Tag: ace

aromanticism, asexuality, disability, faith, interview, queer

Get to know a-spectrum Christians: Destiny DiMattei

jennadewitt

As aromantic- and/or asexual-spectrum Christians and Jesus-adjacent people, it can be hard to believe that we are not alone. There are few examples of us in queer Christian spaces speaking about our experiences, not to mention the broader queer or Christian/faith worlds in general. I want to do my part to change that with this website and connect you with more a-spectrum Christian and Christian-ish people across the internet. This summer, I’m hosting a short Q&A series.

Destiny DiMattei

1. Hi! We’re so glad you’re here. Can you introduce yourself to the Invisible Cake Society with your name, pronouns, any identity labels you feel like sharing? 

Hi, my name is Destiny DiMattei, my pronouns are she/her and they/them. I’m asexual, genderqueer, fat, disabled, and white. I haven’t decided on my label for my romantic orientation, but for me, the lines between romance and friendship are hard to define. Especially once you take sex out of the picture.

2. What do you like to spend your time doing, online or in person, creatively and/or professionally? 

Professionally, I work as a peer recovery specialist at On Our Own Inc. Baltimore, and I’m working on getting my peer recovery specialist certification. I’m also getting certified as a body trust provider, and I’m a certified Body Image Coach. I am also a coleader of Body Liberation Baltimore. I also love doing activism, and when I can, I get involved with my local Baltimore chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. Creatively, I love to swim, watch horror movies, listen to podcasts (especially horror audio dramas), and hang out with friends. I’ve also recently got into ceramics. I’m hoping to get good at making human figures and dolls. I also love to create songs, and I consider myself a bit of a storyteller because I love making up scary stories. I need to start writing them down, but I hate writing. lol

3. When did you hear about aromanticism and asexuality, and when did you realize they described you? 

I don’t remember when the exact year was, but it was in my mid 20s. I was thinking about me trying to date and how I was dreading getting closer to people because I didn’t really want to have sex with people and someone asked me if I considered that I might be asexual. I went into the rabbit hole of research and discovered that this is me. Before that, I thought I was just waiting till marriage like some Christians do, even though that wasn’t a whole thing with my faith. My family never pushed that on me anyway. It was only after reflecting that I realized that was just my out.

4. What’s your faith background and how would you describe your relationship with religion/spirituality/faith today? 

I grew up Catholic, thanks to my granny. She loved the Catholic Church because of the sacraments, but she didn’t agree with everything, especially their thoughts on divorce because she’s remarried a few times. My granny isn’t the most LGBT inclusive, but she is better than some. Now after researching and realizing problems with the Catholic Church, I still have a connection with the Catholic faith, but I say I’m Catholic-ish. I’ve started attending an independent Catholic Church and I’m exploring other methods of spirituality. Now my only goal is to take my new understanding of what mainstream Christianity got wrong from an intellectual thought exercise to trying to develop a personal relationship with God.

5. How has your a-spec identity influenced your personal faith? 

I don’t really know how to answer that. Purity culture was not stressed too hard in my family, but I would hear it in music. It was always also just talks about families and having kids and all that, but I was never expected to live up to that because I’m disabled. As time went on, however, I realized that being ace doesn’t change that I’m a child of God. I think the divine knows me and loves me as I am. I truly believe that. I feel like there needs to be more support for ace Christians, who are living single lives or in the nontraditional relationships.

6.  How has your a-spec identity affected your relationship with religious or spiritual communities? 

I left Roman Catholic churches because I was afraid if they got to know me and I started talking about being asexual and open to romance from either gender that I might be rejected. I found an LGBT-inclusive Independent Catholic Church called Our Lady, Undoer of Knots, which is part of Dignity USA. It’s the Baltimore chapter. The only thing that kind of sucks is the priest talks about sometimes that the LGBT community was virtually just gays and then bis and trans entered, and now it’s the whole alphabet. This kind of joke makes me a little mad sometimes. I feel like asexuality is still a mostly invisible orientation.

7. How has your faith affected your relationship with the a-spec or larger LGBTQIA+ community? 

I’m very careful about who I share my faith with in the general LGBT community because there are some people that I’ve known who have had religious trauma. That’s the main thing I’ve noticed. My faith is pretty important to me, and sometimes I do educate when Christianity comes up about the more progressive and accepting version of things, but sometimes I feel alone in that effort.

