Some of you may have heard my comments read on A Life’s most recent episode. I was responding to some of what was said in episode 4. I said:

You talk about how asexuals don’t really have a human rights issue to organize about, that all we want is visibility. You point out–and rightly so–that asexuals can get married, and marriage isn’t all about sex. Now, you mentioned that there is an expectation there that the marriage isn’t consummated until the couple has had sex. You say that of course nobody is enforcing how often a couple has sex, and sure, that’s true… but the real problem is that nobody is enforcing the right of the uninterested party to NOT have sex. Marital rape is very real, but often goes unrecognized as a real rape because there is this idea that if people get married to one another, they automatically grant consent to have sex with that partner in the future, therefore, they believe those people cannot be raped.

The panelists read some of my email and then summarily dismissed my argument… without actually having heard all of it. I did not write it all out in the email, because I had gone on to suggest that if they were interested, perhaps it might make an interesting topic for a whole show. I thought it would have been interesting to discuss my views with them on the air, but since they seemed not to have been interested in the topic, I guess I will go on the explain them here on the blog.

Henrik misinterpreted what I was saying, and argued that asexuals may actually be less likely to get married, and therefore less likely to be raped. Sure, that’s true. And yes, it is also true that asexuals aren’t the only people who can be raped, so it’s not an issue that is unique to asexuals. But that wasn’t the point.

The point was, since asexuals can never be assumed to give consent, asexuality inherently challenges the assumption that consent is automatically given under certain circumstances. To accept that asexuality exists means to accept that marital rape is a possibility. And not just marital rape. It works for any circumstance in which rape is excused or denied.

And in our culture, that happens A LOT!!

Go to that link. Read it, ALL of it, and then see what you think about dismissing the issue by saying, “But rape is a crime anyway.”

Sure it’s a crime. But it’s extremely hard to prosecute someone for rape, and very often is much more trouble than it’s worth to try. Much, MUCH more trouble. People just don’t take rape seriously, and that often includes judges, doctors, and police. And sadly, maybe some asexuals, too.

I think asexuals bring a unique perspective on rape which would go a long way towards challenging the way it is thought of in our culture. Our very existence gives us the opportunity to do some good in the world, just by making ourselves visible. Since feminists are very anti-rape, maybe we should focus more on forging an alliance with feminists, instead of the GLBT community.

Thoughts?

As you may have noticed, my two most recent posts have disappeared. They have not been deleted. They have only been hidden from public view.

I did this mainly because nobody seemed to be understanding at all where I am coming from, except perhaps for two people. It may have been doing more harm than good. And the discussion was very far derailed from what my original point was. I only meant to bring up some potential problems with the use of the word agender so that other people could consider it FOR THEMSELVES; it should never have been about trying to convince me that the term works, it should have been about deciding whether it does or not for yourselves. It was not at all my wish to attack other people or say that their experiences aren’t real. I’m all for people challenging the binary, if that’s what they want to do. I simply wanted to point out why the word “agender” is so incredibly confusing to people that they are actively avoiding its use.

From a purely pragmatic point of view, if your goal is to have your experience accepted, does it really help to frame it with a word that confuses people that much?

By the way, I don’t think the confusion is the product of people being narrow-minded, but rather that the way the word is used is not consistent. Can you expect people to understand what you are talking about if the word’s definition refers to three different things as synonyms?

According to several posters on AVEN, one of those synonyms is “genderless.” Yet one of my commenters said that “agender” does not in fact mean “genderless” or without gender… but that’s exactly what its components mean. If the word itself does not express the meaning you are attempting to give it, doesn’t that make the definition counter-intuitive?

There’s a certain model that’s generally upheld within the asexual community, and I see now very clearly that it is being transferred onto gender here, exactly as it is. But the wider community does not have any such model by which to understand what “agender” refers to. Can they be expected to understand what you are talking about at all?

From my understanding, the reason for using labels at all is so that one can communicate something. If this is true, isn’t it important to carefully consider what you are trying to communicate and choose the words with which you do so wisely?

Are there perhaps other words which would describe your experience even better than the word you have chosen?

What is different about the way society should treat agender people? How is it different from the way society should treat people who consider themselves somehow androgynous or gender-neutral?

These are all just questions to ponder on your own. It’s up to each individual, of course, to decide if it is worth it to use a word that is so potentially problematic. Personally, I would not choose it, but if you feel that is really, truly the best way to describe your experience, of course you should use it!

I’ve disabled comments on this post because honestly, I don’t care what conclusions you come to. It’s YOUR choice, not mine. If you really, really, really want to try to explain it to me, you can email me about it. I will read it, but I may or may not respond.

In my last post, I theorized that relationships rely on one of two things: proximity and work (which could also be called effort, or commitment). So what happens when two people who became friends at school or work or through some other activity lose that proximity? In what situations do we work to maintain the relationship, and in which do we abandon it?

When relationships work/when we work at them:
1. We both find the relationship fulfilling (as DJ said in the comments on my last post) and feel a special connection that we feel has a meaningful place in our lives.
2. We each feel invested in the other person’s life and automatically feel compelled to keep in touch and support the other person through whatever they’re going through.
3. We feel that spending time together is worth prioritizing above at least some of the myriad ways we could each be spending our time.
4. We have activities that it’s important for us to do together as opposed to with other people or alone.

When relationships don’t work/when we don’t work at them:

1. Both people get lazy and don’t make time to contact the other person, even though we always enjoy the time we spend together.
2. Only one person makes the effort to stay in touch and make plans, until the lack of reciprocity leads them to give up.
3. There’s no specific motivation to contact each other or do a particular activity together, or to prioritize seeing each other above the myriad other ways we could each be spending our time.

Maintaining a strong relationship doesn’t feel like work. However, if I’m the only one putting in the effort, or neither of us is, it does feel like work. In these cases, I feel like the fate of the relationship is in my hands, and I need to remember and decide to contact people and try to make plans with them. My motivation here is different than in the examples up top; I am working to keep in touch because I feel that the relationship has potential and I should nurture it–and that if I do, I can help it grow into something meaningful and self-sustaining. This isn’t nearly as strong a motivator as the reasons above, and most of the time it does not actually motivate me to take action.

In my next post, I will discuss online friend-dating, which has produced most of the relationships of this variety–ones that did not develop naturally through a shared environment, activity, or group of friends, and that require a conscious effort on the part of both people in order to survive and progress.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ways relationships form and what keeps them going. Most relationships are initiated due to proximity–two people being in the same place at the same time, generally over an extended period of time. The internet has mixed things up a bit, so that we can meet people with similar interests whom we never would have encountered in real life, but we’re still more likely to become friends with our classmates, co-workers, and neighbors than with most people we don’t regularly spend time around.

What I’ve come to realize recently is that most relationships also require proximity in order to keep going; in other words, most of the friendships I’ve made through school, work, and other activities have been abandoned once I stopped going to school or working or doing whatever with those people. This has often happened despite the fact that we had a lot in common and really enjoyed each other’s company when we were involved in the same things.

Therefore, the necessary element when there isn’t proximity to keep the relationship going is work–both people have to have an active desire to work at maintaining the relationship. This means taking the time to keep in touch and get together. It amazes me how many friendships just fade away because people get busy and just don’t prioritize keeping in touch with their friends. Sometimes, both people are equally responsible; sometimes, one is willing to do the work and the other isn’t. There have been many times when I kept contacting and chasing down and trying to hang out with a formerly good friend, only to give up on the friendship after I finally realized that I was the only one trying. It was depressing to know that I would probably never hear from them again once I made the decision to stop trying.

In my next post, I’ll look at the different motivations behind working to maintain a relationship.

I’m going to try to get into the habit of posting regularly again. I have a lot of things I want to write about relationships, but right now I’m just going to share a pop culture observation.

I had heard about Britney Spears’ song “If U Seek Amy” and how the title is scandalously meant to sound like a word that can’t be said on the radio, but I didn’t actually hear the song until the other day. The verses make no sense because they’re about this Amy character, whose real purpose is just to be one letter out of four, and the chorus goes, “Love me, hate me, say what you want about me, but all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy.” Get it? I found this statement to be quite interesting. She’s certainly not the first celebrity to make a “love me or hate me” statement (the most recent that comes to mind is Lady Sovereign), but instead of telling the haters that she doesn’t care, or saying that it doesn’t matter because she’s rich and famous, or (as Lady Sov did) cursing them out, she brags about her sexual attractiveness. I think this doesn’t make a lot of sense and is kind of sad. Is that all Britney’s songwriters could come up with for her? That no matter what bad things people say about her, they are somehow negated by the fact that people want to have sex with her?

The baseball metaphor, that is.

While messing around on the intarwebs tonight, I came across this article about finding a positive sexual metaphor. I’d highly recommend that everyone go take a look! In the first part of the article, the author examines baseball as a metaphor for sex in American culture, and just how insidious this metaphor really is:

Baseball is fundamentally oppositional. Both teams can’t win. One team wins and the other loses. As sex, that’s about one partner “gaining” something, and the other partner “losing” something. In our culture, women tend to lose status when they have sex, and there’s a lot of hubbub about women “losing” their “precious virginity.” Men, on the other hand, gain status and respect from sexual experience. This aspect of the model also serves to reinforce gender stereotypes, which are rarely conducive to safe, empowered and satisfying sexual encounters.

Could this have had anything to do with my own fairly intense fear of rape? I was born into the losing team, after all. And the message that I will lose out if I have sex is everywhere, as is the message that the “opposite team” is out to get me–to force or coerce me into having sex without regard for my own feelings about it. In a lot of cases, that really does happen to people, and when it does, doesn’t the baseball metaphor for sex provide the perfect excuse for the assailant? After all, it’s just how you win the game. No wonder there are so many rape apologists!

