tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77505635135126123072024-03-12T21:52:36.559-07:00What do you mean by sexQuestionings of the sexually non-specificUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-59837525978963501752017-02-21T10:42:00.001-08:002017-02-21T10:42:28.340-08:00The Touch ContinuumIt's been a WHILE! I've grown a lot and make no claim that I still agree with some of the things I said 6+ years ago. :)<br />
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These days I am part of a community that is very open to touch and affection, where some physical closeness even between people who don't know each other well, is the default cultural expectation, which has been wonderful and relieving for me. I suppose I continue to be on the asexual spectrum, if I have to choose a definition... Though I mostly just don't think of myself as having a sexual orientation. I have occasionally been marginally "sexual" with people. I have relationships that I consider intimate and they are each unique. I had a counselor for a while who at one point asked me, "Are you in a relationship?" I said, "You mean like, a <i>romantic </i>relationship? No. ... I practice intimacy." That still feels more true to me than getting into something called "a relationship", <i>and </i>I feel there is room for deepening in my relating, <i>and </i>I still feel sad sometimes that my relationships even though they are important to me somehow have less legitimacy and visibility in the eyes of society, <i>and </i>it's an ongoing exploration and I get to grow and take risks at my own pace.<br />
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So, in this group that I am part of, and in at least one close relationship, where we have been exploring touch and talking about touch, I feel I will have to bring up more of how it is for me, and I want to articulate it more clearly to myself (and to all of you) first.<br />
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I feel some fear and shame bringing it up, as if I've done something wrong. It's widely accepted that to have "good" boundaries, you make a clear and clean distinction between "platonic" and "sexual" touch, and we're implicitly agreeing only to sharing "platonic" affectionate touch unless agreed otherwise.<br />
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I don't have those really clear boundaries; not even within myself. Is that wrong? Am I leaking some kind of creepy energy? There are several people that I would want to touch more intensely than I currently do, where I feel that I hold back because I sense they are not open to quite as much touch as would convey my feelings towards them. What am I talking about, and will I upset the established order?<br />
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This thing where people go from "platonic" to "sexual" is really confusing to me. It's like I never got the memo. It's just not how it occurs in my body. For me there aren't people over here, who I want to be sexual with, versus people over there, who I don't want to be sexual with. For me, it's <i>all</i> kind of sexual. We are luscious physical beings. The closer I feel to you, the more I will probably want to touch you. And the more of my surface area becomes available to you.<br />
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There isn't any threshold or line that I can clearly identify where something becomes "sexual". In my experience, there isn't a dychotomy of touch called "platonic" and "sexual", in which I can be engaging either one or the other. To me, it's a single thing at different intensities - and what differs is how much of myself am I bringing to the physical interaction: how much attention, presence, surrenderedness, trust, openness, love, flow, aliveness, feeling my whole body, mutual attunement, do I experience in our contact.</div>
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<i>That</i> is what is relevant to me, rather than the degree of nakedness and which body parts are involved.</div>
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My sexuality is sensual. I think for most people as they get more sexy with each other, there is at least some of the time a tension buildup and a desire to move towards some kind of resolution. Where I feel different and have often felt flawed is that I don't experience a need or desire for sexual "release"; I am not even sure what that feels like. What I like is essentially to make out and explore sensuality and connection and energy, for a looong time, without a goal, shifting direction many times, until at some point I feel done and satiated, and want to move on to something else. But preferably staying in sensual connection whatever space we are in. Really, much of my sexual need is already met simply by being touchy-feely and remaining physically open to each other in our everyday interactions.</div>
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I occupy a preferred position that is neither just a friend nor what most people want from a lover: when I get close to someone, I will predictably want to be more physical than "just" a platonic friend but less sexual than a sexual lover. I've been afraid of either being creepy on the one hand or disappointing (and disappointed) on the other. I have not yet felt fully empowered to own what I prefer, in all my relationships. It feels like it's not an easy conversation to have in one sitting because it seems to require a big preamble of turning the sexual paradigm we take for granted, on its head. Or its side.</div>
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My desire to be physical with someone has little to do with how they look or what sex they are. It has more to do with feeling resonance, attunement, trust, playfulness, ease, connection. Touch is also my preferred language for expression of love, and I feel pained when I can't touch the people I love, fully. Or I feel afraid that there is something fundamentally wrong or perverted or misleading or perhaps even abusive in my touch. It's a conflict I continue to live with and have not yet taken the steps to fully resolve.</div>
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That's all for now. This post does not end with a pretty bow on top.</div>
<br />Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-2133113182061383652011-10-25T09:24:00.000-07:002011-10-25T09:52:11.477-07:00Genderqueer PrideI need to share the email I shared with my parents this morning. It's something that would have crushed me years ago, when I was less out to myself, and would have made me argue and be resentful. My parents are very traditional and conventional, from my point of view, and I had a hard time growing up as a post-conventional child in their household. Now I've been through so much self-inquiry in the past years that I can receive a letter like theirs, and feel strong and comfortable replying.<br /><br />----<br /><br />Dear Trix,<br /><br />I'm very happy to see your new display photo /on Facebook/, but let me have a comment.<br />1. A woman is attractive if she is feminine (in behavior - gentle)<br />2. In appearance - specifically: your eyebrows are too strong and too broad for a woman. They are non-esthetical. They look like the eyebrows of the French president De Gaulle or Russian president Brezhnev. <br />Please don't be like that, because these eyebrows don't suit you at all! I advise you to consult an esthetician. If a woman has eyebrows growing in their own way it's non-esthetical. You would be much prettier and more attractive if you paid any attention to your appearance - and that counts for a lot. Your female acquaintances have probably never said anything to you about it, because they did not want you to resent them, or because they themselves have no idea about their looks. And that counts for a lot. And if your hair is perpetually messy - that's not the best looking. <br />I suggest you model your appearance on your girlfriends XY and WZ.<br /><br />I hope you will accept this suggestion in goodwill. Your Dad<br /><br />PS: After you change your appearance, change your display photo again, and read your friends' pleasant comments.<br /><br /><br />-----------------<br /><br /><br />Dear A /dad/ and B /mom/,<br /><br />Your letter from this morning is very entertaining. And it's my pleasure to be able to respond to it honestly.<br /><br />I take the fact that you notice that I don't look feminine in my latest picture, as a great compliment! I noticed the gender ambiguity too, with delight, when I took the picture, and I immediately used it for my profile. Because in my inner nature, I am not a woman, I am an androgynous being, and I feel best when my external appearance reflects how I feel on the inside. I love my big bushy eyebrows and I would never consider thinning them, because they help my androgynous appearance. I don't have acquaintances who don't want to get on my bad side, instead I have friends and we tell each other the truth to our faces. My behavior is gentle when that's necessary, and at the same time I'm confident and determined, which you could call "male" characteristics. It's on purpose that my hair is messy in the picture, because this way, I express my wild and unpredictable nature. The fact that you give me X to model myself on, makes me laugh, because her appearance is a personification of exactly what I don't want to be.<br /><br />I am proud of my new picture and I admire it. The people who matter in my life accept me exactly the way I am and even love me because of my uniqueness. I'm sorry if my appearance bothers you and you think it's not pretty and non-esthetical. I'm sorry if you think it's impossible that anyone would really like me just the way I am. Have you noticed how content I look in the picture where I don't give a false impression that I'm a woman?<br /><br />Hugs,<br /><br />Trix<br /><br /><br />--------------------<br /><br />I wish I could post the picture, but I don't want to, because I'm doing this anonymously :)Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-36672844110547043072011-06-15T12:36:00.000-07:002011-06-15T12:44:45.847-07:00Don't make me use a pronoun<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNtQArqkfUGc6voA9WUvGcSH1-0vFA6nwjaFpwq8yVnpCjHyMTV3rOBC9IRHx_S39CpsWL6iWuTRFmQMpIE5CeJM5x1BPiZWCfFR5o2oPcVaPFDUKJwhTzxeZgAU1sn1n5Fg8LJl4KAKCT/s1600/image%255B3%255D.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 192px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNtQArqkfUGc6voA9WUvGcSH1-0vFA6nwjaFpwq8yVnpCjHyMTV3rOBC9IRHx_S39CpsWL6iWuTRFmQMpIE5CeJM5x1BPiZWCfFR5o2oPcVaPFDUKJwhTzxeZgAU1sn1n5Fg8LJl4KAKCT/s200/image%255B3%255D.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618533377187828306" /></a><br /><br />A friend of mine recently got very sick and he needed to be admitted to hospital. I went to visit him yesterday. I spent some time looking for him and finding the right room, and a friendly receptionist said to me, “Yes, she's down the hall and to the right.” I'm guessing I might have looked confused for a moment, because then she added: “The person you're... Your person is down the hall.” And off I went, thinking, yeah, my friend has an ambiguous name, it could be male or female.<br />It took me until this morning in the shower (where I'm daily confronted with my own incongruous biological sex) to realize what that was all about: my friend is transgender, transsexual, full-op, and has been for a number of years. But in his medical records, he is forever a F. Which I guess makes sense in that context. In fact, I'm also guessing that they have him down as FTM, because of the way the receptionist looking at his record corrected herself. <br />I've heard a lot of grief from the trans community about being referred to by the wrong pronoun (i.e. the one they don't personally identify as). It's considered rude, disrespectful and invalidating. To a trans person, using the wrong pronoun about them is like saying: “No matter how hard you try to appear and act as (gender x), we will never accept you as that, because WE know what you really are, and you, you are just confused about your own identity.” <br />But, having been on the other side of this divide and raised in a cis/heteronormative society, I want to say a few words in defense of people who do use “wrong” pronouns. I would have done so myself just a few years ago. And I would guess that for most people, it's not that we are trying to be intentionally rude. I think it's more that we are trying our best NOT to be rude in what we experience as a very awkward situation. Let me explain.<br />Those of us raised in heteronormative environments (and at the time of this writing, I think that's still most of us) grow up adopting a number of beliefs which, if we never take the time to examine them (again, true for most people), lie in us unconsciously and govern how we behave and interact. Some of those beliefs are: There are two genders in the world: male and female. What gender you are depends on the genitals you are born with. That gender is for life. It is important to display obvious gender characteristics of your assigned gender: that makes you attractive and esteemed in our society. The only contexts heteronormative culture has for people who do not conform to reinforcing gender norms in their appearance and behavior, are those considered in some way deviant, marginal, to be ridiculed or pitied: the bearded lady in the freak show, the old spinster, the tomboy, the dyke, the woman with a flat chest, the sissy boy, the faggot, the eunuch, the man with the small penis. In other words, these people have somehow “failed” at being their proper gender, and that is considered something shameful.<br />Now imagine a person who subconsciously holds those beliefs, who has never had much reason to call them into question, suddenly having to interact with a transgender individual. Another rule we have as a society is that we try to be nice to each other (or at least to strangers!) :) This heteronormative person now finds themselves in an impossible dilemma: if they use the pronoun which the trans person considers the right one (but the heteronormative person considers the “wrong” one based on genitals), in the mind of the heteronormative person, they are essentially saying to the trans person: “You are pitiful; you are so bad at being your gender that I am using the other pronoun; you are a freak; you are someone I ridicule and not someone I can be an equal with.” Now, they can't afford to appear this rude to someone, so they go with the pronoun that matches the genitals, but probably squirming inside not knowing what to do, because at the same time the trans person is in their face about NOT being the gender they were just referred to as.