On My List

Recently, a loyal reader suggested that I make a page of every cultural thing I reference, with descriptions of what they are. This was more than I wanted to take on right now, so I said, "How about I just make a list of required reading/viewing?" And that seemed to be okay with him. So I thought about it. I've talked about a lot of movies, tv, music, books, and articles here. But when it came to those that I thought were truly essential-- that I thought you had to read or watch, few were left standing. For example, even though I like to write about music, that's so open to taste and interpretation that I can't think of anything (besides Fabuloid's one hit, that is) that you absolutely must hear. And there were very few things you must watch. For once, in order of importance, they are:

1) Shortland Street, a soap opera from New Zealand, which you can watch parts of here. Gerald is the first (and only) out asexual character in film or TV.
2) Withnail and I, a British cult classic film from the '80s, is, if I had to choose, the film where asexuality is the most implied.
3) Season One of Dexter, a series on Showtime. This is just because it seems to garner a lot of discussion among asexuals. Dexter may be a serial killer, but he is also not interested in sex in the first season. He is also a character that you greatly sympathize with. However, if you don't like to see blood and guts, don't watch this.

Links are to posts where I previously wrote about the item.
And here's what you have to read, not really in order:

1) The New Single Woman. Let's face it, whether it's intentional or not, most asexual people will probably be single. And finally, here's a book that actually treats singlehood as a viable life choice.
2) Surpassing the Love of Men, because I think it's important for aces to know about the history of different sorts of relationships. If we want to try new things, it's good to know what came before.
3) On Chesil Beach, a very short novel with very asexual subject matter.
4) Bitch Magazine's article "Do Not Want". A model for media.
5) "Asexual and Autoerotic Women", from a compliation called The Sexually Opressed. If you'll pardon me quoting myself: "Well, I have a 30-year-old article in my life, and it has finally given me ancestors of experience. Knowing that people like me were previously identified, albeit briefly, feels like I've gotten a message of encouragement. And that gives me strength."
6) That's Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. Yes, this is a very sexual book, but I have to keep up my "radical asexual blogger" reputation, ha ha. I think that as asexuals, the sooner we reject "normal" and "being like everyone else", the better. Unfortunately, the current mainstream gay movement isn't a very good role model for this. But the people in That's Revolting are.

Bonus: The Bone People. This book has an ace main character and author! I reccommend it, but the subject matter isn't directly asexual.

Hopefully I'll find a way to link to this post on the side somewhere, and update it as I discover more things that you must read and watch. Feel free to debate away! And remind me of anything I've missed.

Strangers in the Night

A new label has been added: Living situations. I think that where you live and with whom is important in terms of relationships, but unless those relationships are romantic (ie, how to combine your home decor with that of your spouse), living situations are rarely talked about past college roommate issues. So guess what I'm going to do? Yep, that's right, talk about them.

Up until last month, I lived with my 2 cats in a large (although decrepit and overpriced) studio apartment here in San Francisco. Then, the cats and I moved to a house on the other side of town. We now live with two people, a dog, and another cat. The reason for this move was mostly financial-- my rent is now a little more than half of what it was before. But I was also often lonely living by myself, and I thought living with other folks would be a nice change. It turns out that may or may not be true. Like many people in San Francisco, my housemates are from Craigslist, people who were complete strangers before I answered their ad seeking a housemate. I don't know if this is a common thing in your area, but here, it's not relegated to just the young and poor (although I happen to be both). Some of these random people do become good friends. But I think most people who meet in this way continue to lead very separate lives. And somehow, that's even lonelier than living by yourself.

I was surprised at the generally positive publicity that living with total strangers seems to get. I'm always told that living with friends destroys friendships, and that when you live with strangers, you're "on your best behavior". Well, I can finally compare the two situations from my own experience. In my senior year of college, I lived in a house with 3 good friends and one stranger. There was drama sometimes, and lots of it. But at the end of the year, I emerged still friends with my friends. If I wanted to be alone, I could go to my room or the usually-empty running track near the house. But if I wanted to see my friends, all I had to do was walk upstairs to the living room. Now, I have to take a bus to see them-- any of them. For me, living with people who were already friends is the clear win. But, awkwardly enough, I'm not sure how to go about achieving that. It's not like college where everyone changes their housing at the end of the year.

