Asexual curiosities

Spontaneous moving

2010-12-31T10:38:00.001-08:00

I've moved over to wordpress now, for various reasons, some of which I go into in my last post of 2010, my first post of my new blog.

Do come visit me.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

What to expect

2010-12-27T14:00:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking more about TEVA. Yeah, that's me, always first on the scene. Cutting edge asexy journalism.

I've seen some people, before the ad was taken down, criticising the way asexuals dealt with that. I was on the verge of it myself. But, well, it worked (I assume. I've not seen or heard of the altered campaign, I'm assuming I would have done had it been the slightest bit controversial).

I think there's something in the asexual movement which could have gone "Oh dear. Look at this terrible representation of asexuality. Let's talk about it quietly amongst each other." I've been guilty of that, before, of not reaching out and EXPECTING.

This time, when we expected, we got what we were given. Some times, it won't be so simple. I'm with Melissa when I say you know what I expect. I know I won't always get it. But if you don't expect, as she points out, there's no way you'll ever get close.

We can expect people to behave a certain way. And only when we have expectations can we tell them how we expect them to behave. That's what the 101 project I'm intending is about, really.

So we expected that this company would apologise. It did. We expected it would remove it's ad. And it did.

We can expect more. We can expect more from the LGBTQ.

Siggy said something so simple on apositive once that sticks with me, that gives me a kind of strength. He asked the standard question about LGBTQ, but with a subtle twist. He asked, not "Does the LGBTQ cater for asexual people?" but "Should the LGBTQ cater for asexual people?".

There's been an air of defeatist acceptance among asexuality. We have the strength to change what we can, the courage to accept what we can't, and we've lacked the wisdom to decide between the two. Siggy's should was, for me, the first whisper of an alternative, an alternative where we expect more.

And now there are some of us who are starting to lay down our expectations. Suddenly, we don't accept. We expect. And yet I feel like this defeatism still looms over LGBTQ. There is still a sense that, because they, like TEVA, sometimes fail now, that we cannot expect any different. And that'll never get that ad changed.

I was so afraid of my university LGBTQ at first. I was afraid to go to the meetings because I had accepted this lie that LGBTQ wouldn't accept me. But they had placed expectations upon themselves, and now I feel rooted. I have access to a history and culture, a shared strength, I've never been able to access before. I have access to a group of awesome people who are accepting, who I feel comfortable around.

We should expect this. Because some of us need it.

The gay agenda- it's not just for straight people any more!

2010-12-26T10:39:00.000-08:00

From the sinister and teal-clad minds of the Evil Fellowship of Aromantics (ie, Sciatrix and I) comes a new and terrifying game. Tiers of Queer, a game of privilege and plummeting, where the stakes are your lives. Wanna play?

This is based, by the way, on the beautiful last line on this post about asexuality, which was clearly not written by non-libedoists, bitter that we'd stolen their word:

Generally speaking, in terms of sex drive and desire, the homosexual and the asexual could not be further apart

(read the rest of the article. It's short, but... informative)
This quote suddenly made staggeringly clear to me the hidden inference behind this. People like simple lines. Asexuals and other 2nd dimensional creatures, can mess up a linear world view. There's us and them. And, for the more refined, there's moderate us, between two thems. It's how a lot of people view sexuality, and the tiers look something like this:

1.Celebate
2.Asexual (dragged down slightly because the word has been stolen by gay sympathisers. You know who you are!)
3.Decent folk.
4.Deviants (BDSMers, mostly. The definition is left usefully flexible)
5.The Homosexual (male. If you're a lesbian, or homoromantic woman, congratulations. You've broken the game)
6.The Transsexual (not quite sure what these people are, but they must clearly be like the homosexual, but more extreme)

This is why asexual and homosexual are more opposite than, say, asexual and straight. Because being gay isn't defined by what it is, attraction to men, but by the level of sexual deviancy that the quality posesses.

Sexual Deviancy is a single-score game. Maybe you fit into more than one category? Tough. Pick the biggest number that applies to you, and that's your score.

And this is where it got to me. I'm 5 on that list. I am a homosexual. I'm not sure if I've directly typed that on this blog, before, but I've said several times that I used to think I was demihomosexual and realised I was more than demi. I don't use gay, because I'm really not. I find it difficult not to identify in some way as asexual, even if there's no technical asexual left about me. Because I'm an asexual blogger, because I'm aromantic, because to invalidate asexuality is to invalidate whatever the heck I am.

I've been trying to introduce myself not as asexual, and it's killing me. Outings are suddenly fifty times more painful than even asexual outings (which aren't fun). I end up with people having no idea what I am, when what I want is to spread visibility. I want to be proud that I'm asexual. Without being asexual.
And if that happens, if I go back to the word asexual, without the doubt every time I introduce it, without the 'so what' of "Um... I used to identify as asexual?", then guess what? I'm a homosexual, pretending to be asexual. I'm a repressed gay, dispite the fact that I think I'm doing pretty well at not being repressed. Dispite the fact that the biggest force ever repressing me was the fact that I knew I could be used as evidence that asexuality is invalid if I ever admitted who I was.

So now I want to say; yes. I am homosexual, and I will identify as asexual. I'm the betrayer in your midst. The wolf in sheep's clothing. What're you going to do about it?

Enough bitter not-quite-sure-which-bits-are-sarcasm for tonight? You're probably right.

On Static Content

2010-12-21T23:13:00.000-08:00

So this comes apropros of two things, both of which have been discussed particularly recently. Firstly, as we've mentioned, there is uncertainty about the role of AVEN. Is it a place for visibility? 101? Community? Discussion? I know I'm not the only person who feels uncomfortable linking someone to AVEN when I don't know what sort of discussions are going on there, what the current mood of the site is. And yet AVEN has, like, ALL the static content in the asexosphere. Apart from AVEN, there's the wiki, which I find much harder to navigate than specifically written FAQs, and the collection of academia on Asexual Explorations, which is hardly the first thing the general public would look for.

And secondly, I know a couple of other bloggers are starting to consider how we might more closely emulate other social justice movements (feminism, LGBTQ, civil justice, etc), I don't know how quick this is going to be, but I think some serious trolling and fail will emerge at some time within the next three years. Up till now, we've largely been doing our 101 seperately, adressing different things in different blog posts, and linking back to them when needed. What I'd like is a comprehensive and easily navigable pool of resources that we can link people to quickly, which is off-AVEN. What I want, essentially, is this.

I'm considering calling it Awesome! An Asexual 101. Yes, it's a complete rip-off of Finally, Feminism 101. That's intentional. It's a homage to those aspects of social justice we want to adopt.

I'm going to be honest, part of the reason I want this is because I think the non-AVENites have been dithering over whether to create static content, or whether that's outside our bounds, for a long time now, and this is possibly the simplest way of getting it off the ground. What we'll essentially have is an average blog, to which I encourage other asexuals who are interested in the scheme to contribute. I'm looking for good summaries of asexual phrases and our responses to typical attacks in a short, sweet writing style, with just a hint of "F*** off" when needed. Also, links to other posts where we discuss the same issues but more in-depth/more ranty/more personal would really help.

Anyone else interested in collaborating with me on this one? I'm kinda scared of starting it all by myself, partly on the 'presuming to speak for all asexuals' basis and partly on the 'running two blogs while also doing lots of essays' basis.

Smiling through the happiness

2010-12-14T18:40:00.000-08:00

Ok, I've been spending way too long writing about asexuality. The reason I know this? I saw an advertisement today for eye-drops, which said "You may be up for the christmas party, but your eyes won't show it!" or something similar. The idea being that you have to look smiley and happy. Looking happy being prized over being happy (especially for women, whom the advert was aimed exclusively at) is a big issue in itself, but my immediate thought was to the implications this has for asexuals.

The first of these is that we always have to seem happy in our sexuality for our sexuality to be recognised. Technically, an awful lot of asexuals could count as HSDD if it wasn’t for the ‘distress’ criterion. Distress is held up as the thing separating asexuality from HSDD, but I don’t know a single asexual who has never experienced distress over their orientation. That’s perfectly natural, it’s a new orientation, and the complexities of living as asexual can get really, really overwhelming, but asexuals have to smile through it all. If not, our sexuality is judged to be destructive, unhealthy, and the books even back it up. What’s worse, since the community is so focused around visibility, this pressure to smile at the world comes from inside the community, too. It would be nice if the world would give us space to not enjoy every minute of the ride.

I think asexuality gets a particularly bad deal here because aromantic people as seen as single, thus ‘Bridget Jones’; people who don’t want sex are seen as broken, unhappy, unconfident. I don’t know how our heteronormative world took the word ‘No’, one of the most powerful things you can do in the bedroom, a ‘no’ which is routinely scorned, cajoled and belittled, and turned it into a mark of lack of confidence.

And this segues rather nicely into my second point- consent. I’ve long realised this is (/would be, chance would be a fine thing) an issue for myself, but I’ve somehow never thought to associate it with all the other asexuals who want to/ wouldn’t mind getting frisky. The model which we’re told to want is the enthusiastic consent model. In its extreme, the progression went:
No means no (basics of consent, but lacks awareness of situations in which consent is impossible)
Yes means yes
OH, YES, GOD YES! means yes (enthusiastic consent)

Reading Emily Nagoski (awesome writer, maybe too heavy on bodily fluid discussion for the repulsed, a little gender-essentialist for me) recently, I was struck by the consent issues that her view of responsive desire brings up. How does someone with responsive desire ever say “OH, YES, GOD YES!” at the start of a sexual encounter? The only things they can say are no, maybe and a relatively unenthusiastic yes. She breaks it down:

The idea that functional sexual desire requires wanting sex out of the blue is bullshit – pervasive and intractable bullshit, but bullshit nonetheless.

She suggests further down that ‘desire’ should be replaced with ‘willingness’, and that suits me. A lot of asexuals are physically incapable of desire for sex, it doesn’t stop them being willing. Bottom line- enthusiastic consent is a barrier too high for a lot of people to live up to.

And yet- and here’s the issue- it’s fairly important as a notion. The idea that you have to actually want it and not just be coerced in some way is something I’d love to fight for, especially when not-really-consent is an asexual issue too. ‘Willingness’ is something which can be manipulated, ‘desire’ can’t. And I’m lost. How can we create a definition which helps those who don’t pass the desire criteria while still making sure that the system works for the majority?

When I told Sciatrix I was writing this post, she linked me to this conversation. There’s some interesting stuff going on in there, and I especially like the conversion of ‘green-yellow-red’ (yes, go carefully, stop), which I tend to hear in a BDSM context, for asexual uses. The very concept of ‘yellow’, that there is consent which isn’t enthusiastic or total, is likable, and it keeps the power of consent in the hands of the consentee, while other non-enthusiastic, non-total consent mechanisms can be more easily abused.

So, I leave you with this. A world in which displaying our emotions labels us mentally disturbed, and bottling them just makes us more damaged. A world in which we have to confront bigots daily without anger. A world in which we’re encouraged to smile when we don’t want it, but can’t manage a smile if we do.
And even if we get out of this still happy, we have to keep smiling through the happiness.
Till next time, folks,
Keep smiling

Sexuals talking asexual

2010-12-12T20:59:00.000-08:00

This is dealing with cast-off issues from my last-post. When I approached the last post, my head was a mess of all the different things I wanted to put into it, and there was some extremely heavy-handed cutting to get it brief enough to be informative. This post will hopefully be target-audience appropriate right from the beginning.

So this is largely about discussing asexuality in your LGBTQ, or maybe your sex-positive or feminist non-internet-based group.

Asexual canvassing:
There is one discussion that you are perfectly qualified to have without any asexuals present, and that is how much you're going to publicise that you are asexual-friendly. Are you going to add an A? Or a Q? (I know the Q doesn't seem like that much of a victory, but I've seen enough asexuals banned from LGBT spaces because their name wasn't above the door. It sucks to know that you're there at the whim of your hosts) Or chuck the alphabet soup altogether? Are you going to add asexuality and a brief definition to your promotional materials, let people know that your support networks extend to include asexual people? This is a conversation you can have without asexuals, because it might help you snare some. Then you can move on to the next two discussions:

Asexual resources:
Ok, so you have a feisty asexual or two who are willing to spread the message. You can now go one step up and, if the asexual doesn't mind doing some of the legwork, provide asexual resources. These will largely be resources from asexual people to asexual people. The flaw being that you don't know how many asexual people are actually going to find these resources, it's likely to be negligible. But it's good to have them. I'm thinking mostly in terms of asexual leaflets, asexual-specialised support workers, maybe the occasional asexual meetup if there's enough interest. This is something you can't really do properly if you don't have any asexuals on your team. While an asexual can still benifit from a normal queer/sex-positive support group, it's a lie to say that you have resources for them when none of you knows the more complicated aspects of asexuality.

Asexual theory:
I realised the difference between this and asexual resources when a friend asked if I wanted more on asexuality in our LGBTQ. I think they were thinking of asexual resources, and I was imagining an hour of discussion about asexuality being "Asexuality is [trot out definition]." "Okay". *55 minutes of silence*.
Asexual theory (and again, this ball is completely in the court of any asexuals you have around) is basically resources from asexual people to sexual people, with a little more discussion. This is why it is possibly the best way (except maybe a bit of joint visibility) to bring up asexuality in your group discussions. As I said last post, it's the stuff that comes after the AVEN front page that is actually interesting. The stuff on the front page provides five minutes of talk, and 4.30 minutes of that is the "Is asexuality valid?" question, which is a really good way to piss your asexuals off.
Not entirely thought this through yet, but it's essentially ideas that other people would find useful or interesting:
-The y-axis on the Kinsey Scale
-How asexuals define orientation and attraction
-Romantic attraction, aesthetic attraction (leading into Rabger's model)
-Non-binary intimacy, community-based intimacy
-Asexuality and the LGBTQ
-Challenges facing asexuality/asexuals

That's six topics which could each promote a good amount of discussion. In their own way, they're radical. I feel like they're as close to the heart of asexuality as the AVEN definition. They also all link into one another in a coherent order, and would make a nice presentation which would spark some truly enjoyable discussion.

In conclusion, see how hard I, an asexual (shush, brain. Not now), who has spent about four years active in the asexual community and a year active blogging, struggle to sidestep the initial unhelpful and vexing questions and get into a conversation. That's how much effort you have to go to if you want to get a decent conversation about asexuality going among people who don't know about asexuality. I want you to look at yourself and figure out if you really have the expertise to pull this off.

When sexuals write asexuals

2010-12-12T18:50:00.000-08:00

I've been hearing this a lot in the last two weeks and it's only now, when I sat down to write a completely different blog post, that my brain suddenly linked it all together and said "Hey, dude, there's this whole thing going on. Forget your other plans, talk about this instead."

It came to me after reading the Feminists With Disabilities bulletin for the blog carnival. I had a load of stuff here about why FWD is an asexual-friendly space, but I cut it out because I want this post to be easy to read for its intended audience.

Suffice it to say that FWD is always very strong on the idea that if you want to know what's best for disabled people, you talk to disabled people. Maybe this is what makes them so good at representing asexuality when asexuality and disability are two groups that the kyrarchy really tries to play against each other. Because FWD lets asexuals speak about asexuality.
And the ironic thing is that I'm sure a couple of their writers could speak so much better about asexuality than everyone else does, because they spend time listening. But, where possible, they encourage asexuals to talk, rather than speaking for them.

Someone recently mentioned that they were fed up of communities saying they were respectful to asexuals and then not trying to provide any asexual materials. This applies to internet communities and also to localised LGBTQ groups. I agreed a little, but on the other hand, I cringe because I know what sexuals write about asexuals when they've had little actual exposure to asexual thought.

A lot of people, and it happened earlier this week on a blog I'm not going to name, just flick onto AVEN, read the definition, read the FAQs if you're lucky, and get this understanding of asexuality that is no better than the corny American shows that're like "What happens when people don't want to have sex?" Then they tie that understanding into whichever point they want to make, often quite clumsily, and there's your asexual dialogue.

Which, as someone who devotes an inordinate amount of resources to furthering asexual thought, kinda pisses me off. It feels like they've proudly made a volcano out of a cola bottle and some papier mache and they hold it up to me and I'm like "Your paintwork is terrible. You've left most of the top of the bottle visible." They hold up their big, inclusive asexual thought and I can see the holes.

This annoys me because I WANT sexuals to be part of our discussions. I really genuinely don't want a world in which only asexuals can talk about asex, because I think the ideas behind asexuality are relevant to a lot of people. I've talked, face-to-face, with some people who have awesome views on asexual theory. I remember on AVEN, some of the commentors I respected and admired most were sexuals. I'd love to hear the views of everyone else. Also, since typing this paragraph, I've just re-remembered that I'm not actually asexual anymore. I suppose I'm a sexual commenting on asexuality, and no-one's stopped me thus far.

But I think that this is the dividing line:
I'm fed up of hearing "So this is what I think about asexuality, ie. celebately-oriented people." It's too close to "Should we let asexuality exist?" And that's a game I really don't want to play any more. This is what I said a year ago last week:

It's like the only asexual issue is whether we exist or not, and we're too busy with that issue that we have no time to actually exist.

I said it about an article that was four years old. Yawn. Is bored now.

What I'd love to hear is what sexuals think about romantic attraction. What sex-positive people think about repulsed aces. What other minority groups think about detoxing. What other desexualised groups think about the way asexuals experience desexualisation. What polamorous people think about the relationship binary. What feminists think about our own brands of asexual feminism.
What we can add to the discussions on disability, virginity, polyamory, and an ongoing list. What you, dear reader, can add to us.

These are the conversations that are worth having. So when we say that we want you to take asexuality and talk about it, we really, really do. But you have to take more than one bite before you can get anything other than surface. Asexuality isn't useful to you. It isn't something you can talk about. If it was, you'd be asexual (damn, why does my existance always contradict my points nowadays?). But you'll find something will hook you, if you look hard enough. It's past the front page, I'm afraid. If you're not willing to look for it, you could always write throwaway posts. Who knows, you may be thanked by asexuals for even deigning to notice that we exist, and not being more directly condescending than you would be at a museum exibit. You won't write well. And you won't engage me.

(The guest posts idea is still a very good way to get the discussion about asexuality started among your readership. An a certain quasi-asexual blogger is always avaliable, if you want to commission one...)

(a lot of this was also inspired by the blog post by Minerva about the sexual Sherlock fandom writing asexual and ACTUALLY DOING IT RIGHT!! I've found some small scraps of the discussion since then, and there really is some incredibly in-depth, gorgeously respectful discussion going on, a lot of which is by sexuals who have very little experience of asexuality. I was going to discuss what makes this work so very well, but I had to cut that out for succinctness, and because I don't really know. I think some large proportion of it is for the reasons I've mentioned, because they're willing to go beyond 101. But it just shows that sexuals can write asexual)

A film about corsets

2010-12-08T18:31:00.000-08:00

I was watching Rocky Horror Picture Show tonight, for the first time in over a year. It was a shocking realisation of how queer I've become. Before, I thought it was just a bad film, made fun by corsets. I was so shocked I actually asked my friends "Is it bad that I actually understand this film now?" I think they assumed I meant the plot, but the plot was simple, it was the film that was giving me problems.

I'm going to need to watch it again, looking out for the meaning beneath the words, but there were moments when it just pierced me. At the end, when the house in which your wildest dreams come true, the house of mirrors, vanishes, Brad, corset torn, looks up at the camera and says that, through all his searching, through all the crapsack of identity and gender and power and pain, he is never any more than he was when he started, bleeding inside, an eternal question mark without hope of answers or solid ground. I almost cried. It begins with answers, solidity, gender stereotypes, certainty, and ends with nothing but the potential of what the individual might one day be, if they weren't so afraid, so lost, so alone. I'd heard of the interpretation where it's all about 'yay, let's celebrate our sexualities', but I didn't give it much credence because, well, Frankenfurter is a rogue. Columbia rips into him about his horrible power games and then he carries them out anyway. He is punished for his transgressions, and dies unmorned except by the primitive and external id that he created. How's that for non-judgemental?

But now I'm seeing it as part of the cleverness. It isn't just the anthem of sexual freedom, it's the story of it. Metaphorically, it's what is going on inside us all, and inside our societies, when we decide to challenge established ground. There is fear and pleasure and lies and knowledge and ignorance. Nothing is real, and you have to keep comforting yourself that at least you don't believe the lies. If there wasn't badness, it couldn't be sex, because sex can be bad (and there's a radical asexual notion I'd like to stand behind).

And I've always seen Rocky as asexual. Don't ask me why. Maybe it started with the first time I watched, when I missed his sex scenes, but even after I re-watched and saw Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me and the song where he's like "My libedo hasn't been controlled," I still think of him as a sex-liking asexual. He never (until he's hypnotised) initiates sex, he goes along with it when two powerful and domineering people push him into it. And that's a beautiful little thought- Janet has to pretend that he's the big, strong man, and can't admit, even to herself, that the reason she gets with him is because she needs someone to do what she wants, but has to externalise it and pretend it isn't coming from her. Everyone externalises onto Rocky. In fact, now I think of it, I remember thinking something very similar when I decided he was asexual, and they're connected. Everyone has their own desires, their own perversions, and they take them out on Rocky. Rocky never has real opinions or ideas or arousal shown, he's just the playtoy of all the others, and I feel like I can see through the unreliable forcing of the other character's motives onto him and see through to the simplicity of him. He likes sex because it feels nice, and because he has a libedo, but there doesn't seem to be genuine sexual attraction there.

He's an unlikely asexual champion, I'll admit. But I like him.

A privilege check: 'Missing: Presumed Primary'

2010-12-08T02:55:00.000-08:00

We interrupt the scheduled blogging to bring you a post entitled 'Missing: Presumed Primary'. Regular readers will recognise the comforting themes of me being mopey about aromance, also, making up words. We at Asexual Curiosities are sorry for any inconvenience caused.

There's a lot of very cool stuff going on in the blogosphere, about community and detoxing and the autistic spectrum. Right from when I first found Dreki's post, I knew that there was something incredibly potent in the message, and I'm glad it's gripped everyone else the same way.

However, every way I try to get involved, I experience massive privilege-crash, from my original post, as a sex-positive person not recognising how much sex-positivity hurts the exact group of people I'm meant to be caring about and a non-repulsed person who probaby tends to lean too much on the side of 'would you mind hiding that bit of your identity that I don't think anyone should see?', to a neuro-typical person getting involved in the first non-101 nuanced autism-spectrum conversations we as a community have had, and feeling like I'm getting it wrong, to an essentially cis person trying to write a post about my trans 'inspirations' for questioning my gender without sounding like a massive jerk.

The annoying thing is that I now understand the theory of privilege in a much more practical way. Before, I had seen it cheifly as a tool to try and attatch judgement to human behaviour, which may or may not fit in with common sense. Now, I see it as a tool for allies, that allows you to, as I'm doing now, not say "But how can you disagree with me?! I'm a neutral observer!" and just say "Damn, this feeling that I'm not as neutral or respectful as I thought REALLY HURTS. Can't come out to play today, guys. Am doing a privilege check."

So for that reason, I'm going to share some brief thoughts about romantic attraction and how much I feel isolated by it (deja vous?). Also, this has completely nothing to do with the fact that I ran into my squish (Squish: An asexual term, kinda like a crush but non-sexual and often non-romantic) and his impossibly cute boyfriend randomly the other day and they were all like *eskimo kiss* "Sweetie, why don't you tell him that anecdote about this morning" "Oh, that was adorable. You're so cute when you wake up" and I was all like "Hahahaha i want to die."

Completely nothing. Definately the noble intentions, privilege-check thing.

So one of the (many) ways in which I've described the lack of sense which the romantic kiboodle makes to me is this idea that you pick someone, often almost at random, and then you presume that you're each other's primary relationship (Primary Relationship/Partner: A polyamorous term that basically means the same as 'significant other'). If I could encapsulate my feelings on dating (note: it's usually dating I get irrationally angry about, not romantic attraction in general), I'd like it to be a pithier version of "Dating is hoping you can lie to yourself long enough that the lie becomes true." The lie being that this random person is the soulmate, the One.

But my ideas of the presumed primary phenomenon have been loosening recently. It's likely I'm going through an aromantic version of that detoxing stage (detoxing: a still-contentious asexual term where asexuals go through strong negative emotions about sex when first finding the community), and "BUT NONE OF IT MAKES SENSE!!" is, through being able to talk and find people who empathise, becoming "Well, I want no part in it, but I have nothing against it."

Firstly, I don't now think that presumed primary is some antiquated law of monogamy that's been retranslated and retranslated and never rethought since back when women were objects. Well, I do, but that's not the point. I think the presumed primary rule actually has grounds in common sense. When you start having a relationship with someone that's really exciting, people in general will monopolise that relationship, often over their previous but less committed relationships, something that I as the aromantic friend tend to be paranoid about. When that relationship involves emotional intimacy, the two people will very quickly find themselves knowing more about each other than their existing circles. When it involves sexual intimacy, there's firstly a natural Pavlovian reaction to go back to them and get more, but there's also a clear placing above the rest of their relationships because there's only so many people you can have sexual relationships with at once, due to time and safety constraints. And then the final part of my important relationships triangle comes into play, and there will naturally be wild esculation of commitment. When you have someone who you've poured your heart and soul out to, who is also starting to know how to get you going in bed, essentially, a relationship that you prize as 'special', then it's natural to put in concrete plans for seeing them more often, to pine when they're away, and, once all that's happened, to actually start living together, basing your life choices around each other, essentially becoming fully primary.

The thought-test I used to get to this point was this: Imagine that tomorrow, all the crap from romantic monogamy disappears- the idea of soulmates, compulsary monogamy, this binary between friendship and romance, the presumed primary rule. Everyone is suddenly single again and gets another chance, playing by the new rules.

Now come back in 50 years. What stuff did you kick away which stayed out? Unlearned, unneeded. Of that list, the idea of soulmates has disappeared completely. There is still exclusivity of various forms (and much richer and more useful forms), but compulsary monogamy is out. People are categorising their relationships, probably in a binary, but a much vaguer one. Meanwhile, I was surprised to discover that, in the hypothetical simulation in my head, the presumed primary rule is almost as strong as ever. A lot of the sting has been taken out of it because there is no longer a binary between relationship and friendship, so the things which used to be called friendships are seen as valid relationships which need maintainance.

But this whole thought experiment lead, as they inexorably do, to the big question: How do I, as an aromantic person, use this?
I think the key point is seperating the presumed primary rule from its couching in the relationship binary. When you succesfully manage to do that, what you end up with is NRE (New Relationship Energy: A polyamorous term meaning the flood of excitement one gets at the start of a new relationship) leading to a monopolising of time. Which is perfect for our evil plans of binary subversion!
Because NRE can totally be cultivated in friendships as well as romantic relationships. Unless I've misunderstood all sexuals, and only asexuals get the "Wheeeeee, an amazing new friend!" However, from how people have talked about their friends, I'm going to say that's not true.
And I refer you to the story above, where NRE, through the magic of something that works exactly like presumed primary, leads to monopolisation of a relationship. Leads to a relationship fulfilling some or several vital needs, be they emotional or sexual intimacy, or others I've not thought of. And if you can hang on through that phase where you begin to see what needs each other can meet without it becoming a romantic relationship, you then reach the point where you have (fanfare): A highly significant but non-romantic relationship!!

Then, from significance comes commitment, and from commitment comes not dying alone and being eaten by your cats before anyone finds you (which I wish wasn't implied to be part of the natural life-cycle of the aromantic).

I'm very excited now. If I wasn't still snowed in, I'd rush out and find one of the 5 or so people with whom I'm sure I can kindle some NRE and try it out.

