Ep 178: Asexuality and Drag feat. Venus Envy
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SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aroace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)
KAYLA:… and a demi-straight girl (that’s me, Kayla)
VENUS: And an asexual drag queen, that’s me Venus Envy.
SARAH: talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else that we just don’t understand.
KAYLA: On today’s episode: Asexuality and drag.
ALL: — Sounds fake, but okay.
SARAH: Welcome back to the pod!
KAYLA: Uh, m’ilk. I was trying to think of a single drag queen’s name that started with an m. There’s one called Milk.
SARAH: I had in the back of my head prepared m’onkeys playing with slime because i saw that on Instagram.
KAYLA: Oh, that’s exciting.
SARAH: That’s just where we’re going. Moving on, as we do when we have guests. Just gloss right over that bit. We have a lovely lovely guest today. Kayla, you know more about the world of drag than I do so Kayla’s going to be taking the lead on this episode. Take it away Kayla you, go.
KAYLA: Yeah so we have a very exciting guest on today to help us dive into the world of drag and how it intersects with asexuality. So we have Venus Envy on, hello!
VENUS: Hello, how are you?
KAYLA: Good, I’m very excited to have you on. I recently, as Sarah said, got into drag because in quarantine what else are you supposed to do than watch all of the seasons of Drag Race which is the easiest way to introduce yourself to drag. So yeah very excited. Do you want to give us a little introduction of yourself?
VENUS: Sure, my name is Venus Envy, I am 29 years old and I live in Orlando, Florida. I’ve been doing drag for about 5 years now and I am actually a woman who performs as a drag queen.
KAYLA: Yeah which I’m super excited to talk to you about too, even though I know it doesn’t have much to do with asexuality or the themes of our podcast I guess. I guess we should describe what drag is for anyone who doesn’t know before we get into all of that. So do you have, if you meet someone who’s never heard of a drag queen, do you have an easy way to describe that to someone?
VENUS: Yes so the definition I always use for drag—and this encompasses any kind of drag—not just drag queens, is that drag is the artistic expression of gender. So a lot of the times when you think of a drag queen, you’ll think of a very hyperfeminine persona, when you think of a drag king you’ll think of a masculine drag persona. But there’s also drag that’s kind of genderfucked and club kid and neither here nor there with gender and I think that’s what makes drag awesome.
KAYLA: Yeah that’s what I definitely the type of drag I lean to the most is the very androgynous genderfuck drag, I think it’s very interesting. So you said you started doing drag five years ago. What was the reason you started being like, okay I’m going to actually do this?
VENUS: Well it actually started a long time before that. I have loved the art of drag ever since I was 14 or 15 years old. So I’m talking pre Drag Race cause I’m kinda old. I don’t remember exactly how I got into it but I just remember being a teenager and trying to consume as much drag I possibly could, even though I wasn’t old enough to actually go out to the clubs. And then as soon as I turned 18 and moved to Orlando for college, it was a bigger city and I actually did have the opportunity to go out and experience drag in the real world and see how diverse it really is and that’s kind of what inspired me to do drag myself. Just seeing that drag in the real is actually so much cooler and so much more unique than the drag you see on mainstream media.
SARAH: I was going to say, as someone who doesn’t know that much about the world of drag, I feel like everyone’s impression of it who isn’t entrenched in it is that they think the people who are on Rupaul’s Drag Race, you usually have cisgender men who might identify as gay who are drag queens. And that’s just what people think of when they think of drag but it’s a lot broader than that in reality.
(5:00)
VENUS: Yeah I’d be willing to say that cis gay men who perform as hyperfeminine personas, i will say that’s probably about the majority of the drag scene. But, there really are drag entertainers of all genders with drag personas of all genders out there. And once you’re in it, the gender of the person beneath it generally doesn’t matter as much.
SARAH: Yeah, it’s about the performance, it’s about the expression.
VENUS: Yeah.
KAYLA: I know as someone who started with Rupaul’s Drag Race, kind of moving from that further, when that’s your starting point you’re like, oh yeah, drag queen is a man dressing as a woman. Because I never really experienced drag in person it’s interesting to see it in the media. When you were growing up and you were fourteen getting into drag, where did that come from? Where were you seeing drag queens? Were they where you lived? Where were you seeing them?
VENUS: I wouldn’t say I was seeing them so much as I was intentionally seeking them out. I think my introduction may have actually been the Rocky Horror Picture Show which was and still is one of my all-time favorite movies. And then the other movie I was obsessed with Party Monster. So my introduction to drag was more of that androgynous genderfucked club kid type of drag. And honestly, even though that’s not the type of drag I mostly do, that is kind of what I gravitated towards and what attracted me to drag in the first place.