Also, totally unrelated: Per one of your suggestions, I watched A Home at the End of the World. You're right, I really liked the unconventional family in the movie. And parts of it ("Come on, we're all beautiful and lonely here") were really funny, although others were quite sad. But I totally didn't read Bobby as asexual. I can see why someone might, although if I had to choose, I would definitely call him bisexual.

I Fear a Parade! Tra La La!

Last year, I wanted to plan on having a booth at the San Francisco Pride parade n' celebration. But, seeing as this would cost something like $500, I had to give up on those plans. This year, I want to plan on us marching in the parade. But this idea isn't without its issues...

I'm always in conflict as to how I talk about meetups and real-life asexual community. On the one hand, I don't want to show weakness, and I don't want people to think that community organizing is prohibitively hard. It's not that hard, although I sure don't make it look easy. But on the other hand, I do want to show weakness, because then people will know that anyone can organize community, even if they, like me, cannot plan their way out of a paper bag.

This post might fall into the second category. Often, I seem to have ideas that sound amazing at the time, but later, I wonder what I was thinking. This is definitely where I am when it comes to marching at SF pride. I know that a major point of our march will be to show how many asexuals and allies there really are. (That is, if it even registers with most people seeing our group go by who we are and what we're about.) I also know that getting a critical mass of participants will be a very difficult push up until the end. The result will be a really glorious meetup. But if the point is education and visibility, I think we could do that more efficiently through other channels. (Totally unsexy channels, to be sure.) Marching would be a historic moment that would definitely stand out in the events of my life, and maybe all of our lives. I'm ready, but does that matter?

Currently, my job (the thing I get sort of paid to do) revolves around planning a volunteer program. I was warned that if my first volunteers aren't wonderful and do a great job, the program will be set back and no one will want to cooperate with me in the future. I feel like our first really big activity will have to be wonderful and do a great job, too. But that's a lot of pressure!

My fear is that people will plan on coming, but then we'll realize we only have something like 15 people participating. I don't want to cancel the effort, because then I'll feel like an idiot. But I'll feel like an even bigger idiot if only a handful of people show up on the day of. The idea of telling interested parties that we wouldn't actually be marching makes my pulse speed up in a bad way. But if people don't come out of the woodwork to drink excellent chai in a cafe, will they come out to march in a parade? Somehow, I doubt it. And I don't think people understand that we need solid RSVPs now in order to go forward with this project. Now that I've achieved my goal of 10 people at a meetup, I want to escalate my efforts. Is marching the best way to do that? Or should it be more like getting 12 people at a meetup?

I await your comments, enlightened ones...

Erasing Desire

"Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary's life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime."
--Angela Davis

Many thanks to Kim-- I was despairing of having something to post about tonight. Anyway, in a comment to my last post, she shared a link to this article about political lesbians, specifically a group called Revolutionary Feminists that formed in the UK in the '70s. These are women who are active feminists and may or may not have an attraction to women, but decide that they can get more done in their movement by eschewing men. While "men as the enemy" isn't something I agree with, there were parts of the piece I could definitely relate to. The author, Julie Bindel, writes about viewing traditional heterosexual life as a child and doing the whole "Is this all there is?" thing. Like me, Bindel started questioning social norms at a young age. Also, a lot of statements in the article had an asexual vibe. One critic says that political lesbianism is crazy because "it erased desire". And in their manifesto, "Love Your Enemy", the political lesbians in question wrote: "Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women." I can't help but think that such a group could have been a haven for feminist asexuals.

Surpassing the Love of Men talks about lesbian feminists choosing their orientation. It was the first time I'd really heard this concept. I'd always been told "we were born this way!", but when I considered it further, certain aspects of choosing your orientation make sense. Most aces know that you can't really choose who you're sexually attracted to, because we've tried and failed to manufacture desire. But, you can choose who you hang out with, what activities you participate in, who you have relationships with, who you have sex with, and how you identify your sexuality. I think political asexuals are a definite posibility, although I'm not sure what their politics would be. I wonder how such people would coexist with "choiceless" asexuals like myself. The reaction of "choiceless" lesbians to political lesbians was definitely mixed-- many thought the idea of choosing your orientation set back their cause. While I don't think I chose my asexuality, I also think it encompasses more than just a lack of sexual desire. Even if I met someone whose clothes I wanted to rip off everyday*, I'd still want to identify as asexual. I just believe strongly in what we're trying to accomplish here. It's more than sex, or lack thereof.