On yadas and community

2010-12-04T10:37:00.000-08:00

So I tend to get easily distracted by things. It shows on my blog, where I simply cannot put in the effort to be structured. I was mining this awesome vein on simple asexuality (as in, not being messed about by aromance and gender and queerness and demines and tricky things) and the structures we can put in to deepen asexual thought, and I had loads of plans, and then I got distracted by essays. And then I got distracted from essays by Yadas (for those who don’t know, the yadas are a group of originally non-binary trans asexuals who have formed a queer-ass e-gang). So it’s finally sunk in, and now I have two things I want to talk about. The next one is going to be more about my personal gender exploration, in relation to the gender exploration of everyone else I know. This one is, unfortunately, going to be difficult to appreciate fully if you don’t know about the yadas.

I want to talk about community. Because some of my greatest losses have been the deaths of communities. And the loss of relationships that could have been. I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently looking at the good days, with friends, proto-friends, former friends, internet friends, meatspace friends, good friends, poor friends.
There’s something which hurts me just a little when I spend time with the Yadas, and that’s this sickening sense of de ja vous. Believe me, any Yadas reading, you are not the first (here comes the ‘back in my day’ story).
I remember the gang I used to hang out with on AVEN. Maybe a dozen regulars (I can remember about 6 of the usernames), and up to 30 familiar faces on the edges. We spent our time in Just For Fun, and started out just as posters who vaguely knew each other. Then came The Longest Thread on AVEN, and things- exploded. Almost literally. I think, at our strongest, we managed to get through about a hundred pages in a night. You know the chatterbox? That was made to try and contain me and my gang. We were despised! We were infamous!

And that’s the thing. I remember being the New Young Avenites. I remember our impenetrable in-jokes. I remember the way we all praised each other, and then copied each other’s praise into our signatures. I remember the thrill of making AVEN work for us, being radical. I remember hanging around the boards at midnight, taking over practically every thread as we greeted each other, and the forums rang with our delight. I remember laughing at the previous gang of New Young Avenites, as they disapproved of us, mostly just because we weren’t them and didn’t have the same jokes as them. I remember disapproving of the next gang of New Young Avenites, as they laughed our group into the fragmented darkness of the internet.

Boy, do the yadas remind me of me.

I wonder how much the name makes the community. ‘Our group’ seems to eventually get a name, and with that, it becomes something more. It’s happened with pretty much all my irl friendship groups, and the ones with a name seem to inherit a purpose. It seems to me that there’s a sharp difference- communities with names die, or are saved from dying. Communities without names just loose the potential to one day exist.
I’m vividly reminded of this by the fact that I’ve just been texted by one of my old best friends while writing. We had a gang of three, with a name. Within a gang of six, with a name. And each group had an identity. And each group isn’t going too well. And each group is starting to fight for it.

Some random thoughts. Don’t stop fighting, yadas. Really, don’t.

Saving Spaces

2010-11-29T03:03:00.000-08:00

EDITED TO ADD A DISCLAIMER: I've come under severe criticism for being so blindly supportive of sex-positivism in this post, which I think is pretty fair. The problem is, up until this was pointed out to me, I'd always gone with the sex-positive movement's rhetoric of assuming that sex-positive is a synonym for non-judgemental. I'm not going to edit anything out of this post, but for now, please read 'non-judgemental about people's sexualities' where I've written 'sex-positive'.

Not been writing much recently, restraints of work, and all, but every few days, I seem to stumble across new cool asexy blogs. My list has increased almost exponentially. Check out the list to the left-hand side if you’re interested.

One post in particular, from Dreki’s archive, has just got my head spinning.
If you’re interested in (post-101) asexual community building, you must read this.

(It’s so important that I’m not going to summarise what they say. I’m going to wait here until you’ve read it. Done? Good. I’ll carry on).

I’m still really not sure if I want to believe Dreki is telling the truth. On the one hand, they argue well, it is, for example, kinda weird that the only safe space on AVEN is for sexuals. There’s a whole thing about asexual investment in sexual pain which is another issue entirely- I think a lot of it stems from romantic clichés of bodies burned by the irresistible forces of lust, and unavoidable hyperbole when sexual people try to describe sexual attraction.

My biggest argument against them is that asexuality is fundamentally different from most other minority groups. We live in societies that are cissexist, ablest, racist, ect, but we also live in societies that are often quite anti-sex. When some other minority talks in a way which might be called ‘un-PC’, the privileged can ignore them. That’s what the privileged do anyway. When asexuals talk with a hatred of sexuality, that hatred is fuelled by the strong political groups which invest in creating hatred of sex, in breeding judgement and human misery. That hatred is also picked up by the same currents in society. These are horrible lies, I don’t want to see them spoken at all, let alone by people in a group that theoretically represents me. I’ve always seen sex-positive conformity as an acceptable price. True, it means we can’t say what some of us think, but it also means we’re not feeding straight into the judgemental power games of the natural opponents of alternate sexuality. Asexuals should be held to the same standards as others when making judgements about the moral value of sex.

These were my initial thoughts. Essentially, this is what I think the chief difference would be if AVENites stopped self-policing so rigorously. There would instantly be a lot more of the vile sex-negative threads that pop up occasionally, and there would be no stopping them. All the good work of AVEN would be wiped clean, massive asexual loss of credibility, planes falling out the sky, etc. And I don’t think it would help if we had safe spaces, because I still don’t want that filth in my community, thanks.
But then, re-reading and re-reading, I realised that this doesn’t answer the entire charge. In a slight twist to the Ideal Asexual idea, Dreki asks; why is it that transpeople and people with mental health problems and non-neurotypical people (three communities which appear to have a larger incidence in the asexual population than the general population), have to be hidden away? What sort of positive community can that make?

And are we limited to sitting around for an eternity saying “Jolly good lark, this asexuality business! Such fun!” while we secretly blog and queersecrets and PM our (perfectly valid) questions about intersectionality? That’s why I like the blogosphere and apositive, we can talk without worrying too much what the sexuals will think. When I posted a series of angsty cries for help because the loss of my assumed privilege as a romantic person hurt Too. Damn. Much, a month or two ago, I found myself supported by other bloggers going through the same things as I was. It’s comforting, and a conversation which probably couldn’t have happened on AVEN, where there’s suggested censure at your unhappiness, and no way you could have a proper discussion about romantic privilege.

Dunno. What do you guys think?

"I sometimes think no poetry is read...

2010-11-17T03:55:00.000-08:00

...save where some sepultured Caesura bled.”
A letter to a living poet, Rupert Brooke

So I found an ancient (given as a gift in 1944) copy of the complete works of Rupert Brooke in a charity shop for 50 pence. And oh my god.

Because up until now, I’ve only read one poem of Brooke’s. I think it was his last, before he died in his early twenties, in World War 1. “If I should die, think only this of me...” (watch as I completely disobey that instruction). The poem is pompous, patriotist, and famous. In my opinion, it’s one of his worst works. The poetry of Brooke seethes with passion and life, even as the things he agonises about are melodramatic, teen poetry.

Here’s the one I’d like to discuss today:

Thoughts on the shape of the human body:
How can we find? how can we rest? how can
We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man?
We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate,
Who love the unloving and lover hate,
Forget the moment ere the moment slips,
Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips,
Who want, and know not what we want, and cry
With crooked mouths for Heaven, and throw it by.
Love's for completeness! No perfection grows
'Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose,
And joint, and socket; but unsatisfied
Sprawling desires, shapeless, perverse, denied.
Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape,
Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape,
Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed,
Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost
By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways
From sanity and from wholeness and from grace.
How can love triumph, how can solace be,
Where fever turns toward fever, knee toward knee?
Could we but fill to harmony, and dwell
Simple as our thought and as perfectible,
Rise disentangled from humanity
Strange whole and new into simplicity,
Grow to a radiant round love, and bear
Unfluctuant passion for some perfect sphere,
Love moon to moon unquestioning, and be
Like the star Lunisequa, steadfastly
Following the round clear orb of her delight,
Patiently ever, through the eternal night!

I think it might have been the second poem I read. I loved it from the moment I read “who love the unloving and the lover hate.” Such a simple illustration of the cruelty of human relationships.
To briefly explain where I think Brooke is coming from, he was part of a movement which abandoned chaperones, went on long, mixed-sex walks, slept naked under the stars (he went skinny-dipping with Virginia Woolf), but never had sex before marriage. You can kinda see it in his poetry, it’s all about attraction and kissing and mystery- part of what I like about Brooke is that the beautiful, classical language flows from a guy who is seriously horny quite a lot of the time, and willing to talk about it using a form often reserved for true love.
Brooke was also incredibly pretty. Half his friends, by most reports, were friends with him not because of his amazing wordcraft but because he was devilishly handsome. I want to know what would happen if Brooke took up modern day feminism, because a lot of his poems contain, between the lines, this cry of the objectified male. The objectified male who is so, so scared of growing old because all he has are his looks, because he refuses to validate desire when it doesn’t come from someone classically good-looking.

And so we get back to this poem. “Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips.” We try to know people through sex, through intimacy, the act is never the act but some frustrated attempt to connect, to feel like you really, truly know someone when it is truly impossible to. The body is a clumsy metaphor, its own isolation unit.
“Who want, and know not what we want, and cry,
With crooked mouths for heaven, and throw it by.”
Don’t tell me you’ve seriously never felt like this? Me and Brooke can’t be the only ones.

“we love, and gape,
Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape,
Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed,
Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost
By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways
From sanity and from wholeness and from grace.”
Here, he’s describing the body as imperfect, monstrous, an illusion of what we truly are. And it’s so fucking queer. “Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost.” Since reading this poem, I’ve genuinely considered replacing my ‘questioning’ label with that phrase. There is something I find so beautiful, so human, in imperfection.
The imagery here is astounding. Last year, I was doing art (as I think I mentioned), and for his final piece, one of the guys took close-ups of people’s faces and then zoomed in so much on the corner of a nose, the fold of a brow, that they became abstract, hauntingly beautiful patterns of sumptuous flesh. Reading this poem, those photographs are what burn themselves into my mind.
“By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways,” the human body, coming to terms with it, loving it, is a journey. You can literally lose yourself.

And then he goes a bit crap and wusses out and says that it would be better if there were no such things as bodies, these perfectly imperfect forms of wonder and delight, because it would be better if we all connected spiritually, throw in a random classical reference, bob’s your uncle, another Romantic poem churned out.

Which is where I get annoyed with Brooke, because he always has such great potential. He definitely wasn’t afraid of breaking the rules of his day, and his poetry seems, when it’s really flowing from him, so transgressive, so full of fire and change, that even a century after he lived, the world still trembles from his vision.

And then something pulls him back. Whether it’s the fact that he’s essentially writing emo poetry about the latest girl to dump him, moping around in his room at the age of 16, or the fact that he’s stuck in the Romantic framework, where there are easy answers and you have to prescribe to them, or because it was Edwardian times, and there simply weren’t the words, or because he was so young that he never got to realise that he could be more than an object, that desire isn’t something you have to justify.

Poetry changed, months after he died. Possibly the most poetry has ever changed. It became about raw power, emotion that could cut through the heart, mockery of those in command, it became a tool for radical critique of society. Brooke died in the old system, and is remembered by it. He is remembered by silly poems about the honour of death and the romance of war, couched in pretentions. Had he lived even three years longer? I think the world could be very different today.

Operational definitions: Where things get technical

2010-11-15T15:38:00.000-08:00

First- time for a short squeal of delight. A personal first: Someone I know mentioned the split between romantic and sexual attraction without being asexual or, to my knowledge, knowing an asexual. This made me fiercely happy. It also gave me the perfect conditions with which to bring up asexuality for the first time with my LGBT, but various people interrupted and the topic moved on to something different.

Anyway, I’ve been stumbling across a new way of defining myself for a while now, and I think I’ve finally got it sorted. It reconciles asexual and homosexual in a way that demihomosexual never did for me.
It’s based on the idea that sexuality has a number of ways of defining it, subtly different in ways that normally don’t matter. The three which I’m largely thinking of are:

The social constructionist:
Sexuality is defined by identity, feelings, belonging. It isn’t prescriptive or intuitive. Whatever labels fit, stick. It’s also very generic and vague, offering absolutely no definitions of what sexuality is, how important sexual attraction is, etc. In being open, it is blurred and unspecific. According to this definition, I’m asexual.
The asexual:
A definition of sexuality created by people who were told about sexual attraction in the assumption that they’d already know about it. A logical, thorough image of sexuality, like painstakingly painting around something invisible. Very much based on the word attraction. Compartmentalised, due to the difference in the romantic and sexual feelings of many of its creators. I’m guessing I’ll get a bit of flak for saying that asexuality doesn’t reflect reality, but my point is that nothing does. Not completely. I think the asexual theory is utterly awesome because it’s the only one that really looks deep into the complexities of what orientation means. Under the asexual definition, I’m homosexual.
The behaviouralist:
Defined entirely by how you act/want to act. A pretty sucky approximation for orientation, but it has in its favour the fact that it’s actually more important than orientation, in a real-world kinda way. In this sense, I think I’m bi.

The nice thing about this is that it gives me a reasonably succinct description of my sexuality that invites dialogue and hints at the complexities involved, while referencing all the identities that are important to me (my preferred label, my technical label, my behaviour). It’s way better than the “Don’t know, not sure how to say it” that I’ve been trying for recently, which is so difficult to make not sound defensive. Instead, I’ve got “depends on what definitions you use. From a general understanding, I’m asexual. From an asexual understanding, I’m homosexual. From a behavioural understanding, I’m bisexual.” Which is- well, it’s the most compact I’ve got it since I gave up being asexual, and it makes me feel so much happier than any partial label.

Witness the awesome power of synoyms!

2010-11-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

In primary school (dunno what non-UK equivalents are. Kindergarten?), they told us never to use the word said. Or nice. We had a big list of synonyms up on the wall, and we were told synonyms had power. Synonyms were strong and had specificity (my new favourite word).
So we, as asexuals, have the generic word ‘friend’, which we’re trying to extract highly varied, nuanced and specificitised (sorry) meanings from. And we’re having as much luck as juicing a stone. Time to turn, as my teachers would be glad to hear me say, to the awesome power of synonyms.

As a thought exercise, inspired by a comment from WritingFromFactorX, I’m going to list a variety of synonyms and the meanings we might have a chance of getting them to have:

Someone I know- Less formal-sounding than acquaintance, without the commitment of friend.

Acquaintance- A fairly simple one. It’d be nice if we used this more. If you ‘Acquainted’ someone on facebook. It would remove a lot of the extreme end of the devaluation of friend. However, it sounds rather frosty. It’d be tricky to use often in real life without people thinking you were standoffish. Which you especially don’t want to do when you’re forming your Awesome Circle of Asexy Intimacy.

Associate- Someone you associate with. Someone you work as a team with? Would be useful, if it didn’t sound as if you were threatening corporate takeover every time you used it.

Mate- Still fairly casual. To me implies someone you spend time with, but it doesn’t run that deep. Banter and paintball, not soul-searching and commitment. Alternatively pal, buddy, etc.

Confidant- A nice word, indicating a relationship very deep but not romantic or necessarily committed. I think this could be one of the more useable ones on this list, especially if you find yourself with an inner circle who you tell everything to.

Companion- You could get it to imply some sort of faithful commitment outside of sexual/romantic relationships. There’d be a bit of the romantic idea brought it. I think this word would only really be useful if you had a few strong, primary relationships, romantic friendships, binary-blurring stuff, and decided together that you would actively use the word ‘companion’ instead of ‘partner’, to indicate the different nature of your relationship.

Partner- A good fallback for a primary relationship that’s still not best described by standard labels. However, it’s a bit too monogamous.

Darling, dear, treasure, honey, pet, duck- Said with a bit of humour, I think meaning could underlie the joke. If there’s someone with whom you’re very intimate in some way, constantly referring to them as ‘my darling’ (both in first and third person) could show a little more flexibility in the status of the relationship than just ‘friend’. Definitely that you see your relationship as important enough to give them their own unique title.

What do you think? What words do you want in your vocabulary?

PS. The online thesaurus has girlfriend as the antonym for boyfriend. How peculiar.

Asexual literary criticism I: “How would a gay person read this?”

2010-11-04T12:41:00.000-07:00

Note on the series: This started off as one post, but it’d be fiendishly long if I did that. I’m now considering doing it in three, this introduction and comparison to homosexual criticism, then a post linking to various worthwhile pieces of asexual criticism, then a conclusion on what asexual literary criticism might look like. I could take this series down another aromantic, non-binary route, but I’m going to try my absolute hardest to drag it back to standard, possibly romantic, asexiness. Which basically means screeching the blog to a halt and turning it back the other way again, but these things have to be done.

Note on homosexual literary theory: I don’t actually dislike it. It’s because I respect it that I am especially disappointed when it descends to laughableness. I did a whole essay on the homoerotic themes in Hamlet last year. Along with one about the stagnancy of traditional romantic models in Brideshead Revisited, and another about the heteronormativity of WWI literature. Looking back, I wonder what my teachers made of me.

This is based on the summary of literary criticism in my English textbook, and, more specifically;

What lesbian/gay critics do:
[points summarised in brief]
1. Identify lesbian/gay authors
2. Identify lesbian/gay pairings in mainstream work, and then discuss them as such, as opposed to reading same-sex pairings in non-specific ways
3.Set up an extended, metaphorical sense of ‘lesbian/gay’, so that it connotes a moment of crossing a boundary.
4. Expose the ‘homophobia’ of mainstream literature and criticism.
5. Foreground homosexual aspects in literature which have been glossed over.
6. Foreground literary genres which influenced ideas of masculinity and femininity.

To which a queer friend responded: “Not all of us!” (by which they meant, ‘Some of us just read and criticise literature while also being gay.’)

Maybe you can see my criticisms of this section of criticism. For a start, it’s trying too hard, mugging the book in favour of the critic’s obscure and unobjective approach (so, in #3, for example, practically any sort of conflict could be seen as ‘gay’. And since conflict is at the heart of literature, the kids at school were entirely right when they told you reading was ‘gay’). From a more asexual point of view, #2 is downright disrespectful- why must you read a relationship as being gay when it is actually a close friendship? That just a) denigrates further the already impotent power of friendship, b) allows no possibility of an asexual reading, c) makes it harder for two people of the same gender to be allowed to be friends without someone reading into it.

And it occurred to me that we already have the basis of an asexual literary criticism (PHD material? That would be kinda cool). A lot of what we do is ‘literary’ criticism (see Ily and Shockrave), Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, Sheldon Cooper, Dexter (wow, writing the names of all those aliens/psychopaths/sociopaths all together made me feel kinda sad).
And notice we’re fighting already against homosexual criticism, gay people and asexuals both laying contradictory claim to Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, even Spongebob Squarepants. We are never given heroes. We must find those we like the best, and then fight like hell to make sure no-one stronger takes them.

And this is part of where homosexual criticism invisibilises us. It’s not just stealing our characters, it’s actually writing us out of existence. In the frantic desire to analyse what isn’t necessarily there, gay critics, hungry for evidence, revert to the following formula:

Absence of heterosexuality = Homosexuality

Gee, doesn’t that look familiar. Where have I seen that before? How about, oh, everywhere?

Gender: Oh yeah, forgot about that

2010-11-04T12:18:00.000-07:00

So, in this utopian world with ultra-flexible relationship models that we’re going to create (we being me and the Imaginary Brotherhood of Aromantics that I’m increasingly talking to. All you other guys are just eavesdropping), what do we do about orientation? By which I mean sexual and romantic attraction along gender lines.

It seems to me that those sexualities which disregard gender, asexual aromantics and bi/pansexuals, get to smoosh around with the definitions a bit, play loose and easy with the rules. Which is fun and all (except for, you know, when it’s not), but it leaves the monos playing catch-up a bit. How does a mono-sexual person implement a non-binary approach to relationships? When you clearly don’t have infinite possibilities with fifty percent of the population, do you deal with them the same as the others?

My point isn’t that monosexual people are incompatible with this hypothetical universe, simply that it’s going to seriously change the validity of orientation in everyday life.
Imagine, for example, two straight people of the same gender becoming committed life partners, living together, raising children, sharing hobbies, talking about everything and looking outside their relationship for more ‘casual’ ones, focussed on romance and kissing and sex, and those few things which they aren’t getting from their committed friend. How often would this type of arrangement occur in our hypothetical universe? Theoretically, not that rarely, I think a lot of people have the ability to share incredibly strong bonds with people they’re not sexually attracted to. In fact, I think the idea that the person who really gets you going in bed is the same as the one you can share amazing conversations and commitments with is getting kinda strained. I think a system where sexual intimacy comes relatively detached from everything else would be a pretty useful one for a lot of people.

And this ties in a little with a point I threw hurriedly into my last post- the mechanics of jealousy rely on the idea that you only have to be worried about one gender. The idea that only opposite-sex interactions are threatening. This is convenient because it allows an awful lot of control through wielding jealousy, but it still allows your partner to have someone in their life other than you. And this myth and the myth of the romantic binary prop each other up in loads of other subtle ways. If a relationship with people you’re not sexually attracted to is completely unthreatening, but any relationship with the slightest hint of sexuality is suddenly a massive deal, does that tell us anything important about our culture's relative valuations of sex and emotional intimacy?

I’d argue, nothing we don’t already know.

Aromance and polyamory

2010-10-30T02:25:00.000-07:00

Mage has just posted something about the intersection between polyamory and aromance, which, coincidentally, is what I was gearing myself up to write.

They talk about why friendship can have the same sorts of intimacy as an emotional affair, but without the judgement. It’s like a get-out clause in conventional monogamy, the poly-style steam vent without which the whole thing would certainly blow.
(It’s also, as a side-thought, often routed in heteronormativity. “My boyfriend can go out with his guy friends because men don’t form threatening relationships with other men”, “My girlfriend can do likewise, because even when girls do form relationships, they’re sexy and controllable.” Hence the gay best friend. Hence one of the reasons many people don’t want to date bisexuals (because they know they’d have to be jealous of everyone, thus allowing them no friends). It doesn’t work when you start to consider the real gender-sexuality smoosh.)

I don’t want to be one of those non-monogamous people who then decides monogamy is terrible and should be destroyed (but I’m allowed my tactless venting period, right? Like snotty new AVENites?). However, I don’t think I’m stretching my luck when I say- It’s impossible to get all your intimacy from one person.

Monogamy is going to have to struggle with that fact. Doesn’t mean it can’t survive (as Mage calls it, ‘monoamory’), but it can’t pretend otherwise. When it comes to intimacy, humans will always be sluts.

I think polyamory and aromance have a lot to offer each other. And not in a theoretical, we can both learn things, kinda way. In a practical, “Hey, Poly, wanna hook up?” “Sure, Asexy, prepare to be cuddled harder than ever before” kinda way.

It seemed weird to me, first pondering this, that the answer to ‘I can’t have one romantic relationship’ would be ‘have several’. But there’s two very important points about polyamorous people.

Firstly, as a group, they’ve spent a lot of time thinking about relationships, figuring out why the relationship structure they saw around them didn’t work for them. They’re going to sympathise, if you can spin it right.

Secondly, they’re less keen on this idea that intimacy has to look a certain way, and all come from the same person. That means you’re more likely to get a tailor-made relationship with exactly the kind of intimacies you both want, and both of you having the freedom to look elsewhere to fulfil your remaining intimacies.

At the end of the day, a monogamous person who hopes to find the one and have a traditional relationship with them can never be more than ‘just friends’ with poor old Asexy. You can break the occasional small friendship boundary, you can commit to each other and look after each other more than normal, but they’re always going to be holding a little bundle of intimacies out ready for Mr. Right.

What you need, my dear, (he says, giving out fake advice to an imaginary person who is clearly actually himself, somewhere in the depths of the internet) is something queerer. Someone who won’t bind you up with ‘just friends’.

Another awesome plus is the visibility. If you reject the relationship binary and then hang out with people who haven’t, then you’re never going to be read as anything but friends. In the same way that asexuals aren’t assumed to be asexual, they’re just assumed to be single. Whereas if you create interesting relationships, that gives you the ability to subtly indicate to your corner of the world that stepping outside the binary is possible. And, as David Jay would say, it also gives you something to gossip about.

Get me off this tiger

2010-10-25T14:54:00.000-07:00

I want out. Yeah, the hard way's more rewarding if you survive it, but I really fucking want the easy way. Because we are the first, and we have no idea if that elusive milk-and-honey land that we've been telling each other about actually exists. Because we're deluded fools on a ship bound to nowhere. Because I've been swimming against the tide for a few months now, and I'm starting to feel like I'm drowning. Because I can't imagine how I could live my life like this.

And it's true, only a few hours ago, I was feeling happier about this than I have done in weeks, talking to a friend who really genuinely gets where I'm coming from. And it's true, I'm blaming aromanticism for completely other issues, screaming at myself that it's my identity to blame rather than confronting what's really going on. Yes, I have a crush that's becoming unignorable. Yes, I have no idea how I'd ever translate that into any sort of mutually beneficial relationship without my aromanticism flaring up. Yes, it kills me to see him go home with another guy. But it's more a standard story of unrequited love. If he really liked me, we could work something out. It's the fact that he doesn't like me (after, I should point out, spending almost no time with me socially) that makes all my old insecurities come screeching back with "YOU'RE DULL! YOU'LL NEVER BE AN INTERESTING PERSON!" Which, I should probably mention, is where a lot of my fears about aromanticism truly originate.

But sometimes you just need to rant, and lately, this blog has been nothing more than a place I can scream. And scream.

Construction will come tomorrow. And I mean actual construction, not this crappy, fake 'blame it on the identity' thing. I mean actually what's bothering me, and why, and what I can do about it.

For now, just remember that feelings make you stronger. Remember that feeling you had as you were leaving and you shook your crush's partner's hand, staring into his face and wishing him a good night, smiling.

That's a new one.

An explanation, if not an apology

2010-10-15T15:45:00.000-07:00

Here’s where I actually spend just a little bit of time doing more than wailing at a computer screen. I can do that, you know. I keep a blog so I can join the exciting asexy discourse, not so I can go “WAAAAA, I HAVE NO FRIENDS, EVEN THOUGH I ACTUALLY HAVE A HANDFUL ALREADY AND HAVE ONLY BEEN HERE THREE WEEKS, WAA!”

Thought number one- this is exactly why I don’t want to join the LGBT. If I was proud and asexual, I would demand acceptance, but I’m not. I really hate that questioning implies ‘straight, maybe bi/gay’, possibly ‘cis, maybe trans’, and can never mean ‘asexual, maybe whatever’. So for now, I want to lick my wounds and concentrate on how to actually negotiate my sexuality, not just all the idiots who want to use it as their political victim. Screw them.

I want to explain my last two posts to you. Some of you may already know exactly where I’m coming from, but it’s those people I need to address most of all.
I don’t know what aromantic means. Romantic attraction as a concept seems nebulous to me. I don’t know if I am aromantic through and through or if I’m just too cynical, but this fact remains:
I am almost sure that I could not happily be in a standard romantic relationship.

That’s not to say I couldn’t have a relationship with the exact same structure as a romantic relationship, from the handholding and the kissing to the long-term living together and babies prospects. But each of these would have to be genuinely negotiated to be what we, as a couple (or triad, etc), thought was truly best for us.
I couldn’t pick a partner, do the wooing, buy flowers on valentine’s day and spend years being their ‘person-who-makes-me-not-single’ while they are mine. Literally could not do that, without living a huge and destructive lie.

What I have here is potential. I can tailor-make truly exceptional relationships. I can live by David Jay’s new guides, rip up the rulebook and really make things happen.

But there’s a lot that you miss when you give up romance. A lot that you don’t realise until you’re in that position. Sometimes, I think of romantic relationships as celebrated kidnappings, holding just one person in the crowds and making your needs their responsibility (see what I mean about cynical). Which is sort of... irresponsible. Especially if you then abuse that by expecting and assuming left, right and centre and never communicating. Your needs are your own. Deal with them.

That’s what I’m doing. Every need, out into the light, figuring out how to meet it. And it’s scary. I’m scared. I can see why people don’t do this if they have a choice.

I wish I had a choice.