<br />I think the solution is simply to make space for some conscious consideration of how to act. I'm inclined to say something like: “You know, he actually WANTS to appear male, and PREFERS to be called 'he'.” I have a feeling many people would appreciate some instruction, where they are too embarrassed to ask.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-45023055895980082072011-03-06T17:32:00.000-08:002011-03-06T22:16:17.823-08:00It takes a real man to buy a shower gelSo I've not been posting in this blog for quite a while, although my relationship to asexuality continues, I just don't write about it. I've had various realizations along the way, and in my mind I've been composing an "all-encompassing theory of everything" gender and sex related, that makes sense at least to me, and I hope to post it here in the not too distant future. I also came across this recently created site by someone who is pursuing a degree as a sexologist, and identifies as asexual: please go <a href="http://asexualsexologist.wordpress.com/">here</a> and help them out with their research to put asexuality on the map.<br /><br />Anyway. While I haven't been posting here, I've been coming out more and more clearly as not-female-not-male, and investigating the implications of that. Recognizing my own conditioning around how I do certain things because I was socialized as female. So today I found myself in need of a body wash product. And I was in a large supermarket chain that shall remain nameless. Okay it was Smith's. As I habitually drifted through the voluptuously curvy pastel bottles of the feminine section, looking for my favorite shea butter based gel, I realized how half of that isle had always remained alien to me, off limits, wrongly gendered, not for me. And noted that there was in fact no good reason whatsoever for me not to open myself to the whole world of possibilities that those angular, easy-to-grip, bottle-of-engine-oil resembling packaging in serious dark hues might hold.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUxVe3oxLy_DTE1gy29Yk4380vlJpNTOE0GHC-8a-FjjDlOuO9XXGRIp4lI9hH79_OO3wf1LCmbg_Jwxv5X5JfGx36eCCVImaPWRyfo6nwvqD2wfB9NbfknMSpr4Ks3EDO82apr0RHtyWE/s1600/masculine.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUxVe3oxLy_DTE1gy29Yk4380vlJpNTOE0GHC-8a-FjjDlOuO9XXGRIp4lI9hH79_OO3wf1LCmbg_Jwxv5X5JfGx36eCCVImaPWRyfo6nwvqD2wfB9NbfknMSpr4Ks3EDO82apr0RHtyWE/s200/masculine.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5581198700193314610" /></a><br /><br />Sniffing along the masculine smelling (whatever that is supposed to mean) brands, I soon learned from the labels that if I buy one of those, it is likely to cause me to be the subject of unlimited and unrelenting female attention. (And that would be a feature, not a bug.) Not only that, but I will get late nights, I will be ready for all sorts of nocturnal adventures, I will smell just how she likes it, and if I use this product in every shower, she will turn into a man-eater, because this is how dirty boys get clean... I will keep her intrigued and then all I will have to do, will be to rise to the occasion - because the cleaner I am, the dirtier I get... Washing myself with this is sure to bring out the lasses. It's proven to attract, and pheromone infused - need we say more? If my grandfather hadn't worn this original product, I wouldn't exist! Axe products are the worst offenders here, with ridiculous sexual innuendos out the yin-yang. In addition to promising to increase my sexual prowess, the labels are replete with battle imagery: murdering dirt and odor, I will win, odor will lose; I'm gonna maim those pesky odor causing elements, and all that will be left after the carnage, will be the fresh smell of victory.<br />I was having a good time reading these and laughing out loud and taking notes... Just got me thinking how much time can you really spend in a supermarket having fun? Granted, not all masculine products are that overtly machistic. Dove strikes an interesting balance for example. I mean look at the name for a start. Dove? Really? Like, what kind of 'real' man identifies with a 'dove'?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkaIRtWkCln2Hgdz7ZMUqeysvZ_quF-7PrxD7_GUmAHr6odYG1xW0sVqo41vFrT9-pbQk2ETReaypW55NoNsYgbuXxTo4Z_doj5xvxlMVhlKlWfgpBtmvyY8HBSSNAWSTzDlZB4RjixQoG/s1600/DOVE_MEN1-300x222.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkaIRtWkCln2Hgdz7ZMUqeysvZ_quF-7PrxD7_GUmAHr6odYG1xW0sVqo41vFrT9-pbQk2ETReaypW55NoNsYgbuXxTo4Z_doj5xvxlMVhlKlWfgpBtmvyY8HBSSNAWSTzDlZB4RjixQoG/s200/DOVE_MEN1-300x222.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5581201799133457346" /></a><br />/picture of "Dove-men" from the web/<br /><br />Where do you see a group of virtually naked men standing close together and touching in a friendly way? Most of the men I know have plenty of hang-ups about touching other men, even with all their clothes on. I've been conditioned well enough by this society to know that Dove is no label for a grunting, beast-hunting, women-by-the-hair-dragging symbol of pure maleness. I mean, they created a pouf for men. Good job of trying to reconcile that with masculinity. They don't call it a pouf - they make it look serious, call it a "shower tool", reinforce it with rubber on the side - dark gray rubber at that. BTW, is it a coincidence that pouf is also a word for a homosexual man?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTeM4lcWrfBlL0UWQWOEjWr4Sz4fTw8NqZH__eR95OaQ2NhHv3V-GbIy9JvJCx6DzqUVSaZ0-O4YEDWpU_wyjCqanGepcFfDtn8RzkQF2Lalctr6pruLOmmypxlPKpr91scdgLcr-H7u5t/s1600/DoveMenCare.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 193px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTeM4lcWrfBlL0UWQWOEjWr4Sz4fTw8NqZH__eR95OaQ2NhHv3V-GbIy9JvJCx6DzqUVSaZ0-O4YEDWpU_wyjCqanGepcFfDtn8RzkQF2Lalctr6pruLOmmypxlPKpr91scdgLcr-H7u5t/s200/DoveMenCare.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5581203482072060850" /></a><br /><br />Dove for men focuses on lauding the moisturizing properties of the products, and urges you to save water while you shower. Seriously, as a product of the society that raised me, if I had been socialized as a man, I would be afraid to buy this because people might think I was a 'fucking faggot'. (Sorry, no offense intended.) In fact I become grateful that I was not socialized as a man, because men seem to have a lot to prove. <br />Conversely, women's products were all about nurturing the skin, being healthy, soft, smooth, moisturizing, replenishing, restoring the skin - in other words, descriptions referring to actual product properties, rather than outrageous claims of product suitability for mating purposes, obviously not checked by any consumer protection agency. The closest any women's product got to hinting at mating, was some vague reference to feeling irresistible. <br /><br />Here's what all of this implies but nobody is saying outright: Body care is traditionally considered a feminine activity, while real men are supposed to smell dirty and sweaty from just having battled and killed an enemy. The only excuse a man can have to be clean and smell good, is to score with the chicks. Then maybe it's worth the sacrifice. Some men feel insecure and emasculated about buying body care products, so these must first be imbued with a proper aura of masculinity, which will allow for their consumption by such 'real men'. The aura of masculinity is achieved by associating such products with getting sex and victory in battle. By extension, many male-born persons unwittingly pick up the implicit assumptions in this advertising, and create an imaginary picture of what it means to be a man, and sadly believe that they should live up to that ideal. <br /><br />I ended up buying Old Spice Pure Sport. I liked the smell best of all, and as an added bonus, the bottle happens to not have any gendered language or other unbearable hype on the label.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-76917924018078295042010-07-21T16:34:00.000-07:002010-07-21T16:41:52.909-07:00None of the aboveI haven't been writing much lately... But I made an asexual T-shirt! :-)<br />What it represents to me is something like asexual, agender, aromantic, queerdom outside the models...<br />Printed front and back.<br /><a href="http://www.zazzle.com/none_of_the_above_tshirt-235825011110999688">Here</a> it is!<br /><br /><embed wmode="transparent" src="http://www.zazzle.com/utl/getpanel?tl=My%20Zazzle%20Panel&at=238984434934622447&cn=238984434934622447&st=date_created" FlashVars="feedId=0&path=http://www.zazzle.com/assets/swf/zp/skins" width="450" height="300" TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed><br/><a href="http://www.zazzle.com/">make custom gifts</a> at <a href="http://www.zazzle.com/">Zazzle</a>Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-79284562791249657002010-04-03T20:28:00.000-07:002011-06-15T12:45:48.988-07:00Implied gender, and why I’m not “bisexual”(Some more attempts at trying to explain myself to the heteronormative world...)<br /><br />"Heterosexual", "homosexual", "bisexual" - what are the implications of using one of those labels about oneself? What are the underlying assumptions of the system wherein these labels exist? Describing yourself with one of those labels essentially says: "There are two (biological) sexes in the world: male and female. Males have penises, women have vaginas and breasts. Every person belongs to either one or the other sex, based on their chromosomes. Every person is sexually attracted to a whole class of other people based on whether their biological sex is male or female. Most people are attracted to people of the opposite sex to their own (heterosexual), some people are attracted to people of the same sex as their own (homosexual), and some people are attracted to people of the same sex as well as people of the opposite sex (bisexual). The nature of this attraction is that some level of interest exists in wanting to do sexual things with the other people."<br />THAT is the subtext that I'm finding so difficult to relate to. And is the reason why I don't feel "bisexual" really fits me. <br />Although I am biologically female, the whole idea of dividing people up as attractive and not attractive based on whether they have XX chromosomes like me, or XY chromosomes, makes no sense to me at all. To illustrate, imagine that you live in a world where it is terribly significant what color your eyes are. Let's say your eyes are blue. Let's say that since you were a little child, everyone has subtly and overtly let you know that you are expected to be attracted to people whose eyes are brown. Then you would be hetero-ocular. You start to make a big deal out of that and you enhance and give more meaning to your experience every time you find you like someone whose eyes are brown, and you downplay your experience every time you find you like someone whose eyes are blue. Because if you liked someone whose eyes are blue, you would be homo-ocular. Until one day you realize: "What's all this eye-color crap? I like a lot of people, and I so don't care what their eye color is!" And when you declare that, people tell you: "Oh, so you are bi-ocular then!" But calling yourself bi-ocular is meaningless to you because eye color simply has no relevance to you. Truly bi-ocular people are attracted to people BASED around their eye color in relation to their own eye color, and are able to find blue as well as brown equally attractive, each for their own reasons. Whereas to you, eye color is not something you pay much attention to.<br />The nature of the attraction is supposed to be an interest in doing sexual things. I've been with this question a lot, what is the attraction that I experience towards people. Trying to understand what is sexual attraction. Growing up and I think through most of my twenties, I implicitly believed that I was sexually attracted to EVERYBODY. I experience this potential for enjoyable touch with, basically, everybody that I spend even a little time with, and with all of my friends. Physical expression of affection is very important to me and my whole life I have experienced frustration about social norms allowing what seems to me to be only a very limited display of affection between people who are "just friends". Yet at the same time, I would never fantasize about actually having sex with someone. When I am really attracted to someone (in my own way), I want to gaze in their eyes, I want to touch them in a most tender and loving way, hold them, kiss them and caress them, I want to talk with them and share truth and authenticity. I want to be comforting and comforted, nurturing and nurtured. When I feel longing for them, I feel it in my chest rather than my genitals. While I feel open to being sexual, it is something I enjoy vicariously rather than for its own sake, and it is not something I have ever felt like I missed, or needed, from anybody. The expression "going all the way" makes no sense to me, because it does not feel like I'm going down any way that has any end-point. I don't understand from inner experience, why relationships in which genitals are touched, deserve a special name and status and are elevated above relationships in which genitals are not touched, as if those other relationships were somehow second-class and less real, or less loving. I do feel like I have a powerful intimacy drive, and yet sex is not my favorite expression of intimacy.<br />While I don't feel that "bisexual" describes me very well, and I would feel it would be deceptive to use this word about myself, perhaps I could say that I'm "homo-genderal" - attracted to people of the same gender, that is, a gender somewhere close to neutral, neither male nor female. Regardless of whether they are biologically male- or female-sexed. And what that attraction feels like, is that I want to be around them, touch them, be affectionate with them, relate to them, care about them - I dig them, I feel comfortable with them and at ease. I feel like I belong.