8. Does your a-spec identity impact your gender identity? Or vice versa?

I don’t really think so. All I know is I figured out ace first before I started thinking about questioning my gender identity.

9. What should all a-spec Christians know?

They should know that they are all beloved children of God and that your identities are valid.

10. What do you want the larger affirming LGBTQIA+ and ally Christian community to know about a-spec Christians? 

The larger community should know that ace Christians share things in common with the wider community, but there are some differences. For ace Christians, it’s harder to find love if they want love, and marriage might not be in the cards. Also for disabled queer Christians, marriage might not be possible, especially if they’re worried about benefits, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Queer marriage cannot be the end all be all when it comes to LGBT inclusion and affirmation in the church. Maybe a commitment ceremony of QPRs or recognition of polyamorous couples would be a beneficial celebration of queer friendships, and more support for single people as well. If an ace person does get married (either because of love or convenience and necessity) support them as well.

11. At Invisible Cake Society, we highlight experiences that have been erased or seem invisible to those outside of them. What’s your favorite way to show your a-spectrum Pride?

I have an ace queer T-shirt that a friend from an ace meetup helped me make. I also try to go to ace meetups and just share things about myself. I also recommend my favorite podcasts, which two of them have ace main characters.

12. Do you have a favorite example of a-spec representation (whether explicitly stated or not) in media, books, public figures, theater, etc.? What about them resonated with you? 

I love the Magnus Archives podcast because of the horror and the ace representation.

13. Anything else you want readers to know?

Nothing that I can think of. I’m so happy to hear about other ace Christians out there.

14. Where can they follow your work online? 

I’m not very active online, but I do have a few social media things you can follow me on. I used to have TikTok, but I don’t use it anymore. My Facebook is Destiny DiMattei, and my Instagram. If you search my name, I should come up as well. I also am coleader of a Facebook group called Body Liberation Baltimore. I also just recently created my own Instagram for when I start up my coaching practice eventually. It’s a slow work in process, but it’s called ShrinklessCoach.

aromanticism, asexuality, faith, interview, queer

Get to know a-spectrum Christians: Gena Thomas

jennadewitt

As aromantic- and/or asexual-spectrum Christians and Jesus-adjacent people, it can be hard to believe that we are not alone. There are few examples of us in queer Christian spaces speaking about our experiences, not to mention the broader queer or Christian/faith worlds in general. I want to do my part to change that with this website and connect you with more a-spectrum Christian and Christian-ish people across the internet. This summer, I’m hosting a short Q&A series.

Gena

1. Hi! We’re so glad you’re here. Can you introduce yourself to the Invisible Cake Society with your name, pronouns, any identity labels you feel like sharing? 

My name is Gena Thomas, she/her, and I am a demiromantic ace.

2. What do you like to spend your time doing, online or in person, creatively and/or professionally? 

Writing is my intuition. Watching my kids play sports is my favorite source of entertainment these days. Playing rec sports (volleyball recently and now softball) is probably entertainment for others, and volunteering with Indivisible (the No Kings protest organization) keeps me sane in this political environment.

3. When did you hear about aromanticism and asexuality, and when did you realize they described you? 

I had heard about asexuality several years ago, but it wasn’t until I was doing some research for a piece of fiction that I really understood the difference between romantic and sexual attraction—and therefore aromanticism and the spectrum of asexuality. I was in my late 30s when I realized that this was an identity that described me. Because I didn’t understand that attraction is not just attraction, but has types, I had no framework to question my struggles with sex except for purity culture and what doctors told me was a typical low sex drive for women. So for a very long time, I felt abnormal, off, and weird without believing I was and am fearfully and wonderfully made.

4. What’s your faith background and how would you describe your relationship with religion/spirituality/faith today? 

Growing up in a Pentecostal church, I never really knew a day without Christ in my life, and while there is religious trauma I’m working through, I’m grateful that I was introduced to Christ at such a young age and have always believed in being like Christ. As an adult, I moved around to different evangelical churches, but never really found a denominational home especially as I deconstructed and began reconstructing my faith. Now, I attend a United Methodist church and it has been such a great fit for me theologically. Faith has always been such a huge part of who I am, and I’ve found a place where I not only feel like I belong in this moment but feel like there’s space to grow without being judged for how that evolving takes shape as I continue to reconstruct.

