Project Ace

(Image source: http://skepticsplay.blogspot.ca/2011/06/asexuality-at-sf-pride-2011.html)

There has been a tendency for the rights of asexual-identifying people to be pigeonholed into the same category as feminism and LGBTQ-related orientations, and while this association may indeed serve useful in projecting the voices of a very often neglected group further then they may be able to reach on their own at this point, it is also important to remember that the asexual community — that every asexual person — faces very different struggles from the ones presented by the feministand LGBTQ rights movements.  Asexuality isnotan orientation; it is the lack of a sexual orientation, and care must be taken to avoid placing it on the same continuum of sexuality as other movements.

As I hope I have demonstrated, the asexual community continues to grow wider and stronger with every passing year, presenting itself as a movement worthy not only of being considered “real,” but of being understood and accepted by every member of society.  It may yet be a long time before the asexual community is able to reach that level of public familiarity (LGBTQ advocates have yet to do it, and they have been in the spotlight for considerably longer), but it is certainly well on its way.  The momentum of new research and community-building efforts gives every ace more of a foundation to frame their identity upon, and more to be proud of.

Over the course of my blog posts here, I haven’t said all that I might have liked to, but unfortunately I’m reaching the point where I am required to wrap things up as per the structure (and deadline) of the assignment.  But I have found interestingly, that as I have been completing Project Ace, it has been much more than an assignment, and I certainly plan to continue my exploration of the asexual community and its efforts for visibility.  If what you have read here so far has been interesting to you, I hope you’ll continue exploring as well.

So what does the future of the asexual awareness movement look like?  Well, one way or another, it is unlikely to be a quiet one.

(Ace valentines cards by loonarphoenix on tumblr.)

(via spiegalr-deactivated20130315)

Quick, when I say “social movement,” what’s the first thing you think of?

(Image source: http://nyaltnews.com/2012/02/occupy-wall-street-disavow-national-general-assembly/)

Yeah, me too.

But not all social movements need to be about people marching in the streets holding cardboard signs.  Not all activism is done in the street, and not all signs are made of cardboard.  To understand asexuality awareness as a movement, one needs to understand that the asexual community is actively resisting the dominant sexual, heteronormative standard that permeates modern society.

The Power of Words

In her 2011 paper, “The presence of absence: Asexuality and the creation of resistance”, Lily Hughes examines several aspects of the asexual identity, especially with regards to power and resistance to power (the most prominent power, in this case, being the pervasive myth among the population that sex is an absolute requirement for a happy, fulfilling life).

As she notes, there are problems even with the label, “asexual,” as the term only makes sense in relation to sexuality and therefore seems to depend on the existence of sexuality in order to exist itself (Hughes, “The presence of absence”).  At the same time, Hughes notes that placing asexuality on the same playing field as sexuality “dismantles the dominance of sexuality revealing its fickle dependence on desire” (Ibid.), making the term “asexual” both dependent on and the destroyer of dominant themes of sexuality. 

In contrast, Hughes also examines the alternative identity marker of “ace.” “Ace” can be seen as an extremely empowering term for an individual to adopt, since it sets itself as both opposite and independent of sexuality.  In this way, someone who does not experience sexual desire does not need to feel like a subset or an inversion of something that normally exists in the population; in other words, one can self-identify using a term for what oneis, instead of what one is not.

And when it comes to coming together as a group to counter ignorance and promote open discussion, powerful words are really the best tools you can have.

Uniting a Group

In anthropology, we frequently discuss the importance of symbols in socio-cultural contexts. For example, language itself is a system of symbols, in that a single letter or word or sentence may have no intrinsic meaning, yet each component may evoke numerous meanings in one’s mind by virtue of association and connotation.  Symbols become especially important in the context of a social movement, in which large groups of people must be united by a common goal.  Shared discursive practices and the creation of an empowered asexual space make up one way to do this; a set of symbols that the community can build itself around is another.

AVEN’s wiki contains a page dedicated to some of these symbols, including the asexual flag (black, grey, white, and purple, each colour representing a different facet of the asexual community), the ace of hearts and ace of spades (sometimes used as a symbol for orientation, with the heart more commonly used for romantic asexuals and the spade for aromantic asexuals), and black rings worn on the middle finger of one’s right hand.  Uniting behind a shared set of symbols not only strengthens and reaffirms the bonds of solidarity existing between current members of the community, but also serves as an outward projection of shared values that may capture the curiosity and attention of outsiders to the movement.