KAYLA: I never even thought of Rocky Horror as drag. I think I saw Rocky Horror for the first time when I was way to be young to be seeing it so I never fully conceptualized what I was looking at but yeah that is a 100% drag. Okay so now I want to pivot a little bit to the other half of this conversation which is your asexuality. You are an asexual person so could you share how long you’ve been identifying that way or how old you were when you were realizing what you were, what you might be.
VENUS: I realized pretty early on that I didn’t experience sexual attraction. But when I say early on I’m still talking about that 14-15-year-old phase of my life, when it’s generally pretty normal to not be addressing that kind of stuff. And then as I got older and I still wasn’t getting that interest, I kind of started to think like, maybe I’m just a late bloomer and it became maybe something’s wrong with me, and then it became maybe I’m a lesbian but I’m so in the closet about it I’m internalizing it this way. And I had always been, all throughout middle and high school one of those allies that had been way too involved, so everyone assumed was probably not out yet and was probably going to be the last one to know. I do actually identify as—and I’m still kind of figuring that part out—as biromantic or panromantic because I do occasionally experience romantic attraction. I’ve had crushes on boys, girls, gender nonconforming individuals but they’re crushes. There’s nothing sexual about it, it’s very surface level and I generally don’t pursue it either because they’re my friends and that’s just crossing a line or I know they’re not interested in me or because I know that even if I was to be in a relationship with them, that relationship probably would not really go anywhere just because of my general lack of sexual attraction or desire to do anything sexual or even really romantic. I didn’t really know what asexuality was until I was 21 years old and I, as most of us do, came across it on tumblr.com and that was the first time I ever learned about what asexuality is. I’d never seen the term, it was in this comic by a girl who identified as asexual about her experience with asexuality and I looked at this comic and I was like, that’s me. I didn’t know that was an option, I didn’t know I could do that. I didn’t know there was a word for it. So, I came out that very same day, I sent that comic to my mom and said, I figured it out! And she was kind of like, okay cool. She always knew I was a virgin at 21, even know at 29. I don’t think she was surprised but that’s kind of how it happened. I’ve been out ever since. I wasn’t actually outspoken about it until very recently, just until the past maybe two years. But for all intents and purposes I have been out for about eight years now.
(10:00)
SARAH: I love how Tumblr is the birthplace of all asexuals. It’s where we all found it.
KAYLA: It really is. It’s interesting to hear how your story maps on to “maybe I’m a lesbian.” I’ve recently seen so many people being like, well I thought I was bi because I had all of the same attractions to all of the genders but I didn’t realize that that was no attraction to anyone not the same attraction. It’s very interesting to watch people move through those queer identities as trying to figure it out.
VENUS: Yeah it’s definitely been a confusing ride but we’ve gotten there.
SARAH: It’s all connected it’s all just a complicated bundle of things. But you know what, we made it, we’re fine.
KAYLA: It’s true, you made it, that’s all that counts. So you realized you’re asexual before you decided to actually participate in drag, doing it yourself. Did it ever cross your mind of “I wonder if my asexuality not get in the way of drag but influence my drag—” was that ever something you even considered when you were thinking about starting to do drag?
VENUS: That’s not a thought that crossed my mind I think that’s a pure naivety. To me drag never seemed like it was a sexual thing, burlesque never seemed to me like it was a sexual thing, going to nightclubs never seemed like a sexual thing to me. I think part of that is because I was probably just a very socially oblivious to just how integrated sex and sexuality is in all of those things. And it really wasn’t until I had been doing drag for a couple of years and I started to become a little bit more well-known on the internet, someone brought it to my attention that “if you’re asexual, why do you dress so sexy?” I just never thought of it that way, I guess. I just never considered myself sexy, I guess. So it just never really crossed my mind, honestly.
SARAH: I feel like that’s a very ace experience. You don’t view certain things as sexual, things that other people view as inherently sexual or super sexualized. You’re just like, this is just how I dress and how I act and whatever. And once you’re able to map what other people see onto it, you’re like, “ohh, is this what you’ve been thinking and seeing this whole time?”
KAYLA: Yeah I think we talked about this in another episode, the ace or really, aro as well, experience of people saying you’re flirting when you have no intention of flirting yourself and it’s kind of because like it never crossed my mind to flirt so why would I think of this as a flirting activity? I think it’s similar to that of, I’ve never found someone else dressing this way to be sexy, so why would I think it’s sexy for me to do it?