In its literal sense, baseball can be a fun game, but unlike its literal counterpart, when we’re talking about sex as baseball, there is almost never a switch-up between which team is batting and which is on the field–there is not supposed to be; you are born as either a batter or an outfielder, and that’s where, at least in theory, you stay. That takes all the fun out of it, doesn’t it? Because if sex happens, somebody loses, and that loser is determined before the game even starts. It’s a predictable, rigid social role. To win the game says nothing about whether the sex was enjoyable for either party. It’s just about whether or not it happens.

This underlying way of thinking has shaped my experiences with heterosexual men, and that’s not to say that they all thought that way themselves, but that this unhealthy power dynamic exists at all has made me extra wary of dealing with “the opposite team”–to the point that I, for the most part, choose to simply opt out of dealing with them entirely, and instead I generally only play with the queer team. It just removes that whole level of uncertainty, that vague sense of wondering whether this person is playing against me, that sense of always having to be vigilant, just in case. Queer people can’t play the game like everyone else anyway; they aren’t allowed to be included in it in the first place.

The article goes into a lot more detail about that, and also proposes an alternative metaphor for sexuality: eating pizza. It’s definitely a much more ace-positive model, since nobody assumes that everybody must eat pizza; while they may be rare, there are just some people who don’t, and that’s fine.

I do think, however, that the metaphor starts to break down a little here:

Eating pizza with a partner is also not a radically different experience from eating pizza alone. The pizza model deflates the myth that masturbation is a lesser sexual experience than partnered sex. Eating pizza alone encompasses the complete pizza-eating experience, just as masturbation is a complete sexual experience. When we do it it with someone else, the fullness of the experience doesn’t change, we simply add communion with our partner(s) to the experience. What’s different is the companionship, intimacy, variety, and possibly the fun of having someone feed you for a change.

I am not sure whether we should classify masturbation as a purely sexual experience. After all, there are plenty of asexuals who masturbate but do not necessarily consider the experience sexual. To some, it may be. To others… the very reason it might be considered okay is because it seems to be a lesser sexual experience (though even then, many find it bothersome). It really isn’t all that involved, when compared to partnered sex, whereas when eating pizza, aside from the initial negotiation of toppings, the actual act of eating the pizza is not different when doing it alone or with a partner. More is required of the person who is having sex with a partner, as opposed to the person who is masturbating. In many cases, a lot more is required. I just don’t think the difference translates well, when we use this metaphor as a vehicle for expression.

I guess the question is really about whether we consider something to be sexual based on sexual appetite, or whether we consider it to be sexual based on which body parts are involved. It seems that people define things as sexual using both of these determinants in different situations. For example, some people think that kissing is sexual–for them, perhaps, it arouses a sexual appetite. But then, to continue the metaphor, people can still eat something even if they have no appetite. Is it the physical act of sex that defines it? If so, which physical act(s) are we talking about, here? Or is it more about the mental aspect of it, the desire/appetite? In some cases, it’s clear how to define it, but in other cases, like this one, it really isn’t.

I also usually have a problem with food-based metaphors for sex because of the idea that having sex is a need, in the same sense that it is a need for humans to eat. I will admit that there is a need for people to procreate, but it is not an individual need, it is only a collective need. Every individual member of a species does not need to procreate in order for the species to survive. However, every individual must eat in order for the individual to survive. So you really have to be careful not to take a comparison of sexual desire with hunger too far. In this case, though, I think the metaphor of sex as eating pizza works okay, on that level, because it refers only to a specific kind of food, and not to food in general. People who don’t eat pizza can thoroughly enjoy other foods, and that’s not weird at all. Likewise, people who don’t enjoy or engage in sexual activities can get plenty of fulfillment from other activities in life!

[Part I]

We were not lovers.

I didn’t know what we were or what we would become. We were in fuzzy territory, the topography a natural blend, unmarked by conceptual boundaries. There were boundaries, yes, but only the kind of boundaries that a river makes as it cuts through stone. There was no sign that said “KEEP OFF” and no assumption that we would be following societal customs about grass. There were no intellectually imposed markings of any kind, really. It was more organic than a hippie convention at the local farmer’s market.

We did not talk again until a day had passed. I was, quite frankly, distracted by my vibrant social life. You see, after spending the summer heartsick and pining, I had gotten back into the swing of things. No longer isolated from scholastic pursuits, I found myself surrounded by people. There were fickle people, people who started to shun me because they happened to catch me in the company of those with whom they were no longer friends. There were people who were with me for just half a season, and only then because of my roommate, with whom I got along quite well. But there were also a few that I am still friends with today. The night after I went on an accidental “date” with C, one of those friends was going through a personal crisis, and so I invited him out bowling with me, my roommate, and a very lively group of foreign exchange students she referred to as the “Chinese Mafia.”

The next day, when I invited C to come out to “the fair” with us (because that’s what my friends told me that it was, but as it turns out it was just a lame corn maze), I thought it might be awkward because of what was going on between my friend and one of his friends who would be there also. I wasn’t really thinking about C that much, aside from the thought that she might provide a convenient excuse to duck out of the way if the feathers started flying. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I thought it would be nice to see her and all, but I worried that perhaps she was a little more eager to meet again than I was. As ever, I was being cautious.

When she showed up around 2 p.m., my immediate impression was of how nervous and awkward she looked–she was mid-transition but had not gone full time yet, and her male clothing did not suit her face. She does have a girlish face, all big pouty lips and pretty green eyes–eyes which were covered up by glasses with those lenses that change into sunglasses when exposed to harsh light, except that they seemed to be broken, remaining permanently a translucent light brown. Her body, too, was covered up. But there was no mistaking her femininity; it pervaded every shy line of her body–the way she held her arms, the way her lips turned up in a cute grin at the sight of me. “What? No hug?” she pouted, a little put off by the way I had, in my continued rush to get ready, just ushered her in. So I hugged her then, and it was not the same as the one from the other night–shorter, more stilted–because now I was much more nervous about it. But it was still nice.

There were a bunch of people from the QSA going, and so we met up with a bunch of them at the maze, and went through it all together. Truth be told, we trailed after them. Neither one of us was particularly interested in navigating the maze, so we held back and walked next to each other, talking about various things. Tentatively, she bumped her hand against mine–a sign that she wanted me to take it. I was not so sure I wanted it to go in this direction–at least not so soon!–but I decided to just go with it to see where it would lead. We walked and walked, hand in sweaty hand, until the others, still ahead of us, found our way out.

It was clear, at this point, that she was beginning to become somewhat infatuated with me. How much so, I did not know. I felt rather distanced from her at the time, and uncomfortable showing affection like that in public. The others were giving us looks of surprise every now and then, and though I do not remember whether they said anything in front of us then or only later on, when I was explaining how we met, one of them said, “Wow, look at those two! They are totally canoodling!”

Once we were done at the maze, we made our way back to the dorms with a number of tiny pumpkins that they had given away there. While C and I had been walking around on our own, it seems that tension had been building between three of my friends over some issue or another, I can’t remember anymore. We were hanging out, waiting to see if they wanted to go out to dinner with us or not. At some point, C sat down on a comfy zebra-striped chair that R had salvaged from the newly redecorated art building, and then pulled me onto her lap. I was surprised that she would go that far after only the second time that we had met in person, and while I was a little uncomfortable with it, I wasn’t uncomfortable enough to say anything about it. After I got used to it, it was kind of nice.

Then T and W showed up, irritable at each other and both angry at R. At some point, C and I relocated to my bed, curled up next to each other and held hands, watching the three of them duke it out. “You know, I felt bad for them,” C said of it later, “But at the moment, I was really too happy to care.” Ultimately, T and W stalked off to go do something else, leaving R in tears at my dorm. So the three of us went out to eat together, to cheer her up. This involved a lot of impractically one-handed eating, since C sat next to me and had my hand under the table, and refused to let go for as long as she could help it.

I don’t remember doing anything after that, so we must have each gone home. I returned to my relative solitude wondering what I might have gotten myself into, and whether it would be something that would be good for me to pursue. It bothered me a little that C seemed to be pouring herself into our potential relationship so fast, while I was still processing what had gone on in my previous not-relationship. I do tend to let significant relationships (in a broad sense, including friendships) linger on my mind far longer, perhaps, than other people do–long after the feeling is gone, I still keep trying to work out a system of interaction that might have worked out better than what had actually happened. At that point, I was not sure I was ready to get into a new relationship like that yet. I had not expected to find myself faced with that possibility so soon, nor for C to enter my intimate space so quickly. I understood that she was very affectionate with her friends, as she had warned me about it a little, but still, it took me by surprise. I would like to say it took me pleasantly by surprise, but at the time, I really was fairly neutral. It wasn’t something I had expected, and I wasn’t sure it was where I wanted to go, but it wasn’t so bad either. For a while, I just couldn’t make up my mind.

So, Ily got me thinking with her comment on my last post and subsequent post about how it all started, and I think that’s a worthy topic to explore. I have been one of those people who goes, “Uhh, I don’t know, it just sort of happened,” when it comes to the question of how I started dating C. Maybe explaining the circumstances of our first meetings will help both to elucidate how a friendly outing can unexpectedly turn romantic, and to give me some much-needed perspective on what we started with, and how we ended up this way. I have a lot to say on this topic, so I won’t try to say it all in one post!

It was just over a year ago, now. The girl and I would have celebrated her birthday two days after she broke up with me, and our first anniversary the day after that (if we bothered to celebrate it, that is; she doesn’t like to celebrate arbitrary dates, but I think it might as well be an excuse to have fun–but so much for that idea!). We met on an internet dating site, but it had never been our intention to go on a date. It was supposed to have been an innocent friendly outing to see Kung Fu Panda at the dollar theater, and that was all. “I’m going to be too shy to talk to you when we meet,” she told me over IM. I didn’t quite believe it, because we had already had several fairly long and interesting conversations before, just not in person. And, sure enough, after I suggested that we go and get something to eat–since I was interested in actually getting to know her, albeit as a friend and not a date, and 90 minutes in a dark room just sitting next to one another and watching a movie didn’t really give me that opportunity–sure enough, we got to talking.

