Is asexuality a sweet, delectable treat? Something to celebrate not just on birthdays (I’m born!) but when we are being naughty with a nighttime nibble? Licking the frosting caked with crumbs from our special friend’s lips or our own, smiling because of the rush you suddenly cannot distinguish whether it is coming from sugar or the conversation with them near the cool window in a late September winter?

Is asexuality, er, cake, dangerous? Being out and proud asexy: excessive and too indulgent?

I don’t really like cake if we are being literal (and I obviously wasn’t right then). And if you are trying to watch your weight and/or fight emotional eating, the symbol might not translate super well. But I do like my asexuality. And if my cake is my asexuality, and if sex is sexual norms, then the metaphor can really take me places.

Society sort of has a contradicting stance towards cake, sugar, etc. if we want to pause here. I mean, to understand what the symbol is saying, we have to look at it on its literal level first. On the one hand, there are whole stores dedicated to designing fancy and delicious cakes, but of course you can buy one for almost any price you want. They are the expected staple for many important events. Visions of them scream happiness, fun, pretty, color.

On the other hand, society sort of shuns cake as well. Doctors say sugar is killing us. Cake will make you fat, and we all know what the general consensus is on that. Sort of paradoxical. Sort of sounds like the paradoxical way that our world can treat sex (shaming/celebrating/making rules up). Which is right where asexuality comes in.

I don’t see asexuality as separate or different from sexuality (besides, this sentence doesn’t really make sense. Just like it wouldn’t make sense to say ‘I don’t see homosexuality as different from sexuality.’ Right? Because then you would have to ask “which sexuality?” In all actuality, if we let our creative and introspective selves discern our own preferences and fantasies, the diversity that already exists in our (everybody existing) intimate practices would burn an even brighter hue.

Asexuality has been a spectacle at times, on the news, on The View. It has been something that we don’t deserve. I don’t deserve love, romance, cuddling, intimacy, commitment, attention, etc. if I’m not willing to do certain things. Well, I want to keep my cake and eat it too. I want the best of both worlds which shouldn’t really be mutually exclusive – to have agency over my body, discern what I really want, and to have a close, intimate, significant relationships, that one special one if I can get it, or a community of people who don’t see me as a place holder until they get the thing that is what is supposedly ideal or better.

Symbols can be difficult to wrestle with unless you give them the flexibility and the play that metaphorical language was made for. I think only interpreting the cake symbol as “I’d rather” is a bit limiting, especially since “sex” begs to be broadened, and some asexuals are demi and quite enjoy sex after their conditions of emotional, etc. connection and time are experienced. And we aren’t really eating/liking cake, right? But if I were, I would NOT rather eat cake than be intimate, sensual, romantic, etc. yes, whatever I call sexual, with someone. I’m sure for me food could never replace what I get from people. Luckily, I don’t think this symbol has to say that.

What do you think?

I was 25 when I returned back home after graduate school in Ohio. A paradigm shift had most certainly occurred, one that I felt should be celebrated, acknowledged somehow.

Sometimes we have to come up with our own rituals. I remember watching Sex and The City: Carrie Bradshaw, neither married nor mother in any traditional way, was tired of buying constant wedding gifts and shower gifts, for this one friend in particular I think, so she sends an announcement that she is getting married. . . to herself. And so receives the present she feels she deserves even though she doesn’t have a baby or partner to “justify” it. So was silly, but it was also somewhat of a commentary about why we acknowledge certain events or situations and ignore others.

The giving of your name is a ritual, a special thing, if that is what happens in your culture. Most of us don’t really get to choose, but it kind of becomes a part of us. Like a mantra, we write it continuously on homework, documents; we repeatedly hear its syllables roll toward us, a cue to turn around, see what comes next. We carry it with us like a knapsack that becomes so common we may not think about it at all, but starts to carry life with it, contains remnants that are not really ours at all but belong to someone else who wasn’t really the first to own it either.

