dead and buried now, even if I still can’t get that VHS tape out of my skull.

But I never felt that way again after that night. There’s only two other times prior to him I felt that way as well.

Once again, I interpreted this idea of straight women as sex-negative marriage-hungry harridans as more neurotypical schlock and social standards that just won’t die no matter how much we try to evolve as a society. But HOW many guys pretended to be in love with me after I was just “Thanks for the sex, I have to schlep back to The Bronx and play Heroes of Might and Magic now”?

I never, ever understood this gendered norm where a man is so into a woman then he discards her once they have sex, and oh why won’t this clingy needy broad just go away?!

Unless she was like me and clearly wasn’t hung about him. THEN he was suddenly interested.

This shit never made sense to me and it still doesn’t.

Deep down, I desired romantic gestures and knew I wanted a relationship but then I was goddamn terrified when I did receive these gestures and people told me I was crazy for not reciprocating.

When I was that depressed and traumatized abused kid yearning to be free, indulging in my games, music, movies, and so on to escape the shitty home life I had as I longed to be out in the world, the cynic and the romantic battled within me.

With my own parents’ dysfunctional relationship as the eminent example I had, I knew that romcoms were unrealistic and “happily ever after” was Disney’s wish fulfillment marketing hook to indoctrinate little girls for the Wedding Industrial Complex. But I saw plenty of genuinely happy-looking couples in our extended family, at school, and at punk shows and goth clubs so I knew it was possible.

Given how horribly boys treated me at school, I didn’t have very high expectations for how I should be treated. But I wanted to be made a priority: being called, receiving small thoughtful gifts, and the man in question taking charge and actually making plans to get together. Goddamn it, I wanted the nice shit I saw other girls get instead of some pithy “Hey, you’re not that bad-looking, we should sleep together sometime?” after I bought my own drinks.

I wanted those gestures like “I heard Bombshell Rocks and Agnostic Front at the tattoo shop earlier and immediately thought of you.” and other indicators I was actually liked, not just sex on a string where it was on his terms and not mine. Then when I did occasionally receive them, I panicked.

Let’s go back to that infographic: I mistook this as a self-worth issue.

The whole “I wouldn’t join a club that would have someone like me as a member” outlook, which I definitely had shades of. It’s what makes women, even older and wiser ones, prone to things like putting up with that bullshit where he only shows signs of life every two weeks and vaguely checks if you still have a pulse so you be his free therapy session with sex afterwards? Yeah, arrangements like that also appealed to me back then because of surveillance trauma from an abusive home and school. A guy who didn’t check in much appealed to me after a lifetime of these morons CONSTANTLY being up my ass about something.

But I also panicked the first time a man actually made the effort to plan a real date and talk about punk bands and politics all night.

He was genuinely nice and we had pretty good conversation but I just didn’t feel any connection. It was nothing against him at all. And it was the early 2000s, I was nervous that he was going to feel entitled to sex with me when I’d gone to bed with others I did feel more imminent sexual attraction towards without the pretense of a date.

Almost everyone around me — even my straight girlfriends! — told me I was nuts for losing out on a potential wonderful boyfriend, and oh look, you’re still single at 37!

I have to tag Matt Mason here, for he wrote this great piece about how demisexuals are seen as too picky. It’s also true of demiromantics! Especially if you’re a cishet woman. HOW many dating articles say we’re too picky with ridiculous expectations? Throw in demiromanticism, and it’s a far different struggle box.

But what kind of relationship would it have been had I just gone through the motions with someone I feel no attraction to or connection with? He was a perfectly lovely person but it felt like I was trying to build IKEA furniture according to the instructions and Blob Man freaking lied to me that the enclosed little hex wrench would be sufficient for the job.

And I thought this was just normal. Don’t people go on dates, hook up, and spend more time together and find that they’re just not what they’re looking for even if they’re otherwise totally nice?

Then it hit me just HOW many people around me probably started a relationship this way: they found a person over the moon for them, felt little or no romantic or sexual attraction, and just stayed together out of wanting to pay less rent and get nosy people to stop asking “So, are you seeing anyone?”