The asexual community is united in countless other ways.  The website this blog is posted on is a good example, after all.  Thanks to the miracles of tumblr tags, a user can simply click “asexuality” in the tags of an interesting post on their dashboard and find themselves instantly transported to the centre of a thriving asexual community that transcends age, gender, nationality, and geographic location.  Blogs like Ace Secrets provide a safe space for asexual people to express their thoughts and feelings anonymously, while humourous blogs such as Asexual Axolotl and Aromantic Aardvark take a more lighthearted (but no less relevant) look at what it’s like to be asexual.

As long as they have a computer and an internet connection, individuals identifying as ace now have access to a phenomenally extensive support group as well as a wide variety of resources to help them understand themselves better.  In the last year or so that I have been using tumblr myself, I have noticed more and more of my tumblr friends coming out as asexual, and although I cannot presume that my experience is the rule, I would be very surprised if their self-identifying did not have anything to do with the reblogged ace-awareness posts I have been seeing on my dashboard as well.  It seems apparent that the new venues for discussion and community-building provided by the internet have done much more towards the furthering of asexual education than decades of brief academic sidenotes did, and as technology improves these burgeoning internet communities will only grow, making them some of the most powerful voices in the continued push towards widespread recognition and acceptance for asexuals everywhere.

.

.

.

.

.

Hughes, L. “The presence of absence: Asexuality and the creation of resistance.” gnovis, March 20, 2012, http://gnovisjournal.org/2011/11/21/lily-hughes-journal/

“Symbols of Sexuality,” AVENwiki, last modified September 23 2011, http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Symbols_of_asexuality

asexualaxolotl:

“No - Asexuals do not split in two

As awesome as that would be”

Submitted by: oddpicturesoddpeople

“People who do not experience sexual attraction have been documented through history but in today’s society they are largely unrecognised. The assumption that everyone should be able to experience sexual attraction pervades popular culture, medicine, therapy and academia. Asexuality is explicitly or implicitly pathologised or denied and asexuals themselves may be unaware that other people share their experience” (Radloff S157).

If we are to think of the asexual awareness effort as a social movement, then it is useful to consider what the community is moving towards.  In the quote above, Radloff makes note of something that anyone reading this post has probably already made note of: asexual people are an extremely under-recognized and poorly understood group in society today.  Many people have never even heard of asexuality, and even among those who have, frustrating misconceptions exist.

In order to work to dispel these myths and promote tolerance and understanding for asexual people, it is of utmost importance that knowledge of asexuality be able to reach a wide audience through education and research, but unfortunately, scholarly research on the subject has been relatively scarce. 

Early Research

Although asexuality has existed throughout history, it only began to enter the world of academic research in the last century.  Surveys conducted by Alfred Kinsey in the mid-1950s included a Category “X” for those who fell outside his 6-point sexuality spectrum, but it wasn’t until Myra T. Johnson’s 1977 article, “Asexual and Autoerotic Women: Two Invisible Groups” that attention was drawn to asexual people specifically.  Writing from a feminist perspective, Johnson argued that these groups had been, and continued to be, “oppressed by a consensus that they are nonexistent” (Johnson 97).  At the same time, she made note of some of the inherent problems that came with the discussion of asexuality, such as how the English language does not seem properly equipped to deal with the concept of a person who “seems to prefer not to engage in sexual activity” (Johnson 97).  Problems associated with language would continue to be discussed in the work of later writers.

Following Johnson’s article, a number of scientific-oriented papers made occasional reference to asexuality (for example, Michael Storms’ “Theories of Sexual Orientation”), but the subject remained largely unexplored until about ten years ago — roughly contemporary with the creation of the AVEN website.

The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network

Founded in 2001, the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network or AVEN was created with two goals in mind: to further public acceptance and discussion of sexuality, and to bolster the development of an asexual community (Jay, “About AVEN”).  Today, AVEN exists as the primary internet hub for the asexual community and includes FAQs, forums, resources, and an extensive wiki.  For many asexuals today, the thorough and easily accessible information provided by AVEN will have been both their first exposure to the terminological resources that allows them to identify as being asexual (Scherrer 630) as well as their first exposure to a support group made up of people like them.

As Scherrer notes, researchers are often most drawn to scholarly sources in their pursuit of useful knowledge (Scherrer 624), but in a case like this it seems foolish to ignore the effect popular media and non-scholarly sources of information may have on the development of a person’s sexual identity.  Therefore it would be equally foolish not to acknowledge the profound effect the freely available resources and open community provided by AVEN has had on asexuals around the world since its opening eleven years ago.  It is unlikely a coincidence, after all, that the last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of works devoted to exploration of asexuality appearing in both academic literature and mainstream media, bringing the stories of very real asexual people into the eyes of the public and transforming what was once seen as a stigmatized, marginal, “weird” group of outliers into an unquestionably legitimate social movement.
.

.

.

.

.

