Okay, I think we're gonna get started. Um, great group! Welcome, everybody. Um, if we've
never met, I do see familiar faces, um, I'm Leah Fygetakis, I'm one of the Assistant Deans
with the Office of Intercultural Education, and your LGBTQIA Adviser. Um, so this program
is part of our October, uh, LGBTQIA History Month, and um, I just wanted to note, I hope
you've seen our lovely spam, and there are um, individual, um, ads for some of the different
programs that we've got, but it's an embarrassment of riches this week! Um, along with today,
tomorrow we have a panel of students who have studied abroad, um, the panel is entitled
Queer Perspectives in Study Abroad, and um, three continents are covered. I think it's
uh, Jordan, uh, Japan, Italy, Germany, and Sweden, and a lot of the students actually
got to do a lot of uh, LGBT work on um, on the study abroad experience. Uh, and on Thursday,
uh, the um, Executive Director of Dignity will be talking on Queer Theology, and then
our exhibit, our photo exhibit will open, which is called Limit--Limitless LGBTQ, um,
African, uh, immigrant narratives, and um, I was working with the student in getting
the photos printed, they are STUNNING. They, they're like, 24 by 36, and um, I really encourage
you to stop by the um, Jewett Sculpture Gallery to take a lot, and even better, if you can
attend the reception on October 24th, uh, that, that would be great. The photographer,
Mikael Owunna, uh, will be there, and he will share some of his own kind of experience,
and what it was like to take the photographs and how he worked with the people that were
in them, and um, it's just uh, a, a--I, I'm really looking forward to, uh, to that. And
finally, um, on Saturday the 27th, there'll be a film called, it's relatively recent,
Happy Birthday Marsha, and it portrays the life of transgender artist and activist Marsha
"Pay It No Mind" Johnson, in the hours before she ignited the 1969 Stonewall Riots. So um,
I hope to see you again at some of these other events. So at this point, I want to just um,
thank our student group, Wildcards, um, if you don't know what it is, Catherine will
tell you. Uh, and um, uh, the committee on lectures and cultural events, uh, these are
kind of the co-sponsors, along with the LGBTQ, uh, office, and bringing this here today.
So at this point, I would like to introduce Catherine Pugh, who will introduce our speaker.
Thanks! Hello! I'm--Thank you! I love you too. Um, most of you know me already, but
I'm uh, I'm the secretary for Wellesley Wildcards, which is our organization on campus for students
who are asexual and/or aromantic, and we do a lot of fun things throughout the semester
like watch movies and eat dinner together and draw memes for each other, so you should
definitely come check us out. Um, if you wanna be added, the Facebook and Google Groups are
both priv--are both private, so you should speak to one of the e-board members if you
would like to be added. That's us! Hi! Very secret. Confidential. So um, yeah, the group's
been around for about four years, and this is the first kind of big open event we've
done, so it's really exciting to see you all here, um, there's often a not--not a lot of
love or attention paid to asexual and/or aromantic people in the community, so it's exciting
to be part of Queer History Month and get to establish our place in the community. And
here to talk more about that is Julie Sondra Decker, author of this book here, that I am
holding, called The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality. And since she
knows more about it than I do, I will let her continue. Thank you very much! Thank you
everyone for having me. Um, so before I get started, um, I will, I wanna let everyone
know there--there's a camera right here that I'm just taping for my uh, YouTube channel.
So um, if you walk in front of the camera and you realize afterwards you don't wanna
be on video, feel free to just let me know and I will edit you out, if you say something
in the room and you realize you don't want your voice on the film, that's fine too, just
let me know. Um, can everyone hear me toward the back? Am I talking loud enough? All right.
OK sign, that's wonderful. Okay, so--there's a request to speak up just a bit. Oh yes?
Okay! I'll try to talk a little bit louder. I don't have a microphone but I, I, I went
to uh, music school, they taught us how to use our diaphragm. So I'll try to reach you.
So I'm here to talk about asexuality and the LGBTQ+ community. Um, past, present, and future.
And uh, I already got an introduction but uh, my name is Julie Sondra Decker. I'm also
known online as swankivy or Ivy because those are my online handles that I've had for a
million years. Or at least since the late nineties. Same thing. Um, so you can call
me any of those, I will answer to them. Um, I'm an asexuality educator, author, blogger,
YouTube personality, and um, speaking YouTube, if you are interested in looking up any of
my videos uh, you can take a card, uh, if you are interested in this, this book here,
I have some information for you if you wanna pick up a flier. One of them's just an info
sheet; one of them is a slightly more fun Asexual Bingo. It's not so fun to go through,
but it's fun to make fun of it, and it has a little bit of information on the bottom
about the book. Uh, so if you wanna pick one of these up, these are free to take. Um, about
me, personally, I am asexual and aromantic, and I'm not gonna assume that everybody here
knows exactly what those mean, for me personally I identify as asexual as a person who doesn't
experience sexual attraction, that's a very common, uh, interpretation of that term, some
people will define it slightly differently, I tend to use that definition, and aromantic,
very similar, I don't experience romantic attraction. I'm not gonna go into a 101-kinda
course about that today because um, I heard somebody wrote a book about it. You can check
it out. Um, but I am going to talk about how we fit into the history and the past, present,
and future of this overall umbrella movement. Before I get started into the meat of this
presentation, I will say there may be a few uh, slightly uncomfortable topics, I'm not
going to be real explicit about any of them, but I may bring up some references to harassment,
coercion, um, it's just--uh, I, I may make reference to depression, and um, some other
difficult subjects to discuss, but I will give individual warnings as they come up as
well. Um, so one more thing, um, regarding feedback. If anybody wants to ask me any questions
after the fact, um, you're welcome to either write on an index cards that most of you,
all of you should have received one, and we'll collect them at the end, and if we, assuming
we have time, I will go through them and um, answer to the best of my ability. Personal
questions are okay. You can ask me my opinion or my experience about something. I'm okay
with talking with ya. Um, but you know, if something is something I don't wanna talk
about in front of a group, you know, I just won't get to the question, and if you find
that I haven't addressed something that you're curious about, you're welcome to e-mail me,
I've got my info on these cards. Um, okay, so let's get into past, present, and future
with a little bit of, um, I'm gonna talk about the history, very briefly, I'm gonna talk
mostly about currently, and um, some of the future, someday. After a sip of water. So
um, some people will say um, where did asexuality come from? Why are people suddenly talking
about this so much, it's just this new orientation that popped out of nowhere. That is not the
case. Um, one of the oldest sexuality studies, this is very outdated these days, but um,
the Kinsey Scale is well known, it's from the 40s, and um, asexuality actually popped
up on the Kinsey Scale. Uh, Kinsey was mostly studying sexuality not as a black and white,
but more of a continuum, um, as to like, how exclusively straight, how exact--how exclusively
gay somebody could be sliding around the scale, but uh, X was asexual people who didn't experience
any of those attractions at all. So uh, we popped up on the model as early as the 40s.