5. How has your a-spec identity influenced your personal faith? 

Love Beyond Sex, a book I’m currently working on, is my attempt to answer this very important question. When you grow up believing that queerness is sin, it’s a long road to loving your queer self. Especially when you identify as the identity that feels like one of the most queer in the queer community because it pushes the boundaries of what sexual liberation actually is. That is, can sexual liberation include not wanting sex or only wanting it under certain circumstances — and I have you, Jenna, to thank for seeing asexuality so clearly through this lens.

I’m often so grateful that I became an affirming Christian before I realized I was ace. It was like the Spirit was guiding me on a journey of truly learning to love others as a way of leading me back toward fully loving myself. I’ve often heard the phrase, “You can’t give what you don’t have” as a way of communicating the need to love oneself first before loving others. But I think it goes both ways. Sometimes you can’t have what you don’t give. For me, making space for queerness in my theology first resulted in me being able to ask myself the courageous questions about love and sex and attraction. I never had to personally ask myself the very unjust question that many queer people are asking: Does God still love me? My expanded faith opened up the path to immediately know the answer to that question the moment I saw my ace identity: Yes, always and forever, God loves me.

6.  How has your a-spec identity affected your relationship with religious or spiritual communities? 

Even as an affirming person of faith in a church whose values were more conservative than my own, I felt OK staying put for other reasons. But when I started feeling the need to really show up authentically, it felt impossible to stay at an evangelical church. If people began talking about “those queers over there,” they were talking about me whether they knew it or not. For my own spiritual health, it was time to leave. But to be honest, I miss the people there and our shared values. It was a multiethnic church, and it stretched me in ways that a monoethnic church cannot.

On the other hand, in working on the book, I’ve been privileged to meet many Christian aces across the world, and even though many of my interactions with them were specific to a survey or a short video interview, just knowing them feels like its own sense of belonging. From these interactions came this concept of eternal identity that I talk about in my book:

From the moment I began to belong to this word, I also began to belong to the community—past, present, and future—behind that word. The word became flesh, and yet, it had always been flesh—always been right there in my bones, in my blood, in my marrow. And in the world around me. The meaning of the word has existed from the beginning. It was created, just as the stars and the grass were created. It’s much easier looking back to see its eternality. … because of my experience with the weight of the word asexual, I now grasp how something can exist before our understanding of it. I better understand how a personhood, an identity, can bring with it life and light. I better understand how words take on flesh and that a moment or series of moments can change the trajectory of our lives. I understand how one word can bring with it both the heaviest sense of darkness and simultaneously the most piercing, bright light. The word asexual was made flesh for me, and everything came into light because of it.

7. How has your faith affected your relationship with the a-spec or larger LGBTQIA+ community? 

I’m not sure it has.  

8. Does your a-spec identity impact your gender identity? Or vice versa?

No, it doesn’t.

9. What should all a-spec Christians know?

If you are ace and your Christian community is making you ask of yourself, “Does God love me as I am?” that question is unjust. It’s a reflection of your community that it would cause you to ask the question. It is not a reflection of you. Yes, always and forever, God loves you as you are. And there are churches and/or spiritual communities that can and are ready and willing to affirm that in you.

10. What do you want the larger affirming LGBTQIA+ and ally Christian community to know about a-spec Christians? 

We may be the last letter in some of the acronyms and not in others, but we exist. Please take the time to ask us questions and learn from us. True inclusivity requires mutuality and just respecting our presence isn’t the end goal. We need allies too. We need awareness too. And that goes both ways. As aces, we need to constantly ask ourselves: who are we leaving out? Who are we merely respecting but not learning from?

I truly believe the ace community has much to teach the Church, as I wrote about in my article under my pen name at Red Letter Christians, but I hope that more and more, we can see resources, white papers, and theological articles at queer and ally Christian spaces on asexuality. There are too few.

11. At Invisible Cake Society, we highlight experiences that have been erased or seem invisible to those outside of them. What’s your favorite way to be visible? 

Writing: it’s actually how I become visible to myself first and then beyond myself to the world around me.

12. Do you have a favorite example of a-spec representation (whether explicitly stated or not) in media, books, public figures, theater, etc.? What about them resonated with you? 

I really enjoyed the ace characters in Elatsoe and The Charm Offensive. While both main characters are ace and both have aspects that really resonated with me, it was reading them both near each other that helped me see the ace spectrum come alive.