And after we had gone through a pot of tea at the local hippie New Age gay-friendly tea and trinkets shop, we didn’t want to stop. So we didn’t. I said that we could stop by my dorm and grab the moldy bread that I had been meaning to take out to the pond, and feed it to the ducks. We kept on talking and talking, and when we were done with the bread we started wandering around campus together. We wandered vaguely in the direction of her car but then never went to it. We kept circling around it, until it was more than obvious that neither one of us wanted her to leave. We kept ending up near the dumpsters, which spawned an inside joke about dumpsters being super romantic.

We talked about all sorts of things, dating being one of them. I told her I didn’t understand how dating worked, and had never really been on an actual date before. I didn’t really know what they were like; all I knew was that traditional dating seemed so structured, so overly formalized. I didn’t understand the game, the etiquette, or the point. Because, after all, from my perspective, it seemed to me like dating, at least in the mainstream world, was aimed primarily at two things: sex in the short term, and marriage in the long term. Neither of which I was even the least bit interested in, so why would I want to bother? Not knowing what the other person was after would have made me extremely uncomfortable, and not knowing what I was supposed to do would make it even more so. I’m sure my date, unless maybe he was someone like M, would have been quite uncomfortable with it too, because of the way I was acting. About three years ago, there was a boy who had a very obvious crush on me, and although he was generally pretty charismatic, always seemed rather weird when it came to me. Eventually, he asked me out on a date, and while I considered going out with him, I had to turn him down because it would have just been too awkward for me, and probably painfully so to him. But it wasn’t that I was uninterested in relationships in general, mind. Only that I would never date someone traditionally.

Then she told me about her dating experiences, which were mostly internet based, but included one case of what struck me as pretty much a romantic friendship, where the two of them were so close they really could have been thought to be dating. The only reason they weren’t, she thought, was because he was too straight to go for someone with a male body, which she still had at the time. It was almost like a more informal version of dating, it seemed. I wondered if dating wasn’t always as strict as it had seemed to me at first. I wondered if my lack of experience was just limiting my perspective on what it was like to go on a date. Maybe it isn’t always like how it is presented in the media, which was up until then my only source for understanding how the dating world worked. Meanwhile, she was telling me that she had been previously involved in a polyamorous relationship with a married couple. She described some of their sexual escapades, which I found interesting but confusing at the same time. When the topic turned to whether or not we would be a good fit for a date, she said, “You’re really not my type at all. So don’t worry, I’m not trying to date you.”

Well, likewise. She wasn’t my type either, or so I thought. But at the same time, I did enjoy her company a great deal, and on many levels she seemed to get me, and what she didn’t get right away, she had already proven through our few weeks of chatting over the internet that she was curious enough and open-minded enough to put a great deal of effort into discussing. Although she wasn’t sure about dating an asexual herself, at least she didn’t have a problem accepting it–she was even intrigued by it. She brought to the table a cutesy style backed by a lively intelligence, an intriguingly unconventional perspective, and collections of sex toys and socks. I wasn’t in the least bit infatuated with her and wouldn’t get to that point for quite a while, but I did like her. I suppose that’s how a lot of people must feel on first dates, now that I think of it.

Apparently, the secret to getting me to date you is to approach me strictly as a friend.

Tired of walking, we went off to find a secluded bench somewhere, hoping that our already hours-long conversation wouldn’t be disturbed anymore by passing people that we knew. We sat Indian-style on top of it, facing one another, and I remember feeling the coldness of the thick marble slab seeping through the seat of my jeans. I don’t remember if I was wearing a jacket; I don’t think I was. Since it had been a hot afternoon and I hadn’t planned on staying outside so late, either I hadn’t bothered to get one, or I had gotten one that was too thin. In reality, we were right near my dorm so I could’ve gone to get a nice warm sweater if I had wanted, but I didn’t want to bother going back there, and risk the awkwardness of seeing people we both knew who would want to invite us to come hang out with them. For some reason, even then we were bothered by people interrupting our private, two-person-only conversation. So I was cold, and my hands were especially so. I folded them together as if I were praying, rubbed them together a little bit to generate heat. She stilled my hands, and covered them with her own to keep them warm.

We kept on talking and talking until it was nearing midnight. She had an early class, so she really had to get home and get some sleep–I had already kept her up past her usual bedtime. Finally, we parted, but before we did, she said, “This is a date, isn’t it?”

I still hadn’t really thought of it as such, but it seemed to be true. “I guess so,” I said. I didn’t know, really. I thought maybe it could be.

We hugged each other then, and it wasn’t like a typical friendly greeting. I had friends that would give me long tight bear hugs, but this wasn’t one of those. It was long and lingering and ever so slightly awkward, but nice, too. I was kind of shocked about it, that our meeting could have run so counter to both of our expectations and intentions. I didn’t have any fuzzy feelings, I wasn’t sure if I would develop them, and I didn’t know what would come of it, but for the moment, I was okay with seeing where it would lead.

[Part II]

Time passes me by lately like water does a fish—I am always in it, it is always flowing around me, but each moment is just something I live in without really thinking about it. I pay attention only to the strong currents and my eventual destination, letting the usual ebb and tide just make its lazy circles about the unconscious.

Of course, I’m still able to focus on time and its various aspects, bring it out of the background and into the forefront as I am doing now. But that kind of focus might as well be a flash of lighting. For the most part, it passes, and I make neither an effort to live in the moment nor hold fast to hope or memory. Things happen, mostly boring and not worth reporting—or so it was for a while. Unfortunately, no news does not necessarily mean good news, even though I am significantly less likely to update without the motivation of conflict. This past summer, I’ve been beset by a number of injuries and illnesses, including a brief visit to the hospital (which fortunately turned out to mean nothing except that I should take better care not to exhaust myself). Those injuries and illnesses have continued since I started school, which means that I have missed a lot of class and my ability to keep up with assignments has suffered. My relationship with my partner suffered a lot as well—partially, indeed, as a result of my being sick so often—and now we have broken up, albeit somewhat tentatively and while keeping the possibility in mind that we may be able to resolve our differences and work back up to a romantic relationship.

With all this going on, I hadn’t really been thinking about asexuality. Over the summer, there were still plenty of moments, from time to time, when I would see my girlfriend looking at porn and, upon hearing my comments, she would groan at me and says, “You’re so asexual.” But for the most part, it went unnoticed, and barely mattered.

I have been trying to decide what is different about the part that sex played in our relationship as compared to the part that it plays in a pairing of two sexuals, but I can’t come up with much. It’s not as if it isn’t generally enjoyable, and I can’t say that it isn’t intimate. There were periods when we go without for quite a while before either one of us would crease her brow and say, “Hm. When was the last time, anyway?” That is probably the most obvious sign of my asexuality combined with her relative lack of sexual attraction to me. The thing is, our relationship actually did seem to suffer more during the dry spells than when we were doing it relatively frequently, despite my conviction that sex should not be a necessary part of a relationship.

For a while, I really thought the relationship wasn’t suffering on behalf of my asexuality. It was more of an issue between the two of us that I would rarely be in the mood to watch a movie than it was that I would rarely be in the mood to have sex. And after all, even if it didn’t occur to me to want to generally, it’s not like I had a problem with doing it whenever she would ask. I am far from frigid and unresponsive; and this is why I find it so odd that I have been called “sexually disabled,” because I am entirely capable of normal sexual function. It even comes a little easier to me, from a physical perspective, than it seems to for a large percentage of women who are sexual. Usually, during a typical sexual encounter, I would orgasm at least twice, and a handful of times my partner and I even managed to achieve what seems to be considered the Holy Grail of orgasmic experience—that is, simultaneity. That’s not meant as a brag—I hate bragging, and in fact I do believe that most people who brag about sex a lot aren’t actually getting much of it, and what would be the point of me bragging, anyway, since it would be so misleading?—but I say this just to demonstrate exactly how minuscule a problem it actually was, to my mind. I was with the right person, in the right circumstances. The rest was cake.

No, as it turns out, the problem was initiative. I am not dominant enough to match her submissiveness, and I am not sexual enough to start something that it does not usually occur to me to start. Actually, I am still not sure exactly how it is done, this initiation of sexual activity. Even if I was the one who suggested it, I was always taking my cues from her in the first place: a playful bit of fondling when she seemed particularly receptive to it, a diversion of her attention when she was going to go masturbate (which she seemed to take awry anyway, since she began to get the idea that I had something against her masturbating; an odd bit of irony, isn’t it? that a person who is not so into sex should give the impression that it is not okay for her partner to satisfy herself alone! But in my eagerness to keep her pleased, the simple statement that I would offer myself to her if she was more interested in my body than the computer screen was somehow perceived as an anti-masturbatory remark). The few times I suggested it apart from that, there was this awkwardly deliberate, premeditated quality to it; it felt unnatural, almost forced.

How can I dominate when I barely understand what doms do, or why they do it? She says maybe I should read a lot of books, but it’s not as if I have lacked reading material in that area. In fact, one of my favorite book series—one which she can’t even read because she gets so turned on by it—prominently features characters into all kinds of BDSM, and I read it in part because I find it fascinating. But I am not at all sure how I could apply what I have read to a real-life situation. Actually, I do have some intrinsic sadistic tendencies of my own (to which my sister would be able to attest, since as a child I often expressed them on her), as well as a moderate interest in rope bondage—but as it turns out, none of my interests coincide with hers. And so, my natural instincts suppressed, I am left with no lead to follow. Such situations are then stilted and awkward, and I am constantly wondering if I am doing it right, which doesn’t make for a very satisfactory experience for anyone.

