Stereotypes Perception Of Asexuals In Middle School

From the moment a child is born, the society in which they are born into begins to teach the child what is normal, and what is not. If the aforementioned child has a vagina, they will be labeled a girl and assumed to be heterosexual, and the same principle applies if the child has a penis. Yet the human world is not as simple as this established gender binary. For example, there are people who identify with a gender other than the sex assigned at birth.1 There are also people who are not sexually attracted strictly to the opposite gender, or at all. Such diversions from societal normality are more often than not greeted with opposition, as what is considered normal is also deemed right. The LGBT community has had to deal with fierce societal

The LGTBQ community have faced the extreme challenge of being accepted by society due to the dominating heterosexism of the American culture. Heterosexism is defined as “the overarching system of advantages bestowed on heterosexuals based on the institutionalization of heterosexual norms or standards and founded on the ideology that all people are or should be heterosexual, which privileges heterosexuals and heterosexuality, while excluding the needs, concerns, cultures, and life experiences of lesbians, gay males, bisexuals, pansexuals, and asexuals” (Adams et al., 2013). Those that identify as transgender have had a difficult time because of heteronormativity. Whereas, heterosexual people may not be able to understand why someone would want

When asexual people are represented in the media, they usually are not explicitly called asexual, or their lack of sexual attraction to others is driven by emotionlessness, detachment, or apathy. The association with asexuality and mental health disorders such as sociopathy fails to understand the key component of asexuality, which is asexuals do not feel sexual attraction, and just that. Asexuals can be completely able to feel romantic attraction, although some do not. No part of the definition of asexuality says asexuals must be completely cold and heartless. People are able to be kind and compassionate without forming sexual or romantic bonds with other people.

Simply put, I have known that I’m gay since the moment I learned what the word meant. In my eyes, I never tried to hide this part of me from my family and my parents knew from a young age that I was different. Being the great parents they are, they occasionally dropped hints that were supportive of the LGBT community to show that they accepted me for who I was. Looking back, I’m incredibly thankful to have such supportive parents, however, I was still not able to fully accept myself and chose to deal with this challenge internally and never spoke of it. For a great majority of early teenage years, I tried to shut away this part of me, but, this method didn’t solve any problems.

For the next two years I struggled with the concept that I might actually be gay. By junior I was certain that I was in fact all the things that I was called in middle school, but because of the negative memories I decided it was a secret that I was better of keeping to myself. That was until the spring semester of my senior year in high school when I decided that I was going to live my life the way I wanted to. I would no longer allow people to scare me into being anything other then what I wanted to be I would live my life openly and honestly. On the evening of February 16, 2014 I came out as Gay on literally every social media platform I owned. The following morning, to my surprise, my classmates for the most part greeted me with open arms. As I walked from class to class I received a staggering amount of compliments and support. I was quite frankly overwhelmed when I did get a negative comment and a dozen people rushed to my

By October 11th, 2015, everyone knew of my sexuality. Everyone, that is, except my mum. My mum, who I have long been close to, who I have known longer than anyone in the world, was completely unaware of her daughter’s attraction to people of the same gender.

My sexual orientation is not taken serious because it is deemed as me being confused. This was shown when I first came out, it was dismissed as me trying to fit in or confused. These accusations made me feel powerless as a bisexual person. My identity is invisible so I can hide it although I do not think it will be healthy to deny such an important part of me. To truly accept myself, I need to recognize my sexuality. However, this has proven to be difficult because of negative experiences. When I was in high school, a gay student said that being bisexual is impossible because a person cannot like both genders. This statement showed that in my own community, I was unwelcome. This feeling occurs in any LGBTQ event or space and non-LGBTQ spaces are not any better. The dominant group decides how much the LGBTQ community deserves and creates laws that affect us. They decide if we deserve to get married, be a part of a religion or can buy a simple cake. The mistreatment of my community is unnecessary. In order for there to be some change, the idea that being LGBTQ is a choice needs to be eliminated. To do this will be difficult, but normalizing gay couples on media is a start. There needs to be more LGBTQ characters on

While many species extinct throughout histories and many laws been passed to give us a better future, it isn’t enough to protect who we are and what we decide to be in life. We had leaders who fought to give us equality, but the fighting for sexuality has not end. Society struggles everyday to find peace, but yet still fear discrimination and inequality because of who they are. The sense of worry that other see’s you as mentally ill or born with birth defects. Having the thought that society will make fun of you for being abnormal.