<br />Basically, sex = your genes, xx, or xy, and your physical male or female characteristics. Gender = your subjective feeling of maleness or femaleness. For most people, the two seem to be so welded together that there is never a reason to make any distinction. You are born with a penis, and you feel male, and you are attracted to women. End of story, you never question it. However, some people feel strongly about their gender being other than their sex - and this identity seems to be something they know even as small children, before they ever enter puberty and become sexually attracted. For example, a biological female may feel that their gender is strongly male, and may have a sex change operation to become male. Irrespective of this, they could be sexually attracted to either men (androsexual) or women (gynosexual), regardless of their own gender identification. (The point: it's not being attracted to women that defines your subjective gender-maleness, being attracted to women only defines your sexual orientation. <span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity, get to be three different unrelated things in this model</span></span> - whereas for most people they are one thing (the inadequate hetero- homo- bi- model).) Some transgender people feel alternately male or female, or both at the same time, throughout their lives. While some people (like myself) never quite grasp the idea of belonging to a gender, and feel that trying to be either male, female, or both, is a misrepresentation of how they feel. Okay, imagine this. It's like you're born and you're given one of two choices, to be either a republican or a democrat. While you often vote democrat and are in general aligned in superficial appearance and behavior with many democrats, you still feel no affiliation with the democratic party, and don't feel comfortable being labeled a democrat. That's kind of how I feel about being labeled female. I don't feel either like that, or like the other option.<br />The traditional labels of hetero, homo, and bi, are based on the assumption that THE defining thing in my attraction to people is the relationship of my biological sex to their biological sex (different, the same, or both different and the same). Whereas their biological sex to me is as irrelevant as the color of their eyes. The defining thing in my attraction to people is a sense of emotional and spiritual resonance, a similar degree of self-awareness and willingness to trust and self-disclose. Physical appearance plays a role to the degree that a person is more attractive to me if they are well-groomed and healthy and looking content and comfortable in their body. Also, a strongly feminized or strongly masculinized physical appearance may put me off, for no other reason than that I feel I am being perceived by them inside of that same binary, and that I would have to play a very traditional female role with them, which does not come naturally to me.<br />Another way to look at it is to see people as colors. Imagine a color wheel. In a color, you can measure not only its hue, but also its brightness and saturation. It’s as if the traditional model divides people by whether they are blue or pink (bio males or bio females), and considers that to be the most important factor. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3J9t8EUMd6iUD9H0F1aBA6z7lMjiY28Nd6PTctVgBrArnIgvF8BR5m83l_OgxCWWh5tjU7alOHkbTYkUcd9nfon1vjM4qnCC40DrHKwUPQqwUythyydEqFke1sqFOzradVktJ7jyuX54w/s1600/pink-blue-polar-waves2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 116px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3J9t8EUMd6iUD9H0F1aBA6z7lMjiY28Nd6PTctVgBrArnIgvF8BR5m83l_OgxCWWh5tjU7alOHkbTYkUcd9nfon1vjM4qnCC40DrHKwUPQqwUythyydEqFke1sqFOzradVktJ7jyuX54w/s200/pink-blue-polar-waves2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5456120786151799618" /></a><br /><br />They will say that heterosexuals are people who look for contrasting hues, homosexuals look for non-contrasting hues, and bisexuals look for both contrasting and non-contrasting hues. In any event, it's about hues. Whereas I perhaps perceive and parse the color spectrum along a different axis altogether. Maybe what is of primary significance to me as a color is not my hue, but my saturation. I’m attracted to other people who are unsaturated colors. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgum-9bfwqAIL7NPnJnvhad9E2tyoiwCo7oMAK198yjEnPshn1FWagPpwxWUtBGlqY2zyxli6j0sMmTLqNe4hAJMwOrWyGmo9K0n3RDd2Cv-7UbZLM7xcaA5nR1rss4dVbqzd8vzR0gcOIY/s1600/pink-blue-polar-waves1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 116px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgum-9bfwqAIL7NPnJnvhad9E2tyoiwCo7oMAK198yjEnPshn1FWagPpwxWUtBGlqY2zyxli6j0sMmTLqNe4hAJMwOrWyGmo9K0n3RDd2Cv-7UbZLM7xcaA5nR1rss4dVbqzd8vzR0gcOIY/s200/pink-blue-polar-waves1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5456123139806081090" /></a><br /><br />The fact that this happens to overlap with both contrasting and non-contrasting hues, is beside the point for me. I perceive people who are strongly based in a gendered identity, as more saturated, and less interesting. Maybe I also see more hues than just pink and blue.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbftompSi42lwgavpGN8mtKKfiC6-qnAbUAoy_cDAbYetFNNfs4AWKLCKXad0udXmHsQTrcWFnYbajb-XI5zlwl4xJVr8Exh9ADscFg3_3YU8bRuGzJiHwCSXB0Zpe-fQvQFoLc4cibMZO/s1600/fractal.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 159px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbftompSi42lwgavpGN8mtKKfiC6-qnAbUAoy_cDAbYetFNNfs4AWKLCKXad0udXmHsQTrcWFnYbajb-XI5zlwl4xJVr8Exh9ADscFg3_3YU8bRuGzJiHwCSXB0Zpe-fQvQFoLc4cibMZO/s200/fractal.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5456122300936194002" /></a>Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-76741027348568229382010-03-25T09:49:00.000-07:002010-03-25T17:19:03.728-07:00What DO you mean by sex?And finally, we get to the actual title of this blog: What DO you mean by 'sex'? I’ve found myself slightly irritated and offended when I hear the word ‘intimacy' used as a synonym for ‘sex’. It sounds as though that negates and cheapens so many other things that are intimate, and very meaningful, to me. As if ‘sex’ were the pinnacle of human relationship. So, what is ‘sex’, actually?<br />As traditional mainstream thinking would have it, the most narrow definition of ‘sex’ would be 1) sticking a penis into a vagina. This, for some reason, is believed to be an act of great significance with long-ranging relational ramifications. It is the ultimate test of so-called fidelity in a relationship and sometimes used as a trump card (“Okay, so we may have done A and B and C, but we never ‘had sex’”. Voila.) The narrow definition can then sometimes be expanded to 2) sticking penises into other human orifices and/or penetrating vaginas with other objects (in a non-medical context) - still the focus is on penetration and penis/vagina. All of this can still land you in jail if done without consensus. A definition broader than this would then be 3) rubbing naked genitals in some way, genitals including vulva, penis, anus, testicles, I suppose, the infamous “Down There” region (somehow this brings up images of “He Who Shall Not Be Named”). There’s something about this obsession with genitals, I don’t know. I’ve sometimes described myself as “lacking a genital fetish”, as opposed to most of the population. But even if I expand the definition further and say oh, you know, touching other naked parts of the body, or French kissing, that’s also a form of sex. And I could come up with a list of behaviors and actions which could be considered sexual. But for me, that just doesn’t cut it. <br />Sex, the way I relate to it, is so not about body parts. All of this can be done with me and I still don’t experience it as 'sexual’. I don’t begin to desire that genital involvement when ANY part of my body is touched, in any way, by anyone. Nor is it about physical arousal. I’ve found that I can be quite physically aroused (increased sensitivity through the body, alertness, wetness) as a symptom of feeling close and connected, and I’m still pretty indifferent to all the above concrete actions. I know even sexual men can become physically aroused simply through stimulation – without any desire to engage in the above acts. Nor is what I call sex about wanting orgasm. That is something that just doesn’t compute for my body, no matter how much sensual stimulation it experiences, there’s never this sense that there is too much tension and it needs to be released. For other people, those who masturbate and consider themselves asexual, masturbation is not seen as an inherently sexual act only because it involves the genitals. It is seen simply as a function of the body, an itch that needs scratching.<br />When a person loses their head over me or gets all passionately hotly sexual over my body, I don’t actually experience their desire as pleasant – I experience it as disconnecting. Like, they are having their own trip, but I’m not really involved, they are not really seeing me, they’re not really there with me. I’ve heard of mutual masturbation, and that's kind of what regular sex seems like: a solitary experience in the company of another body. It can be interesting to watch, as long as I’m not required to be turned on by it. I don’t really desire to stimulate anyone in a way that makes them need to orgasm. Feels kind of distasteful, like I’m using them, manipulating them. Like I have power over them. And it feels slightly repugnant to me to be invited to use that power imbalance to make their body do tricks.<br />So, in my world, it’s not about climax, it’s not about physical arousal, it’s not about body parts – and yet there is still something that I experience that I will dare to call sexual. That I will be able to relate to myself next time someone says that humans are inherently sexual beings. Rather than deny that statement, I will simply take the liberty of defining how I experience my sexuality, and what that word means to me. <br /><br />...<br /><br />So, since I wrote the above about a month or two ago, I’ve been reframing the idea of sexuality for myself, away from genitally-oriented pleasure and release, the cultural default, and expanding the concept to an exchange of energies, a play and turning of yin and yang, a dance of delight in each other’s existence, going nowhere and serving no purpose other than being present with each other and feeling each other’s most intimate direct physical expression in a given moment, and responding to it in a cooperative way. Now I’m sure many sexuals can read that and say, yes, that's all part of good sex, of course it’s not just about genital pleasure and release, that’s way too crude. But from what I understand, apparently for most people, sexuality as they first begin to experience it in their youth, manifests itself through these genital drives, the need to “get off”, and the overwhelming desire to be sexual with particular people who they find “hot” and who cause them to have some kind of mysterious reaction in their pants. As they age and mature, they (sometimes) learn more about sex as an expression of love and sensitivity to their partner, and don’t necessarily just go for the release – although it still seems to be the norm to think that genitals must be involved or it’s just not sexual (as, I assume, in Lori Brotto’s <a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QuestionnaireDevelopment2">recent survey</a>). With me, I never followed that pattern, and so I thought something was malfunctioning and that I could ultimately not claim sexuality as part of my humanness. <br />I never experienced <a href="http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?showtopic=10791&st=0">primary sexual attraction</a>, any sex in the past was always mostly emotional for me, mostly trying to be an expression of love, the physical part was incidental, and seemed formulaic and stilted that genital stimulation would always be considered the culmination of intimacy and love. I now get the exchange and blending of energy part – it’s a very physical experience – and yet even when feeling arousal in my body, it’s still not about sticking body parts in each other and getting off. I still don’t relate to the “release” part – I’m just enjoying feeling myself with the other person, but not needing it to go anywhere, not even needing to get naked necessarily. There’s an intensified, energized feeling and a joy of communion and directness of contact and openness to each other. Which doesn’t need to reach any culmination and resolution, as far as I’m concerned. It can just continue. There’s a prevalent belief it seems that when one experiences arousal, this is always something that needs to be “taken care of”, through sex or masturbation. Not true. Not for me. I enjoy experiencing a sense of heightened arousal in the body all for its own sake. It has never occurred to me that I should mess with the genitals in order to get rid of it.<br />Or another experience. The first one in a series, since then. I had this meeting with someone I trust deeply. We had both agreed that we would meet and speak from complete honesty and transparency and truth, holding nothing back. I found myself so excited going to meet them, I was thinking – “this is an invitation to sex – this is sex – this is better than sex”. It was. :) To be able to be completely, completely open and available with another human being, to be entirely present with our whole minds, emotions, and bodies, to each other as we are. No barriers. Speaking from immediacy of direct experience. Then just looking in each other’s eyes. Touching not even needed. Feeling totally united and complete. Touching only becomes needed when the feeling that we are apart, and need to connect, returns. <br />Now I’m letting myself tentatively propose that the difference between "normal" sexuality and my sexuality is this: "normal" sexuality is driven by urges, desires to mate with specific people based on their physical attractiveness and sometimes also emotional closeness. As a person ages and gains experience, these desires can become more refined with expressions of love and less urgency to simply mate for mating sake. Many people have said to me, "I can no longer just have sex, now I only respond to making love." The same people have also expressed to me that they feel different from the average because of this. (Correct me, sexual people, if you feel this is a misrepresentation.) That is, the sexual act is viewed as having gained a spiritual significance for them. <br />Whereas in my world, there is no "sexual act" per se, because all authentic and deep relating with another person is viewed as equally (a)sexual, just varied in intensity: all are an opportunity to bare ourselves to each other and embrace one another, in whatever form that takes. The fact that sometimes this involves physical nakedness and arousal and touching genitals, is circumstantial.