Um, but uh, you know in the, in the 60s and 70s there was a lot of um, sexual revolution
which also of course included LGBTQ slash Queer slash "alternative sexuality," anything
that they could come up with to refer to it, um, we randomly i, invented the term asexual,
throughout the history talking about sexual diversity. "Asexual" kept popping up as like,
yeah, I'm just, I'm just asexual or I'm nonsexual, this, this happened a lot with people who
were trying to find their place, to find their identity, and um, it, if you look around on
posters here and there you'll see it, in literature, you'll see it, in unexpected places. But it
was not organized. It was very sort of piecemeal, you'll see it here and there. Um, I, I have
seen a few published articles on it, "Asexual and Autoerotic Women: Two Invisible Groups"
was an early article, it was published shortly before I was born in 1977, um, in a collection
called The Sexually Oppressed, you can see the no image available Amazon cover, this
is how hard this is to find, I've never seen a copy. It exists, I hear. Um, and uh, this
was an article that examined frequently invisible groups. Um, going on, there was um, there
was a sexuality study, like a sample that was taken, I believe it was in the UK in the
90s, 1994, there was a big sampling of sexual attitudes, and um, what happened with this
group, I believe it was around, um, 18,000 people were surveyed about their, their experiences
and their attitudes, and one percent of that group kept coming up in the data as not experiencing
any of this attraction. And um, it was from this sample that Anthony Bogaert in 2001 wrote
an article saying hey, this one percent, it hasn't been studied. Let's study it. And this
is, this is where that one percent figure, if you've ever read anything about asexuality,
you've probably seen one percent thrown around a lot. This is where it came from, was Anthony
Bogaert, studying it from this older sampling from um, from the UK. Not necessarily that
the UK is representative of everyone, but it's at least some math. It's at least some
research that was done. And Anthony Bogaert has actually gone on to write a book about
it, um, more from a academic standpoint, but um, he, he's frequently contacted as an academic
content--contact, whenever anybody wants to talk about asexuality. Um, so personally,
computers looked like that when I was first starting to uh, explore what this meant to
me. There was no Internet, um, there was--well there was an Internet, but I think it was
mostly for the military. And um, there were certainly no social groups organizing online.
Um, I invented the word "nonsexual" to refer to myself, I just knew I wasn't straight,
and I wasn't sure what I was, but I just felt like I was something that was none of the
above. And so I just kinda invented a word for it. I wasn't particularly broken up about
it. I was just like "yeah this is me, I guess if it changes one day, maybe it'll change
one day," but you know, I wasn't really searching for connection. Um, but at the time it really
wasn't out there to find unless you did it in person. This is a very common story for
people who were in my age group and older. Um, so what would happen is you would seek
connection and you would say "I know I'm not experiencing what I'm 'supposed to' experience,
okay, I'm a woman, so I'm supposed to marry a man and have some children, I know that
doesn't appeal to me, and I definitely am not interested in that life, so uh, where
can I look? What is the alternative, if you're not straight you're gay." So a lot of us have
explored that. A lot of us have said "Maybe I'm this," or "Maybe um, I'm something that
I haven't explored, maybe I will find the answer somewhere where people are more willing
to listen to something that isn't mainstream," and that was usually queer, LGBTQ-friendly
communities. So um, in a documentary called (A)sexual, which I did an interview for this
too but I'm not gonna talk about me. Um, this lady up here, Barb, she described that her
experience of being with a whole bunch of different partners, always just kinda trying
to find someone that would do it for her, and she only mentioned being with same-sex
partners. I don't know if she identified as lesbian, but she only described being with
other women, and she, she frequently just felt like she was missing something. She finally
just said "I give up, this isn't for me." And um, when she discovered asexuality, that's
what she started calling herself. Um, similarly, um, this lady here, Kathy, she did an interview
for the (A)sexual documentary in um, in a scene that was filmed shortly before an asexual
contingent was going to march in a Pride parade for the first time, she, I believe she said
she was in her late 40s, and she had come out as a lesbian in the 80s, um, and she identified
as a lesbian for a very long time, uh, before discovering that she's actually a homoromantic
asexual woman. And she actually said that it was scarier to come out as asexual than
it was to come out as lesbian because she didn't know if she had support and she didn't
have the words for it. It was, it was very um, it was unknown territory. And so she,
she found herself around people half her age trying to organize about this, feeling left
out in a slightly different way, but um, you know, she found her people. And uh, learned
a lot about uh, what kind of language we were using to talk about um, this common experience
we were having. Oh wow the sun is in my eyes. So we're going into the present! Um, what
you see mostly how so much of the organizing started of course online, this is how we do
everything these days. So we're gonna reach out online, say "hey, I'm feeling this, are
you feeling this," can we develop the language, if you have language, you can have a conversation,
you can find other people who are similar to you. Uh, the big name in online organizing
is of course the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, also known as AVEN, it wasn't the
only game in town, especially at the time, there were these Yahoo Groups and mailing
lists and stuff popping up. I, I didn't see some of these and others I did know about.
Um, they didn't have a coherent mission statement really, it was just a bunch of people trying
to figure out who are we and how can we find other people uh, you know, to, to figure out
how to talk about this. And at least find a place that we're understood. Um, there was
a LiveJournal group. Um, uh, LiveJournal still exists, um, and then much later of course,
Tumblr. Tumblr is well known for having a lot of asexual organizing. What happened on
Tumblr, like, and you can say what you want about Tumblr, but I, I kinda live there, I
love Tumblr. And without, without having uh, the connections that I found on Tumblr, I
definitely wouldn't have been able to write the book that I wrote in the form that I did
because I had so much help from willing people who, who despite also being asexual, they
had a very different experience from me, like, how am I gonna write a subchapter about male
asexual people or asexual people of color, asexual people who have disabilities, how
am I gonna write about that with any um, authority if it's not my experience? So I have to ask
somebody what would you want everyone to know about you that's different from, uh, a white
able-bodied cis woman who's asexual. I'm obviously not going to experience the same things. So
that, that was a great place to find other people who are having the same yet different
experiences in asexuality. Um, also, uh, it gave me an opportunity to talk to young people,
because um, that's, that is so important if you're going to continue to do activism as
you get older, because the conversation does change, it's not just about what different
terms we might use, it's about attitudes, it's about nuances, and I'd fall out of touch
with what you guys are talking about at approximately half my age, like, I'm, I'm gonna become irrelevant.
And it's also personally satisfying to me to hear what you guys are, you're very inspiring
to me, um, at college age and younger. It's, it's um, it's not a different world, but it
kind of is. I guess you'll see when you get there. So even though Tumblr full of Discourse
with a capital D, it's very important, um, unfortunately one of the side effects of Tumblr,
which is kind of, it's kind of a blessing and a curse, is that you can find a lot of
content that you didn't come there to see. Um, yes, you know what I mean. So, oh my goodness.
