Author: Sydney Merrill

Exploring sexuality as an asexual person is quite an interesting experience. For me at least, it just didn’t matter for a long time. I never had to think about it because I wasn’t interested in a relationship or hookup. Even when I joined the GSA club in seventh grade, all the stories I heard were about a person being someone’s ‘gay awakening’ or them knowing for a long time that they liked people of the same gender, even if they never had a word for it. And I figured that if I didn’t have these experiences, then I was straight.

That wasn’t the case, evidently, but that is what growing up in a allonormative and heteronormative society will do. I’d say that most people don’t even know what the word ‘allonormative’ means. Just like people don’t really have to think about their heterosexuality if they’re straight, people don’t have to think about their allosexuality if they’re allo. Living in a world where you are the norm makes it unnecessary to think about what else there is.

And when you’re not the norm, it can be hard to recognize that unless you happen upon similar people’s experiences. So, I thought I was straight for a while. Then around ninth or tenth grade I thought I was bi because I realized that I didn’t like guys any more than I liked girls. But in eleventh grade, I realized that that was because 0 = 0.

This is where the internet really stepped up. I learned about asexuality and a bunch of labels on the ace spectrum. For a bit, I was trying to find myself in a label more in the middle. Maybe I was demi, or gray-ace, or one of the many other identities that wouldn’t mean I was completely, one hundred percent different from the majority of the world. But eventually I concluded that nope, I’m asexual. And while we’re at it, I’m sex-repulsed.

It made a lot of sense once I thought about it. For the longest time, I thought sex was something people made up for movies and such, like laser cannons or talking cars or unicorns. How could it be a real thing that real people actually liked? It seemed gross and painful (still does, honestly). When I finally accepted that people do actually have and think about sex, the world became a very uncomfortable place to live in.

You see, I don’t want to be able touch sex with a fifty foot pole. I don’t want to be associated with having sex, with being sexy, or with wanting sex. And the fact that I am lumped into the group of people who do makes me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I want to take everything on my body associated with it and just make it disappear. But I can’t do that, and I can’t control other people’s thoughts, so there’s no real solution (at least, that I’m aware of. If you think of something, let me know).

I’m not really sure why this has such a big impact on me. Maybe because it feels like I’m fundamentally different from so many others. Maybe because of how much sex and relationships are talked about in high school and college. Maybe it doesn’t need a reason.

Being aspec can be an isolating experience for some, as it’s harder to knowingly find other aspec people without explicitly discussing sexuality. I was lucky in that a couple of my high school friends are aspec, so it never felt like I had absolutely no one to relate to. Also, as I recently found out, the majority of my college friend group is aspec! It’s really interesting how we gravitated towards each other, even without knowing it at the time. My theory is that because we almost never talk about sex or romantic relationships, we find it more comfortable to be around each other than non-aspec people.

Simply due to allonormativity, I’ve been surrounded by conversations about hookups and physical attraction, but more than that, I’ve heard about crushes and romantic partners and dates. Romantic orientation is again something that many people don’t have to think about because it often goes along with sexual orientation. For me, it does; for others, it doesn’t. But even as an aromantic person, I’m not romance-repulsed. Orientation is about attraction, so I’ve never had a crush (what even is a crush?), but I don’t dislike the idea of having a partner.

I don’t know if this is a common aro experience, but it’s hard to imagine myself in a relationship without feeling some guilt. I know that aro people can be in romantic relationships just like ace people can have sex, but I wouldn’t feel for them what they feel for me (assuming they’re alloromantic). Even if I love them in a non-romantic way, I feel like I’d be depriving them of being loved in a way that they might want. And this is an issue that I would not bring into a relationship. Also, I’ve seen that when people get into a relationship, their friendships tend to suffer. Not on purpose, but people will want to spend more time with their partner, often at the expense of time with their friends. I value my friendships so much, and they already fulfill everything I could want.

I’m perfectly happy being single and not mingling.

Diving into Kpop has been such an adventure for me. I first started listening in early 2020 because of a soloist named AleXa, who had debuted only a couple months prior. I don’t remember how her music video for Bomb showed up, but it hooked me from the start.

It was the start of a rabbit hole, and I tumbled in without noticing how deep it went. AleXa, BLACKPINK, and BTS were my introduction to the Kpop world – the artist who had showed me the genre and the two biggest acts globally.

The whole Kpop culture was quite odd to me at first. I was someone who was pretty oblivious to pop culture, and I guess I still am, to a lesser extent. I focused more on the product – the song, the movie, the TV show, etc. – than the people in it. If you showed me a celebrity’s picture, odds are that I wouldn’t be able to name them, which is why I was taken aback at the culture of knowing tons about the idols. It seemed unnecessary and invasive, which, in some ways, it is, even more so than American celebrities.

Nevertheless, seven men somehow gained the power to make me smile. Maybe because they had so much more content than AleXa or BLACKPINK, maybe just by chance, but either way, BTS became people I cared about, people who made me happy just by being happy. It’s the same kind of joy I feel when I see my friends laughing together or when I see my brother having fun with his teammates. A deep seated fondness.

I ran away from it when I first realized. It’s scary, the idea that people who are halfway across the world and completely unaware of your existence can affect you emotionally.

But I kept coming back to the fact that they made me happy.

Why should I hide from something that makes me happy and isn’t hurting anyone else? So, I listened to their music, watched their videos, and accepted them into my life. I let them make me happy and let them send their messages to me through music.

Their music isn’t necessarily deeper than other artists, nor is it inherently more meaningful. But because I spent the time looking at lyrics and translations, the messages in the music were more prominent in my mind. With English songs, it’s easy to memorize the words without actually thinking about them, but songs in another language require more attention. Once BTS started releasing songs in English, it was already a habit to read the lyrics and understand the message, so I did spend the time to think about what they were trying to say.

This doesn’t only apply to BTS, by the way. I use them as the example because they’re the first artist I connected to on a level deeper than ‘I like your music’, and because they’re still the artist I connect to the most, but plenty of other artists have a similar effect. Maybe the same phenomenon even happens to non-English speakers when listening to English music.

Aside from lyrics, Kpop astounds me with performances. The synchronization within groups and between artists and backup dancers is astounding, and the choreography is definitely not a walk in the park. I’ve learned a few Kpop dances, and as a non-dancer athlete, it was pretty hard. For me though, the most awe-inspiring aspect of Kpop performances is the staging.

The artists will almost always have a custom or personalized set during performances, whether they’re at large, year-end awards shows or weekly music broadcasts. The background, the outfits, and the concept are all carefully tied together to create exceptional performances. For example, here’s part of a year end performance at the MMAs from 2019 – it’s definitely worth watching.

Kpop performances actually inspired me to think about Entertainment Engineering as a possible track for my education. I think it would be insanely cool to help build the stages and sets that people’s favorite artists perform on. Both designing sets and actually bringing all the crazy ideas to life seem like challenging but rewarding work.

In Kpop, it’s never about just one aspect – of an idol, of a song, of a performance. It’s about both meaningful connections with fans and putting on spectacular performances.