<br />I'm saying that maybe my sexuality has just always been more subtle than is the cultural norm. And as I say this, I mentally contract and brace, ready to be clobbered by society saying “what, you want to be better than everyone else, how dare you?” There’s this need in our conditioning, whenever something is different than the default, to immediately see it as either “devil” or “angel”, so if I assert a different sexuality, I know that many people, even well-meaning ones, will instantly go to explaining it as either “repressed, immature, undeveloped, pre-orgasmic, unwilling to let go” or “beyond the desires of the flesh, better, more evolved”. So, I consciously step out of that paradigm of linear progression towards a superior version of human, and simply say, I am a natural variation in a mosaic of possible expressions. I claim the right to be as I am.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-59544301960099603462010-02-18T10:36:00.000-08:002010-02-18T12:27:48.290-08:00Word games - sexual attraction againI'm gonna do a really quick side post here because I'm in the middle of writing a longer post on "what is sex, anyway", and it doesn't look like it's gonna be finished any time soon. So this post is just to express some of my frustration and to demonstrate the circular nature of the concepts we use and the seeming impossibility to break into that self-contained universe unless you already know what it's talking about.<br /><br />One concept that I would really like defined, is the ever elusive sexual attraction. I mean, what literally, concretely, specifically happens in the experience of people, in their bodies, in their emotions, in their perceptions, that they then go and label that "sexual attraction". It's an open question to anyone who wants to answer it.<br /><br />Here are the results of my wild goose chase around dictionaries:<br />sexual attraction: attractiveness on the basis of sexual desire <br />sexual desire: a desire for sexual intimacy<br />sexual intimacy: (no definition)<br />sexual: of or relating to or characterized by sexuality<br />sexuality: sex<br />sex: sexual activity<br />sexual activity: activities associated with sexual intercourse<br />sexual intercourse: the act of sexual procreation between a man and a woman; the man's penis is inserted into the woman's vagina and excited until orgasm and ejaculation occur<br /><br />Well there we go. Apparently sexual attraction is all about desiring to insert penises into vaginas and exciting them until ejaculation occurs.<br /><br />I have a sense that even some sexuals would find that definition too narrow and limiting.<br /><br />Does anyone else get a feeling that there is a LOT of vagueness and indirectness here? Like every time you ask, you get sent to someone else (or some other dictionary entry) that might answer your question. These terms are either not well and clearly defined and explained, or I don't inhabit the same experiential universe as the dictionary-makers. <br /><br />Imagine that you come from Alfa Centauri and you know nothing about "wug" (stand-in for "sex" here). Now go and read articles attempting to define "sexual attraction/desire" and replace "sex" with the word "wug" and see how self-referential they are and how they don't really explain anything in a helpful way. It's all about the externals of the experience - what influences it, what different kinds there are, what disciplines have studied it, what it has been called and how it has been classified, where and in which species it exists, what are some other words to call it, what can adversely affect it - but really NOTHING about IT, from the inside, how IT feels! As if we all know what we are talking about.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-14802695646923869112009-12-26T11:53:00.000-08:002009-12-26T11:54:51.871-08:00On commitmentI've had a lot of programming around believing that a really mature intimate relationship is of course something that is monogamously exclusive and committed. Making this kind of promises, however, goes against what comes naturally to me. And so voices come up in my head accusing me of being irresponsible, immature and inconsiderate. So today I would like to make a case for how this can be seen from another perspective. I am probably not going to be able to see all sides of the situation, and my bias will come through, and I just want to say I’m aware of that and welcome input on whatever I may be blind to.<br />Let me look at commitment first. What are we actually talking about? The voice that comes up strong is the one saying "you're afraid of commitment". It’s the trump card, calling 'chicken’. The person calling ‘chicken' is assuming that making a commitment to “being with” someone for the foreseeable future is a value shared by all. This person views commitment as something desirable, though difficult to attain and maintain, since it possibly goes against one’s assumed fickle and treacherous nature, and so someone willing to make the ‘sacrifice’ of committing, is seen as valiant, strong and noble. The value of "commitment" upholds consistency as something to be desired, as in: I made a choice to be with this one person, and now I should stick to it, because this is how I continue to know that the decision I made in the first place was a good and right decision. If I were to move on from this one person, it might mean to me that I made a wrong decision in the past, and that would be distressing (usually in proportion to the length of the relationship). Or, if I were to move on, it would mean I am weak and unable to deal with problems that arise in any relationship, it would mean I am a failure. Or, I feel such love for this person, ergo it means we should keep trying to “be together” as a couple. People say things like, “I want this relationship to succeed”, and they mean they want an agreement of me+you=couple to be permanent, stable and safe. In fact now that I put it that way, I’m seeing a deeply Christian morality behind the idea of commitment. There’s a lot of implicit belief in human nature as being essentially sinful and wrong, and to remedy that, we must “do the right thing” (as opposed to the “wrong” thing) and make relationship contracts that will override our “destructive” natural impulses, and abide by those contracts to ensure everlasting correctness and righteousness. <br />From my perspective, I am not afraid of commitment any more than I am afraid of smoking cigarettes. It just has no appeal to me. It’s not that it’s only fear of getting cancer that’s keeping me from smoking - it's that I have never felt a desire to light a cigarette in the first place. And, trying to be a consistent person is not a value that I share. Even more, the idea of “committing” to someone just makes absolutely no sense to me. I promise to “be with” you? What does that even mean? Oh, I know what it means on a most basic operational level – I will not have sex with any other person. That is foreign to me in so many ways. First, I don’t know what it means to be “with” someone, so all the issues around entering relationships and ending them are bizarre to me. My internal experience is that my close relationships with people may change in intensity over time, but they don't end, nor do I enter them. There are no defining moments of “getting together” or "breaking up”. It’s as if the whole society is taking very seriously some rules that are permanently confusing to me. I’ve found that I can have sex and yet feel no attachment to that particular person, no sense of “being with”. I’ve also found that I can feel deeply intimate and one with someone, and yet there is no sex or desire for sex involved. Sex is irrelevant to me, whereas to others it seems to be pivotal in how they construe that relationship. <br />My best understanding of what it means to “be with” someone, is this. A person wanting to have an agreement of commitment and exclusivity, really wants to experience mutual trust, total intimacy, closeness and love. Those are wonderful things to experience. And for some reason, the way they are able to completely trust and open to somebody, is if they can have a guarantee that they are their partner’s most important person, valued above anyone else, and will continue to be so in the future. In a sense, they want a reassurance of a kind of unconditional love and acceptance, in order to give the same back. So I guess exclusive relationship contracts really work, when both people need that, and give those unspoken promises to each other simultaneously and call it “getting together”. It’s exhilarating to feel that you are free to exchange this complete trust and openness and love, and it also explains the corresponding drama and grief over loss of such reassurances – it’s as if unconditional love has been lost to them. That is tragic. <br />As for myself, I first thought that I was entirely incompatible with the idea of commitment. How could I possibly make promises about how I was going to feel about someone later on, when the mere thought of fixating some kind of safety for my future like that, in terms of “what should be”, is terribly deadening, and I can just feel it draining aliveness and spontaneity and delight out of the flow of a relationship in the present moment. Then it occurred to me that there is something I want to commit to – no, something that I don’t even have to try to commit to, because I am already committed to it through and through. I can’t commit to “being with” a person. But I am committed to, and always respond and am attracted to, a person’s willingness to be open, transparent, intimate, real. I am committed to being the same way. I am committed to truth and to addressing any issues, difficulties or incompatibilities as soon as they arise, rather than sweeping them under the carpet or hiding anything unpleasant in the interest of trying to “stay together”. I would much rather have full disclosure regardless of where that leads, than to try to make myself look acceptable so that I can have the safety of being “with” someone. I am committed to doing whatever with another free agent on a purely voluntary basis, from delight in each other, rather than trying to “make” a committed relationship work. Now does this mean that because I have made no contract of commitment, I am going to turn on a dime, and after consistently being close and intimate with someone, simply abandon them one day without warning? I am open to that risk – but I think it’s highly unlikely, and I believe that kind of situation is actually more likely in relationships where the goal is to stay committed to each other regardless of what’s going on for you, rather than in relationships where you are open to acknowledging and discussing any changes and developments as they arise. I can’t imagine ever just “dropping out” of the life of anyone I have been close with, if they are still willing to continue opening and growing with me. Whether this involves sex at some point or not, whether we are currently close or far apart, doesn’t matter much to me. There are people who have touched my life deeply, and I never stop loving them.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-69033867947897058512009-12-23T14:53:00.000-08:002009-12-23T15:00:49.761-08:00Sexual attractionSince declaring myself asexual about a year and a half ago, I have done more experimentation, had more candid discussions and experienced more diverse situations involving sexuality than in my whole previous life. And I have been able to do that because I now felt secure in the knowledge that the only thing that is required of me, is to follow my own natural impulses, and there was no pressure to act in any way that I might have previously thought I needed to act, out of an obligation to comply with “normal”. So I want to shout that from the rooftops to “experts” who fear that asexual people are closing themselves off prematurely: I and many others share your value of self-exploration. Very much.<br />I am fortunate to have experienced a trusting, emotionally intimate and mutually supportive relationship with a close friend, who does feel sexual attraction towards me. Now that I know that a) I am not required to respond, and that b) I am free to have any reaction, people who are attracted to me no longer freak me out, and I feel quite comfortable addressing this. I feel open to receiving and feeling whatever is being felt by them or me. <br />I’ve found that although it never occurred to me to have sexual ideas (I may have wanted to be more physically affectionate) before my friend’s attraction was made explicit to me – I am able to respond to the feeling of sexual attraction. My body senses and resonates with the longing, and feels a quickening of energy when near, which is enjoyable. At some point, I want to write a separate post about the concepts of “proceptive” and “receptive” sexual desire – I seem to lack proceptive, the initiative and drive part, but am capable of receptive arousal. At the same time, I can’t seriously imagine initiating something like this without a strong desire on the part of the other: I just wouldn’t believe myself.<br />So recently I’ve been feeling the feelings that this brings up. It still doesn’t really involve sexual fantasy in terms of body parts, but it does involve an attraction to something. It occurs to me that the desire I feel, is basically for surrender. It’s a desire to be completely open, free, loving. Desire for absence of any conflict and tension, utter flow and total intimacy, absolute nakedness in the sense of having nothing to hide, being completely real. I imagine these are desires shared across sexual orientations. I may or may not express them through sex – it would not be my first choice, as I lack the primary drive. <br />The presence of this person inspires a great openness in me. And I think I get now that what is commonly referred to as “sexual attraction” is when you think you need that particular person to cause these wonderful feelings of letting go, openness and unguardedness for you. I find that problematic. It places the responsibility for feeling your feelings, on an external stimulus. Whereas in fact, the way I see it, what’s primary is my longing to be completely open, real and transparent. The reason there is attraction to a particular person is because we somehow only ALLOW ourselves to feel those feelings around them, because we consider that person safe. We close down around other people because we consider them unsafe. I realized this in the middle of a wave of gripping desire to be close to my friend. That what I really wanted, was not this person per se, it was the feelings I am able to have with them. I realized: “I’m really longing to surrender.” And what came to me was – “Just be the openness.” Allow yourself to feel that much intimacy and flow, right now, with yourself. That switch was very soothing and nourishing and pleasurable, and released the obsessive focus on the person instantly. <br />This is not to say that I intend to just be by myself all the time. Only that there’s a possibility to share this intimacy with each other freely, rather than obsessively, rather than believing the other person has to provide it for us.