But um, the, the issue I think has been people are suddenly intersecting with populations
that they didn't know about and they're saying, this must've been invented on Tumblr! The
Tumblrinas are over here creating fake identities because they wanna be special. We of course
hear a lot of that in queer community, overall, as well as especially in asexual spaces, that
we're doing this to be special, we're doing this to um, find a label and not have the
risk of being LGBTQ. Um, so what we get a lot of is this objection, why do you think
that you belong here, because there's a perception that we don't belong, that there's something
different about us that we're not, we're not sharing enough of what defines a person as
having an LGBTQ+ identity. Uh, to have any place in this community, that we don't have
anything to add and that we don't have, that we may even make the spaces unsafe, and even
if I disagree at the root level with that idea, I also wanna listen to where it comes
from, and the reasonable perspectives that I've mostly heard is that people fear we're
going to come in with a mainstream perspective that they've had to fight against, and that
we're going to make their spaces all about us. Um, so here's the thing. Going back to
this (A)sexual documentary. Um, there were a lot of objections from people who were some
stripe LGBTQ rainbow. Um, Dan Savage is pictured up there. He, uh, I think he's kinda flipped
on asexuality, he's mostly inclusive now, but in the documentary, he said um, asexual
people, you don't need to march to not do anything. You just need to stay home. Uh,
and he, he also said that as a sex educator and advice-giver, he has heard from so many
people who are deeply conflicted about their kinks or something, that they choose to call
themselves asexual because they are afraid of what it really means to embrace their sexuality,
that it's, it's kind of an "I give up," and that was how he interpreted it. And that's
how a lot of people see it before they, before they learn more about our experiences, but
I think with someone like him, it could also be dangerous because he has a platform, and
then he's telling everybody, you know, hey, these other people who are, they're, they're,
queer-friendly but they're not gonna be ace-friendly if they believe like him. Um, like I said,
I think that he's, he's mostly flipped on this, I, I don't know entirely, but um, some
of the other folks that are pictured here are people who said, um, kinda ignorant things
about the asexual uh, marchers in the pride parade. Um, the, the ladies at the top there
had said "just give us 20 feet, please," they, they were scared of the asexual people that
were marching behind them, and uh, the, the folks in the bottom over there, they were,
they're saying um, you're the only one that took the asexual literature, that's, that's
scary, um, this guy pities our poor soul. He thought he was being recruited. He thought
he was being told to abstain from sex, and I think that, that is a very common attitude
that you hear is that we're recruiting and that we're shaming sex, uh, and that's unfortunate
because um, that's absolutely not what asexuality is about, um, but it still comes from a place
that is legitimate because for a lot of folks who have to struggle to be proud, they've
been told that being asexual would be an ideal situation, that if they would abstain they
would be saved, they would be pure, they would be better. And um, and it's very hard to then
look at us and say oh yes, you're just as queer as I am, um, so I think that's kind
of where that comes from, that's what some of them have communicated to me, uh, unfortunately,
you're still seeing a lot of um, really aggressive invalidation coming from inside the queer
community, and for instance, the Trevor Project reached out to some asexual organizers saying,
um, we are an LGBT crisis line, we help queer young people who need somebody to call if
they're feeling depressed or suicidal, and um, we wanna know, we're getting calls from
people who are asexual and we don't know how to help them, can you help us train our volunteers
on this. When they advertised that they were doing this, some folks spoke up and said,
I don't think you should help them. They're, they don't need to be helped because they're
invading us, they're not really part of, you know, how can you, how can you say I think
you should not help certain depressed people who are in crisis, but, you know, that's,
that's how possessive they felt with this. Um, so what's really common is for certain
stripes especially of the asexual community is to be identified as you're really just
a straight person in disguise. Uh, if you're aromantic, if you're demisexual, graysexual,
those are some terms that I talk about in my book and my video essays. Um, and especially
if you're heteroromantic, um, you tend to be interpreted as you know, you're a straight
person who is trying to get into someplace that you don't belong. Uh, so if any of those
arguments sound familiar, maybe it's because they're said about bisexual people too. Um,
and they've got a letter! So I dunno. Where does that leave us. Um, so if any bisexual
folks um, have ever heard like, hey, you're not, you're not, you don't belong, you're
not queer enough, because you can choose to have a "straight relationship" and other than
your relationship, your identity doesn't matter, you don't belong here, you're probably hearing
a lot of the same things that we've heard. And um, that's actually part of why bisexual
people and asexual people have so much in common, because there is this perception,
and also, incidentally, a lot of us, myself included sometimes, um, have identified as
bisexual in certain context, because we didn't have another box to check. Um, so, if I like
everybody about the same, I guess that's as close as I'm gonna get if I don't have a check
mark. So in the present, we have to recognize that this rainbow flag, I mean, when we're
saying, you know, PRIDE, it, it's, that's, that rainbow does not include anything more
than to say this is the gay pride flag, it should be uh, it does include an awful lot
of other identities that are not specifically named in that flag. But are also often invalidated
like say, some intersex people identify as queer, um, you might if you're pan, if you
are trans, if you are agender, um, there are a lot of identities that um, have been questioned
um, and what I have found unfortunately is that some of the detractors who wanna kick
ace people out, uh, they're also TERFs, they're also exclusionary in other ways, uh, not all
of them, but many of them, they don't just have it out for us, so um, a lot of them are
very possessive about their spaces, and in some cases that's legitimate, because you
need to have safe spaces, sometimes it really is about safety. Um, but it, it can't be rooted
in hatred and it can't be rooted in ignorance. So what I have found in person is most LGBTQ
organizations are inclusive. Um, the Lambda Literary Awards is a, it's an award that is
given out every year to a bunch of um, recognized LGBT, um, books, I got nominated for one in
the LGBT History--or, LGBT, um, Nonfiction category, so an asexual book got nominated
in a category that I didn't fit in the acronym. Um, but they included me, they were like yes,
that makes sense. That makes sense why this is here. So um, a lot of the places that I've
done presentations and included in panels have been LGBT-specific or queer-specific
organizations and conferences. Um, I, I participated in them, was invited to them, felt welcome
in them, and I've been published by several um, publishers or subsections of publishers
that are specific to queer orientations, they didn't say, like, hey, we think you're weird,
but we wanna hear from you. You know, they just treated me like your perspective is welcome
here. And um, that made sense to me, but then, you know, we still see this. You say, you're
a cishet, get outta here. So what does a person who um, may be asexual but feels that they
are inherently queer, um, what do they have to share with a broader community? Um, first
of all, it's a common misconception that asexual people are kinda just straight lite. Because
many asexual people are trans, are nonba--are nonbinary, are uh, same-sex-attracted, um,
have some other, one or more queer identities beyond asexuality, but even just on the strength
of being an asexual person, there are some things that we do share. And uh, the question
is, is it about pride? Um, well, uh, first I wanna throw this up to let you know that
I'm about to share a comment where um, there was some invalidation presented, this was
a comment where someone says please tell me how asexuals are discriminated, well if you
say please tell me, I will tell you. So there's this idea that institutional oppression is
what kinda defines you as having a valid identity within this community, and that, to me, um,
that is confusing, because it suggests that, um, hatred is where identit--identity comes
from. And I don't believe that. Um, so why do we want to be here? And should we let our
identity mostly be about who hates us, how they hate us, what it looks like? Um, so for
asexual people, it's true that the hate and the othering tends to look a little different
sometimes. It's more about invisibility versus hostility. I'm not gonna say there's no hostility
because I've certainly experienced my share of it, um, but a lot of it is based on not
even being seen at all. For instance, if somebody says, "Give me a break, you're never gonna
get beat up coming out of a gay bar," I'm gonna say "I don't have an ace bar to come
out of." So it's, it's a different problem, um, and there can be a difference in how much
danger you might be in, and the violence of the reactions. But it is not necessarily true
across the board that asexuality's just like "Oh, okay, well that's not threatening." It
absolutely is threatening to some people, and I will discuss some ways that that manifests,
and um, I will also say that with asexual people, aromantic people, a lot of the time,
the things that we do experience, if we say "Hey this happened to me," they'll say "That
happened to you 'cause you're a woman. That happened to you 'cause you're trans. That
happened to you 'cause you dress like that." They'll always say that whatever the asexuality
aspect of yourself, that's the least relevant part of what happens. It's never important
to them. Uh, so, what I'm gonna go into next, I'm gonna try to run through it a little quicker
because I'm already at like, halfway through. Um, so the common cause of a lot of our problems
is heteronormativity. This is the big word here. Oh, thank you. We're natural allies
because it all, it all forms from this experience we share of heteronormative attitudes that
shape how we grow up and what is denied to us and what we experience. So what struggles
do we share? Some of this stuff is gonna sound really familiar even if you know nothing about
asexuality but you know anything about being an LGBTQ person. So we know about the marriage
laws. Um, obviously there, relatively recently, nationwide in the United States, there has
been, um, same-sex marriage is legal. Um, obviously, we're still dealing with the aftermath
of, of that being uh, argued about, and the still-existing prejudice of course for same-sex
couples. But did you know that in some states there are still consummation laws? It sounds
archaic. It is true. Um, so people say, if you didn't have sex, you can get an annulment,
that that's like, you don't have a real marriage that's okay to, to um, dissolve this marriage
if you find that your spouse doesn't wanna have sex with you or can't have sex with you.
