The Queer Ace. Open Letter to Researchers « Asexuality Studies. Open Letter to Researchers: We believe that researchers have an invaluable role to play in promoting understanding of asexuality, and that a better understanding of asexuality will promote a richer understanding of human sexuality more generally. Prior to the creation of online asexual communities in the early 2000s, the study of asexuality was largely limited to isolated case reports with no means of doing more systematic research. Thanks to the growth of online communities—and increasingly offline communities as well—the possibilities for researching asexuality have grown enormously, and an increasing number of people in a variety of disciplines are studying it. As members and allies of the asexual community, we are committed to promoting research on asexuality and working with researchers in a variety of fields. 1) People studying asexuality often face a tension between wanting to using existing instruments and developing new ones.
Sincerely, Asexual Awareness Week 2011 Committee. Sex Positive St. Louis » Blog Archive » (A)sexuality: The Making of a Movement. AAW 11 Logo Oct 23-29 is Asexual Awareness Week! That’s right now! To celebrate, SEX+STL refrained from all sexual activity this week. Just kidding. Actually, we hosted a screening last week of the new documentary working the nationwide film festival circuit: Asexuality: The Making of a Movement.
I like to joke that I’m the opposite of asexual. I used to think asexuals didn’t exist, that they were like Bigfoot or the Tooth Fairy. Since only 1% of the population is asexual, I was really excited to watch this film and learn about the growing awareness movement. The leader of the asexual movement is David Jay, who was featured in the film and founded the most popular asexual resource website, AVEN. Sex educators Carol “Sex-Positive” Queen and Dan “Doubting Thomas” Savage were interviewed in the film. The film was a fascinating mindbender with a surprise twist at the end, but the talk that followed was even more thought-provoking.
I am not asexual. Have we outgrown Pride movement? Results of the Asexual Community Census 2011. Megan Christopher: Asexuals Activate! : LGBT | POV. Ace Answers Podcast #3 and the End of Asexual Awareness Week. The end of this momentous week really deserves a thoughtful, well-crafted reflection post, but I spent most of the weekend trying to sew a TARDIS dress that I ended up half-crafting with blue and white duct tape, so I’m not really in the mood. My room is seeking funds from FEMA, I haven’t worked on my book in weeks, and I’m still unemployed – but I’d happily work on Asexual Awareness Week again next year. Hopefully I’ll be able to write up a more in depth review – after I transcribe my interview with author Sarah Kuhn. I really appreciate people commenting and asking questions, here, on Facebook, and on Twitter. I’m still open to questions; if you want to know something, just ask. The final Ace Answers Podcast is available, I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to them as much as I’ve enjoyed making them (right-click and ‘save as’ to download): Ace Answers Podcast #3 Like this: Like Loading...
The Ace Answers Podcast #2. The second podcast is now available, so right-click and save as: Ace Answers Podcast #2. For reasons known only to Technus, lord of machines, this podcast can also be listened to streaming just by clicking it, even though I did exactly the same thing that I did when I uploaded the first one. C’est la vie! This episode tackles the topics of misconceptions, challenges faced by asexuals, and asexual representations in the media.
I’m working on finding the best way to upload and share these podcasts, so hopefully they can be streamed at some point. I also hope to do some kind of collaboration with Melanie from Ace Secrets, so keep an eye out for that. And one more piece of Asexual Awareness Week news, I wrote an article for LGBTPOV that went up yesterday: Asexuals Activate! Like this: Like Loading... The Ace Answers Podcast. For Asexual Awareness Week 2011, I joined the planning committee (more on that in an article to be published this week on the blog LGBTPOV.) All the members had their own projects, and I decided that I wanted to give people in the community the chance to answer questions that no one was really asking. Given that we are often overlooked, ignored, or invisible, I wanted to offer the wider world an opportunity to hear from real, live asexuals, in their own voices. So I developed the Ace Answers Podcast, and contacted volunteers to share their stories.
The first of three podcasts is now available. To listen, right-click and download: Ace Answers Podcast #1. A huge thank you to all my volunteers. I hope this project is shared with others, and I hope those who listen to it come away with a greater understanding of the complicated but passionate community surrounding asexuality. Like this: Like Loading... From 221 B Baker St. to 30 Rockefeller Plaza: Asexual Representations in Pop Culture. Read Part II HERE. Equally as important as celebrating asexual heroes is having real-life reflections on the screen or page. Time Lords and wizards are all well and good, but they can too easily be dismissed as ‘unrealistic,’ because they don’t actually exist in our world where everyone has sex all of the time.
That doesn’t help ordinary human beings who are looking for validation, and reassurance that feeling otherwise is still okay. There aren’t a lot of modern role models. Two of the more visible asexual characters on American television today are leads of situation comedies, so their lack of libido is played for laughs – but that doesn’t make them any less realistic or identifiable. “I just wish I could start a relationship about twelve years in,” Liz says in the Season 3 episode, “Gavin Volure,” “when you really don’t have to try anymore, and you can just sit around together and goof on TV shows, and then go to bed without anybody trying any funny business.”
Like this: Like Loading... From 221 B Baker St. to 30 Rockefeller Plaza: Asexual Representations in Pop Culture. Read Part I HERE. Depictions of asexuality seem to be more common in Great Britain than the United States, possibly reflecting real life demographics. One of the more famous English ace examples in fiction would be the titular character from television’s Doctor Who. The Doctor is a man who has shied away from sexual encounters over the course of his 900-plus years. Granted, he’s a time-traveling alien whose biology has not been fully explored, but he’s also shown to be a brilliant, passionate, deeply feeling individual rather than some emotionless automaton, so in terms of role models, the asexual community could do a lot worse. The Doctor is considered a romantic asexual, although this can vary depending on the writer of the era and the actor portraying him. When asked about the conception of this child, the Doctor gets defensive: “Well how would I know?
And he’s adamant that there isn’t time for such things as it’s all, “running about, sexy fish vampires, blowing up stuff.” Like this: From 221 B Baker St. to 30 Rockefeller Plaza: Asexual Representations in Pop Culture. Back in the days when Lucy was still coming up with hare-brained schemes to get into Ricky’s shows, it was considered scandalous to show a married couple sharing the same bed on TV. In modern culture, with thinly-disguised soft-core porn making up a large percentage of HBO and Showtime programming, eyebrows are far more likely to go up at depictions of adults who demonstrate little to no interest in sex, and unfortunately for those who find sex as appealing as licking drywall, popular culture has sent a clear message: “Sex is normal – you are not.” The media is where humanity looks to see itself reflected, where people are reassured that they are not alone in their beliefs and can also learn about what is unfamiliar to them.
While there are some fictional examples for whom intercourse is not the answer, they’re hard to spot against the backdrop of our sex-obsessed society, which makes identifying and claiming them even more important. Who are these alien beings, you may ask? Like this: AAW2011-financialreport.pdf. Asexual Awareness Week 2011 - October 23-29.