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-76102834223748130462009-11-06T15:44:00.000-08:002009-11-06T17:06:30.357-08:00Casual relationshipI found a term for a satisfying and fulfilling style of relationship that I engage in. It's called "casual relationship". I like the Wikipedia definition because it does not stress the sexual aspect. <br /><br />So here's my definition, patched together from various sources and my own interpretation of it:<br /><br />Casual relationship. A relationship with emotional and physical closeness, that may involve sexuality or may come close to sexual expression, when desired. There is no aspiration to long-term commitment and no expectation of exclusivity. The relationship may be part-time and does not dominate one's life and choices. It may be strong and intimate, but is intended to endure only so long as both parties wish it to. It includes mutual support, affection and enjoyment. <br /><br />I read about this on the web and see biased language such as "motives for entering a casual relationship", or "because they are unwilling to commit to a full-fledged relationship" and "doesn't have time for a proper boyfriend". So I want to categorically declare that this type of relationship can be a legitimate relationship in its own right and not a transitional stage on the way to something else, or a compromise.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-68118339466325007342009-11-05T14:39:00.001-08:002009-11-07T10:24:28.540-08:00Question everything you knowBrowsing through the forums on AVEN, I come across many young people just entering the community, asking the same question: "Am I asexual? Do I belong here?"<br /><br />To them I want to say: Welcome. There is no stamp of approval and no authority to declare who is “really” asexual. We are just people who have found that none of the generally available sexual-orientation labels have been a good fit. The fact that you are searching and wanting to be true to whatever it is you really feel or don’t feel, means you belong. Here is a place where you can be perfectly honest with yourself. What you (don’t) feel or want, is natural and okay, for the simple reason that you actually (don’t) feel or want it, and you are a human being, so it must be natural for some human beings. There is no "correct" way to be asexual.<br /><br />A lot of effort has gone into trying to get “asexuality” accepted in the eyes of society as a fourth “sexual orientation”, to kind of legitimize and rationalize that if you tweak and rearrange existing models, asexuality will fit in too. And reorienting mass mentality to include the possibility that you exist (!) can be perfectly useful in practical situations. But my personal take on it is that I opt out of the whole “sexual orientation" model. I abandon the existing preconceived ill-fitting framework and build my own interpretation of the world, based on how I myself actually experience it. There is so much more hue and variety in real life than any model can encompass. The labels “straight”, “gay”, “bi”, are only a lens we use for convenience so we can have a feeling that we are able to manage and contain an infinitely complex reality. People don’t realize that, and implicitly believe that humans should conform to the language labels they happen to have inherited from the way their society arbitrarily parses reality. My own feeling is that the concept of “sexual orientation” is due for a rethinking.<br /><br />Our entire language around relationship matters is dominated by terminology and styles of speaking that accurately reflect the experience of people (males in particular) who are strongly driven by sexual attraction. In addition, sex has been historically associated with virility and power and strength and dominance and all sorts of desirable qualities that leaders in a tribe will possess. And they are the ones who have set the standards for all of us, who have described their experience for all of us, who we have been programmed to emulate and look up to. However, not everyone's reality and internal makeup is that of a specimen who is driven to rise to the top of the clan and mate with many individuals. Enough people in the world do experience sexual attraction that most of society seems to be able to at least relate to that, and view sexual partnership as the be-all and end-all of personal happiness and fulfillment. But then you see people who are radically unlike that “ideal”, and they are questioning if their experience of themselves and their lack of wanting to mate, is legitimate or is it pathological. Good grief people! Of course it is legitimate. It is just the way you are. Your world has been interpreted for you through the eyes of somebody else. It’s time to acknowledge that, and take back the right to be yourself. Discover for yourself what you actually feel. Invent your own language to accurately reflect your own experience, and know your own needs and desires. Own what you feel. There are so many ways to like people and be connected and intimate and loving with them that have nothing to do with sex. We only think they should, because we have been programmed to believe it.<br /><br />One thing I do give psychologists credit for, is that they say something is a “disorder” only when it causes you distress. To all the new people who are feeling troubled: if there is anything causing distress, I would encourage anyone to investigate it. For example if there is a social anxiety and you are suffering because of it, I would recommend working with that. It may well be that after you relax around people, you may discover that you could enjoy having sex with them. It may equally well be that after you have worked through your fears around being with people, you discover that you actually enjoy being by yourself, or that you still don’t experience any sexual attraction to anybody. But now you will be able to state it with confidence, and won’t feel like you have to hide. In either case, you win. This community is a good place to explore your feelings. Being true to yourself is always a good guide. I like that quote from dr. Seuss: “Always be who you are, and say what you feel, because people who mind don’t matter, and people who matter don’t mind.” Good luck.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-4551952346082255612009-09-15T11:39:00.000-07:002009-09-15T12:49:59.151-07:00Different ways to sayI feel so grateful and blessed for the people in my life and for all the understanding I receive. I was talking to a friend online who lives in another country, and we had not seen each other in a while. We came to the subject of relationships and he was asking me if I was open to a new relationship. I kind of went, well, it's complicated, and he asked about the details, so I started explaining how I felt and what I had discovered and gave him the link to Aven FAQ. <br />At one point he was trying to make sense of it and saying, wait, I'm confused, so you don't really want sex, but you like sensuality? I tried to ask him to say what exactly was confusing, but he just turned right around and said: I didn't get it, but emotionally I got it. There are just different ways of saying "I love you".<br />Even right now as I write this, I feel deeply touched by that kind of understanding and acceptance. That, to me, is an act of love. Just seeing me as I am, without trying to find any reasons for it. <br />One of the other things he said, when I was explaining how I've never really cared about sex, was - "You have always felt this way?" And I said "Yes". And realized how his question underscores for me that what I have always felt is not the same as what he has felt. That this must be new and odd to him. That he, in fact, must have those desires I find so hard to comprehend. Realizing that I had never imagined him as a sexual being. That I have the automatic assumption that all my friends are like me: even though I intellectually know they are sexual, instinctively I assume that they just form relationships the way people watch television, because it happens to be there and it's an imitation of what society does. But to think of my friends as genuinely desiring sex with one another, and having it be an important component of their relationships. Still wrapping my head around that one.<br />I imagine it must be the same in reverse: even though someone intellectually knows that you are not sexually driven, they will automatically make unconscious assumptions about what you are like, based on what they themselves are like and have always known. Just because they haven't yet deeply considered what it would be like to really LIVE from a different perspective. Can't blame that.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-67497910072514720982009-08-17T16:43:00.000-07:002009-08-17T19:32:52.258-07:00How does asexuality feel.<br />DO <a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=11mWKxs9u3Ld8zMDRBDn3g_3d_3d">THIS SURVEY</a>, IT'S INTELLIGENT<br /><br />So I have several ideas what I want to blog about here, but I never get around to it. It's much easier for me to produce text if I'm responding to something or dialoguing, rather than creating content from scratch. So I'm plugging my answers to the survey here, to fill this blog. But don't read them until you've completed the survey yourself, okay?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">1. How would you define/describe asexuality?</span><br />This is a tricky question. It assumes that there is an "asexuality" out there in the objective world in the same way a "table" is out there in the objective world, and can be grabbed and defined. But the word only means what anyone uses it to mean. So when I use the word, I don't want to imply that I am referring to something objective out there. </end disclaimer><br />People use the word to mean various similar things, the one thing there seems to be some consensus on is that it is a "lack of sexual attraction". That of course brings up the question "what the hell is sexual attraction", and people who ostensibly don't experience any, are poorly qualified to describe it.<br />So while this definition may make sense to people who experience sexual attraction and know for sure what that feels like, I feel a sore lack of a definition that would describe the asexual experience "from the inside". We are forced to define ourselves by the absence of something we don't understand to begin with. <br />If I try to approach a definition, I would have to say something like <span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">"asexuality is a way of relating to the world that does not refer to sexual relationships or to oneself in a sexual context, as a means of seeing or defining oneself"</span></span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">2. How would you define/describe sexual attraction?</span><br />Good one. I don't know. I've wondered that myself. I used to take it for granted that I knew what sexual attraction meant. It took me several decades to figure out that what other people mean when they say this, may actually not refer to anything in my experience. I used to think I was sexually attracted to pretty much everyone I felt friendly towards, because I wanted to touch them. That was embarrassing and I unconsciously believed there was something wrong with me. After some intense soul-searching and frank conversations, it turns out that people referring to sexual attraction mean a kind of magical pull towards someone that overcomes them, they have no power over it, and they begin to fantasize about how pleasurable it would be to engage in sexual activity with that person. I started to consider the strange possibility that maybe I don't know what that means.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">3. How would you define/describe sexual desire?</span><br />It seems to be a clear wish that you want to have sex with someone. Which seems strange and arbitrary, from this perspective - how can it be so clear to you that you want to engage in that particular activity with someone? Having the need for a term for "sexual desire" seems like having a need for a term for "desire to make peanut butter jelly sandwiches with someone on Tuesday afternoons". Like, how do you know that's exactly what you want? I mean, it might be fun or interesting if you did that, but how often does it come up as such a clear expression?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">4. How would you define/describe romantic attraction?</span><br />That's more an emotional thing. It's happened to me a few times, to various degrees of intensity. It's when someone is very very important to you and you want to be equally important to them, in its extreme stages wanting to be the most important people in the world to each other. You are especially elated to spend time with that person and love everything about them, and are in heaven if they show affection or attraction to you. It's a kind of extreme form of attachment. You think about them all the time and you are totally dependent on their attention. You put all your energy and hopes in life into this person. It's tiring and distracting and addictive. This person is your euphoria drug.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">5. What are some factors that initially lead you to consider yourself as an asexual?</span><br />I was considering whether I was bisexual, because I was suffering an identity crisis I guess and a failing relationship, I was trying to be absolutely truthful to myself and had to admit that I had been attracted to people regardless of their gender. I was browsing some bisexual forums and came upon the word "asexual". I linked to Aven and felt relieved to discover that it was actually possible, valid and legitimate to not have the feelings I had always been telling myself I am supposed to have, and very healing to consider the possibility that maybe I'm not just horribly repressed.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">6. How would you distinguish asexuality from a sexual dysfunction such as sexual desire disorder?<br /></span>Simple. If you used to have sexual desire, and now you don't, but you want to have it - then you have a problem. If you never had sexual desire and don't miss it, then you're asexual. As for distress, yeah distress can be experienced, but the distress is not inherent to being asexual, it's caused by the social stigma and feeling different and unacceptable. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">7. How might you have described your sexuality BEFORE you came across the term 'asexual'?