So that’s why I talk about friends. Because they’re what’s important to me, friend relationships are my primary relationships. And I reckon this blog’s going to get seriously self-indulgent. I don’t know how long for. Stick around. Especially if you’re going through the same questions about romantic relationships as me. Learn with me.

That super-random last post- Part II

2010-10-12T14:48:00.000-07:00

So the last post- a lot of where it came from was what I've been thinking about aromance recently. Thinking about friendships and relationships, and how I can create relationships which work for me. How I create relationships is fundamentally an asexual issue, and that's... odd, when you've just abandoned the only label you've ever felt comfortable in and now you have a suuddenly decreased quality of relationships.

I'm not going to talk about relationships today. Instead, I'm going to talk about creation. I want to create something. Something interpersonal. It was a goal of mine already to figure out how to do that, and now it's a need. For want of better words, a party, but not a party as such, because a load of strangers and loud music is the opposite of what I want. A gathering. A meeting of minds. Mostly, I want to create a space. A space in which I can be myself and relax.

And, for me, it's big stakes. It's not just the people I chat to in lunch breaks, friends mean everything to me and they will always mean everything to me. There is nothing more out there.

On the doorstep

2010-10-08T16:33:00.000-07:00

I have a small group of friends, back home, that I used to hang out with. One of the best moments I remember was when we first started meeting outside of school. We went to one girl’s house, and someone assumed that their mother wouldn’t let us in. So we hung around outside the door for a while. A while turned into a little longer, people who had been standing sat on the doorstep and the pavement and eventually, her mother opened the door and said we were welcome to come in. We never got round to getting up.
We sat outside as evening fell. We sat outside, a circle of pale faces, and talked and talked into the darkness.

We never made that mistake again. We went round to that girl’s house every week and watched youtube videos and films, until her mother became too passive-aggressive and we started going round to mine. Where we watched films. And youtube videos.

One of the group understood. We used to go for walks, and we’d sit on the grass and talk and talk. One day, it threatened to rain as we were leaving. We only grabbed one, large umbrella. We sat on a bench as it started to rain. We huddled under the one umbrella. We watched the drifts of rain, the banks of clouds, the foggy lights of the city beneath us. We talked. Every time we tried to get up, the rain got worse. We sat down, and continued our conversation, deeper and deeper. We agreed- we were glad we had only brought one umbrella. It forced us closer.
Hours later, the rain stopped. The familiar world had become different, breathtaking. A beautiful, shared experience.

Within the last year, I’ve fallen in with a crowd who, I’ve just realised, have spoiled me rotten. They have this unspoken habit of finding some quiet room or garden in which to lounge- going to some event and then almost deliberately avoiding the actual event, just hanging out with the same old people in strange new places, as dusk falls, transfigures. As the dark draws in.

As the dark draws closer.

I was thinking, before I went to uni, about how to capture these moments, make them happen more often. And here- well, I’m in the middle of a sudden neurotic episode caused by the combination of my periodic “Oh god, I’m aromantic. How can I have the relationships I want while people won’t commit to me because we’re ‘just friends’” and the new “oh god, I need to go out and make some friends, but I’m incredibly ill with freshers flu.”

And every single event on the freshers week programme was in a nightclub, apart from the mother and baby group.

And the girl who’s likely to be my best uni friend hates walking even five minutes, which caused some tension today when I just needed go get out and stretch my legs, because that’s practically how I emote (I even wear holes in my hallway carpet).

And I just feel so scared that I won’t find anyone who does this thing of collecting moments, moments of non-conformity, of the elements, of coming together through the weird places you find yourself and the wonderful people you find yourself with.

And I just want to be back on that doorstep, on the corner of the street next to mine, as the light fades.

Quick post-freshers week update

2010-10-03T02:38:00.000-07:00

Hi, all. Little internet access, so this'll be short.

Apparently, the uni LGBT is both vaguely transphobic and probably asexophobes, too. I've not had any first-hand experience of them because I accidentally fell in with a small and awesome splinter cell who are much more accepting.

Also, I've decided not to label myself as asexual anymore. This decision happened more than a month ago, but I somehow never got round to writing the long-winded explaination. Basically, if the label fits, it'll come back to me. However, I'm still aromantic, I'm getting more and more sure of that. So:
-I still feel like part of the asexual community.
-I should still have a lot to write on here. Whether and when I do depends on how busy my life is.

My society went out to a trans resources centre, and they had forms which actually had an asexual option on them! I ticked them, partly because asexual is the option I most identified with, and partly because I didn't get a single asexual tickbox when I actually was asexual, and I don't want to miss out on the opportunity.

Jump at the sun

2010-09-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

Am leaving in a day or so to go to uni. Once there, real life will catch up with me rather harder. I'll try to update- oh, who am I kidding, see you at christmas.

Had meant to build this up with sexuality-tinted reflections on how I've learned and grown this year, finishing climactically and leaving the reader with a view over the wrapped-up fulfilment that I feel, looking back. All finished, time to move on.

Then life got in the way. And I was too busy enjoying it. Sucks, I know.

See ya.

Salad

2010-09-16T03:53:00.000-07:00

First off, here’s a picture of Spiderman, making the American Sign Language sign for ‘I Love You’. It’s derived from a mixture of the signs for I, L and Y, so what Spiderman is actually saying, as he swings his way through the streets is “I love you, Ily!”
This is clearly a shoutout to the fantastic and most prolifically asexy blog Asexy Beast, and its writer, Ily. Even superheroes demand asexual visibility!

Now, with that acknowledgment out of the way (random, but I promised Ily I would), here’s a David Mitchell-esque rant about innuendo that I thought asexuals might particularly enjoy:

Did you really have to make the word salad gross? Just from a foodie point of view, didn’t you think there was enough of a force in the world that made salad seem disgusting already, to all those people who are scared of vegetables and things that haven’t been grilled or fried? Did you really have to make it so that, whenever anyone says “I’m going to have a [blank] salad” in company, someone else is going to take advantage? See, it might seem like harmless fun at your en- to you, but this rant really isn’t about sex. Can you understand that, innuendo? Do you get that something could possibly not be about sex? Because what this is about, is language.

As you close off words, as you make more and more obscure sexual acts share the same lexicon as innocent things, what you are essentially doing is making those words unusable in the context they were meant to be used in- in an uninterrupted conversation that isn’t about sex, but is instead about, say, watersports.
Have you read 1984, innuendo? In that book, people are controlled by words. When there are things they can’t say, there are things they can’t think. The greater the vocabulary, the more open the consciousness of society.
I reckon you’re also starting to go bad for sex, as well, innuendo. Sex being all about communication, why can’t it be “You want to stick your what where?” All these nonsense terms for obscure (dare I use the term pornified?) acts almost amounts to using Urban Dictionary as a checklist. Which is not going to give anyone what they really want in bed.
I think you’re dying, innuendo. It started with come. One of the main verbs in the English language and you thought it would be oh-so-clever to take it for yourself. And now almost every book or short story or imperial-verb using conversation in the world contains an innuendo at least once.
The problem, innuendo, is not that you’re too hard. It’s that you’re too easy. You, innuendo, are a slut (word used rhetorically, this blog does not endorse slut-shaming). Sure, we’ve had our good times over the last few years. Remember that time when the racist Americans all called themselves teabaggers? Gee, that was fun. Or the last time we watched Rocky Horror together, when Frankenfurter was like “I’m coming” and we were all like “So’s Brad!” See, you used to know how to have fun, innuendo. Now you’re trying too hard.

So, innuendo, when you finally die, under the crushing weight of your own hunger, I’ll be at your funeral. I’ll even go to the wake. There’ll be salad. And it won’t be funny.

Quotes of the da- of the night

2010-08-31T17:17:00.000-07:00

Staying up way too late, ostensibly finishing a long and introspective blog post, I decided to check what Figleaf had been up to recently. He's found some killer quotes since I last read him, quotes which resonate with me, and I think could have a particular meaning in the asexual community. So, in the aim of spreading the love between asexuality and sex-positivism/queerness/kinkiness/otherness in general:

What I am saying is that as we intersect with a world full of people who don’t yet understand what we do and who we are, we aren’t doing ourselves any favours by putting on a good face and only trotting out the kinks and the people who are easiest to digest. No real understanding can come of it.

Andrea from Sex Geek (I think this may have actually been in Figleaf's reading list, rather than his posts), on queer community-building, sounding almost exactly like a lot of conversations we asexuals have had in the past. The speech is full of interesting poly/kink stuff, two areas I feel the start of a personal involvement in, as well as that random "Don't forget the asexuals! How'ya all doin' out there?" line that always makes me go "Ohh! Ohh! That's ME!"

Like Svutlana mother always say, if it take only two adjective and one noun for describe your sexual proclivities in headline, you no try hard enough.

The titular Svutlana, on Vivien Leigh.
To anyone who knows my label addiction, or anything about the vast, polysyllabic sexualities asexuals often build themselves, this needs no explanation.

The lures of the feminine- bloomin' quests

2010-08-31T04:25:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been feeling like I've been having the tiniest bit of sexual attraction to women. I tend to over-minimise my attraction on this blog, so 'tiny' tends to mean 'minor'. In this case, it means 'less than tiny'. It's not even got to the stage of being sexual attraction yet, it's like... increased responsiveness. Like before, I went looking for the bit of my brain that stores my gynophilia and there was just a wall there. Now, the room is still empty, but the wall has disappeared. There's a room in my brain that I've never been into before, waiting to be filled up.

I use this metaphor because that's what it feels like when this feeling strikes. It's that physical sensation when you open a door in pitch black, and somehow, you can sense the open space in front of you.

And I've been thinking about why this is, and what this means. Neither are easy to answer. Neither, I know, are strictly neccesary to answer, sexuality can be what it is without cause. But I think it's useful to look deeper.

When I was younger, I used to think that girls were off-limits. I used to surpress any proto-feelings I developed for girls, and encouraged the ones for boys, because I've been raised in a culture where heterosexuality is destructive. Where it is a metaphor for destruction heaped on the female by the male. Fires which, as they kiss, consume.

I've been going on a bit of a journey on that front, recently. I'll write about it when I have time. Knowing internally what I knew academically- that heterosexuality isn't wrong. Giving myself permission to feel things. When I do, now, it's interesting, exciting, not shameful or confusing. I feel like I'm on a new, a wholesome, adventure. And that could be the reason for my feeling of newfound space.

Also, and I'm less sure about this one, I've hinted before that my attraction to men may be as much about who I want to be as who I want to be with. Now I've come to the horrific realisation that I'm moderately attractive, I feel like that whole issue is coming to a close, and leaving me more mentally healthy.

So, it appears I have a flexible sexuality. And, what's more, it appears that my sexuality is often tied into whatever issues I'm dealing with at the moment. So, here I am, the perfect example of a late bloomer who deals with repression to fully accept themselves and suddenly open new vistas of sexuality. Yes?

Well, no, not really. The important take-away message I have about asexuality and flexibility here is that it really works both ways. As someone like me goes on a journey, their sexuality will change to reflect that journey, in subtle and unexpected ways. All too often, in our society, coming into a sexuality is seen as maturity, openness, a good end goal. But coming into asexuality, a restriction of sexuality, can be just as much of an emotional blossoming. It can stand for maturity, contentment, refinement of personal knowledge. So there is such a thing as a late bloomer. Right now, I feel like I'm blooming quite a lot. But asexuality is just as much a bloom as sexuality.

As sexy as they get

2010-08-30T04:31:00.000-07:00

This depressing thought struck me as I was waiting at the platform of the train station in the rain.

I am an attractive young man.

I have no deformities, nothing that would repulse the shallow or unsuspecting. I am tall, dress smartly, my hair finally looks like it was grown by someone who realises that hair can be aesthetic. I fit narrow, Euro-centric, even Aryan beauty standards. Careful choice of glasses hides the things I hate about my face, and careful choice of clothes hides the things I hate about my body. I am skinnier than I think, even if I will never take the massive time/money/pain investment that leads to a great body. I am reasonably healthy. People who know me well wouldn't call me confident, but various strangers have loved my confidence so much that they crushed on me. When I talk with passion, when I reveal what I tend to hide, I can feel people responding to that.

When I realised this, I felt as if I'd been gutted. Because that's it. Battle over. Goodbye, irrational complexes, see you again sometime in middle age. Have fun.
Because I've spent so long looking at uber-pretty men, I can't bear to accept that this is it. This is how far I get. This is attractive.

I don't feel any different. I don't feel like I always imagined attractive men to feel. So therefore I don't feel like I'm attractive.

It's sort of like the myth of thin, which I read about somewhere and now cannot find (prizes to whoever provides me with a link). You keep putting your life on hold, thinking 'when I'm attractive, I'll have this amazing and successful life'.

Well, I'm attractive.

It's time to start living.

On redefining queer, and who's allowed to use it

2010-08-17T01:55:00.000-07:00

First off, a quick asexy link, courtesy of my friends at American Virgin. I think I've heard about this film before, and I'm guessing the first place they came to fundraise was AVEN, but, in case you haven't heard the trailer, go and take a look.

Anyway, I forgot to write down the big list of topics I had to write about, so now I've forgotten them all, and I'm back to writing whatever comes into my head.

How does this reclaiming the word queer thing work, guys? Are we still meant to be slightly disapproving of anyone who uses it and doesn't fit in the LGBTQ crowd? Does it still hurt too much that we don't want to give others a free pass to use it?

I ask because I may one day decide that asexual is too confusing a shorthand for demisexual etc, and decide queer would be better. If I label myself queer, am I defining myself by a word that over half my friends can't even say? Cos that sort of sucks for them. It sort of sucks for me, as well, when they try and explain what I am, and can't use the actual word that I find most helpful.

Is it free to use, but you have to be prepared to grovel the instant any non-hetero-cis person takes offense?
Or is it based on how progressive you are? Feminists and sex-positive people get in free? Do you have to donate a certain amount to gay rights organisations (in which case, I'm not entitled, and won't be until I have some actual disposable income, in several years time [hopefully])?
Maybe you have to have a seal of approval by an actual queer person. If so, we could get little cards printed. That would definately save on confusion.

Or maybe we could just say 'ok, a word's a word. What's more, it's the only word we've got for a concept that needs expressing*'. If it's used in hate, sure, point out the hate, same as you would if someone viciously spat the word 'gay' at you, but just agree that the word itself isn't offensive any more.

*And a concept that needs expressing is a concept that EVERYONE needs to be able to express.

The demi closet

2010-08-10T01:52:00.000-07:00

So, quick recap:

In the last post, I promised my next few posts would be short. I then wrote a post that I thought would be really short, and it ended up the same length as the others.
In the post before that, I promised to make things less asexual-based, or at least more wired towards a readership that I don't assume to be asexual. That's also notably been failing.

Today, I hope to meet promise #1, if not promise #2.

I've been thinking about how little I really mention the sexual side of my demisexuality on this blog. A lot of what I write about is written from the 'asexual perspective', and I almost seem to be trying to aviod the part of me that's, well, normal. Seriously. Second-guessing how sexual everyone really is makes my brain hurt, but I reckon there's happily sexual people out there with the same level of sexual attraction to me. I know that my feelings are the only ones I can comment on, but the more I let them be what they are, the more they seem to mark me out as subversively on 'the other side'. It doesn't mean I'm not asexual, the label is still the most useful to me without getting complex (like demihomosexual), but maybe that I'm less asexual than my deliberate persona.

I think it's a matter of bravery. I don't want to stand up and say "This is who I am" because it goes against the idea of the Ideal Asexual. Or maybe, if the Ideal Asexual is the asexual sexuals want to see, the Pure Asexual, the one who's as asexual as possible, who has earned their place at the table of the sexless.

And then there's the excuse. The excuse being- we live in a society with screwy notions about sex (especially queer sex), and I know that I can never rely on this blog to be anonymous. I want the worst real-life experience I can come away with to be "Yes, I blogged about asexuality for several years. God, I was privileged, time-wasting and self-obsessed back then" and not to be "You've read my blog? Oh, great. Now you know way too much about how I think about sex." I draw the line very high so I have a little further to slip.

And the problem is that it's quite a good excuse. The chances aren't all that remote, especially as I remain openly asexual, if someone just decides to google asexuality and do a lot of reading on it. I'm probably blowing the effects out of proportion, I'd never planned to be any sort of graphic sex blogger. After all, that would isolate some of my asexual audience (see promise #2, above) and be practically impossible, considering I'm not reckoning on having a sex life to write home about any time soon.

But anyway. What's courage and what's foolishness?

And, looking back, I'm less convinced that I've met promise #1, or that I've not met promise #2. The moral of this story is- I always break my promises (must be because I'm an evil demisexual aromantic).

Sexual aromantics and asexual romantics- guess which are the bigger bastards

2010-08-09T06:00:00.001-07:00

Note on the title: Yes, I'm perfectly aware most asexual romantics don't agree with the people quoted here, and the ones who I have quoted probably didn't think about it in this much depth. Now I've got your attention, I'll put away my broad brush and start painting with the narrowest implements I have. Which would be the knives.

So I spent three weeks on holiday and what feels like another half a week catching up on all the internet stuff I missed out on (and that only includes the blogs I have feeds for- the busier ones I tend to just check whenever I have time and inclination- that’ll take me months!). Anyway, I tend to compose my subjects for blogging away from my computer, so I have two or three short things that will basically write themselves, and one big, epic post I want to make about heterosexual masculinity, and am building up to.

When I came back, I noticed Charles (I’m avoiding Pugnacion because it’s harder to spell), who has been the most admirably busy asexual blogger in my absence, had linked to a thread on sexual aromantics on AVEN.

I’m demisexual a?romantic, I’m probably the closest anyone has come to self-identifying as sexual aromantic, and I want to use that thread as a springboard for some of my thoughts on the matter.

It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought, to be fair. Only two or three comments were actually offensive, a lot of the rest were telling the offensive ones that they were wrong.
In the manner of a very effective presentation on pedophilia that Pretzelboy recently linked to, I’m going to re-phrase each negative statement made so that it reads as a statement about you, the reader. This is effectively what the AVEN thread was saying about me as I read it:

I find you rather horrifying, and I think many people here would agree with me on that count.

The emotional aspects mean absolutely nothing to you. You trick people to get them into bed and then never call them back or talk to them again.

There may be people like you who do not come off as sleazebags, but I'm not entirely sure how that would work . . .

I think you are horrifying, or disturbing in the very least.

The final quote is one I’d like to pull out for further analysis:

“it would be so much simpler, if you wanted to satisfy sexual desires, not to be so focused on the other person. Sex for the sake of pleasure rather than the intimacy and focus of love and whatnot.”

Ok, so there’s a whole load of stuff about how I don’t feel the right thing. I can’t feel love. I’ve said how much that hurts. In its place, I have (a small amount) of lust. And that’s bad. That’s shallow. That’s wrong. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me where I stand.
I’ll skip over that for now, I’m certain I’ll come back to it later. What overwhelms me are the misconceptions. According to the quotes above, someone who feels sexual attraction but not romantic attraction:

-Tricks people and lies to people
-Does anything possible to get people into bed
-Is incapable of human connection
-Is incapable of self-control
-Is always and irrevocably selfish in bed

And, I know, asexual people aren’t the best at understanding how sexual attraction goes, for obvious reasons. And AVENites are often not on the same page as me regarding sex-positivism. But how are any of those things linked directly to sexual attraction? You can have casual sex without deliberately hurting or deceiving your partner. You can be sexually attracted to someone and want them to be happy in bed. That’s how it tends to work, in fact.

The ideas in that thread were based on two paradigms. The first is that a sexual relationship without love is inevitably destructive, and that people (often interchangeable with ‘women’) will only have this destructive sex if they think they’re tricked into getting love. The second is that sexuals cannot control themselves- sexual attraction, sooner or later, is a matter of selfishness, especially when not balanced out by the healing and benevolent and entirely unselfish powers of romantic attraction.

A lot of gender/sexuality blogging seems to be about picking out the paradigms behind what someone thinks, and then pointing out that the paradigms are wrong, to a load of people who already agree with you that those paradigms are wrong.

They’re wrong. See. You agree with me, don’t you?

God, I’m good at this.

Picture-pretty

2010-07-14T09:08:00.001-07:00

So I've finally been browsing some of the Hot Pieces Of Ace videos, although youtube seems to be messing up and stopping me watch the majority of them. As I said, I'll tune in on a topic of particular interest to me, and long-term followers of the blog may know that aesthetic attraction is something I think about quite a bit (basically, whenever I see someone incredibly pretty).

For example, I agree with the little scenario in Ally's video where her friends are like "Oh, he's cute, I want to have sex with him" and she's like "Oh, he's cute, I want to... like... look at him! Oh, maybe we could have a conversation!" and that's ditto for me, even down to the excited "best thing evar" voice.

However, there's something I've seen in a lot of the videos, and in a lot of places before, that I suddenly realised was odd.

When people ask how we can find someone attractive but not aesthetically, the response is often "I find them pretty in the same way that landscapes are pretty." And it's an answer that often works. It has the benefit of simplicity. It references the fact that we just love to look at them, like you would an amazing picture (and my love of photography and of pretty men seem to feed off each other in complex ways when I look at a good photo of a pretty man). However, I'm guessing it's often a downright lie.

See, I crush. I don't know how I know it's a crush. There's generally no (or little, depending on how demisexual I feel today) bedroom antics at the base of the crush, but my response to a pretty, confident man with a big personality is so different to my response to a basket of kittens.

Come to think of it, my response to said man is different to my response to a pretty woman, which tends to be an aesthetic attraction in the same way a picture is. It's hard to describe, but my response to the man contains something of that attraction that most people think of as sexual. But not the sexual bit.

If you want to use the "pretty like a picture" illustration, good for you. Especially if you feel it is really true for how you experience sexual attraction. Heck, looking back through my blog, I've used it myself. But, personally, I feel that I'd be lying if I simplified it to that. And it'd be one of those lies that weaves itself around you and ends up trapping you.
So my answer? Probably a "Why do crushes have to be sexual?". There's so much else involved in a crush, I'm sure, why can no-one understand that what I feel is the same thing as you feel*, except without the desire to rush of and have sex with them?

I'd go so far as to say that I think a lot of people, assuming those feelings are always about sex, self-define them so that they become about sex anyway. The "Oh, I really want to... oh no, I actually don't. There's nothing I specifically want to do" feeling is offputting.

*another simplification- I tend to assume that no-one feels any aspect of attraction in exactly the same way. Talking about attraction is like talking about pain- language fails because there can be no common references.

NOTE: So this was a random little thought that occured to me. I'd promised myself that, starting after my holidays, I was going to adress to an audience of any vaguely sex-non-normative people or allies, rather than sticking to adressing a small crowd of in-the-know asexuals constantly. As you can see, this post blatantly disregards that. Sorry. Will try harder.

Aromantic until further notice

2010-07-12T16:37:00.000-07:00

Firstly- no, I have not posted for the last month or so.
Secondly- I doubt I will post again before my three-week internet holiday starting next week.
Two reasons: Firstly, because I decided this blog simply has to take last priority in my life. If I can't keep it last priority, I can't keep it at all.
Secondly, because I tend to write when an idea pops into my head, I mull over it for a day or so, and then set it all down. This all relies on ideas. At the moment, I have little about asexuality. My head has been buzzing about the practicalities of aromance, but not really in bloggable form, and not that much. A lot of awesome real-life stuff is happening. And now is where I sort of want them to connect. I've been over 2 years asexual and now I want my pay-off. I want to take all the theories and graphs and deeper understandings and cash in in meat-space.

I'm having to deal with the loss of social circles. At this time of year, I'm stopping seeing my friends and acquaintances (worse- friends I never made) from college, I'm reminded of this time last year when I went through the same about school. And my very best friends ever are back from university, and we're having to re-negotiate our closest relationships. At the same time, I have more circles blossoming. Two activities I've been doing for years have, for various reasons partly to do with my new independence and partly through random luck, started blossoming in various ways into something more approaching social circles. And then there's university this autumn. Whatever happens there.

And something about me is changing, and I think it's the aromantic in me. I'm getting stronger. More world-wise, more determined. I have ways of looking at friendships now that I never had before.

This year, which, you notice, has been the main year of my blogging, was all about change, independence that had been fought off too long, growing more comfortable in my skills, my place in the world. And I've transformed, slowly, and asexuality has helped me. Asexy posts like these have been the final straws.

I'm declaring myself aromantic polyamorous. No relationships, and many. I like the contradictions, but I like the lifestyle better. I like the focus I can have on creating satisfying, meaningful relationships. I like the fact that my relationships can just be what they are. And I like the fact that, with this idea in my head, this map of what the future can be like, I can start to develop the tools to make it that way.

Also, I like the fact that, after a year of transformation, this blog (and my sexuality) finally has relevance to my real world! Which means my real world, what happens to me day to day, has relevance to this blog! Which means reams of easy materal! Harrumble!

(more will follow on the actual technique of living aromance. Once I've figured it out, mostly)

First Person

2010-07-02T04:29:00.001-07:00

My First Person post, exploring how I connect with the idea of virginity, is out on The American Virgin blog. Check it out. (The title stands better as part of the text than it does on it's own) And, if you feel you have something to say, contact them, they're looking for more First Person stories, especially from an asexual perspective.

On privilege

2010-06-26T02:39:00.000-07:00

I’m a big fan of the theory of privilege (if you don’t know what it is, look it up. And this may still not be the post for you). As a model, it makes a lot of sense. I see it playing out in the real world all the time. It gives a direction with which everyone- privileged and unprivileged, can start to understand why we’re not a fair society.

However, I’m also a big fan of the meta-theory that models can never be true, only useful. The privilege model is an incredibly useful model. But I see problems when it is seen as not just useful, but true.

I’ll list some examples so we’re not just into theoretics. Bisexual people often experience various shades of biphobia from gay people. Often, this is justified by privilege. Bisexual people have straight privilege, therefore it’s impossible for them to need the protection of their identity that gay people need, goes the theory. I’ve heard something similar happens between Asian and black people in Usian racial dynamics, but couldn’t comment from personal experience.
It gets even more muddy when you rigidly apply the privilege criteria to transpeople. Especially transwomen, here are women who’s privilege (as biologically men) was the very cause of their non-privilege (as trans-people). Ensue not just transphobia but also transmisogyny. I believe it also works the other way, with transmen being disapproved of by some feminists (as well as the status quo) by trying to ‘claim privilege’ that is outside of their rights.

So these examples, as you can tell, are all very much from what I’ve read on the internet, and little from personal experience. Sorry if I’ve oversimplified (which I undoubtedly have) or got anything wrong. The main example I can see in my own life, as a male feminist, is the way the model of privilege is (ab)used in feminism. To an extent, it is incredibly useful. There’s a whole range of privileges men have that need to be recognised as privilege. I’m thinking higher wages, the right to a reasonably unjudged, autonomous sexuality and appearance, the right to see themselves in the media not as clichéd stereotypes, the right to basically assume you’re not going to give up your job to look after your children, the list goes on and on. But this creates a very gender essentialist outlook. Feminism can and should be incredibly useful for men, too. Not just pulling them down, but broadening their prospects, too. And when it becomes a case of beating the nasty men, well, do you really think you’re going to win? Remember all that privilege they have. All you’re doing is pointing at the nasty men and saying “That’s what all men are. Nasty!” And then more men are nasty because it is seen as one of the defining things of being a man, and then you really are stuck in a war against lots of nasty men, and you will lose! And they will lose!
When what men really needed was the freedom to break the bounds, to be whatever they wanted to be within their gender. When you’re busy breaking down gender stereotypes for women and building them up for men, the net result is just more gender stereotypes.
The idea that men are nothing more than walking bags of privilege, when applied universally and without discrimination, ignores the very real gender stereotypes that men, too, are forced into, the very real harms that are persecuted against men by the patriarchy.