Of course, there was another issue, that being what I physically lack. She is more attracted to men than to women sexually, even if she seems to be extremely disappointed with them otherwise. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder occasionally if that meant she would be happier with someone other than me. We had an agreement that she would be allowed to have a “friend with benefits” if she could find someone interested who was actually trustworthy, and not just after her because of a fetish—she did, once, during our relationship, exercise her prowess at giving blow jobs, and it was never a problem—and, in fact, she was allowed to look for another lover, too, if she wanted. I didn’t expect to fulfill her completely. Still, still. I couldn’t help but wonder. If she found someone else to have sex with, would it mean that she would completely lose interest in me? Had she already lost all her interest in me? I found that I considered that prospect depressing even though I was not even sexual to begin with.

I realized then that sex was becoming for us, much to my dismay, something of a shorthand for intimacy, the way it often is with sexuals. That’s not to say that there was no form of non-sexual intimacy that we shared, and not to say either that there wasn’t the occasional time that we had sex that really wasn’t all that intimate (though those were usually terrible experiences anyway). But on the whole, she was beginning to push me farther and farther away emotionally (and sometimes, she out and out shoved), and for a while anyway, sex seemed to offer a brief respite. But my own private torment was the creeping realization that her degrading sexual interest in me was a mirror of her disengagement from the relationship as a whole.

Nothing diminishes the sharp, cold sting of rejection. Gradually, she was becoming more and more closed off to me. She no longer texted me in the morning to let me know she loved me, and seemed apathetic when I attempted to continue the tradition. And although she would reasonably often profess to being horny, she would no longer ask me to participate, and would even seem to balk at my meant-to-be-courteous suggestion. Was one a symptom of the other? Did they feed off of each other, the slow mounting fog, the thinning breathless suffocation so much like the way the air thins as one approaches a mountain peak, until finally there was no oxygen left? Am I the only one left panicking at the possibility that what we created between us has iced over so thoroughly that there may have been too much cell damage sustained for it to survive?

Such questions plague me, and maybe only me, but my fear of rejection was certainly not unfounded. During this time, I even began to question my own asexuality for a while, since so very much about our relationship resembles a relationship between two sexual people. But upon further reflection and a number of discussions with her about it, I realized that my asexuality was undeniable, and undeniably a part of the problem. In this area, we simply are not compatible. But that is not a huge problem when it is compared to our other areas of incompatibility, which, although they may not be so very many, have been far more harmful to our relationship than a simple lack of sexual compatibility.

Next week, we are slated to see a couple’s counselor so that we might decide whether there is a chance we can resolve some of our issues. I think, personally, that there is a strong possibility that we might indeed be able to do it, if only—indeed, if only—she is as willing to put as much effort into working on them as I am. I am not so confident of that, but either way, this is one sexual/asexual relationship that is not ending purely because of sexual issues, and most likely, we will be able to at the very least put everything aside and be close friends.

Still, it was useful for me, and I thought it may be of interest to my readers, to articulate what sometimes oddly counterintuitive difficulties we have had with regard to sexuality. Maybe someone somewhere will find in my analysis of my weird-ass relationship with this girl I cannot yet bring myself to call an ex a helpful reflection. I figure at the very least, it can’t hurt to add to the available pool of asexual content, which is something I have been neglecting to continue for far too long! I will make no promises about posting more often since I am completely overburdened as it is, but for this moment at least, I am back.

Over the past year, while my understanding of asexuality has developed, the way I think about all of my relationships has evolved as well.

You know how when people talk about dating, they often talk about “deal breakers,” the qualities or habits that make them call off (or not want to enter into) a relationship? These are often small, ridiculous-seeming things that they would never hold against a friend, but for some reason find unsuitable for a partner. Since I am not looking for one person to be my perfect everything, I find it possible to appreciate each person and relationship for what it is rather than holding any of them up to a highly specific set of standards for the “right” person and inevitably being disappointed.

But at the same time, I often end up disappointed anyway, because I’ve raised my standards for what I expect from each of my friends in terms of how they treat me and show that they value our relationship. I want each relationship to be meaningful and worth both of our time, and just as people who are dating often want to be clear as to whether they are “in a relationship,” I have found it increasingly necessary to know whether or not someone is my friend, and to see it as an all-or-nothing thing the way people view romantic relationships. I’ve developed my own set of expectations, of “deal breakers,” that I think most people wouldn’t apply to people they are “just” friends with. I don’t care if any given one of them is taller or shorter than I am or snores or likes the same sports teams, but I need to know that each of them is committed to the maintenance and growth of our relationship, and that they won’t drift away and abandon me whenever they’re in a romantic relationship. But my expectations have just set me up to get let down again and again, and then to let go. It really frustrates me that while it’s normal and expected for people in romantic relationships to discuss their relationships, I’m pretty sure that if I attempted to have a similar “state of the relationship” conversation with a friend who had disappointed me, I would be seen as crazy, as imagining myself as and/or wanting to be that person’s girlfriend, when that wasn’t the case at all. I don’t have a framework for making demands, for fixing things, because I haven’t earned that right by being their primary person–we never actually made a deal either of us is obligated to uphold. So instead, frustrated and insulted, I walk away, wondering why it has to be that way.

When discovered my asexuality a year ago, I saw the word heteroromantic and figured it must apply to me; after all, I have occasionally felt attracted to guys over the course of my life and have been in a long-term relationship with one. And I figured that even though I didn’t ever want to have sex with anyone, I would still want romance at some point, and be forced to navigate the pursuit of it–a complex thing for asexuals in a sexual world.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized romance wasn’t actually a goal of mine. While it may be intriguing and dramatic and fun, I see it as being unsustainable and separate from the types of relationships I really want in the long run. In my experience, romance is the butterflies and excitement and flattering mutual admiration at the beginning of a relationship (or the beginning of something that never goes anywhere), but it’s not a characteristic that I see as necessary or even possible (for me, at least) in a long-term relationship of any kind.

I have learned that the distinguishing characteristic of the relationships I seek (whether friendships or partnerships) is commitment. Not commitment that requires a ring or a vow or even an explicit declaration, but a mutual and unshakable feeling of being committed to each other’s happiness. It’s about a feeling of “I care about you. I will always be there. I won’t abandon this.” So I’ve reached the point where I know that I won’t be too disappointed if I go the rest of my life without having any romantic interludes, as entertaining and ego-boosting as they may be, because if I can have the less flashy but safer comfort of true understanding and companionship, that’s enough for me.

So I’ve been neglecting my blog over the past month, and I just realized that in the meantime, I missed its first birthday! It’s hard to believe that a year has passed since I discovered my asexuality and started Edge of Everywhere to explore my thoughts and share my journey. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll try to make a series of posts summarizing what I’ve learned and how things have changed for me in the past year. In the meantime, thank you to everyone who has read and commented on my posts. Having an outlet for sharing my experiences and connecting with other asexuals has been invaluable to me.

I think I have found the answer to my question about meetups – or, more specifically, about why we have them.

It is because spending time with other asexual people is the closest to our home planet as we can get.

I have written before that I feel that I must be from another planet, and it appears that some other asexual people feel the same. In fact, I have felt that way all my life, not only because of my orientations – since I was not always aware of them – but because I could feel I was different from other people I knew (especially people my age) in various ways: I did not have the same interests, use the same slang, care about the same things. Because of that, I found it very difficult to relate to my classmates; it seemed to me that we could not be from the same world at all. Now, of course, it is because I am asexual and aromantic (and aware of those orientations) that I often find it difficult to relate to others – and in a way, it is maybe worse than when I was growing up, because back then I still could relate to my family and feel that they, at least, were from the same planet as I. But it is not the case anymore; my parents are very understanding of my asexuality and my aromanticism, but still, they are not asexual or aromantic, and even though they try very hard to see things from my point of view, and succeed most of the time, that does not make them asexual or aromantic. They try to understand how I feel about things, but of course they do not feel the same. When I am with them, I feel I am in a safe place, among friendly natives – but they are not from my home planet.

Until very recently, I did not think I actually needed to be among my own kind. I have never really minded being alone (this is actually my natural state of being; I am always glad to spend time with my friends, but I do not need other people around to be happy), so feeling I was from another planet did not mean that I felt isolated on this one. I daydream sometimes about what my metaphorical home planet would be like, but I do not long for it. Or so I thought.

When I attended the Asexy Dirty Weekend in Bath, I did not really feel there was anything special about being among asexual people. We did not really talk all that much about asexuality; we talked about AVEN, about other meetups, about visibility projects, but not really about asexuality itself, about how it is like for us to be asexual. As I wrote later, “it does seem that meetups are really about meeting other people, and asexuality does not really matter – the people attending happen to be asexual or related to asexuality in some way simply because the meetups are organized via AVEN, but asexuality is not the focus of meetups”. I did not think this was disappointing, in fact I liked it better this way, as talking nearly exclusively about asexuality would certainly have been rather boring; but this also meant that spending time with other asexuals did not seem different from spending time with other people, no matter what their orientation is.

When the second Asexy Dirty Weekend was announced, I was very eager to attend it – and I wondered about that. True, I had had fun in Bath, and I had met nice people that I wanted to see again and who (well, some of them, anyway) would be attending the new event – but it did not seem to be enough to justify my spending half a month’s food budget on a Eurostar round-trip ticket to England for only a weekend. There was something special about these people that made me really want to spend more time with them – something more than how nice they had been to me or how much fun I had had with them.