I guess it was my last name I most thought I should change. At 25 I wasn’t married. Big deal, right? But it was there. And I grew up, for better or worse, with the practice of writing my name in my magic little girl notebook where the last name of your crush would suddenly appear in place of your own and you could critique it’s loveliness or not. I really don’t have an opinion one way or another about girls changing their last names when they marry boys or other girls, or other combinations, or hyphenate, or whatever it is. Not much of an opinion anyway. I only know that, as an uncoupled person, my gut told me that this was something I wanted to do. So I did. And I felt very much, unmistakably, like the me I had become, and sort of always was. I don’t know if this is how married people who change their names feel. But that was how I felt. And I never regretted it. And I no longer had to wait.

Not a Weeping Uterus

There is a very strong statement going around that you are either 1. in an exclusive romantic relationship that is going somewhere (somewhere = marriage) or 2. alone/sad/lonely/socially unfeeling/awkward. . . did I say sad?. Evidence? It comes with the constant question “so when are you going to find someone?” or “any dates lately”? etc. It comes with the weird feeling one gets during family gatherings when everyone is coupled up, even your 14-year-old cousin who brought his girlfriend. It comes from my own mother (I love her so) constantly angling for me to sign up on Christianmingles.com or any of the other dating sites, worried about me finding someone rather than being impressed/encouraging/admiring of how hard and focused I am on the other parts of my life, such as this dissertation. Or for you, maybe how hard you are working in school, the promotion you just got in your job. Maybe it isn’t a “sacrifice;” maybe it is just that not everyone has the highest priority of having a lover and babies. My uterus is not weeping inside of me. . . my body is athletic, svelte, soft and hard. Not a sad body, trust me.

Still, and I hate to admit it, those family members and friends are kind of on to something. . . if you don’t opt to Seek Out a SSS (single special someone) or you are not in a relationship with a SSS, then. . . how hard is it to establish a network of bliss partners, cuddly family members, deep coffee conversationalists, domestic partners, and blood-friends that will be there for a long long time, geographically accessible, and not consider their lovers (if they have/want them) to be their exit out of your life? How possible is it? “They” (the people who desperately want you to fall in love/date) may not consider this a solution, but it is, if we could get it. Good friends that are there for more than a passing glance and fulfilling all kinds of needs, including ones where there is a platonic live-in future together, is just as or more fulfilling than achieving (it feels like it is supposed to be an achievement, right?) the hook-line-sinker of the SSS.

But how?

With all the people spinning around me, seeking their SSS, having their SSS, and even me internalizing the vision for the SSS, how the hell can I create an urban family? When there is the assumption that Just Friends is not always a good deal, and no one really wants it (and by wanting, I mean, trying desperately and investing, and being willing to risk), then well, yeah. Until society collectively understands the other possibilities to relating and living and satisfying, until there are enough people around to help figure out how we can create new relational ties to each other that society does not currently see or value, well, dear mavericks, I don’t know.

But there’s a reason, mixed in with all the rom-coms and dating sites, that FRIENDS and SATC and the L WORD and any sitcom with a “bromance,” despite how well or not people can relate to everything that happens in their lives, are fantasies too. There’s something really appealing about platonic partnerships (exclusive and poly both), more than ephemeral chimeras, that call to something deep within us. All of us maybe. But can we take the risk? Can we communicate what we want? Can we envision something full, fulfilling, and desirable like this together? I think we can, and I think it is a possibility. I think that the increasing awareness of asexuality and our accepting of the challenge to create these new relationships as the first models to how it all works will help it happen.

Have any of you had success with creating those platonic poly-communities and/or exclusive partnerships that you want? Comment below.

WHY? Let me give you the quick and dirty of it.

1. The data set that this statistic comes from was collected in 1994. NINETEEN NINTY FOUR peoples. Even IF 1% of the population in 1994 was asexual (this stat was not even true then), would there STILL be only 1% in 2013?? No new asexually-identified people in almost 20 years? That is one stable statistic.

2. The guy that “counted” the number of asexuals from the data set (that he did not even personally collect) did NOT interview people. These “asexuals” did NOT self-identify as asexual.

