Ep 164: The Medicalization of Asexuality
Listen to Ep 164: The Medicalization of Asexuality here!
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SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aro-ace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)
KAYLA:… and a demi-straight girl (that’s me, Kayla)
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: the medicalization of asexuality.
ALL: — Sounds fake, but okay.
SARAH: Welcome back to the pod! Happy 2021 kids.
KAYLA: We made it. We m’ade it.
SARAH: We m’ade it. I’m glad that all of us who made it did, continue to stay safe out there kids. Please, please, please. Anyway, Kayla what are we talking about this week?
KAYLA: This week is a request from one of our patrons because as you know our patrons can demand us to do certain topics.
SARAH: You can demand.
KAYLA: Anyone can request or suggest a topic but if you’re a $15 patron we simply have to do it.
SARAH: It could take months before we do it but we will do it.
KAYLA: But we will do it! So this is a request from Shrubbery and they wanted us to talk about the medicalization of asexuality or other queer identities. I think we’re going to stick pretty closely to asexuality since even that is a pretty big topic. So yeah, that’s what we’re going to talk about.
SARAH: A real positive, uplifting episode for the first of the year.
KAYLA: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
SARAH: Excellent. Okay, do we want to just dive in?
KAYLA: I wrote several disclaimers while I was doing my research.
SARAH: What is it? 2017?
KAYLA: Yeah. We did cover a topic similar to this where we lightly covered it in episode 44 which was an episode we did about this women’s viagra medicine that was coming out. Or had come out and there was news about it. And we had kind of talked about this but this will be our updated views and maybe a bit deeper.
SARAH: Indeed.
KAYLA: But then disclaimers. We are not medical experts, not experts in any of the subjects we are going to be talking about.
SARAH: I’m an expert in myself.
KAYLA: Yeah we are experts in ourselves.
SARAH: And nothing more.
KAYLA: This episode’s more educational than most of ours but is not meant to be a 100% educational, most just us doing some research and reacting to the things we learn.
SARAH: Starting a discussion.
KAYLA: Yeah, we’re having a discussion. So, you know, you should 100% do your own research on the topics we talk about. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there. But it can get pretty deep and scientific and all that. So as usual, we’re just having a conversation between two friends so.
SARAH: We’re just dipping our toes in.
KAYLA: Yeah we’re just starting, then we’ll continue the conversation with you online like we usually do. Because you will probably have more experience with this and a lot more interesting thoughts so those are our disclaimers. So yeah, medicalization of asexuality. We’re talking about how asexuality is viewed in the medical world, in the mental health world, things of that nature so to start, I wanted to ask you and myself if either of us have brought up our sexuality in a medical or therapy setting and how that went.
SARAH: I don’t ever bring it up voluntarily not because I’m ashamed of it or anything. It can be a sticky subject and then you’re giving a TED Talk to a doctor sometimes. It’s not really what you want to get into, they always have questions like “are you sexually active” and I’m like, no. And they’re like, “have you been sexually active,” and I’m like “no.” And they’re just like “oh, okay,” and we just move on. When I did at one point have a therapist, which I need a new one, but hey I finally saw a psychiatrist, which, guys, we’re making money moves, it came up where she was asking about—there was a form she had me fill out and it asked about sexuality and I said “prefer not to answer” and she was like, “is there a reason you say that” and I’m like “I’m ace but I don’t want it to be a thing, it doesn’t impact my mental health in any way and that’s the thing” she was like “okay cool!” and then it never came up again.
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KAYLA: I think for you, you often talk about how your sexuality isn’t the biggest part of your life or anything so it makes sense. The one thing I thought for you is when you went to the gynecologist and you were supposed to get stuff done and they were like “you’ve never had sex before so we’re just going to wait till you have sex.”
SARAH: And I was like, I’m sure you’re supposed to get them once you turn 21. I was super nervous about it because I did not like the whole situation.
KAYLA: Pap smears are not a cute look.
SARAH: Yeah. I was like this causes me moderate panic.
KAYLA: And you went and they were like, “nah.”
SARAH: I was so stressed out and they were like, “no actually you don’t have to do this.”