And then I realized what it was: with them, I felt – safe. Not because being with non-asexual people is dangerous or makes me feel worried about my physical safety or psychological well-being, no, but because with asexy people, I knew that my orientations were not in danger of being questioned and doubted. Everyone knew (or at least assumed) that I was asexual, and even if they might not know I was also aromantic, at least there was a good chance that they were aware of the possibility. No-one would think me weird for not having a boyfriend or try to comfort me for being single. There was no need to actually talk about asexuality, or about my orientations, for me to know I was safe, to know that if we did talk about it everyone would be open and understanding – and not as people who see asexuality from the outside, but as people who know what it feels like to be asexual, who are asexual themselves.

When I am among asexy people, I can be certain that no-one is assuming me to be heterosexual – something I strongly dislike and never know how to react to when it is made indirectly clear by something someone says. For a few hours, I am among my own kind – among people who do not assume that I must be interested in sex and dating, among people who may never think about sex or dating unless the outside world reminds them that such things exist and matter to some people. For a few hours, it is as if I were back on my long-lost home planet – that place where asexuality is the natural state and where no-one has ever heard of or thought about sex, and where friendships are the closest, strongest, most meaningful relationships people can build (all right, so maybe not all asexual people are from that specific aromantic planet, but they’re from a planet very close by). There is no need to talk about asexuality, because it is everywhere – while we are together, we can forget that asexuality is not the mainstream sexual orientation in the wider world, because it is the mainstream orientation in our little group, at least.

This, in turn, led me to finally understand why people who belong to “minorities” tend to want to meet other people like themselves and get together. It is not at all because they feel they can only relate to people who are like them, or because they distrust people who are not like them, or because they hope that this common point will make it easier to become friends with people who are like them. No, it is because it is exhausting to live in a society which does not always recognize us, in which we are always assumed to be something we are not, and where, very often, we cannot correct those mistaken assumptions – and from time to time, we need to be among our own kind, among people who understand what we are and who see the world the way we do. We cannot go back to our home planet – but we can build a safe haven with our own kind, and for a while, we can forget how far from home we are.

Now I only wish I did not have to go so far from my Earth home to find this, and could meet with asexy people nearer the place where I live, without months going by between two meetings. But AVENfr is not an option for me, and I have not yet found another way.

From the comments on my last post about the Cuddle Party phenomenon, it sounds like these touch-oriented workshops, while emphatically non-sexual in nature, aren’t necessarily so ace-friendly.

That got me thinking: sexual people have access to endless amounts of books, magazines, workshops, and other resources about all aspects of sex and relationships. What kinds of books, workshops, or other informational resources do you wish the asexual community had? I’d love to know the secret to erasing the friendship/romance boundary and bringing non-sexual affection into close friendships with a minimum amount of awkwardness. What else?

I suppose that, since I started this series with sexual attraction, it would be logical to follow with sexual desire.

Just like sexual attraction, sexual desire is a concept I cannot relate to and which I cannot easily define. I assume that experiencing sexual desire for someone means to want to have sex with them; while sexual attraction, to me, would more something like “hmm, this is someone I could imagine having sex with”, sexual desire would be something much stronger, like “I need to have sex with that person, there is nothing else in the world I want more” or something along those lines. I understand sexual attraction to be the awareness of a possiblity (that someone is the kind of person one might want to have sex with) and sexual desire to be much more specific and intense; obviously, since I have experienced neither, I may be totally wrong.

I do understand desire – not sexual desire, obviously, but the other kinds. I know how it feels like to desperately want something, so much that this wanting becomes physical and being denied is nearly unbearable. I have even felt that way about people – although I never quite understood what it was I wanted them for; I just knew that thinking about them hurt because I wanted something more with them, “more” remaining something undefined (and yes, I did consider the possibility that what I wanted was sex, and it was not – it was not romance either, by the way). So I can imagine what it feels like to “want” someone – just not what it feels like to want them in a sexual way; sex being something repulsive rather than desirable for me, I cannot imagine wanting to engage in it, and especially not wanting it with the intensity of desire that I have experienced for other things.

Still, in a way it is an emotion I can understand – I may not understand this specific kind of desire, but I still do know how it feels like to want something so very much. It would scare me to find out that someone desires me sexually (even more than if they were merely sexually attracted to me) – not because I would be afraid that the person might try to get by force what I could never give them willingly, but because I am always a bit afraid when someone wants something from me that I know I cannot give them, as if I felt they have no right to want such things from me – even though wanting them does not actually take anything from me, and my fear does not have anything to do with being worried that they will try to take what they want not matter what I want. In the past it also scared me to find out that someone was “in love” (his words, not mine – it seemed to me that he did not know me well enough to be truly “in love” with me and that he merely had a crush on me, but what do I know?) with me; I did not identify as aromantic or celibate then, but I did feel that I was not made for romance, and that I could never return his feelings, and I was afraid to be “in his debt” in such a way. With sexual desire, I would probably be even more uncomfortable, not only because sexual desire is an emotion that I understand to be much more intense than whatever feelings this guy really had for me, but also because of the fact that it is difficult for me, as I explained in my previous post, to see sexual attraction (and sexual desire) as something positive, as a compliment. I can make myself see it as something that is not negative, but I do not think I will ever be flattered or happy if someone experiences sexual attraction or sexual desire for me.

I recently found out about the phenomenon of the Cuddle Party, “a playful social event designed for adults to explore communication, boundaries and affection.” A bunch of strangers pay to go to a trained facilitator’s house, put on pajamas, go through exercises dealing with the aforementioned topics, and spend a couple of hours sharing non-sexual physical intimacy and affection. Participants must ask each other and receive a verbal “yes” before hugging, cuddling, giving massages, or engaging in any number of other types of physical contact.

I totally agree with their belief in the value of affectionate touch, but just as hooking up sexually with a stranger just for pleasure makes no sense to me, cuddling with a stranger just to enjoy the sensation doesn’t make sense to me either. I can only understand physical contact in the context of a close relationship, whether it’s with family, friends, or a partner. I mean, isn’t affection about liking and caring about someone? I just don’t get how people can take a shortcut to intimacy without actually knowing and liking each other.

The other thing that struck me about the Cuddle Parties is that their site spends a lot of time convincing people that cuddling can, in fact, be non-sexual. It also acknowledges the inevitable presence of sexual energy and arousal (including erections), and talks about how those are dealt with during the parties. Interestingly, a major rule of the parties is “no dry humping.” It was fascinating for me to read about non-sexual touch from a sexual perspective, because I generally forget that things like cuddling could ever be construed as sexual or seen as necessarily leading up to sexual contact.

I’m curious to hear everyone’s opinions on the Cuddle Party phenomenon. Great idea, or just kind of creepy? Have you ever gone to one? Would you?

(Edited August 6 to correct a mistake)

This was not necessarily the topic I had initially envisioned to launch this new series of posts, but very recently a few comments about sexual attraction on one of my older posts reminded me that this is quite certainly one of the things that make the less sense to me about the non-asexual world – and since becoming aware of this is what led me to first consider the possibility that I might be asexual, maybe it is, actually, the most fitting start for this new series.

I realized that I had no idea what “sexual attraction” meant about three years ago, when I became aware that my feelings for a woman I knew were much stronger than mere admiration and that maybe I was not heterosexual at all. I looked up resources about bisexuality on the Web to find more information about this orientation and see if it fitted me or not, but the definitions I found confused me, because they all more or less summed everything up to “you are bisexual if you are sexually attracted to both men and women” and I did not understand what “sexually attracted” meant. It was not a concept I had ever thought about. I identified as heterosexual more by default than certainty (I was a girl, so by default I had to like guys, unless I had good reasons to think otherwise – and until that moment I had never thought I had any reasons to question my orientation); I had crushes on guys and not on girls (or so I thought, anyway) so clearly I had to be heterosexual. When I realized I could also have crushes on women, I supposed it meant I was bisexual – but suddenly these definitions reminded me that these were sexual orientations I was thinking about, and that they were not just about crushes, but about sex – and sex was not something I had ever seriously thought about.

I decided to interpret “sexual attraction” as “wanting to have sex with the person one feel attracted to” and while this was a concept I could understand, it was not one I could relate to; understanding this eventually led me to identify as asexual.

As a sex-repulsed asexual, I find it very difficult to imagine people wanting to have sex in the first place. I am not sex-negative and I do not think sex is wrong, I just find it ludicrous at best and disgusting at worst. How one can desire to engage in something like that is beyond me – the best I can do is to remember that people do want to engage in that activity and often enjoy it very much, but it definitely seems very strange to me.

Looking at someone and thinking “I’d like to have sex with him/her” (this is how I imagine sexual attraction to be like) seems even stranger, especially as this is supposed to be something positive, like a compliment. A few times, I have tried to think about people I find attractive in those terms – to picture myself having sex, or wanting to have sex, with them. But it always killed the attraction rather than enhanced it – it made me feel very uncomfortable and I could not endure thinking about that very long, because it felt wrong to think about these people in such a way. I do not mean that it felt wrong in a moral sense, but rather that it did not seem to be a natural way for me to think about them. I could not keep feeling attracted to them after thinking about them in a sexual way (or whatever I imagine to be a sexual way, obviously).

Back when I was still trying to figure out whether I was asexual, I remember the final test that convinced me I was definitely asexual. I thought about my celebrity crush – a movie star I had had a crush on for several years – and asked myself to imagine what I would like to happen if he could suddenly appear in my room and if everything was possible (meaning that if I wanted something to happen, for instance if I wanted him to kiss me, he would really want to do it and not just submit to my every wish like a puppet). Basically, what I thought was that if there was one person in the world I should be sexually attracted to, it should be him, since I had been totally crazy about him for years. But I could not imagine doing anything sexual with him. I even thought that I really did not want him to suddenly appear on my bed naked or anything like that – I could think of so many outfits he had worn in movies that I would rather see him wear! I think that back then I thought that if he kissed me and if we cuddled it would be nice, but nothing more. Thinking about seeing him naked, touching his naked body (not even thinking about touching him there), or even worse, being naked and touched by him, were all very unpleasant images that I hurriedly kicked out of my mind before they could kill my attraction to him. Whatever I wanted to do with my celebrity crush, sex was absolutely not on the list.

