Whoa, Married People Not Having Sex!

I'm not sure how many of you would have seen this, but The Guardian, a newspaper in the UK (where apparently, people actually read newspapers) recently published an article by an asexual guy, familiar to many of us, named Paul. You can read the article, called "We're Married, We Just Don't Have Sex", here. On Apositive, Pretzelboy commented: "Of the articles that have appeared on asexuality, I think this may be the best I’ve ever seen–they let the asexual person use his own voice for the whole piece, and the writing is quite good." I can't really say it much better than that. It was, indeed, a very good and informative article, proving that you don't need to show negative views to educate people on what asexuality is. I had already heard, through other articles and hearsay, most of what Paul wrote about his relationship (more on that later). What really stood out to me was this:

When my studies took me to New York, I got more involved with the asexual community there. I posted messages on their website and there were regular meet-ups in a little pink tea shop in the East Village - I guess you could call it the asexual equivalent of a gay bar.

That is exactly what I want! The asexual equivalent of a gay bar! I had no idea that, for a time, one actually sort of existed. New York, what happened? I hope folks there will be able to resurrect the glory of meetups past. (Also, down on Shortland Street, the "Asexual Society" meets every week for lunch. Maybe life will imitate art sometime in the future. True, you may not want to spend quite that much time with asexuals, but I, for one, can't seem to get enough of you guys!)

But back to the fact that I'm oddly famliar with Amanda and Paul's relationship, even though I've never met either of them. When you think about it, though, it's not surprising, as most publicity around asexuality seems to deal with married ace couples. And there have only been two or three that have appeared in the limelight. Although I'm sure there are others, I think it's safe to say that ace/ace marriages are extremely rare. It's funny, because you wouldn't think there's that much shock or entertainment value in two married people not having sex. As Paul says in the article, "We like to joke that the longer we're married the less unusual this is. By the time we've been married five years we'll be just like everyone else." But, it's not just the wider world that's interested in asexual marriages-- it's aces themselves. The prevailing emotion that seems to surround the idea of ace/ace marriage seems to be great hope. Even though we have unusual orientations and most of us probably have unusual lives to match, many of us still hope to get married one day. It's kinda funny how we hold out this hope under huge odds. I think part of the reason is societal-- getting married is the social equivalent of getting 500 tickets on a Skee-Ball game. But it's also hard to find someone who wouldn't want to find at least one special person to love for their whole lives through. Hell, that sounds pretty good! I'm down. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except for the fact that I find asexual views on marriage really interesting, and it's a topic I'd like to see more written about. If marriage didn't exist, what would be the chances of an asexual person inventing it?

(Oh, and if you're into marriage-- or heck, people in general-- remember to vote a big fat NO on Prop 8 in California!)