Our awareness is still low
But have we been paying enough attention to the nons? People who aren’t a thing are people too you know! The BBC helps out by paying deep solemn reverent attention to those thrilling misunderstood long-neglected insufficiently advertised people the Aze.
In the UK, our awareness of asexuality – the experience of not feeling sexual attraction towards others – is still low.
Well it would be, wouldn’t it. It’s not generally something we need to know about other people, nor is it generally something other people need to know about us. Not feeling X towards other people is mostly just a personal [whatever] and thus not of general interest.
I really can’t stress enough how important it is to grasp that our personal tastes or habits or quirks or indifferences are not of general interest. They’re not the kind of thing you can build a politics around, even an identity politics, and they’re not the kind of thing you can build a news story around, either. They don’t make a “community.”
A poll of over 1,000 UK adults in 2019 suggests that three-quarters of them were incapable of correctly defining asexuality.
And that doesn’t matter, because there’s not really anything to define. Lack of interest in sex is just that.
So what is asexuality?
It’s a spectrum of experiences and identities. Some asexuals don’t experience romantic feelings, but others do.
What is the BBC doing publishing this teenagery nonsense? Nobody cares.
We get a whole tedious list of definitions, as if we were leaving for Camp Wokamonga tomorrow and needed to know what to pack.
￭ Gray-sexual: Someone who identifies with the area between asexuality and sexuality.
Oh shut up.
For the AVEN [the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network] though, it is clear that the number of people identifying with the term worldwide has been growing. “The most noticeable thing is that new communities are emerging all the time,” says Michael Doré, their spokesperson.
Because people like you babble about this horseshit and because adult institutions like the BBC for some reason publish your babbling. It’s not because there’s anything there.
“Today, the online ace community is represented on social media, Facebook and Discord. There are organisations in many different countries around the world, including outside the Anglosphere. Year on year, we’ve had a steady increase of members joining AVEN.”
Then we get three people’s self-admiring accounts of themselves, which I didn’t read because I want to continue to have the will to live.
As a matter of fact, I had an AVEN account and was a member for years. It was a fairly warm environment to interact with strangers with whom I had nothing in common other than levels of attraction different from the norm, but ultimately I couldn’t take all the bullshit and the dogmas.
My favorite post was the one by a girl around seventeen years old, who wrote: “I used to be fully asexual, when I joined this forum. But now I no longer identify as ‘asexual’, but as ‘semi-asexual’. You see, I’m still asexual towards women, but no longer asexual towards men!” That should be in the DSM-V, surely.
Aka welcome to puberty, kid.
Oh fuck, another goddamn “spectrum?” More bloody “identities?” Soon to follow, the demand for “validation,” and “rights.” Soon they’ll be picketing the openings of romcoms to “educate” us about their “plight.” I am only slightly heartened by the fact that an “ace” is probably a bit less inclined to take out other people than your average incel, though I could see aces easily slipping into inceldom.
So many questions. Should I start an online community of non-stamp collectors? What about basketball non-fans? People who don’t like turnip? The possibilities are endless. Why be left out, or left behind? Choose your pronouns, and add your very own stripes to the LGBTQ2%*$ flag today! (Mind you, in order to do the latter, you’ll have to invent a new colour, as all the rest are taken.)
Oh, they exist:
https://www.google.com/search?q=heteroromantic+flag&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj8hf-EoL3wAhWNMd8KHU8wBlUQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1536&bih=754&dpr=1.25
And this: (I forget what “akiosexual” is supposed to mean):
https://www.google.com/search?q=akiosexual+flag&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwipsLOboL3wAhXOSt8KHehADywQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=akiosexual+flag&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoECAAQQzoCCAA6BggAEAcQHlC4NFipTmDNT2gEcAB4AIABUYgBjgiSAQIxNZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nwAEB&sclient=img&ei=6yyYYOmOIM6V_Qbogb3gAg&bih=754&biw=1536
If it wasn’t so self-important, it might be reasonable. There are some issues that folks who have no sexual interest whatsoever routinely encounter, and a bit of internal group support is handy, and acknowledgement by the public and media that this is a thing which should not be any big deal would also be good. Some people really do have an issue grasping the idea that a person in their ‘sexual prime’ might not be interested in anyone at all in that fashion, and it leads to a lot of stupid exchanges and comments that I’m sure are annoying to deal with.