And some people said like, oh wait, well, isn't that about the babies? It's--it's NEVER
about the babies. Um, whenever you hear that, it's never really about the babies. Um, because
no state permits an annulment on the basis of infertility. You can't annul a marriage,
you can still divorce, but you can't annul a marriage with no fault. Um, just because
you find out that your spouse is infertile. So um, there has also been um, you know, some
discussion of with non-romantic relationships, these are things that um, maybe poly people,
um, same-gender people or if you're perceived to be the same gender, which what I mean is,
you might have a, you might have a so-called straight marriage but one of you might be
trans and some people are saying oh, well that's a, that's a gay marriage, you know,
people are misinterpreting you based on your gender. Um, so, there have been a lot of complications
with these. In the asexual community we deal with a lot of these things, but it's very
broad too, we are not the only people who have had problems for not having uh, a marriage
equivalent for relationships like these. And um, here's something that a lot of people
don't think about with immigration, um, when people who have citizenship in different countries
get married, there's sometimes a perception that one of them is doing it to stay in the
country. And um, they can be questioned, they can be interviewed, they can be um, interrogated,
and they'll take the people in the marriage into separate rooms and they will ask them
questions that supposedly they will answer corroborating each other's answers if they
are really married, and sometimes those questions are explicitly about sex. How often do you
have sex, where do you have sex. And they're allowed to ask these questions on the assumption
that sex is always part of a real marriage, and if you're not having sex, you're probably
not really married. You're a fake marriage. So that exists. Um, job and housing discrimination,
uh, there was a study--there have been some questions about the validity of this study,
which I can't go into detail, but there's a study called "Intergroup Bias Toward Group
X," it's about attitudes toward asexual people. And um, a lot of people on the survey, like
a statistically significant number of people similar to how they answered about how they
felt about um, gay couples and trans people, they were saying that they would discriminate
against asexual people to a similar extent. Uh, in giving them a job or letting them rent
a house. Um, I guess on the assumption that um, you're a weirdo, uh, we don't want your
kind here. Um, so I um, personally I, I wouldn't say this was discrimination, but I recently
had the experience of renting a new house and I'm renting like a three-bedroom house,
but I'm just one person, I don't even have any pets. And the, the people interviewing
me, they, they take my form, and I specified in the e-mail to them, I said I'm just one
adult who I want a guestroom and an office as well as a bedroom, you know, there's nobody
else. And they asked me two MORE times, they said what are your children's names. And who
else is on the lease. And I was getting concerned when they kept saying this, they kept saying
who else is here? Because they couldn't, it blew their mind that a single woman would
want a house by themselves, where's your kids? And I thought maybe they were trying to, that
they were about to accuse me of uh, like hiding another adult so I wouldn't have to pay the
background fee check, um, you know, the money that you have to pay for everybody who lives
there. And uh, you know, they kept asking this question, making it very clear that it
was not expected, that I was afraid that they were gonna deny me based on that. They didn't.
I don't know what was going through their heads, but you know, being treated like it
was really really weird to want a house by myself, uh, you know, that was um, I think
that's a very common attitude, and people with more malicious intent may act on that.
Um, similarly, this is probably not surprising to a lot of you, that some asexual people
report hostile workplace cultures. This kinda data point I'm mostly basing on a story that
I read about an asexual person who had a coworker who was always talking about sex at work,
and she said, can you stop doing that, it makes me really uncomfortable, so the coworker
began on purpose doing it more often, more explicitly. So they took it to the manager,
and the manager blamed the asexual person, said "You don't fit in here, this is just
how we talk here, if you can't handle it, then maybe you're not cut out to work here,"
and they let her go. And um, you know, she was, she was like, "Did I just get fired 'cause
I'm asexual?" So I mean, how can you prove it? Um, so this might be a surprising one.
Adoption denial. Like, why would you deny someone the chance to adopt a child if, just
for being asexual? This was just from this gentleman's talk at the Spotlight on Asexuality,
you can look this up on YouTube if you wanna see the whole thing. But he mentioned an asexual
couple went to a private adoption agency and was looking into adoption, they said, well,
you look like you're a straight man and woman, how come you don't wanna have your own children?
Are you infertile? What's going on? And they said we don't want to have children because
we don't want to have sex with each other. We are asexual. They said, if you're asexual,
you're not fit to be married. And they were denied. Just on the idea that, I guess, there
is an attitude of what marriage is for, and you are, you're not a safe place to raise
children, your household is unacceptable for kids. Um, so moving on, anti-discrimination
law. I don't have a lot to talk about here, because it does change so fast. But um, with
anti-discrimination law, um, what you basically want is for you know, protected status for,
it's illegal to use someone's sexual orientation to discriminate against them, and if they
do it's a hate crime, um, so there's very few uh, state-related uh, policies that mention
asexuality. There are a few, it's kinda interesting that they exist. But nationally there is no,
no protection based on sexual orientation, um, so let's see, moving on to um, the legal
paper that Elizabeth Emens wrote. Um, this was published in Stanford Law Review, Elizabeth
was arguing that as more people of college age are starting to graduate, identifying
as asexual, and going into the workforce, there's gonna be more suits about this, there's
gonna be more discrimination because it, it's existing now, and there's language about it,
so of course, it's gonna happen. So this was a relatively long paper where Elizabeth Emens
talked about the manifestations of that and how it all comes down to compulsory sexuality.
Um, so this'll be a really um, um, it'll be a recognizable one for most of you I think.
Um, so of course we all know this abstinence equals purity idea. Um, there's a pressure
to marry and reproduce, and this last one here where I say celibacy is meaningless if
it's not a challenge, I know someone in the ace community who said like, I was thinking
about being a nun when I was younger, and I went to my mentor and I talked about it,
and said "I think I'll be a perfect nun, I don't even desire sex, so it won't be hard
for me," and they said "well in that case, um, you're not cut out for this life because
it's not a sacrifice for you." You know, that's--what are you giving up if you're not doing this
for God? So um, that was rough, and they didn't wanna be a nun anymore. So um, moving on to
media representation. This is a fun one. I think most of us are very familiar with the
idea that sometimes media representation you're like, "Oh look, it's me! Oh look, they're
making fun of me." So um, we'd love to see more asexual people in the media, but it doesn't
happen without cost. This pictures a character on a Canadian document--or, documentary, this
is on a Canadian um, comedy, I believe. Called Godiva's. The character's name is Martin.
He was heteroromantic asexual. They gave him hormones and he wasn't anymore. So that was
fun. They fixed him. And it was funny. Um, this is Poppy from Huge, she was aromantic
asexual, she called herself asexual by name and she described being aromantic, not relating
to uh, a romantic situation in a movie. She was just kind of a background character, but
she was really cute, she played the ukulele. She was a camp counselor. I liked her. Um.