<br /></span>I guess I always checked the "heterosexual" box, though I always kind of felt like a fraud. Like I'm misrepresenting something I myself wasn't exactly sure of. It's like being asked about your religion and then given three choices, none of which you really identify with in your heart, but you don't realize that it's possible to not be part of any of these religions because everyone in your country belongs to a church, and it's unthinkable that you wouldn't too. Just before discovering asexuality, I started to seriously consider "admitting" that I was bisexual.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">8. What questions would you use (without describing or using the term 'asexual') to identify an individual who might be asexual but has not yet come across the term?<br /></span>What a great question! This touches directly on my need I expressed above to have a definition "from the inside". Because I didn't immediately identify with "asexual", it took me a little while to overcome the brainwashing that says "everyone is sexual, you should be sexual, those [asexual] people are just broken". I would ask questions such as:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">- Was there ever a time in your life from which point on it was clear to you what sexual attraction means?<br />- If it was okay to never have sex, would you feel deprived to never have sex again?<br />- Is there anyone that you consider "hot", and how would you describe what that means?<br />- If you have a relationship to the word "hot", what happens in your body when you see someone that is "hot"?<br />- Has sex ever seemed like a chore, and have you ever wondered why people get so excited about it?<br />- Did you often feel out of place as a teenager when other kids hooked up with each other, and you didn't know how to or what it was all about?<br />- Did you ever invent crushes in order to not be different from your friends and have something exciting to talk about?<br />- Did you ever fail to relate to all the fuss about makeup and hair and scents and making yourself look attractive to the preferred gender?<br />- Have you felt confused about what sexual messages you might be sending, and have felt shy about being free with your body because you never knew how it was going to be interpreted?<br />- Have you thought that surely, people cannot think about sex every day, or been stunned to discover that most people actually masturbate regularly?<br />- Have you been embarrassed by sexual jokes because you couldn't relate or didn't get the reference and suddenly everyone was laughing hysterically and you felt left out?<br />- Have you had the opportunity to have sex with someone you really loved, and often felt like this is something you should want to do, though if you could have it your way, you'd be perfectly happy to just snuggle?<br />- Have you always felt like there was something strange with you in the area of sexuality, that you felt different, though you could never quite explain what was wrong?<br />- Have you felt pressured to talk about your sexuality and felt like a fraud for describing how you thought you should feel, not how you actually felt?</span><br /></span><br />~~~~~~<br /><br />I’d love to hear if people can come up with more questions to ask someone who might potentially identify with “asexual” but hasn’t yet heard that asexuality was possible!Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-34103771644104415632009-08-12T13:54:00.000-07:002009-08-12T13:56:00.582-07:00Cuddle worldI recently had the privilege of spending a week with a group of (non-asexual) people where the social norm was that cuddling was allowed. Where emotional and physical intimacy and openness were welcome. Where hugs were freely given and received. Where it was okay to gaze at each other and even spoon with each other and it did not mean "I want sex". It meant "I feel affectionate and want to share it with you, if you want it too." And because that was the understood norm, and well, also because the people involved in this were pretty awesome and having-their-shit-together specimens, there was a lot of freedom and very little neurosis around touching. I felt so at home. Yes, it is possible. I even came to a point where I had my fill of group cuddling and wanted to step away. I'd always suspected that I would be the cuddle-craziest in a situation like that, but turns out I wasn't. I discovered it was possible to feel "I've had enough". And I feel fulfilled and encouraged by the whole experience. That humans can be that loving with each other without the manipulation of sexual and predatory and possessive games. What joy.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-18804010446939941512009-07-11T20:52:00.000-07:002009-07-13T09:16:17.957-07:00Squish!New word to add to the vocabulary of asexual experience: squish! I get squishes!<br /><br />---UPDATE---<br />I added "squish" to the <a href="http://squish.urbanup.com/4104791">Urban dictionary</a>: go vote it up so it can rise in the rankings!<br />------------------<br /><br />Invented in <a href="http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?showtopic=23290&st=0">this</a> thread on Aven. <br /><br />Others have described it beautifully, so I will copy:<br /><br /><blockquote>I've been trying for a looong, loooong time how to describe the "crushes" I get on people. It was getting frustrating having to say "I got crushes on people, but they weren't really crushes because blah blah, and so blah blah blah......." So I finally decided to just pick a word, and I'm calling them SQUISHES. I just have a desire to talk to the person and be friends with them. I may desire romance for a brief period of time, but then I'll be over it and I'll be glad that desire passed. [...] There's one guy that I have a squish on right now. He's very sexual, so I know a relationship would never work out. And that's fine by me. I don't care if he ends up with a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, because I don't want to be exclusive with him, I don't want to date or have sex with him. I just want to spend some time with him, talking and laughing. </blockquote><br /><blockquote>i sort of have that when i am friends with someone but it's sort of a mushy kind of friendship, or when i'm unusually fascinated by someone i've just met, sort of a "i have really got to get to know and be close to this person." but it's just a desire for a deeper friendship, not a relationship.</blockquote><br /><blockquote>I used to say I got "friend-crushes", which involve me feeling very impressed by somebody or thinking that we'd get along really well; as a result I really want to be friends with the person. I'm told these feelings are stronger than the feelings most people have for friends. But perhaps now I can call my "friend-crushes" "squishes".</blockquote><br /><blockquote>>>>I hate to be the skeptical one here, but what exactly is the difference between this and wanting to be friends with someone?<<<<<br />There's a big difference. Maybe if you've never felt it, it might be hard to imagine... but it's just like having a crush, only platonically. For me at least (I'm not sure if this goes for everyone), I really look forward to seeing them, I think about them a lot, I have a very high opinion of them, and I really care about their opinion of me. Other friendships develop because you just happen to spend time with the person... but I will go out of my way to spend time with my squishes, and I get super-elated when I get any kind of proof that they like me/want to spend time with me.</blockquote><br /><blockquote>The desire to get to know someone can sometimes be a lot more intense for certain people I know, with lots of happy fuzzy feelings associated with it. But it doesn't happen with every person that I'm wanting to get to know better.<br /></blockquote><br /><blockquote>I will probably use this. I've had squishes. For me it's the nervous, butterflies in my stomach feelings. Usually I don't want to date them, and sex was never a goal. Using the word squish would avoid all the assumptions people would make if I used the word crush. </blockquote><br /><blockquote>You've made me realize that precisely because I do have squishes on them we will never be close friends the way I want us to be. I care about their opinions too much. Which sucks.<br /></blockquote><br /><blockquote>Squish is perfect lol I love it, great way to describe it!</blockquote><br /><br />To sum up, a squish:<br />- is an intense feeling of attraction, respect, appreciation and admiration<br />- is a desire to be close and connected and important to each other<br />- is not a desire to have sex or be in an exclusive romantic relationship<br />- gives you a nervous or excited feeling when you're with that person, and you may act kind of silly<br />- makes you think about them a lot<br />- gives you disproportionate joy to see that they like or respect you back<br />- makes you feel delighted that this person exists!<br /><br />My squishes, in contrast, have often been on people who I did end up becoming close with, and yes, the squish does wear off in the sense that the nervousness and excitement die down, but the intense feelings of affection and appreciation remain. They are all still my squishes. I love being able to use a noun for it.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-8445697770542050392009-06-21T07:42:00.000-07:002009-06-21T08:29:59.784-07:00Vicarious attractionI have to write this somewhere, it is just too bizarre not to mention. I've been noticing that in a situation where someone is strongly sexually attracted to me, I can feel it - or I feel something - through empathizing with how the other person feels, or how I imagine they feel. It's not even thinking about it, I can reproduce a physical response. I can see a picture of myself and, bringing that other person into my awareness and knowing about the intensity of their feeling, experience a thrill, a strong pull of attraction in my whole body. Attraction to the person in the picture, apparently. I get a kick out of that. I think this is similar to romantic attraction, it evokes something I have felt on occasion in my life, the rush of seeing someone or a picture of someone who was very important to me, or receiving their letter. Without being sexually aroused, I think. But with this vicarious thing, even when someone was appreciating my, um, physical attributes, I could identify with that, looking at the same picture of me and feeling a kind of tug from my core, a kind of boost of energy, like electricity, and a knowledge how satisfying it would be to merge with that body. Is that what they call sexual attraction? I just think it's weird that I can feel it for myself. (I've heard of autosexuality - but when this feeling happens, I have no desire to do anything about stimulating the body I'm sitting in - just that I see the picture of myself as if it were someone else.) It's like identifying with a character in a movie or in a book, I can re-live something akin to what they are describing - I just can't take it seriously in real life. <br /><br />And I can persuade myself to a certain extent that I'm feeling the same thing for someone who is attracted to me - but I question that, I question that it's really coming from me - because it's so easy for me to drop the idea of pursuing any kind of sexual relationship with any person. To have certainty that there's no chance of that happening, and that they don't want that with me for whatever reason, just feels like a relief and a complication taken away. Then I look around and wonder where my "need" evaporated to. Just yesterday it seemed I might be interested and willing to experiment with sexuality with you if you ever wanted to - and today, knowing that you would not want it to happen, it's a complete non-issue, unnecessary, and I feel happy to move on.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-34010173176098895142009-05-08T06:41:00.000-07:002009-05-08T07:09:35.004-07:00Comfortable with sexAt this point, after scrutinizing physical reactions, sensations, thoughts and feelings that occur to me, for a number of months, I could assert with a great deal of integrity that I don’t mind sex. I don’t have any scruples about being touched “down there” when I know that it's within a context of a reasonably loving and trusting relationship. The fact that another person has different physical responses and experiences, is no longer scary, because I've left behind the fear and anxiety that there's something wrong with me if I don't experience the same. So for me now, sex feels neutral to pleasant, and I like the fact that the other person seems to be enjoying it so much. <br /><br />It’s a particular way of touching, and I don’t draw an arbitrary barrier between sexual and non-sexual touching. That would only make sense to me if I had sexual feelings that I needed to differentiate from other feelings. But when I don’t operate within the context of sexuality, it’s all just touching. And there's nothing wrong with it and I don't have any reservations about it, I just am not as focused on this one type of expression as most people. And my body doesn't inherently tell me that touching one person in this particular way now signifies that we are exclusively pair-bonded, and that if I were to touch another person in that way, it would signify some kind of betrayal. That attitude just seems completely invented and random, and I wonder how it is that most people understand it and subscribe to it so implicitly and intuitively. <br /><br />The thought that I have not allowed myself to have (because it’s socially unacceptable), is that actually, I probably wouldn’t mind being naked and having sex with people I feel pretty close and trusting with, if there was interest on their part. I haven’t tested this in practice, but I sense that if such a situation arose, I wouldn’t have a problem sharing that kind of touch with several different people in the same period. The only reason I would be holding back is because I know that having sex does create the expectation of pair-bonding, and I am reluctant to send out the wrong message, or rather to have my behavior be misinterpreted. <br /><br />The way I can participate in this is, essentially I’m responding to the energy of a partner: if there is a sexual charge there, I can pick it up to a certain extent and have fun with it, play with our responses. The only thing is, I guess it’s not as much fun for them with me as it would be with someone more sexually-driven. Maybe kind of as much fun as a hearing person and a deaf person going to a dance together. They will move and have their own enjoyment, but they are not sharing your experience. I don't get “lust”, or maybe I do, for moments at a time, but then it eludes me again. So people may in the end conclude that sexual activity is not something they particularly want with me anyway. And that settles that!Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-48193580495974476942009-04-08T08:47:00.001-07:002009-09-15T13:08:29.357-07:00Breaking it DownThe way I was trained to think from a very young age, was this: you want to find a perfect person (of the opposite gender, of course) who you will have romantic feelings for, have sex with, want to pair-bond with as your partner, and want to have children with and live happily ever after.<br /><br />It's amazing how ingrained that perspective is, unconsciously, and how I have to intentionally question it and "manually" readjust my attitudes or actually choose something other than my automatic assumptions. Even now when I'm becoming close to someone, there's this momentum of thought that says the only way to safely proceed is for this relationship to follow a particular track towards increasing commitment, and that I should employ certain tactics to make sure that this person becomes attached and bonded to me in a unique way so that we will need each other more than we need anybody else in the world. <br /><br />Screw that. I don't want to manipulate anyone this way. I understand a lot of people would find following that track mutually enjoyable - good for them. But I can't do it and feel clean about it at the same time. <br /><br />But what I wanted to write about was "breaking it down" - break down this perfect person that is supposed to fulfill me and make my life complete. Break them down into needs. <br /><br />It seems that several wants, usually conflated into meaning one and the same thing, can actually exist quite independently of each other, in the same way that yawning and sleepiness can exist independently of each other. If I want one of these things with a particular person, it does not necessarily mean I want any of the other things. What I want is always something to be verified with my own feelings, and not assumed. So this is how I break it down at the moment:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">1. Need for meaningful, intimate emotional and spiritual connection.</span><br />This is my primary need in relationships and what comes up the most. I'm not particular about who I have that with - I can have it with anyone who shows themselves to be willing, open and capable of intimacy and radical honesty, even if we have differing opinions or interests or are at different points in our life paths. I don't care. Give me truthfulness and transparency any day, and I will be irresistibly drawn to it. That's my ultimate passionate attraction. There is nothing more enjoyable than seeing and knowing each other as we are.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">2. Need to pair-bond.</span><br />Now this is the confusing part, I always used to think that wanting #1 must mean that I want #2, must necessarily lead to #2. That when I'm feeling #1, I should already be planning for #2. I'm seeing now that the two do not necessarily overlap, and expecting them to overlap is an unexamined simplification. I don't get a lot of desire for pair-bonding and never have. Pair-bonding is what girls did with each other growing up, when they were best friends and shared everything, and it was a world I was never privy to - I never "got" how you were supposed to do that. Pair-bonding is what you are expected to want with your romantic partner, when you start thinking as a "we" rather than an "I" and you plan everything together and buy things together and people see you as a unit and invite you places together and address you in plural and always have you sit together. I've experienced some of that once, in the early stages of my longest relationship to date. But it did not stay, and I can't honestly say I feel any need to find a particular special person to settle down with and see myself as paired with.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">3. Need for sex.</span><br />The fact that this can exist independently of anything else, has been covered at length in many different places. Further broken down into need for sexual release (masturbation will do) and need for sexual intercourse with particular people. Neither of which I experience.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">4. Need for intimate loving touch.</span><br />I experience a lot of that, and do desire and crave it as a physical, visceral, most immediate expression of trust, closeness and affection. I'm often frustrated and feel blocked because the kind of physical closeness I would enjoy with my dear ones is normally socially sanctioned only within relationships that are romantic and sexual.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">5. Need to have children.</span><br />Never experienced it, or only in a somewhat detached intellectual way, as something I think I'm supposed to want. I'm fascinated by some women's accounts of the clear sensation of a biological urge - and only reaffirmed in my knowledge that I have never sensed that.<br /><br />And so I attempt to exist, feeling a bit alien living from a template that is unlike that of most people, not even knowing yet where I want to go with this. But as I am, so my world becomes - and unsubscribing from common unexamined beliefs brings me in touch with new people more open to experimentation. Which I'm happy about.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-26586131001233568372009-03-04T09:28:00.000-08:002009-03-04T09:49:31.114-08:00NeitherJust a small visibility achievement that probably no one noticed, but anyway. It's a principle. When you register with a physician, they ask you all sorts of interesting questions that don't see their own slant or bias... Like are you currently "using" alcohol. Or lumping the use of cocaine and marijuana into one question. And at the top of the list, the obligatory question about your marital status: married - single - divorced - widowed. WTF? What does it matter to them? Oh this time yesterday when I signed up with a new doctor, I was extremely lucky, one of the options was "partnered". But that didn't quite fit either, so I made another check box, "complicated", and checked that one.<br /><br />Then the nurse asked me again about my marital status, and I just paused for a long time and smiled at her and said, "I'm not sure". We then established that what she was really needing, was the name of the person living with me - for some reason? I asked her why do they ask that and how is it relevant, and she was genuinely surprised and said, "I don't know! I wonder about that!" Then the doctor asked if there were any people or animals living with me, so I laughed and told him I was happy that he was asking a more specific question. I asked him too about why they want to know about marital status, and he also said he didn't know, and that it was probably a hold-over from a hundred years ago, and everyone just keeps doing it.<br /><br />Everyone just keeps doing it. It's not that people are intentionally bigoted, they just don't often question habitual realities.<br /><br />Anyway the asexual visibility thing. For whatever reason the doctor's form feels like it needs to ask you about your sexual preference. And it gave me two options: "males" and "females". Not even "both"! So I felt really smug and wrote "neither" in the blank space next to it. <br /><br />Nobody asked me anything about it.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-80229523358322904332009-02-28T13:43:00.000-08:002009-02-28T14:04:25.177-08:00Relationship 2.0This is going to be about undesired sexual attention. In AVEN forums, I often see people complaining and freaking out about those sexuals who won’t leave them alone and just don’t get it. And what I hear in their frustration is asexuals wanting respect and wanting to be believed and acknowledged and seen for who they are, because there is (not surprisingly) probably still some insecurity and fear about asserting themselves as different, and the hope is that being believed and respected by other people would bring these asexuals the peace of mind and comfort in their own skin, that they need so much.<br /><br />Fact is, if by a fluke of fate you find yourself asexual, it means you just set yourself up for MORE exploration of “relationship” rather than less. That’s right, you can’t sustainably use the “asexual” label as a way to avoid having to deal with people because you just can’t handle them. Because your label is going to be continually challenged and disbelieved and suspected. And unless you’re comfortable hiding out in your room forever playing video games and chatting online only with other people who are safe because they are “asexual”, you will have to continually question and carefully observe what is going on in the relationships that you enter into. One of the things that I liked most about AVEN when I first found it, is that you were being invited to not assume this as a monolithic identity, but rather to use the word to describe yourself for as long as it makes sense to. <br /><br />So as with everything else, in order to assert yourself, it's best to come from a place where you are really, really comfortable with yourself. If you go out into the world saying to people "I've determined that I'm asexual and I never ever want to have sex ever, how gross" while you still have doubts and insecurities inside of yourself, and so you’re really invested in people believing your statement, because you think that will help you believe yourself – well you’re just not going to be convincing. People can always feel that you’re not sure of yourself, sometimes subconsciously, and they will respond to your insecurity with doubt and dismissal, sometimes also subconsciously (even if they verbally reassure you). So how do you become sure of yourself? <br /><br />It’s paradoxical, but the more flexible you are and the more you allow for your identity to not be fixed, the more stable and unshakable you are. It’s scary because we are used to having firm and solid definitions of everything. And society’s rules are not made to accommodate a lot of “I don't know". Nevertheless. The ultimate tool you always have at your disposal is telling your own complete truth, and sometimes that truth is “I don’t know”, or “I don't relate to that question" or "I'm not sure what that word means" or "I don't remember ever feeling that way" or “I have mixed feelings about that”. Just be as truthful as you can – and speak from your own authority, from what you really, really know to be true for yourself. But the more you try to present yourself to people using external labels of identity, the easier it is for them to dispute that. <br /><br />It’s like in literature, you have passive and active characterization. I can write a novel and say “John is outgoing, friendly and cooperative”, or I can narrate a story in which John does and says certain things that demonstrate his character. Which are you more likely to believe, the conclusions that I’ve made for you about John, or the conclusions that you’ve drawn yourself based on what you have seen about John?<br /><br />I haven’t actually said to anyone “I’m asexual”. In some relationships, I’ve mentioned that asexuality is an orientation that I relate to and understand the most. Other times, that hasn’t even been necessary, I’ve just described how I feel about certain aspects of sexuality. And what I get back from friends is a lot of understanding and support and acceptance. I’m making sense to them, even if their experience is different.<br /><br />Does everyone who is trying to romance you necessarily have to know that you identify as asexual? I don’t think so. There’s someone who is really, really in love with me right now, and since I’m living the crazy experiment of not knowing and not defining my relationships inside the friendship/romance dichotomy, so I’m living from a place where nothing HAS TO happen, I’m allowing myself to simply enjoy his company and enjoy as much physical affection from him as I like without having it have to mean anything. At the same time I’m also being super attentive to myself and clearly knowing what I do and don’t want, and communicating my boundaries. I’m allowing this powerful intense energy to flow towards me from him, while knowing where I stand, and allowing any response that arises in me, to happen. Even allowing for the possibility that if at any point the unlikely impulse comes to have sex with him, I will. Everything is so much easier when I no longer tell myself that I have to resist or fight anything, or on the other hand that I have to follow and fall in and reciprocate. Just doing what comes naturally. I’ve let go of a lot of guilt there. As long as I was telling myself that I should be a certain way, there was plenty of discomfort. Now I allow myself to feel anything that is felt in the moment, and it’s great to have that validation in real time from within my own body that no, I don’t actually want that. <br /><br />You are strongest when you don’t have to convince anyone. When they tell you how much they want to be with you, can you, instead of wincing and trying to get away, just look them straight in the eye, feel what’s going on for you right then and there, and express it? I would personally find that much more believable than hearing “I’m asexual, leave me alone”. I think it’s a great challenge for asexuals to learn to absorb and deal with and become comfortable with direct sexual energy – and I see it as an inevitable part of maturation, to be willing to face that at some point. This guy who’s in love with me, I simply told him that I was very open to people, and that that didn’t mean I wanted a relationship - but that I knew this could be confusing. And he WAS confused, but he said that I was wonderfully strange. :) Well, I enjoy being strange. And if at any point he wants to ask more, I can explain more. But I don’t feel like I HAVE TO make him understand what I’m all about. And that’s freedom.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-14086897692578289052009-02-23T22:04:00.000-08:002009-02-24T11:35:53.255-08:00What would you ask an asexual?I took this <a href="http://www.surveymethods.com/EndUser.aspx?81A5C9D783C5DDD5">asexuality survey</a> for the National University of Ireland. Their idea is to explore the experience of asexuality and sense of identity as an asexual, and I'm really glad that they provide space for essay-type answers rather than pigeonholing you into multiple choice. And happy that someone took this on, and would really like to see the results!