KAYLA: Which I feel like you should get them whether you’re sexually active or not cause it’s also checking for cancer and shit which can come from a lot of different things.
SARAH: Exactly. Me and Kayla know people who have to get them every year because certain cancers run in their family. It’s not about whether or not they’ve had sex yet so I was like, “okay I’ll take this out this time but I’m not sure you’re right.”
KAYLA: Next time I come back I’m getting that smear.
SARAH: I’m not sure that you’re right.
KAYLA: For me, it’s never come up in a medical setting. I have yet to have an adult doctor. The few times that I go to the doctor these days I still go to my pediatrician in my hometown so that stuff doesn’t typically come up. When I had a therapist, I need to have one again, it did come up for sure but we didn’t talk about it much. Both therapists I brought it up with were very open and came back like, “oh I did some research on it and now I know what you’re talking about.”
SARAH: Which is what you want.
KAYLA: Which is what you want. But honestly, it mostly came up because I was talking about my life and the podcast would come up and I’d have to talk about what the podcast was and blah blah blah.
SARAH: Podcast, constantly making us out ourselves.
KAYLA: It really does. Yeah, I was very lucky in the situations I had where my therapists were really good about it. I happened to live in college towns for both of those therapists so that kind of helped because they saw a lot of students and maybe sexuality and that kind of stuff comes up with students more but that’s definitely not the case for everyone that it’s smooth-sailing and that’s something that we’ll get to later. I know a lot of people for reasons different from us where it just doesn’t really matter, there are other reasons that you might not be comfortable bringing it up with the doctor because some doctors are stupid.
SARAH: Yeah. I think that’s kind of a common thing with aspec people that they don’t bring it up unless they have to.
KAYLA: Cause like you said, you have to do a whole talk. Even if you go to a therapist who is saying upfront, “I’m LGBTQ friendly,” they might not know about asexuality. That’s the thing while I was doing research for this episode, I saw a lot of articles about how to be a better psychiatrist or therapist for aspec people. So seems like there are conversations happening around that but it’s not everywhere.
SARAH: And it’s not something you’re necessarily learning in school. Maybe they are now but if it’s a person who went to school a long time ago it’s not.
KAYLA: The last thing you want for when you go to a therapist, you have to explain things in-depth to them, that’s what they’re supposed to be doing you know.
SARAH: Yeah it’s their job.
KAYLA: Yeah. So.
SARAH: Fun.
KAYLA: Well, speaking of psychiatrists and psychology, one of the biggest topics when talking about asexuality being medicalized is it being misconstrued as a disorder. This is something we talked about back in that episode 44, is hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and also a kind of asexuality in the DSM which is—
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SARAH: The psychological encyclopedia basically.
KAYLA: Yeah I was trying to find if I can find its long name. The DSM is basically a book that psychologists and psychiatrists and therapists use to diagnose people with disorders. So it has every psychological disorder, its definition, and usually a list of criteria. So when I was getting diagnosed for depression and anxiety, we had to go through this checklist and be like, okay you have to have five or more of these things to get this diagnosis. And it’s updated every couple of years. The DSM-5 is the most recent one. It’s relatively new. But, still problematic.
SARAH: Yeah at one point, gayness was in the DSM as a psychological disorder. It no longer is. It’s not a bulletproof document.
KAYLA: Absolutely not. I found an article from the Asexuality Archive. It’s from 2015, which may be around the time the DSM-5 came out actually now that I think about it. It’s basically talking about asexuality in the DSM-5. It talks about HSDD, which is the hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and also some other places where asexuality is kind of mentioned. So the two places where asexuality the word kinds of comes up, one is the section on female sexual interest/arousal disorder, whatever the fuck that means. And in its diagnostic feature, so your definition of here’s what it is, here’s how you might be able to tell someone has it, basically “this disorder is a lifelong lack of sexual desire, is better explained by”—let’s see. “If a lifelong lack of sexual desire is better explained by one’s self-identification as asexual,” and asexual is in quotes which is weird. “Then a diagnosis of female sexual interest/arousal disorder would not be made.” So it’s basically saying that if you self-identify as asexual, then we would not diagnose you with having this disorder. And the same thing for male hypoactive sexual disorder, they say if the man’s desire is explained by self-identification as asexual, then the diagnosis is not made.