"I was expecting that to have such a bad end!" Isn't that great? The only sad thing about
that is that she is, it was a one-off line, it was like "representation!" and you know,
it wasn't bad, but it was, you know, they said the word "asexual" and we all went "YES!"
That was enough for us. That's our standard! Um, this one's interesting. This is Gerald
from Shortland Street. This was a soap opera in New Zealand. Um, he was biromantic asexual,
and his entire um, arc was about discovering he's asexual, going through a lot of crap
about it, um, having a realization that this is who he was, going through a relationship
with a woman, and a relationship with a man, um, it was actually really good, but at the
same time it kinda implied at times that uh, it was tied in with his obsessive compulsion
and also possibly with some um, issues with his mom who was very um, she talked about
sex very openly from the time that he was a very young person, so they kinda suggested
maybe he was a little traumatized from that, but that can be some people's reality, so
I didn't think it was in poor taste, it's just I'm not sure what they were trying to
say there. This is a, this is a pretty good one. I liked it. Um, and then like, ugh. Let's
get the groans going. House! Yeah! Anybody see this episode? I like House most of the
time. "It's simultaneously my favorite and my least favorite for just that episode."
Exactly. Yeah. The intersex episode was terrible too. Um, yeah, but if you haven't seen the
episode, House had well, his doctor, Wilson I think, had a, a, uh, a patient saying she
was asexual, she and her husband were both asexual, didn't have sex with each other,
and he was like "Well I'm sure there's a medical reason, and I'll prove to you that there's
a medical reason, 'cause everybody wants sex, unless they're dead, dying, or lying." And
uh, so in short, by the end of the thing, he proved that both of them were wrong. The
man had a pituitary tumor that was causing his asexuality, and the wife was lying to
make the husband feel better that he couldn't satisfy her. So. Yup. They were both not really
asexual. It would have been a really cool twist ending if he had the pituitary tumor
removed and then he's like "No, I still hate sex." That would've been awesome. "Is that
even what pituitary tumors cause?" How medically accurate is it? "It's never lupus!" Wasn't
it lupus once though? "It was lupus ONCE. He was so wrong. Anyway." Yes. So he's wrong.
He's wrong. Mental health. Um, so anybody who knows the basic about mental health probably
knows the DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, this is kinda
the bible of what's a disorder and how you treat it. Um, this is version four, we're
now into version five, it's pretty and purple. Um, they uh, yes, they mention asexuality
in it twice as NOT being a disorder, they're saying you can't, you can't diagnose somebody
as having sexual aversion disorder if, if a self-identification as asexual um, makes
more sense. The problem with that is you have to know, you have to say, like, "Oh no no,
I'm asexual, I don't have this." Otherwise they can, they can say oh, they probably have
this. So um, it's probably not a surprise to anyone in here that homosexuality used
to be medicalized as a mental disorder. And um, it wasn't that long ago, I mean, I believe
it was relatively recently, in my lifetime I think? "73?" Oh was it, 73, that they changed
over to the four? To DSM four? I'm not sure. "I don't know about that." Okay yeah. So that
was slightly before I was born. Well thank goodness. They um, yeah, there's still some
problems with the way they word that, especially since there's this tendency for doctors uh,
professionals who are not always educated about asexuality to project their own prejudices.
Um, did you--wanna say something. "Oh sorry, I was just, I looked up what it was, it was
not removed until 1987." Oh wow. "It was gonna bug me if I didn't look it up." Oh thank you,
neato, thank you. "Sorry to interrupt." It's fine! Oh, I appreciate that, thanks! Um, I'm,
I'm running a little behind I'm sorry. Um, okay, so as I've said professionals are not
always educated, they are humans, I think most of the time, they are. They do, they
do sometimes push "fixes," they say like, they're, they're not really, they don't know
how to ask the right questions sometimes. They will, they will hear what you're saying,
and they'll say, "That's a sexual arousal disorder, you need a libido enhancer." That
happened to one of my friends, it had, it had uh, some profounds on her relationships
and her um, her experience of her body. Um, I, I have also heard about some pretty serious
medical abuse, which I won't go into for privacy issues for the person involved, but sometimes
they will be so intent that this person needs to be um, interested in sex, especially if
it's a man, honestly, that they'll ignore everything else about their health to try
to get them to be sexually active. Um, and they often can't help us except to prescribe,
you know, okay, that one's, that one's the broken one, they have to make that person
want sex more, it's, it's not about what will, what will help compromise-wise to make these
people more compatible with each other. So um, talking about this is obviously an automatic
uh, trigger warning for corrective assault. I'm not gonna be specific. But um, I interviewed
for a, there was a HuffPost Gay Voices did this pretty cool like six-part um, article
series on asexuality. I was in a couple of them. Look it's me! And um, I talked, I talked
about one of my experiences where you know, this guy wanted to kiss me, and I said no,
and he uh, he ended up saying he would settle for a kiss on the cheek, I figured that was
harmless, until he started licking my face like a dog. And it was really gross. So I
got out of the car, and he yelled after me, "I just wanna help you." And I had disclosed
to him over dinner that I was asexual, so that was his way of helping me. Uh, he then
sent me messages for months afterwards saying wanna come over I'm watching porn, and stuff
like that. Um, he also told me you know, I thought we were gonna have sex that night,
and I can tell that you're interested in me and you won't admit it. And you know, gaslighting,
all that fun stuff. Uh, so when I talked about this to the media, the comments filled up
with people who said you know, well, you're selfish that you don't have sex with people.
How dare you. And they were saying well she should, you know, she should have, she should
be in a situation where she has to experience it, and if she doesn't like it, then you know,
she's appropriately punished for not serving the um, the role that she's expected to as
a woman in our society. Um, so we get rape threats and we get denial that we experience
those, so that was fun, and um, this idea that we are, we are depriving our deserving
partners of sex is another really insidious manifestation of compulsory sexuality. Um,
so moving on to another really heavy topic: depression and suicide, um, like I mentioned
earlier, the Trevor Project tries to help with all stripes of the LGBTQ rainbow, uh,
they are ace-inclusive, and you know, we were, we were told by some vocal opponents to this
that we didn't deserve that, we didn't deserve inclusion in this. I'm not sure what they,
what they wanted us to do, especially if you know, we're experiencing um, suicidal ideation,
you know, just, who would have the heart to say you don't deserve help? But um, this all
kinda stems from the disrespect that people who do not serve this heteronormative ideal
will experience, and um, it's a phase, you're trying to be different, all of these, these
are all things that everybody in this community has heard multiple times, um, and there are
a few that are reserved for asexual people I mean, this kinda the mocking of virginity
is a common one, uh, where there's just no nice words for people who don't have sex,
it's always pathetic, and especially for some men who are encouraged to um, define themselves
entirely by their sexual success, they feel emasculated by you know, being told that they're
not really a person, they're not really a man, they're not successful if they can't
get laid. Uh, women of course, mostly "frigid" is usually applied to women. And uh, all this
lovely stuff, robotic, alien, inhuman, lacking vitality, all this fun stuff. The, the invisibility
and the pushback we get when we are visible, that takes work, and it really does sometimes
get underestimated as to how these can affect us, how these can form us into a person who
thinks there's no place for them in the world. Um, so what we learn from this is that we
develop shame, we internalize this oppression, we sometimes will not trust authorities, uh,
in our lives, we'll feel like we have to impress them or we have to serve their ideal, we may
sometimes overcompensate by being very sexual or I'm gonna get married and do what I'm supposed
to do even if I don't want it 'cause that's what I'm being told my role is, um, and these
are all ways that this manifests in our lives. So what are we going to do in the future to
make sure that this is uh, less common for everybody? Uh, I think inclusion by default
is a good idea. Uh, the problem is you know, one of, I actually saw this really recently,
it was, it was kind of a shock to see this all of a sudden, where somebody was saying,
on um, on Tumblr, my favorite place, yes. Um, that um, they were saying hey remember
her, you know, talking about me, um, remember her, oh my gosh, that was just such a cringe-fest.