*(And why, when talking to aces, is this situation usually called "When you find the right person?" It's very possible that any number of us would be sexually attracted to people who are total assholes. Don't plenty of folks want to have sex with people who are wrong for them? Whoever's spinning this "right person" stuff either can't separate sex and love, or is high on Windex and cheese puffs.)

Mixtape for Inanimate Objects

A long time ago, I made this mix in honor of a (now married) friend's statement: There is too much romance in songs. I decided to make a mix all about love songs to inanimate objects. However, it sort of rotted on the vine, since I made it way too hard for myself. Here were the rules:

1. No songs about places-- that's a mix in itself.
2. No songs about cars-- that's also a mix in itself.
3. I could include non-car vehicles, but no more than one song about each type.

I think it's pretty obvious how I only came up with 7 songs. This was the best one: Darren Hanlon's "The Kickstand Song", which is all about the enterprising person who devised the bicycle kickstand. Others were:

"Television" by Robyn Hitchcock. I think this song is about how television is creepy. But it's also an unrequited love song...to TV.
"Speeding Motorcycle" by Yo la Tengo (originally by Daniel Johnston). Pretty obvious. This song has great lyrics: "We don't need reason and we don't need logic, 'cause we have feeling and we're damn proud of it."
"Enola Gay" by Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark. Again, kind of creepy because this song is about the plane that bombed Japan in World War II. So I'm not sure if it's really a love song. But it's just a good song, and about such a strange inanimate object that I had to include it.
"A Summer Wasting" by Belle and Sebastian, which doesn't seem quite relevant (summer and indolence are a little abstract for this mix), but having six songs was just too pathetic.
"Truck Train Tractor" by the Pastels. Getting a few objects in at once! This song doesn't make much sense lyrically, but it is, believe it or not, a pretty great song to dance around to.
"Wheelz of Steel" by Outkast. A love song to turntables.

I may have to revisit this mix and find more songs. It seemed like such a good idea at the time...

Sex/Work?

As you may know, I started posting less often (if you could call gaps of 2 days less often) because I got a full-time job. I'm working for Americorps, which is supposed to be interesting and rewarding. I don't miss being unemployed (yet), but since I developed so many hobbies during my unemployment that I now don't have time for, I don't foresee a future boredom like the past one that had me on Google searching "Edwyn Collins and asexual", "Kevin Shields and asexual", "Morrissey and asexual" indefinitely. When I didn't have a job, ideas for this blog would get me out of bed in the morning. Now, it's the fact that it's probably warmer on the other side of the house.

Yes, I still want to talk about sex and work.

I didn't like all of Against Love, but it did get me thinking about this subject. The writer of Glad to be A commented that when she's feeling down, that's when she thinks about being in a relationship, because that's what society prescribes for all our ills. I recently did some pretty grim math that yielded something like the average person only having 4 hours to themselves a day. If you spend most of your day doing things you don't like, where are you supposed to get your love? I'm finding that I can't reject sex and passively accept our worklife. I feel like you enter into a societal contract where if you want even the most basic stuff of civilization, you need to commit yourself to working, whether you enjoy what you're doing or not or wether it's contributing to our collective problems or not. I'm not motivated by money, so I can't get anything out of a job I dislike. But I don't understand why we work the way we do. Why do I work 40 hours a week while some work 80 while some don't have jobs (but want them)? Can't we divide up the labor a little better than that?

I remember reading a book called The Corrosion of Character that was about the "new flexible workplace" and how it seems cool and laid-back and ping-pongey, but it's actually damging to worker morale in lots of ways because people have no security. It's funny how at work, we have to be flexible and constantly learning new things, in fear of being obsolete. But when it comes to our relationships, we're very rigid and hesitant to change. I think our relationships could have been a lot more varied by now, but maybe because we're pushed into fake flexbibility at work and uncertainty in our professional futures (if we have professional futures), we cling to traditional dating and marriage. It's a thought. I wish my unknown future could seem like an exciting adventure, but it just doesn't.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on work, (a)sexuality, and relationships. I still plan on writing that epic article someday.