So, yeah. Privilege. That’s what I was meant to be writing about. It annoys me when ideas of privilege are taken as if they were laws of physics, like the laws of thermodynamics. So you have rules like “An unprivileged person cannot have privilege against a privileged person,” a rule which is true, but misleading. Particularly annoying when you assume that there are no closed systems. As in, when one person would have privilege globally, that person automatically always has privilege, even if they’re in a country, room, or other closed system where they might seem (if replicated on a global scale) non-privileged. To take a fictitious (and thus hopefully non-divisive) example, the Ancient Greek men who lived in fear of abduction and torture by the Amazons* probably weren’t especially pleased because, in terms of the world or country as a whole, men had privilege. They lived in a closed system where men very much didn’t have privilege. In fact, the very fact that they were in the privileged group probably added to their lack of privilege, making people simultaneously believe that they were too weak to be men and strong enough that they could never be truly victimised because, well, they’re privileged.

Ok, ignore the complicated mythological situation for a moment and look at the sentence before. The one that starts “When one person would have privilege...” That’s what’s wrong with the way the notion of privilege is used. That it forces otherwise reasonable people to use sentences like that. I’ve seen people having whole arguments in which both sides have to refer some holy ‘Laws of Privilege’ to make a point.

This is sociology, people! It’s not physics. Physics can be neat and mathematical and logical, but this is the way people live. It needs common sense. It needs analysis that can be, if it needs to be, truly independent of the buzz-words. It doesn’t obey rules and is dirty and messy and incomprehensible. Remember what we were searching for when we started using the word privilege? Remember why we like it so much? It was a quest for empathy, for new ways of looking at things. Sometimes, we need empathy, new ways of looking at things. Sometimes, the model of privilege just gets in the way of that, and that’s when we should quietly put it on one side for later, not try to force it in a space it won’t go.

So this wasn’t a discussion of a/sexuality and gender, as I promised you in a side-bar that is, as you read this, probably way up above you. It’s something that’s been cooped up inside me, as I read various things, for a while. Judging by the effortless length, I didn’t realise how much this did mean to me.
But this is one of those things that I really want to say before we get into the proper discussions of sexuality and gender. As a person who’s basically privileged in every way, I want to articulate this as pure theory, because I’m going to need it if I ever take that step to call someone out on it. I needed to write this before too long, because I thought it needed to be said. In the space in my own head, at least, and I tend to think of this blog as an extension of that.

More flippant asexy posts soon? I hope so too.

*a mythical tribe of women in Ancient Greece who abducted, tortured and often killed (as far as I can remember, I may have my fake facts completely wrong) the menfolk near them.

You don't count

2010-06-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

“Isn’t it annoying how men are really sex-obsessed?”
“Not all men are sex-obsessed. If you thought about it for a moment, you’d realise that a lot of the men you know aren’t.”
“Give me an example.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, you don’t count. You’re asexual.”

“I think everyone would secretly do anything for sex, they’re just hiding it.”
“Again, not true. I wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, but you don’t count. You’re asexual.”

So what’s with this idea that, because I’m asexual, I’m outside of the normal spectrum of sexuality? I’m statistically written off? I think partly, it’s an example of how people construct a ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy in their stereotypes, especially of gender. They think that, for example, men like sex, and so think of men who like sex as being most typically men, and then, when they think of the people who they know who are typically male, surprise surprise, they all like sex.

There’s also an element, though, of odd otherness. Like when you cross the line to asexuality, your views are no longer useful because you’re in your own little subsection. Which is just not how it works. Firstly, asexuality is a spectrum, or several, not a little group of people born without any relation at all to the world of sexuality. Secondly, if you’re going to remove all the people on one side of the data, you’re going to have really badly skewed results. Thirdly, I’m a human being, dammit! (or a man, or whatever other population you were talking about). It’s as simple as that. I’m a human being so, whatever my sexuality, I am automatically one representation of how human sexuality can function. Even if that means functioning by absence.

"How to loose your virginity"- the wrong film title to leave on your computer when your friends come round

2010-06-23T05:31:00.000-07:00

Remember a while ago, I pointed my faithful readers (/reader?/imaginary friends?) in the direction of all the great stuff on the blog The American Virgin?

Well, they're producing a film examining the myths of virginity in the American culture, and looking for donations. Go and check them out, have a look at what they've been doing and give what you can. Also, I'm sure they'd love to hear from other asexuals, or indeed anyone, who's interested in doing a First Person post (I've written one which should be out soonish, more on that story later).

I feel I really should explain why I've not been posting much. Partly, it's because college is screaming to a finish, partly it's because the sun's shining and I've suddenly lost interest in my computer. Partly it's because I spent quite a while researching for a Flibanserin post and then lost all the research. All I can really remember is that google returns shockingly few results for "I have HSDD" (and by shockingly few, I mean 3), and that I was going to conclude cautiously with this very good summing up of all my present knowledge from Feminists with FSD:

The thought that keeps popping into my mind is, “So an asexual woman and a woman with sexual dysfunction walk into a bar…“
What I mean by that is, I can’t figure out what the next line in that setup is but there’s something going on there…

Shaming the mentally ill, and why we shouldn't do it

2010-06-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

Ok, so just to clarify, I don’t think that this is something we, the asexual community, actually do. However, I’ve not seen anyone saying how we can stop it happening. I thought it might be worth a quick mention, though I don’t know how many people actually read this blog.

I’m sure all of the asexuals who may be reading this know that we’re trying to get the new version of the DSM, the psychiatrist’s handbook, to be more asexual-friendly, especially in the wording of Hyposexual Desire Disorder. This is a really good project, and I wish those involved the best of luck. It is very important that a normal, healthy asexual can’t be diagnosed and stigmatised with a mental illness just for being who they are. However, it’s worth considering our motives and the language we use while doing this. You might want to read through this post, and those it links to, about autism distancing itself from mental illness. The context for asexuality is very different, since asexuality doesn’t imply any lack or difference in functioning, an asexual can be completely mentally healthy, and if the DSM decides that something is wrong with that state of being, then the DSM is incorrect.

However, consider for just a few seconds the situation we appear to be in. Mental illnesses are stigmatised, those who have mental illnesses, whom society should be protecting, encouraging, are instead minimised and excluded. The solution, to those on the outskirts of mental illness, are to protest that they’re not part of the category. If these people win their fights, it just encourages the view that mental illness is shameful and dehumanising, and there is no way you could possibly live with it.

So asexuality isn’t a mental illness. But as we point that out, we can try to avoid perpetuating the cycles of prejudice against the genuinely mentally ill*.
We don’t say “We’re not mentally ill because we’re not like THEM.”
We talk about the original reasons for HSDD (as far as I’m aware, many of the best ones are American health-insurance-system related), and why these are questionable, and need to be reconsidered, given the rise of the asexual community. We ask why exactly it is that lack of sexual attraction can’t be considered normal.
We talk about the use of the stigma of mental illness to control undesirable groups. We talk about the way homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness, we look outside our community to issues like how the DSM stigmatises fetishes (and, yes, this is exactly what ACH has been doing brilliantly). And, most importantly, we discuss how it’s wrong that classing a socially undesirable group as mentally ill can be an effective weapon against them, can completely invalidate their existence.

*Important note: Throughout this post, I’m thinking in terms of what we say in wider society, the conversations we have with each other, what we may say to the media, that sort of sphere. If you’re sitting in a boardroom with the people who decide DSM policy, then you don’t start with “The entire current system is fundamentally flawed.” You play the game, which may involve not challenging professional prejudices, and I’m completely behind that.

Important note II: This entire post was written before all the stuff about Flibanserin hit the blogs. It is absolutely nothing to do with all of that, which is a very different interaction between asexuality and mental health, and one on which I'm still organising my thoughts.

Varied things: Behavioural sexuality, pieces of ace, the myth of HSDD

2010-06-02T01:14:00.000-07:00

A couple of quick thoughts now (and interesting links). These are ideas that I may come back to, but I just wanted to get them out there first.

Firstly, I found this awesome blog post about sexual identity, with some really cool things about behavioural sexuality. Check it out. A couple of the highlights, for me:

We are using what I call the “behavior model” of sexuality, where a person’s sexuality tends to be judged by their appearance and behavior. This is in fact how we define sexuality: gay men are “men who have sex with men but not women”, straight men are “men who have sex with women and not men”, and so on. This seems straightforward but is in fact inaccurate. Some lesbians have husbands. Some bisexuals have been sexually monogamous for the last decade. I know a straight woman who would get drunk and have sex with her woman roommate, on a weekly basis.

When a gay man tells me he’s gay, he could be telling me any number of things. Maybe he is gay because he is attracted to men. Maybe he identifies as gay because he only has sex with men. Maybe he identifies as gay because he has no attraction to women. Maybe he feels gay. Maybe he identifies with the gay community. Maybe he falls in love with men but not women. Maybe he is extremely effeminate, and other people continually identify him as gay, whatever his attractions. Usually, being gay is a combination of a number of these things.

Also, Hot Pieces of Ace, the new asexual youtube channel, is up. I'd really like to get into watching it, but I tend to avoid spoken-word formats because of the amount of time involved. As good as it is to hear asexuals in a less formal mode than the average blog post, I tend to find I can't dedicate enough time to watching/listening. I may just check in to specific vloggers/topics.

Finally, I've always been interested in what the asexual movement can do for the world in general, and as the debate over the new 'cure' for female hyposexual desire rages, I'd just like to pull out this statistic:

43% of women experience sexual dysfunction.

I think that statistic may actually be '43% of women can have their life experiences pushed, twisted and occasionally hammered into fulfilling the HSDD criteria, minus the distress one'.

But wow. Just wow. The abuse of maths itself is overwhelming. If slightly under half of women are abnormal, you know what we need to do? REDEFINE NORMAL. You know, so it's actually normal, and not just a random state decided by advertising executives. The entire argument has echoes of Freud's insistance that women who couldn't orgasm from man-pleasing coital sex were repressed, when we all now know that orgasm only from clitoral stimulation is common, even normal, and Freud's false norms were caused by his own values of what women should be.

This proves something deeply uncomfortable about psychiatric diagnosis. If 43% of women can be crowbarred into the 'sexual dysfunction' category, then roughly 100% of women who come looking for psychiatric help for sexual problems will be able to be legitimately told that they have a sexual dysfunction. By singling these people out, because they're the ones who will be diagnosed, you're wilfully hiding the fact that the thing you're curing them from, the thing you're pressuring them not to be, selling them placebo-like drugs for and charging them to get rid of- that thing is the way that half their gender works!

Yes, we do need discussions about those who are genuinely distressed about their lack of sexual desire/attraction. We do need caution. But, at the same time, asexuals are in the perfect position to kick down this myth until it dies. And we need to.

Just a tiny little bit?

2010-05-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

So today I’m going to talk about an idea that is used in different ways to invalidate monosexuality and asexuality. It’s the idea that everyone’s a little bit bi. Or, in the asexual case, that everyone’s a little bit straight.

The scientific backing to the idea stems, I think, mostly from Kinsey, who created the scale going from fully straight to fully gay. As with all spectrums, the idea is that no-one really occupies the very extreme points. Everyone is in the middle to some extent. And the important thing about this is that it’s a model, not a theory. The Kinsey scale is important because it provides a sliding scale of sexual attraction. Someone can, plotting their space on the Kinsey scale, be basically monosexual despite the occasional query. That little twinge doesn’t invalidate their sexuality because everyone has them. Bisexuality is normalised.
And you see the occasional recently-outed bisexual getting a bit pushy about this. It’s natural to conclude that everyone is like you, and sometimes the Kinsey scale is used as a justification for the fact that everyone is secretly bisexual, everyone is repressing their desire to be exactly like you. I get where that comes from.
But the important point is that there are still these big monoliths of straight and gay at each end. If you insist that no-one is completely, 100% monosexual, despite everything they tell you, then there’s going to be a lot of people clustering around the 99.9% point. A world in which we’re all theoretically bisexual creates a world in which we’re all theoretically equal. It’s a nice ploy, but it denies the realities of those who genuinely only feel attracted to one gender.

And then asexuality bursts onto the scene, and sexuality GOES 3D!!! (well, ok, 2D). And this desire to make everyone technically bisexual is shown for the other side of what it is- a desire to make everyone the most sexual they could be, out of the misplaced belief that more sexual = more free = happier. The idea is that bisexuality is a liberating concept for straight and gay people has flaws, but is simply laughable if you apply it to asexuals. The freedom to be asexual is the freedom to be less sexual, to be sexually attracted to no-one. The invocation of a tiny little invisible bit of sexuality just negates what we’re trying to say.

So now we actually explore what’s meant by that ‘tiny, little bit’. Does everyone really have a tiny, unnoticeable amount of attraction to both genders? Maybe. I have no idea. Is it relevant enough to base your assumptions of the universe on? Hell no. When you get right down that scale, sexual attraction (already a slightly nebulous concept) looses any meaning it had.

I think this is one reason why the official definition of asexuality is ‘little or no’ sexual attraction. Because it’s so deeply lodged in the public psyche that everyone has these little tiny bits, that no-one can be completely without attraction to both genders. The idea of the invisible but ever-present amount of attraction makes invisible all the sexualities based on lack of attraction to something.

Cisgendered men don't wear tie tacks: A theory of performative masculinity

2010-05-22T13:33:00.001-07:00

So the way I want this blog to start heading is less about the considered, slow and, above all, painfully delay-prone musings about big asexual issues (though asexual issues will still be central), but to open the scope out to more general ideas about sexuality and gender. The gender bit is important. I have a lot of thoughts on gender.

So today, leaving my basic ideas about gender for another time, I’m going to dive straight into the big questions I have about performative masculinity. I may be inadvertently transphobic in this post. If you think I am, please bawl me out on it in the comments.

I’ve always been annoyed with how women can wear things that look pretty, ornament without merit other than the fact that it’s simply good to look at. Men’s clothing is dominated by status, and prettiness is difficult to work in. The image that burnt it into my brain is this one.

See how all the men wear boring suits while the woman has something original? It isn’t very exciting, no, but that just demonstrates how little freedom men have. Even something as simply-tailored as little white bits on the lapels is too effeminate.

Ok, so I realise this freedom screws women over. It’s the freedom to be dolls, judged only on your appearance, the freedom to be cookie-cutter cute, but still. I want the pretty.

And with this sensitivity to the plight of the poor, ugly and unloved modern man, I’ve been casting my eye over various fashion blogs and internet resources designed for people presenting as male. I won’t link any of them here, because I’m going to be rude about most of them. The ones for straight cismen weird me out. They have a tendency to go on and on about how amazing it is to be a gentlemen, and how much better we are than those filthy degenerates who wear white after labour day, or don’t take a stand on the big ‘how many vents should a suit have’ issue. Because that kind of person is just worthless.
The ones for transmen and butch women are a slightly subtler kind of weird. At first, it seems like almost the same plunge into the world of your grandfather. The same excitement about pocket squares and trilbys, clinging to the relics of a bygone age because there is too little beauty in this modern world. But it’s more of a personal feelgood factor. ‘I have this cool new tie tack, isn’t it awesome’. Everything in the cisgentlemen’s wardrobe is designed to create superiority. Not even that, designed to create a snivelling and imagined inferiority in others. Because that’s what these men get out of clothes. Wheras these people raised as women, they, like me, seek out the pretty. They just want fun and style.

I don’t know how many cisgendered men really wear tie tacks. Apart from the very elderly, there are probably a few. It doesn’t stop me imagining the entire tie tack industry being kept alive by transmen and butch women who buy into this idea of performing masculinity.

Men don’t seem to perform masculinity through clothes. Or when they do, it’s about clan allegiance or status symbols. And I feel slightly sorry for these people raised as women, who’ve thought “Right, I’m going to go out and dress like the best guy ever.” Because that’s applying female principles to the thing. They dig through the history books and the antique shops, looking for ways to perform masculinity, when masculinity is performed through absence.
I see myself in them. Looking for something that will be positive, that will be pretty, when all men seem able to hope for is something simple enough to make them look good, or status-filled enough to make them better than scum like us.

On Doctor Who and Liz One

2010-05-16T11:08:00.000-07:00

So I try to say what I have to say, here. I confess to things even when I'm worried that some members of the asexual community may not approve. I try to create a voice for the renegade. However, today, I am about to cross the line. I am about to admit to the worst crime an asexual could commit.

I ship Ten. and Liz One.

And here's why:
(note: if you didn't understand that sentence, this blog post may not make the most sense)
(note: actually, having now finished this, I advise you that this article (apart from the tiny history bit at the beginning) really is completely irrelevant unless you watch Doctor Who. Which you should.)

Elizabeth the First (henceforth to be known as Liz One) was one of the most powerful and iconic female leaders Britain has ever had. In her day, she was consistently thwarted by society's perverse gender expectations. She masculinated herself, famously declaring she had the heart and stomach of a king. When she ascended the throne, she also became as contractual a virgin as the Jonas brothers. She could never marry or have sex, because both of those assumed that the man was in charge, and no man could politically be in charge of the queen of England. She wore white and pearls and fetishised her virginity, turning it into her strength.

So, an asexual icon? Well, no. If she was a virgin, it was probably only in a Clinton definition of sex. In her intact hymen rested her intact political power. But there is little doubt that the Virgin queen broke the rules. She was barely past puberty when she was rumored to engage in heavy petting with her patroness's husband (even better, the man was her half-brother's uncle, his wife was her father's widow- how's that for soap-style drama?), and the rumours kept on flowing.

Doctor Who is a nine hundred year-old Time Lord, much beloved of asexuals. Now, he really is an asexual hero. He travels round the world with lots of pretty girls and still is nothing more than a charming intellectual. He recently reacted to an indecent proposal with the same puzzled horror that I can imagine I would. He doesn't seem to be attracted to humans. But recently, there have been some suggestions of something more.

We first met Liz One when she recognised Tennant's Doctor. He had done something she disliked in her past, his future, but it wasn't revealed.
Then, as Tennant's time drew to a close, in a possible attempt to solve one of the many small inconsistencies the show creates and then forgets about, Tennant boasted idly "They don't call her the Virgin Queen any more." He implied that, in his loneliness and fear of mortality, he had raided history for the trickiest conquest. I was, frankly, a little disgusted. I felt they had taken the character where he never should have gone.
They haven't dropped the idea. Liz Ten, in a far future, may have mentioned something about Liz One having been very fond of the Doctor (I'm not sure, though. The reference slid past me at the time. It may have actually been the present queen, Liz Two). And, this weekend, it was mentioned again. "Have you heard about Elizabeth the First? Well, she thought she was the first". So there were more before her? Does our time-travelling nerd-action-hero have regular love affairs?

And that was when I realised, I am actually really happy for him if he does. True, I'm annoyed by the new phallus-wielding Dr of this series ("Yours is bigger than mine", "Don't start all that". "I can't feel my feet, or other parts", "I can feel all my parts just fine."), but the Doctor is meant to connect with people in wide varieties of ways. He is momentary and life-changing, and is the perfect person to challenge the stuffy sexual confinements most people throughout history have been placed in. His relationship with the Madame du Pompador was one of the most touching moments in the new programme. The reason he can't get close to his companions is because they will age, but what makes the Doctor a person, not just a big, world-saving concept, is the fact that people can change him. A particular person in a particular circumstance can force him to embrace a relationship he'd never have considered, just like humans do. We saw this with Rose, River, du Pompador, the Master, and this is the Doctor's greatest strength- other people define him as much as he defines them.

So the Doctor finds a woman, trapped and alone. Sexual but with an enforced virginity. So very strong and forceful, like the other people who have the power to wrap the Doctor around their willpowers. They are both all alone, with no one who will understand them. They both want just a temporary feeling of kinship, and of belonging. She can't forsake her duty, nor he his. They connect in a way which is relevant for both of them. Even if he was asexual, he could still gain a lot from the experience. And the fact that they were probably also in the midst of an alien invasion probably helped.

I've not yet heard any asexuals judging their relationship, but I, for one, will stand by the right of the Doctor to enjoy sexuality (or not) in whatever way works. If we apply that right to real people, it's got to start with fictional.

Maybe we just need to find a new asexual idol. Spongebob Squarepants, anyone?

Pretty

2010-05-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

Oh how I love the word pretty. It sort of means not very much when you talk about a woman, maybe something along the lines of "Well-presented, with a symmetrical face."

But when you're talking about men. Then it seems to express everything I want it to.

A pretty man is attractive, like a picture. You could stare at him for hours, but there's no indication that there's anything below the surface. A pretty man is slightly boyish, slightly androgynous, generally dreamy. He isn't automatically sexy. Sometimes the joy is just in the sheer aesthetic qualities. The artistic formal elements, line, form, shape, seem to merge and create, through simplicity, through sheer randomness in thousands of pairings of chromosomes, over millions of years, a form indescribably wonderful.

Pretty is a light word. It trips easily off the tongue, the two short syllables floating up like bubbles into a blue sky. It means something trivial, a shallow sort of feeling, the opposite of the intense, brooding passions of hot and sexy.

Pretty is a precise word. Use it in the wrong place, such as to describe someone with a Y chromosome, and, in the little echoes of that little word, the tables of 'objectification' and attraction crash to the floor of the temple of heteronormativity.

Pretty is an innocent word. It liberates and sanctions. Something pretty cannot be bad, or shameful. It is a word that has nothing to hide, everything to give.

Pretty is an empty word. It can be laden with whatever intent you need it, it is an opening for so many questions. It is the start of a dialogue.

N.B. I. This is mostly based on some extra thoughts from my last post, that I considered squeezing in there and then thought deserved their own, highly linguophile post.
N.B. II. Yes, I used an extended biblical metaphor. What're you going to do about it?
N.B. III. You know when you say a word loads and it starts to distort and loose all meaning? Totally happened while writing this.

On shallowness

2010-05-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

So there's this idea, one of those sorts of ideas you see out of the corner of your eye, one of those ideas that just builds up as millions of tiny words, said or unsaid, and it looks something like this:

"[Romantic] asexuals are so pure and innocent. They can be attracted to people without all the shallowness of sexual attraction. They're an inspiration to us all."

Ok, so, in some ways, I'm the reverse of a romantic asexual. An aromantic grey-a. But seriously? When do I get to be an inspiration?

There's a girl at college who acts nervous around me. Either she thinks I'm terrifying or she fancies me. And that made me realise- I've never felt that way. When I have a crush, I never feel scared of the other person. I just feel admiration for them. Because, get this:

I am unable to form that sort of deep attatchment to someone*
*although I can do deep friendships.

Every feeling I get is shallow. Every crush, sexual or demi-sexual urge, everyone I've stared at in the street, has been just a nice collection of body parts, clothes and mannerisms to me. I appreciate people cold, like a photograph, and I just cannot comprehend the world of people being heart-stammeringly, sickeningly, burningly in love with another actual Person. To have a crush on a conciousness, rather than an image.

I am entirely, 100% shallow. And I love it.

I'm a good feminist boy, but I wince whenever a feminist sees sexual attraction (from a man to a woman) and labels it 'objectification'. Don't get me wrong, I think objectification exists. But using it as a synonym for sexual attraction? Well, that's just forcing straight men to deny their sexualities in a way which would be bigoted if you did it to any other orientation. The heart wants what it wants and so do other organs.

I always thought asexuals could do something about that. I looked into myself, and I saw that my attraction was clean. Geometric. Shorn of the complex and centuries-old ideas of 'bad' and 'wrong'. It was nice and innocent and so, so shallow. Without being corrupt.

But it seems like we might be part of the problem. However we present ourselves, especially the romantic asexuals, there's always going to be that little part of people's heads that beatifies us without our consent. You can see it in people's righteous anger when you out yourself, assuming that you think you're above them. Because sex is bad and wrong, and we've escaped it.

So I try to be dirty. I take everything clean and innocent, everything unsullied by the constant war of the virgin and the whore and fire it at the world, to show that we're not saints. We're not children. We are not better, nicer, higher. We understand the biology, maybe better than you. We make jokes about it, maybe wittier than yours. There is no innocent asexual because there is no guilty sexual. If I'm asexual, and I'm like you, then you can't be bad. And all that phyical attraction? All the stuff most asexuals lack? Is fine. It's who you are, and it's really not worse than the deep stuff.

I am shallow. And shallow is good.

Asexy link-fest

2010-04-27T13:05:00.000-07:00

A couple of things I thought I might as well raise awareness of. Firstly, the asexual non-written media seems to be kicking off forcefully, with A Life back, a new podcast, Unscrewed and Illuminated, and the possibility of a youtube channel- Hot Pieces of Ace. Check it all out. It's awesome that we're getting more stuff, especially more stuff with regular time-frames (cos us bloggers are notoriously lax).

I found the latest A Life episode particularly interesting. A lot of the episode dealt with the repercussions of being both asexual and in a same-sex relationship, and the sort of multiple-outness that can generate. All this is stuff I've been thinking about recently.

The final thing I wanted to draw people's attention to is a wonderful blog post I've just found about dealing with mixed libidos (NSFW?)- perfect starter advice for asexuals in relationships. I especially liked the last section, a reminder that sex isn't isolated, and I think a lot of asexuals can get caught in relationships that have psychological sexual issues as well as straightforward logistical ones.

On demihomosexuality (which sounds a bit like some kind of dinosaur)

2010-04-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

While composing this, I have 4 tabs open in this window. One is the one I'm writing this on, another is the asexuality and disability essay I've linked to in the past, another is a section of the full text of A Christmas Carol, which is what I was about to write about before I found this.

It's a really good start for that discussion on being in that space between asexual and gay.

I'm not going to say that discussion hasn't been had before. In fact, two of my all-time favourite grey-area asexuals are Shades of Grey, who I believe is currently in a long-term same-sex relationship, and the now-quiet Venus, who now identifies as lesbian, but used to identify as asexual.

As an aside, I'm wondering if there are reasons why there are more same-sex oriented asexuals than opposite-sex who define themselves in the space between sexual and asexual and write blogs about it. Maybe we tie in better to queer activism, or maybe queerness gives more of a space to play around with individual sexuality than the layers of gender expectations in heterosexuality. I don't think there's much point speculating, when the count is 3-0, and that's just based on a quick tally of the blogs I could remember. That data's not really going to support anything.

Anyway, a lot of the asexual discussion is quite female-led, especially on the blogs (I never go on AVEN, haven't got LJ and Apositive is always quiet). Generally, there aren't many gendered asexual issues, except for the feminist intersection, but I think the way society compartmentalises people who seem to be gay men and people who seem to be lesbians is very different.

Here follows a list of some of the major ways in which I worry society will react to me as I become openly demihomosexual (well, the major way is that I can't even out myself as demihomosexual without sounding awfully silly).

When I picture myself in relationships (see previous post), as, indeed, in life, I'm often taking on a very feminine role. I imagine myself doing housework, fussing about interior design, loving my fashion, being potentially stone (more on that story later?), staying at home to look after the kids. I'm completely prepared to rock gender-queerness in a relationship with a woman. But it occured to me today that, if I end up in a relationship with a man, all my self-expression will become horribly heteronormative, and I won't be able to do anything without fitting into that idea that every gay relationship has a man and a woman. Ok, actually, reading back through, this is less an asexual issue and more a SlightlyMetaphysical issue, but I have this almost irrational hatred of having my personality judged by gender, and the idea that I'll have to spend my whole life listening to friends crack jokes about 'the womanly one' when I know that who I am is just who I am scares me so much that I almost want to cry. As I said, weird.

But, yeah, people's perceptions can hurt. Not once, but over and over again and it becomes this great big bruise that you live in fear of anyone prodding. I know what it's like from outing myself, for instance, and this'll become even worse if I end up with a boyfriend, because I'll have to out myself invariably if he's ever introduced. As I was saying over at Skeptic's Play (quoting myself from about 5 minutes ago), this is how I imagine my future:

"So, here's my boyfriend."
"I didn't know you were gay."
"Well, actually, I'm not..."
*long, awkward conversation, in which they either find out too much or too little about me*

"Oh, hi. Have you met my boyfriend?"
"Oh! Are you gay?"
"No."
*long awkward conversation*

"So, me and my boyfriend are getting pretty serious."
"Cool. I didn't know you were gay."
"I'M NOT GAY!"
*long awkward conversation, in which I have to persuade them I'm not in denial*

The thing which would outweigh this all, though, would be my ability to legitimately yet ironically wear a T-shirt that says "I'm not gay, but my boyfriend is."

