Jump to content

*The benefits of having an asexual friend


Siggy

Recommended Posts

Enjoy.

They make a pretty good case. It's true, I've never stolen a condom!

UWire appears to be a site that collects articles from college newspapers. This one is from the Daily Nebraskan at the U of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Link to post
Share on other sites

^-^ That's kind of awesome. It made me laugh, yet so much of it is true.

Link to post
Share on other sites

#5. No whiney relationship BS.

#4. Friendship for the joy of friendship!

#3. An asexual friend will never steal your love interest.

Sounds like they're confusing asexual and aromantic.

Link to post
Share on other sites
lessthanlevi

awesome. I have bookmarked this for the occasion of my facebook coming-out. :D

Link to post
Share on other sites

#5. No whiney relationship BS.

#4. Friendship for the joy of friendship!

#3. An asexual friend will never steal your love interest.

Sounds like they're confusing asexual and aromantic.

I was thinking the same thing. It's pretty amusing, but there are definitely some fallacies in there.

I am pretty damn good at random, deep conversation, though.

Link to post
Share on other sites

#5. No whiney relationship BS.

#4. Friendship for the joy of friendship!

#3. An asexual friend will never steal your love interest.

Sounds like they're confusing asexual and aromantic.

I would have to agree with you there, still i quite enjoy sex. Well the idea of it anyways, all those sexual relationships that are forver being formed between the people around me is something that I find purely fascinating. I would love to be able to get inside there head and see how the gears turn so to speak ^^. Find where my train of thought differs from theres and so on

Link to post
Share on other sites

#5. No whiney relationship BS.

#4. Friendship for the joy of friendship!

#3. An asexual friend will never steal your love interest.

Sounds like they're confusing asexual and aromantic.

I was thinking the same thing. It's pretty amusing, but there are definitely some fallacies in there.

I am pretty damn good at random, deep conversation, though.

yeah i was reading this thinking they were confusing asexual and aromantic. and assuming that we all have some weird super-human hot-ness sensor or something. i don't know about anyone else but i am personally really confused by the whole concept of hotness so i certainly can't help out any of my friends like that. on the plus side however, i too do rather enjoy random deep conversations. they're a great way to spend a friday afternoon :)

Link to post
Share on other sites

#5. No whiney relationship BS.

#4. Friendship for the joy of friendship!

#3. An asexual friend will never steal your love interest.

Sounds like they're confusing asexual and aromantic.

I was thinking the same thing. It's pretty amusing, but there are definitely some fallacies in there.

I am pretty damn good at random, deep conversation, though.

yeah i was reading this thinking they were confusing asexual and aromantic. and assuming that we all have some weird super-human hot-ness sensor or something. i don't know about anyone else but i am personally really confused by the whole concept of hotness so i certainly can't help out any of my friends like that. on the plus side however, i too do rather enjoy random deep conversations. they're a great way to spend a friday afternoon :)

Yeah, I don't even really understand the concept of hotness. I can tell you who I think is aesthetically pleasing, but that's about it, and most people don't agree with what I think is "pretty", anyway.

Link to post
Share on other sites

#5. No whiney relationship BS.

#4. Friendship for the joy of friendship!

#3. An asexual friend will never steal your love interest.

Sounds like they're confusing asexual and aromantic.

I was thinking the same thing. It's pretty amusing, but there are definitely some fallacies in there.

I am pretty damn good at random, deep conversation, though.

yeah i was reading this thinking they were confusing asexual and aromantic. and assuming that we all have some weird super-human hot-ness sensor or something. i don't know about anyone else but i am personally really confused by the whole concept of hotness so i certainly can't help out any of my friends like that. on the plus side however, i too do rather enjoy random deep conversations. they're a great way to spend a friday afternoon :)

Yeah, I don't even really understand the concept of hotness. I can tell you who I think is aesthetically pleasing, but that's about it, and most people don't agree with what I think is "pretty", anyway.

i completely agree. someone actually once tried to teach me how to recognise what hotness looked like because they thought i just didn't understand and that's what i meant when i told them i was asexual

Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm pretty uncomfortable with narratives encouraging people to seek out and befriend specific types of other people. I particularly think the "gay friend" narrative is creepy. It has the feel of encouraging straight women to go out and find a gay guy to befriend as if they were looking for an accessory, not building a relationship with another human being. I would be fairly upset if this sort of imagery took root surrounding asexual people, too. It has a nasty whiff of... not fetishizing, but a non-sexual form of the same sort of thing.