Girls and boys are both targeted in different ways like, using certain colors, the perfect voice in commercials, and even the way the actors use the product, they are even targeted by using actors with a certain age. Stereotypes are also a big impact, for boys it could be violence and competition for girls it could be something like shopping every day and having to look like the girls in the hottest magazine to be beautiful.

Imagine if homosexuals were treated the same as everyone else, nobody gave them a second look, nobody silently whispering about them. Homosexuals have been treated differently since people have known about them, since they have come out and showed us the real them. Homosexuals, over years have been trying to be treated the same, like everyone else, they have walked through everyone's opinion, through the scientific thoughts about them, through the way they have been treated, through all these years. Throughout their history homosexuals have been fighting for rights,the rights to be married, everyone has thoughts about homosexuality whether it has to do with psychology, or genes, whether it is wrong or right according to their

What information, if any, do you wish you would have known prior to taking the course?

Intersex refers to a person who was born with both male and female parts. The growing LGBTQ movment world wide has been calling for equal rights for everyone who may not be seen as a traditional person seen in the world's eyes.

But I literally came out to my parents, In a letter! all my life I wanted to do this in a musical. But really, I went the hole day thinking I was going to shit or throw up (Still not sure the difference in feelings to this day) at any moment. Then I got to my Last class the teacher immediately new something was up. So I confided in her, I told her every thing the letter the bad shrimp, how i was going to get sent away to pray the gay away. But then as I'm sitting in class still keeping a close eye on the door and how fast I would need to run to get to the bathroom on time. I hear the worst sound I've ever herd, A Beep, on the intercom system “can you send Zachary Laiche to the office with his books.” (I literally just got nauseated thinking about it, just now) all I could do is look at my best-friend She says that I turned white as a ghost and looked as if I had passed away, Im pretty sure I did. I thought I was going to Jesus camp. But instead My parents threw me a huge party with wine and strippers, the whole nine yards, haha I wish, NOPE they were in the phone book looking for therapist… they asked me a wide range of questions like “am I sexually attracted to kids….” “WHAT!!!? NO! I'm gay not a perv.” What I master-bate to, “use your imagination.” but in any since that didn't go well. And well they forgot, or pushed me back into the closet with a

Still, I was not secure and had no idea to what my sexuality was. And with growing up in and with the societal idea that being anything other than straight was wrong and is something that can be vehemently mocked, I left it alone. Yes, I know that not everyone is going to berate me for liking my own sex, love is love after all. But school kids can be harsh and not actually realize the extent that their actions pose on someone else. I may have believed then that I could stand up for myself, but I still was not at a place where I could verbally fire back shots, and being physical was not possible with my stature. I see this now than I did back in 2010. However, I did have people in my life to defend me if I needed it, but I had to find myself and learn how to anticipate others’ actions.

I went into my bathroom turned on the lights, stood in front of the mirror, looked myself on the eyes, took a deep breath and said I’m gay. I told myself there’s no denying it, there’s no changing it, there’s no hiding it and it’s completely okay. After finally coming to terms with my sexuality I felt a lot better it was like I was carrying these heavy bags for a long time and one of them was lifted off my shoulders. It was a small victory for me, but, I knew there was still more things I had to do. Over the next few weeks, I slowly began to come out to friends and surprisingly was well received even by the ones that were religious. I knew coming out to friends would be a lot different than coming out to my parents so I hesitated and next thing I knew three years had gone by. I always wanted to tell them, but I was so afraid I let it get away from me