I also find it hard to understand sexual attraction as a positive feeling, because I cannot help feeling it is quite demeaning to the person who is desired in that way. Now, this is just my gut feeling – I try very hard not to think of it that way because it seems too sex-negative. But I find it very hard to imagine an emotional component of sex – it seems merely physical (and unpleasantly so) to me. So, from that point of view, being sexually attracted to someone means being attracted to their body and their body only, and this offends me – it seems disrespectful to the person to want to use their body in that way.

I like to think (and I am aware that this is probably totally unrealistic wishful thinking) of myself as impervious to sexual attraction – and I do not mean that I think of myself as unable to experience it (quite obviously, it is the case – if I could experience it, I would certainly not have such a negative idea of it; I tend not to reject things I experience, but to try to understand and eventually accept them), but that I think of myself as someone that no-one could feel sexually attracted to. I know it is quite certainly not the case, as there is nothing about my face or my body that should repulse the average person and therefore no reason why, for statistical reasons alone, there cannot be at least one person who saw me once and thought me sexually attractive – but thinking of someone being attracted to me in that way is nearly unbearable. I prefer to live in a fantasy world, in which my innocent and youthful looks are enough to prevent anyone from having impure thoughts about me (just kidding here – I do not believe in purity or think that sex is evil or whatever).

I am aware that I have a very negative view of sexual attraction. On the other hand, I live in a culture that highly values it and among people who are shocked when I tell them how I understand it, because they never saw it as the ugly thing it is for me, so I try to remember the way they understand it (since it is a concept that they relate to, not I, it seems that I should try to see it from their point of view and not mine), even though I will probably never be able to see things that way myself. I do not do this in order to pretend to understand things the way most other people do, but simply in order not to be intolerant and reject what they experience simply because it does not make sense or appears unpleasant to me. I wish others would see things from my point of view sometimes and understand that there are things (like sexual attraction) that I do not experience and that I cannot relate to the way they do; the least I can do is to know how they see things and accept that we perceive them differently.

The more I think about it, the more I hate the word “virgin” and wish it would just go away. Long before I came to identify as asexual, I was uncomfortable with the heteronormative nature of the concept, and was aware that it was irrelevant for non-heterosexuals. Sexual people of various orientations can and should redefine and reclaim the idea of being or not being a virgin in whatever way makes sense to them and fits with their idea of what sex is, but opting out of the dichotomy altogether is more complicated.

Since I do like guys in some sense, people (particularly heterosexual guys) often put together the ideas of “straight” and “virgin” and can’t seem to get their heads around the idea of heterosexual virginity being a state that does not necessarily ever need to change. They assume I am attainable, and occasionally delude themselves into thinking they will be the first to attain me. The idea of women who like men but don’t want to have sex with them just does not exist for most people. I don’t like admitting that I am a virgin for this reason, but don’t want to say that I’m not, either.

I recently wrote a piece for AVEN’s Asexual Perspectives section, in which I chose to focus on the most important thing (at least, I think) that my discovery of my asexuality brought me: the awareness that I should not take anything for granted, and that I should question even things that seem obvious to everyone (and that, indeed, maybe for that very reason these are the things I should question first of all).

This led me, among other things, to question the belief that the concept of romantic love is universal and that romantic relationships are essential components of happiness, and to discover my own aromanticism and come to identify as celibate, something which matters a great deal to me now. It has also led me to realize that there are things that everyone takes for granted but that I often find it difficult to fully understand or that make no sense at all to me – like sex, romantic relationships and the whole concept of “cheating”, for instance.

In my previous post, I wrote that I did not want to keep thinking like the heteronormative person I am not, and that I had decided to stop pretending I understood and believed in the norms and assumptions of the heteronormative society I live in and to ask questions to make my ignorance known and maybe gain a better understanding – but an outsider’s understanding – of these matters. I think that this blog is also a good place for me to try to make sense of them – or at least to state that they make no sense to me at the moment.

In my next posts, I intend to explore these various concepts, norms, ideas and beliefs from an outsider’s point of view – a little, I suppose, like a visitor from another planet entirely populated with asexual beings (“asexual” taking here also its biological sense of “which reproduces asexually”) would try to make sense of them. After all, the more I think about all this, the more I feel I am coming from another planet.

As Ily wrote in a blog post over a year ago, it is easy for asexual people to “pass”, since asexuality is not expressed in a conspicuous way that could indicate at first glance that we are different. I suppose it is true of most sexual and romantic orientations; people may choose to wear some symbols to make their orientation clear to anyone who cares to interpret the signs (like wearing “Mars” or “Venus” jewelry, for instance, to indicate that one is interested in one’s own gender), but if they do not make such efforts, it is not really possible to tell at first glance what their sexual and romantic orientations can be, and even those signs do not necessarily make sense to everyone, far from it. Still, at least the existence of most other sexual and romantic orientations is known by most people, which is not true of asexuality; some people try not to be heteronormative and to avoid assuming that everyone they meet is straight, for instance – but it is quite unlikely that even they are ready to consider asexuality a possibility, not because they are not open-minded enough, but simply because they may not have heard of it yet.

Of course, the problem – if we can call it that – with passing is not so much that people’s orientations are not conspicuous enough, but rather that people in general tend to assume that everyone is heterosexual until told otherwise (and may even be reluctant to accept that someone is not heterosexual when they are told about it). The problem is not that people do not behave in ways that make it clear which gender they are attracted to (if any) and which kinds of attractions they experience; sexual and romantic orientations are only components of who a person is, and there is no reason why they should advertise those components more than others like, say, their favorite food or music genre. Still, while the possibility that someone might be a vegetarian or be totally insensitive to music is quite probably not the one that comes first into people’s minds, I do not believe that everyone is assumed to love, for instance, hamburgers and pop music, so why should we all be assumed to be romantically and sexually interested in people of the opposite gender?

Whether we want it or not, though, this is what happens, and most of the time, it probably does not seem worth it to correct inaccurate assumptions, especially when asexuality can be so difficult to explain in a way that make it acceptable for others. The mistake is not really a harmful one, either; by passing as heterosexual, we are playing it pretty safe. People are (unfortunately) sometimes hurt because they are not heterosexual, but the opposite is much rarer.

Still. I have realized that I am tired of passing – of allowing people to believe inaccurate things about me, simply because I do nothing to correct them when I could. It seems to me, at times, that I have something like a duty to reveal the truth, to come out as asexual and aromantic whenever I have the opportunity to do that (that is, when the context of the conversation leads rather easily to such a revelation, such as when people ask questions about my romantic life) because I may very well be the only asexual and aromantic person that most of my acquaintances know, so they may have no other opportunity of learning about these orientations. If I do not come out from time to time for visibility’s sake, it is rather unfair of me to complain that most people around me have a rather narrow, heteronormative view of the world – after all, it is likely that only I can change that.

I am tired, also, of still thinking according to norms and expectations that, although they are the mainstream norms and expectations of the society I grew up in, are not the ones I fit or believe in. Maybe I believed, until I was 21, that I wanted to fall in love and have wonderful sex with the man of my dreams; maybe I believed, until maybe a year ago, that even though I did not want sex, a romantic partner would make me happy, but now I have finally managed to dissociate what I really want from what cultural myths and social conditioning once convinced me I should and did want, so why should I keep thinking in ways that do not fit what I actually feel and want?

Let me give you an example. Two months ago, I started an internship in a big company. I work in a large office with four women and four men, all much older than I am; three of the women are married and have teenage children. Most conversations are about these women’s husbands and children (the men generally do not talk much, or when they take part in conversations it is always about more general things, but they do not talk about such aspects of their personal lives; the more personal details they give are usually where they spent their last vacation or where they are planning on spending the next one).

The only person who is about my age is another intern, who worked in that office for the first couple of weeks I was there, then was moved to another floor so he could be closer to his manager. As soon as I had been introduced to him, I wanted to get to know him better, simply because I was longing for someone my age I could talk to (and especially a guy, since there were only girls in my major last academic year, and I have grown tired of talks about boyfriends, clothes, and how cute the teaching assistant is but how sad it is that he is not a bit taller). But I was afraid to go and talk to him. Contrary to That American Kid, I do not find it easier to talk to guys because I am asexual. Obviously, I do not feel shy or embarrassed to talk to them because I want to appear cool and potentially attractive to them, but I feel shy and embarrassed because I am afraid they (or other people) will assume that if I talk to a guy, it is because I am romantically (or sexually – not that anyone would actually say it, but maybe they think it?) attracted to him – and I am uncomfortable with such an assumption.

This is, of course, the consequence of the same social conditioning that once made be believe that I might be happier if I had a boyfriend or a girlfriend, or that the best way to be close to someone would be to be their girlfriend. Just like I have discovered that romance does not necessarily make everyone happy, and that in my case it is quite the opposite, and that it is possible to be very close to someone without being their romantic partner, I am now aware that there are other reasons for talking to someone of the opposite gender (or even someone of the same gender) than romantic or sexual attraction (well, of course I always knew that – for years I had only male friends, after all; but apart from them, the only guys I then felt like talking to were guys I found attractive). So why do I keep thinking as if I did not know better? Why do I keep fearing that people might interpret my behavior in a specific way, when this specific interpretation is not the one that would come to my mind first?

In short, why am I still thinking like a heteronormative person?

I have decided to do my best to put an end to that. Since I know that I am not interested in getting to know that other intern for romantic or sexual motives, I will stop assuming that others will think that these are my motives. I will, in fact, ignore that possible interepretation, because it is not coherent with the way I think, with my asexual-, aromantic- and celibate-oriented view of the world, a view of the world which does not include romantic or sexual motivations. I will talk to him because I want to, and get out of my mind the possibility that I might be assumed to have different reasons for doing that – because these other reasons do not matter to me.