3. The answer that meant a person in the data was an asexual (according to the author): “I have never felt sexually attracted to men nor women.”

IF you were choosing who you felt sexually attracted to (men or women) PRIOR to any understanding of what asexuality was, even hearing the term, PRIOR to self identifying as an asexual, what would you have put? I would personally have put “I have always been sexually attracted to men” back in the day BECAUSE I would have not distinguished between romantic and sexual attraction and because, growing up in a heteronormative society where it was assumed I would have crushes on boys and eventually get married and have sex (I also grew up Christian), I never really questioned I was heterosexual. SO, THEREFORE, I don’t think you can assume that everyone who was an asexual person in 1994 would choose this answer. Besides NEVER felt sexual attraction? This cuts out all the demi-sexuals, etc. Yeah.

4. IF you accept from this study that asexuals make up 1% of the population, you MUST ALSO accept the conclusions the author makes while looking at this 1% of the data. These are that “asexual people” have:

1. adverse health

2. later onset of menarche

3. short height

4. and low weight

DO you accept these conclusions? You can’t just pick and choose.

Q: How Many Asexual Peoples are there REALLY in the World?

A: Too fucking few. But growing every day!

(Sorry, I just had to edit this to be more direct. Bad research just makes me angry. Below, you will find the previous version of this post:)

I have read that “1% of the population is estimated to be asexual” pretty much everywhere people are interested in noting the prevalence. I’m not saying it isn’t true, but I think people should really know where this stat comes from.It comes from Mr. A. Bogaert’s 2004 article “Asexuality: Prevalence and Associated Factors in a National Probability Study.” Mr. B did not actually DO a study. Not his own, at least. He looked at data from ANOTHER survey collected in the UK in 1994 (10 years before he published his article). In this study, people were NOT asked if they were asexual, nor did they otherwise self-identify in anyway.Mr. B simply looked at those who answered “I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all” and called them asexual.About 1% of the respondents gave this response. Why is this problematic? Saying that an absolute, lifelong lack of sexual attraction is the definition of asexuality is kind of narrow and reductive. And you can’t really just call someone asexual. They really have to have the opportunity to identify themselves as such.Secondly, generally, people who do have a lack of sexual attraction and find this distressing and wish to be treated/changed, do not take on the asexual identity. Those who chose the answer they did might have chosen it for a number of reasons. Third, “sexual attraction” was the only choice and not clear. Some asexual people might have chosen their relational attraction based on the gender(s) they are attracted to sexually, romantically, platonically, etc. This was not a survey that had asexuality in mind. In 1994. So having a researcher make conclusions about the asexual population based on a study that did not look at asexual peoples is problematic.Some of the other conclusions Mr. B made from looking at the 1994 UK survey data? He said was a relationship found between “asexuality” and certain health/biological issues. So. . . . I figure not many people have read the article from which the 1% statistic came. This is it. So 1%? I personally don’t care what percentage of people are what. I just know there are too fucking few.(By the way, the author of this post has good health, her first period at 12 [yes, you needed to know], is average height, and well, I wouldn’t say low weight.)

I think St. Valentine’s Day is a very asexy holiday. To me, with all the sweet pink cupcake, shiny red electric guitar cards, the idea that you should give someone orchids or write a poem, or spend an evening at a seaside cafe with sparkling wine. . . well it is all about intimacy, romance, and showing your friends how much you care. In a sense, it is the one day when sex really doesn’t sell all that much. Love does. All kinds of love. In the village I walk around during study breaks, there is a bakery with a sign in the window that says “We even have sweet lovey treats for Fido!” Pet love. Staying at home and watching a black and white film. Self Love. Being good to yourself and others. I can definitely dig that.

So all the love to you, peoples.

Progress: Working on writing another chapter. 

Coding is completed. (May 7, 2013)

Interviews are closed. (Mar. 31, 2013)

All participants who provided contact information and gave a working email have been contacted.  (Mar. 18, 2013)

Chapter 1 (Intro chapter) completed. (Mar. 2, 2013)

The survey will be closed for new responses at 3pm US West Coast Time today. (Feb. 18, 2013)

I feel as if this topic is something that I need to address explicitly. Because it is damn confusing.