And then you do the simple maths. People who are headbangingly stupid about homosexuality + people who are headbangingly stupid about asexuality = an awful lot of people. (Yeah, I know some of them are the same people, but they'll be making the really, really stupid mistakes.)

Anyway. I have a long time to think about this subject- either for the rest of my life, or until I discover that I'm not going to end up with a guy (either through aromanticism or a sudden onset of heteroromanticism). So I'm going to leave this point here for tonight. Again, I don't think I've presented the subject as well as Miller, and he got to all the more relevant points (such as the interaction with the 'scared to be gay' myth) first, so if you haven't already read it, and you somehow expected me to present you with a cogent argument on the intersection between homosexuality and asexuality, well, for once, I can actually oblige. Lucky you.

Options

2010-04-07T11:33:00.000-07:00

At some point, I'll warm to this subject and will have the time to write real, witty and devastating critiques of the structure of romance in our society, rather than short and graceless gripes. Don't hold your breath, though.

I'm the sort of guy who daydreams, constantly re-imagines what my life will be like in 10, 20 years time. I've been planning, scrapping and re-planning the smaller details of my wedding meticulously since I was about 7, for example, (in a casual, relatively non-creepy way) and, when I'm in a daydreamy phase like I am now, I tend to imagine plots for myself and where I'm going to end up. What annoys me is that any of these plots with happy endings have three variations, excluding gender variations (which I care surprisingly little about) and small nuances:

1. I fall in love with someone, pursue something as similar to the traditional pattern as I want (which isn't really that similar), but enough to keep my mother happy, make myself look reasonably normal (as long as this person isn't a man, but same-sex relationships are getting more and more respected) and either conceive children or look normal enough to get an adoption agency to give me some.
2. I don't fall in love with anyone, but there's someone understanding of my aromanticism with whom I have a very close friendship, maybe with sex, which would make it basically the same as a relationship anyway, and then we move in together, get married and concieve/adopt, and my mother is happy if eternally confused.
3. I become polyamorous (because how do you solve the fact that you're not capable of even one romantic relationship? That's right- get loads of them!) and end up doing steps 1 and/or 2 more than once at a time.

This proves three things about myself:
1. My subconcious is very unoriginal, and can't think of any way to get what I want out of life that doesn't involve a romantic relationship.
2. I need to be really, really careful, if devoting my life to someone, that I'm doing it for them and me, and not just out of the obvious desire to one day raise children (but I think I'd probably notice).
3. I need to stop using my mother as a foil for heteronormative society. It really isn't fair, as she'll eventuallly be fine with anything that makes me happy, even if it baffles her, and it also makes it sound like I'd let her control my life negatively. Which I'd never do, even if she was trying to.
4. I need to channel some of my daydreaming time into writing blog posts about asexuality, rather than whiny notes about aromance.
5. I like lists.

I'd rather have 100,00 dollars

2010-04-04T16:04:00.000-07:00

More inflammatory stuff here-

Found via:

Nonetheless, if you had to take more than three seconds to think about this question, you are absolutely crazy. Marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining personal well-being. If you have a successful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy. If you have an unsuccessful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many career triumphs you record, you will remain significantly unfulfilled.

From the moment I saw the headline, I knew I just had to do a post on this. It seemed to slide so neatly into that whole dismissal of the aromantic lifestyle that I've been brooding on recently. However, as I read through, the research seemed laughably far from the hypothesis above. Basically, the big news was that money doesn't make you as happy as social interaction! People who try to make themselves happier by getting more money fail!

This blog is basically anonymous, so I don't want to take pictures of myself, but one thing you should know about me is that I have a very good and well-practiced unimpressed face. And I'm doing it now.

Anyway, skipping briefly over "Money isn't the root of all joy! Who'd have thought it!", I'm going to address the first issue in the article.

Brooks correlates achievement and finance in a way which makes no sense to me, a finance/'spirituality' binary in which love is the spiritual side of life (oh, Ily, I hope you're reading this). He says that a marriage gives the same amount of happiness as $100,000 a year. So, as an aromantic, my only hope is to become Scrooge*, amass a vast amount of wealth and prove him wrong. Or I could join groups, share dinner, live with people, have sex and hang out with people after work, all of the other options which he admits are just as viable as marriage, but, you know, they're not proper relationships.

What doesn't work is Brooks' hasty analogy to Sandra Bullock. Because there, the game changes from financial success v. love to achievement v. love. These aren't opposing forces. Pride in yourself, in what you've done well, is not a hollow and cold replacement for healthy interaction- it is the very core of healthy interaction. Good relationships with others can be no more than mirrors of good relationships with yourself. In the comments to one of my recent posts, Joy talked about 'differentiation', the idea that you can only have some form of success or happiness in a relationship if you have that connection to yourself.

Not sure where I’m going with this, I just know that it hurts when people say marriage is the only chance anyone ever has at happiness. Actually, that’s pretty much what this post and a lot of past and future posts could be boiled down to. Screw that. I have my primary relationships and I have my ambitions, and I have a whole damn life ahead of me. I’ll get me my $100,000 worth of happiness, one way or another...

*I think I've just realised why A Christmas Carol always makes me cry- and it's to do with aromanticism. More on that story later.

Aromance of a non-virtual vind

2010-03-31T13:47:00.001-07:00

So I had my first real-life discussion about the aromantic loss of privilege today, and it was with the irascible V, of all people. Talking to V is sometimes surprisingly cool, because she’s conservative through simple lack of thought, so I explain what I think in simple ways and see it click. For example, last week, I had to explain to her why gender stereotyping is bad. It’s challenging because she doesn’t have the same worldview as me, so I have to explain right from basics.
The conversation went something like this:

V: (thoughtlessly) I don’t think you’ll ever fall in love
Awkward silence
V: Sorry, that was a really horrible thing to say. Of course you’ll...
Me: No. I don’t think I will ever fall in love. (first time I’d ever said that, out loud or possibly even in my head. Felt weird)
V: Ok. Are you upset about that?
Me: (pause) Not about not falling in love. I’d be ok with that. It’s just all the other things that automatically come with it.
V: (thinking of sex) But I thought you didn’t want those things?
Me: No, like the fact that it’d be almost impossible for me to have children. Like the fact that it’d be much easier to set up a home if I had a partner and lots of useful wedding presents. Like the fact that, as people get older, they automatically withdraw into their romantic relationships and leave the friendships, so I have so much less security against being alone than others.
V: I’d never thought of it like that. I suppose most married people don’t spend much time with their friends any more.

V: (later) Maybe you could marry [mutual friend who doesn’t seem interested in sex or relationships].

I think the thing about my conversations with V is that I’ve realised the extent to which anyone, even someone of a completely different mindset to you, can eventually understand what makes you tick if you just both take the effort to meet in the middle and you make sure you use the right sort of language and the right shape of ideas.

The 'coming out' game

2010-03-22T15:59:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been browsing blogs again, as always, and came up with this random nugget:

The “What are You?” Game (U.S. Edition) Rules and Regulations

Minimum 2 players, no maximum.

Object: You.

Goal: Retain as much dignity as possible while dealing with racial ignorance.

Materials: All you need is yourself – an ethnically-ambiguous human being – and somebody else’s lack of respect.

GAME PLAY
Be born into this world. Interact with other human beings. Game-play should ensue shortly.

When to Play/Who to Play With: The “What are You?” Game can be played at any time, anywhere. It can be played with friends and family, but is best played with casual acquaintances and outright strangers. Any time another human being asks you the question “What are You?,” the Game has begun, and your humanity can be earned or lost. Again, it is important to stress that this can happen at any time, as ignorance has no concept of appropriate boundaries and/or timing.

GETTING STARTED
Game-play is commenced once another person (“the Asker”) asks you (“the Person”) “What are You?” It is then your turn.

There are things in this article that strike me as ‘OMG, yes, so been there’, and a lot that doesn’t seem much to do with me personally. With ethnically-ambiguous people, there’s not necessarily any answer, with asexuality, there is an answer. But the minute you tell someone the answer, you have basically thrown away your right to steer the conversation onto something else. Once you come out as asexual, you have to stick it through to the end, through however many faux pas and completely bewildered looks they give you, until they’ve grasped the simple facts.

It’s a problem I risk coming across as I make the changes I want to make to who I am, more flamboyant, better-dressed, proudly owning my androphilia and acting generally camp and unmasculine whenever I happen to think it suits me best. It takes no effort for someone to ask what your sexuality is, and it takes a lot of effort to answer, if you’re asexual.

And so you end up with what is best described as game-play. Game-play for your very humanity against awkward silence and the (understandable, but difficult to work around) ignorance of the majority. Like the writer, asexuals are in a weak position made weaker by a world that sees in binary- ‘black/white’, ‘straight/gay’, and in which asking “What are you?”, or, more likely for me, “Are you gay?” doesn’t fixate on your identity but on your ability to conform to the asker’s worldview, an act of erasing who you are, not celebrating it.

For the record, I am pretty much completely out. Except that my dad has never heard me talk about my sexuality, I never tick the ‘other’ box in job applications, and all of my friends but few of my acquaintances know about my sexuality. And the reason for this closetness isn’t a fear of reprisal. It’s because I know coming out takes so much effort. Almost every time.

Walking the Line

2010-03-13T17:17:00.000-08:00

As promised here, I’m going to jot down a few thoughts about the Line between asexual and sexual. I’m interested, as I mentioned in that post, in times when asexuals draw the line differently to sexuals. This is more initial thoughts and outlines than conclusions, and is intended to mildly enrich the ‘definitions of asexuality’ debate. I’m going to use myself as a case-study, and pretend to be analytical and scientific, when I’m actually probably being closer to navel-gazingly introspective and live-journally. Oh well. That’s the way I roll.

There are two variations of Line-discrepancy. Times when asexuals draw the line lower than sexuals, and times when they draw it higher. One results in perilous no-man’s land, the other in overlapping yet contradictory labels. Fortunately, I believe my scientifically-chosen study-subject (ie. me), is subject to both these conditions.

In the first example, we see asexuals sticking to a very reductive, prescribed definition of asexuality- ‘lack of sexual attraction’, while sexuals go for a more nuanced definition, one which reflects the realities of their lives more. So, for example, I almost definitely have some form of sexual attraction. This sexual attraction is very abstract, I’d describe it as being more likely to be physically attracted to someone who’s in a sexual situation to someone who isn’t. Asexuality is very much about what is or isn’t going on in your head. I have a theoretical form of sexual attraction, therefore, from an asexual point of view, I’m above the line. However, a lot of sexuals bind their sexuality around more practical ideas- who do you fancy? Who are you in a relationship with? Who are you screwing? Were I to call myself gay, I’d instantly draw to myself a whole host of untrue assumptions about how pronounced my sexuality is, what my relationship to my sexuality is. In fact, my relationship to my sexuality is far, far closer to a physically-attracted asexual than to a sexual person. I can imagine myself saying ‘Well, I’m not asexual, because my physical attraction to people is often enhanced by sexualisation, even though I don’t want to act on it,” to even the most understanding sexual, and they’d look completely blank.

In the second example, we have the asexual bending the definition of asexuality while the sexual holds to it. This can be seen in the example I linked to above- Joy thinks that not experiencing sexual attraction the vast majority of the time and then coming to it occasionally is just part of the range of experiences of a sexual person. A lot of demisexuals would be confused if you told them their experiences were in the normal range of sexuality, because the reason they identify as demisexual is because they don’t feel any space in a sexual label for them. For example, I think that, were I to have a romantic attraction which pointed in the same way as my aesthetic/sexual attraction, the issue of asexuality would never come up for me. I would assume that my sexual attraction was complete and normal, I would pursue relationships, feel attracted to the people I was having relationships with, and enjoy sex. Any energy I was lacking from sexual attraction could be drawn from other aspects of my sexuality. I reckon there are a lot of people like me out there, who have less-than-complete (whatever that means) sexual attraction, but just assume that they’re normal, because they function perfectly well. In my case, only my hetero- or a- romanticism and my over analysis have jarred with the ‘normal’ life. Then how can I really claim to be asexual, when there are sexuals somewhere out there existing quite happily as straight or gay or bisexual, who have less sexual attraction than me?

Running long on words and short on time now, and this was just meant to be something for you all to ponder. Do any of you have any idea how these could be reconciled? Personally, I think the key is in shared experiences. Demisexuals and grey-a’s share all their experiences of living without instant, obvious and actionable sexual attraction with asexuals, which makes them closer, gives the asexual label a relevance to them that their corresponding sexual label wouldn’t. Which is why we live by it- because it describes us, in the spirit, but not in the word.

Which begs an awful lot of questions about how seriously we want to take the prescriptive definition of asexuality.

Linkbait

2010-03-05T06:18:00.000-08:00

I've not been posting for so long, or, at least, it feels that way. It's probably good that it's nagging at me now, when last year I didn't update for months at a time. Dunno why I'm so slow, I promise to get more involved in this blog again at some time this month. For now, I leave you with this wonderful essay I've found on asexuality and disability, which, as far as I'm aware, has mostly stayed in the parts of the internet related to disability and not been seen much in the parts related to asexuality, and has lots of interesting thoughts about this particular intersection.

Unpacking romantic privilege

2010-02-21T13:20:00.000-08:00

Based on this essay, unpacking white privilege*, and on leftover thoughts from Valentine’s Day- that it endorses the privilege romantic people have in this society anyway. Here’s my list, off the top of my head. There’ll be a lot of important things I’ve forgotten, and your mileage may vary, but:

Daily effects of romantic privilege:
1. I will constantly find my lifestyle endorsed and promoted above all others in every form of media.
2. My lifestyle will be the promoted as the only safe place to raise children, to not die alone, sometimes even the only place to experiment with consensual sexuality.
3. When I want to ditch people I’ve known for years to spend time with someone I’ve just met, it will not be questioned.
4. When I make unhealthy decisions in my love life, I will continue to find that these decisions will not make me seem less mentally secure, or that my lifestyle will not be seen as less valid.
5. If I am romantically compatible with people of the opposite gender, or live somewhere that supports same-sex marriage, I will have all the benefits of marriage- visitation rights, property rights, inheritance rights.
6. I will further be able to declare my main life partner in a universally recognised ceremony, particularly if I am monogamous.
7. I will escape stereotypes of impotency, madness or coldness.
8. I will be able to have children easily, and probably rely on either financial or time-related support from my partner in raising these children. I will also often be able to adopt relatively easily.
9. I will be able to easily explain my marital situation, and people will instantly accept the validity of my relationships.
10. If I am single, the things people say to comfort me will probably have that effect. They are unlikely to make me feel more broken and insecure.
11. I will have one of the major commercial holidays of every year dedicated to making me look and feel special. More if I become a traditional mother or father.
12. I will have card/present shops, as well as books, magazines and entire industries catering mostly to my style of relationships.
13. I will be able to spend most of my time in the company of like-minded people.
14. I will always be able to qualify my relationships in binary terms.

I’m going to stop there, because it occurred to me that this isn’t necessarily the most helpful way of looking at it. Yes, there is a lot of privilege on romantic people in our society, and it’s important to understand that and unpack it, but there are also a lot of advantages to aromanticism, largely in that you can more easily change the relationship models to suit you. So, for example, number 3 becomes “I feel valid in spending my time with people I’ve known for years, and not treating a near-stranger as suddenly the most important relationship in my life.” Numbers 11 and 12 become “I do not feel forced, simply by my romantic status, to indulge in ceremonies that are often needlessly tacky and capitalist,” while 13 becomes “I will gain the ability to respect other’s views by being surrounded by wildly different priorities.”

These privileges are definitely there, and they do hurt- privileges like the ones above were the reasons I was in confused denial about my possible aromanticism(/pomoromanticism?) for so long. To say that you don’t expect to have any romantic relationships in your lifetime seemed, and still seems, to me to be accepting a role as a second-class citizen, and, as a white, British, middle-class man, the loss of even that small* amount of privilege shocked me.

And it should be discussed. But there is little point in discussing this idea as a hierarchy. Romantic people are trapped in a gilded cage, similarly to men. While they have privilege, they also have unwritten laws following them everywhere. The position of the aromantic or pomoromantic in society should be seen not as a deconstruction of every time romance is held to be better than aromance, though these are telling. Rather, it should be seen as one of a whole host of narratives which can work to pull down the traditional romance structure which, like the traditional gender structure, works well for few, and to replace is with something freer, more individualistic.

*Insert statement here clarifying that aromantic struggles are less than black struggles, while also pointing out the stupidity of the oppression Olympics.

Happy belated St. Skeletor's day

2010-02-16T13:54:00.001-08:00

A moderately postponed rant about Valentine's day, brought on by all the blogs whose last 4 days of posts I've just caught up on.

Around about the 1st of February, I opened the daily paper to find a four-page spread on Valentine's day. The first two pages were how to get a relationship before Valentine's day if you're a straight woman. The next two pages were how to get a relationship before Valentine's day if you're a gay man. (Yes, we've come a long way, but a lot of it was still written by straight men with gay friends, and all of it contained really simplistic stereotypes). It's something I've seen several times since, now I'm aware of it.

My response to this, fed by my growing hatred of 'buy this and you'll be happy', was the same as my response to a lot of the heteronormative dating crap we're meant to eat up and be thankful for, and can be summarised thusly;

Do none of these people even realise how horrifically wrong their outlook is?

Specifically, what proportion of the population seriously enter February single and think "I absolutely have to get myself into a relationship before the commercial crapfest begins, and my consumerist overlords dictate that I must become an object of affection (and by affection, I, of course, mean money), because if I don't manage to get myself a relationship by this particular annual event, I will have failed in the main goal of relationships, which is to use them as a crutch to shield myself from my lack of happiness (driven, of course, by my lack of possessions) and because everyone in the world is continually reinforcing the message that not to be in a relationship is to be a looser and a failure, and I've got to spend all my time doing that too, because otherwise they'll suspect I'm secretly a looser underneath, and that no-one will ever validate my existance by buying useless things for me!"

And how have they been so adequately controlled to think that, and to stifle all thought of what a relationship really is, you know, two people, together because they want to be (Because THEY want to be. Because they WANT to be), and how that's mutually incompatible with making sure you're in a relationship on a particular calendar date? It really is a work of genius. If we (the general wouldn't-it-be-nice-if, respect-your-fellow-people sort) had those marketing people working for our side, just think of the power.

Anyway, two smaller pieces of Valentine's Day news.
I saw a red plastic bell which said "Ring for sex" in a card shop. I've decided, if I get a partner, rather than ignoring Valentine's day, we're going to get the most messed-up and heteronormative cards or trinkets for each other that we can find. And if I give them that one, it'll probably still come with a link to Ily's post.

Also, can't figure out how to get the image over here, but a quick click over to this Valentine's day page on Feministing is yet another example of that pesky space which so plagues asexuality.

Q+A with Joy Davidson, part 5

2010-02-11T09:36:00.000-08:00

Since the last one was over with quite quickly;

All the disclaimers from before apply, the article is found in its entirety here, and I don’t own any copyrights, etc, and am quoting from it for the purpose of analysis.

Molly in Naperville Writes:
I have been married for two years, and I have never had an orgasm. I had two sexual partners before I was married and never had an orgasm then. I am in my mid-20s and starting to think there is something wrong with me. My husband and I have a healthy sex life, but the fact I have never had an orgasm comes up every so often. I am sort of OK with the fact that it hasn't happened, but in the back of my mind I know it bothers my husband a lot. I feel guilty. I don't blame either of us. ... I just want it to happen once or occasionally. I could really use some advice on this topic. Please help.

Anorgasmia is one of those difficult issues that I think could have a complex and subtle relationship with asexuality. It’s definitely something that could be discussed more in an asexual context, but I don’t feel particularly qualified to do that, I’m not sure if anyone is. I was considering writing something soonish on male anorgasmia, and, now I’m starting to assemble my thoughts about it, I see it’s not a particularly useful or useable definition, because it groups people by the symptom rather than the cause (more on that if I ever write it). We have no idea why this woman doesn’t orgasm. Indeed, one of the problems with anorgasmia is that we have no idea why anyone doesn’t orgasm. The very loudest voice saying they’re fully confident and accepting of the fact their body doesn’t do that may just not have had the right experiences, while a woman like this, who you think probably has issues with ‘performance’ anxiety or conditions that don’t arouse her, may actually physically have far less response to genital stimulation than others, or have some sort of non-harmful mental block, the same sort of preference that says ‘I’m aroused by this gender, not the other’, but saying ‘I don’t need orgasms’. And then there’s the complicated issues of why it matters. There are people whose quality of life would be seriously depleted without orgasms, people who don’t like them at all, and have a more stone sexuality, there are probably people who get a lot of pleasure from sex without orgasm, and are somewhat sceptical of the ‘counting game’ everyone else seems to play. And then there’s whether your partner has any right to expect you to have an orgasm. Is it just misplaced pride? Do they have trouble understanding that you’re fine without it (if you are)? Do they judge themselves by the aforementioned counting game, rather than genuine intimacy? Or is it that a large part of their sexual pleasure genuinely comes from getting the other person off, and they’re struggling to do without that?

Backing away from my random and not particularly helpful stream of consciousness for a moment, let’s assume this woman has the potential to be orgasmic and has one of several problems stopping her from achieving it. It’s sure as hell not going to happen while she’s waiting anxiously for it.

Let’s see what Joy says:

Davidson Responds:
You don't say how you're trying to have an orgasm, so I'll presume that you're going for the Big O during intercourse, which is the least likely way to achieve a climax. Rest assured, there is nothing wrong with you; only about a third of women have orgasms during intercourse. The vast majority of women have them through separate oral or manual stimulation of the clitoris. Even women who do climax during intercourse often require simultaneous clitoral stimulation. However, if you're an "orgasm virgin" the cooperative choreography required to master that can be tricky.
Learning to orgasm is much easier as a do-it-yourself project. Once you become adept at self-pleasuring, you can share your newfound successes with your partner. For step-by-step help, pick up a copy of Lonnie Barbach's classic book, "For Yourself, or Julia Heiman's "Becoming Orgasmic" or my book, "Fearless Sex."

In the short format, Joy’s chosen what her experience tells her is the most likely option- a poor type of stimulation and/or some anxiety issues, which can both be solved through old-fashioned D-I-Y. That’s probably a good call. I found it quite bizarre (but I tend to get my opinions from sex- and especially masturbation- positive people) that the writer doesn’t mention masturbation in the first paragraph. It seems so obvious to me that it’s the best way to find out if and how you can orgasm.
In a desperate bid to include something asexuality-related in my penultimate article in this series (just in case there are still asexuals around, or who might find it in the future), I may as well mention that asexuality is an introspective definition. All the categories of sexual attraction, sex drive, romantic attraction, and so on, are settled by looking at fantasies, desires and masturbation habits, rather than by partnered sex. This is something asexuals can bring to sex-positivism; the increased ability to be introspective, and to know your own sexuality regardless of how it relates to those around you, which I think can be an incredibly strong trait.

Q+A with Joy Davidson, part 4

2010-02-08T15:43:00.000-08:00

All the disclaimers from before apply, the article is found in its entirety here, and I don’t own any copyrights, etc, and am quoting from it for the purpose of analysis.

A little mini-episode now. I quite like this brief letter as a stand-alone thing, and I think I’d like to find the time to write about something else, so I decided not to join it to the next one.

Part 4:
Chuck Writes:
Is it possible to become asexual after you've been married eight-plus years, with a child?

Yes, I think so. I think many people find sexuality fluid, and what makes sense at one time in your life can become something completely different at another time of your life.

If I was an agony aunt, I think I’d have a helicopter, which could fly around the place and drop little sacks onto people, embroidered with the words: “Context, please!!” I’m speculating wildly, but I bet he’s not dealing with someone becoming asexual. He’s dealing with someone finding out that they’re asexual, or with someone who’s becoming something else (like uninterested in sex).

Davidson Responds:
It's certainly possible to lose desire for sex in a long-term relationship, but losing desire is not the same as being asexual. People who believe they are asexual claim they have never had interest in sex.
There are many reasons why a woman would turn off to sex -- some are medical or hormonal but most have to do with the changes in her relationship. Lack of trust or feelings of anger and resentment can play a huge role. So can the inability to communicate sexual needs or have them met by your partner. Illness, depression, anxiety and certain medications can also have an impact.
Complaints of ebbing sexual desire in marriages, whether by the female or male partner, are the most common reason that people visit sex therapists. You are not alone in your frustration or sense of loss. I'd like to suggest that you look through some of the reading resources I've suggested, and then perhaps contact aasect.org for a therapist referral. Best of luck!

I have a couple of disagreements with what Joy wrote here. Firstly, as I said, I think people can often change sexuality. It’s interesting to compare Joy’s answer in this section to “Can a sexual person become asexual” to her answer in the first section to “Can an asexual person become sexual”. I think it works both ways.
Also, and on a far more minor point, Contextless Chuck never mentions that a woman is becoming asexual. Joy assumes this from what she’s read. I don’t mind too much about this, since some things about the way the letter is phrased would suggest it, and sometimes you just have to guess at what isn’t there to make a good response.
I only mention it because there’s an extent to which I think it’s written with the idea of asexual men being less common, and also because it may arise from ideas about women being ‘complicated’, backhand sexism that sneaks in when you’re not watching it. Having spoken to Joy, I don’t think this is any sexism on her part. It’s just that I get touchy because this side is always reported, and the side which deals with men’s complex emotions/desires is always hushed up.
Replace all of the gendered words in Joy’s speech with their male or non-specific equivalents and you get a paragraph that is still completely true, but which you’d never see in a mainstream magazine or newspaper, and which a lot of people sadly really need to be told.
That’s it for this week. Sorry there’s not much genuine analysis of the issues going on here, even less of specifically asexual issues, but I’ll be back for the penultimate in this series next time.

Small worlds

2010-01-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

Today, it happened. One of those moments that the asexual activist always remembers. The first time I saw my name in print connected to asexuality. "[SlightlyMetaphysical's true name] has never felt sexual attraction in his life," said an article about virginity in one of my friend's trashy mags, which we were reading at college. I wanted to scream and jump about with the sheer horror of it, but I couldn't, because most of the people in the room didn't know I was asexual. The article was about someone else with the same (common) first and last names as me.

Small worlds.

Mad about the boy

2010-01-26T13:58:00.000-08:00

Regular readers will know that I have difficulty finding emotional connections between who I am now and the subject of asexuality. I don’t experience a lot of angst in general, and have very little about my sexuality. Anyway, I’ve found something, something that I’ve long known about, but have been thinking about a lot more recently, which fits nicely into a medium-sized meditation with a Noel Coward song title (and will hopefully make up for the last post, which was rather fragmented).

What I want to talk about today is Hollywood (which I will be using as a shorthand for popular, drama-based and often cliché-rooted films) and my asexuality. For Hollywood and asexuality in general, see some of Ily’s pop-culture musings.

I’ve always been a complete social constructionist, but, with the amount of messages we get about being born the way we are, I find it difficult to even admit to myself that a lot of aspects of my sexuality might well be taken straight from whatever confused ideas my adolescent brain plucked out of the social consciousness. For example, my ideal vision of sex involves two people, in bed, artistically lit, faces working furiously, but no genitals, simply because Hollywood told me that sex doesn’t happen underneath the sheets. Preferably in a montage.

I’ve been wondering more and more about my demihomosexuality, while still trying to keep the whole thing as open as possible. It occurs to me that my attraction to people carries a great deal more of emulation than the average homosexual reports. I have a desire to become the person I find attractive.