SARAH: You know what’s really strange though? I’m looking at this. Aseuxal is not in quotes when it’s talking about men. It says “self-identification as an asexual,” whereas when talking about women it says self-identification as “asexual.” That’s weird.
KAYLA: I know. And it’s in the same book.
SARAH: What are your copy-editors doing? Come on.
KAYLA: It’s so stupid that they’re trying to blanket this as “oh no it’s okay that we diagnose people with this disorder because we’re saying oh if you’re asexual you aren’t going to be diagnosed,” but then you have psychiatrists who don’t know what asexuality is and so if you were to bring up your asexuality or bring up whatever issues you’re having with your psychiatrist, how would they know to not diagnose you?
SARAH: Yeah it’s difficult. I think when we did episode 44, we definitely kind of hedged around this and beat around the bush a lot because it’s hard to accept both realities. It could be that there are people who do have some sort of sexual dysfunction but there’s a line somewhere. And in my opinion, yes I’m an asexual person so it definitely colors my view of this, if I had a sexual dysfunction I would not care. I would just be like, whatever. I know that some people do care. It’s very hard to find the line and make sure that people abide by it and are thoughtful in looking at these two things as possibly separate issues/non-issues.
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KAYLA: That’s the very hard thing is, there’s other language in the definitions of these disorders and the way people talk about them is you also have to be dissatisfied. If you have a low libido or you’re not interested in sex and you’re fine with it, then they wouldn’t diagnose you. But that’s also incredibly problematic cause what if you are in the early stages of accepting your sexuality. There probably is some distress there. For most people, coming to terms with sexuality, there might be some denial, there’s some distress. I wish this wasn’t how it was, that’s how I was when I was realizing I was demisexual. I was very distressed and I didn’t want to be that way.
SARAH: And especially if someone is coming at this from a medical perspective. If they think there’s something wrong with them, it’s not just like oh “I experience the world a different way, what is this?” If they’re looking at it as possible HSDD, they’re already viewing it in a distressed way. No one looks at the DSM and is like, I would love to have one of these, let’s see what I have.
KAYLA: Take it out like a catalog, let’s see!
SARAH: I would love some depression and anxiety. Give me one please. So if you’re already looking in the DSM for this sort of thing, there’s a decent chance you already have a lot of personal distress about it. Our interpretation of personal distress can be determined by how informed one is about asexuality, but how ingrained norms about heteronormativity and allonormativity and amatonormativity are in their head. So for two people who experience the exact same thing. One could consider themselves aspec, and another could think they have HSDD and there’s not rules as to being like this person is this, this person is that. It’s very dependent, very subjective.
KAYLA: Yeah absolutely. Consider someone that has never heard of asexuality but feels out of place in society because they aren’t interested in sex so they go to their doctor and then their doctor doesn’t know what asexuality is. Then they're going to be like you have this disorder without ever giving this person the chance to even learn that they might be asexual.
SARAH: Right I think the real issue is when HSDD is discussed, I think it should always be discussed in conjunction with asexuality. I think both should always be given as options and education about both should always be given because it is such a subjective thing. Yes, there are certain rules for you have to meet certain criteria to be diagnosed with something in the DSM. Especially for something like this, it is really subjective. And so I think everyone who goes into it, the doctors, the people who might be prescribing medication, and most importantly the patient, needs to be fully informed on both sides of it so they can make the best decision for themselves.
KAYLA: Yeah. That’s the hard thing for me. I don’t think HSDD as a whole is fake. I do think it’s completely possible for someone to be very interested in sex for a long time, maybe have a high libido, then all of a sudden, not.
SARAH: You hear about that with people who experience trauma or even certain medications that bring down your libido or whatever. There are some people who do want to have that level of libido and they have had it previously and they want it back. But it’s so hard to find the line between that and someone who’s just maybe asexual and not accepting of it but there is a line somewhere.
