Sunday, September 19, 2010

San Jose Actually Worked.

No offense to San Jose, but I was pleasantly surprised when we got a big turnout--11 people-- for our meetup there today. I thought it was fun, and there was a good mix of Apples to Apples-playing and more serious asexuality discussion. For part of the time, the large group broke into smaller groups fairly organically, which I thought worked well. For past meetups, I tried to get down a list of funny things people talked about, but this is apparently something I'm not good at doing, so I gave up. All I can remember now is that "spam" and "Detroit" are always trump cards...good to know.

If you've been reading this blog for a long time (thank you), you might recall posts where I wondered if we would ever get 10 people at a meetup. Now, for the past few meetups, we've been exceeding that number. I tend to be overly hard on myself, but I shouldn't underestimate that. It's something everyone who's participated is entitled to feel proud of. At the meetup, a few people asked why the Bay Area has so many asexuals (or some variation on that question). I tried to explain that the reason we get this many people at meetups is only because we've been having them for so long. At the first meetups I organized, it was common to only get one or two other people. I think that any area having regular meetups for (oh my gosh...) 4 years would meet or easily exceed this number. I say this just so everyone knows, it can be done.

2 comments:

heidi said...

Yay for the meetup awesomes! I found this yesterday - it's about Afghan girls being raised as boys sometimes - "Mrs. Siddiqui said she never had romantic fantasies about boys — or of girls, either."

From http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/world/asia/21gender.html (page 4 or 5)

Anonymous said...

Hooray for big meetup turnouts!
I've organized a few ace meetups here and have found that perseverance is definitely key. For you Bay Area folks, it does help that you're already in the Queer Mecca of the U.S. -- it gives you a bit of a jumpstart, in addition to all of your hard work ;-)

@ Heidi: Thank you for mentioning that article. I enjoy reading about cultural influences on gender and sexuality.

~Carsonspire