I have a suspicion that I’m beginning to see the original causes of that desire. Throughout my life, especially in adolescence, indeed, until about two years ago, I had to confront this bewildering world of sexuality. And I had absolutely nothing interior to guide me. With no desire to form my path through this new world, I had to borrow from other people. David Jay talks about sexual drag, as a form of witty wordplay asexuals can use to free themselves from negative stereotypes. I sometimes wonder if I’m subject to another world of sexual drag, knowing so little about my true sexuality, I hide behind the role of the straight man, adopting his mannerisms and even feelings if I need them. I created a personality in which to store all this, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to reconcile the created sexual with the overly simplistic asexual and see where that leaves me.

The main recipient of my subconscious scrambling for role-models was Hollywood, and there I found a particular sort of man. He was thin and had an elegantly sculpted face, amazing hair and amazing clothes, and eyes you could get lost in. He tended to have an English accent, and a pretty little smile that betrayed this exact confidence in what he was doing. He always played the lead role. Of these 8 qualities, I possess only the accent, and it’s a lot less sexy when you’re not surrounded by Americans, but the body, face, hair, eyes, clothes and self-assuredness are all things that I’ve felt self-conscious about from a young age. I think what really attracted me to this man, though, was the way he always seemed, in an adolescent way, to know exactly what was going on regarding love. He had his desires precisely worked out, and would smile that neat little smile that told you it was so simple, being him.

I wanted so much to emulate him, and even now, I still do. I’d love to be able to step into that amazing confidence, matched perfectly by looks. I’ve wondered, in the past, why I seem to care about my appearance when a lot of sexual men for whom it might be more important in real terms just get by with confidence. Besides the fact that a lot of them probably hide their emotions, like me, and the fact that they have less notion of what’s pretty in a man, I think it’s because becoming that boy matters so much more to me, it signals this complete ability to ‘pass’, to have, in some way, earned my rank not just as a sexual, but as a real human being. After all, if Hollywood’s taught me one thing, it’s that you don’t get your own plotline until you have damn fine cheekbones.

Deepest desire- Human Instinct

2010-01-24T15:50:00.000-08:00

Remember how the msn ‘today’ page is one of my most regular windows into the world of popularised heteronormativity? Well, today, looking around for something to blog in between my ongoing series, I saw an msn story labelled nothing more than ‘sexual attraction’, and I thought “Well, the definition of sexual attraction is one of the big asexual issues”, clicked on it and was taken to a 48 minute long video on the nature of sexual attraction, presented by the odious Professor Winston, who, despite his relatively inclusive and open-ended explorations of the basics of evolutionary psychology at a level pitched to the masses, somehow makes my skin crawl. I think it’s because, even as the relatively dim and socially blinkered kid I was when I last saw him, there was something vaguely disagreeable about his statements, but I may have just been projecting that. Anyway, now my cynicism is in full bud, and often directed towards popular ideas of sexual attraction, I thought I’d note what I think while watching it. This post will be incredibly odd, possibly incredibly long and mostly pointless, and I plan to return to another, much more structured, essay at some point this week.
Oh look, salsa dancing. Duh.

Begins with some statistics: What will each of us do more than 3,000 times in our lives? Oh, the harsh law of averages!

The instinct to have sex is vital if we are to produce the next generation. Really? Really? Cos, with contraception and IVF and such, the instinct to have and raise children seems much more important to me.

3.19 minutes in, and we’ve already limited ourselves to heterosexuals (cos gay people don’t watch documentaries, or expect to be included) and are exploring the difference between men and women.
3.55 seconds in, and we’ve got our first TERRIBLY, TERRIBLY flawed methodology. Hear my teeth grating. (They have one man and one women propositioning people, to see who’s most successful. Not counting at all for which one is prettier, a better speaker, etc). The results are predictable, but I’m afraid that the experiment will be used to support the idea that men and women are really, biologically different- in fact, it just has been!!- when there’s such a lot of social issues- slut-shaming and the idea that men who are direct are probably quite dangerous, but, no, it’s got to be about pregnancy. Gahh!

What underlies sexual attraction? Well, this should be interesting from an asexual point of view.
Oh no, wait, it’s just loads of montages of a guy in his trunks. Who, by the way, I find entirely unattractive, which disproves pretty much everything they’re saying about a universal standard, but then, I am attracted almost entirely to pretty faces and amazing hair.
Science has proven that a man’s body affects how attractive his children are. Well, of course! If you select a perfectly random beauty standard, then the people who are most attractive by that definition will produce those who are most attractive by that standard.

Ok, I know I’m a dyed-in-the-wool social constructionist, but there is completely no accounting for social mores and learnt behaviour in this at all.

Here comes the ‘Mr. Right-Smell’ theory. God, I’m so bored of this. Gonna phase out for the next five minutes.

Men, at least, are always primed for a potential mate, even if they don’t know it. And, we have biological evidence for this hackneyed and socially damaging idea!!
Oh, and it’s about testosterone. Men are constantly sexual because they constantly have testosterone ready. Except for the fact that testosterone does loads and loads of things, it’s not just a sexy, sexy man male sex hormone. And it’s also constantly present in women.
I really hate it when they use entirely spurious science like this to support whatever horribly damaging and hurtful status quo stuff they want to say.

It’s a lot more about gender than it is about sex. Another shoddy methodology, “It’s not as scientific as the stuff I do in my laboratory, but it’s a lot more fun.”
Fun to those who are invested in keeping old, conservative gender and sexuality alive maybe. But if you think about it as an adult, you’ll realise that this sociology-as-biology thing is actually just messing everyone up.
The experiment, by the way, is seeing whether a handful of pretty, middle-class women (who I think may be the millionaire-chasers he just interviewed) preferred him in rags or riches. Except these six women clearly knew exactly what the experiment was, and presumably had a biased view from the start. Also, ‘raggy Winston’ had no fashion sense. Believe me, it doesn’t take money to look sharp.

Infidelity. “What on earth could drive a woman to be unfaithful? The answer begins with biology.” I bet the answer isn’t going to be “Women sometimes like to have sex. Deal with it.”
“Most men are fertile all day, every day, and everyone knows it. But women are a little more complicated.” Thank god. Thank god, as a small child, I wanted to punch this guy. All that’s changed is that I have the vocabulary to disagree with him, and to actually know why his ideas are stupid and wrong. I’m glad that I wasn’t overreacting when I first watched him, and I’m glad that I didn’t just swallow his lies.

More about how women are evil. Sob story, sad music. Like they’re the only ones who cheat. The programme was made for the straight, male viewer.

Winston compares his sexual prowess and testical size to various animals. Eww.

“Men posess a powerful instinct for sexual jealousy.” 40.30, and I’ve turned it off. I won’t learn anything useful to asexuality, I won’t learn anything.

What annoys me is that I remember watching this programme. I remember a vague feeling of unquiet, but generally believing everything it said. After all, scientists said so. And if I did, how many others?

Q+A with Joy Davidson, part 3

2010-01-23T05:04:00.000-08:00

Copy-paste from last time:

All the disclaimers from last time apply, the article is found in its entirety here, and I don’t own any copyrights, etc, and am quoting from it for the purpose of analysis.

Part 3:
Karen in Cincinnati Writes:
I had sex numerous times in my 20s and 30s (I am currently 43), but I only did it because the males in my life wanted it. Sex has always been extremely uncomfortable for me. I guess I could say that it hurts. However, I have performed it because the men in my life wanted it.
My husband, though, is not asexual, but has an EXTREMELY low sexual libido, and has chosen to be abstinent concerning sex with me. So, we had sex a very few times when we dated, but we haven't had sex one time since we have been married because he knows that sex is painful for me.
Even though sex is painful for me, I can become aroused with the "right" movie, etc. I can also get "hot" with kissing, etc. However, I can only remember getting aroused one time in the five years we have been married and it was when I was watching a movie.
So, should I go to a doctor again to see if there is a way for me to have pain-free sex, or should I just be content with my asexual lifestyle or can you recommend another solution for me?

It has occurred to me pretty much every time I read a help column, and occurs even stronger now, but I’d hate to be an advice writer. My answer to pretty much every question is ‘that depends’, anyway, and when you get someone who gives you a little information and expects you to know not just what their problem is, but how to solve it, I know I’d have difficulty giving equal weights to all options. There are so many questions here. Is this woman asexual? If not, does she find her husband attractive? Would she enjoy sex if she was aroused? Can she get aroused on her own? Would she enjoy sex if it was done more to fit her individual needs? Does she fantasise about sex? Does she, or would she consider, doing anything other than ‘sex’? Does she have some medical condition that makes sex painful for her? If that was cured, would she enjoy sex?
I’ve thought it over, and my answer would be to give her a list of those questions and tell her that these are things it would be good to know, but not urgently. Her partner seems completely unfazed, and, heck, there’s a lot of stuff you can do in bed that doesn’t involve any form of pain (a lot of asexuals do other things, rather than coital sex), and negotiation on that front could keep the two of them both incredibly happy with their sex life. It’s worth exploring whether she can turn her arousal into that of what we think of as a ‘fully-functioning’ sexual woman, but it’s not necessary to know that, and she’d be better accepting herself fully as who she is at the moment (and a little boost of self-assurance is often just what you need to get the latent arousal flowing). I’ve got a feeling Joy’ll disagree with me on this one.

Davidson Responds:
We live in a culture that is saturated with sexual images, yet it is pitifully devoid of real sexual education for young people, which translates into a poor foundation for adult relationships. Uninformed teens grow into adults who may spend years, even decades, basing relationships on the minimal or incorrect information they accumulated as youngsters. Today's emphasis on abstinence-only education leaves many couples without basic knowledge about how their bodies work or what to expect in a relationship. Much of your own suffering -- as well as your husband's -- might have been prevented had you acquired comprehensive information about sexual health and pleasure. Nevertheless, I'm so glad you wrote now! You've described a complex situation, but there are two points that stand out: First, no one should ever have sex that is painful or even uncomfortable. Pain is a symptom that something is amiss and needs attention. And having sex because someone else insists is a surefire way to feel disempowered, which can erase whatever authentic desire you might otherwise have felt. If you were having sex you didn't want, then you were certainly insufficiently aroused and lubricated, which could have caused sexual intercourse to be painful. In addition, certain medical conditions also make intercourse -- and sometimes even gentle sexual touch -- painful. Given your background, the precise cause of your pain can only be determined by a thorough sexual history and physical exam.
I would urge you to see a doctor, but, this time, be sure to see someone who is well-trained in the practice of sexual medicine and comfortable discussing the extent of her expertise working with patients who have sexual pain conditions. Anyone who is reluctant to have this conversation with you or doesn't supply satisfactory answers is not the right doctor.
The second key point is this: Many people think that sexual desire is supposed to hit like a bolt from the blue; that a woman should merely look across the room at her partner and feel overcome with sexual urgency. If she doesn't feel that way, she may imagine that there is something wrong with her or with her relationship. The reality is quite different. Many people -- especially women in long-term relationships -- feel desire only after they have experienced sexual pleasure and arousal. So, a long, lovely kissing session, or the right kind of caresses, or the mental stimulation of an erotic movie or conversation, could initiate the arousal that leads to a desire for more. However, building up arousal to the point where you are ready for intercourse -- physically and emotionally -- can be a slow process. Many women simmer "on low" for a long time before their heat begins to rise. Along the way, any disruption can turn the flame down and leave her cold. A partner who rushes, the experience of pain, even a major mental distraction can snuff out the fire. Anybody who has had only a few poor sexual experiences may conclude she is just not very sexual, when, in fact, it is pretty healthy not to feel sexual under circumstances that are uninspiring, counter-erotic or unpleasant!
I hope you'll see a doctor about your pain, as well as learn more about your sexuality by taking advantage of the many resources -- books, films and Web sites -- that provide exceptional adult sexuality education. I have a list of some of the very best sources on my Web site, www. JoyDavidson.com, and invite you to have a look. You'll also find answers to nearly every sexual question at www.LoveandHealth.info. And the AASECT.org Web site has referral information to sex therapists and a list of excellent sex education books written by its members.

I think I remember, reading this through for the first time and thinking “maybe I should make a blog series on this”, that this answer was about when I started to actually like Joy. Until then, I could grudgingly admit that she maybe had a point in her problems about the asexual community, and I knew she was probably very good at being a therapist, but, based on hasty first impressions, there seemed something a little too conservative in the (few) views I’d seen her share. It was at this point that I finally realised she was on the same page as me with a lot of the important issues- too little real sex education, abstinence-only that doesn’t work, a sexual model that doesn’t support women’s arousal patterns and physiology, we agree on pretty much everything except, maybe, the importance of sex in a healthy relationship (which is an incredibly fraught and complicated issue anyway, and I’m not too sure where I stand on it myself).
Also, isn’t it sad that we have the need, in our society, to give advice like “sex that doesn’t attempt to stimulate you mentally or physically isn’t the best sex to arouse you” to a woman who has the intellectual capacity and maturity to write and send a letter?

(Aside: Joy’s comments about the ill-preparedness of young people reminded me of this speech, which I read very recently, and which implores me to propagate it. Worth a read, I think)

Joy, as I suspected, focuses much more on how the woman can enquire about her sexuality, learning new things. This is partly because she has a greater range of useful knowledge than me on where you go to find out all that stuff, but I notice that Joy’s position in this article urges a far less ‘adapt to what you’ve got’ approach than the majority of asexual-written advice. Sure, this means that an awful lot of people will find out ways in which they can live closer to the sexual standard, but I would argue that this doesn’t always make you happy. It can often be best just to have the confidence to say “I like who I am. I like what I want and don’t want, and I’m going to work around every issue,” which is what you’d have to say eventually.
It’d be particularly easy in the case of this woman, who doesn’t have to force herself to change, all she has to do is learn to be happy with what she is, and deal with whatever comes of it. It’s a more important skill, that’ll probably make you a lot happier, and end up a lot truer to yourself, in the end.

On a different matter entirely, I wanted to look at the asexual connotations for a moment of this idea; “Many people think that sexual desire is supposed to hit like a bolt from the blue; that a woman should merely look across the room at her partner and feel overcome with sexual urgency. If she doesn't feel that way, she may imagine that there is something wrong with her or with her relationship. The reality is quite different. Many people -- especially women in long-term relationships -- feel desire only after they have experienced sexual pleasure and arousal.”

It has a couple of very different meanings taken in an asexual context. Firstly, this is an incredibly good use of Pretzelboy’s rarely seen ‘Argument from Below’ * - basically, how do you know you’re asexual when you have no way of quantifying your level of desire compared to everyone else’s? Maybe you’re perfectly normal, or normal enough to not really be asexual, but you have this weird idea of how sexuality works, that it involves this sudden pheromone change like mating season on the discovery channel, when, for most people, it’s a whole ragbag of intimacy and romance and physical attraction and the physical desire for sex all mixed up together.
It was something I struggled with, from the opposite angle, before realising myself to be demisexual, trying to quantify all my feelings as “Well, that’s not sexual, because...” and then thinking “But there’s probably loads of people out there who have exactly the same emotions, who define themselves as straight or gay or bi, when the only differences between them and you are their ability to be satisfied by romantic relationships and not to wildly over-analyse everything”. I think it’s an argument worth looking at.

The other interesting thing about this idea is its relationship with the conventional asexual idea of demisexuality, which is often described as only being able to experience sexual attraction once you’re in a romantic relationship. I don’t know how this fits with my ‘ragbag’ theory of sexuality, presumably only in the presence of intimacy and trust can sexual attraction and desire develop. What’s interesting here is that Joy would define this as part of the normal range of sexual responses of straight women, while a lot of demisexuals prefer to label themselves as asexuals, because they feel it’s more representative of their normal state of being. It’s this whole idea of the Line between asexuality and sexuality, and that asexuals might actually draw the Line higher than sexuals would. People like me and the conventional demisexual mess it up completely by saying ‘Well, we feel sexual attraction, but the label of asexuality is still more useful for us to identify by’, and that gets confusing, because asexuality is based on not feeling sexual attraction. (more thoughts on the Line to follow at some point in the future, once I’ve thought them)

NOTE: If the only function of this series were to spark a conversation between myself and Joy, I would probably have written that last part very differently. It discusses things right in the deep end of asexual thought, things we haven’t really discussed ourselves yet, but it flowed so naturally on from the letter that I thought I might as well bring it up, in case there are still other asexuals reading this series.

*part of being asexual appears to be in having a birdwatcher-style ticklist of things people say when you come out to them, and I feel like I’ve just spotted a red kite.

Apositive

2010-01-16T06:17:00.000-08:00

I don't go on it much, though I've somehow managed to figure how to get a feed from it (despite a dismal understanding of Web 2.0), so hopefully that'll alert me on any interesting topics that I feel I could make an impact on.

However, on the basis of this post, I'm going to link to it, because it really should be in the first google page results for 'asexual' and 'asexuality', and I want to do my (small) bit.

Check it out.

Q + A with Joy Davidson- part 2

2010-01-11T13:45:00.000-08:00

All the disclaimers from last time apply, the article is found in its entirety here, and I don’t own any copyrights, etc, and am quoting from it for the purpose of analysis.

Also, a considerable amount has changed since last week. One of the main reasons I took this article and decided to look at it more closely was because I wanted something approaching a dialogue between the asexual community and Joy Davidson, and I thought a fair analysis of her words was the only way. Since then, she’s come forward and said that she is prepared to have that dialogue, which I completely wasn’t expecting. There are still a number of reasons to examine the article more closely, even though I think it’s best to measure Joy’s opinion by her current words, not what was reported 4 or 5 years ago.
Hopefully it’ll kickstart that discussion, and I think many of the views are those likely to be similar for many therapists. It’ll also produce some interesting ideas about or linked to asexuality that aren’t the ones asexuals necessarily think of. It may show how asexuality is represented in the media. If it fails to do any of those things, or have any current relevance whatsoever, it’ll at least be a history lesson, and those are always useful.

Having said that, I think this’ll be a disappointing part of the series. I’ve had a glance through the article, and decided to do letters 2 and 3 together, because they’re quite short and focused more around relationships with a low libido than around asexuality, and I don’t feel I can add much to Joy’s relationship guidance.

Part 2:

Cecelia in San Antonio, Texas, Writes:
We've been married for 13 years and haven't had sex in over 11 years. Looking back at the first year of our marriage, I realized I had been the one to initiate anything physical. It was my second marriage, and I have one child; it was his first marriage and we met, got engaged, married and went on a weeklong honeymoon all in less than three months. Before we married he claimed to have too much respect for me to resort to sex before marriage. We have wonderful vacations in remote and romantic settings; we love to cuddle. We sleep late on the weekends and take afternoon naps together, but on his part there is absolutely not a hint of desire or passion much less sex, I've seen the uninterested look on his face and his less than willingness to touch me anywhere! I sometimes wake up in a panic, knowing I will never in the boundaries ... of this marriage have the pleasure of sex again. I married at 39. I am now 52 and extremely frustrated!

Putting aside questions of whether these are genuine or created to address an issue, this letter rings so true to a lot of things said on the Sexual Partners and Allies forum on AVEN. The romance and the cuddling (which I think are often signs of overcompensation in an unknowing asexual), the complete lack of desire which the asexual partner thinks is perfectly normal, the buying into conservative ideas of sex to normalise your lack of desire for it, the plea for understanding from the partner, which, unfortunately, not knowing her husband, is very hard for a stranger to give.
(side note: If a guy says he respects you too much to have sex with you before marriage, being a closeted gay or asexual is actually one of the better scenarios. The other is that he has a load of weird ideas about the purity of women and sex being evil that you, as his future sexual partner, should definitely address before you get to the altar)

Anyway, none of this means he’s asexual. Asexuality could very well be causing all of it, but there are a number of alternatives. You could argue that, in a pragmatic sense, that doesn’t matter. The problem is that he won’t have sex with her, and she can’t foresee a relationship without sex. I suppose it depends whether your advice is “Ditch him,” or “Talk it through. Try to work something out. Then, if he doesn’t pull his weight, or you decide you’re too different, ditch him.” If the latter, you’re going to need to at least touch on what it is he doesn’t like about sex.

Davidson Responds:
Unfortunately, you can't "work out" a sexual problem with an unwilling partner. What you can do, however, is tell your husband that you love him dearly but don't want to live a sexless existence forever. You need make no apologies for desiring a new level of intimacy in your relationship. Let him know you understand and respect the fact that he has blocks and resistances to sex with you , but that you'd like to explore them with him in counseling. If he is willing to consider couples therapy, don't wait another day. If he is not, I urge you to get counseling for yourself. You deserve some help in considering all your options and making clear and responsible decisions about your future.
This is a good place to mention that I highly recommend that anyone who chooses to see a sex therapist select one who is certified by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists. AASECT's standards for education, training, and supervision are rigorous, and knowing that someone is AASECT certified is the only way to be certain that they have the qualifications you need in a sex therapist. Many general therapists call themselves sex therapists because they talk to clients about sexual matters, but the only gold standard for training and certification among sexuality professionals is AASECT. A therapist in your area can be found on its Web site at www.aasect.org.

Joy’s definitely in her element here, and all that is good advice. What they need is structured communication, to see what common ground they have, to explore the partner’s issues around sex, and to negotiate, and the best place to get that is with a qualified therapist.
One of the key issues that comes up again and again in the story of sexual/asexual relationships, those that failed and those that succeeded, are ideas of blame and naturalness. Undoubtedly, at least one partner will feel that they or the other person is to blame, that they or the other person should be ashamed of their unnatural interest, or lack of it. It seems to be one of the hardest things to get past.
In that case, and with so many asexuals out there looking for relationships with sexuals, I think making sexual people feel comfortable in their sexuality is just as fundamental to the wellbeing of asexuals as making asexual people comfortable in theirs. So I think the asexual community should be completely behind Joy when she starts by saying that the writer should be proud and confident in her identity and needs. It’s only when both partners accept that of themselves and the other person that they can start to negotiate.*
However, for the sake of balance, it would be nice to also have a little bit that says “While you’re not to blame, and you need to be respected, he deserves the same treatment.” The ‘make no apologies’ line on its own reads a little too close to a disregard for his consent and lack of desire for my liking.

*This is where the asexual community comes in useful. For asexual individuals, it does so much good to be able to say “There are people like me. There’s a name for what I am,” and it helps build confidence and the ability to really think about and have the words for what you want (and don’t).

Frederick in Pennsylvania Writes:
I am 56 years old. I have been married for 11 years. My wife and I have not had sex or any affectionate relations for many years. We have a 17-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter. We rationalize and claim that we do not want to divorce for the children's sake. Recently, we realized that we are not diplaying an accurate representation of the type of loving relationship we would want our children to experience in their lives. Any suggestions ?

This person lives in a completely different world from me, and I’m seriously rather stumped as to his problem. I know from my parents that, if you’re willing to do absolutely anything for the sake of the children, a clean, friendly divorce is possible, and that’s going to teach your kids loads more stuff, about maturity and not just accepting what life gives you than being stuck in a bad relationship would. Also, 17 and 11 year olds are nowhere near so fragile that some major, mature life decision by their parents is going to mess up their ability to love (their parents being constantly aggressive or passive aggressive might, though).

So I have absolutely no idea where this letter is coming from (it’s the result of a time, place and value system that are largely alien to me), and can’t really comment on the big asexual issues. Sorry to disappoint.

Instead, I’m going to briefly mention the problems caused by most of the external representations of asexuality being in the form of problem pages (it’s either that or life-affirming curiosity of the week, which is probably only slightly better).
Asexuals, and asexual/sexual couples, need positive role-models as well as negative ones, they need to see asexuals who are confident in their sexuality doing their own thing, and examples of the great things that can happen when an asexual and a sexual get it right. There’s something about these articles that suggests relationships between asexuals and sexuals are one big seething mass of pain and heartbreak on all sides, mostly due to the quite obvious sampling bias, only people with problems write in, but it all builds up after a while and the situation looks rather hopeless.
True, they’re difficult relationships to pull off, but I’d like to see more acknowledgement (among asexuals, too) of their good sides. These relationships rely on communication and non-sexual activities (which are like the transferable skills of the social world, in that you can use them to deepen any relationship, not just a romantic one), the sexual ones have a pick-and-mix approach to sex that can work better than doing it in the ‘right’ way, they bring together two people with different viewpoints and force them to co-operate, they force issues of non-sexual adultery a long time before the tricky issue will be figured out for most people, and I expect a stable asexual/sexual relationship may well adapt better into middle age, a time when a formerly well-matched pair often get differing sex drives, amid some confusion.
Yes, these are often minor things, but they’re there, and I’m sure there’s a lot more that haven’t occurred to me, and the point is that these relationships shouldn’t be seen as just a problem, something to overcome. In an ideal world, they should also be celebrated for what they are.

Davidson Responds:
I applaud you for realizing that staying together for the sake of the children may not be doing them a real service. The absence of touching, kissing, and general physical affection -- not to mention the void in romantic energy between you -- offers your children no reliable template for intimacy. If you do plan to stay together, you need to get serious about rekindling the romantic and affectionate side of your relationship. If doing it for yourselves seems awkward and embarrassing after all these years, think of it as a hurdle you need to leap for the children. This may be where "for the sake of the kids" actually means something!
There are many books that can help you find direction, including David Schnarch's "Passionate Marriage." You will probably need some counseling as well, since change of this nature can be difficult even with help, and head-spinning without it.
If you're unable to re-ignite intimacy within your marriage, counseling can help you separate in a way that supports your ongoing relationship as co-parents and generates the least amount of disruption or insecurity for your children.

It’s reasonable that Joy doesn’t mention asexuality here. The original letter doesn’t mention it, and it’d be wrong to presume. But the answer also seems to deny the possibility that this woman really doesn’t want sex, has no intimacy left to ignite.

Joy’s answer assumes that a marriage without ‘intimacy’ should be separated in a way that’s as harmless as possible. I don’t know if I agree with this. It depends on the definition of intimacy. It could mean ‘any form of human connection’, in which case I completely agree. It could mean ‘hugging, kissing, dating, the more corny aspects of romance and sex’, in which case the decision is far less clear. It is true that there are relationships which don’t have those elements and can still thrive for what they are. I personally believe that relationships without any of these elements can still be strong enough to base a marriage on, and I’d like to see that represented more. However, these relationships are difficult to manufacture, and starting from a basis of a relationship that never questioned all this before, with two partners who are having to question all their basic conceptions about how everything goes, and with the risk that, if you get it wrong, things could get nasty and not good for the children, I can completely see where a new asexual and their partner would decide to respectfully cut the ties and build up from scratch.

One final after-thought: An awful lot of asexual culture directly relates to the gay culture of decades before. Back when homosexuality first became a common word, there were lots of people who realised, in a marriage, that this new label applied to them, causing heartbreak all round. The spread of asexuality could result in a powerful new set of tools for people deciding and communicating just how much sexual interest/attraction they have, and, in a generation’s time, the asexual (or similar) who discovers themselves too late could also become greatly reduced.

The Masturbation Paradox (don't mention the P word)

2009-12-31T00:29:00.000-08:00

This is less of a post, more just a note for me to handily link to/copy-paste from to save me writing it out each time. I've been meaning to write this for some time, hastened by Ily's re-working of the issue.

It adresses the flaws in the argument that, logically, asexuals who masturbate cannot be called asexual, and have to be called autosexual, as follows:

There is 1 operational definition of asexuality- X. someone who does not experience sexual attraction. There are others, such as someone who doesn't engage in sexual activity, but these are generally more flawed definitions, and none of them are embraced by the asexual community.

There are 2 operational definitions of autosexuality- A. someone who engages in sexual-esque activity with themself (ie. masturbation), B. someone who is sexually attracted to themselves.

The problem here is that A and X can both be true, but B and X are contradictory. People are often confused between A and B, meaning that they think A and X are contradictory.

