Asexuality and Queerness

[AVENguy]

Ok, so having just e-mailed the majority of my school's amorphous formerly queer body I should probably dust and throw up a few new topics.

Where do people think asexuality fits into the current mosaic of orientation and gender related politics/stuff? What experiences do people have with organized groups/individual people? I know a few amoebas have expressed that (given the general lack of asexual accompanyment) they are often most comfortable around gay members of the opposite gender (to be gendered about it.) I know that this has been true for me, to some extent, because when I was figuring stuff out lesbians were "safe."

[Selie]

I don't have a problem with my straight male friends, unless they make a point of hitting on me or being incredibly lewd in conversation (which can make me really uncomfortable). I also have many lesbian friends, who would have the possibility of wanting a relationship with me as well. I don't feel threatened by them. They're my friends and they'll respect my wishes. If they don't, then they aren't my friends.

[AVENguy]

Do you have any gay male friends? I found that I was more comfortable in friendships with lesbians because I just didnt' have to worry about it. And on the whole I've found that gay males who I'm randomly talking are less likely than straight women to see some sexual subtext to the conversation (depends on the situation and the person, of course, but sometime I feel that I have to be more consciously not hitting on striaght women.) WIth straight men there's a weird sort of sexually competative subtext that creeps in some of the time and makes things awkward. This definitely doensn't apply to all straight guys, but the ones who make lewd comments or hit on people I'm not that comfortable around just because their idea of male-male bonding is cought up in their sexuality.

[Selie]

Yeah, my best male friend is gay. He came out about two years after I met him, and we all helped him through that big ordeal (it's certainly not fun in the bible belt) together... he's more boy-crazed than any of my female friends, and more into that than most of my straight male friends are about women (at least, he seems more obviously obsessed with it than them) but like the others, he respects me and won't say or do anything to make me uncomfortable.

My "big brother" is also gay, and he used to make some quite sexual jokes until I explained to him how uncomfortable they made me feel. He's since stopped. The same goes for two of my really good straight male friends.

[AVENguy]

Yeah, none of my friends going up were overly girl crazy, which helped. Still though, it's a trend (an interesting one, and one that's been observed elsewhere.) There's another side of it for me, LGBT folk tend to be more "sexually aware" on the whole, and so they're better about picking up on the more abstract components of asexuality in general than their straight counterparts.

[Madame_Sosotris]

Hmmm...I've had the most trouble coming out to, well I was going to say LGBT people, but what I really mean is bisexual people. As in, I've come out to a lot of bisexual people without any problems, but almost inevitably my biggest issues are with bisexuals. Example: last month I came out to a female bi-friend, who explained to me calmly, that I was wrong, because all people are sexually attracted on some level to all other people. After a great length of explaining (and by this I mean 10 hours) she finally agreed that I might be telling the truth, but informed me that I (as a hetero side of biromantic) would not be welcome at the local queer group meetings, because "you aren't queer. I mean, I guess you aren't anything."

I spend almost all of my time around heterosexual males, due to my major (comp. sci.), although I have an easier time coming out to women...possibly because I hate discussing sex in general, even to mention that I don't want to have it, and discussing it with males is even harder for me.

[AVENguy]

Said you wouldn't be welcome at the local queer community because you were asexual? What's your local queer community like? It's an interesting distinction, it took mine about a year to get comfortable with the concept but now they are my closest allies on campus.

To make a point on your friends behalf, saying that you experience no sexual attraction is like a straight man saying he is only attracted to women. It's technically not true, as no one is at the absolute extremes of orienation, but it's a safe enough assumption to make.

Interesting that it's bi people. Are alot of these people bi/queer people? I've run into some queer people who get over-zealous with their sex-positivism and/or lack the immediate imagination required to see why asexuality is sexually deviant. If your local queer community doesn't welcome you I'll personally kick their ass :)

[nemesis]

I'd certainly be most comfortable with gay male friends. However, I don't have any. I don't seem to run into them often (I'm not prone to going out, so I don't run into many people at all very often). My closest friend is a straight male and my next closest friends are female (also straight).

[Madame_Sosotris]

:-) Thanks for your support, AVENGuy.

I should probably be more specific. In my area, there are probably more queer communities than there are people (kidding, mostly -- there are at least 10 or 11 large, active groups on a pretty small campus). The friend in question ran one of them. I know there are two or three that are only for people who are Lesbian or Gay (no bisexuals) and I also know that there's one that welcomes *anyone* who's willing to be tolerant. The group of this particular friend billed itself as "For anyone that doesn't consider themselves completely gay or completely straight." When I asked if I were included in this I was told that I was not, that my issues were too different from those of the other members, and that, in general "We only deal with people on the Kinsey scale." This particularly friend also ascribes to an odd view of queer theory in which people who claim not to be attracted to someone are sexually repressed. For example, people who calim to be heterosexual, are repressing homosexual urges. Therefore it is only healthy to admit to bisexual urges. She believes that the existence of true asexuals, who are not repressing anything would invalidate this theory.

We've talked recently (since I've discovered this forum) and I think she's moving closer to understanding. She's at least backed off on trying to send me to a therapist...

