OutCasting; Asexuality (first person account)

before i told people that i was essentially felt like i was like i was lying like i was actively saying that what i was was damaged in diseased and broken and healthy i just felt the press but almost constantly that officer telling people a certain feeling fantastical myself like it has no more difference from unwholesome they were just experiencing something else something that they do they didn't know about but are still the same as a stealthy this is our testing public radio's lgbt q u program we don't have to be queer to be here are casting as a production of media for the public good a listener supported independent producer based in new york online accessing the dot org hi i'm andrew on this edition about casting we hear from fellow al kassar dante about his experience growing up a sexual and our sexuality has affected his life i left the four sixth grade was completely

normal i didn't feel different doing six ratings and gray than i had my entire life what i felt was like everyone else is bidding different i feel like every else was changing in some really strange and almost satirical and prior to the sixth grade i felt like i was completely normal like there's no difference to me anybody else i mean they're ever ends different but there's not really anything are clearly high lead to be different any clear separation but after about halfway through sixth grade he was as if everyone had been born with a card and at the point they all flipped over and i was deciding what the session on tuesday and i simply have nothing after they've made for the car after they would start figure out what they were

they acted completely different but it needs reforms were day enters richmond restraint by a conceit pre clearly but i simply had nothing to see anybody is attractive and see anything as attractive i began feeling that there's something very wrong with me by about halfway through seventh grade when i still had no armor i surrendered feeling very connected to the friends of mine that hadn't yet began feeling attractions people added stick was demonstrated how ridiculous it was the people would be dating in the seventh grade and then by the eighth grade they would be getting too it's like everyone's interacting different way out of nowhere between the middle of the sixth grade in the middle of some great i felt like everyone was just slowly it was not once not have ruined train started acting from the runway blues that he was spreading

and by the time it had spread to everyone else i still was and that's when i started getting depressed ever knowles was appearing to be attracted to someone else and i wasn't assigned tracking who made whose eyes dilated and made their breasts shorter end deeper i try to like you who kept tuesday's long narrow arm alter the behavior of who agassi clearly who is at which people are attracted to you and no one made me feel that way of of that that was just the way normal healthy people behaved and so i tried to making a bet that when i was considering myself to be unhealthy but there's something wrong to me that there's something that i can talk to anyone about and then i would see a psychologist and then they would

say here's wrong with you and communists you on its limitations what were quote just that would disprove that there's a lot at the minute i couldn't haven't you know see me that way if i can be healthy i wonder ms be seen that way it was terrified of looking up or as telling anyone i am stayed that way as to know until senior year in high school and parents but i don't touch my friends but own doctor and churning out dr as eighth grade came around i began feeling extremely desperate i thought that it just couldn't control myself that i was lacking this essential thing and i couldn't cult comic for it i couldn't pretending or more that i just felt powerless and out

of control and i actually began some nights holding a knife to my wrist just to feel like i could consist can still can fall that if i could never if i couldn't continue keeping up the parents of being healthy then i could always just controlled that one aspect of my life meaning i could still and that if there's no other way to do is there's no other way to be healthy there's another if there's something wrong with me that i could still fix about why i never tried killing myself but i just tried to restrain myself that i could that that was always an option and that was off maybe you once every

month or two and get up to an overnight and just hold of them i wouldn't break skin but i'll just feel that i have the ability to go it went on for a couple of years until about tenth grade commitment to upgrade not like it was continuous that it get it i would do it wants a reminder to for a couple months and then i would stop for a while and then i'd feel better about myself and then the depression come back and i'd do again are just do that and then feel like ok i'm going to try and just push that line nothing about it up until that i'm just going to live without this toxic feeling of being broken and these can try and be healthy enough eu with out dealing with it and then i was nothing

about it for a few months and then something would happen we are so alike someone be talking about how cops or something and then he would come back and i would think about it again the depression would come back to manila to do it again and feel better was a numb feeling of better thanks a sense is numb the pain basically did not feel good about myself just better than i had been feeling and then pushed the feeling of being broken of feeling he somehow damaged i pushed it out of my head for or about two years until the end of on you read i just didn't think that i just like i wouldn't look at anything that make me think about our dislike you'd be completely ignorant of anything that was

caused by federal judge and just ignore it does feel like only toxic thoughts can come from that and just whistle navarro it wasn't a good feeling that was the best i had felt a long time something about i did actually immerse myself and not score but just out of school activities i became the president of tech club vice president of yemen club new president of strategy games club and i'll just be after school every day in the computer lab playing games are programming games are doing research on whatever i find interesting anything at my brain occupied when my friends was trying to figure out what like sexual there was one book what i was attracted to you talk about what girls i thought were attractive for them for now the large ends i remember a movie has just told him to stop talking about it but like as stealthily as

