On Queer: On Peer Pressure

I remember sitting on the bedroom floor of the first girl I ever loved. We were chatting about identity and eating Tostitos. She decided to tell me the story of how a friend of hers had recently slept with a girl from her math class. It was her friend’s first time.

She had all of the nitty-gritty details of the story. Her friend had been sitting doing homework in this girl’s apartment. The girl turned to her, put down her calculus textbook and said “Hey, want to do it?” The rest was history.

My friend was trying to help me figure out how to label myself. At the time I was trying to determine whether I was asexual, a label that wound up not fitting me. My friend told me she had a definitive test for me and my sexuality.

“If a girl from your math class had turned to you and said ‘Hey, want to do it?’ would you have said yes?” she asked me.

I thought about the question for a while, and decided that no I would not have assented to this impromptu hookup.

“Oh,” said my friend. “Then yeah, you’re definitely asexual.”

There are so many reasons I would have said no to my hypothetical math classmate. I would’ve barely known her. I wouldn’t have wanted my first time hooking up to be outside of a relationship. It was a Sunday night, and I would have wanted to watch "The Voice." Why is it that my not wanting to take part in sexy times with a near stranger label me as ace?

One thing that annoys me about hookup culture is that it puts a blanket over so many people. Hookups can be great and healthy for some people, but not for others. Yet if we don’t want to take part in random hookups, we are somehow labeled as 'other' for it.

This culture completely delegitimizes asexual people as well. To group me with an asexual person is to ignore the fact that we don’t have the same experiences and that the ace person will have had genuine struggles which I have not had to face.

Sexual peer pressure is real, and it is pervasive. I wish my friend had known how confused she would make me by implying that my not wanting to have sex just yet made me something other than who I am.

I hope someday soon we can all step back and throw out the culture which makes us feel pressured to do things we are not comfortable with. And to all the people out there, asexual or not, who don’t want to have sex just yet or don't want to do it at all, know that you are normal, healthy and not alone.