General Blogging Question

So, say someone has a blogroll...well, in this case, "homies". Would you rather see every asexual blog that has ever been created, or just blogs that are currently active? Maybe there should be a page where we can round up links to the blogs that aren't currently active, because they still have good material, even if they're not being updated. Hmm...

Real post later today or tomorrow.

More Involved, More Determined

A little over a year ago, I did a series on historical BFFs (best friends forever!). One pair that I wrote about were Paul Cezanne (painter) and Emile Zola (writer). I had no reason to think I'd ever mention them again...this is a blog about asexuality, after all. But I recently went to an Impressionist painting exhibit where I saw this quote on the wall, and just knew I had to blog about it (Thanks to my mom for risking a stern talking-to in order to take a picture of it for me):

In 1869...Manet invited me to join him every evening in a cafe [Cafe Guerbois] in the Batignolles quarter, where he and his friends would gather and talk after leaving their ateliers. There I met Fantin-Latour, Cezanne, and Degas...the art critic Duranty, Emile Zola, who was then embarking on his literary career, as well as some others. I myself brought along Sisley, Bazille, and Renoir. Nothing was more interesting than our discussions, with their perpetual clash of opinions. They sharpened one's wits, encouraged frank and impartial inquiry, and provided enthusiasm that kept us going for weeks and weeks until our ideas took final shape. One always came away feeling more involved, more determined, and thinking more clearly and distinctly. (Claude Monet)

It sort of reminded me of this, the "Epicurean" living arrangement. But even more so, it reminded me of this-- my own dream of a personal "utopia" involving a community of creative types. Oddly enough, what impressed me even more than the assembled names was the fact that they all met daily in the same cafe. It sounds like a simple thing, maybe, but it seems so elusive to our 2010 world. Even if you exchanged "Batignolles quarter" with "Duluth" and the famous artists for amateurs, something about their meetings and the way they felt about them would have still touched me.

Their gatherings met many of my "pillars of community": A shared purpose, individual fulfillment (at least in Monet's view), commitment, a meeting place and exceedingly regular contact. And from the quote, it all seemed enjoyable. That exhilaration described by Monet is something that I've come to associate with community. I think a lot of people have gotten the idea that you can only feel that kind of excitement through romantic love, but I find that to be an overly narrow view, and an undersell of community.

We all know that attraction tends to happen spontaneously, whichever sorts of attraction you experience. But if you wanted to, say, get married, you'd have some idea of a strategy for that-- dating online or in meatspace, getting friends to set you up with their friends, going to places where your preferred gender congregates. But if you want community, there's not a lot of common wisdom on how to go about that. There are no rules. I don't think I'm capable of writing them, and I'm not even sure there should be any. But in this series that I'm sneaking on you folks, this nuts and bolts discussion of community, I want to at least talk strategy.

And because pop culture only gets you so far, here's my favorite painting from the exhibit:

"The Bridge at Maincy" by Cezanne. I wish I could walk into that painting and stand on the bridge for awhile. I feel similarly about this one, "Snow at Louveciennes" by Sisley:

I love those random little alleyways that you can find in some places. Sadly there aren't a lot of them in the suburbs.

Pillars of Community

This morning, I was reading something David Jay had written about his concept of Community-Based Intimacy. I've read and commented about CBI before, and written about community more generally so many times myself. But for some reason, it was today that I realized: When I say "community", I have no idea if other people are on the same page, a different page, or another book altogether. (This is a similar theme to the "Sexual Fluidity" post, I guess.)

There is no one definition of community, and I think that's great, actually. But a lot of things get called "communities" that may not really be all that communal, such as towns and neighborhoods (Most places I've lived, it seems like the predominant attitude among my neighbors is to pretend that none of the rest of us really exist). And some people may have never experienced a feeling of community at all, which would make it hard to identify. Community is as much a feeling as a concrete entity. And a community can be a thing that lasts only for a day. Communities don't have to be really strong and tight-knit for us to get something out of them. But if you did want to create a strong, long-lasting and positive community, it might look something like this:

A group that works towards a shared purpose while also providing fulfillment for individuals.