[AVENguy]

ahhh.. campus queer politics. Your campus sounds alot like oberlin (don't know if that's it) where I have a little experience. The good thing about a broad base like that is you can usually find SOME group (or groups) to back you up. That is if you feel a need to be active in a group, which understandably you may not.

My campus had one big group (with all the muscle and subtlety of a women's rugby team, but by gum it god the job done) which disbanded this past year, in a sort of parastroicka/glastnochst type move (to which I played quiet advisor.) Now everything's amorphous except the queers of color group.

Odd that your campus has a group exclusive of bi people (and one inclusive ONLY of bi people.) I guess that's the problem with identity-based (as opposed to politics-based) groupings...

[purplehaze]

Haha :) Ours USED to exclude bi people, until I managed to become president (they didn't know I was bi, and I didn't know until I'd been to a few meetings that it was preferred to be lesbian/gay, and by then there was no getting rid of me). Now, the bi chick runs the show...funny, isn't it?

[firewalkwithme]

My high school didn't have any clubs for gays as far as i know...:| maybe there were private ones...but then again, i didn't totally come to grips with it till after high school...but it would've been nice to know cuz of the feelings and crap i was going through. -_-

And yay...im at member status now, lol

[mindlife]

Hmmm...I've had the most trouble coming out to, well I was going to say LGBT people, but what I really mean is bisexual people. As in, I've come out to a lot of bisexual people without any problems, but almost inevitably my biggest issues are with bisexuals. Example: last month I came out to a female bi-friend, who explained to me calmly, that I was wrong, because all people are sexually attracted on some level to all other people. After a great length of explaining (and by this I mean 10 hours) she finally agreed that I might be telling the truth, but informed me that I (as a hetero side of biromantic) would not be welcome at the local queer group meetings, because "you aren't queer. I mean, I guess you aren't anything."

Nobody is "not anything." Or let me put it this way: nobody is nothing.

That's just a cop-out for refusing to understand.

Your friend claims to be bisexual, yet bisexuality is all about not being pinned down, not forcing definitions on the rest of the world as well as one's self. She has trouble with the broad possibilities of human behavior & romance; bisexuality glorifies the inclusiveness of love itself. Maybe she's not as bi as she believes herself to be.

I remember CatePerfect writing about homosexuality; how it wasn't "a fucking merit badge." No orientation, any more than "queerness," is a "fucking merit badge."

Her body has been very busy clearly.

Her mind has not.

[Autumn]

i have personally always got on better with straight females. But that may be because i dont actually know many gay or bisexual men/women... certainly the only gay male i have been particularly friendly with was a complete bastard and actually used his "gay male" status to get women interested in him so he could cheat on his boyfriend with them. And the other gay men i know at uni tend to perfer to hang around with my friends who are on the pull all the time so they can eye up men together. Alot of people my age in the UK think its cool to have at least one gay friend, i would rather become friends with someone because we have things in common and get on well than because of their orientation.

anyway that was incredibly off the point.

We have an LGB group here at my university- karl contacted them recently and im watching for their reply, im interested to see how they respond because its my impression that they are more a group to meet other LGB people than a politically active group, they write the odd letter in the student paper about gay bashing and stuff but thats about as politcally active as i have seen them get. Perhaps im being too harsh... if they do give a favourable reponse to karl's asexuality e mail i may well get in contact next year and see if my impressions are wrong. At the moment i wouldnt feel comfortable approaching them since i dont want to sleep with anyone.

[meep]

Well pretty much all of my closest friends are girls, mostly because I've known them since the days when girls were friends with girls and guys were friends with guys and no one strayed from that :roll: Long friendships rock.

I don't happen to know any gay guys. I know one lesbien and I'm perfectly comfortable around her though

[Cate Perfect]

Madame S...you're 'friend' seems rather insensitive.

I keep thinking that because gay and bi people know what it is to be ostracised for being themselves they would be more receptive to the idea of asexuality. We're told the same things that they were a few years ago--that we're not natural, or abused when we were children or not fully grown up. Things like that. Seems not every queer person sees it the way I do, though.

(I can't believe mindlife remembers my post... *flattered and surprised*)

Cate

[Gorax]

I know a few amoebas have expressed that (given the general lack of asexual accompanyment) they are often most comfortable around gay members of the opposite gender (to be gendered about it.)

Yep. Best friend is gay and of the opposite "gender".

I have other friends who are straight or bi, but they are already in relationships, so no problems there ;)

[(SP)]

Nobody is "not anything." Or let me put it this way: nobody is nothing.

Actually I sort of do not mind this. I sort of think of my asexuality as 'nothing'.

[Cate Perfect]

I think of it as a non-issue, is that what you mean, sacred? I'm always surprised when anyone else cares what I do/don't do in my bedroom.

Cate

[Gorax]

Hell, I'm pretty surprised when anyone else wonders what I look like 'down there'.

Surprised, and disgusted :evil:

[O'Really]

I can be friend of anyone as long as he or she doesn't feel any physical sympathy for me (and I for himher, but that's already assumed).