But the media can’t just let it lie at, “Hey, these folks ain’t into boinking, stop asking them when they’re going to settle down and have kids, already, and also stop asking if they’re gay while you’re at it,” but instead have to wrap it up in “identities” and “spectrums” and all the rest.
Please, please, please, people, after identifying your pronouns, list all the things in which you are uninterested. Doing so removes the necessity for others to have to guess, thereby possibly bringing something up in conversation which you don’t care about and hence causing you to extreme, albeit unintended, violence that might drive you to suicide.
Absolutely. And partners of such people.
I identify as an apeanutbutterist, an aNascarist, and an aoperaist. The first two often lead to my being oppressed and denigrated; the last one I have a large community with whom I can share any feelings of oppression. I am still looking for a support group for ayogurtists.
Wait…I thought I was grey sexual: Over 60 but not dead yet (nudge, wink). Do we get a flag too?
Ikn: I am a bipeanutbutterist, into both creamy and chunky.
It would never work between us.
NotBruce:
As each non-this and non-that is added to the list, the ‘community’ becomes ever more exclusive, until it finally comes down to one individual who can keep it going by continually adding more of her / his / their / its / own traits until the non-cows come non-home.
Of course, the ‘non-cows’ category includes every other animal, plant, rock, mineral, sea, ocean, mountain, plain, volcano, etc, etc on Earth; no make that the solar system; no make that the Universe. So with every stage of this rake’s (garden not dissipated) progress the ‘community’ ever-widens, until it needs a full-time staff and an office tower full of supercomputers just to keep track of itself in terms of who and what it is not. Or should that be a non-full-time staff, non-office tower etc, etc, etc?
Which is very different from the category of people that don’t experience sexual attraction, since 99% of people do.
I laughed. I know a young woman/girl who is that age and still on the side of boys being an entirely theoretical prospect.
Isn’t a gray sexual what we used to call low libido? So not asexual at all, just not especially motivated by sex, regardless of which sex they are attracted to? I can understand Freemages point @7 about some in-group support being needed, but honestly, I don’t see why out-group should either care, nor make it our business to speculate about others drives or lack thereof. Personally I’ve made a lifelong point of not speculating or getting involved in others sexual attractions. kinks or lack of desire, unless that has intersected with my own in a relevant manner. Just not my business.
Bruce @12, you can count me out as well. Creamy peanut butter (we call it smooth) is just construction adhesive.
I think that it’s something that the general public should be vaguely aware of, and should have the resources to learn about if they end up in a relationship with someone that finds them attractive romantically but not sexually (or barely sexually). That’s all.
I struggle to see what goal this group could possibly have. Sure, some people are obnoxious about pestering others – especially women – to settle down and pump out babies. Some social interactions can get awkward, with one person hitting on someone that does not have reciprocal interest. Some people will further respond at the lack of reciprocal interest with offence; perhaps they will even suggest that the person must be gay.
But what on earth is the asexual community actually doing to solve these annoyances? Coming up with an elaborate system of incredibly granular degrees of asexuality, each with their own silly name and sillier flag – doesn’t do a damn thing. The message is simply that people have different sexual drives and wouldn’t it be nice of people weren’t offended / obnoxious about it, but this is already generally known and obnoxious people will always exist.
Especially women, indeed. Pestering men to pump out babies is not only obnoxious, but also stupid. Nobody could possibly be so stupid. Oh wait …
I really want to find whoever is responsible for this obsession with “identities” and throw them into a bed of poison ivy. (Things that are on my mind after spending a day dealing with a massive honeysuckle invasion.)
But I *love* honeysuckle! So romantic!
Of course, this occurs with people who are not aromantic also, just not interested in the asshole hitting on them. Asexuals are not alone in that. And yeah, the subtle and not so subtle ‘hints’ to women about what they should/shouldn’t be doing, the constant “I’ve got a friend you’d really like”, etc is annoying no matter what your sexuality.
Sigh. Yet another team joins the Victimhood Olympics. If everyone is a victim, who wins?