Like I said, this isn't a definition-- nothing in this post will be. It's my own personal idea of what community means, taken from life experience. Bear in mind that you and I could be in the exact same group of people, and while you may consider it a community, I may consider it something else entirely. At the end of the day, whether or not you feel that warm and fuzzy community spirit is really an individual thing. Now I'm going to hopefully not intimidate you much with a list of what I've found to be important aspects of community. Because how can I try to build it when I haven't given thought to what it actually entails?

1. Shared purpose (mentioned above) is really, really broad. It can be as basic as a group of friends who want to have fun together. What people want to gain from the community will vary, but if everyone has a vastly different purpose, I don't see the group lasting. (In previous time periods, the shared purpose might have been "survival".)
   
2. That a community needs to fulfill individuals was also mentioned above. If you give and give to a community but get nothing in return, you won't want to be a part of it.
3. Investment. Not everyone needs to be equally invested, but a community is not one person's project. "Commitment" is another way to put it.
   
4. In communities I've been a part of, what really made them seem communal and not like a random group of people was a welcoming attitude from the people who were already there. That's probably why my college sorority felt like a community rather than a secret society. It was also my experience with my Girl Scout group in high school. Even though I was from a different school than everyone else and no one knew me, they welcomed me. I'd dealt with a lot of mean girls, so that was one thing that made me really value that community.
5. I have never been part of a community that didn't have its own meeting place. Sometimes, the community can even be created by the place. When I lived in San Francisco, I met friends every week at this bar that served free pizza. The fact that we always met at the same place at the same time started to give me community-oriented feelings about this little group. The "meeting place" concept was taken to the extreme in my sorority, where we all lived together in our own section of the dorm.
6. I also have a hard time considering something a community if there is no regular contact. I feel like once a week is the minimum that I need to really start feeling like I'm in a community. It doesn't need to be a formal meeting, or a gathering of everyone in the whole community. There should be some flexibility for people who want to be in contact more often, and people who want to be in contact less. But in my opinion, for a community to really prosper, some members need to be at the meeting place (see #5) at least once a week.
7. A community should have no forced conformity. And people should be there only if they want to be. If your leaving is met with death threats, you're probably in a gang or a cult (which are some of the negative sides of people's desire for community).
   
8. Related to #7, larger or more "public" communities should provide different places for diverse people. An example of this is my high school's Organic Gardening Club, which was an important community for me during that time in my life. In high school, my social skills weren't yet good enough to really befriend any of the other people in the club. But just chatting with one or two other people while gardening made me feel a lot less alienated at school. If you want to make lasting friends, I think communities are ideal places to do that. But if you just want to maintain the garden and not talk to anyone, I think your contributions should be valued as well.
9. And related to #8, larger or more political communities should provide involvement at different levels as well as changing methods of involvement. There should be easy ways to jump in, as well as ways to increase your involvement. There should not be closed upper echelons. Also, people's involvement needs to be able to adapt to the rest of their lives. This is one problem with activist communities where the people involved face a lot of burnout.
10. I don't think communities necessarily contain "constantly changing relationships", as David puts it. But I do think it's inevitable that any community will contain a variety of relationships. Again, my sorority was the best example of this. Although we were all "sisters", there were a few people in the group, maybe 4 or 5, that were among my closest friends. There were others that I considered friends, although we were less close. And there were still others that I either didn't know very well, or didn't especially get along with.
11. Size doesn't matter. The Organic Gardening Club I mentioned had only two other active members that I can recall. But it was still an important community to me. Years later, the garden is still there.
12. More than just being personally fulfilling, being in a community needs to be enjoyable. It's hard to over-emphasize this. If it's not enjoyable, you might as well be at home reading some book that you want to read. Seriously, life is too short for communities that feel like grim tasks.

This might be a long list, but it's still partial. Growing up, I was always in very "formal" communities that were either related to some activity or part of a larger organization. At this time in my life, my challenge is to find other kinds of community that may not be as familiar to me, or look like communities I've known in the past. However, I also have to focus on my own development, and I'm not sure how exactly community fits into that. There are a lot of obstacles to community (so many that at times, it may not seem worth the effort) which I'd like to write about in some future post. I'd also like to write about the qualities of AVEN that bode well for a "real-world" asexual community in the future-- and what we might have to work on to get there. So stay tuned!