Question: Do asexuals have/not have sex?

Answer: What do you mean by sex?

Sex can cover a wide range of intimate, physical (sure, you can even debate physical) activities. I find that it is problematic to attempt to have a hard and fast rule about 1. what counts as foreplay and 2. what counts as sex. You have to get the idea OUT of your mind that THE sex only means penetrative sex. Or that it means only genital sex. Asexual people usually have sexual boundaries, but where exactly those boundaries fall is only known when you, well, ask the asexual that you are in a relationship with or want to be in a relationship with what they are.

Hierarchies are particularly a problem. It is sort of insulting to me (or anyone for that matter) to insist that everyone agrees that a particular sexual activity is the ultimate, the best, the goal of a relationship/encounter, and the rest of the sexual activities are progressively lesser/less satisfying/desired/fun/meaningful, etc. Everyone does not agree on this. And this is why not everyone is automatically compatible with one another. And that is fine. Perhaps a bit frustrating, but fine.

SO the answer to “Do asexuals have/not have sex?” is kind of a confusing question to answer. First, because what you (asexual or not) mean by sex is unclear and what “asexuals” mean by sex depends on the particular asexual concerning A. what s/he engages in and doesn’t and B. how s/he refers to what s/he engages in and doesn’t.

The point of identifying as asexual is to allow people a starting point in discussing/sharing that some people have certain relational boundaries they feel are non-normative in the relational/sexual community they are in. This could be boundaries that are physical, as I discuss mainly here, but also could be boundaries of time or situation or condition. It goes to say that different sexual communities have different sexual norms and that is important to keep in mind. Asexuality also can be indicative of certain normative relational boundaries people wish to blur or dismantle, but that is another discussion for another day.

It is also important to keep in mind that “asexual” works because “a-” does not only mean “not.” It also (please look it up and you will see) means “in completion of” or “all.”

Consider this just a quick and dirty lesson on a topic in asexuality studies.

Eve Sedgewick says that it amounts to violence when you feel someone is scrutinizing you, attempting to intrude with questions about your secrets, your closets, the things that may not be intentionally hidden even, but what you don’t feel the need to put on a tee shirt or a big sign that you carry around for the comfort of others you confuse. Sometimes terms are made into idols, and that disgusts us. Sometimes the term seems to be what we and others are bound by or loyal to, raising the term up to define the lines of our minds. So this isn’t about terms or feeling guilty for not casting your pearls before those who won’t cherish the gift.

This is about being an agent and not being scared. This is about survival and not retreating into ourselves. This is about finding community, those who have the ability to listen or know or relate, and taking what that community has to offer – strength and a safe place.

I can talk about being more honest this year all I want, but if I do not do it responsibly, strategically, I might usher in unecessary grief and misery, awkwardness, that I don’t deserve and could have avoided. I always say I am going to be more honest, never lie about who I am. I never realized that making it easier on myself was an option and not a sin. Anyone who says differently may not realize just how hard some truths can be, truths like Gay, like Asexual, like Genderqueer, like I-don’t-believe-in-that-religion-anymore. It depends on where you are, where you live, to whom the receiving ears belong.

1. Community. Here’s our first goal. A physical community we can join, we have activities with, we can use to practice and live the lives we live and maybe tell others about. It takes energy and planning and time to find/create/participate in community. But community is why norms are so forceful – the normative community is so large or maybe it simply exists. When I was a religious child, I could go out and talk about Jesus to anyone because I knew that I had a whole community backing me up, that would be proud of me, that would embrace me, that would assuage my wounds that I might make out in the non-Jesus-loving world. If we can learn anything from our childhood and why it was so happy (or why it wasn’t), let’s learn how our communities, perhaps unchosen at the time, helped us with those feelings. I don’t believe an internet community is enough. I think that people we can touch and move with are important to find. May we consider such a task an everyday effort and as important as salvation to our souls.

