Name or Nick Name : Andrew
Country or City you are from: : St. Louis
Your Age : 25
Your Gender : male
What did you come out as? : Asexual
What other words would you use to describe yourself? :
How old were you when you first realised your identity? : 24
How old were you when you first told someone? : 24
Did you plan it? If so, how? : I hadn’t really planned it.  I was chatting on Skype with a girl who lives several states away and the question issues of dating and relationships came up.  I figured that since she is far away and isn’t a very important person in my life, she would be a pretty safe test case.
What made you choose that person to tell? : The opportunity presented itself and I felt safe enough to do so.
Can you remember exactly what you said? : No.  Something about being asexual and the fact I’ve never thought that someone was hot.
How did you feel? : Fine
What was the person’s reaction? : It was more of a non-reaction.  Something like a question to make sure she understood me correctly, but that was about it.
What did they say? :
What was your relationship with the person like afterwards? : Not too much different.  We chatted occasionally before then and occasionally afterwards.
What’s it like now? : Don’t really talk anymore, but we were never all that close to begin with.
If you’ve been outed unwillingly, who did it? : No.
What happened? :
What were peoples’ reactions? :
If you’ve experienced homophobia etc, please give an example. : I’ve never really gotten a bad reaction to my asexuality, but did once get a very homophobic reaction.
When people find out that I’m not interested in hot girls, they generally assume I must be gay.  I’ve never really tried to hide my lack of interest, and several years ago (long before I’d heard of asexuality), I was once getting a ride from somebody, who, and he picked up on this fact about me, asked me if I was gay and threatened to make me get out his car if I was.  I, truthfully, said I wasn’t gay, but I knew that in his mind, I was telling him that I was straight, which isn’t really true either.  I felt dishonest, and I felt bad about letting him continue in his homophobic attitudes for the sake of my own comfort.
Since coming out how out are you at school? : only_friends
Since coming out, how “out” are you at work? : not_applicable
Since coming out, how “out” are you with family? : partly_out
Since coming out, how “out” are you with your friends? : only_friends
What does being out mean to you? : It means that people don’t assume certain things of me that just aren’t true.  Also, even among people I’m not out to, I don’t really attempt to hide my asexuality (but since most people have no idea what asexuality is, I don’t feel like having to give a mini lecture on the subject which is one of the main reasons I don’t come out to them.)  Also, I’m a lot more comfortable around sexual discussions than I used to be–I don’t feel like I have to find certain jokes funny that I don’t like or even pretend to understand ones I just don’t get.
What differences, if any, did your cultural background make to your experience of coming out? : I grew up Evangelical (I still go to church, but now I go to a much more inclusive one.)  Before I knew what asexuality was, I was able to pretend that the reason I didn’t have sex was my religion (rather than sheer lack of interest.)  Also, my mother is quite a bit more accepting than what her church teaches, so that helped too.
What does the concept of the closet mean to you? : Before I knew about asexuality, I knew that there was definitely something different about me–I had known since at least 16 or so–but I had never heard of anyone else like me and I really didn’t even have the vocabulary to explain it.  I tried to come out to people before learning about asexuality, but these were usually pretty miserable failures.  I had this feeling that I wanted to come out of the closet, if only I knew what closet I was in.  Now that I know about asexuality, it’s a lot more complex.  I don’t feel like I have anything to hide, but I don’t really know how public I want it to be.  There are definitely times where I really feel in the closet–I’m aware of how I am consciously allowing people to make certain assumptions about me that simply aren’t true, but I sometimes would rather let them continue making those assumptions that do the difficult task of coming out to them.
What advice would you give someone wanting to come out? : I don’t feel that I have any really good advice here.  I don’t really know a lot about it.  The ways I’ve used for coming out to people have by and large dealt with explaining asexuality to people in general and avoiding talking about my own asexuality.  The longer I identify as asexual, I’m slowly becoming more open about it and out to more people.
If you could do it all again, would you do it any differently? If so, how? : Nothing comes to mind.
Anything you want to add? : The biggest difficulty with coming out as asexual is that most people have no idea what it is.  Some asexuals have had pretty negative reaction when they come out (people assume that they just don’t know their own feelings, or that they just haven’t met the right person, or that they must really be gay/lesbian and are afraid to admit it, or that they’re just a late bloomer, no matter how old they are.)  And when people are trying to say something personally important to themselves that can be difficult to talk about, it can be painful to have others tell them that they’re wrong–they can’t possibly understand their own thoughts and feelings.  Fortunately, I’ve never had this reaction, but that’s also because I’ve been fairly selective in who I’ve come out to–it’s usually people who’ve known me for a while (except a few people I’m not that close to as test-cases.)
I was very confused about why I wasn’t feeling certain things and I never heard of anyone else like me.  Because of this, I’m very conscious of the important of increased visibility of asexuality and that the most important source of visibility is individual asexuals coming out to their friends and family.  Still, I feel like I haven’t been a very good example of that myself.  On the other hand, I’m slowly becoming more comfortable talking about asexuality.
You may add your website if you like : http://asexystuff.blogspot.com