The Radical Nature of Side B

As a follow-up to my last post, I'd like to reflect on some of the reasons why I was so surprised to find like minds among Side B proponents. The obvious one was, the places that I'd been finding my people were pretty radical spaces, and Side B is the 'traditional' or 'conservative' side of the GCN community, and I fell into a "you don't find what you aren't looking for" trope. But another reason is Sex-normativity and internalized Acephobia. When it came to Side B gay Christians, I had assumed that they accepted the role of celibacy bitterly, that optimally they would want to pursue romantic-sexual relationships, because that is the optimal state for humans (that line of thinking has worrying implications for what I subconsciously think about myself, but we're not going to worry about that right now). I had assumed that since they were conservatives, they couldn't possibly be radically re-examining the way that society (and the church) do relationships.

I've been kicking myself since that Saturday session, because Of Course the people who feel called to celibacy are going to be thinking about doing community in ways that break the romantic-sexual mold. Of Course these people are going to be frustrated by the lack of alternatives to the SNAF (Standard Nuclear American Family). Of Course these people are going to be rejecting romance supremacy and sex-normativity. In my self-pity I'd read think pieces by other aces about how sex-normativity is present in Gay and Straight spaces, and I'd forgotten or intentionally overlooked the space where romantic-sexual people were facing the same challenges as aromantic and asexual people.

So I'm still Side A, I believe that God made many things good, and that includes many kinds of attraction, and many kinds of relational structures, but as I read more and grow more comfortable with my own identity and explore my own possible call to celibacy, my respect for that calling grows. As my respect for celibacy grows, so too does my debt to the Side B Christians, the community that has cultivated that vocation by being quiet radicals in a truly radical way. The things I heard in that room were examples of this: monasticism is radical in the modern context, having friendships with a couple so close that they consult you when they're moving is radical, swearing an oath of celibacy in front of an evangelical congregation is radical. I was in a room full of radicals who were arguably more radical than me: here were people who felt sexual attraction, who still felt called to disrupt the normative relationship structures. So while I may disagree with some of their theology, I'm also grateful for that disagreement.

 I'm excited for the months ahead, to read the books that the members of the Side B community present in that session (and Tim Otto) recommended me: to see where and how the practical application of Side B can inform the practical application of Asexuality. If my sense of things is correct, I've got a lot to learn. I hope and pray that God continues to stand my worlds on end in ways as wonderful and challenging as this upheaval has been for me.