When I can, which has not been much lately, I jump into a piece of fiction I’ve started that follows the life of a 20-something ace. Her name is Mattie and she’s helped me process a lot myself: a family history of breast cancer, religious trauma, emotionally immature parental figures, and how being asexual intersects with all of these things. I hope one day others will get to meet her.

13. Anything else you want readers to know?

I want to speak to any closeted aces. There are many reasons that queer people do and don’t come out, and it’s no different for the ace community. If you are reading this and thinking, “I wish I felt safe enough to come out,” whether you are referring to folks in your real life or online spaces or both, please know that you aren’t alone. And know that this journey you are on is not one you have to be on alone. You can be fully ace and fully quiet about it at the same time, these are not mutually exclusive.

14. Where can they follow your work online? 

Best places for people to find me:

asexuality, faith, interview, queer

Get to know a-spectrum Christians: Kristen Tallau

jennadewitt

As aromantic- and/or asexual-spectrum Christians and Jesus-adjacent people, it can be hard to believe that we are not alone. There are few examples of us in queer Christian spaces speaking about our experiences, not to mention the broader queer or Christian/faith worlds in general. I want to do my part to change that with this website and connect you with more a-spectrum Christian and Christian-ish people across the internet. This summer, I’m hosting a short Q&A series to introduce them to you.

Kristen Tallau
  1. Hi! We’re so glad you’re here. Can you introduce yourself to the Invisible Cake Society with your name, pronouns, any identity labels you feel like sharing?
    Hello! Thanks for having me! I’m Kristen, pronouns are she/her/hers. I identify as asexual, biromantic, and sapphic, which is basically a fancy way of saying I’m not sexually attracted to anyone, but I am romantically attracted to anyone, and chances are it’ll be a woman.
  2. What do you like to spend your time doing, online or in person, creatively and/or professionally?
    Well, my day job tends to be crazy at times. I work as a video engineer in the corporate conference world, so my days can be anywhere from 4 to 18 hours long. When I have a day off or time to myself, I love baking, especially bread. (Yes, I have watched every series of Great British Bake Off, multiple times! And bread week is always my favourite!) I also enjoy reading, mostly sci fi and adventure for fiction, and I’ve recently started getting back into playing Switch.
    So if anyone has some game recs, I’d love to hear!
  3. When did you hear about aromanticism and asexuality, and when did you realize they described you?
    It was during Pride month of 2018. I was seeing posts from friends about it, and it was the first time I had been seeing people posting about the LGBTQIA+ community with the IA added. The I was easy enough to guess, but I was curious about the A. So, I googled it. And I started reading all these stories from people describing asexuality and their experiences with it, and I realised I was reading about my experience too. Took awhile longer to realise the biromantic and sapphic labels, but finally having something to describe what I had (not) experienced my whole life was so wonderful.
  4. What’s your faith background and how would you describe your relationship with religion/spirituality/faith today?
    I grew up Independent Baptist. Like not quite Duggar-level fundamentalist, but not super far off, either. I had friends who were IBLP (Institute in Basic Life Principles). It got better when my family started attending a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) church when I was at university. It got even better after I left the SBC. I still follow Jesus, and I would still say I’m a Christian, but it’s the Jesus of the gospels (rather than white Republican Jesus) who loves and welcomes queer people, rather than shutting them out. My faith is still evolving, but it’s still there.
  5. How has your a-spec identity influenced your personal faith?
    It’s made it more inclusive. Realising my own queerness after 30 years of believing being queer is a sin forced me to reexamine a lot of other parts of my faith and expand it to include a wider spectrum of people.
  6. How has your a-spec identity affected your relationship with religious or spiritual communities?
    To be honest, it’s made me more cautious. Being primarily from super fundie spaces means people will misunderstand you, mishear you, and think they know exactly what you’re talking about, and basically anything that ends in the term “sexuality” is generally frowned upon. I was telling a friend at a former church about an interaction I’d had on AVEN’s website, and suddenly one of the elders of the church had run up to the table and interjected with, “You know there won’t be homosexuals in heaven, right? You know that, right?” And then just as quickly ran off. Like, dude, what? Now I wait for people within a church or religious space to prove themselves first before even telling them about my orientation.
  7. How has your faith affected your relationship with the a-spec or larger LGBTQIA+ community?
    If I’m going to truly say that everyone is made imago Dei, that is, in the image of God, that includes all the diversity and variation we see. And that includes the not: the not sexually attracted, the not romantically attracted, the not gender affiliated. It does not make any of us less-than. I see Jesus speaking positively about the queer people of his time, and teaching that sex and marriage will not be a thing in the kingdom. Inclusion means including those for whom something may not apply.
  8. Does your a-spec identity impact your gender identity? Or vice versa?
    Not really. I identify as female, and always have. Realising my asexuality didn’t affect that. Maybe it will in the future, but I have other things to dwell on for now.
  9. What should all a-spec Christians know?
    We are not broken. We are not partial human beings because we aren’t attracted to others in ways they might expect. For my fellow millennial a-specs who are also purity culture survivors, this is especially important.
  10. What do you want the larger affirming LGBTQIA+ and ally Christian community to know about a-spec Christians?
    Our faith is not contingent on our identity, and vice versa. And while so many churches use marriage as an illustration of the “Christian walk,” there are so many more ways to be inclusive of those of us who may not ever marry. Community is the support everyone needs; it just shows up differently for us.
  11. At Invisible Cake Society, we highlight experiences that have been erased or seem invisible to those outside of them. What’s your favorite way to show your a-spectrum Pride?
    I’m a hobbyist baker, so I lean into the cake and garlic bread tropes a lot. Bread actually is my favourite thing to bake, so it makes it easy. It doesn’t necessarily lead to conversations about being a-spec, but when it does, it’s a fun conversation, and either way, you have something to snack on with friends! And who doesn’t love that?
  12. Do you have a favorite example of a-spec representation (whether explicitly stated or not) in media, books, public figures, theater, etc.? What about them resonated with you?
    One is Elsa, from Frozen. Also I high-key relate to her wanting to be alone once everything goes to hell, but that’s beside the point. She’s not your typical Disney princess, looking for her Prince Charming. She’s dealing with learning how she’s not actually broken by being different from others. She’s telling off her sister, Anna, for being boy crazy (I relate to that SO hard), and Elsa is more concerned with doing what she needed to do to be queen rather than finding her own person.