VENUS: Yeah also for drag, I pad my body, I cinch my waist, contour my chest to unrealistic proportions, but when I do all of that, I’m not thinking of it as sexy, I’m thinking of it as, I want to look like a Monster High doll. Or, this is how I wish my body looked or I want to look like a cartoon. Those are the kinds of thoughts going on in my head when I’m doing it and when I am in full drag, I feel like I look like a clown so I feel like, if anyone finds me sexy, that really says more about them than it does about me.
SARAH: If you think I’m sexy, that’s on you!
KAYLA: It’s very true. Like you said, drag is about performing gender. Not necessarily about performing sexuality. When I look at your drag, it feels very hyperfeminine. This is taking what people see femininity to be and taking it to an extreme. Like you said, like a doll or something like that. The expression of gender, and it’s kind of interesting to think about, when did sexuality come into that? Cause I think a lot of people do see the drag world as very sexualized. So what do you think, because when I watch drag, I do get the sense that it is a sexual performance for a lot of performers trying to put on kind of acting like a woman, so I’m going to attract these men. What do you think it is about drag that makes it a sexualized thing?
(15:00)
VENUS: I guess what makes drag a very sexualized thing for some people, I guess it just depends on why you do drag. For some people, drag is a way of embracing or expressing femininity or masculinity, when society tells them that they need to be the opposite. So for them I feel that there’s this sense of confidence and power that comes with being able to present yourself in a way that you are told that you are not allowed to for them. So I can see how for some people, when they’re in drag it may feel like, “wow I’m gorgeous, wow I’m hot, wow I’m sexy, I feel so confident and powerful” whereas for me it doesn’t have that sexuality piece. But also for me, drag isn’t about presenting in a way that I’m told I’m not allowed to present, it’s more so going way over the top with my presentation of femininity as someone whose femininity is policed on a regular basis just being a woman in society.
KAYLA: No that does make a lot of sense. And I kind of wonder too for a lot of queer people, their sexuality is very policed. For a gay man, it’s not necessarily okay for you to walk around talking about how much you love to have sex. Or to act very sexy. So I do kind of wonder if that’s part of it, okay so I’m putting on this persona, I’m putting myself in this performance state and now no one can stop me from presenting what is usually policed both for gender and sexuality.
VENUS: I never thought of that but that makes a lot of sense actually because for me I’m not, as someone who’s asexual, I don’t have people in society telling me, stop talking about that. That’s inappropriate, think of the children. No one’s doing that to me. So I don’t feel the need to express and reclaim that. Whereas for other queer people who are policed in that way, it probably is a very empowering experience to be overly sexual.
SARAH: It’s one of the reasons why pride is so sexualized. The asexual community’s relationship to that is a whole other can of worms but it was in large part because these people were told they couldn’t express themselves that they’re saying “fuck you, we’re going to have a whole party.”
KAYLA: I’m going to wear a thong to pride!
SARAH: So it was a rebellion against the status quo but it was also a means of performance and self-expression. It is cool to have you or other drag performers who maybe don’t fit the stereotype of what we think about when we think about drag queens because then those people are coming at it from a different perspective. They’re doing it for different reasons and that impacts how they perform and I think the greater diversity of types of performances we have, the better.
VENUS: Yeah I think it’s important to have diversity in drag and like I said I think that that’s just what inspired me so much, just seeing how diverse drag is in the real world compared to what we see on television. And I think part of that is in addition to gender diversity and racial diversity, sexual diversity as well.
KAYLA: Yeah for sure. What has it been like for you as a female drag queen? Are there—from my limited view of just getting into drag—for me, it feels like it’s all gay men. Is that the reality and how is entering the scene as a female drag queen—what’s the experience like?
VENUS: My experience may be a little different than some other women who do drag because I’ve been doing drag for five years but I’ve been a part of my local drag scene for about 10 or so years. Just working at the clubs, working backstage, backup dancing for queens, doing queens’ makeup. I’ve just kind of always been there and by the time I started doing drag, several years into my involvement in the club scene, most of the other queens in my generation were people who I had helped them start out. I had been supporting them from the beginning, they were my friends, they were people I knew very well, so when I started doing drag myself, it didn’t have that, oh she’s an outsider, why is she here, what makes her think that she’s entitled to do this? It was just kind of, oh she’s doing drag now? That makes sense. They already knew I could do the makeup, they already knew I could perform, they already knew I knew the history, they already knew I was part of the club scene so it was a logical next step. So I didn’t really receive any pushback from my local drag scene and my local drag scene also living in Orlando, a large part of our drag scene is transgender women so when I was first starting out, a lot of those transgender women really went out of their way to kind of welcome me into it, they made sure I got bookings, they made sure I was treated fairly. I think having that experience was amazing because not only did I not receive pushback but anytime I would receive pushback there was always another queen who identified as a woman to say oh so you’ll book me but not her? What are you trying to say, I’m not a woman? And would shut it down really quick.