In longer speak: If your definition of autosexual is someone who masturbates, then this doesn't affect sexual orientation, or someone's status as an asexual. They can be both asexual and autosexual. If your definition of autosexual is someone who feels sexual attraction for themselves, then, you're right, autosexuals aren't asexual. However, people who tell you they're asexual and masturbate almost definately (excluding the possibilities of denial*) aren't autosexual by this definition, so therefore they're still asexual.

*and I'm not actually sure whether anyone of this definition of autosexual exists. There probably are some people, though.

Boring but neccesary.
This is a pretty effective logical counter to people who use the word autosexual to invalidate masturbating asexuals. It doesn't, unfortunately, work against people who say "Well, masturbation's just inherently sexual". In that argument, you have two choices:
Try and convince someone that their most regular, fantasy-based, dependable and probably best (from a personal pleasure/achieving orgasm point of view) sex, that's undoubtedly been the most major feature of their sex life since their teens, isn't inherently sexual for everyone.
Point behind them, say "Look over there", then run and hide under a bush until they've gone.

Asexuality and the asexual movement

2009-12-29T05:03:00.000-08:00

I've been sleeping really weirdly of late, so the basic thought-processes of this morning were "Ohh, it's 7 o' clock. I really should get up... Ohh, it's 10 o' clock, I really should get up. Ohh, it's noon, I really should get up. Nothing on facebook, nothing on deviantart, nothing on blo- Oh ****, Joy Davidson has commented on my last post!!!!!"

She was really respectful, seemed quite glad I'd written about her actual words, rather than assumptions about her beliefs. I'd ask any asexuals or interested parties reading to check out her comment. I knew she'd been a bit typecast, but it never occured to me before that, in just the same way as media appearences don't allow asexuals to have the very in-depth discussions they'd like to, she may have been constrained by the same system.

Anyway, one of the things she said was that there's a difference between asexuality and the asexual movement. It's something I've always known, but never considered before. Like all binaries, it looks fine at first, but is impossibly complicated once you get closer to the dividing line. For a start, we all know it's the asexual community that defines what asexuality is. And asexuality defines what the asexual community is. I have not a chance of approaching the complexity of the effects of this symbiotic relationship, but Pretzelboy's definitions series, especially the two awesome posts on the history of asexuality, do a very good job of exploring the issue (I seem to spend half my time as a blogger looking through his archive for places where Pretzelboy's said it really well).

To assume that the asexual movement and asexuality are somehow seperatable, we have to assume there's some definition of asexuality outside of the asexual movement, a gold standard by which AVEN's cheques are measured*. This is obvious. There are people who were asexual before the first asexual groups, people who took the name before they knew anyone else had, and, assuming that there has always been, behind the scenes, such a thing as sexual orientation, I'm certain that there have always been people who experience little or no sexual attraction to anyone. However, there's a semantic issue here. The word asexual, with etymologically-easy subdivisions, like aromantic and demisexual, its own roots in the language of sexual orienation like homosexual, has influenced the self-understanding of the first generation of asexuals. And the more fixed these become, the more important it will be, in the real world, that the word we chose is asexual, and that the operative definition of that word is 'you are if you feel like it', and all sorts of things that came about through the asexual movement will affect the real world applications of asexuality, as opposed to nonsexuality, nonlibedoism, lack of sexual attraction, none of which really made it this far.

It's not a bad thing. The only way to avoid semantic issues is to not use any words, and I think the operational definitions of asexuality don't have any real major flaws. Also, even the most semantic people (and I count myself as one of them), eventually start thinking "Blow this. I'll be exactly who I am, and the words will have to try and catch up with me." But it's worth considering.

Maybe I should extend this to a less semantic level, now. The fact that asexuality started off as an internet orientation gives it a sort of memishness. It's main proponents are people who can spend their time stuck behind a keyboard, making it's activists a little different from most other activists. The fact that you have to fight to even find it (though that's changing more and more), means that it attracts introspective researchers. The fact that it models itself on the big three sexual orientations has a whole host of meanings. Decisions of the asexual movement affect asexuality itself, and it's often difficult to find where the gold standard exactly is.

No particular conclusion for this, not at the moment anyway, it's just a thought.

*To explain this metaphor: The gold standard is the amount of gold kept in a bank. In the old days, all bank notes were promissery notes, saying that they were worth exactly so much gold from the bank. You could keep circulating the notes, knowing that, if you ever wanted, you could exchange them for gold, but no-one ever did. It was enough just to know that the gold was there somewhere, keeping the value of the money stable, making sure the promises were worth themselves.

At more financially savvy times, the banks lent and printed more money than they actually had gold to refund for, because they knew that whether there was gold or not didn't actually matter. In the early 19th century, the English radical politician Francis Place went so far as to threaten the collapse of the British banking industry by encouraging all his followers to go to the banks and take out all the gold that they had notes for, even though there wasn't anywhere near enough. No-one, now, bothers with the gold standard, money is entirely judged by trust and confidence, hence the lack of trust and confidence leading to the current economic recession.

Don't know how much of that was relevant to the post, but it does make a rather nice story.

Q + A with Joy Davidson (part 1)

2009-12-28T09:50:00.000-08:00

This series is designed to give me things about the small world of asexuality to talk about, other than the slightly insular view of things running round other blogs, and the very insular view of things running round my head. Each time I update it, I'll pull another question/answer from this article, and analyse them. I'll try to be relatively fair about it, giving an asexual perspective, but also considering Joy's perspective.

I have no idea what the copyright situation is with quoting things. I'd like to point out that the copyright on this article belongs entirely to ABC News, and I'm quoting directly from it for the purpose of analysis.

Part One:
I am 19 years old, and I've been having a lot of trouble convincing my parents that I do not experience sexual attraction. After watching the asexuality story on "20/20," my father looked at me during your comments and gave me a very snide "See?" as if he feels that I should force myself to do something that I have absolutely no interest in. Is there anything I can say to my parents that will make them understand that sex just is not for me?

This seems to be the relatively confident asexual to start off, so no-one can accuse the article of bias. However, notice that they don't use the term asexual in relation to themselves. Also notice that (if these letters are indeed genuine), Davidson's own comments have caused increased friction in at least one family with an asexual in, and are used by the father as an authoritative justification of his doubts.

This is also the comment that should be easiest enough to answer. Even someone who doesn't believe in asexuality should see that someone who doesn't want sex at the moment should be given space by their parents, and just needs to adress how to get everyone communicating properly.

Davidson Responds:

I hope you can see the weird humor in having a dad who says, "Be more sexual!" while most of your friends' folks are probably saying, "Wait!"

A humor that a lot of asexuals have pointed out. Some have said there's a magic age of about 16, after which they suddenly get a bit more involved in Project Grandchild.

But I would hate to think you're rebelling against your father's pressure. Rebellion may be part of growing up, but knowing when someone has a good point, (even if it IS your dad!) is part of being a grown-up. In this instance, your dad is picking up on the idea that lack of interest in sex can be based on something other than an irreversible condition called asexuality.

I suppose the crucial difference here between Joy and I is what we've read into the letter. She says 'picking up on', while I think 'refusing to let go of' is probably more accurate.

I don't feel it's worth mentioning that the unsubtle way in which she immediately says "You're rebelling" is quite insulting. It seems people often use whatever's there to justify it not being proper asexuality. In this case, the girl may very well be rebelling. However, the only information in the letter is that she has a dad who's annoyed with her. QED- she must be in a rebellious phase!

Also- irreversible condition. Why don't we have more asexuals who ponder language bias? It's struck me that it's an interesting aspect of the asexual movement.

I totally believe that you're not inclined toward having sex right now. But do I know for sure that you will never be interested? Not without a crystal ball. We all develop sexually at different paces. Some of us are sexually precocious, and some of us are late bloomers. Just because someone is in her late teens or early 20s doesn't mean she is necessarily in full bloom. What you feel now may not be who you are so much as where you are in your own unique cycle of development. By labeling yourself too soon, you run a serious risk of mislabeling yourself, then feeling duty-bound to live up to it.

"I believe you. But I don't." At this point, she's stopped answering the question and just started listing her own views. I hope she gets back to the problem with the father soon, because it seems to me that the girl is pretty mature about knowing what she wants and turning her identity into the problem is just going to make her relationship with her dad, and those of thousands like her, more difficult.

There's no doubt that when you feel like an outsider, when all your friends seem boy crazy or girl crazy and you're not, you'll want to gravitate to a group that better reflects where you stand. I'd be down with that 100 percent if the group in question stood for accepting how you feel right now but also supported the possibilities for change. I'd be more comfortable, too, if the group offered education instead of an "if you think you are, you are" approach to the matter of asexuality. Lay psychology is sometimes intuitive and smart, and sometimes more about inclusion than pure wisdom.

Now, these are interesting criticisms of the asexual movement, and I'm not just going to brush them aside (although it's obvious at this point that the original letter mentioned asexuality, and that it's been whitewashed out).

The question of whether asexuals are 'allowed' by the movement to change their ways is a long one. In my recent change from asexual to who-knows (which is now approximately back to demisexual), I found that asexuals were all entirely enthusiastic about me questioning myself, but I did feel constrained by the asexual label, and there is a certain fear of leaving it that has to be adressed, if we're sure that eager asexuals aren't just denying their partly sexual natures. I'm aware that both Joy and I are rambling horribly, so for now, I'll just ask that you read this post by the formerly asexual-identifying Venus of Willendork, written with Joy's objections in mind.

I personally love the self-definition of asexuality. I'm not sure Joy quite grasps the consequences of denying people the right to define themselves. One reason asexuals don't offer an education is because there is none to offer. Not just asexuality, but sexuality too, is indefinable. There is very little concrete knowledge out there about sexuality, and only the possession of concrete knowledge that someone else doesn't have can possibly raise someone to the level of a Teacher, rather than a Wise Friend.
There is also absolutely no way of deciding any sexuality other than self-identification. Without self-identification, there would be no sexual orientation in the world.

However, the idea of the asexual community offering an education is an interesting one. Maybe, rather than leaving the vulnerable minds of new asexuals in the care of whoever stays in AVEN (and that place, especially the repeated threads, does get a bit too dull after a while), and the occasional awesome but jokey flow chart, it would be better if some form of asexual authority eventually arises to put together some sort of e-guidebook for those questioning if they're asexual. A serious flowchart, perhaps. The FAQ of AVEN is a good example of one or a few asexuals committing what's often thought of as the horrific crime of speaking for all, and maybe it's something that has to be done occasionally, as little as possible, to gain respect. Maybe there should be some sort of protocol for 'am I asexual' and 'I am (or varient). What next?'. Maybe Joy's right, and it's too important a thing to leave to chance, as the term becomes better known, and we get more and more asexuals who aren't neccesarily keenly introspective and able to navigate their own way round finding out if they're asexual.

In addition to the timing of sexual development, there are plenty of other legitimate reasons that someone could feel asexual without being in a permanent or irreversible state. The short list includes endocrine imbalances, history of trauma or abuse, subconscious negative attitudes about sex, fear of being swept up or losing control, depression, anxiety, and the effects of undiagnosed medical conditions. Some people might even just like feeling "special" or "unusual." In fact, there are so many convoluted possibilities that only a trained person can help you sort them out.

More of the same.

Is it scary to dig around in your emotional and physical recesses? Good grief, yes! But when you have another 70 or 80 years of life ahead of you, don't you owe it to yourself to spend a few of them doing that kind of excavating?

I completely agree with her here. And we do need to encourage this kind of thought. But, at the same time, it's already being encouraged more than she realises, and there's no need to police the first few years of everyone's asexuality to make sure they doubt themself all the time.

Also, I did spend years and years not just questioning, but actively trying to invent sexual attraction. And a lot of questioning, of course. This girl's older than me, and Joy's completely dismissed the idea that she could have already spent years trying to figure things out.

Even if, in the end, you are more convinced than ever that you're incapable of being attracted to anyone, male or female, at least you will have come to that conclusion after educated and responsible consideration. I'd really like to see you give yourself the advantage of time, and, ideally, have at least a few sessions with a qualified sex therapist so that you can talk about all your feelings beyond the pressure imposed by either your family or your peer group.

*goes back and looks at the question*
*looks back through the answer again*
*looks at the question again*

You know what, this is what really harms asexuality. Joy Davidson here admits that not wanting to have sex, not feeling sexual attraction, can be a valid way to live your life. However, when an asexual reaches out to her for help, trying to find out how to live this life, all Joy does is melt into a flurry of reasons she might not be asexual. Yes, doubting yourself is important. But I would love, just for once, to see some professional advice about asexuality from the other side of the coming out line. It's like the only asexual issue is whether we exist or not, and we're too busy with that issue that we have no time to actually exist.

The definition of insanity

2009-12-23T10:20:00.000-08:00

I’ve remembered what I liked about that rather tacky, obvious, and capital-motivated article on MSN that I discussed five minutes ago.

It ends with the words: “they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for different results!”

And the aromantic majority of my brain and the cynical majority of my brain joined together (as they do depressingly often) and thought ‘hmm... that’s also a really good definition of dating’.

Now, I ought to say, in fairness, that this doesn’t relate dating and insanity in any actual form at all. For a start (and I feel almost embarrassed to be this simplistic when the rest of the asexosphere rings to intelligent thoughts on the medicalisation of sexuality and the DSM IV) , that’s a really bad and obviously colloquial ‘definition’ of insanity. There are lots of times when, counter intuitively, doing the same thing and expecting different results is very sane. The problem is, dating falls across both these categories like a small circle in the centre of the standard Venn diagram*. Sometimes, it really does live up to this categorisation, and I can’t help but feel that only the incredible importance society places on dating makes people keep trying again and again, when they’d otherwise recognise that there’s something wrong at the root of whatever systems they’re following.

*Graphical representational tangent approaching:
A small circle placed across a standard Venn diagram would actually not be very accurate, because it would contain areas where repeating is a sensible thing to do and areas where it’s not, but also areas in the total population (probably ‘all scenarios in which you can repeat something expecting the same results’) which somehow don’t correspond to either ‘x’ or ‘not x’ and areas that somehow correspond to both. A better Venn diagram would be a square divided horizontally, vertically or diagonally into two sections, with the circle lying across this line.

So just what do you do all day?

2009-12-23T10:17:00.000-08:00

The annoying girl (let’s call her V) from the last post returns! In a birthday party she had last Saturday, she brought her boyfriend along, who knew all about my asexuality, and he became the third person (after V and a guy from college), who responded to this news with the question:

“So just what do you do/think about all day?”

On the basis that pretty much everyone who I’ve ever come out to who isn’t a largely disinterested virgin has said this in some form, and it’s something I’ve not heard of from any other asexual, I think this idea deserves more examination.
Before, I’ve always answered with “Whatever you do/think about when you’re not doing/thinking about sex,” and they go away still bemused. This time, and largely to annoy V, who thinks I have some problem with her sexuality, and because I was revelling in the discomfort of this conversation, I asked her boyfriend, “How often, as a proportion of the day, do you spend on sex and girls?”
And he said, after much thought, and after we’d debated whether time spent sleeping could count, that everything he did was because of sex and girls. From the high-class degree he’s studying to the amount of time he works out, everything he does (direct quote) “is so people can find me attractive, and spending time with people who find me attractive.” He then asked me why I hadn’t accomplished anything major with my life. I have, in fact, done very little, despite not having this overwhelming amount of time dedicated to sex and romance, which he seemed to feel was fairly normal.

At this point, trusty V, in an effort to make the conversation awkward for me, and not for her, began to suck his face off. I escaped to the prudish corner of the room (which, given the inexperience of my friends, was basically all of it that didn’t have V in it).
But that’s been rattling round in my head ever since. What do you do all day? What have you achieved with the time you’ve been granted by your asexuality and effective aromanticity? What positives have you made out of a situation that would make people like V feel life isn’t worth living?

I was going to write this down and blog it, but I didn’t have an answer. I felt there was no conclusion. And then, today, on the irritating MSN popup window that always opens, I found this article.
I tend to like perusing the dating articles on MSN (which they have about once a week, sponsored discreetly but not too discreetly by an internet dating service), on the basis that, since this girl ruined Cosmopolitan for me, it’s the best way to press my face against the glass of cosy, vapid, thoughtless heteronormativity, and feel that sort of blankness that comes from seeing your future everywhere, which is normally denied to me.
In a cynical, objective way, of course.

I really can’t tell why, but this article got me thinking about my seemingly inevitable slow-motion realisation of some innate aromanticness in me. Somehow, it got me thinking about how people invest such a great amount of time in boyfriends and girlfriends, and how I have nothing to fill that void, no hope of an intimate connection that is just automatically an intimate connection, because society says it is.

And that’s when I realised. I can spend all of my life forming those intimate connections with other people, connections that don’t have to end, and that have a healthier amount of communication than the standard romance, and that are more tailored to our needs. And I can spend all of my time, outside of work and recreation and sleep and all that other stuff, thinking about my friendships, where they are, how to improve them, how to let my friends know how much they mean to me. THAT’s what I do all day. And I really think I’ve picked the longest straw.

Being come-out about

2009-12-16T14:37:00.001-08:00

There's one girl I know who's incredibly rude and erm, forthright in her views, lets say. She does it in a way that's hard not to love, and you take the sort of crap unthinkingly from her that you wouldn't from anyone else. Anyway, I can only think of two (non-internet) people who I've actually come out to (her, and my mother. Almost everyone else who knows I'm asexual, including me, knows because she told them.

The fact that I came out to her and then she outed me to myself is rather confusing, and a result of me finding asexuality twice, and not thinking much of it the first time, except casually mentioning it to her. After that, everyone who walked into the room was told within ten minutes that I'm asexual.

Anyway, we all got our grades this summer. I didn't get enough to go to university, so I quickly hopped onto a nice year-long art course, 'cos it'd be fun, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. She went to university, decided she didn't like it, and dropped out after three weeks. So she moved onto my course, with my help. I'd planned to keep my asexuality pretty secret, considering the amount a couple of guys on my course bonded around sex. I managed (not lying or denying myself, but not having The Talk), for another two weeks. Then guess what's just happened. Go on, you'll never guess.

Anyway, this (being the only tiny tidbit of asexual-related thing that could vaguely be considered to be happening to me at the moment) got me thinking about how little I've been bothered by the reactions to my outings. Apart from my mother (I still have no idea what happened in that conversation), the most common response was "oh?", the best was "ok." and the worst was "huh". I seriously can't relate to the people who've had drama about it.

Anyway, as mentioned in the last post, Dr Who Buzzcocks is on the iPlayer, so I have no more time to rationalise about this now. I'll probably return to it next time I come out/are outed.

Random musings of an internet nature

2009-12-16T14:10:00.000-08:00

I guess comfort and danger are always going to be the two driving forces in my life, sailing (too) couragiously out into the big wide waters of unknown situations, pushing myself further at every success and back to safety at every failure (or at least the ones that take a little getting over). Hoping for dreams and dealing with reality sometimes seems too much of a sudden change to not leave a mark, but I suppose it's just like muscles that tear to grow.

The reason I'm posting this here is that, for the last month, maybe two, I've been spending so much less time on the internet. Before I could spend hours on here, it was where I felt safe. Now, I just check e-mails and facebook and deviantart and blogger and think "Hmm... I wonder what I could do in the real world." Which is awesome, it really is. I've done so much new stuff, and so much that was always a 'I really should' has become a 'Got the T-shirt', and that's completely going to continue (unfortunately for my blog).

But I experienced my first medium-ish set-back with mood swing just now (I've taken up sewing, and a costume I was making ended up a little small. A tiny thing, but sometimes you get an emotional investment), and I immediately got on my computer, in the hope that the nice kind internets would soothe the pain. And, of course, they haven't. They aren't my safe harbour any more. They're a tool, not a recreational activity. Which is irritating, because the internet as a recreational activity had no possibility of failure. It also had no possibility of success.

Time to get away from comfort. That's what this kind-of gap year was all about. From now on, my entire life is going to be things with successes and failures, and this small blog doesn't really get a look-in.

Anyway, David Tennant and Catherine Tate are hosting NMTB, and it'll be on the iPlayer soon. If there's one thing an internet-embittered asexual can still enjoy, it's Dr Who related hijinks! :D

(I've been torn for a while on whether to take this blog down a more personal, private lifey type road, or a critical analysis of asexual culture. The problem is, it's difficult for me to combine the two, because asexuality really isn't part of my mental landscape any more. It's just a complete non-issue, personally. Maybe that'll be the death of the blog, but it's good news for me)

Dead inside

2009-12-02T10:16:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I now have some sort of reasonably stable rountine. Seriously. It remains to be seen how long it'll last.

So I've resolved to post something on this blog every single Tuesday. If I'm busy or forget on Tuesday, then Wednesdays. Basically, I have no excuse not to do something every single week, which'll get myself into the habit of it. It'll mostly be random little things- I have two series lined up, one in which I talk about the manifestations of romantic attraction, and one in which I discuss a Q+A article I found written by Joy Davidson.

Anyway, today's (or rather, yesterday's) snippet of thought concerns Freud. Good old Freud. In this article (which I found linked to in Pretzelboy's blog), which I read a while back, Freud, in his discussions on impotence, talks about "all those men who are described as psychoanaesthetic: men who never fail in the act but who carry it out without getting any particular pleasure from it—a state of affairs that is more common than one would think.... An easily justifiable analogy takes one from these anaesthetic men to the immense number of frigid women".

The term stuck in my mind because it has a nice ring to it, and it'd make a good ironic label to adopt, especially since it's actually almost the opposite of my actual sexuality (I'd refuse sex a lot more than I'd accept it, but probably enjoy the physical act) and it's based in all these outdated notions of gender and sexuality that are worth bringing up, just so people question current notions of gender and sexuality.

It was much more recently, as I was pondering the term, that this blanket word for all asexual or low-libedo men literally means 'mentally numb'. A better translation for Freud's asexual men would be 'dead inside'.

Gee, thanks doc.

Asexuality is a sexual orientation

2009-11-11T03:42:00.000-08:00

I see this idea around quite a lot. “Asexuality is an orientation in the same way that atheism is a religion,” is a quote I’ve heard on various occasions, most recently from the A Life podcast some while back (but it’s probably also said a lot on AVEN), and remember noting that I wanted to make a post about.
I agree that atheism isn’t a religion, but I do think that it is a faith. The difference is maybe analogous to a religion being “Describe the sort of person you feel sexually attracted to” and a faith being “Who do you feel sexually attracted to?” (in case you can’t tell the difference, the first question can’t technically have the answer ‘no-one’).

So, here comes my post on the subject, which I can link people to, copy and paste from or just generally use to have my thoughts organised if the topic comes up again.

To me, there are a couple of big inconsistencies with the idea that asexuality is not a state of sexuality.
One issue is the semantic issue. To say that an asexual is someone who doesn’t have a sexual orientation (and therefore that asexuality isn’t a sexual orientation) is to completely misunderstand conventional ideas on sexual orientation, and the use of the suffix ‘sexual’. ‘Sexual’ has a different meaning to its actual grammatical implication. For example, heterosexual literally means something like “different sexuality’, while homosexual means something like “same sexuality” and bisexual means “two sexualities”. In this context, it would be reasonable to assume that asexual means “no sexuality.” However, this is obviously completely untrue. In every wording apart from transsexual, the suffix sexual means ‘sexually attracted to people of this gender, relative to you’. So asexual doesn’t mean ‘no sexuality’, but ‘experiences no sexual attraction’.
Now, of course, we have to figure out if experiencing no sexual attraction can be counted as a sexuality. Which is where the second issue comes in.
The second issue is that of common sense. Sexualities could be defined in two ways. The one which includes asexuality is “Which people you find yourself sexually attracted to,” and has a tickbox for ‘none’, the one which excludes sexuality is... hang on, I don’t think there is one. Except the same question, just without a tickbox for none. Which is silly, because then the whole thing just becomes a question of bad survey-writing, and not one of ideology.

Anyway, back on track, the other reason asexuality is a sexuality is because it makes more sense for it to be one, in the real world. Asexuals look inside themselves, figure out their feelings with regards to sexual attraction, come out, stay in the closet, look for asexual relationships, join LGBT groups and a whole variety of other things that are so similar to what every other sexual minority does that the average asexual will get so much more support and community if they accept their personal sexual preference as being a sexuality, since sexuality basically equals personal sexual preference.
With all that to lose out on, those (asexuals and asexophobes alike) who insist that there’s some big semantic reason for asexuality to define itself as ‘not a sexual orientation’ should really ask themselves if it’s a price asexuals should pay for a stubborn insistence on technicalities that I hope I’ve disproved anyway.

(That post ended on rather a heated note, so I’d better clarify, I’d still love to hear from you if you hold the view that asexuality is not a sexual orientation, and can enlighten me as to why you think that).

Pomoromantic

2009-10-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, just another quick little post to keep this blog in a state that somewhat resembles life.

I thought up the best new label the other day. Not only is it rather fun, it’s one that I think the asexual community could use, and one that I personally could use.

Various asexuals have discussed the idea of pomosexuality (Post-Modern Sexuality), a general desire to blur all the lines of sexuality and break out of identifying yourself as a conventional sexuality. I never really understood it until I pondered the meaning of ‘pomoromantic’.

My guess is that a pomoromantic asexual is one who doesn’t fit in with romantic orientation, one for whom romantic orientation doesn’t makes sense, even in terms of a lack of it, or one who deliberately goes out of their way to challenge and break apart the conventions of romantic orientation.

An asexual who subscribes to the community-based intimacy or non-binary relationship theories, for example, rather than just saying that neither ‘romantic’ nor ‘aromantic’ apply to them, could label themselves ‘pomoromantic’.

So, I’m upgrading myself (again) to a demihomosexual pomo(hetero?)romantic greysexual in questioning. Yay!

Anyway, I like the word so much that I’m going to go sign in to AVEN for the first time in ages and make a thread to see what people think. If you like the label too, please do your bit to spread the word, since I’m not in a particularly widely-read corner of the asexosphere.

Disclaimer on labels

2009-10-20T10:12:00.001-07:00

In this blog, there will probably be countless posts chronicling the useless minutiae of sexuality and asexuality, and inventing various labels for every little thing ever.

Playing with labels can be dangerous. You may do this at home, but it’s best to make sure the more extreme form of categorisation is all just for fun, and that you can stop at any time.

Be self-aware about being self-aware.
You have been warned.

Attraction, attatchment and asexuality (and alliteration)

2009-10-03T05:33:00.000-07:00

This post (shows you how long it takes me to write posts) on appositive reminded me of some musings I had on the very same subject, although they were pretty unrefined, because all I knew of it was a friend (who studies psychology) referring to the model in a discussion about sexuality (she was using it because she thought it’d prove to me that most people need to feel lust to be in a close relationship, a slight misunderstanding of the model, and an argument I’ll discuss later).
There are some very interesting ties with various asexual theories, which I shall now discuss in a haphazard manner.

Here, by the way, is the full report. For this relatively surface analysis of the themes, I’m going to be drawing from this shorter and more layman-friendly article, which focuses more on the human applications of the model. The model basically breaks attraction down into three parts- lust, attraction and affection. I’ll try to explain what I think these parts are, but if you want a clearer view, it’s best to go to the article.

The first part of changing this model to fit asexuality is simple- as with the Kinsey Scale, we must add the y axis. The y axis here stands for either the amount you are capable of feeling this type of attraction, or how important you judge this type of attraction in your relationship. It adds possibilities from “Very interested” to “Not interested at all”. Where are asexuals and asexual aromantics on these scales?

In terms of lust, the answer is very obvious. Lust translates into asexual terminology as ‘sexual attraction’, the lack of which unites asexuals. So asexuals would have little or no lust.

Attraction is a little harder to line up exactly with asexual terminology. Fisher does describe this as ‘romantic attraction’ at one point in the article. I’ve never been entirely certain on what romantic attraction is, but it seems to be what Fisher describes- the desire to spend your time with someone in a romantic bond. This scale would be the one defining whether you’re romantic or aromantic.