But wait, you will tell me. You have to remember that other people – most of the people you know, in fact – follow different rules, that if, say, someone asks you to have a drink with them after work, it may (it does not have to, but it may) mean that they are interested in getting to know you better so they can decide if they want to try to date you or not. You live in a mostly non-asexual, non-aromantic and non-celibate world, and you need to play by its rules.

Well, no, I do not think so. We need to play by the established rules when those rules are here to guarantee our safety – like driving on a given side of the road, waiting until the light is green to cross the street, and so on; if each person followed their own rules in such matters, many people would be hurt or killed in car accidents. We also need to follow some basic social rules of courtesy and good behavior so that it is easier for people to live together. But I do not think that, if I think as an asexual instead of trying to see things from the point of view of who I am not, it is going to cause such terrible misunderstandings that it will become difficult for me to keep interacting with others.

In fact, I probably misunderstand many things when I try to think like a heteronormative person – since, after all, I am not heterosexual and do not really understand or know these rules very well. Most of the time, in a given situation, I sort of know what a heteronormative person is supposed to think, but it is not because I think that way – it is because I have heard other people talking about these things and I know what they think. I suppose, though, that at times my interpretations are wrong.

It is like trying to play a game I do not know the rules of and trying to figure the rule out by watching what the other players do. Because that game is of the kind that everyone is supposed to have learned to play as a child and to have played many times while growing up, none of the other players can imagine that anyone might not know the rules, and I am embarrassed to tell them that I do not know them and that in fact I have never played that game before, because I know that they will not believe me and it will take a long time and a lot of explanations to convince them that it is possible to grow up without playing that game. Until now, I did not say anything – I watched what the other players did and I tried to imitate them as well as I could. The game, however, was not very enjoyable for me, because I was imitating what I saw other people doing, but it made no sense to me; I was unable to think of a strategy, and therefore I had no chance of winning the game. If I asked someone to explain the rules to me, though, I might have more fun playing…

This is what I have decided to do. When I find myself involved in a conversation about sex or romantic relationships, instead of taking mostly everything for granted, like the non-asexual and non-aromantic people I am talking to, I now ask questions, and explain why I am asking them: “I’m sorry, but I have no experience with such things. What do you mean exactly by this?” or “I’m not sure I understand why this conclusion seems obvious to you – it’s not obvious to me, but that’s probably because I have never been in a situation like that. Could you explain to me why this is the only explanation?”

People are often surprised that I ask questions about things that seem obvious to them (like “being in a romantic relationship with that guy seems a lot of work and trouble – what is is exactly that makes it worth it for you?” or “you say that your romantic partner must always take your side if you are in a disagreement with one of your friends. Why is that?”) but they also answer, and it does not take too much to make them give a more detailed answer than “but it’s obvious” or “that’s just the way it is”. By asking questions, I am gaining a slightly better understanding of the world of sex and romance – but this time, it is an outsider’s understanding, not an insider’s. I am learning to see this strange world from the point of view of the extra-terrestrial being that I often feel I am in such situations, instead of trying to see it like a native, which makes no sense since I lack the personal experience and the interest required to really understand this world from the inside.

And, of course, by asking questions, I am making it clear to others that I am different from them when it comes to sex and romance – that I have not had the experiences they may assume a girl my age should have had and that none of this is obvious to me. It may not necessarily lead to my coming out to them as asexual and aromantic, but at least they usually notice that I approach sex and romance from an outsider’s point of view, something they probably never thought was possible before (how could someone feel that sex and romance are not things that concern them?). By asking questions about things that are supposed to be obvious to everyone (meaning: obvious to every non-asexual and non-aromantic person), I am not only gaining a better understanding of the non-asexual and non-aromantic world, but I am also making it more difficult for myself to “pass”.

Regardless of sexual orientation, all people have egos, and anyone can get jealous. I have an old friend with whom I have always enjoyed a flirtatious dynamic and the knowledge that he is attracted to me. When he got a serious girlfriend, we saw each other less often, but when we did, our dynamic was unchanged and I was still able to enjoy the innocent flirtation and validation of my attractiveness. However, his girlfriend eventually got really jealous and complained about his tendency not to introduce her to his female friends, so he promised to introduce her to me and we all went out with some other friends.

Even though I never had the slightest bit of interest in being with him, it pained me to see him shut off the way he usually acts around me, interacting with his girlfriend in a way that made it clear she was special to him and with me in a way that showed I wasn’t a threat to their relationship. I realized that many of the things that normally seemed natural to us, like sitting close together or sharing a drink, suddenly seemed impossibly intimate and inappropriate with her in the room. Those things were reserved for her, and it hurt to realize that.

It soon became clear that the only way to continue our friendship and eliminate his girlfriend’s jealousy would be for me to embrace her and be friends with them as a couple. But I don’t think I can do that, because I realized that my enjoyment of our friendship was based not only on his great qualities as a person and the interests and beliefs we share, but also on the particular type of closeness we shared and the way he made me feel attractive and special. I have to admit that despite our long history, without those things, I’m not sure what it would mean for us to be friends at this point, or if I want to try.

Before I start telling you about my first meetup, I would like to apologize for not writing/posting this sooner. I have had to deal with computer problems and health issues; I am happy to say that the computer and I are now perfectly fine, so I should be able to follow the intended schedule from now on.

I was aware, when I decided to attend it, that the Asexy Dirty Weekend was not a typical meetup, since it spread over a weekend instead of being a one-day event. In a way, it bothered me a little that this would be my first meetup, since whatever happened there would probably not be representative of what goes on at meetups in general:if I enjoyed it, I might be disappointed when attending one-day meetups in the future; if I did not, I might be put off attending meetups of any kind, even though whatever I disliked about the Asexy Dirty Weekend might be due to the fact that it was a weekend event. But I also wanted to be part of such a unique event – in fact, I think it was its uniqueness that made me want to attend it, while I had never really been tempted to attend a meetup before (I had thought about it, thought it would be nice, but never really tried to do it; I thought about meetups in general, but never actually considered attending a specific one). I happened to have planned to be in London around that date, so traveilling to Bath was not really much trouble; I might not have done it just for one day, though, but for a weekend, it certainly seemed worth it – and it seemed I simply could not miss such an occasion.

In the end, it turned out that a weekend event was probably the best kind of meetup I could choose to attend. I met some people on Saturday and some on Sunday, so the first good thing is that I did not meet everyone at once. The other good thing is that I had more time to get to know the other people (well, those who had arrived on Saturday like me, anyway) so by Sunday afternoon I felt rather comfortable with most of the people I had met on Saturday. A one-day event would have been too short for that, I think. Another thing that helped is that I helped cooking dinner on Saturday night, so by working in the kitchen with some other people I got to talk to them and get to know them a little, more easily than I got to know the other people the next day while just walking with them in Bath or sitting on the boat.

As I expected, there was little talk about asexuality – someone said at one point “I have never been in a room with so many asexuals!” and another person replied that they never really thought about that – about the fact that the other people were asexual too. So it does seem that meetups are really about meeting other people, and asexuality does not really matter – the people attending happen to be asexual or related to asexuality in some way simply because the meetups are organized via AVEN, but asexuality is not the focus of meetups. I expected that, and I think it makes sense; our sexual orientation is important to us (or at least, it is to me), but it is not the main focus of our lives. Still, even though asexuality was rarely discussed, there were several moments when it was mentioned or when what someone said clearly indicated they were asexual, and that certainly fulfilled my expectations about reassurance.

I definitely had a great time, met very nice and interesting people (some I had never really noticed on the AVEN boards – how could I, since I nearly never go there? – and others I had noticed in the thread dedicated to the Asexy Dirty Weekend and was looking forward to meeting) and felt sad to leave them. I hope I will be able to go back to the UK and attend another meetup – maybe one of the London ones, since I enjoyed my stay in London and want to go back there.

Photo Credit: Hooligantastic.

Lately, the topic of choice over at Asexual Explorations has been sexual repression, one that has been on my mind lately as well, in a slightly different sense. As Pretzelboy points out, the term “sexual repression” has roughly as many definitions as it does letters. Thus, when people use the term,

[s]ometimes they mean that a person isn’t willing to acknowledge their own sexual feelings. Sometimes they mean that a person is deep-down really interested in sex despite the plain reality that they aren’t. Sometimes they mean that not having sex somehow in a super-secret way causes neuroses. Sometimes they mean that a culture is sexually restrictive with its negative messages and oppressive rules about sex. Sometimes they mean that a person isn’t able to express their sexuality because of such rules. Sometimes that mean that a person who isn’t interested in sex must be disinterested because of such societal rules, ignoring the fact there might be other reasons for not being interested in sex (like lack of desire, for example.)

