About

I am called by various names, but around here I go by Elizabeth, or the Gray Lady.

When I originally started this blog in late May of 2008, I did so primarily to create a space for myself to sort out my own emotional turmoil. I had just—I mean literally just—the previous day cut off contact with someone who, despite my assessment of him as a generally well-meaning person and high hopes that he would learn to accept my asexuality, failed to do so and in retrospect turned out to be quite toxic. At the time, I considered myself a gray-area asexual, or in other words one who may occasionally experience faint sexual attraction. Back then, there were only a handful of asexuality-themed blogs, none of which tackled the topic of being sexually active as an asexual or navigating the gray area between being asexual and being (somewhat) sexual. Wanting to preserve my anonymity, I hastily picked a not-particularly-creative pseudonym, and got to work. It made a good distraction and had a tremendously positive effect on my mental well-being. The feedback I’ve gotten has convinced me that this is an important topic that goes far beyond just my own individual experiences; many people have thanked me for giving voice to things very similar to what they experienced themselves, and so I want to continue to write in order to help anyone out there who might identify with what I’m saying, and otherwise would feel alone.

Now, I don’t really identify as being in the gray area anymore, I just think of myself as a regular old asexual. But gray represents more than just a specific type of person in the asexual community. It’s about nuanced, rather than black and white thinking. It’s about the space in between dichotomies besides the sexual/asexual one—which still applies to me in a sense even if I don’t see my orientation as being something that shifts between the two anymore, since I am a sexually active asexual—like the space between friend and lover, which I see as a continuum rather than two distinctly divided things. I am polyamorous, and I blog about that too, on occasion. My primary (and currently sole) romantic partner is a male-to-female (MTF) transsexual. She passes well, so the vast majority of the time we are perceived as lesbians, even though neither one of us identifies that way. My nickname for her here is C (originally short for Cupcake, but now she comments here as Cat Pajamas), and I request, because it is a very important precaution, that if any reader recognizes either one of us from my descriptions, please do not do anything to break our anonymity, and more importantly, do not go spreading her status around among people who know her in real life. This could prove to be dangerous for both of us.

I consider standards of consent to be a particularly important issue to explore both in relation to asexuality and within a larger feminist and sex-positive framework. Anti-rape activism is a large part of my focus. Since April of 2010, I have been collecting stories anonymously from people who have been sexually assaulted (or feel like their experiences might fit within a gray area between rape and not-rape—a position I was in myself as well, up until I started this project) for an eventually forthcoming awareness project that will take the form of a lyric essay. If you wish to contribute your own story or just learn more information about the project, please go here.

Since I blog about several different topics, I expect to get some readers coming here who don’t know much about asexuality, but since this blog is (or was originally) aimed at an audience that already has a vested interest in asexuality, it may be confusing for those of you who have come in here from the wider community. I assume my readers are already familiar with certain concepts that are not well-known outside of AVEN. If you wish to read along, feel free to do so, but I suggest you familiarize yourself with the content of the FAQs contained here, at the very least. Other resources are listed on the sidebar, please check them out if you’re interested in learning more.

Mにメッセージ:
このブログに本音を少し書いたんだ。
もし、お前が詠んだら、過去を女上にちゃんと考えてくれ。
分からなくても、軽挙妄動を慎んでね。