<br /><br />"How would you define your gender identity" is a relevant question, since I would expect many respondents not to have a strong gender sense. Some other questions seem largely irrelevant, like how does ethnicity or age or religion affect your asexuality. Age probably only has relevance in that people take you more seriously the older you are, but that goes for everything and not just asexuality. I'm curious about religion, as a disproportionate number of AVENites seem to be non-religious/atheist/agnostic. Pretzelboy is also making some guesses as to why so many <a href="http://asexystuff.blogspot.com/2009/02/are-asexuals-nonreligious.html">don't have a religious affiliation</a>. I guess the assumption many people on the outside make, is that being religious and believing you should not have sex much, makes people asexual... But in reality it seems rather the other way around. My completely unscientific 2 cents would be that a lot of religion is about instructions how to deal with sexual desires and channel them towards some spiritual ideal, doing right as opposed to wrong; and as asexuals are already living the experience of being outside of society's norm and not even having to control their sexual appetites, not fitting in and thus not having a strictly black-and-white view of the world, that kind of religion simply does not seem relevant, and has little appeal for them. <br /><br />Some good questions in this survey were around relating to others, disclosing one's sexuality and how that has been accepted. How does asexuality fit into your self-concept. Other questions were decidedly too generic, like listing the good points and bad points of being asexual. And I would like to see more specific, juicier questions being researched, such as:<br /><br />- When did you first realize you were asexual? Have you ever felt sexual? How did you discover this identity, and how did it feel? What did you identify as before?<br />- Do you ever fall in love? If you are attracted to people, do you have a gender preference?<br />- How do you feel about touching and sensuality? Hugging, kissing? How do you express affection and how do you view intimacy?<br />- What kind of close relationships would you ideally like to have in your life?<br />- Have you been in sexual relationships and how do you negotiate that? If you have had sex without actual desire for it, why did you do it?<br />- Do you want to have a family, children?<br />- Do you have a sex drive? Do you masturbate and how do you view masturbation? How about orgasm?<br />- Do you have a spirituality/religion and which? Does it bear any relation to your asexuality? How much does your (lack of) spirituality/religion define you?<br />- How was sex viewed in your family of origin, and do you think that has had any effect on your asexuality?<br />- When did you first realize that someone was sexually attracted to you, and how did you know? Are there particular areas of daily life that are confusing to you and that you would like more understanding around by people in general?<br /><br />You know, lots of questions researchers could ask. Just imagine that your best friend comes out to you as asexual, what would you be curious about?<br /><br />---<br />Update: Here Pretzelboy suggests some good <a href="http://www.asexualexplorations.net/home/research_agenda.html">Topics for future research</a> in a more methodical way than me.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-34114220359125966722009-02-23T20:38:00.000-08:002009-02-23T21:09:52.500-08:00Recognize an asexualI stumbled on these posts on AVEN <a href="http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?showtopic=30762">here</a> and <a href="http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?showtopic=38283&st=0">here</a>, talking about wearing a black ring on your right middle finger as a sign that you are asexual. <br /><br />I like the idea of increasing visibility, especially among each other. I went and bought myself a nice-looking but inexpensive black band off of Ebay. And although I don't expect to be seeing large numbers of people sporting black ase-rings just yet, I want to support this as I'm hoping that the symbol will penetrate public awareness over the coming years and make it a little bit easier to exist as a legitimate minority. So this post is kind of an encouragement to spread awareness for all those who wish to pick it up. Wear a black ring on your right middle finger when you want to claim an asexual identity. Tell everyone who is interested in your ring, and let them know that this subculture exists. I'd complement this with the "ace of hearts" symbol where appropriate.<br /><br />Hopeful vision of the future: guy tries to romance girl who seems to be playing hard to get. Guy checks her left ring finger. Nothing. Then guy checks her right middle finger. Guy sees black ring. Guy knows and understands that this means she is not interested in sex with him, thank you very much, and does not take it personally. People do not pressure you with questions and expectations about getting together with someone, or getting married, are not continuously suspicious of your permanently single status. The hope is that maybe one day asexuality would become at least as commonplace and accepted as being gay is today.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmczv_PvRbnZu5noF-d3kpLbgCZ4OUwBxU7rInDqvM7Udh0yhv-WU9zBHBDH1QxhYVptjZYheXgv9-J4YmucB_N6MovGBnKJeXfQz0SJ3KuhnJB4kZUWJvxoVJFy0bKOtzLVABjDwKTa3d/s1600-h/AceOfHearts.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 295px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmczv_PvRbnZu5noF-d3kpLbgCZ4OUwBxU7rInDqvM7Udh0yhv-WU9zBHBDH1QxhYVptjZYheXgv9-J4YmucB_N6MovGBnKJeXfQz0SJ3KuhnJB4kZUWJvxoVJFy0bKOtzLVABjDwKTa3d/s320/AceOfHearts.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306224898682752050" /></a>Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-58520820161852864372009-01-20T19:04:00.000-08:002009-01-20T19:27:07.969-08:00What's stopping you?I usually have a judgmental reaction when I hear quasi-scientific statements to the effect that “x characteristic evolved IN ORDER TO y”. It’s the same Creator-with-a-Purpose-in-Mind paradigm masquerading as a more impersonal Nature/Evolution-with-a-Purpose-in-Mind. Why doesn’t anyone expose that kind of thinking? It's ubiquitous in popular press and supposedly research-based literature. It’s people with a coat of science over a core of superstition.<br /><br />But today, I’m going to allow myself just that kind of completely subjective, unscientific and unjustified speculation, which will not increase objective understanding of humanity one iota. It will be more like a rant that’s not rationally founded. (Although I wouldn’t object if anyone can point to scientific research connected with such questions! I’m just too lazy to spend time on research myself. It’s easier to shout out opinions from the bleachers.)<br /><br />I’m speculating that the “purpose” of sexual attraction in the human species is so that individuals who find themselves in the inexplicable grip of this powerful drive are forced to get beyond the otherwise powerful fear we humans tend to have of the Other, and become physically close enough to perpetuate the species. This might also explain why society conditions us to believe that the most intimate relationships are necessarily our sexual relationships. That only this apparently immense force over which we have no control, can bring two people to get over themselves and allow themselves such intimacy and vulnerability. It’s like those episodes of Star Trek (yes I’m a geek) when the screenwriters wanted to allow their viewers to be voyeurs of a romance between two characters which would otherwise have been unacceptable: they seemed to always invoke some strange mysterious alien force that inhabited the body of this or that person and made them act in a romantic and sexual way towards another crew member, right? So that when it was all over and the alien force departed, we could rest assured, it’s still okay, the fabric of our inhibitions has remained intact, and it’s back to business as usual. <br /><br />Well as far as I’m concerned, it’s the same thing with non-sexual intimacy. One would think that with our higher faculties we would no longer have to fall back on sexual reflexes if intimacy is what we want. But still we are programmed to believe that we can only be ultimately intimate and vulnerable and real with other people if we are simultaneously sexually attracted to them, and want to have sex with them. It’s as if wanting to be emotionally/physically intimate and completely open is something shameful, and we need a legitimate excuse (our alien force, or in this case sexual attraction) to enact it. As if to say, no, really, I would leave you alone if I had a choice you see, but this attraction thing is forcing me to want to be intimate with you, I’m terribly sorry. As if the only legitimate place in which complete intimacy was allowed, was if there is a sexual contract of couplehood in place; otherwise we have a different contract: to continue to play the game of being afraid of each other and hiding from each other to various degrees, because we are, after all, “just friends”. It’s then tricky and confusing to navigate those waters of expectations. I want more intimacy and at the same time I'm afraid to demolish implicit societal agreements. But it's happening anyway.Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7750563513512612307.post-45950358659576372512009-01-07T15:27:00.000-08:002009-02-15T20:44:36.780-08:00Recognizing lack of sexual attractionI think people should talk more about sex. No, let me rephrase that to be more accurate. I’m disappointed that in my past, I did not initiate talking about sex more. So many assumptions would have revealed themselves so much sooner. Or would they? Maybe I just wasn’t ready for it.<br /><br />When I first encountered the term ‘asexual’ and the asexual community online, I was averse to the idea of considering myself asexual. I was too much in the mindset that there was something wrong with "these people", that they were just immature; especially after reading some posts by teenagers who seemed to simply fear the powerful unknown sexual experience, fear growing up. At the time I was seriously considering if I should be calling myself bisexual. It was only months later that I came to AVEN again, having faced more of myself and dropped more preconceptions. And I could read it with new eyes, and laugh with the joy of recognizing my own experiences described, with the joy of not being alone.<br /><br />One of the first things I noticed was the fact that asexuality was being defined by the absence of something that an asexual person would by definition not understand to begin with. “Asexual is a person who does not experience sexual attraction.” That statement works for the sexual world, it means something to “normal” people. How about an internal definition? How does an asexual person experience themselves from within, without referencing something that is not part of their world in the first place? An asexual person who hears the official definition might not recognize themselves in it.<br /><br />See, I had never even considered that I did not experience sexual attraction. Because it did not occur to me that I was any different from everybody around me who talked and acted as if we were all experiencing this same thing. I figured I must have it; I have attraction to people, it must be sexual. And I always felt awkward and insecure, because in reality I didn’t understand it, I didn’t get it. It was almost completely mystical to me. Sure, I was always able to recognize very obvious and overt sexual come-ons, but most my interactions were more subtle, and there was always a nagging question at the back of my mind, in all relationships, whether something sexual was happening or not. Always wondering – is this it? I like this person - does that mean that I want to date them? What was the magic formula by which people recognized this in each other? I kind of assumed that I must be sexually attracted to some degree to pretty much everyone I liked, and to all my friends. That any look, touch, gesture, expression, word indicating closeness, could be seen as leading someone on, could be somebody’s subtle hint or meaning something. I preferred to block this out of my awareness most of the time, because it was too much to handle. But overall, it affected me, I found myself alternating between being very open and very reserved – never knowing how friendly is too friendly. Mostly being more reserved than I would have wanted to be - just to be on the safe side.<br /><br />Last year I had some pretty direct and graphic conversations about what “sexual attraction” actually meant to different people, and how they experienced it. And I’m told that it is CLEAR to them, that it hits them suddenly and unmistakably, that they have specific sexual fantasies about the person they are attracted to, that it’s this amazing and magical pull, and so on. I feel like I’m off the hook! When I allowed for the option that this sexual attraction business is just not something that I experience or should necessarily experience, it did wonders for my self-confidence and how I show up around people. I’ve felt so free since then, like a huge weight was lifted off my back, the weight of having to be so careful because you don't know how things work and human relations never quite make sense to you. I feel much more at ease now to look at people, touch them, be open with them - and I know that however they want to interpret it, is their own business. Because I know where I'm coming from, and I keep checking with myself. And since I've recognized my asexuality, I have experienced loads of attraction that I allow to come out as it happens, because it's just what it is, but having sex with someone or wanting to make them my significant other does not occur to me, and that’s perfectly acceptable. I can simply be who I am. There is no expectation. And if this amazing and magical pull does happen some day, I want to be able to allow it just the same.<br /><br />So how would asexuality be described from the inside, so that an asexual person who does not know of asexuality, might recognize it when they read about it? So much of my self-description has been by negation lately; what can I say that I do want?<br /><br /><br />-----<br />Update: Found this thread discussing <a href="http://www.apositive.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=238">Defining asexuality from an asexual perspective</a>. Hope to get back to this!Trixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02892086097855620183noreply@blogger.com21