I need that rare emotional connection and I’m not gonna apologize. And yes, I DO want all that romantic jazz like actual dates, being made a priority, seeing my effort and affection be reciprocated, forming inside jokes together, and so on! But I want it with someone I can feel with.

I just can’t go through the motions with some guy who’s crazy about me but I feel nothing for him. And I shouldn’t be expected to just because this is what women did historically when they couldn’t have their own bank accounts til the 70s.

I always felt that relationships were a bigger deal than sex.

Ready for an epic story from the alternative corner of the turn of the millennium? Well, you’re getting that whether you wanted it or not. And it converges on the points I made in the last few sections.

In the year 2001, women and girls with this outlook were treated like we had something severely wrong with us.

Like I said in that chronicle about knowing you were different, I always felt like having a relationship was a much bigger deal with more “specialness” than just having one-night stands or casual sexual relations.

There was just so much disconnect and warped attitudes about both sex and romance all around me. Some of this was chalked up to coming of age at this hyper-misogynistic era, my own family’s really weird attitudes about sex, and the shadow of Boomer conservatism that still colors the northeastern United States which could merit entire essays on its own.

And naturally, the age-old double standard about how a man who has lots of sex with multiple people is a stud to be envied while a woman who does the same is an immoral slut who has no self-respect, if she’s not infantilized and/or pathologized for her love of getting pounded like a dented Toyota at a chop shop off the Bronx River Parkway.

Last I checked, a door has to swing both ways!

So I remember having it drilled into my head since middle school about how my first time having sex should be so special with a first boyfriend that only the writers room of a tween romcom could concoct, and hopefully he’d be the guy I’d marry, just like how my own parents were the only ones each other ever had!

So I never understood how that last one was so valued, but even more so for women. I even met plenty of people in the punk scene with numerous notches on our bondage belts who said, upon hearing how my parents were each other’s respective firsts, “Wow, I wish that could’ve been me.”

Really, you wish you never had sex or dated other people before just living single or locking it down with someone? It’s not necessarily better. Just different.

Like how some people love digital nomad life and others wish they could’ve bought their forever home at 20 and want to stay in the same place all their lives. Both choices have their own virtues and downfalls, all in the eye of the beholder. The same is true of sex and relationships.

If you want to do the whole “relationship or marriage before sex” thing, that’s fine. I’m not going to knock it. But I personally knew it wasn’t for me despite wanting a monogamous romantic relationship underneath it all.

Because if I waited for that oh so special guy who’d sweep me off my feet and promise ever-lasting love, I’d still be a virgin at almost 40.

Which not to knock my ace siblings who choose not to have sex, or people who’d like to have sex but haven’t by this age — well, I just knew that I didn’t want that for myself. I was both horny and ready to be out in the world. I felt like I already lost out on so much of my youth from surviving child abuse and these incredibly poisonous environments I was shoved in, and the shit I did to survive them. Now was the time for adventure, and to take control of both my sexuality and the narrative.

I wanted to just soak up as much of the human experience as possible: which included the happenstances of meet-cutes, dates, sex adventures, and just seeing where chemistry and hormones took me.

That if and when I met the one, I wouldn’t feel like I missed anything. And I can confidently say that I feel this way at 37.

Decades prior, I made it my mission that my first time would be as UN-special as I could possibly make it because fuck the whole patriarchal notion of “giving my virginity” to some guy.

What exactly am I “giving”?

Isn’t consensual sex a mutual act?

Have you stopped to consider that I think this guy I met at a Biohazard show is hot, and I want to get plowed like Flatbush Avenue in January?

My first time was with a guy I’d seen at the first crop of metal and hardcore shows I went to. He hung around the alternative quarter frequently so I saw him often and would usually just say hi, but I didn’t know him that well.

He struck me as a player and my instincts were correct. He was the rare ennobled male slut: dude definitely had game, but he was not obnoxious about it.