(20:00)
KAYLA: Oh yeah I bet it would. Yeah and I think it proves your point of how important it is to have diversity in drag because there were other people around you who were trans, who were not gender-conforming, it wasn’t just a boy’s club, it made it easier to enter and I imagine as time goes on it gets more diverse, it’ll be easier for more diverse people to join. Is there anything about your performance—I know you said you only realized within the last couple years “oh I guess asexuality and drag kind of is odd to people or I guess there is kind of a dissonance”—has that affected your performance at all? Did you ever think, “oh maybe I shouldn’t dress this sexual, or maybe I should change how I’m performing” or anything like that?
VENUS: I wouldn’t say it’s affected my performances at all. My performance style, this isn’t all the time, but when I actually have the time to put effort into what I’m doing and to put out a number I really like, I love performing stupid, campy comedic numbers. So because that’s most of what I perform, I don’t view it as doing anything sexy, and when I do, I almost view it as mocking sexuality. I performed the song “Sex Dreams” by Lady Gaga and it was for a lingerie-themed party so the number had to be somehow based on lingerie or you had to wear lingerie. And I came out looking probably more sexy and gorgeous than I’ve ever felt in my whole entire life. I felt so confident and then I performed “Sex Dreams” and I squired the audience with an enema filled with water. Do I necessarily know what an enema is for? No. Have I used it ever before? No. And I think it was funny and that’s what matters.
SARAH: That’s delightful.
KAYLA: I love that because it’s-yeah I don’t know, the more I think about it, I think at the beginning of this podcast I was like, “drag is about gender performance not necessarily sexuality performance,” but it also very much is and can be a performance of sexuality. You kind of mocking, “okay we’re doing sexual today, I’m going to be so over the top sexual that you’ll realize how stupid being sexual sometimes is and how it actually does not make sense sometimes.”
SARAH: I feel like gender and sexuality are sometimes so related. I feel like they both have their—they fit together, they both have a place in the queer community because a lot of the times, it’s when people start questioning their sexuality, it’s also when they question how they express their gender. Whether that leads to them identifying as non-binary or trans or not, it still leads to them thinking about how they express themselves. So I think drag is such a queer thing, such a queer activity and queer space, it really does express both the gender and sexuality of it all.
(25:00)
VENUS: Yeah.
KAYLA: Speaking of drag being very queer, it’s obviously very embedded in the queer community, how has your drag community been about your asexuality specifically? Have you received any pushback about you’re not queer, asexuality doesn’t belong here, or any of that?
VENUS: I haven’t received any of that from my own community, I started working at the clubs when I was 18 years old and I didn’t even know what asexuality was until I was 21 years old. So for a while I was a very awkward, late-stage teenager who would get hit on all the time and have panic attacks cause I didn’t know how to respond. And I didn’t like it. And I didn’t like boys and I didn’t know if I liked girls, and I think that my general reputation from that was just, she’s confused. And that’s kind of what I was. I was confused. And when I did realize I was asexual, I wouldn’t say I came out to people but I did start using that as a response when people would proposition me and I wouldn’t be interested. I now had a valid excuse that wouldn’t hurt anybody’s feelings. So when I did come out to people it was people who had made advances on me that I had turned down and that kind of just became an educational moment each time I had to have that conversation and I wouldn’t say I received any kind of pushback because for the most part people were not concerned with my sexual orientation because people were not—and when I say people I mean the other entertainers—they weren’t sexually interested in me so why did they care about my sexual orientation? When I started I believe I was the only cis woman doing drag. There were cis women doing burlesque but I think I was the only cis woman doing drag by the time I started doing it. Because I wasn’t sexualized, because I was a woman and most of the people I was performing with aren’t sexually attracted to women, it just kind of never really came up and it was never really an issue. I think that’s why I felt safe there.
KAYLA: Yeah that makes a lot of sense.
SARAH: Because drag is such a queer thing, obviously it’s not a prerequisite, you must prove how you’re queer before you can participate in drag or that sort of thing. Do you ever feel—not necessarily from your own community cause obviously they’ve been wonderful and accepting—but do you ever feel like from just the broader void that is the Internet, do you ever feel as though there are people would be exclusionary towards an ace drag performer? You mentioned you hadn’t faced any issues from your own community but like, as a person on the Internet has that happened to you?
