The Left Hand of Darkness

I heard there was something asexy about this book, so I read it (which took awhile). The book in question, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin, might be the first sci-fi novel I've ever read. Left Hand is about Genly Ai, an envoy from a confederation of worlds called the Ekumen. He's sent to a faraway planet called Gethen in order to pursuade the countries there to join that group. On Gethen, the people have evolved in a unique way in which they are neither male nor female most of the time, and basically asexual. But for a few days a month, they enter "kemmer", in which they develop male or female sexual characteristics and are interested in sex with others and able to engage in it. The rest of the time, they're not interested in sex at all. Whether people take the "male" or "female" role seems to be random, and people switch from month to month.

Gethen has no concept of gender or masculinity/femininity, which Genly, a man from a "bisexual" society, constantly struggles to comprehend. People like Genly are described as "perverts" who are "constantly in kemmer". There's also a bit of an unconventional love story that blurs the lines between friendship and romance. This was the part of the book that most touched me emotionally. I was really pulling for the relationship between these two people, and I won't tell you what happens, but the ending is a sad one. For someone who doesn't like Hollywood endings, I did want them to live happily ever after together. Maybe because in that society, there's no pressure for everyone else to do the same.

Aside from the constantly cold temperatures (people from other worlds call Gethen "Winter"), Gethen is definitely a place I would like to visit, especially the country of Karhide where the book begins. If you're into extremely intricate "worldbuilding", you will love this story. The detail makes you wonder where the book is going sometimes, but you'll become, quite uselessly, an expert on all things Gethenian. LeGuin called her world "a vision of genderless justice" and it does hold elements of wish fulfillment for me. Sex on Gethen, whether you have it or are celibate, is just so matter-of-fact, not mired in all the judgement that we put on it. While some people take a "vow of kemmering" and have a monogamous relationship with that person, there's not a lot of "romance". There's no dating or marriage, and everyone has an equal chance of bearing children. In Karhide, people seem to live in some sort of communal arrangement called Hearths, in which children are cared for. At any rate, you're seen as a person first, not a man or woman-- there's no other way. I know that gender has shaped me, as it's shaped all of us. Could we ever move beyond that baggage? It sounds like a great thing to leave it all behind.

In Praise of Confusion

Last week, I was interviewed by a reporter from The Chronicle (howdy!) for an article about asexuality and AVEN. I was asked some good questions that made me think. One point the reporter brought up was that although there may be a definition of asexuality, it's not really that concrete or obvious, and this is confusing. I agree, it IS confusing, but I realized later that the potential confusion over who is and isn't asexual might actually be a good thing. I'm no fan of intentional vagueness, but sometimes unintentional vagueness can leave you with a rich heritage, if you don't fight it. Along these lines, the first thing I think of is Judaism. In all my studies of religion, I've found Judaism, my own religion, to be the vaguest. All the prayers seem to say the same thing: God is our God, there is one God. I always wanted more information about God, but I never got it. I think it's because of this vagueness that Judiasm developed such a long tradition of lively discussion and debate on spiritual matters.

So it is with asexuality. The asexual community is one of the only places (and I just say this to be inclusive, because I know of no other place) where people are having discussion on the nature of sexuality, and on what defines their orientation. Of course, this discussion can be tinged with angst or anxiety, but for me, it served to expand my knowledge of myself, other people, and society in general. When I identified as straight, do you think anyone ever talked about what that meant? The answer, obviously, is no. Being heterosexual was supposed to influence the trajectory of my life, but it was never defined. For someone who feels as little attraction as I do, "liking guys" wasn't clear enough. In what way was I supposed to like guys? How few guys could I like and still be straight? What actions were supposed to accompany attraction? I would never know the answers. In my teenage years, I didn't have enough experience or information to even articulate these questions, although they hung out in a shadowy way under the surface of my "default" sexuality. It's my time with the asexuality discussion that's enabled me to come up with them now.

Since we're forming an asexual culture as we go along, I can say that I think it would be a shame if we rushed to some ironclad definition of asexuality. I like that there's no asexuality police ready to kick people out of the club for doing some "non asexual" activity. I know not everyone enjoys the confusion, but at least the asexual community is a place where it's okay to be openly confused, which is not a common thing to find. No one will foist an orientation on you, which is also rare in this world. Sexuality is fluid, we say, which can be both confusing and comforting. Questions can lead to more questions, and I think that's what really changed me; I acquired a new attitude where I don't accept "the default" anymore (although this is sometimes very annoying!). I hope we can remain a group where that lively discussion goes on, long after asexuality is well-known.

BFFs: Friedrich and Karl

A while ago I wrote about "Marx and Engels", one of the most asexual songs ever. It's an interesting coincidence then, that Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx were the third pair of BFFs to come to the top of my head (along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton/ Paul Cezanne and Emile Zola). These economist-philosophers were most famous for The Communist Manifesto, which they wrote together in 1848. Four years earlier, they had met in Paris, and their friendship would prove to be lifelong. In the 1850s, Marx and Engels lived in England, Marx in London and Engels in Manchester. Engels supported Marx and his family financially for quite some time. Marx was married with children; Engels had a long relationship with a woman, but was opposed to the institution of marriage. Marx died in 1883. Engels would live 12 years longer. After Marx's death, Engels compiled and edited what must have been thousands of pages of Marx's Capital. In one of his prefaces to Capital, Engels described Marx as "the best, the truest friend I had- and had for forty years- the friend to whom I am more indebted than can be expressed in words..." They both liked large beards that made them look rather unapproachable:

Aside from sharing interests and enjoying each others' company, the 3 BFFs I've covered so far seem to have one thing in common: A massive outpouring of creative energy. I don't know if our current times are as fertile for that kind of partnership. It seemed like in the 1800s, when men and women largely lived in different spheres, it might have been common for same-sex friendships to be the most important relationships in people's lives. I'm glad that women and men are more integrated now, but today, if you're married but you're closer to a friend than to your spouse, that would be considered very strange.