I hadn’t even set out to sleep with him. It turned out he had his eye on me for a long time. And that was exactly who I wanted to get with.

Because I knew he wasn’t a potential boyfriend. I figured he’d probably provide a much better time than these awkward boys I met at Nihilistics shows who didn’t know if overly complimenting me or negging me about my body type would get me to fuck them as if they were fumbling with dialog options in a hentai dating sim on Newgrounds.

I felt like starting a commitment with someone was a MUCH bigger deal than having sex. Funnily, it looks like this is now the norm even for alloromantics now that dating apps broke all your brains while fucking nerds like me remember when meeting someone off the Internet was rare and gawked at. But demiromantics who are total horndogs were always like this and we were always treated weirdly for it, particularly women. Aren’t we supposed to be pining for these guys?!

This slutty punk guy was pretty much nice to everyone regardless of gender. He wasn’t trying too hard or inadvertently revealing that his niceness was conditional on wanting to sleep with me. He was just genuinely nice and easygoing, if you’re wondering how Pete Davidson has tried more women than Night Court.

Then one night he just shot his shot and I excitedly agreed to go back to his place, where he was both great in bed and respectful the entire time I was there.

He didn’t pretend to be in love me and I didn’t see it as anything other than it was: a fun sex adventure after a night of great local metal and hardcore bands.

And I never said a goddamn word that he was my first.

I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Years later, I had a proud slut moment that felt like something out of a Scorcese film: I was out on the town with the man I had my last failed relationship with. Well, the alt world is small and they knew each other. This man apparently finally locked it down with someone, and she was out with him that night. Suddenly, we’re all at the same table and I’m wondering what the hell is going on.

He offered his hand to introduce himself. Granted, I looked a lot different than I had when we met (the Twin Towers still existed). I accepted and replied, “Oh, we’ve met,” with a smirk.

To this day, I do not know if he genuinely didn’t recognize me or he was just saving face in front of our respective dates.

I think this entire story arc should’ve told me that yes, I’m on the aro spectrum, even though I feel romantic desire and want a romantic partner.

No disrespect to the first dude I fucked, he was genuinely cool. Plenty of disrespect to my failed relationship for how he treated me.

But that really special guy who I’d feel that intense emotional connection with and finally receive that romantic love from as well? Well, I knew he’d have to be pretty damn special for me to experience that rare romantic attraction and connection: where I’d want to be fiercely loyal to him and finally be free to powerfully love the way only demiromantics are really capable of.

Alloromantics just give it to anyone nice enough, from our vantage point. Throw in how I completely violated gender norms here, and that’s maybe what should’ve tipped me off I was even more different than we all knew.

People really think women don’t experience post-nut clarity and I knew this was wrong.

People think women don’t experience it. But we do.

If you think we don’t, I beg you, fucking talk to some women who aren’t lovelorn alloromantics trawling dating apps like a damn job, and haven’t been married for 15 years to the same guy.

I’ve absolutely had post-nut clarity where a guy I thought was hot…turned out not to be that hot as a person. Sex I regretted before I could even get out of that bed.

For some women I knew in the hardcore scene, they ended up marrying men they had one-night stands with. I figured my turn would come eventually, if I didn’t meet him through some other crazy adventure. (That would be how I met VHS Tape Guy.)

Believe me, there are many women who also make poor decisions thinking with our clits instead of our brains. Maybe not to the same extent as straight men with poor self-control, but I’ve definitely done some things that weren’t the smartest when I was down bad.

It’s just pretty fucked up that we live in a society where women’s sexuality is mocked, derided, and suppressed because of these norms. And it’s not just men who get post-nut clarity. In fact, I think women experience it in greater levels now that there’s more mid-late thirties singlehood whether it’s by choice or not.

Now that I know I’m demiromantic, these gendered aspects of my life experience and more recent observations finally make more sense to me. Namely, how I felt like an outsider in this additional way I couldn’t put my finger on previously.

It turns out I’m in the queerdom rainbow after all. A grayer part of it. But rainbows are spectrums, not flat colors.