Sexuality is intimately tied to gender identity. For men and women, sexuality primarily centers on penetrative intercourse and the acts of erogenous stimulation. But there's a whole world of genders out there which have sex differently. And for proof, you only need to look at the sexes of diverse animals in nature. Plants use flowers as sex organs, fish fertilise eggs, and mushrooms are weird. If any of those creatures were intelligent enough to invent gender, their genders would surely involve a different conception of sex.
Certain nonbinary gender identities also have sex weird. For swarmgender and dronegender people, sex is mind-melding. Experiencing oneness of identity with a partner or a collective. I thought I was asexual until the first time I did it, and in fact for a year afterwards until I thought back one day and realised "Wait a fucking minute, that was totally sex!"
Neurotypicals have a hivemind. A very faint and weak one, in comparison to the level of connection I would consider "sex", but the way everyone is forced to think the same thoughts and be part of a collective is certainly sexual to me. They all have a shared sense of empathy calibrated to one another, and most of them get hostile when it doesn't work on autistic or narcissistic people. They dehumanise, depersonalise us, or take us to be in bad faith, assuming bad intent. They get violent, at the idea that we will not or cannot at some level mind-meld with them.
And when your sexuality is based on mindmelding, well all of that feels just a bit more personal. Me and my collective don't let just anyone into our swarm, and I refuse to be part of the neurotypical hive. I used to be, but I don't know if I even could after discovering myself beyond what neuronormative society will accept as real or possible.
I can take the time to patiently and slowly build a little bridge between myself and one other person, allowing their sense of empathy to work on me. But it's individualised. The data bandwidth required is too much for a mass broadcast, I need the high fidelity of a personal connection in order to teach someone empathy for any of the strange stuff. So yeah, I have sex with some neurotypicals when they demand to understand me. Their empathy won't work on me if I don't fuck them.
But I can't have sex with everyone. That's too many people. And there's times I'm tired, or frustrated, and I don't want to have sex with someone who's being rude to me. And then they always come out with "You should be more patient, you should tailor your arguments to me, you shouldn't call me a transphobe just for spouting rhetoric".
And, well, I don't like it when neurotypicals get upset that I won't fuck them.
Building a mental bridge. Opening up my mind so they can read it. That's what empathy is, mind reading. And for my gender, it's an erotic activity. One I don't enjoy when I'm coerced into it as a matter of personal safety. I'd rather have conversations with neurotypicals in which we don't feel a need to read each other's minds. There's no need to bring sex into every conversation, but some people get aggressive if you don't.
Nobody should get aggressive over something like that. I think, however, I'm unclear what you mean by empathy. My interpretation of "reading someone's mind" in this context is more akin to recognizing social cues than having or displaying empathy for another person's situation.
I understand that I'm not at all equipped to even make a comment on the concepts you're talking about. I'm just trying to understand how I could engage with society in such a way that, if we were to randomly meet, you would not feel as though you were being harassed.
Affective and cognitive empathy are two different skillsets. Affective empathy tells you what people are feeling. Cognitive empathy tells you what they're thinking. Recognising social cues is part of cognitive empathy, and that's why autistic people are said to struggle with cognitive empathy.
When I'm closed off from the NT hivemind, I'm a black box to cognitive empathy. You can't see inside, you can't guess my motivations. And there are lots of people who respond to that with hostility. Just having the option of closing myself off when I want to would be what I want.
Can I ask, and I don't mean to pry, how does this work? Like, without allusions to fiction, what does building a mental bridge look like in reality?
Neurotypical thought is governed by cause and effect. The same causes will result in the same effects. If you've been in the same situation a dozen times and paid attention, then when that situation comes up again, you can identify which mental causes will result in which actions of the neurotypical. I use my repository of past experience to make educated guesses at what other people are feeling that makes them act in the way they are. Then I know what's going on in their head.
Narcissistic thought is governed by the rules of fiction. To understand what a narcissist is thinking, all you have to do is be genre savvy. So to make others feel empathy for me, I have to convince them on some level that they are interacting with a fiction. Once they've got their art critic hat on, they'll understand me. So I talk about fictional scenarios and try to rope that person into my reality. Or I try to tell a story they find compelling that they'll be able to predict the next beats of based on their culturally learned understanding of stories.
Once I understand them and they understand me, we have two way empathy.
That's really fuckin cool
Thanks!
One side effect of narcissistic thought being based on fiction is that, well, a lot of our deepest held ideals are fictions: Justice, Honour, Fairness, Science, Truth, Hope. These are ideas human beings invented. And real people cannot hope to live up to them. Narcissists can. On the other hand, though, there are plenty of less savoury fictions: Evil, Malice, Hopelessness, Vengeance, Punishment, Authority.
If you understand the rules of the Narcissistic brain, it's actually very easy to manipulate a narcissist. Risky, and dangerous, but not technically hard. You just have to get the narcisstist to tell the story you want told. Do you want a hero? A mentor? A damsel? A devotee? These are fictional character archetypes, and with consent, a narcissist will play them. Everyone wants to be a hero, we can actually do it. The trouble is, if you're not careful, you'll end up with a villain. A crusader. A devil. A betrayer. When the narrative is disrupted, it seeks the most stable equilibrium. There's no guarantee you'll like it. That's why narcisstists are seen as abusers.
Few people are capable of true introspection and improvement. Neurotypical or otherwise. But if you find a narcissist who is, then you have a true paragon.