The Designated Hater

The original purpose of this blog was to respond to representations of asexuals in the media. As you've noticed, these are so few and far between that I've had to branch out to other topics. But with ABC's recent coverage of AVEN's DSM (that's the big book with the psychological disorders) project, I seem to have reached critical mass, mentally speaking. I feel like I can really start to identify trends in the way that we're presented. I'm about to lump a lot of things together, however, there are exceptions. The most notable ones to me are Bitch Magazine's article "Do Not Want", the KPFA radio story, and the Guardian's article from Paul's perspective.

First of all, in most media we're really presented as "other" and outside the mainstream. There's little done to help the readers identify with us. Harvey Milk was very wise when he declared that gay people were your family, friends, and neighbors. He knew that gay people would be "othered". Milk and his compatriots took to the streets to show solidarity, but also to demonstrate how many gay people there really were. And that's another thing about the articles-- they make it seem like we're an extremely small group, when in fact, 1% of the world's population is an enormous group. There's always mention of AVEN, but little thought is given to the power and implications of this community. And asexuals actually interacting off-line? That must really be an urban legend.

To me, the most annoying feature is that there is always, always at least one hater*. What they're saying doesn't even have to make sense, but it apparently has to be included anyway. So few people know about asexuality to begin with, so where did these haters come from? I would guess that they're not very informed about asexuality, if at all. Most people spend about zero time thinking about asexuality, so how much do these "experts" really know? They seem to be operating on rumor rather than fact. I know that dissenting views make a good story. But you don't look at the wedding announcements and then see quotes from people who claim the wedding didn't actually happen. Asexuality, like I've said before, isn't an issue with two sides because it isn't an issue. The way we're treated might be an issue, but our orientation itself is not.

Since I realized this issue with the haters, I've looked for haters in media about other groups. You'll find them often in stories about the gay community. A few months ago, I saw a documentary, made by a gay man, called Small Town Gay Bar. As you might imagine, it was about the patrons of gay bars in small towns. It was obvious that the film's subjects were risking their safety, perhaps even their lives, to congregate with people who they could relate to. So when Fred Phelps appeared to talk about how much he hated gay people, it didn't serve to educate me much further. Hearing the stories of the small town gay people themselves was much more edifying than random hating. However, maybe I just say this because I already know more than I want to know about Phelps. If you had no idea what gay folks have to contend with, Phelps' vitriol might show it to you. But the thing is, Phelps is so over-the-top and ridiculous that he's obviously there to illustrate how stupid hating makes you look. The asexuality haters are cloaked in professional or "expert" terms, and so people are more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. Whose word would you believe, a self-professed sex expert or a random asexual? Would you believe a mild-mannered lesbian or a raving bigot? Maybe we can include haters after all, if they're batshit crazy enough.

But the three stories I mentioned above (Bitch Magazine, KPFA, and the Guardian) are proof that we don't need haters to produce a quality report. Those three pieces were the best so far, in my opinion, because they were the most informative, thoughtful, and fully-formed. I know that many aces, myself included, are very hesitant to appear in media, if we don't refuse alltogether. I think part of this apprehension is because we don't want to square off against haters. To me, arguing with someone you know is wrong is the most frustrating feeling in the world. That's why I have a blog so I can always be right. (Mwhahaha.) But I really do think our media options are beginning to improve. The hating on ABC was rather light, all things considered (I know, my expectations are so low). And at least it focused on something we were actually doing rather than the mere fact of our existance. Maybe one day we'll get more in-depth reporting than the 10 people in the world who are allergic to water and are always on TLC during the daytime.

*[Sidenote: Let me define exactly where in the ABC article hating takes place. An professor who doesn't seem to have any prior information on asexuality says: "Given that I believe our sexuality is a great emotional and physical asset, it is hard for me to think asexuality is appropriate to declassify [as a dysfunction]". But what she misses is the fact that asexuality isn't classified in the first place! Hypoactive sexual desire disorder is classified. Way to ignorantly mislead people and imply that we're emotionally and physically deficient. But! Cake for Lori Brotto!]