i could end it brought up and we were watching something on hulu and i said wait stop talking i'm going to watch this and then i realized i'd said that to an airplane commercial and she looked at me very strange after that because it was very clear that age very uncomfortable talking about it in eighth grade and seventh grade and ninth grade i would watch sexually explicit been suggested music videos of my friends and pretend to be really huge demand even not on cd is the boring to watch and watch movies that were suggestive and things of that nature around my friends and destroying act like i was some will even interested in that but he was sol just a list has anything interesting everytime i pretended to have the same kind of impulses and desires is as remy i felt like i was reaffirming that there's something wrong with

me i told myself has made me feel better because i was pretending to be healthy and that was working but it every time i did it it just made me feel deep down that i was right there something that there's something really wrong with you every time i did it it reaffirms to myself that yes everyone would think it's unhealthy if you didn't if you came out and sad and every time i did it i felt like i had some kind of disorder some kind of mental disability something that was just causing me to be unable to sue these are like some kind of psychopathy almost they can to connect to people that way throughout our concerts de sacs is seen as something that is if you can't have it with someone you can't

love a person the sex is called making love if you can't do it then you clearly can't be in any kind of romantic relationship with a person i felt that i you could relate to close friends and i was at that i would never be able to connect with someone anything in any way deeper i wanted to but i felt like i couldn't if i had been diagnosed with an official mental disorder it it would've been like death to me it would have been i just wanted to be allowed to be not be healthy without having something that would never go away never be really treated just hover over there saying that i was never going to be elderly day a healthy life but always be broken from this moment on i feel like all my cognitive abilities are implies that something's wrong with me like i was missing something very essential and then i

couldn't feel that there's something very wrong and i felt like there's something wrong with me because i couldn't feel like there's something wrong with a second identity i what was wrong with it and does that is unknown it doesn't do is just meet see or wells differently than they saw each other it wasn't really that there's something wrong is just that i was different than what us perceive ever asked to see in each other and that something was a central attraction this is our casting public radio's lgbt q youth program or you don't have to be queer to be here how casting is a production of media for the public good a listener supported independent producer based in new york online at guessing media dot org and on the citizen about casting we're hearing from eighteen year olds about caster dante about his experience growing up a sexual at the end of eleventh grade i want have this person

and the thought i won a cup an end they were a couple of us made sure i'd say they were mentioned i've said no i'm not trying to run a sexual and was kind of came out i didn't think that before that i just kind of the way just kind of came out thought that was the square to describe to the people what my experience was that i had a complete lack of sexual attraction to any person gender rather was when i told this person that has essentially felt very liberating to finally have it off my chest and they have someone sort of understand was going through and that not everyone was bad or sexual or they are by that there was another division another orientation out there that just wasn't being represented a sexual attraction is completely separate from a beat or i experienced will be open it

was just not connected to you any attraction to people is just an impulse not a attraction a few months later i decided that let's see if anyone else's use this label since its mid section it might be using orientation and maybe someone else's expense it's a look that up and then i came across this suburb site called a van and that's when i found out that there were a lot of people at that experienced this orientation and that there's actually a a very nice community of people and he was one of the most liberating moments of my life that i didn't have the disorder or are anything that i was just had an orientation and i could be completely happy a kid they were people in relationships and happily so distant extreme satisfaction to another it

human being in there is patty themselves the answer as i could be to just had to accept it and became very quickly when i drove sudden discovered there is actually a home a whole system of classification that news is it decoupled relationship between romantic attraction and sexual attraction and they could actually be a complete experience a romantic attraction someone while having a complete lack of a sexual attraction to him and this made me feel like i could finally see and understand what had been and having to me from like a birds eye view it is celebrated finally see that what i do experience was normal lives just another experience in the empty for many other just a little rare

and average discovering this made me very happy and excited for the future and i could be in as healthy relationship is anyone else going just off my romantic attraction thunder individual identify as a sexual demi pan atlantic a sexual means i'm not sexually attracted to anyone in a gender or creed or anything on them demi means i'm only attracted to people i've known for a while or unlike know personally and they're say you attract varying romantically attracted to end pencil a pen means attracted to anyone of any gender summer meant a great track and to people i've known for a while people in a closely basically people and are to be friends with armed and drives those people regardless of their gender or gender identity ends i am not sex attracted to

anyone before i told people it felt like i was like i was lying like i was actively saying that when i was was damaged and diseased and who broke in unhealthy but man i just felt oppressed the almost cancel a buffer zone time people are certain feeling fantastical myself like i like i was eight it has no more different from anyone else and they were just experiencing something else something that they didn't know about but are still the same as that mose and i was healthy the first person i came out to was in the computer lab after school he was a friend of mind for the last three years and who is talking about this summer