KAYLA: And I think it also comes from fundamental misunderstanding of what asexuality is right? People who are asexual can have a high libido, can want to fuck all the time. Someone who actually has HSDD maybe has trouble getting aroused, suddenly has a low libido, they could still be sexually attracted to people and not able to do it. Think about men who actually need viagra, like older men, that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want to have sex anymore. Their peepus just stops working.
SARAH: Their sexuality doesn’t change because their penis doesn’t work.
KAYLA: We often talk about the difference between attraction and action. I think it’s a big misunderstanding there of what it means to not be interested in sex versus not interested in or not having the attraction, y’know?
SARAH: Right, I’m looking back again at the language at the DSM and it says, “distress may be experienced as a result of a lack of sexual interest / arousal.” But sexual interest and arousal is not the same.
KAYLA: SO different, very different.
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SARAH: They’re so different and I think it’s a very allonormative view which I would expect but it’s a very allonormative view to take those things and conflate into they are the same, whereas people who are familiar with the aspec community understand that interest and arousal are not the same thing and they should not be treated as one lump sum.
KAYLA: Yeah, definitely. I will say the good thing I saw through doing research is there’s a lot of research going on about the difference between HSDD and asexuality like psychologists and doctors or whatever doing hardcore research looking into both and trying to find the differences and trying to find how we should be talking about them differently. So if you’re interested in that, there’s a ton of—I don’t know about a ton—but I found multiple, peer-reviewed published articles about that so. And the good thing is people are talking about it. Science and medicine moves so fucking slow.
SARAH: That’s what I was going to say. It’s also worth noting that academia and science and medicine and everything has to be peer-reviewed. The COVID vaccine was basically ready in January but they had to go through tests and they had to make sure it did what they said it was going to do and that there weren’t any other things. The same goes for changing things in the DSM and so the general zeitgeist may change much quicker than the DSM does so it’s important that we keep pressure on the scientific and medical communities to say “hey you’re working on this right? This is something that you’re doing?” And then they’ll say “yes we are” and then hopefully in the next DSM it will be better phrased, better conveyed.
KAYLA: Yeah, hopefully. I think from the abstracts I read of some research papers, it looked like the results were good of “hey we should be more careful about this and the way that HSDD or disorders are talked about in general isn’t great” so that’s good but you know you’re also going up against a huge organization like the American Psychological Association which I don’t know this for sure but I’m sure is run by white old men so getting anything changed is kind of an upheaval.
SARAH: And again the heteronormativity, the allonormativity that’s so ingrained in culture it’s ingrained in every part of culture. It’s not like the medical community or academia is exempt from that. So you know we just gotta keep working towards it. Another one of the links that Kayla pulled up, it was the definition for laypeople on ASHA which is the American Sexual Health Association and its description of HSDD wasn’t bad, it specifically says “this distress is an important component. The fact that a person is distressed by their low libido or low sexual desire is an important part of HSDD.” But it only refers to women. It was such a red flag for me. In the DSM it mentions both men and women. Obviously, there’s a big oversight there with non-binary folks and that sort of thing but this website only refers to HSDD in regards to women and I think that’s a horrible idea because it seems like this is something that can only affect cis women. And then it goes on to say “While prevalence rates may vary, The Society for Women’s Health Research estimates that about one in ten women have HSDD, making it one of the most common female sexual difficulties,” which, I would like to know how they got that number because I don’t know. I’m just very curious why they think 1 in 10 women have HSDD and how those people are defining HSDD and what the cause of the distress that they’re feeling is.
KAYLA: The thing I wonder about distress just from reading some accounts of people who did bring up asexuality in medical settings is that you might need to be very distressed to get diagnosed but HSDD brought up in a medical setting at all, just because it’s brought up doesn’t mean you’re diagnosed. So even if you aren’t diagnosed, just your doctor bringing it up I feel like can still be very not good. You know what I mean? You don’t walk away with a diagnosis, just your doctor being like I want to try to diagnose you.
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SARAH: Yeah, like, I think something could be wrong with you. And this is what I think could be wrong with you.