Um, and they were saying because of activism in the asexual community, we're having all
these um, asexual people storming into our, OUR spaces, and trying to take it over, and
making everything all about them. And I'm like, I . . . I mean, I guess I'm biased,
but I, I've never, I've never seen that? I've mostly seen a lot of asexual people afraid
that they won't be accepted? Um, but there are problematic individuals. And that's what
I think we should address if there is, I'm not gonna say that's never happened, um, there
are individuals who are like, yeah, I am identifying this way and it's empowering me, and now I'm
gonna make everything about myself, but you know, I'm, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna saying
someth--I'm just gonna say it. Um, white able-bodied cisgender gay men are frequently in the spotlight,
they talk over a lot of people, they um, a lot of the activism and resources goes to
them, it doesn't mean that they're bad people, but we don't categorically say we'll let's
kick them out of the club, you know, we're gonna say, if I have an individual in my club
who's of this description who he needs to learn how not to talk over people, et cetera,
you know, you're not gonna say his orientation is a bad thing, we should stop including people
like him, you're gonna say, this person's making the space unsafe. If you have an asexual
or aromantic person who's doing that, that's really awful, and I don't support that, but
address it as a person and not as um, well, all aces are like that person. Uh, I assure
you we're not. Even if some of us are loud. Uh. So-- "You've never been to a Wildcards
meeting." My gosh! Oh gosh, I'm getting a foot cramp right here. Let's see. Okay, so
benefits of inclusion for us, I'm gonna go with um, if we're included, this is what we
can, what we can expect to see. Um, so of course we can learn how to become better allies
to people who are not like us. Being you know, like I was saying earlier about being on Tumblr,
I encountered attitudes that I never, you know, I wasn't opposed to, I wasn't automatically
like "hey this, this is, this is silly and I don't wanna learn about it," but I'd never
thought of that. And when you're in a group of people who share something at the root
with you but they have all these other understandings that you never thought of, you're like, huh,
okay, I can learn to, how do they wanna be supported. So in those group atmospheres you
will learn to be a better ally in many ways. Um, so also avoiding elitism and slurs. You
know, there's a lot of um, stuff you don't, you're not born knowing it, so when you come
into a group where you know, people are saying oh we don't talk about that population this
way, this is why, you know, you wanna, you, you can't figure out how best to talk about
other people if they don't, if you're not listening and they don't tell you. And so
if you put yourself, an asexual person is putting themselves into a group where they're
going to hear these conversations, they're gonna learn more about how we should talk
about each other. Um, similarly, um, this, I have absolutely seen this in the ace community.
I will absolutely admit it. That um, sex non-judgmental positivity, sometimes needs to be learned,
especially for, you know, baby, baby aces, who are like, my manifestation of being proud
of my asexuality is to talk about how, how gross sex is. And you know, sometimes at the
beginning, they're like, they need a place to say like, I think sex is gross, and there's
like, yeah, you do too? Okay, I--you know. That's--okay, you know, but you're also yucking
someone's yum, and that doesn't feel good, especially since you have to acknowledge that
that's what they get from the rest of the world, don't do that. So sometimes we need
a little bit of help and perspective to understand that you know, talking about being better
or purer or something, just plays into all of these stereotypes that nobody wants and
don't help anybody. Um, so, my bullet point here number 4 of "on the shoulders of giants"
is a really important one. In the queer movement we have so many leaders who are inspiring
and amazing. I would love to see the ace community and organizations kind of gravitate toward
some of the ways of leadership that I've seen do amazing in the queer community over the
years. There are so many inspiring figures that you know, I have taken um, lessons from,
and uh, I, I've, I just don't see how we could not succeed if we do a lot of the same things
that they do. Um, so we have, we have a, some great examples ahead of us that we can learn
more about if we're in these groups. Resources, advice, and support, of course, if you're
part of a group uh, you will have friends who understand what it's like to be you, uh,
you may make friends that you can confide in, um, and of course you may have access
to a wonderful library and some zines and you know, or just um, things other people
know that you don't know. And also we start to learn about privilege dynamics. Um, that
was a big one for me. Um, I like, I have been fortunate as to not, I don't remember a whole
lot of uh, epic callouts or anything, but you know I'm trying to learn to listen as
you know, a person who lives with a lot of privilege. You know, I am, you know, an upper-middle-class
white cis woman who you know, a lot of my identities are privileged, and I've, I've
uh, I've had to listen, I've had to be in places where I hear these conversations to
be able to understand how many advantages I have and how not to abuse them, um, and
you know, how to help dismantle some of these uh, these dynamics in ways that um, allow
me to do it following the lead of someone who knows what they're doing. Uh, so, moving
on to benefits of inclusion, 'cause we're not just here to take stuff from the groups
that we're part of. Benefits of inclusion for non-ace and aro-spectrum, LGBTQ folks.
Um, so what you're gonna learn from us if we are in your groups is of course we will
give you resources on understanding us and learning our terminology. Uh, that's kind
of an obvious one, but also relationship models. And you may not know what I mean by this,
but relationship models are really interesting in the ace community 'cause, um, we're a bunch
of nerds, and um, what I mean when I say that is we've had to pick apart what our relationships
are made of, because the givens don't necessarily apply, so when you hear people complaining
that asexual people have a bunch of made-up words, like, of course we're gonna make up
words if we need to talk about things nobody has talked about. Um, and uh, so we come up
with a lot of language that you may not have heard in mainstream circles, and some of them
fit, uh, relationships that you may not even realize are in your circle or even in your
life. For instance, I have a friend who is a uh, cisgender straight woman who is married
to a man, and she said you know, until I read your book, I didn't know what a romantic orientation
is, and I'v realized I'm romantically attracted to women as well as to men, but I just thought
that it wasn't, it couldn't be romance, it couldn't be a ro--I couldn't have a crush
on that woman because I'm not sexually attracted to her. So she realized she spent her whole
life having crushes on women, but because it wasn't coupled with sexual attraction,
she's biromantic but only heterosexual, and she has words for that now, and it, you know,
it, it's not just a word, it's a transformation of understanding who she was, and that's important
to somebody. Even if they're married and in a relationship, it's, it's very important
to know that aspect of who you are. Uh, and there's lots more like that. I promise. Um,
so also the true extent of heteronormativity. Um, it's not just about what happens if you
reject traditional understandings of gender or um, partner choice. Um, heteronormativity
is a little bit bigger than that. Because even as an aromantic woman who does not have
relationships with--romantic relationships with anyone, um, I have still suffered under
heteronormativity with like, why aren't you doing what you're supposed to, as, as a cisgender
woman. Um, what happens to people like me? How do I form a life that's meaningful and
fulfilling, when everybody's telling me I can't be happy in who I am. So um, non-sexual
intimacy is another one. Uh, this is not to say that you have to give up sex to have non-sexual
intimacy, but non-sexual intimacy is really important to um, any kind of relationships
that are intimate in any way, and we sometimes, because we don't really have a choice if we're
not sexually attracted to our partners, uh, beyond trying to cultivate intimacy in ways
that are not necessarily um, common, uh, we have a lot of resources on that, a lot of
experiences to share. And uh, alternatives to sexualized spaces. This is, this is a difficult
one to talk about, because again, um, a lot of people who are, who are same-sex-attracted,
they have been shamed, they have been taught that you can't be proud of who you are and
they want to celebrate that in a place that's safe. And they should be allowed to do that.
