For older asexuals; Can you tell me about asexuality in the 1960-1990's?

[ooka]

For myself, I never heard of anything like it.  Like others in this thread have said, there is straight and if not straight, gay.  Knowing I did not have any sexual attraction towards the same gender, I took the default route and entered into a long informal conversion therapy program which was my hetero-conforming marriage.  

 

That  millenials are not able to understand what could shove an asexual person into the closet of trying to "cure" themselves of "low sex drive"  is not surprising.  To put it in terms they can understand, it is conversion therapy, plain and simple.   Reframing my experience in my mind as my identity, rather than a terrible flaw that I have to hide by making the degrading physical transaction in exchange for validation as a proper human.has given me the strength to get out of a  long term hetero-conforming relationship that was sucking the life out of me and start living my life finally.  

[anzu2snow]

I find this very interesting, and have been wanting to know more about the history behind it, too. The first time I heard about it personally was in 2001. A classmate had come out to me. I barely knew him, and the only definition I knew when he told me was the 'asexual reproduction' thing. I looked it up after we talked, and was scared that it sounded too much like myself. I don't think I encountered AVEN at the time, and can't remember if it was around. Anyways, it scared me so much I denied it until I looked into it again back in June. I didn't want to feel 'different'. I kind of feel guilty that I didn't look more into it, or identify as one when I was a teen. Going to a Q Center thing for Thanksgiving, there were a lot of ace teens there. It was great to see, but felt weird for me. Like a cross between being jealous, guilty, and happy they had some support.

 

I've also heard about the Group X thing. I've read that we called ourselves amoebas in the late 80's and 90's. I think that was on some old online forums. I don't remember exactly what those sites were called. It was apparently a play on people making fun of us. I've also read that the term asexuality was used in dictionaries as early as the late 1880's, and the first mention might have been as early as 1830. So, it's been around, just not used often in the past. I've also read that in England, during Victorian times, we were referred to as extra men and women. Those people were considered dangerous, and kicked out of major cities and towns.