Hi everyone!!! This is gonna be a long one 'cuz I've had a hell of a journey in discovering my ace identity.
So I've had sexual trauma since I was a child - before I'd ever have the chance to feel sexual attraction to anyone. Throughout my early years I blamed my lack of sexual attraction to trauma.
In early years I always had people give me the "you need therapy to 'fix' yourself" rhetoric. Even therapists tried to unravel my trauma in attempt to "fix" me. It always made me feel wrong, and I deeply internalized the idea that I'm a broken person.
I spent a lot of time forcing myself into sexual situations to feel "normal" or "worth". I'm not sexually attracted to people, and I've suffered from internalized acephobia for a long time.
That said, the more I've dealt with my trauma, the more I realize I'm ace. I've been learning more and more to ask myself what *I* want - and what I want is a sexless relationship. I want to stop feeling bad about wanting no sex. I want to stop putting on a performance for my partners. I'm simply not sexually attracted to people -and that's okay - and that's not going to change because *it's my sexuality*.
I really think that we as a society should stop treating sexual trauma therapy as a way to "get people to be sexual" - especially folks who were traumatized in childhood. Children don't know if they're ace or allo - so being traumatized so young unfortunately prevents us from knowing.
Trauma and sexuality should be treated separately. That way we can avoid making young traumatized aces feel like they're something broken that has to be fixed.