KAYLA: Like that’s almost just as bad as actually walking with a diagnosis.
SARAH: Yeah usually if you get tested for something and it comes back negative, it’s either a relief, like oh thank god I don’t have that, or it’s like, oh shit what is it then? But in this case, it’s almost like, you’re thinking about why the doctor thought you had that because you have an emotional reaction to it because you think it’s some sort of reflection on your place in society or who you are as a person just because of the way society treats it.
KAYLA: If it came up because you told your doctor you were asexual and that was their response then that—
SARAH: That’s bad! And you know, it’s possible someone could both identify as ace and have HSDD, like that’s not impossible. So, what are the rules? Who knows?
KAYLA: That’s the hard thing, they make all of this stuff about you have to have such and such stuff to get diagnosed but I still feel like it’s not specific enough.
SARAH: Yeah.
KAYLA: And again that knowing for a fact that probably a vast majority of doctors don’t know what asexuality is or don’t have a nuanced understanding. It’s like, how am I supposed to trust them to do these diagnoses if they don’t actually know the full story. How.
SARAH: Yep. And also, doctors are supposed to be Hippa-compliant and all that stuff. Just because a person is a doctor doesn’t mean that they’re not homophobic or aphobic or biphobic. You know, they’re not bulletproof just because they’re a doctor. We want to view doctors as people we can trust but you know, there is a certain weariness that needs to be had for people who identify as queer. And honestly, anyone who’s a part of any minority. If you look at the way black women are treated in the medical field, it’s bullshit.
KAYLA: And I will say, we’re focusing mostly on asexuality in this episode but like Sarah said, being gay used to be in the DSM, I’m almost positive that gender dysphoria used to be in the DSM and maybe somewhat still is. And obviously, you have things like conversion therapy. This is just to say that the DSM and psychology have a long history of issues with the queer community. So because Sarah and I don’t have a lot of experiences ourselves with bringing up in a medical setting, I tried to find some people talking about it online, and mostly tried looking at the AVEN forums, which is obviously a bit difficult because so many people are talking and it goes back a billion years.
SARAH: Billions.
KAYLA: I just wanted to find some examples of people’s experiences. I know I’ve colloquially heard of people in our Discord talking about it, or people online talking about it, but I just wanted to find some hard—
SARAH: Stuff that our listeners could look at themselves.
KAYLA: And obviously, if anyone is comfortable, we want to hear other people’s experiences because Sarah and I have been lucky enough to not go through this. We’re interested to hear how other people have dealt with this. Obviously, if you’re comfortable, we’d love to start that conversation or continue it, obviously other people are having it. So I was looking on the AVEN forums and I found a post from last week which was just distressing cause there are some older posts you know from 2010 of people dealing with this and you would think it would end there but. So, I’ll link this discussion in the bio of this episode because I think there’s a lot of interesting talk on it but basically this person, the title of the post is “My Mom Pushed Me to Bring Up Asexuality at a Doctor’s Appointment.” So the person is like “I’m definitely asexual,” they brought it up with their mom who was not good about it and basically kind of forced this person to bring it up at the doctor’s which immediately got escalated to getting scheduled to get bloodwork and recommended to go to therapy. This is something I’ve heard a lot, people getting bloodwork done to check their hormones. Either someone telling them to, or before they knew what asexuality was, asking for it to get done themselves because they didn’t realize that they were just asexual. So basically this person goes on to talk about the experience they’re having with their mom and they’re not just choosing to be asexual and then getting bloodwork done and it comes back completely normal. This person does not have a hormone imbalance, they’re completely fine, they’re just asexual. So, let’s see, they were recommended to go to therapy, they were at the therapist and the therapist was like, “wait you’ve heard the word asexual before right?” and the person was like, “yes I have and I am. I am completely fine with all of this,” and the therapist was like, “okay so you know you’re normal then.” and the therapist was upset that the doctor had had them get bloodwork done and all that.
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SARAH: So the results all came back normal, there’s nothing wrong with this person. They said that they had avoided using the term asexual while talking to the therapist because they didn’t want to get into that but the therapist brought it up themselves.