Sexual Fluidity

Let's talk about sexual fluidity! If you're asexual, and maybe if you're not, you've probably heard the phrase "sexuality is fluid". I'll be open about the fact that I don't really understand it in a lot of ways-- that's actually the point of this post. "Fluidity" can imply many different things, but no one ever really goes into what exactly they mean when they use the term. If someone asked me how sexuality is fluid, I'd probably say something like, "Well, I guess it's common to not be 100% asexual, 100% heterosexual, and so on for any other orientation." There are, as we hopefully all know by now, many gray areas.

However, I'm not sure that's what most people using the term mean by it. The idea of someone's sexuality changing a lot over a lifetime isn't something I can personally relate to, at least not yet. My feelings towards sex, romance, and whatever else that comprises a sexuality (or lack thereof) have always been about the same. Only my ability to understand and explain it has changed. And from my brief time on Earth, I can't say that I've noticed human beings to be especially fluid. Most of us seem pretty stubborn and set in our ways. Even people who are constantly seeking the new can be stuck in their own rut, where they have trouble changing enough to stick with one thing.

Another issue I have with the term is that it seems like it's mostly queer people who ever mention it. Maybe queer people are just next-level when it comes to this stuff, but if sexuality in general is fluid, then heterosexuals are just as fluid as everyone else. There's this idea among asexuals that in the future, there's some chance of us becoming sexual. However, no one ever says that one day, sexuals could become asexual. It seems like kind of a double-standard, sometimes.

And last, "sexuality is fluid" is a very absolute statement. If asexuals have taught us anything, we should know that there probably isn't anything that sexuality is for everybody.

So that's my confusion; let me show you it.

If you comment about sexual fluidity (and I hope you do), please include in your comment what the concept means (or doesn't mean) to you. Thanks in advance!

White Blackbirds: Reviewed

So I got the White Blackbirds zine (about "women who aren't married and don't want to be"), and it was really cool. One thing that surprised me was that most of the women profiled were in romantic relationships, or had even been married in the past. I know that being in a romantic relationship isn't the same as marriage. However, if you're been with someone for a long time and live together, certain aspects can become similar. So most people in the zine aren't talking about the everyday experience of marriage, but its legal/religious/social connotations on a broader scale. Katie, the zine's editor, wrote in her introduction that unmarried women, in her opinion, need role models (one of hers is Morrissey!). And I definitely agree with that.

The interview I could relate to the most was with Hannah, age 21, from the UK. She talked about Boston marriages and when asked what she was passionate about, had this to say:

Creating community and community feeling-- it's become a cliche to say, but it's true: there's a lot of distance in modern life. We've never been so connected via e-mail, phone, the internet and on and on and on, but the biggest malaise of our time seems to be how we feel isolated from everyone. Community isn't automatically there because of family, heritage and roots anymore. It has to be built and worked on and thought about, and people are busy and absorbed in their lives- which have a gap. Generally a community-shaped gap. Whether it's a community of people who happen to share the same sexual orientation, religious beliefs, political beliefs or an interest in baking, gardening, or BDSM, that sense of community is important to our lives.

A lot of other people made interesting comments as well, like one woman, Nine, who observed that "...I don't think men get quizzed quite so much about whether they want kids, and if they don't want them, I don't think they're so likely to get that patronizing smile and 'You'll change your mind, once your biological clock starts ticking...'". There was another interviewee, Ciara, who got "Spinster" tattooed on her knuckles to "remind myself to continue to be critical of traditional romantic myths. i feel that these concepts are especially damaging to women, encouraging us to postpone other significant parts of our lives for love and romance." I thought that was a pretty badass tattoo idea, however, I decided to take my cue from Queen Christina:

Although with these Paint skills, I agree, it's astounding that I could still be single.

Apparently, there was so much interest in the zine that there's going to be another volume. I'm going to be in it! Which is pretty exciting. Doing my interview brought up some thoughts that I'd actually never considered before. For awhile, I've had a vague suspicion that marriage may not be "for me", however, no one had ever asked me to articulate why this was, until now.

How About We...