VENUS: Online, yes, I haven’t received it as much for being asexual, well as I have for just being a woman. I’ve definitely got pushback for both part of the reason that all the while realizing I was asexual and was super happy when I was 21, I stopped mentioning it on the Internet for a while because like I said, I discovered that on Tumblr. At the time I was a decently popular Tumblr user not to brag—
KAYLA: So was Sarah, it’s okay.
SARAH: I wouldn’t call myself a popular Tumblr user.
KAYLA: Within your fandom I feel, whatever this doesn’t matter.
VENUS: I was so happy I had a word for it and I was so confident and comfortable I started making posts about the fact that I was asexual and every time I’d make a post, I’d get an onslaught of anonymous messages telling me, you know, “that’s just straight with extra steps. That’s not a real thing. That doesn’t make you queer. Shut the fuck up. We don’t care. You’re not better than everybody else just cause you don’t want to have sex,” when none of that was implications I was trying to make. I learned very early on, oh people don’t like this, so maybe I shouldn’t just talk about it if I don’t want to receive this pushback. Because at that kind of pivotal time in discovering my sexuality, that pushback was really making me wish I wasn’t asexual. And for a long time, I kind of wished I was any other identity except that one and just kind of decided okay well maybe I’m not going to put a label on it because this is the one that fits the best but I don’t want this one so I’m just not going to use it. So that’s how it was for a couple years, I only just started talking about it again because you know Tumblr’s dead, I left all that behind, I have a new name I have new social networks and was somehow lucky enough to find that same level of popularity. So now I’m at a point where I’m older and I have more life experience where I can say, oh I have this platform. There are asexual kids getting the same pushback I did, I should really use my platform to speak up about it, to be open about it, to show that you can be an out asexual adult and be accepted for that. So that’s why I think it’s important you talk about it now and generally speaking, I mostly get a very positive reaction when I do mention my asexuality. But there always that one or two comment telling me that I’m not queer just because I’m asexual. Or, I have no right to be drag because I’m not queer or I have no right to be doing drag cause I’m not a woman. When in reality, I do identify as queer. And I almost feel the need now to add that caveat, everytime I say I’m asexual, that I’m biromantic or panromantic but I usually don’t because I don’t want to give myself a label when my romantic attraction is so rare and so far and few between it almost doesn’t feel right being a part of my identity. I’m just asexual. I’ve never been in a relationship. I’m not looking to be in a relationship so why should I give myself a label that doesn’t necessarily feel a 100% accurate, just because I feel like I have to tack that on so people can feel I’m queer enough.
(30:00)
SARAH: Yeah you shouldn’t have to use that other identifier just to prove something. That almost feels like you’re capping your asexual identity which clearly seems to be from my perspective a little bit more important to you since that’s the one you really talk about. So I think that’s a good outlet to have whether you’re biromantic, panromantic, or whatever, you don’t have to use that to qualify you’re queer if you’re also ace because you’re already queer.
VENUS: That’s exactly how I see it. I think that asexuality is just like any other sexual orientation. It is a sexual orientation, it’s a sexual identity and it is inherently a queer identity.
KAYLA: This makes me feel so validated. I struggle with feeling queer enough because I’m demisexual and am heteroromantic, I struggle with that a lot so I love to hear people validate me.
SARAH: Kayla loves to be validated.
VENUS: Don’t we all.
KAYLA: I think it’s so important to hear though that you’ve had so much acceptance from your physical community because I think when we spend so much time online, I know i don’t have a lot of queer people around me ever since leaving college especially. And so a lot of my time in the queer community is spent online, which can be really exclusionary and kind of harmful. You start thinking to yourself, oh if everyone online is being like that everyone in person must be super exclusionary too. And sometimes they are. I’ve heard horror stories from in-person interactions too but it’s actually very heartening to hear your experience of being in an incredibly queer space of a club with drag queens, just feels like the epitome of a queer space and you receiving the utmost respect for who you are. Not to be like it gets better campaign but it can get better.
VENUS: I’m so grateful for the community that I’ve been around and that I continue to be around.
SARAH: But I also feel like the whole basis of whether it’s the drag scene—my brain straight goes to Paris Is Burning—house, stuff like that. The point of that was to be inclusionary, accept people with open arms. That’s the whole background of that so I think for something to be a truly queer drag experience, it has to embrace that as well so it’s great to see that that has been your exprience.