girl you jesse thousand just in her and i was interested but i wasn't like attracted to her and he started trying to dissect the difference between those two as it it took awhile of talking about it and explain it and then i just looked and said it not sex attracted to anyone in a sexual or something we just exchanged that in the new entitlement and talk about again until i come up to him like officially come out like hey i think i'm deaf lies actual it was over the phone and he came over and i shouldn't even hints that i just joining as a member on even like there's this community we'll talk about it again until after i had found a van and head come out myself officially as being a sexual in a long conversation about when a sexually was in was still have conversations here and there but

most part he understands it and to accept me three no two people except it the same way i have to explain it the new each time and most reactions are unexpected said least have done very good responses of just immediately clicking in understanding what's i can totally understanding and getting him and other friends will reacted very negatively and friends i've been and known for years one of my friends every every trial a trial might bring up my relationship was immediately blown about iran relationship fried cheese this is the guy like such a great guy like the nicest person ever has just showed up and then like all bring up like hey james can win over his iou mean your best friend of

unknowing or girlfriend uneasily show up on your friends' coming out my mom exciting it coming and her mom took about an hour of talking to her and then showing her even in explaining it to her and the best i could get was every action those ones of it and support you on that you oppose any way you own life but i'm sorry sir it sounds to phase that's actually the corrections i've gotten from people she'd continue thinking was a phase for quite a while in riyadh have a few more talks but doesn't she said do you prefer pretty neatly it not much light and i told her not to discuss with them but he knew about me growing up timmy farm for dollar and she knew he'd just i don't they have at times the district is about his sharp eye

i met somebody on a vendor who i began dating fairly quickly within a month of knowing them and we dated for about two months they're growing that was living in canada at on the board at the time and who is you're going to meet later on relationship but we broke up before we're telling me we're not thither in those fine i was just talking to them you're counting on after i broke up with my previous girlfriends i began dating someone show that that from now casting a friend and coworker of mine named jamie love the individual during one meeting up casting their was in a whole lot of work for us to be doing so the whole crew of pastors at a dinner party repeat sun goes high and talked man named jamie

were often the corner we should talk again and then neo in next time during the next some car ride tower casting we talked the entire it over again back and got a little cat lady halfway back the week after that we didn't talk just cuddled for the entire trip to and from the casting and exchanged glances will we were there during work on separate sides the room and then that weekend i had a barbeque editor to its old mayan mother queer friends and i invited jay me and we talked the entire time by ourselves on a trampoline does talking in cuddling and then known that next friday it included jimi

though come over my house and we took a walk that permits in the woods street that sold breasted bridge that leads out and that's never on to this small sand are we talked for about an hour in the us when i asked aimee houghton they said yes and it was after that we're into the park just hung out in a cast after that a few hours later we went to a park on the side of town says this small sweetener stream that cuts through about a third of it and mark preston benches it pulled out a bench to the pillow parker news cassatt has to be honest knowing that a sexual

yearly my life would've made me avoid a lot of the the turmoil that self doubt that i hadn't few much of my younger life i really felt like i was different than ever now so i can feel your wife ellie goes like my brain was damaged like there's something wrong with me and i can see whatever else on campus something so basic something so really essential sex is in every part of society it's completely normalized if you don't see it if you don't follow it and it fueled a slew of the people is look at me differently throat coming to terms with my a sexuality if i've had a deal for depression to toxic toxic thoughts and just a lot

of just sadness about it but i know that have come in terms of that are just i just feel better about myself it and they're lovely relationship i hope you're not sad about i feel any more eyes and i smiled i tell people about it is that used to belong to that i can see dante is an outcast a new participant who identifies as a sensual we thank you for sharing his story on the next edition about casting dante will be speaking with professor at the boatyard to get an extra perspective on gay sexuality anthony romero is a professor of health and sciences at brock university in st catharines ontario he specializes in the study of human sexuality that syphilis edition about casting public radio's lgbt

q youth program where you don't have to be created the years this program has been produced by the outcast and team including youth participants dante joseph sydney michael jamie any answers our executive producer is mark silva's out casting is a production of media for the public good a listener supported independent producer based in new york more information about how testing is available that out casting mia dot org you'll find information about the show listened wings for all out testing episodes and the podcast link out gassing is also on social media connect with us on twitter tumblr facebook and youtube that out casting media if you're having trouble whether its at home or school or just with yourself call the trevor project hotline at eight six six forty eight seven three eight six or visit them online at the trevor project dot org the trevor project is an organization dedicated to lgbt q use suicide

prevention call it if you have a problem you have an online said you can use if you don't want to talk being different isn't a reason to hate or herself aryan go get a piece of paper will say one more time feed six six forty eight seven three eight six or online at the trevor project dot org you can also find a link on our site out gassing media dot org under casting lgbt key resources on injury they still listening join us again next time