But as a result of that, many LGBTQ spaces are very sexualized in a way that makes some
people uncomfortable, and it's not just asexual people, it's some people who just don't want
their, they may not want to be sexual in public, they may not want to witness sexual displays,
um, it doesn't mean like, oh, that person's a prude, they need to get over it, it's just,
some people are not comfortable um, engaging in sexuality in, in those kinds of spaces.
And I think a lot of people in the LGBTQ community would say um, I would like that too, I would
like a place where that's not really gonna be the tone, there needs to be more diversity
in the types of experiences we can have and as, when asexual form groups, a lot of times,
of course, it's not very sexualized, I mean we might, we might make jokes like, like a
lot of us still use a lot of, uh, really uh, colorful language! But uh, at the same time,
you know, you're usually not gonna see somebody um, you know, displaying sexual behavior in
ways that sometimes you'll see it in a Pride float or something like that, and um, you
know, there's, there's, I don't want to say oh there's a time and a place because I feel
like people who are gay should be allowed to have the same opportunities to not be shamed
for their sexuality just like straight people always take for granted, but there should
be alternatives. Um, and finally of course, resources, resources for LGBTQ partners of
aces and aros, because some of you may wanna date us. And um, so imagine that, right? There
are mixed-orientation couples all the time. Uh, there are mixed-orientation groups, and
there are different kinds of partnerships, so resources to understand and get along with
us and to maybe not internalize any kind of feelings of rejection that you may feel from
the person not desiring you sexually, like, there's all kinds of stuff to talk about that
we can help you with if you're interested. So finally, um, the last piece here, this
is very brief, is media art and music. Okay. I love media. Because it's sort of a shortcut
to understanding who we are as people in the world. The--the, you're represented in media,
you're here, everyone knows that there are stories about you. You're real. Someone else
has experienced what you've been through. But um, like I said before, um, sometimes
the words that are used to talk about us are not nice. Um, if you've, if you don't have
nice words for people like you, if words for people like me are "spinster" and heh, and
um, I don't know, I, I can't really be a cat lady, I don't even have cats. But the ideas
about say, women who live by themselves without a romantic partner, nobody seems to see that
as positive. All the stories about us are, we're creepy, we're weird, we're lonely, and
when all the media displays us like that, we internalize that and we say, "I won't be
able to be happy in my adult life if I don't find a partner, or at least I'm not alone."
Uh, so media art and music, um, is more than just um, not being about sex. It doesn't become
an asexual-inclusive piece just because it excludes sex, but that's the closest we have
right now most of the time. So sometimes asexual people are like "I really like this" because
it doesn't depend on, you know, relating to a romantic or a sexual desire to enjoy what's
going on. So like a lot of us will say, you know, I prefer watching children's entertainment
because usually it's not explicit like, that's part of how we, we get our "childish" images,
you know, that it's a thing that children do before we're mature. Um, and you know,
I love cartoons. So it's like, you know, how much music out there is about, like, "I love
bein' alone!" You hear 'em occasionally. They're usually like power ballads about like, "I'm
single and I'm awesome," but they still--huh? Oh my goodness. So our media representation
is often actively harmful or it just leaves us out. If it's, if we're on the screen but
we're fixed with hormones or we're treated like a liar, obviously not just us but everyone
who is in our lives will internalize that about us. It's very powerful. And if we're
not represented, it, it makes us feel like nobody's talking about this, nobody else must
be experiencing it, uh, media is how humanity talks to itself. If we're not in it, we feel
like nobody's talking about us, nobody's talking to us, we're not part of the global conversation,
and that's kind of a tragedy. And so, we're trying to make more of it ourselves, but we
also need people who are not asexual, who are not aromantic, to see these good examples
so that they know we're here too, and they don't accidentally contribute to the erasure
and the terrible messages that we're all hearing every day. And so, this is my last slide.
It has the question mark. I'm ready for any questions if anyone wants to submit some.
Do we have time? Okay. We'll go down the rows and if you wanna pass back the blank cards
too that would be good.
I went five minutes over but that's not too bad.
Oh gosh are we gonna get memes? Oh you are definitely getting memes! So many memes!
We're gonna separate the blanks and the memes.
Should I, should I go ahead and read some of these, and--for those who are staying I can try to answer
I'll try to keep it brief, 'cause I know some people are hungry and some people just want
me to stop talking.
Okay. Um, so this says, "What's your best response to 'it's just a
phase'?" Um, honestly, my best response to that is uh, "Well okay, maybe it, maybe it
is." Um, a lot of times if you acknowledge at first, like, yeah, I might be wrong about
myself. It's not a decision. I didn't decide I'm asexual. But everyone, everyone, including
the person asking you to you know, defend whether it's a phase, their sexuality is their
best guess based on their past and their present. And your past and your present is how you
navigate what you expect to happen in the future with your sexuality. Everybody is going
on um, im--like, incomplete data. You haven't met every person in the world, so you don't
know you can't be attracted to some person you haven't met. That is true for us, that
is true for them. And if it's just a phase, then I'll change what I call myself. But until
or unless that happens, I do expect you to respect what I'm calling myself now, and just
out of you know, basic decent humanity. So thank you! All right. Um, let me see. Uh,
this looks like it says, "Intersection of asexuality and being POC," is that what that
says, I think so. Um, as a white woman I don't have that much to say about it, but I will
say that I talked to a lot of people of color for my book. And um, one thing that um, both
um, primarily the black women and the Latina women who talked to me, they said that it
was difficult sometimes to separate out how much, like, being sexualized as minority,
like, exotic kind of damaging tropes about them, uh, what they're like sexually, they,
they've said you know, "I'll never know who, who I might've been if I hadn't experienced
those, and whether, how much of my asexuality is a reaction to that." Um, so that's frustrating,
but it's also, um, one of the things they said is that because so much of the activism
and so much of the in-person interaction in asexual communities is very white, uh, that
they sometimes feel that they don't belong, there's racism within the communities, I have
seen that, that is true, I've seen racism in ace spaces that really kinda messed me
up when I first saw it, um, and I can't even imagine how bad it must've been for the people
that it was directed at, um, I'm really embarrassed about that on behalf of them. Um, so um, one
thing that they have said is that they risk losing the support of their racial group sometimes,
like their family that they may have very tight uh, ties to, and uh, religious groups
that they may be part of, uh, they feel that they are risking something that they need
in their lives by saying "well, I'm, this is how my orientation is," they, they, they
may feel that um, they're risking a community that they, they can't risk in a, you know,
world that uh, they don't have this other support that a lot of us who have more mainstream
identities, we don't risk as much by coming out. And um, that's one major thing that I've
learned from talking to these folks. Um, from the men, I've, I've seen um, a lot of Asian
men are desexualized a lot? While Asian women are sometimes like, a fetish, and that's really
messed up too. Um, so, some of the folks that I've talked to about that say, um, that their
identities, uh, they may, it made it very difficult to talk in mainstream, what passes
for mainstream ace spaces, uh, because, their special experiences are so isolated, they're
so like, unusual within an unusual group, it's so hard to find somebody else who has
experienced that. Um, so um, I, the first asexual conference, or the first conference
I went to that had an asexual um, group, um, they had an Asian and Pacific Islander uh,
caucus, which is really interesting, obviously I didn't go so I didn't hear what was going
on, but there are occasionally, they will make spaces for people to talk about their,
their, their intersections and how it's affected them. Um, lemme see what else have I got here.