    Another is Dr. Spencer Reid, from Criminal Minds. Granted, I haven’t watched the entire series (it’s so dark!), so I’m not sure if he’s ever presented as actually a-spec, but it does seem to be his thing, even though he does have partners here and there. As someone who’s asexual but also biromantic, it’s great to me to see someone for whom that distinction also seems to exist.
  13. Anything else you want readers to know?
    Trust people when they say they’re aspec. Ask questions to learn. Just like anyone who says they’re gay/trans/etc., please believe us when we say what we are. Trust us. We know.
  14. Where can they follow your work online?
    I’m a cohost on the Where Do We Go From Here? podcast, on the No Hard Feelings segment once a month. Personally, I’m mostly active on Threads and Instagram, where my handle on both is @krtall. I also have a baking Insta @aceofbakes24 where it’s just photos of my baking.
asexuality, queer, resources

Ace and allo partnerships

jennadewitt

Recently, I was asked about ace and allo marriages, and I didn’t have any resources about marriage/partnership and asexuality, especially when one of those partners is allo. In fact, there really aren’t many resources like this out there in general. I’ve never been in a partnership like this as an adult, so I don’t have any experience in this area to draw from. However, aces and their allo partners on Twitter were eager to help and share what they have learned. We all hope these stories and links can strengthen ace/allo marriages and long-term committed partnerships of all kinds. 

My thanks to M.J. Weissenberger, Mitchell Atencio, Grey, Loxley Blaine, Russ Walker, Case, Cody Daigle-Orians, Kate Wood, our anonymous friends, and everyone who replied to my tweet here.

Many mentioned setting boundaries, trying nontraditional things that work for you (separate beds or bedrooms, for example), honest communication, being willing to compromise when you can but be honest when you can’t, and learning more about various ace labels and experiences to have clearer language to communicate your needs and desires. While therapy in general is a good fit for this kind of relationship issue, many therapists are not ace-informed, especially marriage and relationship therapists, so be careful going in to choose someone who understands your situation and won’t pressure you into sex or relationship structures that don’t work for you. For example, some ace/allo partners found polyamory was a good fit and enjoy multiple relationships, but others didn’t and resented how it was assumed or presented as the “solution” to fix their relationship. Some of these answers may work for you and some won’t. They are not blanket solutions, simply lived experiences of those in these partnerships.

Here’s more of what aces and allos in relationships with aces had to say:

Continue reading “Ace and allo partnerships” →