Fisher describes attraction as the ephemeral process at the start of a relationship, which doesn’t fit easily with the asexual version of ‘romantic attraction’.
Some of the quotes; “attraction is also associated with feelings of exhilaration, intrusive thinking about the beloved, and the craving for emotional union”, lead me to wonder exactly where crushes fit in with this model.
Enough asexuals report crushes to make it seem that they don’t need a sexual basis. Are they a form of lust which just doesn’t need to be driven by sexual motives? Or are they a form of attraction which doesn’t need to have a whole relationship built up around them?
This model is designed to talk about relationships, so the crush, generally a precursor to relationships, isn’t mentioned. To make it properly asexy-friendly, though, I’d like to know where the crush lies in this model.

The third and final stage of the fictitious typical relationship, and the last division of attraction, is attachment, the simple desire to stick to someone, even if the initial sources of other attractions are lost. This might also fit well with ‘romantic attraction’ in the asexual terminology, the desire to pair up. However, the good thing about this model is that the labels don’t quite fit with the asexual labels, so it’s another new angle to view things at.

For the sake of convenience though, I’d say that I’d interpret the three elements of a relationship as sexual attraction, crushes/squishes(/aesthetic attraction?) and romantic attraction. There’s a question about whether ‘relationship elements’ (which is how a lot of romantic sexuals tend to think) can really be changed into forms of attraction, which is how asexuals tend to think, but if I get into that, I just know I’ll never finish writing this.

The importance of this theory is a way in which sexual and romantic attractions can be featured in every type of relationship. For different people, their level of interest in the three aspects will be very different. So we can talk about people in relationships who have differing levels of these three attractions, and asexuals don’t seem quite so remote any more. There might be people who don’t have the attachment or crushes or any other combination, and there are a lot of asexuals who have at least one of the other two.

I’d intended to talk about the relationship between the Fisher Model and the big tripartite asexuality model, the Three T’s, in this post, but it’s been languishing in draft form for ages, so I’ll just release this bit and I promise there’ll be a part two. At some point. Promise.

The American Virgin (and thoughts on asexual denial)

2009-09-27T03:13:00.000-07:00

Somehow, I think possibly in my wonderings over various sex- and kink- positive blogs (because they tend to make quite interesting reading), I ended up on the blog The American Virgin yesterday. Reading through it again earlier this morning, I got a strong feeling that this is a very useful resource for triggering asexual thought.

Basically, the blog is dedicated to virginity. It appears staunchly pro-sex education, though, and I would guess that it takes the same line as a lot of asexuals; sex positivity, while pointing out that sex isn't and shouldn't be positive for all.
The posts seem to be either about the pressures and stereotypes of being a virgin in this culture, a chord which I know will resonate with a lot of asexual virgins, or about people's personal stories and experiences of virginity.

I haven't come across mentions of asexuality yet, in the few posts I've skimmed, but that's why I think this blog is so interesting from an asexual point of view. Sometimes I feel we asexuals get so obsessed with our own, socially constructed, definitions and labels that we might not realise that, just outside or beside the asexual label, there are people with whom we can still relate. In terms of Venus' fabulous colour wheel, these people are greeny yellow. Or yellowy green. Or turquoise, cerulian and aquamarine. Or greeny red (a colour which I occasionally see out of the corner of my eye, but probably only due to my colour blindness). Or, indeed, greeny grey.

Ok, overstretching the palette a bit, but you get the idea. Maybe asexuality should look outside of itself a little. It doesn't help the asexual movement much, but it certainly helps asexual individuals to see how people without the magic label justify their similar sexualities and sexual choices.

EDIT: Oh gee, I forgot one of the main reasons I wrote this post. It's often difficult, when justifying a sexless life, to hit that right balance. You always end up swerving off into a pre-created position.
Either you think sex is icky and everyone should stop doing it, or you pretend you're more sex positive than you are so that no-one can call you erotophobic (when plenty of sexual people are just as uncomfortable about the role of sex in modern society, which is actually pretty screwed up).
Either you open yourself up and say, as the last interviewee on the American Virgin blog did, something like; "I'm worried that I have some kind of undiagnosed social anxiety disorder" and open yourself up to the idea of being 'damaged goods', with a disinterest in sex that is obviously entirely the cause of an oversimplified and malignant psychiatric disorder, or you close yourself up and become the Ideal Asexual, with a standard of psychiatric health, confidence and complete wellbeing that no human being could aspire to.

This is the choice asexuals (and other celibate people/deliberate virgins) have to face. Either you deny who you are, or you give your enemy the power to accuse you of denying who you are.
Ok, so I've only read a little of this blog. But, from what I've read, it seems to float above that whole mire quite effortlessly and beautifully. People just are who they are. If they don't want sex, it isn't a problem with a cause, but a choice, with a whole array of reasons. It's something to be admired, and if we can gain that same tranquility and honesty, I feel we'd all be a great deal happier.

Filler post

2009-09-26T08:56:00.001-07:00

Ok, I am determined to write about something soon. I have a whole variety of more academic posts at 2/3rds finished and some interesting things that have happened since I wrote the last blog.

EXCUSES TIME:
I have to get my university application off by October-time, and I still barely have any idea where I'm going. As well as that, I've just started college, and I'm looking for part-time jobs, while keeping my volunteer work going, because I doubt I'm gonna find anything in the recession. I am very, very busy. So sorry for the continuing stagnation, folks.

Anyway, something off-topic and not especially related to asexuality:
I found this today:
http://calculators.lloydspharmacy.com/sexdegrees/

"You have had 0 indirect and direct sexual partners.Based on information entered into this calculator, people in your age group have had 296,132 indirect sexual partners"

While this is a fun meaningless quiz for asexuals, I'm really not sure of the maths.

On a hunch, I entered that I'd had one sexual encounter, with a 17-year-old. If the 17-year-old was male, I'd have racked up 3,074 indirect sexual partners. If she was female, I'd have a cumulative total of, wait for it... 17.

Wait, what? I really, really wanna see some methodology. How does that maths even work? Surely they assume that a girl of my age would have slept with someone else before me? If they didn't assume that, then straight boys would have a combined total of only who they'd slept with. But they'd probably also assume that the girl had slept with mostly boys (it can't be very likely that I'd find myself dating a lesbian or someone close to that end of the Kinsey Scale). So I'd be only one degree of seperation away from a whole handful of those slutty, slutty menfolk, and then my numbers should rack up like lightning after that.

Not only is this based on gender stereotypes that are highly questionable (on the second series of The Sex Education Show, they interviewed a lot of boys only a few years younger than me who were pretty much all virgins, so I don't see how men are this much more promiscuous than women), it's also very heteronormative, and simply doesn't seem to add up.

Sorry for the density of this post. I was trying to figure out the maths as I wrote.

Shout it from the rooftops

2009-08-31T09:47:00.000-07:00

(warning: stream of consciousness approaching)

I am demi-homo-sexual. And I am proud.
That’s the first time I’ve ever said that. Ten minutes ago was the first time I ever thought that. This is my story. And asexuality has a place in that story. But it isn’t everything any more.
Before I found AVEN for the second time, I had a range of theories of what I was. I bounced mostly from straight to gay and back again, but neither fitted. I had some theories about why my crushes on men weren’t as a gay person should have experienced, firstly that homosexuality was tied to masochism in my personal sexual view, and lastly, right before I became asexual, that I was sexually attracted only to straight men. It’s true I probably do have homomasochistic and straight guy fetishes, which overcomplicate my sexuality horrendously by being right in the blurry bit between a fetish and a sexuality (I may talk about fetishes and asexuality some other time, at which point I’ll go into these in more detail).
On the whole, I’ve always been reluctant to admit that I have any homosexual feelings whatsoever other than these fetishes. I’ve been refusing to let myself think this, but part of the reason is possibly because of how homosexuality is considered in society. I’m not afraid of it, since a couple of my friends came out, guys dating has been the most natural thing in the world, but maybe those who exist between the binaries, bisexuals and asexuals, often find themselves going with the ‘right’ sex, to satisfy their ingrained homophobic socialisation.

However, there is a larger and more sensible part of my reluctance to own this sexuality as anything other than aesthetic attraction. I’ve always struggled to see what purpose coming out as homosexual would serve. I certainly couldn’t come out as gay, since I’m either hetero- or a- romantic.
My sexuality towards men is pretty much gazing at them and sighing a bit, described excellently on this blog- these two posts particularly. I don’t want to have relationships with them. I don’t even want to have sex with them, as actual sex would definitely not satisfy this attraction.
But I have to admit that there is a sexual element. It’s not the primary element, by any means, but men in sexualised situations generally spark my attraction easier than men in non-sexualised situations, where the attraction is (unless they really are incredibly pretty) often more passive.

The problem is that, up until now, I’ve ignored these feelings, shut my ears and said, “I can’t be thinking this because I’m asexual, and I’m asexual because I can’t be thinking this.”
I ignored the fact that many people who happily call themselves gay or straight probably just have my level of sexual-aesthetic attraction, but pointed in the same direction as their romantic attraction. How can I claim I’m different from them?

So I’m not doing. I’m going to call myself demisexual (well, I’m going to introduce myself as asexual, still, but you know what I mean), and when I say it, I’m going to know that the grey area is between asexuality and homosexuality, even if it’s still mostly asexual. I’m going to do this because calling myself asexual homoaesthetic took too much effort censoring myself from all the feelings that didn’t quite fit.
I’m looking forward to using a more open-ended term, because now I can accept everything I feel, without having to worry about recategorising my sexuality every time I feel something new.

If you’ve read this far, I applaud you. I’d like to finish with two morals to this story, one a warning to asexuals, and the other a warning to asexophobes.

To asexuals, and demisexuals, I would say that it is, indeed, very easy to leap at the asexual label, because it (and we) makes so much sense, when nothing else ever has to you. It’s very easy to assimilate, slot yourself into the asexual boxes and cut off the corners that don’t fit. But someday, you need to face your sexuality and decide if it really does fit absolutely. That’s why we have labels like demisexual and grey-a, they’re basically asexual with the boundaries taken off, where you can be who you really feel you are.
I always used to say that I’d be happy changing my sexual label if I got any evidence that I was sexual. It was true, but the evidence would basically have to be writing in the sky, and the fact that I was throwing myself on everyone with a pulse. I wasn’t looking for evidence that I was just a little bit away from asexual.
It’s important to let those little things in, even if it means you’re one step away from the asexual label. In the words of the asexy flowchart: Sorry, you’re not asexual. But you can still be a cool person.

To asexophobes, who often have the idea that asexuality is somehow confining, that you adopt the label and rigidly stick to it, you’ll have read this (if you do read asexual blogs) with glee. But I’ll happily join Venus in saying that asexuality has been the greatest help to me in coming to terms with my exact identity.
Without asexuality, I had the choice of only straight, gay or bisexual. The discourse within the asexual community opened my eyes not just to the possibility of not having attraction, but of all the different types of attraction available. Asexuality has given me a label which I still use, and will probably feel comfortable using for a long time to come, but, in the year since labelling myself as asexual, I have questioned myself far more thoroughly and gained more of an insight into my sexuality than in all of the other years of my life put together.

I have things to figure out, but I have a space to do that in, and a community that will support me no matter what.

The asexual revolution

2009-07-22T06:15:00.000-07:00

So in this blog-post, I’m going to share some ideas about the importance of the asexual lifestyle. If you want to be picky about lexicon (which I do), it should probably be called the ‘non-sexual’ or possibly ‘de-sexual’ lifestyle. After all, the celibate lifestyle is one that I, as an asexual, have no particular desire to keep in the long-term, and lots of sexual people clearly do. The basic premise is not of what would happen if everyone stopped having sex, but what would happen if everyone wasn’t assumed automatically to want sex. If sex wasn’t actually a big deal.

Let’s start with the obvious- relationships would change. Too often around me (mostly on TV but worryingly in real life as well) I see opposite-sex relationships that are based on stereotypes of what each gender is. Both people just slip, unconsciously, into gender roles which don’t really fit them. Key to this is sex- the boyfriend/husband, the sexually motivated one, makes overtures of intercourse constantly, in the hope that a few will get through. This system is similar to the way an airline sells more seats than it actually has- it is impossible to gauge how much sex the man actually wants, because he pressures for so much more than he needs. This turns the man into the ‘one who wants sex’, which, in turn, provides the man with all these handy excuses to deny what he feels in a relationship. It’s far too easy, at the moment, for men to escape into the realm of sexual objectification, far more easy, in some cases, than it is for them to show genuine affection.
The woman’s role is harder to define, what with the Madonna/Whore traditionalism and the various waves of feminism all with subtly different expectations. Still, the woman is seen as a prize to be won for the man. This is so easy to convert into terms of sex- if you pork her, you claim her.
Take away the idea that all women are going to want sex, or that all men are going to want sex, and it becomes so much more difficult to be that objectifying in a typical relationship. “Yeah, we sat up and talked all night. I’m such a stud. That bitch was so into me, she really opened up in a way she never has with anyone else.” More trust=less ownership.
It would be too Dworkin to suggest that sex is the essence of objectification. It’s generally something both people want to do. But the fact that a man can enter into a relationship and be reasonably sure of getting sex, the fact that he can dump a girl if she isn’t responsive enough to his propositions and still make her out to be the unreasonable one, all of this helps to maintain the heteronormative standard where men can hide behind sex while using it to ‘take’ women. I’d suggest it would be better for relationships in general if women couldn’t be ‘taken’, just communicated with.

Perhaps it’s too much to hope, but the second great effect of society’s realisation that sex isn’t something everyone wants may be that sexual minorities get greater equality. I’m not too sure about this one, because a lot of people are just randomly bigoted, whatever the facts are. Still, I have a suspicion that genitals are pretty important in a lot of homophobia. Take away the sex, after all, and it just becomes love, which doesn’t really change based on the genders of the participants. Gay men stop being told “that’s dirty, things aren’t meant to go up that way” (and yes, I have heard that one). Lesbians stop becoming the fantasies of random guys, and no one assumes that they’re the way they are because they didn’t meet a man who was good enough. Bisexuals aren’t seen to be in it for the promiscuity. For asexuals, the benefit is obvious.
It seems to me that a lot of the pressure is taken off ‘controversy’ if the controversy doesn’t involve sex.

And then we get to our sex lives. Can I really claim they could be improved if we scrap the assumption that we all need sex?
“OMG, sex” seems to be the order of the day (no pun intended). The multi-billion dollar industry telling us exactly how to get our kicks in bed provides us with all the pills, instructions, body image role models and toys that are so clearly necessary. And it can’t just be me who feels really insulted. Perhaps its because I know that one day I’m hoping to have to sift through all these disparate shards of sexuality with some equally confused partner, trying to figure out which bits of what we’re told we need we actually want. But it still strikes me that sex should be something wonderful and individual, something we all figure out for ourselves. Perhaps it’s the incredibly individualist culture of the asexual community, but I don’t want to be spoonfed someone else’s idea of sex.
All models of sex, though, have one thing in common. They say that sex is enjoyable, and that it’s of crucial importance. Even the fundamentalist sex-negative view acknowledges that these two generalisations are true of everybody.
Which is, of course, why asexuals are so damn scary. If it isn’t enjoyable and it isn’t important, WHAT THE HECK IS IT? And the answer has to be; sex is whatever it means to you and whoever you choose to practice it with. Go out and non-conform. Because everything you’ve been told about what you have to need is a lie. Just have fun.

This prediction is, of course, a fantasy. There will never be enough people saying “Actually, I never really saw why it’s worth the fuss” to significantly change the views of that proportion of people I call ‘heteronormative’. The vast majority of the world does want sex, and, quite rightly, want to identify by that desire. Even if they didn’t, the old-fashioned ways of thinking would find ways to cling on. But, in small, open-minded pockets, I think asexuals can really make a difference. We can, just by our existence, truly challenge most of the great beliefs about sexuality. So maybe just a small revolution, or a series of them. Maybe revolutions that, like the asexual community itself, are more about individuals than about groups.

/muse.

The A is never the problem

2009-06-30T03:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I’ll succumb to the pressure and have a little rant about those darned asexohaters. Just one. Just to get it out of my system.

A couple of months back, there was a thread on a sex-positive forum, which I think has now been blocked, in which the members of this forum discussed the validity of asexuality, quickly joined by AVENites, anxious to set them right. There was only one poster who seemed to directly disagree with the idea, once we’d explained what asexuality was not.
For three or four pages, the battle raged on between this poster and a handful of determined AVENites. It was only a short time before the thread was finally blocked by the moderators (not for the constant flaming on all sides, but for various weird reasons) when we figured out she didn’t disapprove of asexuality. What she disapproved of was the labelling of sexualities, believing people should be free to experience whatever they experience without it being tied down in a label.

The view has been echoed by the arch-asexohater Joy Davidson (who, to be fair, has probably been cast in that role more by chance, from Montel and such, than by an especially sustained malevolence to the community), who says that asexuals are “closing themselves off” (paraphrased from Montel show) to possibilities.

For the moment, I’m going to lay my cynicism aside and pretend that this isn’t hypocrisy. I’ll pretend that they’d react exactly the same if a straight or gay person came out. I won’t mention that only asexuals (and possibly other minorities the speaker is uncomfortable with) get this reaction. I’ll take them at face value and assume that many asexohaters really do just want all sexual labels to be weakened, and just happen to be taking them on alphabetically.

Arguments about the validity of sexuality still have no place amongst arguments about the validity of asexuality.

The two are completely different issues. In a world where everyone believes in straight and, often, gay, the idea of sexual orientation, however flawed, is an assumption that we’re perfectly aware we’re making when we talk about asexuality.
The phrase ‘asexuality is a sexual orientation’ wouldn’t make much sense if there was no such thing as a sexual orientation. But the arguments over whether sexual orientation makes sense are so massive that they eclipse the whole point of the debate if brought in to argue against asexuality.
Our hypothesis should be “Asexuality is a sexual orientation, given that sexual orientations are valid.” We don’t bother with the last bit because, to those of us who identify as asexual, it often seems self-evident. But it annoys me when any passer-by with an axe to grind about conventional sexuality then has to do it on asexuality, because it’s weaker.

I doubt this is how many asexohaters think about it. Joy Davidson may not think she’s attacking sexuality when she criticises asexuality. But so many of the arguments against the validity of asexuality don’t actually make any sense until you consider them as criticisms of sexuality as a whole.

Here’s where I borrow from some really good recent articles on the rest of the asexual blogosphere, which argue that criticisms of asexuality can be equally applied to any other sexuality, a thought which was the main inspiration for this post.
The argument that ‘asexuals haven’t met the right person’ is based on the idea that sexuality can change, and sexual identity is often too rigid to allow this change. There’s just as much chance of someone of a more conventional sexuality falling for someone outside their presumed parameters as there is an asexual.
The argument that ‘you’re all repressed’ is based on the idea of denial. Sexual identity is a confusing place, and the identity you choose affects far more than how you think about your feelings- sometimes, it can be life or death. So there’s a lot of denial going on around sexuality. The traditional asexual answer to this, as shown on Montel, has been in explaining that the asexual community is very hard to find, and still full of questions about your sexuality even once you’ve identified, so not likely to provide any space for denial. It’s a good response, but I rather like the Venus of Willendork’s new angle. Of course asexuality can serve as denial. So can all sexualities.
I expect the largest proportion of people denying their true sexuality (even if it’s just a Kinsey-esque ‘a little bit bi’) can be found in heterosexuality. It’s an argument against sexuality, sure, but not really one against, or even about, asexuality.

I’ve run out of claims that are made about asexuals. I think those are the main two, but said in slightly different ways. They’re arguments that sexual identity is too constricting, too obstructing a thing to be placed on anyone. Except they focus on asexual identity specifically, for unexplained reasons. Tell me if there’s more I’ve missed.

So I’m finally brought, in a round-about way, to the title of this post. The A is never what people have the problem with. People have a problem with the sexuality. It’s only when a startlingly new concept, like asexuality, comes up, that people start to see the problems engrained in sexuality, which they hadn’t allowed themselves to see before.
Actually, no. Scratch that, it’s a load of rubbish. People use arguments against sexual identities as a whole to argue against asexuality because they’ve decided asexuality is unnatural, and they need to find reasons why they think that retroactively. It makes a pretty depressing end to this post, though.

Out of stealth mode

2009-06-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

So, as of 10.59 this morning, I've finished my A-levels and, assuming I don't find a job, which'd be hard in this economic climate, I'll be completely free all summer. So that means a lot more time to devote to blogging. I've got a couple of drafts which I'll try to get out as soon as possible.

It also means I can stop this weird stealth-mode thing I've been doing, and add all the asexy bloggers out there to my reading list.

Hooray for summer!

'Demisexuals' and the blogosphere

2009-05-16T16:19:00.000-07:00

Catchy title, yeah? Well, consider yourself lucky I’m posting at all, with this many exams.

When I’ve had time to settle down to this blog (and taken it out of the current 'stealth mode'), I’ll find out how to put one of those lists on the side with all the blogs I read. They’ve been really helpful to me in seeking out loads of new asexual blogs.

Anyway, I was looking at my list of blogs the other day, and it surprises me just how many of the blogs are written by ‘demisexuals’.
To clarify, when I say demisexuals, I don’t use it to mean people who are sexually attracted to romantic partners, which I think the official definition is. I use it to mean everything in the grey bit of the AVEN triangle, grey asexuals, demisexuals, semisexuals, kinky asexuals, honorary asexuals, or just ‘proper’ asexuals who are so involved in a personal way in sex positivism that they find a way to apply it to their lives. Names such as ‘Edge of Everywhere’ and ‘Shades of Grey’ are on everyone’s reading list.
I can hear you pleading with me to get to the point. Maybe the stereotype of the (possibly aromantic) ‘frigid’ asexual who wants nothing to do with sex or the sex culture is just that, a stereotype? But they’re very common in AVEN. It’s just that less of them seem to write blogs.

The traditional asexual doesn’t feel they have anything to say. That’s interesting. So, putting on my best pseudo-scientific head, I thrashed out a couple of hypotheses:

1. If you don’t want to interact with sex in society, you can largely ignore it. Aside from bitching about the occasional lewd advert or film scene, an aromantic asexual won’t build up a complex relationship with sexuality. A romantic asexual who draws very strong lines outside the bedroom door will have a slightly more complex relationship with sexuality, but still largely simple. Their problems will mostly be with getting their partner to understand them. These sorts of issues are the kinds of things AVEN is really helpful for, with the emphasis on escaping the annoyances of everyday sexual society and on relationships (as a glance at the forum titles shows; ‘Asexual musings and rantings’, ‘Asexual relationships’, ‘For Sexual partners, friends and allies’). They’re not good issues to run a blog on, though.

Now take a look at the standard ‘demisexual’. They want it all, flirting, romance, physicality, platonicness, and all of it uniquely repackaged for their own brand of asexuality. Better start drawing a lot of graphs!
Suddenly sexuality is something really complex- far more so for the asexual than for the standard sexual. So we need words and diagrams to help us figure out what we want, which is something more complex than the ‘No sex, please’ of the traditional asexual, even if that’s still a recurring theme.

‘Demisexuals’ have something to say to the world, a big speech to give, an explanation of who they are. Asexuals less so. Especially since most readers of asexual blogs are already familiar with standard asexuality.

2. Or, alternately, ‘demisexuals’ are self-selected to correlate to people who think too much. Hence the blog-writing. Indeed, hence this blog.

It sounds quite insulting (or possibly quite bigheaded), but the people who identify as asexuals have to be looking off the beaten track a bit anyway. For those asexuals who want a lot of what sexuals want, arriving at the conclusion that they’re asexual indicates that they’re very introspective. Then you can get a weird alternate version of Big Fish syndrome. Having jumped from the ocean of sexuality into the rather small box of asexuality, we find that there’s still too much room for our liking, and abando it for our own, smaller boxes. Most of them hand-made.

Now, that’s the kind of mind that would write a blog, that takes intrigue in little intricacies and (no offence, most demisexuals are fascinating) finds themself a fascinating subject of academic study.

3. The final theory is, and I admit it’s quite a stretch, that there are two almost entirely separate asexual blogospheres. The demisexual or sex-positive asexuals relate more to one set, so link to them, while the other side relates more to the other. I would expect these other blogs to turn up on the AVEN or the asexual wiki blog lists, though.

But there’s still a chance that I haven’t found them, for whatever reason, or they just resonate less with me.

Any other explanations I’ve missed? I feel like there’s another one I meant to put. I may do an update of this when I remember.
In the meantime, back to the graphs.

EDIT: About 2 minutes after submitting this post, I stumbled across a really awesome and long-running aromantic asexual blog, and remembered there's quite a few out there I was already reading. I hope the trend I've been observing is real, and not just random chance mixed with my own interests, or the entire post will be a failure. Any other day, I'd feverishly tally up blogs, but tonight it's 1 AM.

Spectacular failure

2009-04-27T13:30:00.000-07:00

Wow. This blog has just been so utterly neglected. When I started, I was halfway through a variety of small essays to put up here, confident that I could promote it in the asexual community within two weeks as something worth reading.

About 3 days later, I remembered that my A levels are in about a month and a half. Since then, I've been working flat out.

So, if anyone finds this blog, don't worry, its not abandoned. Keep half an eye on it, because it may very well blossom in June/July.

So much for spontaneity.

Terminology check

2009-04-13T14:53:00.000-07:00

Today, I added the word heteronormative to my Microsoft Word spell-checker. I predict I may use it a lot over the next few years. It’s really fun adding new words to a spell-checker. The words you add reflect the sort of person you are. The last word I added was hecatonchires, when I was a massive Greek mythology buff.

And now, writing a rant about how asexuals fit into society for my new asexual blog, I feel like I’ve finally let that part of myself, the part that is egregiously queer, that’s going to join the LGBT society as soon as I get to university and possibly never leave it, into every single part of me. Even into that most modern of external displays of a personality, my personal computer.

Hellos and cakes

2009-04-13T04:50:00.000-07:00

Oh look, another asexual whose input on AVEN is wavering has started a blog. Well, join the queue, there’s a whole blogosphere out there.

Yeah, that’s basically it. I like the whole asexual blogosphere, it seems to be friendly but at the same time political, intellectual and individualistic. It’s so popular with asexuals who have something to say that it now seems like some sort of recognised ‘next stage’ after AVEN. So, with my first AVENiversary just passed, I decided to finally make one.

I’m not going to try to update this with any sort of regularity. That would just end in failure. So I’ll update when I have an idea and the time to write it up. This could mean that I get a lot of stuff up in the first few weeks and then nothing, or it could mean that this blog really gets going in summer, when I have more time to think, or Autumn, when I join university and LGBT.

As for the demographics you may need to imagine me: I’m British, male, 18, asexual, and out to close friends and anyone vaguely interested who’s not going to tell my parents. I’m a pretty ‘bad’ asexual, in that I have romantic and aesthetic attraction, sex drive and sexual arousal.

Oh, yeah. I’m writing this blog mostly for asexuals (and sexuals who are part of the asexual community). It’s easier because I’m mostly interested in asexual culture in itself, more than how asexuality relates to the world. Any non-asexuals can read, and I’ll try to provide basic definitions of all terms, but it may be a little confusing if you don’t know the asexual community. If you have any questions, ask me. If you’re new to the concept of asexuality, it would be better to start with AVEN, particularly the FAQs. If you’re a relative outsider to the asexual community looking for blogs, I’d recommend Love from the Asexual Underground, Ace of Hearts, Glad to be A, What Do You Mean By Sex and Exploring A/Sexuality and Gender. They’re all good blogs for people who aren’t too wise on the issues around asexuality (or, at least, the issues the asexual community has around asexuality).

Erm, yeah… I think that’s it. I was gonna make this lead into a whole entry about demisexuals, which is roughly what I am, and their place in the asexual community, but I think I’ll save that for another day. This’ll do for an intro.
Hello to everyone reading. For those who don’t know, it’s an AVEN tradition to give cake to anyone you meet, so please, have some cake. I hope you enjoy the blog.