(35:00)
KAYLA: What do you hope for the future of drag? I know you’ve kinda talked about online you’ve received pushback for being a woman in drag, so what do you hope for, the future of continuing to diversity? What do you hope for what drag culture grows into in the future?
VENUS: Having been a woman in drag on the Internet for over five years now I’ve definitely seen a huge shift in people’s perceptions and opinions of women in drag when I first started to people’s perceptions of women in drag now. I feel like that comes down to the fact that through social media people are able to be exposed to drag in the real world and to the diversity that exists in the drag industry that may be a little different than what they see on Rupaul’s Drag Race. Even shows like Dragula and House of Drag and Camp Wanakiki are also kind of showing people hey drag isn’t just one thing even though the most popular show only tends to feature one thing. So I definitely think that with drag definitely becoming more mainstream over the years and with drag becoming more popular on social media over the past few years, diversity in drag has definitely been a lot more acknowledged and represented and promoted. I’m hoping and also confident that that will continue to be the trend for the next five years and beyond that. So, I’ve just seen drag develop in such a way that it’s becoming more mainstream but it’s never lost that inherent queer artistic power behind it. And I would like to see drag continue exactly as it is.
KAYLA: One of my secret worries with asexuality becoming more well-known is just that it’s kind of going to lose that authenticity like you said drag hasn’t. Do you ever worry about the commercialization of drag and it losing its queerness as there’s more corporations involved—
SARAH: As it becomes more mainstream?
KAYLA: Do you ever worry that it will eventually lose that?
VENUS: I mean I definitely worry about it, I think a lot of people in the drag scene also worry about that. I feel like that’s also the queens who are participating in these shows who are going on to take these commercial deals and work with major brands are always very careful to make sure that doesn’t happen. And I don’t really hear the same thing happening for asexuality. I feel like asexuality as it is now when I first came out, I didn’t know what it was. I went years and years having no idea that that was a thing that existed. I feel like now asexuality as an issue is at a point where more people are aware of its existence and I think that that’s a positive thing. I don’t think that it’s gone into the mainstreamness that drag has gone into. But for now for the time being I would like to see asexuality become more of a talked about thing and become more of a well-known thing because I still find myself finding myself explaining to people on a regular basis what it means to be asexual.
SARAH: Let it become mainstream and that comes with its own set of issues. Let’s face those issues once they come. Let’s make ourselves seen first.
KAYLA: Oh yeah I definitely agree. I think the anxious part of my brain is like, when we become mainstream, the haters are going to come.
SARAH: The haters are already here.
KAYLA: But also, it’s a completely worth it situation. It’s a privilege to deal with that. Do you have advice for people in their discovery of their asexuality kind of that you’ve learned being a more seasoned ace and being confident in talking about it. Do you have advice for someone currently going through that?
VENUS: I guess what I would say is that like any other sexual identity, other people do not get to label you. Other people don’t get to tell you how you identify. I think that’s definitely something I wish I’d heard early on because when I did first come out it was, “well that’s not a thing. There’s only straight, gay, and bi. So you can be ace and one of those but you can’t be ace.” I wish that I was told that I didn’t have to fit inside a box. But if I did want to put myself in a box I can choose what label I want to put on it. That’s something I would want to tell someone who’s figuring it out. I’d also tell them that it’s completely normal to not be a 100% sure how you identify and still be figuring it out. I’m 29 years old and although I know I’m asexual, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t figuring things out, especially when you are asexual, it’s hard to know your romantic orientation when you don’t have that sexual attraction to go by. So I guess I would tell people it’s okay to be figuring stuff out, it’s okay to use labels, it’s okay to not use labels. But what’s not okay is to let other people label you.
SARAH: Tea.
KAYLA: So true. So true, bestie. I also think what you said for a while just hating your asexuality and being like I’d rather be anything else, that’s obviously very sad to hear but I think that’s good to hear for people currently going through that that’s a very normal feeling. You don’t come out as ace and automatically be okay forever.
VENUS: When I first came out, there wasn’t that sense of ace pride. I still wouldn’t feel comfortable posting a picture and captioning it #acepride, because I don’t feel pride in my identity. It is my identity. I didn’t get to pick it but it is what it is. I have a responsibility to provide that representation as someone with a platform. I’m still coming to terms with actually liking that part of myself.
KAYLA: Yeah I think that’s very good to hear. From the outside, it would seem you are super confident because you are using your platform in that way. But even people who are talking about it using their platform, we’re all figuring it out. Sometimes I really question myself too.
SARAH: None of us know what we’re doing.
KAYLA: No one knows. We live on a floating rock, you know.