Jay, D. “About AVEN.” Asexual Visibility and Education Network, March 19, 2012, http://www.asexuality.org/home/about.html

Johnson, Myra T. “Asexual and Autoerotic Women: Two Invisible Groups.” The Sexually Oppressed, eds. Harvey L. Gochros and Jean S. Gochros (New York: Association Press, 1977). 96-109.

Radloff, K. “Beyond the disorder - change of discourse on asexuality.” Sexologies 17, sup. 1 (2008): S156-S157.

Scherrer, Kristin S. “Coming to an Asexual Identity: Negotiating Identity, Negotiating Desire.” Sexualities 11, no. 5 (2008): 621-641.

Storms, Michael. “Theories of Sexual Orientation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38, vol. 5 (1980): 783-792.

minionier:

project-ace:

It would be unproductive to jump into the actual content of this blog without providing a working definition of asexuality to begin with. But, since this blog is not meant to be an encyclopedia and there are numerous websites out there (such as AVEN — remember that name, because it will be…

Hey, um,

So there aren’t only two genders. There are many, many, many more than that. I realize you’re probably quoting the guy who wrote in 84…but we’ve hopefully come a long way since then in recognizing the gender spectrum and people off of the gender spectrum. An asexual lacks sexual attraction to people of *all* genders.

Aromantics can fall in love…just a different variety of love than romantic. And there may very well be aromantic asexuals who have sex. Just…the line “this is a complicated area that commonly occurs in romantic relationships between one sexual partner and one asexual partner” is problematic to me in general.

First of all, thank you so much for pointing all this out — as I’ve mentioned, I’m still sort of a newbie in this area and I really appreciate any guidance anyone has to offer me.  Phrasing it as “either” gender was definitely an oversight on my part (“either” was indeed how it was written in the Bogaert article — surprisingly, it’s actually from 2004 — but I think I can still credit the author with the idea while slightly altering the wording).  I’ve edited the post now — any better?

And thank you, I’ll mention that there are other important forms of love that an asexual can experience, because I do think it’s important to get across that there’s nothing “missing” from an asexual person’s life, whether or not they’re romantic.  I have to be a bit more brief than I’d like to be here, though, due to the constraints that come with this assignment (making it accessible to someone who knows nothing about the topic, etc.)  But yeah, I definitely don’t want my briefness to lead to inadequacy or misleading information, so I’m very glad you pointed that out.

Point taken about that last line; honestly it’s clumsy enough that I think I can just ditch it and rewrite it in a way that doesn’t make it seem like a sexual/asexual romance is the only context in which sex can happen with an asexual.  I’ve also changed it now, but if you have any other suggestions on how I might improve the wording, please let me know.

Thanks once again for the feedback!

Vance, Carole. Pleasure and Danger (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 7.

It would be unproductive to jump into the actual content of this blog without providing a working definition of asexuality to begin with.  But, since this blog is not meant to be an encyclopedia and there are numerous websites out there (such as AVEN — remember that name, because it will be coming up again and again) that do a much better job of providing definitions than I can, I will keep my explanation brief and functional.

Although different definitions exist, an asexual person is generally classified as someone who does not experience sexual attraction to any person, regardless of gender (Bogaert, 279)  Therefore, they experience no desire for partnered sex (ie. sex with another person).  An asexual person may, however, experience other aspects of human sexual behaviour.  This definition implies a distinction between one’s sexual attraction and sexual behaviour — as Bogaert notes, there is “imperfect correlation” between these two areas (Bogaert, 279).

How is asexuality different from celibacy?

Celibacy is a choice, whereas asexuality is understood as inherent to the individual (Jay, “Overview”).  It is conceptualized as similar to sexual orientation, in that one does not choose to be homosexual or heterosexual; it is simply a part of who one is.

Is asexuality a medical/psychological condition?

While there are certain disorders that may result in a reduction of sexual desire (such as hypothyroidism and depression), these are generally treated as separate from asexuality (Prause and Graham, 342).  There is currently no evidence that asexuality indicates a “problem” with an individual.

Is asexuality rare?

Some research, such as that done by Bogaert, indicates that the prevalence of asexuality within a population may be around 1% (Bogaert, 282).  While research is still sparse and figures like this one cannot be taken as a general rule, it seems clear that the number of self-identifying asexual people within the population cannot be dismissed as negligible.

Can asexual people fall in love?

Someone who identifies as asexual may still identify as romantic, and terms such as “heteroromantic asexual” and “homoromantic asexual” are sometimes used.  Sex and love must be considered as entirely separate entities, as they serve very different functions in a relationship (Diamond, 174).  Since asexuality does not translate to the erasure of emotions, many asexual people still feel romantic attachment to others and are perfectly capable of sustaining romantic relationships.  Some people do not experience either sexual or romantic attraction and may be classified as “aromantic asexual”.  It is also important to remember that not all forms of love are romantic, and that even an aromantic asexual may fall in love.