I’ve written — rather minimally – in the past about the accusation of sexual repression, particularly the definitions that resemble denial and a reaction to upbringing/ abuse. It’s a response asexuals who attempt to come out often receive, and I’ve stated before how my own experience of the asexual community defies its characterization (from folks like Joy Davidson) as a place where important explorations of self and sexuality are truncated. In response, largely, to Davidson’s claim on 20/20 that if you’re going to label yourself asexual, “You may as well label yourself not curious, unadventurous, narrow-minded, blind to possibilities. That’s what happens when you label yourself as…as…sexually neutered,” I pointed out that — since finding the asexual community – I had learned more about myself and my sexuality, expressed more curiosity, adventured further into the sexual world, and opened my mind up more to what sexuality is, how it works, and what it can be, than I ever had as a person defaulting into sexuality. Commenters on that post suggested a similar experience, which is mirrored in the livejournal forums, and presumably on AVEN as well, although I don’t frequent the forums there and therefore can’t speak to trends. For many of us, it seems, an asexual label — or even interaction with the community sans labelling, which seems to be more of my role these days — allows something that assuming sexuality does not. Introspection, an increase in knowledge/awareness (of sexuality as well as asexuality), and eventually self-actualization seem — at least for some of us — to be outcomes of our interaction with the ase community, even as Davidson and her doppelgangers claim this interaction fundamentally limits us from those experiences. I have seen more willingness to recognize and support fluidity in the asexual community, for instance, than in any other sexual community, straight or queer. Individuals bringing “confessions” to the table — of shifts in orientation within the homo-/ hetero-/ bi- scheme or from asexual to sexual, of realizations that trauma/ religion/ identity confusion/ etc did play more of a role in their asexuality than they previously realized — receieve, in my experience, a similar respect and support to those who come to the forums asking for support of their asexuality. I have yet to see the same for lesbians who come to identify as bi, etc. For many asexual people, there seems to be a fundamental value, which suggests that figuring out one’s identity, as an individual, matters significantly more than which identity one determines.

As David said on the Montel show a few years back, “here [in the asexual community] is a place you can come to explore yourself. Here is a place you can talk about yourself. We’re not saying, come to the asexual community, and then just give up trying to figure out who you are. It’s a community where we’re very actively asking questions about ourselves.” For some of us asking those questions, the answers lean — in time — toward sexuality. A year ago, I was trying to wrap my head around how to come out as asexual or potentially asexual; I felt recognized in what I read on the subject, and supported in the ace community. Now, although I still respond, act, think, and feel, much more like an asexual person than a sexual one, I recognize that I am — in all likelihood — someone whose sexuality, whatever it looks like, has largely been shut down through negative experiences. My sister’s statement to me last year, that it was less likely I was asexual and more likely that I’d been “raised by our parents” — (a reference, largely, to their body-phobic/ sex-negative perspectives) — has proven wise in a way I almost hoped, initially, that it would not. As the therapy I’ve been receiving for years (for reasons unrelated to sexuality) begins to explore this territory, it becomes increasingly clear that I am in many ways just what the Joy Davidsons of the world are seeking: the girl raised in a (bizarre attempt at rejection of) hyper-religiosity, in a culture of abuse and trauma, with medical conditions (and treatments) that can contribute to hyposexuality. I score at least 3/3 on the trifecta for dismissal. Davidson claimed on 20/20 that “there may be something, maybe something physiological, intricate, maybe something that has to do with trauma or abuse, or repression or a severe religiosity that has predisposed you to shutting down the possibility of being sexually engaged,” and here I am — the prototype for this explanation. And yet… I still don’t agree with her, and I don’t agree with her criticisms of asexuality or the community built around that identification. 

For starters, although I can fathom a sexuality I do not yet experience, although I can recognize the multitude of factors that have (most likely) dismantled what might have been a much more “traditional” sexual development, and publicly claim them on this blog, I don’t project my experience onto all members of the community. Are there others in the community who have ended up there with the help of trauma or bizarre religious teaching? Certainly. Are they the only people there? I doubt it. And, given the relatively poor understanding the scientific community has about the development of desire, attraction, and orientation, isn’t it equally possible that people end up in other orientations for these same reasons? Straight girls try on homosexuality for a semester to rebel against their upbringing. Lesbians are constantly (if decreasingly) accused of responding to trauma inflicted by men through an attraction to women. Gender (and relationships between people of defined genders) are policed as medical issues. So, why is asexuality — which, if it is constructed through personal experience and biology, is no more constructed than other forms of sexuality – so unacceptable?

My personal stance, for some time now, has been that I don’t care what I “end up” being — asexual, sexual, or attracted to rutabagas — so long as I can feel that I am genuinely that, and not hiding out in an orientation that keeps me safe from personal realities too frightening to face. And so I move forward, attempting to understand and heal whatever I have left to understand and heal. In the meantime, however, I don’t find anything immoral about a temporary identification. I may have chosen against actually self-describing as asexual, but I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with a person similar to me who chooses to do so. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with choosing to identify a safe space, in which to do the necessary work.

For many, asexuality is not a safe space. It’s an identity, – and one that sometimes brings misunderstanding, pain, and rejection, even ridicule or betrayal. For others, it’s the exact security necessary to begin the difficult process of unpacking one’s past. Winter, one of the asexual people present on the Montel show said that “We [in the asexual community] are not a place you go to hide from your sexuality,” — and she’s right. That’s not the purpose of the community. “Asexual” is not intended to mean traumatized or confused. Yet, it’s unrealistic to suggest that traumatized and confused people will not end up there. Opponents of asexuality attack the community for providing a place to hide, despite the fact that it’s not the community’s purpose. It’s my personal opinion that rather than claiming none of us are hiding, or that those who are have no place in the community, we might choose to ask what’s wrong with hiding. I’ll say again that I value introspection and self-actualization. However, I know that exploring difficult issues and working to heal them requires the secure environment where one can do so “safely” and with support. Being badgered into sexuality has done nothing for me. Being allowed to identify as asexual has allowed me to address the possibility that I am not. So, while I agree with Winter’s statement that the ace community is not intended for hiding, I disagree with what follows, her idea that, “If you are just looking to hide from a problem, we aren’t the place for you.” The community, with its refusal to force sexuality, its tendency toward supporting folks, and the surprising willingness of (many) members to gradually educate themselves (and in certain cases, each other) about sexuality, may be just that place. I don’t advocate hiding forever, but I reject the idea that hiding temporarily can’t help. Sometimes we need support in what we have been — or feel we have been — to explore what we might become. Sometimes it’s only in finding a place to hide that we uncover the courage to seek.

Photo ganked from hamsBlog.

Asexuals read Playboy for the articles. Asexuals watch hotforwords to learn the etymology. Asexuals… watch PG Porn and analyze it so thoroughly they lose the joke. 

Ok, so actually the last of those blanket statements applies to me, and in spite of how logical the ace identification would be, I still — er– don’t identify as asexual. (After all, when have I ever been logical?) I was, however, intrigued by the notion of PG Porn, which I first heard about on an installment of Loveline last month, (listening goes against my prudish tendencies, but I’m a wee bit obsessed with all things Dr. Drew), and which sounded like potentially good material for a post. After all, I more than owe a blog post at this point, owe a bone thrown to any loyal readers still loitering about after all those months of silence spent bartering my life for a degree. 

PG Porn, the brainchild of filmmaker James Gunn, is described as “non-sexual” pornography. In fact, at least one of the videos features a ”non-sexual content warning” — (“this video contains graphic footage of some really happy guys in a bus [...] who are totally awesome and just want to be nice”), — which also happens to predict (and attempt to pre-empt) my over-analysis. (“If you are still reading this, you may be taking your PG Porn viewing just a little too seriously. Not that we don’t appreciate the close attention, but it might be just a bit obsessive. That said, we like you better than the people not reading this.” Aw, shucks. Thanks, PG Porn.) The warning bodes well for the films; likewise, the hilariously off-beat description that first led me to Gunn’s page: “How many times have you been watching a great porn film – you’re really enjoying the story, the acting, the cinematography – when, all of the sudden, they ruin everything with PEOPLE HAVING SEX?” The seemingly delusional perspective on porn’s filmic merits aside, the blurb reads like a plug ganked directly from the AVEN boards. I decided that a parody of porn, some ace-approved Bizarro-world version of the stuff, must await. Right? A less beastial (technically speaking) version of asexualporn.com must be a click away. Mustn’t it?

Well… maybe.

The issue, (at least, if you’re hoping PG Porn will represent more than an amusing premise well-executed), lies in the ongoing difficulty of defining what is “sexual.” After all, any claim of non-sexuality requires an understanding of “sexuality,” in order to decide what it’s rejecting, what it’s rebelling against. Consider the e-mail conversation I had with a friend last year, in which we discussed my involvement with the asexual community and my own questions about whether or not I identified as asexual. At one point, he suggested I had “fallen victim to the media’s narrow definition of sexuality as things a person does with her vagina,” an uncharacteristically pointed line that irked me for a few reasons. Not the least of those reasons is this: if I’ve made that mistake, and one could argue I have, then I am most certainly not the only one. Perhaps it’s the lack of comprehensive sex education (although my health class film-strips thankfully pre-dated the abstinence-only Bush years ), but an increasing number of people these days seem to equate sexuality and genitalia, from the preteen girl who claims giving oral sex is non-sexual (after all, it doesn’t involve her vagina) to the right-wing fundamentalist whose concept of homosexuality directly resembles the “adult” video rack.

Likewise, what’s been removed from porn to create its PG counterpart, is the physical act of sex, not sexuality as a whole, or even more than that layer of it. Take casting in the films, which combines mainstream actors with adult film stars, and note that the vast majority (potentially all) of the women involved fall into porn star category. Why? Because by cladding these women in the same skin-tight, low-cut tops or short skirts that they wear in their non-PG porn roles, the tittilating sexiness of porn’s premise is preserved, in a new “tv-friendly” form. (Since the films currently air on Spike, the tv channel that originally marketed as “the first network for [misogynist heterosexual] men,” the inclusion of male porn stars apparently made less sense.)

If I’m starting to sound something like Tipper Gore circa the late ’80s, I apologize. In many ways, the PG-porn premise requires that the majority of more X-rated porn be left in tact. Doing so helps the films read as spoofs on the “gutter” minds of viewers, in much the same sense as the card game Dirty Minds: “If we set up this entirely nonsexual premise,” both game and films argue, “we bet you’ll mistakenly presume sex!” In truth, however, both entertainments rely, if not on sex, than on sexiness. As David at Love from the Asexual Underground, pointed out in a post late last night, “sexiness” is defined as