SARAH: To any of our listeners who are younger, teenagers, you think that suddenly you’re going to be an adult and you’ll make sense, I really hate to break it to you but that’s not how it works. The same thing goes for your sexuality. There’s not going to be an aha moment of you’re now 18 and how you’ll be an adult,how to be asexual, you’ll keep learning.
VENUS: Yeah none of us know what we’re doing.
KAYLA: I’m almost 24 and I thought I’d have everything figured out by this time. Let me tell you a thing. I do not. That’s okay.
SARAH: You’re still an infant, it’s fine.
KAYLA: I am, it’s okay. Is there anything else we didn’t cover that you want to share?
VENUS: I don’t know I feel like we covered a lot and all the things I prepared in my head to say I feel like I swallowed them.
KAYLA: Yeah no is a good answer to that question.
SARAH: Yeah no is a perfectly fine answer to that question. Kayla, what’s our poll for this week?
KAYLA: Oh I was just thinking about this and I don’t have an answer.
SARAH: We could ask how much people know about the diversity of drag. I don’t know how to phrase the question.
KAYLA: I have nothing to write on.
SARAH: We need to say a question for the purpose of the listeners it can’t just be a surprise.
KAYLA: Well it could. I don’t know, maybe it will be a surprise.
SARAH: It’s going to be a surprise. There will be a poll on our Twitter. Something to do with probably diversity in drag but the wording is not coming to us now. It’s a surprise.
KAYLA: I need to craft the tweet.
SARAH: Excellent. Well you can tell us—nope I skipped a whole section.
KAYLA: You actually can’t tell us.
SARAH: You can’t tell us. Kayla, what’s your beef and your juice this week?
KAYLA: My juice is I got my second round of vaccine juices inside of me on Sunday, yeah I said it.
VENUS: The only juices we want inside of us.
KAYLA: Exactly, thank you. I got the good good safe juice in my arm, now I am safe, well I guess in 2 weeks when it goes through my body I’ll be safe, which is very exciting. My beef is listen sometimes you get that second shot and you feel incredibly ill the next day so that was me yesterday and I felt as though I was perhaps dying. So that wasn’t fun but it was worth it.
SARAH: And you don’t appear to be dead so that’s always a good place to start.
KAYLA: You don’t know that this could be a hologram.
SARAH: Is that why we’re having so many technical issues because your hologram is messing up?
KAYLA: My hologram keeps bleeping out.
SARAH: My beef and my juice this week. My beef is that I have not been able to take my full dose of Prozac for several days because my prescriber was out of town. Is there someone who can prescribe it who’s not out of town? I have questions.
KAYLA: I should have just shipped you my Prozac, I have some I could have just mailed you some in a little envelope.
SARAH: Some drug dealing for drugs that was prescribed to us.
KAYLA: That’s fine.
SARAH: My juice is drinking a lot of water. Hydrate guys. Venus Envy, what is your beef and your juice this week?
VENUS: My beef for this week is that a whole bunch of different states especially Arkansas and Alabama and those southern states that start with an A are trying to put in a bunch of anti LGBTQ legislatures that limits trangender students’ ability to be referred to by their correct name and pronouns in school that means transgender youths don’t have access to gender affirming healthcare and they make it so transgender individuals don’t have access to things like extracurricular activities and sports. So that is my beef for this week is that America needs to be moving forward not backward. And my juice for this week is that I love my friends and my friends are great. And I like hanging out with them.
SARAH: That’s a good juice.
KAYLA: These are good beeves and juices, that’s a good juice. The beef is very bad but I’m glad that you brought that up.
SARAH: people were like oh yeah the governor vetoed it, yeah but then it was overwritten the next day by not Congress but the statepeople, those ones.
VENUS: And that was just one. There are man more of these that are going to be voted on so make sure that you are aware of the things that are happening in your state. I live in Florida so I’m already sure that we’re on the wrong side of whatever’s going on here. So make sure that you are contacting your Congress people.
SARAH: And even if you live in a blue state, contact your Congress people.
KAYLA: People are still doing various things in blue states.
SARAH: Even if they already support the legislature you want them to support, letting them you support that as well is beneficial.
VENUS: Good job, keep it up.
SARAH: Thumbs up to you.
KAYLA: I need to register as a citizen of Louisiana so that I can fully—
SARAH: Citizen of Louisiana.
KAYLA: Yeah whatever it’s called I need to be legally here—a resident, I haven’t yet, it’s been months and I’m sure there’s a lot of things that these people need to hear from me also.