It's a waste that I don't date, but not for the reason most people might think. The truth is, I often have what I would consider good ideas for dates, but no romantic interests to try them out on. Then I read in the New York Times that there's a new online dating site where people are "matched" by suggesting date ideas. It's called How About We. I think that at the moment, it only covers New York, and even if it didn't, I am rubbish at online dating. However, I have to admit that this is one of the better mainstream dating-site concepts that I've seen. One issue is that when I chose to search for "women and men", it automatically put "Bi-sexual" on my profile (yes, with a hyphen). But aside from that, focusing on an activity might be beneficial to asexual daters. Your date might not get laid, but hey, at least they didn't have to play miniature golf and eat fondue alone. Online daters can be really intense, and meeting over an activity just seems a lot more casual to me.

Anyway, I entered a New York zip code so that I could view some of the dates that people were suggesting. Here's a selection:

• "How about we... go to the botanical gardens and try and spot people that look like their dog." A man after my own heart.
• "How about we... do something super active/healthy and then completely negate it with leisure/gluttony." Someone figures themselves a study in contrasts.
• "How about we... wander around all the bad neighborhoods in the city until we get mugged and/or assaulted and then we can bond in the police station as we file a report." So...ladies?
  
• "How about we... paint watercolors on the brooklyn bridge at dusk." Actually, that sounds kind of cool.
  

However, even I know that dates aren't exciting because of the activity, but because you might encounter someone you have chemistry with. Under the surface of How About We is the certainty that a lot of these really cool date ideas will end up being snoozefests at the best, because the people involved didn't end up getting along. Knowing that, maybe I should try to make my dream date activities a reality with some of the people in my life who I already know and like. While meeting mysterious strangers for "bocce ball and drinking wine from paper cups" might have a unique appeal, doing that activity with a good friend can have advantages of its own. And it sure beats my usual activity suggestion: "I dunno, whadda you wanna do?"

5 Years! Count 'Em! Five!

It was Spring of 2005 when I first started to question my sexuality in earnest, coming to the conclusion that I was asexual. So since it's been five years (a weighty number, I guess) I thought I'd write a bit about how my attitudes have changed since then. I don't remember the exact moment when I realized I was ace, but I think that if I really reach for it, I can remember the exact moment I realized I was not the same as heterosexuals. I think I was in my infinitesimally small dorm room, oddly situated in the most beautiful neighborhood I'd ever seen: Chelsea, London. A guy had asked me out (I think my friends were more excited than I was) and I found my thoughts wandering to: "Would I ever want to have sex with him?" My answer was an emphatic "no". If I'd just stopped there, I wouldn't have dug up anything unusual. But I continued on with, "Who would I have sex with?" Away from my familiar routine, I felt free to answer: No one. At that moment, I had a realization. It wasn't that I was asexual (yet), but that I hadn't been separating sex in practice from sex in theory. Sex in theory sounded well and good, something I would do when I was "in love" with someone (which still hasn't happened). But sex in practice was something I never had any interest in. And in that moment, I knew that meeting "the right guy" wouldn't change that.

Since then I'm pretty sure I've learned countless things, including:

• I don't have to engage in any sexual or romantic activity that I'm not comfortable with just to prove my orientation.
• And that I was a normal asexual, not a "failed" heterosexual.
• It doesn't matter when your first date or first kiss is, if they ever happen at all. Same with losing your virginity.
• Cake makes everyone feel more welcome.
• The gender binary is silly, and some people fall outside of it.
• A lot of people are really ignorant, but some are surprisingly open-minded.
  
• Asexuality has a long history, from Hippolytus to Kinsey's "X"s and beyond.
  
• The Doctor, whose name is not "Doctor Who", travels in a police box and this is the image you should use as your internet icon or avatar.
• Being married, or in a romantic relationship, is not an instant cure for loneliness. Plenty of people feel alone, regardless of orientation, and being asexual doesn't mean you'll be lonely.
• Indiepop is oddly asexual.
  
• To question everything. I'd like to think this will be a good thing in the long run.
  
• Heteronormativity is a problem.
• Community is one of the most important things to me in life.
  
• The language we use to talk about sex and romance, from "just friends" to "in a relationship", could do with some updating.
  
• It's okay to not be "in love" with anyone. And the love I do feel is just as valid as romantic love is.

Whether you came out as asexual yesterday or 20 years ago, I want to ask...what have you learned? And if you're not asexual (or if you like this question better), what are some of the most important things you've learned in the past 5 years?