KAYLA: Yeah I think this story has an interesting two sides of it, like the doctor being an ass about it and the therapist being very knowledgeable and it’s very telling that the person wouldn’t use the term asexual with the therapist probably because of the experience they had with the doctor and their mom. It ruins any trust with the medical field and that’s sad because doctors are supposed to be helping us and also because it could have damaged this relationship with this therapist who is a good person.
SARAH: I’m glad that the therapist was there to be like no you’re fine. This doctor was wrong, your mom is wrong in thinking there’s something wrong with you. I’m very glad that this person had this experience but that’s not going to be the experience of everyone.
KAYLA: Yeah and there’s a lot of people that commented on this post talking about how the doctor just lacked knowledge about asexuality which I think again is true, that if the doctor understood, then they probably wouldn’t have been like, go get your hormone levels checked.
SARAH: Also, you could have issues with your hormone levels and have it have nothing to do with your sexuality. Some people take hormones because of thyroid issues. It’s not inextricably linked to sexuality in any way.
KAYLA: It’s another thing of trying to fix someone’s sexuality. Kind of a version of conversion therapy, really is like, okay you say you’re asexual, I’m going to get your hormone levels tested, if they’re anything but normal, we’re going to put you on some medication. It might not be as intense as the conversion therapy that you think about when you hear it—
SARAH: It still fits the description, yeah.
KAYLA: Yeah, it’s still people rather than taking the time to understand your sexuality they’re just being like “no no we can fix this” which I mean just gets into a whole load of stuff about people thinking that asexuality is sad and needs to be fixed and just all of that. Yeah and I think people are talking about here that it tracks with the experiences of people who have other queer identities, their parents being like, “no we can fix this,” which is like, no we don’t need to. The other post I found, this is from 2017, it’s older, but it was just someone asking everyone’s opinion of “should I tell my therapist that I’m asexual” and the post has a lot of interesting thoughts from people about their experience with therapists. Most of the people talking seem to have really good experiences. It made me think of Rebecca Burgess’ How to Be Ace where there’s a scene where they’re talking to their therapist and they give them terrible advice about “oh just do things, it’s fine, you’re just nervous,” stuff like that, again showing two sides of if you have an informed therapist who knows what asexuality is it can be really good, and if not they’re going to try to fix you when you don’t need it.
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SARAH: Yeah and there’s definitely a diversity of opinions in the responses and a diversity of experiences, which just shows, shitty stuff is still happening to some people but it’s not fixed.
KAYLA: That’s the sad thing, a lot of this comes down to just education. That seems to be a major point that everything is stemming from that doctors and therapists and psychologists just don’t know what asexuality is or don’t take it seriously enough just because they haven’t been exposed to it enough. If there was just more education around it, they might not jump to the conclusion of like, oh something is wrong with you.
SARAH: Right. And it’s not even necessarily just education in an academic setting it’s also just in a cultural setting. If more people were aware of asexuality more broadly, maybe those people would be like, “oh yeah, that’s interesting, let me see how I can deal with that in my line of work. Let me see how I can apply that to patients I see.” The ownness isn’t just on academia to do this, it’s on culture more broadly.
KAYLA: I feel like the therapists I’ve had talked about going to conferences, doing certifications in different types of therapy, even after you get your degree or your certificate or whatever you need to be a therapist, you should be continuing to stay up-to-date on the things that are happening with their patients.
SARAH: Yeah teachers have to renew their teaching certificates so let’s all renew our understanding of queer identities constantly.
KAYLA: The last thing I found was good news I guess. Basically, the UK, last year, had a memorandum of understanding—
SARAH: Two years ago now, it’s 2021 baby.
KAYLA: It’s 2021 when you’re listening. 2 years ago in 2019, the memorandum of understanding about conversion therapy about coming together with organizations to put an end to conversion therapy in the UK and the first memorandum did not include asexuality and trans identity but the most recent one in 2019 did. I forget their name but there was an asexual person in the mental health panel from Ace Con that was working on that and I don’t remember their name now.
SARAH: Shame! Shame!
