AVENguy Posted July 25, 2002 Share Posted July 25, 2002 Ok, so explain this to me. Prior to starting this forum I was actively involved in a Yahoo group, the Haven for the Human Amoeba (they're in the links section). I was just going over their old records. The club was founded in October 2000, afterwhich there was about 8 months of NO activity. Zilch, 3 straight months of no posts and then a glorious 7 in february. 3 in march, 1 in April, nothing through May but we're looking up in June with a record of 8, shoot that out of the sky with 18 in July. Then in August 2001, there were 130. After that the club stayed in the range of 100-200 posts a month. So why the sudden explosion? It seems like asexual sites have echoed this trend, only a piddling few date prior to 2000 (AVEN was started in February, 2001) and it seems like most have gone up in the past year. Any theories on the sudden explosion of activity? With the amount of traffic coming into this forum and similar groups (like paranoidgynandroid's LJ group) it's hard to believe that as early as a year ago there was absolutely nothing. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Anonymous Posted July 25, 2002 Share Posted July 25, 2002 weird as hell Link to post Share on other sites
nemesis Posted July 25, 2002 Share Posted July 25, 2002 Well, a couple of suggestions... Possibly it's due, slightly, to the increased use of the internet. More likely, though, it seems that many asexuals don't actually think one day that they should go looking for a community like this. but if word gets to them that such places exist they might be curious enough to check it out. Link to post Share on other sites
AVENguy Posted July 25, 2002 Author Share Posted July 25, 2002 Is that true of people here? It seems like most of the people on this site started looking on their own. It's possibly explained by advances in search engines such as google, but still... Link to post Share on other sites
quarridors Posted July 26, 2002 Share Posted July 26, 2002 I'd only ever seen 'asexual' written up on the board when the workshop I was in got to listing all the different kinds of sexualitities they could think of. I pretty much thought that asexual was something that people sort of accepted existed (or at least one person in every sexuality/diversity workshop did) but didn't actually identify as, at least primarily. Then I saw people on LJ putting asexuality in their interests and joined the asexuals community. Which was for anti-sexual elitist celibate people apparently. After a while being there I made my own community for 'my kind' of asexual and asexuals flooded on. Then I was pointed here... So I wasn't really looking, it was just something I tended to accept that other people wouldn't relate to. As soon as I knew it was a pretty common experience, I was kind of insensed that no one ever told me it was OK when I was growing up thinking I was broken. So I suppose one of my big motivations is to get this thing more visible so less people have to go through that 'am I broken?' stage. I also like talking about my 'space alien' experiences *g* Nat. Link to post Share on other sites
Artemis Posted November 3, 2002 Share Posted November 3, 2002 I've noticed this explosion in asexual interest as well, and I think it's mainly due to increased visibility meaning that asexuals who were hidden away thinking "I'm the only one" start to realise that they aren't, and then go looking for sites, or start their own. In summer 2000 when I was one of those hidden asexuals I saw a magazine in a newsagents with a headline on the front saying something like "I was celibate for 5 years" (which is apparently so abnormal that it requires this shocking article to make people believe it happens), anyway I read the article, which was about somebody who had been celibate after the breakup of a bad relationship, and found it wasn't very relevant to my situation; but the author mentioned they'd found a website on celibacy, so that's what made me decide to go looking on the net. I found about 2 sites and a couple of short essays by asexuals, and realised that I was one. I carried on searching the web and the number of sites increased very slowly at first, and then there seemed to be loads of sites, all coming online in the space of around 6 months. I eventually set up my own site as well to try to help the cause. At the same time the media seemed to be getting wise to it as well: there was an article the UK women's magazine "Shine" (can't remember when, possibly autumn 2001) about 3 women, in their 20s/30s who had either given up sex or never bothered with it; there was the article in a UK paper by Geraldin Rich Jones more recently; and now asexuals are even wanted to talk about it on TV! We do seem to be becoming more visible, which is great, but there is still a long way to go. I spent such a long time believing there was something badly wrong with me and trying (and failing) to change myself, and I hope other people can find out that asexuality exists earlier than I did, so they don't have to go through that; and also that non-asexuals can accept it as well. Link to post Share on other sites
Luisa Posted November 4, 2002 Share Posted November 4, 2002 My personal experience is thus: For years, I never even thought that there was anyone else who felt the way I did...and if they DID feel the same way, it was simply a "woman thing." It was explained to me by many women in my family that they didn't particularly like sex, but it is a "woman's duty" to make her husband happy. Also, they said that no marriage would last without sex. My own marriage is breaking up for, primarily, that reason. So, in other words, I, like everyone else, was expected to "close my eyes and think of England." Make a compromise. Do my female job. This was generally very hard for me to do. I have had one or two sexually pleasing times, but they were ONLY heavy petting, and ONLY with someone that I was deeply in love with at the time. (I was very young then.) --------------------------------- Very recently, I got the idea to start typing in things like "celibate" and "asexual" and "asexual relationships" and the like into the search engines. Up until then, I had never "reached out" in any way, and so, of course, had never found anything. Ask and ye shall receive, I guess. :) There were NOT that many choices on the search engines, and many of them are "dating clubs" which charge exhorbitant fees. But there was something. ------------------------------------- It's either that, or... ...everyone who is really an asexual is having sex anyway, and creating children who also posess the chemical/genetic predisposition to be asexual. So, our numbers are growing. Just think - if only we could get all the asexual people to have sex with each other, one day, there would be enough asexuals to take over the world - even the entire UNIVERSE!!! (Oh...wait...I didn't mean to mention my plans for universal takeover yet. It's too soon. Forget you read that.) ;) Link to post Share on other sites
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