Can asexual people have sex?

Asexual people are still capable of having sex, just as a homosexual man is capable of having sex with a woman.  There are a variety of reasons why an asexual person may have sex, including but certainly not limited to relationships between one sexual partner and one asexual partner (Jay, “Relationship FAQ”).  Asexual people are still physically capable of feeling sexual arousal and some may occasionally masturbate, but their sexual desires are not generally “attached” to another person.

So what does this mean?

It means that there is not, and cannot ever be any one checklist for asexuality.  What one person considers to be asexual may be very different from what another person considers it to be, and likewise one asexual person may lead an entirely different sort of lifestyle from another asexual person. There are also various sub-groupings and alternative labels that exist under the umbrella term of “Asexual” that are too numerous to explore in any great detail here (but if you’re interested, you can start by checking out terms like Grey A).

If this is the first time you’re hearing about asexuality, I hope you aren’t confused, but I do hope that you’re overwhelmed, because this is an inevitably overwhelming subject.  In order to understand the asexual community’s push for public awareness, it is absolutely imperative to have an appreciation for the complexity of this area and how easily blurred the distinctions between different modes of sexuality, romance, and intimacy can become.

So, for the purposes of this blog, who should we call asexual?

The people who call themselves asexual.

.

.

.

.

.

Bogaert, A.F. “Asexuality: Prevalence and associated factors in a national probability sample,” Journal of Sex Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 279-287.

Diamond, L.M. “What does sexual orientation orient? A biobehavioral model distinguishing romantic love and sexual desire.” Psychology Review 110, no. 1 (2003): 173-192)

Jay, D. “Overview.” Asexual Visibility and Education Network, March 16, 2012, http://www.asexuality.org/home/overview.html

Jay, D. “Relationship FAQ.” Asexual Visibility and Education Network, March 16, 2012, http://www.asexuality.org/home/relationship.html

Prause, N. and Cynthia A. Graham, “Asexuality: Classification and Characterization.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 36, no. 3 (2007): 341-356.

What This Blog Is, And Who’s Running It.

Hello, my name is Alanna.  I’m a third year university student majoring in anthropology, and this blog is being completed as a project on social movements for my socio-cultural anthropology class.  I feel a certain sense of obligation to note from the start that although anthropology is my major, my specialization is in archaeology; therefore, I am still rather new to the area of contemporary social research in general.  That being said, the topic of asexuality is something I am genuinely interested in, and although I may be not be familiar with all the research being done in this field academically nor of all the complicated circumstances surrounding the topic in the real world, I hope to learn as much as I can and perhaps even share what I’ve learned with others as I go.

This blog’s purpose is threefold:

• to fulfill the requirements of my anthropology assignment;
• to help me learn more about the asexuality awareness movement;
• and to present all this information in a format that can be easily read and understood by any random stranger who happens to be browsing the uncharted depths of tumblr tags.

My goal is to keep things interesting and relatively informal while still giving asexuality and the asexual community the respect they deserve.  I will be drawing on academic sources, but various posts around tumblr will also serve to illustrate the growing salience of asexual discourse among social groups today.

I will also do everything in my power to approach the topic with respect, politeness, open-mindedness and an appreciation for its complexity; however, if my goal is to create a comprehensive account of everything asexuality is and everything it means, then I will inevitably fail.  The topic is simply too broad to be summarized.  Therefore, please keep in mind that this blog is not “A History of Asexuality” or “Is Asexuality Real” or “The Asexuality Resource Hub”.  Project Ace simply presents an anthropological perspective on the social movement related to asexuality visibility and awareness.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly: if I do something wrong, please tell me.  There are many, many people in the asexual community — even in the tumblr asexual community — who know a lot more about this subject than I do.  There are going to be things I am ignorant of, and if I offend you, it would really help me if you pointed out my mistake so that I can improve upon it.

Now.  Have I managed to get you in the mood for educational ventures?  Then let’s begin.

(Image Source: Original)

A social movement…

• is an informal network
• is based on shared beliefs and solidarity
• mobilizes about conflictual issues
• frequently utilizes various forms of protest (which may include boycotts, petitions, marches, sit-ins, camp-ins, hunger strikes, advertisement, letter-writing campaigns, flash mobs, slogans, signs, and suggestions for things you can do to change the world)
• consists of people who share a common goal and the desire to change things

(Source: Class notes from Anthropology 207, taken January 23, 2012)

Is “Asexuality Awareness” a movement?

The short answer: YES.
The not-quite-as-short answer: this blog.