KAYLA: Let me see if I can find it. The UK is like so ahead of the US when it comes to ace things it feels like.
SARAH: Yeah but it’s not hard to be ahead of the US.
KAYLA: No.
SARAH: There are people behind the US too, it’s a continuum. But yeah it specifically says, in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation, including asexuality.
KAYLA: Their name is Jo.
SARAH: Just Jo.
KAYLA: That’s the name she has. Jo Russell.
SARAH: Nice.
KAYLA: Joe Russell is working on that, which is cool. Thanks Jo. So, I guess she’s a psychotherapist. Good for you Jo.
SARAH: So this episode fizzles out.
KAYLA: I don’t know how good any of this was.
SARAH: I think it was an interesting conversation at the very least.
KAYLA: I think it’s a good start to the conversation. Like I said I would be very interested to hear about the experiences of other people, especially people with disabilities and mental health issues. I think people who have disabilities, this is an even bigger issue of like, are you actually asexual or is it just part of issues you have—
SARAH: The intersection yeah.
KAYLA: I think that’s something we want to cover in future episodes is like having people who are autistics and have disabilities to talk about—
SARAH: I really want to have an autistic guest to talk about autism interacting with aspec identities, so if anyone has any great ideas.
KAYLA: Of guests, yeah.
SARAH: Let us know.
KAYLA: We need to get back on the guest grind. We have a lot of topics we want to cover that that require people who actually know what they’re talking about. I’m really interested to hear what people have experienced and think about this. I know I’ve interacted with people who are ace therapists online and have talked about how they educate people and I’d love to hear about how everyone else can help with that.
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SARAH: Yeah. Wonderful. Alright, what’s our poll for this week?
KALA: I guess we can go with the open-ended poll about that.
SARAH: Had you had experiences with this?
KAYLA: What has your experience been with asexuality in a medical or mental health space?
SARAH: Yeah. Sure. Alright. Kayla, what is your beef and your juice this week?
KAYLA: I’m typing.
SARAH: Okay. I’m going to start with my beef because it's sad. My beef is that the new strain of COVID has reached the United States and also that California cases are up 600% from last month and in LA they are no longer bringing people who have strokes and heart attacks for resuscitation because there’s no room for them. They’re just being pronounced dead on the scene and I’m headed back to LA in the eye of the storm in about a week and I’m just not excited about that. So my beef is COVID, it’s always COVID, it’s always people being stupid.
KAYLA: I am not excited to fly.
SARAH: Not looking forward to it, especially cause my layover got extended, so now instead of spending an hour in the Salt Lake City airport, I’m going to spend 3 or 4 hours in the Salt Lake City airport and I’m more concerned about airports than airplanes to be frank. Yay. My juice is the Disney Pixar movie Soul. It was good.
KAYLA: I haven’t seen it yet.
SARAH: My other juice is a PJ Vogt tweet that says, “probably next year will be good and normal.” Yes, it’s dark, we all cope in our own ways. My other juice is that 2021 is the year of the cow and I think that ought to mean something.
KAYLA: I mean to us that should be something certainly.
SARAH: Yeah that’s what I’m saying. Also apparently 1997 was also the year of the cow so we were both born in the year of the cow.
KAYLA: I did know that actually. Cow print is like very trendy now, have you noticed?
SARAH: No.
KAYLA: Yeah. I don’t know. It seems to be the thing and so are Squashmellows which is the brand that Herb and Georgie are, seems like we have just been ahead of these trends.
SARAH: We are trendsetters. Kayla, what’s your beef and your juice?
KAYLA: My beef is that I finished Schitt’s Creek and now there’s nothing left for me on this earth.
SARAH: Kayla was like, “why is it over,” and I was like, “cause Dan Levy is smart.”
KAYLA: What am I supposed to do? This is a direct opposite of my beeves and juice were last week, but I have been still playing my video game Ikenfell and I’m on the final battle and I can’t beat it and it’s making me irrationally angry so I’ve been taking a break from it. And everyone online was like, “this battle was so lame for a final battle” and I’m sitting here and I can’t fucking do it, so very sexy.