Let's see. Their definition of asexuality is off, since it doesn't focus on attraction but rather on sexual desire, and I agree with the other criticisms that the article writer appears to be conflating asexual people with aromantic people.

I suppose it's good basic visibility, but I wish the article writer had chosen a different format. Mostly now I just feel a bit uncomfortable, like the article writer views me (or his friend Viv) as An Asexual, not a person who happens to be asexual.

Link to post
Share on other sites

It was funny, but a bit stereotypical, and there was a love = sex fallacy there. I know I'M not drama-free, and romantics generally do a lot of that stuff. They Did Not Do The Research. <_<

Link to post
Share on other sites

I particularly think the "gay friend" narrative is creepy. It has the feel of encouraging straight women to go out and find a gay guy to befriend as if they were looking for an accessory, not building a relationship with another human being.

Yeah I think you're exactly right about this that some people have this idea that it's somehow fashionable or something like that to collect a gay guy to go shopping with. as an "accessory" is actually a really good way of describing how they treat them. and that's really not very nice i think:)

Link to post
Share on other sites
I'm pretty uncomfortable with narratives encouraging people to seek out and befriend specific types of other people. I particularly think the "gay friend" narrative is creepy. It has the feel of encouraging straight women to go out and find a gay guy to befriend as if they were looking for an accessory, not building a relationship with another human being.

The writer is making fun of those fashion magazines. That's fairly obvious to me.

Alright, so we’ve joked in this column and generally had a good time.

Let's see. Their definition of asexuality is off, since it doesn't focus on attraction but rather on sexual desire,

Why is their definition off? She says Viv shows no outward sexual drive (her observation) and basically doesn't want to bang anyone (Viv's statement of fact about herself). What is un-asexual about that? Remember, people are not required to use the exact same definition that is on the front page of AVEN. In fact, people should be free to describe their asexuality in any manner that they choose. And people who are comfortable with themselves will find it easier and easier to accept a level of flexibility.

and I agree with the other criticisms that the article writer appears to be conflating asexual people with aromantic people.

Perhaps Viv is both?

Mind you, these reasons may not be true of EVERY asexual, since we’re all unique snowflakes.

I suppose it's good basic visibility, but I wish the article writer had chosen a different format. Mostly now I just feel a bit uncomfortable, like the article writer views me (or his friend Viv) as An Asexual, not a person who happens to be asexual.

And better yet, a truly wise friend knows that you don’t need a bachelorette party as an excuse for to have a wild, crazy and fun night.

Rhiannon and Viv are probably friends because Viv is wise and alot of fun and they share the same sense of humor. Have no worries about how the writer views you as she does not know you.

The real point of the article? To collect donations to complete the documentary Asexuality: The Making of a Movement.

Cheers,

Lucinda

Link to post
Share on other sites

I was aware of the riffing off of those narratives that the article writer was doing, but the article didn't critique those narratives at all--just substituted "asexual" for "gay" and went on with the jokes. It's not "making fun of" those articles if you never once evince any sort of criticism or subversion of the original concept. It's just taking a form of fetishizing one group and reapplying it to another. (I still haven't thought of a better word.) So no, I don't think "but it was just joking!" is a particularly good defense. I still found the article very othering.

I concede your point about the definition of asexuality, however. I did feel the "unique snowflake" line was more of a snarky line than an acknowledgement that asexuality =/= aromantic, especially because the phrase "unique snowflake" is almost never found outside of the context of snark and because it paid bare lip service to the point that we as asexuals are not all like one another while going on to treat asexuals as a monolithic group. I understand that Viv may have been aromantic, but the article was a generalized treatment of the pros of having asexuals in general as friends, and therefore it probably should not have assumed that all asexuals in general are aromantic.

I perhaps should have worded that last sentence better, but I didn't think anyone would take offense to it! (And apologies for confusing the gender of the author.) I didn't necessarily mean I worried about what the writer thought of me personally, but rather that I felt that the writer did not see asexuals as people first but as asexuals first, in the same way that some people I have known think of gay guys as accessories-in-the-making rather than people. I may have been wrong about this, but all I have to work off of is this one piece.