Nullius, please be more mindful of those that are clearly on the Honeysuckle Appreciation Spectrum such as GW. Your language, which includes ‘dealing with’ an ‘invasion’ of honeysuckle is very othering to this plant, and furthermore implies that honeysuckle plants have some nefarious intent towards your yard. Please discard your dignity by issuing a grovelling apology somewhere public, and use kinder language in the future.
And while you’re pondering your sins against honeysuckle, consider the pain it must give poor Ivy when you refer to her (him? it? they?) as “poison”. That is as defloraizing as you can possibly get!
Let me tell you about all the other hobbies I don’t have.
Honest to Pete.
Hm. I’m not asexual or aromantic, but if my wife were no longer around for some reason I strongly doubt I’d be interested in forming other sexual/romantic relationships, lasting or fleeting. I’ve got shit to do, books to read, a demanding cat.
So what’s the name and flag for that?
As an aidentitarian, it seems to me like so much of what is wrong with the world is directly attributable to People of Identity (as well as the closely related and largely overlapping People of Community). Simply belonging to a certain sex, ethnicity, etc. does not in and of itself make you a Person of Identity, nor does the idea that “We can’t stop talking about sex, ethnicity etc. as long as discrimination based on such labels continues to affect people’s lives”. Aidentitarianism is perfectly compatible with supporting special arrangements to account for physical differences between men and women etc. Aidentitarianism simply means refusing to accept that your various group affiliations define you as a person. Any talk of an aidentitarian “community” or “movement” would be an oxymoron.
People of Identity come in both left-wing and right-wing versions, but some common features include:
• An obsession with boxes and labels, not simply as convenient short-hands for ethnic origin, certain physical traits etc., nor even for identifying axes of oppression, but as cosmic revelations about the kind of person you are with vitally important implications for your inner life, your interactions with other people, who your friends and enemies are etc.
• Reducing individuals to representatives of such boxes and labels.
• Treating the boxes and labels themselves as homogeneous blobs, or at least a united “community”, while ignoring individual differences, differences in status or power, other group affiliations etc.
• Accepting the loudest, angriest, most aggressive self-appointed spokespeople of each such “community” as the rightful voice of the community with a legitimate claim to speak on behalf of all its members.
• The rejection of universal standards and a return to different rights, standards, roles etc. for different groups of people.
• Tribalism, forced orthodoxy and zero tolerance of dissent.
• A siege mentality and a perceived need to close ranks against hostile outsiders.
• Etc. etc.
Oh, an aidentitarian? Well I’m a Libra.
Iknklast,
As a lifelong peanut butter allergist, I find your apeanutbutterism highly offensive. My people have suffered years of oppression from the peanut supremacists, and now I suppose you want to dress in hive face and go around pretending to suffer anaphylactic shock. Stop appropriating our culture!
Long time lurker here, breaking my lurking briefly to give my two cents.
I have been asexual all my life and never felt the need to “come out”, because, as you said, Ophelia, it’s just an inaction and not something you do. But to me, asexual falls in line with heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual as the fourth (logical) category. Just as one cannot change from heterosexuality to homosexuality, one cannot change from asexuality to one of the other categories. Because of this, the distinctions made on forums like AVEN are utter nonsense to me; they are mostly just for people going through a long or short-term stint of voluntary celibacy.
I just think it would be nice if asexuality was simply acknowledged as belonging in line with the other sexualities with no further explanations needed.
Rassafrackin’ missing slash.
Don’t quite follow that last comment, Nullius… Have you just missed one of those honeysuckles as you swiped at it with your sickle, and fallen into the poison ivy? It sounds like the Day of the Triffids where you are. Here in Japan, the honeysuckles are all out where we are, but they are very well-behaved – my wife & I walked past two or three clumps this morning without getting entangled, though one of them did wave a tendril or two at us, in a friendly sort of way, we thought, not threateningly or hungrily.
I am disappointed to learn the true meaning of ‘gray-sexual’, which I had hopefully assumed to refer to attractive young people who felt an overwhelming attraction towards people above the age of 70. Are there any discernible differences between the American variety, spelled ‘gray…’, and the British variety spelled with an ‘e’ – ‘grey’?
Tim, I failed to close a blockquote tag properly. That is, I omitted the slash.