SARAH: Very sexy of you.
KAYLA: Those are my beeves, also flying, not excited for that. Also, it’s New Year’s Eve when we’re recording this and I’m not doing anything and I keep thinking about last New Year’s Eve when I was with all my friends and I’m sad.
SARAH: Yeah my family every year—
KAYLA: Yeah you guys have a whole thing.
SARAH: My aunt and uncle and cousins come over, it’s a 48-hour extravaganza yeah and that’s obviously not happening this year. My sister and her cousins are coming over and we will be in masks the whole time and they’re bringing Rosie the dog and Arugula the cat. Rosie the dog keeps having diarrhea, fun fact for the listeners. So yeah, it won’t be the same, it is sad, but you know, safety.
KAYLA: My juice is the other I slept until 2pm and it felt very good. I was so awake for the rest of the day.
SARAH: I had texted Kayla 4 separate distinct texts and one of them was podcast-related.
KAYLA: Which usually gets me.
SARAH: She will answer podcast-related texts but she didn’t answer and I was like, “I think she’s dead.”
KAYLA: I passed away. Yesterday Dean was skiing all day so he did not answer a single one of my texts so I resorted to texting his friends’ group chat being like, “can anyone confirm he’s not dead” cause he also didn’t pick up my phone call and I was convinced he had passed away and no one was telling me.
SARAH: Oh my god.
KAYLA: It was fine, he called me when he was on the ski lift. What was my other juice?
SARAH: I don’t know.
KAYLA: Who’s to say.
SARAH: Who’s to say. Well you can find our poll, tell us about your beef, your juice, your interactions with asexuality and mental health, medical community on our social media @soundsfakepod. We also have a Patreon - patreon.com/soundsfakepod. We have two new $2 patrons, Cheryn S. Rapp and Kaley Knowlton. I think you have a fun name. Just an announcement. Thank you to both. You get it, you’re great. Our $5 patrons are Jennifer Smart, Asritha Vinnakota, Austin Le, Perry Fiero, Dee, Quinn Pollock, Emily Collins, Bookmarvel, Changeling MX, 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 who is not the CEO, Amanda Kyker, Vishakh, Jacob Weber, Rory, Amberle Istar, Rachel, Kate Costello, John, Ariel Laxo, Ellie, Tessa, MattiousT, Courtney Pritchard, Chris Lauretano, Dia Chappell, Sam, and Megan Jeffrey. Our $10 patrons are Arcnes who would like to promote the Trevor Project, Benjamin Ybarra who would like to promote Tabletop Games, 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, Cassandra who would like to promote their modeling Instagram @liddowred, Doug Rice who would like to promote "Native" by Kaitlin Curtice, Maggie Capalbo who would like to not promote but appreciate Maxie boy who joined Molly in across the bridge, we miss you Max, I’m sorry, Maggie. Maggie Capalbo would also like to promote H. Valdís, who is our next $ patron. Purple Chickadee, who would like to promote ichliebevogel.wordpress.com, Barefoot Backpacker, Ashlynn Boedecker, who is @shlynnbo everywhere, The Steve who would like to promote Ecosia, Ari K. who would like to promote Thought Slime's segment The Eyeball Zone, Mattie who would like to promote The Union Series by T.H. Hernandez, Derek and Carissa who would like to promote the overthrow the heteronormativity in support of Melody the Hamster and Andrew Hillum who would like to promote being excellent to each other. Our $15 patrons are Nathaniel White - NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com, my mom Julie who would like to promote Free Mom Hugs, Sara Jones who is @eternalloli everywhere, Andy A who would like to promote Being in unions and IWW, Martin Chiesel who would like to promote mental health, good, and support of aspec identites, Miranda Denton who would like to promote Casa Q, Leila who would like to promote Christmastime lasting the entirety of December or however long you want, it continues. Christmas is forever. Shrubbery who was the prompter of this episode, would like to promote the Planet Earth and Dragonfly who would like to promote Shrubbery. Thanks for listening. SARAH: Thanks for listening. Tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears.
KAYLA: And until then, take good care of your cows in this Year of the Cow.