2. Self-sufficiency. Here’s the second goal. It is no doubt that it is difficult to voice words others may hate when we depend on them for food, clothing, and shelter. When what we say may cause them to throw us out of the house, physical violence, or making living miserable in any way, it is no surprise we consider the consequences to breaking the silence as something halting. So if changing your living situation or at least the ability to is a possible prerequisite sharing what you need to share, work on either preparing (if you are not the right age to move out) or acting on doing just that. There are some things that may need to be sacrificed in order to do this. But you can’t hold off on beginning to live your life, can you?

3. Stop being responsible for other people’s feelings. While your reality may cause another to feel confused, hurt, anxious, it is still your reality. Love yourself enough to be able to ask for and expect acceptance. Your reality is nothing to be ashamed of. It is what it is. And you aren’t alone.

What causes Amelie and Nino to have interest in each other? Nino is not immediately attuned to the “affinity” Amelie feels for him. Nino’s tendency to see objects as animated allows him to ask to the man in the photo that Amelie had left as a clue the question, “What does she want?” He wonders why Amelie is only teasing him with the return of his complete photo book instead of just giving it to him. It does not cross his mind that Amelie, as the photo man informs him (accurately or not), is in love.

As the current paradigm of Amelie and Nino’s world is one in which sexual intercourse and romantic relationships are both expected and important, more normative members objectify motivations and desires that both are and are not true for our main characters. For example, when Amelie is still searching, in the beginning of the film, for the owner of the discovered box of past trinkets she finds behind her wall, she tracks down the location of the next person she can inquire of and asks to leave work early. Madame Suzanne (her boss) immediately asks, “What’s his name?” mistakenly assuming it is a romantic rendezvous. Amelie either does not catch the implication or chooses to interpret it in her own way, smiles, and gives the name of the next person of her pursuit without correcting her. When asked if she has kids, Amelie replies, no. Nevertheless, she is “godmother of the outcasts, Madonna of the unloved,” which sort of means she is mother of all of everybody, doesn’t it? We can be mothers and fathers in many ways.

One neighbor, a man who paints, has one figure that he cannot finish, and Amelie says, “Maybe because she is different.” How so? “I don’t know,” she says. “But she is different.” As her neighbor tells her, “any normal girl would call the number, meet the guy, return the book, and see if her dream is viable.” Amelie both is and is not normal. We may say that she is too painfully shy to connect with others, but what other person in the film connects with others to a deeper degree? There are no intimate conversations among anyone really. But Amelie does intensely long for something.

Amelie grows up in a world where she longs for more intimacy. Her doctor father is described as “neurotic” and rarely gives her any physical contact. A rush comes from human touch in an examination and causes a quick-beating heart, but interpreted by her father as something to be diagnosed when she is a young girl. Her desire for physical and emotional intimacy is not a disease; but we may say her father was correct, at least symbolically, when he tells her it is a “heart condition.” Aside from the Present yet Absent Father who cannot really hear her when she speaks to him, the Mother is quite literally killed off early (as in most sacred history), but was described as “an iceberg” anyway. Amelie’s is a solemn and rigid world filled with irrational guilt. The childhood that lacks intimacy is eventually replaced by an adult world she doesn’t quite fit into either: one that privileges certain sexual and romantic practices.

I think Amelie pursues Nino because there is some aesthetic connection, some chemistry that need not be explained. Nino, the great x-ray animator, sees a pumping, bright red glowing heart inside of Amelie when they meet at the photo booth for the first time. The romance she prolongs with him is a source of frustration, longing, inability, and play. She does the best she can, being who she is in a world that is what it is, peppered with sacred, intensely-felt moments, being the creatrix. For we are introduced to many moments of intimacy and ecstasy in Amelie’s life, moments of redeeming and redemption: Madeleine, the Mary Magdalene who tells Amelie a tale of sexual pleasures and betrayals by a husband who left her, receives a letter, cut and pasted from the deceased Adrian’s love letters originally written to the “other” woman, by Amelie in order to preserve his memory. The man who is the owner of the trinkets says, when it is returned to him, that he has a guardian angel. Afterwards: “Amelie has perfect harmony, a surge of love.” It does not stop. She helps a blind man cross the streets, and tells him in a detailed fashion about all that is happening around him, and rushes off. A split, fast momentary ecstasy.