Japanese honeysuckle is great. In Japan. Here it, and several other varieties, are tenacious invasive species that choke off everything else. Here’s what amur (bush) honeysuckle has done to Missouri, for instance: https://youtu.be/4XALnfGoGHw It’s very, very bad. https://www.invasive.org/browse/subinfo.cfm?sub=3040
No, Nullius, I realised what you meant but wanted to tease you. Gomen-nasai! Oh, dear, I hadn’t realised that Asian honeysuckle had become such a pest abroad. Though I can understand it – with fond memories of honeysuckle in English gardens, and the bees they attracted, and in the late afternoon & dusk humming-bird hawk-moths (one of my rather too many favourite insects), I introduced a honeysuckle cutting, brought from the flood-plain below, in our garden here, in Japan. And eventually I had to to root it out and get rid of it – it started strangling everything; and its flowering season is so short compared with the more northerly clime of Britain. So, my commiserations.
One would certainly hope so. Except it is not a sexuality. There are varieties of sexuality, just as there are varieties of wine, cheese and orchids. As pointed out by YNnB@#4 above, the alternatives to straight hetero are LGBTQ2%*$. Of course, there will be those who maintain that the full spectrum should be something like LGBTQRSTUVWXYZANDNOWIKNOWMYABC2%*$. But asexuality, by definition cannot be any of those either.
It’s a bit like modern ‘dark-sucker’ theory in physics, which says that lights work not by emitting rays, beams, photons or anything electromagnetically else at whatever speed, but by sucking in dark. Physicists are divided on the issue, with something approaching a majority supporting modern dark-sucker theory but fearing to admit it publicly lest they be subject to the condescending sneers of the Establishment.
We can only wait and see what time, in its true fullness, delivers. Let’s hope that it’s a bit more than the same old, same old ticks and tocks.
Hope this helps.
;-)
Kalmen @#30: See #35 above. No !@$%^&*# preview like we used to have here once in the Golden Age of B&W. Sadly, nothing lasts forever. “The moving finger writes….”
How many times do I have to say that I have no technical abilities so please stop yelling at me about it?
Nullius I can’t figure out where you want a blockquote to end, so let me know where and I’ll fix it.
Tim wrote:
Ie, ie. I’ve got pleasant childhood memories of honeysuckle, too. I used to pick the flowers for the nectar walking with my dog through the cemetery across the road.
Ophelia: It was supposed to end right before, “Gotta say,” so that there was an outer blockquote wrapping around the inner two.
It turns that that Japanese honeysuckle is rather less savage than the Asian Bush Honeysuckle (I don’t know what part of Asia that comes from) that Nullius seems to have been at war with, but it does seem rather more savage than British honeysuckle. The greatest stranglers in Japan are the kudzu wine and its cousin, the beautiful wild wistaria – I remember walking along the northern shores of the island of Sado years ago at a time when the wild wistaria was blooming on all the trees it was simultaneously strangling: it was extraordinarily beautiful, as were the wonderfully scented wild roses (R. rugosa Thunb.) actually growing among the rocks on the shore.
I still don’t know how to do blockquotes – I have tried, but nothing seems to work; but I am wholly incompetent still with computers.
Tim:
Google up ‘HTML’ without the parentheses. It stands for ‘HyperText Markup Language’. Tutorials abound. See how you go.
Tim,
Learning HTML from scratch would not only be massive overkill, it would also be less than useful. WordPress comment forms (like this one) only accept a small subset of HTML tags and which are used can depend on which have been allowed by the blog’s owner. It’s easy enough to learn how to do simple stuff, though.
For (simple) blockquotes, see here:
https://www.techonthenet.com/html/elements/blockquote_tag.php
Notice that the text to be blockquoted is contained within ‘tags’: the word “blockquote” surrounded by angled brackets ‘opens’ the tag (begins the blockquote) and the same but with a forward slash inside the bracket and before “blockquote” ‘closes’ it.
This form of opening and closing tags in angled brackets will work for most stuff. For example, use “em” instead of “blockquote” if you want to emphasise text (with the B&W theme, this will give you italics).
Ophelia:
I’m by no means a WordPress expert but I can have a no-promises stab at restoring the edit button if you like. You know how to get in touch.
Omar at #36: I have not thought about it this way, but it does make some sense. Atheism is not a religion, either…
Omar & Latsot, thank you very much. I shall look into things.