SARAH: Yes. For a second I thought you meant our pod listeners. I think our pod listeners really care about your issues about which state you legally live in.
SARAH: You can tell us your beef, your juice, respond to our mystery poll on our social media. @soundsfakepod. Venus Envy where can the folks of the Internet find you?
VENUS: You can find me @venusenvydrag on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, I’m on YouTube I’m on Twitch. Do I use them? Not really, but I’m still there.
SARAH: Give a little subscribe and maybe you’ll be happily surprised one day. Excellent, well everyone follow our lovely lovely guest on all the social medias. Do you have anything aside from yourself you want to promote before we leave? It can be anything or you can say no.
VENUS: Support gun control. Gun control now.
KAYLA: Very good, these are all very good things you’re bringing.
SARAH: Lots of great points, wonderful. We have a patreon - patreon.com/soundsfakepod. I will read the patrons later. Hey it’s Sarah from the future. When in the future, I cannot disclose that information to you for your safety and mine. Just know that I have traveled to the future to give you these patrons. Our $2 patrons, we have a new one it is Peter G thank you Peter. Our $5 patrons are Jennifer Smart, Asritha Vinnakota, Austin Le, Perry Fiero, Dee, Quinn Pollock, Emily Collins, Bookmarvel, Simona Sajmon, Jamie Jack, Jessica Shea, Ria Faustino, Daniel Walker, Livvy, Madeline Askew, Lily, James, Corinne, AliceIsInSpace, Skye Simpson, Brooke Siegel, Ashley W, Savannah Cozart, Harry Haston-Dougan, SOUP, Amanda Kyker, Vishakh, Jacob Weber, Rory, Amberle Istar, Rachel, Kate Costello, John, Ariel Laxo, Ellie, Tessa, MattiousT, Chris Lauretano, Sam, Kelly, Scott Ainsli, Orla Nieve Eisley, Julianne, Lost In Space, Colleen Walsh, Mattie, Super Sarah, BAGEL, and we have two new $5 patrons, they’re Edward Hayes-Holgate and Emily M. Thank both of you, you’re wonderful. $10 patrons are Arcnes who would like to promote the Trevor Project, Benjamin Ybarra who would like to promote me playing D&D, anonymous who would like to promote Halloween, Sarah McCoy who would like to promote Podcast From Planet Weird, my Aunt Jeannie who would like to promote Christopher’s Haven, Cass who would like to promote the best of luck on the journey of self-identification, Doug Rice who would like to promote “Church Too,” by Emily Joy, H. Valdis, Purple Chickadee, who would like to promote using they as a gender neutral singular pronoun, I got weirded out by how I said Chickadee, and that distracted me from saying that Purple Chickadee is promoting using they as a gender neutral singular pronoun Barefoot Backpacker who would like to promote Reclaim the Night, The Steve who would like to promote Ecosia, Ari K. who would like to promote Thought Slime, Mattie who would like to promote The Union Series by T.H. Hernandez, Derek and Carissa who would like to promote the overthrow of heteronormativity, Aaron like to promote free forehead kisses, Khadir who would like to promote Gnocchi Feta Fettuccine as a name for a cat, Potater who would like to promote potatoes, ChangelingMX who would like to promote starshipchangeling.net, and Sarah Kujawa who would like to promote her dogs’ Instagram @aviatthehusky and David Jay who would like to promote the book “Emergent Strategy” by Adrienne Maree Brown. Our $15 patrons are Nathaniel White - NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com, my mom Julie who would like to promote free mom hugs, Free Mom Hugs, Sara Jones who is @eternalloli everywhere, Andy A who would like to promote being in unions and IWW, we support unions. Martin Chiesel who would like to promote his podcast, Everyone’s Special and No One is, Leila, who would like to promote love is love also applying to aro people, Shrubbery who would like to promote the Planet Earth, Dia Chappell who would like to promote twitch.tv/MelodyDia, Sherronda J Brown, Maggie Capalbo who would like to promote Lewis University’s Writing Center @writingcenterlu, Andrew Hillum would like to promote The Invisible Spectrum podcast, and Dragonfly who would like to promote vibing. And we have $20 patron, it’s our first $20 patron, it’s Sarah T, thank you Sarah you’re a delight. All Sarahs, excellent. And I’m pretty sure all Sarahs we have as patrons I think you all spell your name right. Just checking, it’s important I do that right. Yeah I think you all spell your name right. And Sarah would like to promote long walks outside. Thanks to all of our patrons. Back to us in the patrons. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much to the lovely Venus Envy for joining us today. Tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears.
KAYLA: Until then, take good care of your cows.