For Amelie, I wish people wouldn’t see her as so broken, or at least her brokenness as so much an anomaly. I wish she could be more confident in her ventures of love and romance, but sometimes it is difficult when the world’s norms are slightly different from your own. I think it is difficult for an American especially to understand the film unless we know a little more about French cinema, but that is what I will be looking at next. I feel that a lot can be explained (especially the silences) by French emphasis on symbolism via the urban and natural and acting styles/portraying the person/Euro personalities.  I DO see Amelie as asexual, and I see her world as not producing her asexuality but, instead, presenting her with challenges that she must uniquely work to overcome. And she does.

Who knows if asexuality was on the radars of Guillaume Laurant and Jean-Pierre Jeunet when they collaborated together to write the 2001 film Amelie. Nonetheless I see her as a redemptive figure needing to be redeemed, offering us a sacred narrative of the erotic asexual. I also intend to respond to what Amelie’s suggested shyness, non-intimate childhood, and silences might mean for members of asexual community who must struggle to convince a non-asexual world of their emotional and physical health.

The film begins with worlds colliding – a blue fly rapidly flapping wings, wine glasses teetering on a balcony table, the erasure of the name of a deceased friend, and the conception of Amelie, our main character. Throughout the film, the audience is bombarded with the intensity of flickering scenes of brilliant color and images, almost like a speeding slide show used to evoke overwhelming emotion or the way we hope “life passing before my eyes” might be experienced when on the verge of death.

Amelie shares with us a life that is both vividly intense, causing what should be mundane to be imprinted with the fantastical, and ubiquitously erotic, causing what otherwise is contrasted with a world filled with sexual intercourse to be highly charged and sustaining.

We do not make it very far in the film before we see Amelie in bed with a man. She is beneath him, disengaged in intercourse. It is not a hightly erotic scene, but Amelie rather gives the camera a smile of amusement; she seems to not reveal any sexual pleasure. During this exchange, we hear from the narrator, “Amelie has no boyfriend. She tried once or twice, but the results were a letdown. Instead, she cultivates a taste for small pleasures. Dipping her hand into sacks of grain, cracking crème brulee with a teaspoon, and skipping stones at St. Martin’s Canal.” Seeing her interact with her world, dip her hand almost orgasmically into the cool, dry beans, is simply more satisfying for Amelie as it is, visually, for the audience.

Amelie lives in a world where everyone is described by their idiosyncratic likes and dislikes. Yet Amelie is the only one who seems to not like sex. Perhaps sex in this film is simply symbolic of the deepest relational connection that Amelie cannot, because of her shyness, make until the end when she allows herself to meet the man from the photo booth she is interested in and, it could be argued, makes love via sexual intercourse with him.

This is one reading that might make sense if scenes of sexual intercourse were ever imbued with the erotic, but there are none. (Although quite sexy/erotic as the end is, we only see Amelie and Nino embracing in bed, at least partially naked, but not actually having intercourse, so this cannot count). Nevertheless, sex is everywhere in Amelie’s world. She wonders about the people having orgasms (from intercourse) in the city below her balcony (we see 15 groups of people), Nino works in a sex shop that she searches for him in, and when looking for the man whom the little time capsule she found hidden behind her wall, Amelie is propositioned by what looks like a handsome female prostitute. Amelie is aware of sex happening all around her and seems to feel neither longingly nor adversely about it, simply slight curiosity and amusement.

The man, Nino, that she first sees at a photo booth in a train station and “feels an affinity to,” is introduced to the audience as having lived only a short distance from Amelie growing up and “five miles apart, they both dreamed of having a brother and a sister to be with all the time.” We wonder as a curious audience if this could be a romantic interest, and he does become such, but the lines between family, friendship, affection, and romance are blurred as the story of Amelie continues.

And as this post is long enough, I shall give you part 2 soon.