I'm not sure why you appear to have so disliked my personal reaction to the article, though. (Are you Viv, by chance?) I have a few problems with it. I don't think it's the worst thing to have mentioned asexuality, and I laud its goal of attracting funding for the documentary. That doesn't prevent me from wanting to talk about the aspects of the article I found problematic and unsettling. It also doesn't prevent anyone else from loving that article, or thinking it's the most hilarious thing ever, and you'll note that nowhere in my post did I say what other people should think about it--only what I did.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I understand that Viv may have been aromantic, but the article was a generalized treatment of the pros of having asexuals in general as friends, and therefore it probably should not have assumed that all asexuals in general are aromantic.

Welp i know it may not be very accurate for the article to generalise all asexuals as aromantic, but i've found that a lot of people who aren't asexual think that aromantic and asexual are the same thing so if this is a taking-the-mickey sort of article then it works best if it uses the most well known model of the asexual which in this case i guess means assuming we're all aromantic. which would be why the author did that. i'm guessing. wow i really don't know if i made any gramatical sense whatsoever there. :)

Link to post
Share on other sites
mad_scientist

It was funny, but a bit stereotypical, and there was a love = sex fallacy there. I know I'M not drama-free, and romantics generally do a lot of that stuff. They Did Not Do The Research. <_<

Off-topic: props for actually remembering to put the spaces in. I always forget.

Link to post
Share on other sites
mad_scientist

I understand that Viv may have been aromantic, but the article was a generalized treatment of the pros of having asexuals in general as friends, and therefore it probably should not have assumed that all asexuals in general are aromantic.

Welp i know it may not be very accurate for the article to generalise all asexuals as aromantic, but i've found that a lot of people who aren't asexual think that aromantic and asexual are the same thing so if this is a taking-the-mickey sort of article then it works best if it uses the most well known model of the asexual which in this case i guess means assuming we're all aromantic. which would be why the author did that. i'm guessing. wow i really don't know if i made any gramatical sense whatsoever there. :)

This is the sort of article that stereotypes all gay people as fashion experts for entertainment purposes, so you may have something there.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 7 months later...

Hehe, I found this funny, ignorant, but funny. The writer probably only new aromantic asexuals, but hey, at least he/she recognized that asexuality exists, even if he/she was being stereotypical about it. Baby steps my friends, baby steps.

The best part about it is that it came from my college's newspaper and gives me hope that I might meet an asexual friend here :)

Link to post
Share on other sites

I found another article by this person about how asexuality needs to be accepted here.

Link to post
Share on other sites

@Hey there,

That story you linked made me go awwww.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm pretty uncomfortable with narratives encouraging people to seek out and befriend specific types of other people. I particularly think the "gay friend" narrative is creepy. It has the feel of encouraging straight women to go out and find a gay guy to befriend as if they were looking for an accessory, not building a relationship with another human being. I would be fairly upset if this sort of imagery took root surrounding asexual people, too. It has a nasty whiff of... not fetishizing, but a non-sexual form of the same sort of thing.

Let's see. Their definition of asexuality is off, since it doesn't focus on attraction but rather on sexual desire, and I agree with the other criticisms that the article writer appears to be conflating asexual people with aromantic people.

I suppose it's good basic visibility, but I wish the article writer had chosen a different format. Mostly now I just feel a bit uncomfortable, like the article writer views me (or his friend Viv) as An Asexual, not a person who happens to be asexual.

- Ditto here...

Link to post
Share on other sites

makes it look like they should have bought a pet labrador or had an asexual friend

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...
Måskemigselvetsted

Okay, there was quite many "mistakes", but I don't think it's supposed to be taken serious! And if you view it as something "just for fun" it wasn't bad!

Actually, I thought there was some pretty funny statements! :lol:

And some sweeet :wub:

Sometimes I just want to talk about zombies, explosions or even cheesecake. Deep ridiculous conversations about random stuff that have no relation to sex or sex related problems, you know? (Except maybe the cheesecake, mmmm….cheesecake.) Anyway, asexual people still have the ability to talk about sex, but it’s not their focus.

And they mentioned cake!

But except? Except? Cake shouldn't in any way been seen as something sex-related! And there should be deep conversations on the subject.. :P

Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...