Uh, have I spoken, okay, "Have you spoken to Anthony Bogaert, what is your opinion on
his work?" Um, I have really only seen um, cherry-picked quotes from Anthony Bogaert,
I haven't read his book, and I have not spoken to him, but all I know is we were in, we were
in some of the same stuff, a lot of times he gets interviewed and I get interviewed.
And he wrote a book before me, but it's not from an asexual perspective, and it's from
an academic perspective. I don't know how accurate it is. And I, I know that um, as
an outsider to the community you can still do some good, but he's never gonna quite have
the same goals as we do. Um, so when I wrote my book, I wanted it to be from an asexual
perspective, I think it's particularly valuable because of that, but my book is not a scientific
book at all. So you know, I don't, I don't know sometimes if I should recommend Anthony
Bogaert's book because I haven't personally read it, but mostly I just acknowledge that
he exists and he also I believe has worked with Lori Brotto, who is another common researcher
of asexuality, she seems to be a little bit more active with um, sort of the activism
aspect, I believe she was one of the people who was instrumental in getting asexuality
mentioned in the DSM-5. Um, so I don't, I'm sorry that it's only kind of a partial answer
to your question because I really haven't had a lot of experience with Anthony Bogaert.
There's a few things on here. Let's see. A question: "One argument I've heard against
asexuality is that by separating sexual and romantic attraction, we perpetuate the connection
between homosexuality and hypersexuality, which is harmful. What would be your response
to this?" I'm not sure how homosexuality and hypersexuality is uh, distinguished, like,
how that is hurt more by separating sexual and romantic attraction, but I think what
I've seen is um, let's see. I think we have proof that, that the sexual attraction to
someone can sometimes not manifest with the romantic attraction, but I think that because
most people experience them together, it is still useful to talk about them like they're
uh, intertwined, when they are. Um, I think we also need to acknowledge that some of us
don't experience them that way. Experience it that way. Um, but I don't know if I understand
exactly um, how it perpetuates the connection between homosexuality and hypersexuality.
But maybe it's because um, there is definitely this uh, this perception that especially gay
men are oversexualized, that they're, that if they are given the spotlight they're just
gonna um, use it for deviance or something. I don't know. Um, it's definitely a harmful
idea that homosexuality is hypersexuality, I don't think I quite follow the logic though.
I don't know how to respond to it. I think I would need a little bit more elaboration
from the person who's alleging this. Um, I don't know if I've really come across that
honestly. I've definitely come across the idea that hypersexuality and homosexuality
are linked, which is, you know, harmful. I don't know if I've seen someone make that
connection. Um, the next question here says, "One thing I've noticed is there's a clear
difference between how I experience my sexuality and how my other queer friends experience
their sexuality, because for them it does have a sexual component that I just don't
experience. Often I've wondered if that may justify some of the whole 'your experience
is different, you don't belong here' rhetoric. I was wondering what your thoughts on that,
the difference I mean." Well, here's the thing, like, everybody in the LGBTQ community does
have a different experience. And you can't necessarily say, um, you know, I'm different
from you because I don't experience sexual attraction, and all of you do, but you know,
I'm also a lot of, a lot of people who are gay are also cisgender, a lot of people who
are trans are not gay, or they are gay, you know, you're gonna have different experiences,
they're gonna have different intersections. And um, I don't, I, I think that it is true
that we're not having an experience that they have, but I don't think that means we don't
belong here because you could probably find a reason for a lot of folks that are in LGBTQ
spaces that have one of the letters, uh, you could probably find, say, well, I mean if
you're a trans person and you're a trans person who is frequently misinterpreted as cis, and
you know, a lot of people don't know you're trans, are you, do you still belong here if
you're not experiencing transphobia every day. But of course transphobia still affects
that person, of course that person still wants trans friends. So it's like, um, yes, that
person might have, is definitely gonna have a different experience in the world from somebody
who's more visibly trans or somebody who is not transitioning medically, um, but both
of them are trans people, both of them have important things to gain and contribute to
these groups. Um, I think it would be wrongheaded to identify one aspect of something that most
of us experience and some of us, a minority of us don't, and say well, let's just say
that those people don't belong here. Okay, let's weed out them, and you're a trans person
but you're straight so get out of here, um, you know, there's, there's all of us are gonna
share space with um, people who have at least a few mainstream identities that privilege
them. And I, I think that what we have in common is more important. Um, okay. Let's
see. "In your talk you frequently equate being asexual and not wanting to have sex. Do you
think someone can not experience sexual attraction and also be comfortable for lack of a better
word with having sex?" Yes, absolutely. There are sex-positive, and there sex-desiring asexual
people. Um, actually I would say um, this kinda gets a little bit, um, into another
category of discussion, but in my book I do talk about kinky asexual people and actually
even people who are not asexual who might be kinky, um, they don't necessarily have
to be attracted to the person who's giving them a sexual experience that they desire.
A lot of people say "I like sex, I'm not necessarily into you, but I'll take sex from you 'cause
I like sex." Some asexual people, it's a small, it's a minority, but some asexual people do
that. Some of us, um, enjoy self-stimulation. Some of us are um, willing to compromise?
Maybe we don't necessarily enjoy it, but we enjoy some aspects of what that connection
brings to us. We may not intrinsically enjoy sex but we might be willing to do it for other
reasons that are valuable to us. Hopefully it's not in a coercive situation, 'cause there
is a LOT of that. Um, I definitely don't think that being asexual is about not having sex.
But for me, that was a big part of how I discovered I was asexual, because I didn't want to do
this thing. This thing that nobody else seemed to recognize anyone could ever wanna refuse
if they could get it. And they're, they're just telling me that it, it has to be fear-based
or something, so I kinda formed an identity partly around what I didn't wanna do, and
I only later modified my, my term for myself um, as not experiencing sexual attraction
when I realized it was more accurate. But I also don't wanna have sex. That's true for
me too. And the, the behavior and the orientation being different is, is an important distinction,
um, and so I think with um, being asexual and still wanting to have sex, you, you, it's
not common, it's, it's not, um, it's not vanishingly rare, but one of the dangers of putting a
lot of attention on that is um, that the mainstream will gobble that up and say "Well asexual
people still have sex! They still compromise! You can still have sex with them!" And you
know, you, you see a lot of that in, I've, I've seen some folks discussing the dangers
of emphasizing that too much because it's what is already emphasized in society, that
you're still expected to compromise even if you don't desire it. It's a very complicated
question, it's true. But for some of us it's very hard to parse out how much of our um,
how much of our attraction is um, because it's expected of us. So, um, let's see, did
I go through all the ones on the cards? Um, does anyone else have one? 'Cause I think
I only got these. Um, and if anybody wants to say one, you can too. Um. Mmkay. Well,
um, I don't have any more index cards so, and my computer has gone dark, it's telling
me to shut up. Um, so again, I have some sheets here if you wanna take home an Asexual Bingo
card, if you wanna look at the book it's there, and my card is here. So, um, come grab one
if you want some freebies. And thank you so much for listening to me for like an hour
and a half. Thank you so much for inviting me, it's been a pleasure. Thank you! All right.
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