[Jayann]

Physical...sympathy?

[O'Really]

This is another way of saying physical attraction.

Nietzsche, "Human, All Too Human", § 390

"Women's friendship - Women can very well enter into a friendship with a man, but to maintain it--a little physical antipathy must help out."

This is not to base my argument, just the "physical sympathy" term. 8)

[mindlife]

Hey, Nargothic O'Really, it's good to hear from you again.

[O'Really]

Oh really! I've been so busy I can only give short answers these days! :-|

[KidKash]

I try to hang around anybody who is involved in a relationship (orientation disregarded), and it's intentional. I try to put myself in situations that people are distracted from me and there is much less potential for that "more than" friends attachment to develop.

[Maigo]

Mmm, the way girls and gay guys think as been really bothering me lately, and I don't know any lesbians, then straight guys just don't stand a chance of getting it. I have to say I'm more comfortable around bisexual males.

I really feel bisexuals are more open to the idea, dealing with the hetero and homo populations more often than the others.

I guess I have a few more points for bisexuals then some of the rest of you :D

Being a fur, I tend to talk mostly to other furs... and we're used to the freaks :)

And (once again) I love talking about sex and taboos. Those are fairly open subjects with male bisexual furs :roll:

[gambit_boi]

i think there's room for asexuals in the queer spectrum. i listen to stories in my campus glbtq meetings and identify with the sexual and gender confusion others describe, dealing with one's self and with others, as well. i feel queer, but kind of abstractly...

[Sunshine Superman]

The ancient Athenian aristocracy is often considered to have been a gay culture. However, the Athenian ideal for homosexual relationships was essentially homosexual-oriented asexuality. The ideal was that an older man would form a long-lasting and altruistic romantic and didactic relationship with a boy who would be his pupil. They might have sex to satisfy their natural urges, but according to the ideal, the sex should be a low priority. Older men who formed relationships with boys primarily to satisfy their own sexual urges were looked down on and laughed at as "lecherous old seducers". Boys were warned away from such people. I don't remember the source, but I can paraphrase some old Greek advice from memory. It went something like "Boy, you are intelligent and beautiful. Beware of those seducers who would come to you with promises of deep love and friendship, then abandon you as soon as their desire for your body has been sated. Before you give yourself up to a man, make sure that he is virtuous and that he actually wants your improvement".

It was an interesting culture, in a way the sexual opposite of our own. In our culture, the female body is considered more lovely than the male. In ancient Athenian culture, the male body was considered more lovely than the female. But even in ancient Athenian culture, the ideal of a lovely boy was a rather effeminate, muscularly curvaceous boy. Unfortunately, in their culture women were by and large seen as boy-making, house-keeping machines by the aristocrats. The prostitutes seem to have had much more fun in their lives than the housewives, and the common folk were probably more promiscuous, and less poetic about the nature of their sex acts, than the aristocrats.

However, historically, the idea of romantic love seems to always originate with the aristocrats: which is quite the opposite of the myth Hollywood loves to perpetuate (see, for example, Titanic). Peasants have generally always had a workman-like attitude to sex and marriage, though often understandful of the teenage/young adult passions, and often making way for these passions to find satisfaction. In our Western culture, the idea of romantic love has spread to all classes. But it originated with the aristocrats: the Greek aristocrats, the Medieval courtesans, the small elite of 19-th century Romantic poets, the Victorian English aristocracy, and so on. And these days, in a way it is the celebrity aristocracy of Hollywood that keeps it alive, though that is a different matter. My point really is that the romantic urge, when pushed to an extreme, is asexual. I believe it has something to do with the romantic idolization of the partner, which leads to a lack of desire for sex because it is wrong to have carnal relations with an ideal, a God(dess), a living myth. And this extreme romanticism likes to pop up in aristocracies. In the same way, innate or inborn asexuality automatically puts a person into a kind of mental aristocracy that has the "priviledge" (or curse, if the issue is seen from the point of view of sexuals) of devoting their time to less fleshly pursuits. I use the word "aristocracy" not because I can prove that asexuals are better than sexuals--there's no way to do that--but because asexuals are small in number. There is also, on the other end of the stick, of course, a counter-aristocracy, which is an aristocracy in its own right, of extremely sexualized people.

One of the divisive issues in my life has been that I've, often simultaneously, looked up to both aristocracies: the extreme asexualized, the "minds with no bodies" and the extreme sexualized, the "bodies with no minds". That is because I generally like both extremes of any spectrum, when it comes to appreciating the spectrum through spectacle and not reality (that is, it's not that I like extremely spicy food AND extremely bland food, but not food in the middle--it's that I would idolize, say, an extremely conservative person and an extremely liberal person, but not get much turned on intellectually by people in between--this extremism is one of the immaturities that I can feel slipping away as I grow older).

But by this point one thing should be clear: I'm an egoist. I've hijacked the topic to talk about myself, and I've rambled from the topic. I don't really know to what extent my speculations are true, but I hope maybe somebody has more in-depth knowledge of history than I do and can correct any mistakes I may have made.