Things Asexuals Like: Doctor Who

This is what I think I know about Doctor Who: It's a TV show on the BBC in which people time-travel in a phone booth (what's a phone booth?). The show has run for an extremely long time but the title character is most recently played by David Tennant, who people seem to find quite the asexy beast. Knowing as little as I do about Doctor Who, I seem to be in a small minority among asexuals. WHO is Doctor Who? Is he supposed to be asexual? Why do we like him so much? Remember when everyone was talking about "The first rule of Fight Club", even people who have never seen or read Fight Club? That's what it's like to be an asexual who's never seen Doctor Who. Even so, I can identify if you have a Doctor Who Livejournal icon and I might be able to pick David Tennant out of a lineup, probably because he's appeared multiple times in the "Who do you find beautiful/handsome?" thread on AVEN. As you can see, Doctor Who appears to be part of our culture, whether we're watchers of the show or not.

The German Baby

On Friday, I got to go to a small meetup where we locals hung out with a globe-trotting AVENite on her way to Sydney. Apparently, they're having a meetup there today with 20 people. Whoa. We met at Peter's Cafe, a diner in Millbrae where I ordered an extremely terrifying pancake called "The German Baby". An enormous, dense concoction, I was repeatedly warned that it would take 35 minutes to cook. The waitress kept telling me that "The baby is on the way". And later, "How's the baby?" We had a jolly time talking about travel and our worst sunburns ever. Yay for unofficial meetups!

Someone also coined the term "Post-pride depression". Apparently that's what I'm suffering from at the moment. Oh, woe! I'll go drive down 280 to the dulcet tones of Orange Juice...maybe that will distract me from thinking of rare ailments I can potentially use to get out of my job assignment.

Nervous Habits

This week, I was contacted by the reporter from the Chronicle, wanting to interview me for a larger article on asexuality. I wasn't sure at first, but then I decided I would go for it. First of all, I was worried that future employers would Google me and find things about my sexuality. However, as it is now, they would find "Radical Asexual Blogger" next to my name if they bothered to go to page 2 of the results. And for the longest time, my top result has been from "The Magazine of Persian Weddings". Don't ask. I was also told by a friend that employers would think I was less distractible because I wouldn't be checking out my co-workers. However, I am constantly looking for cute new co-workers to add a little excitement to my day, so...

I was also worried about the offensive comments that people will no doubt leave on the newspaper's website. If people's own "friends" tell them that rape would straighten them out, goodness knows what strangers would have to say. However, if the article could make a few asexual people realize they're not alone, I think it would be worth it. And having it be in a local paper might even get a few more people to meetups, which I would love. The fact that other AVENites wanted to be interviewed made me feel a lot better, because I tend to worry about things for no apparent reason. Thanks, guys.

Pride may be over, and I may have met my meetup goal (if more than 10 people are regularly attending, the format may have to change), but I don't plan on "sitting on my laurels", whatever that means. Not totally sure what I'll do next, but I have been wanting to make some asexually-related videos for quite some time...

The Women

Before the parade yesterday, a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle spent quite a bit of time talking to members of our group. I wondered if we would appear in his article, and we did. You can read the whole thing here. These are the AVEN-related passages:

"I'm a guy at work, but 80 percent of my free time I'm female," Rose said. "Gays and lesbians are fighting for the same things, but they're a little bit ahead of us."

Perhaps even further behind in recognition were a nearby group of women from the San Francisco-based Asexual Visibility and Education Network, who were making their first appearance in a Gay Pride Parade in America.

Wearing T-shirts that said "asexuals party hardest," they said the Internet has brought together people who are not engaged in sexual activity - showing them that they can focus on what they want, not what other people tell them they should want.

"It's queerer than queer in some ways," said Karli June, a 26-year-old Stanford graduate student. "Asexuality gets pathologized, medicalized and infantilized."

My first thought upon reading this was "A GROUP OF WOMEN?" It's funny because at the BBQ on Saturday night, a group of people were talking about how it was good that AVEN's founder is a young man, because that breaks sterotypes about what kind of people want and don't want sex. The difficult thing about analyzing media portrayals of asexuality is that when people have never heard the term before (as if often the case), every word counts. For a different population, being called "a group of women" might have been a minor gaffe. And it probably still is, but it's very possible that someone could come away from that article thinking that asexuals are only women. Calling us a group of people who "don't engage in sexual activity" is also incorrect, although I guess it's more informative than "a group of people with a cake fetish".

At any rate, I'm glad that no value judgements were made-- "Asexuals in a pride parade, how UTTERLY BIZARRE!" Yes, I have very low expectations, guilty! It is indeed true that we're far behind other queer groups in terms of recognition, and I'm glad that we were included in a discussion of other people's struggle for validity.