scarletlatitude Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 http://www.pressreader.com/uk/elle-uk/20170201/281569470408358 Elle UK, 1 Feb 2017 This website won't let you copy and paste, but it's an article about how millennials date while asexual. Link to post Share on other sites
Janus the Fox Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 Found a way to copy pasting it is long, in spoilers. Edited to remove repetition, formatting errors and assist in consistency. Spoiler The absence of sexual attraction to anyone doesn’t mean the end of love and dating Six years ago, I was lying in bed with my then boyfriend. I still had my trainers on. Everything was about to fall apart. I knew he was going to ask me why this was the first time, after four months of dating, that he’d been admitted into my flat, and why we’d not had sex, and why, when he put his tongue in my mouth, I’d recoil. How do you tell someone that when they kiss you it feels like someone is putting a scarf over your face and pulling it tight? That you feel sheer panic? I thought, “Tell him now, because when you say it’s because you’re asexual, he’s going to leave.” So I did, and he did, and I put those trainers in the bin.’ My friend Sarah, 28, works in marketing and is now in a happy relationship with a non-asexual man (more on how this works later). She’s laughing a full, hearty belly laugh when she hits me with the trainer line, but I’m finding it hard to smile. This year she ‘came out’ to me as asexual. Asexuality means a lack of sexual attraction towards anyone. Initially I was shocked, not least because she’s in a relationship. A 2015 survey suggested Brits in relationships have sex three times a month*, on average, and I’d assumed Sarah and her boyfriend were no different. Being asexual is not like being sat at a banquet, starving and salivating, with your jaw wired shut. As Sarah puts it, ‘You don’t like mushrooms, right?’ I stick my tongue out to show distaste. ‘But if someone you loved wanted to eat them all the time, then you might, say, let them put some in a risotto and you’d swallow them down. That’s what an active sex life is for me.’ I probe further: ‘What do you mean, then, that you occasionally have sex?’ Sarah pauses. ‘Only very, very occasionally, and that’s preferable for me to ever giving oral sex. But yes, that’s a hyper-rare compromise I make.’ She pulls a disgusted face. Living without desire is difficult to conceptualise using our Freudian understanding of psychology. We’re a civilisation built on the presumption that everyone constantly wants sex. Take the maxim ‘sex sells’, still the pillar on which most advertising is built, from Wonderbra’s ‘Hello boys’ to Diet Coke’s ‘window washer’, via Kim Kardashian and Louboutins: sex is everywhere you look. Not until 2004 did Canadian academic Anthony F. Bogaert’s paper propel the term ‘asexual’ into common use and establish the idea that 1% of the British population were asexual**. Of that figure, 70% were women. Thanks to online communities, such as AVEN (Asexual Visibility And Education Network), awareness is increasing. But with such powerful stigma surrounding the ideas of asexuality, it’s safe to assume more people are asexual than we’re aware of. Conversations around gender have been rife recently, with many people from Generation Z identifying as gender fluid (oscillating between gender and non-binary identities) or pansexual (not being limited in your sexual choices by gender or sex). Celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, a pansexual, and Amandla Stenberg, who is non-binary, are heralded as role models but I can’t think of a single asexual icon. I can’t imagine the admission of zero desire would go down well with the PR squads. ‘Asexuality sells’ has less of a ring to it. I’m told that asexuals are often asked whether they’ve been diagnosed as asexual, or if there’s a ‘cure’, which suggests it’s a term we’re still not fully clued up on. I ask mathematician Dr Michael J Doré, 33, who is asexual and joined AVEN in 2009, to explain what asexuality means to him. ‘Everyone has certain people they aren’t sexually attracted to, and asexuals find that everyone falls into that category.’ He was quick to add that ‘asexuality is a sexual orientation, not a disease, pathology or a choice. We’re just like gay or straight people.’ And it’s like any sexual preference in that everyone falls on a spectrum. Take my friend Sarah, who is able to have a loving relationship with a non-asexual man and occasionally have sex. I ask her to tell me more about how she makes the relationship function in a balanced manner where both parties are satisfied: ‘It’s hard at times. It helps that he travels a lot and I relish in having my own space.’ And the sleeping situation? ‘We share one very large bed. We kiss, but not passionately and not for too long. But occasionally I like to be hugged, and we hold hands in public.’ I ask if that’s for show. ‘I think it was when I first “came out”. Now I like it because he does.’ Have other people been judgemental? ‘I got fucking sick of the “You just need to meet the right person” rhetoric,’ she says. ‘I’m fine with sex being a tiny part of my life, as is my partner. Don’t pity me. We make love – rarely, but it’s enough for us both.’ Does she worry about him cheating? ‘Look, I know he watches porn. It’s fine. He’s committed to me and I don’t angst over it.’ Sarah wasn’t always so self-assured. ‘When I was 18, the internet wasn’t even a thing. There were no books about asexuality in the library. My adolescence was rough – I felt like a freak. I’m in awe of the next generation’s acceptance.’ For Sarah, there was a wake-up moment at school. ‘My first memory of being different was in a sex-education lesson. There was this really graphic visual of intercourse and I felt dizzy. It snowballed; sex was all my friends spoke about. I stopped reading books for fear of the sexual parts, and feeling like a weirdo. I kissed someone for the first time at 19, because at university I felt my sexuality was a source of suspicion. I hated it. I’ve blocked out losing my virginity. I didn’t have sex again until I met my current partner, three years ago.’ Campaigners such as Maria Munir, the 20 year old from Watford who publicly came out as non-binary to Barack Obama at a London meeting of students and youth leaders in 2016, are effecting real change. By email, Maria introduced me to George Norman, a 22-year-old student who, in 2015, became Britain’s first openly asexual parliamentary election candidate. ‘I got to university and realised people weren’t acting. This thing that seemed so alien to me was really important to them. I was 19 when I heard the word “asexual” – it made sense of my feelings.’ I ask him where he found the courage to publicly identify as asexual, and why he felt it necessary. ‘I had fears, but largely people have been very supportive. We’ve got to make sure no one feels like I did as a young adult, as if there was no one in the world like me, and I was broken and alone.’ Jess, 29, works in fashion and is living secretly as an asexual. I know her because she’s famous for her outlandish style, and I see her at industry parties. Even as a teenager, Jess knew she was different. ‘I hated people in my space, and became chronically shy.’ I tell her she seems the opposite of shy. ‘Maybe I’m not shy with women, but there’s no threat and it’s part of my job to pretend I’m not. But I developed huge breasts early, and people commented. Men’s eyes wandered; they still do. I hate men looking at me in a sexual way. I cross my arms and close my eyes on the tube.’ Eventually I broach the subject of a family with Jess. I imagine that, for women, it makes identifying as asexual even more burdensome. ‘I fear the future. I come from a religious family who put a lot of emphasis on having children and getting married. They won’t understand.’ Sarah, who thinks she might want children, says: ‘If I decide to have kids, sex will be a topic that’s hard to avoid. I’m a loving person who desires emotional connections. So kids are in the back of my mind.’ Michael explains: ‘Some asexuals are in relationships and some aren’t. Some don’t mind having sex sometimes, whereas some don’t have sex at all.’ The desire to group asexuals into one homogenised ‘type’ has brought about other false stereotypes: ‘Cold, emotionless and out to trap a sexual person in a relationship’ – George ticks off an imaginary list. While his story is particularly hopeful (‘The people I date accept me’), there’s still much ground to be gained so that people like Jess can live without fear of being misunderstood. Campaigners like George and Maria are seeking a second sexual revolution, one that says people should be free to have sex with whomever they want, even if that is ‘no one’. Both are emphatic about the need for acknowledgement of the multifaceted and complex remit of sexuality. As I continue my conversation with Jess, her voice cracks. ‘I’m terrified I’ll be like this forever, and I’m not sure if I’m OK with that,’ she confesses. I tell her about the activists I’ve spoken to and she looks pleased, but exhausted. Unwittingly, we’ve sustained a culture that diminishes alternative ideas of what love might look like. It seems an obvious statement, but to understand the broad spectrum of human desire, we must also begin to accept the absence of it. ‘WE KISS, BUT NOT PASSIONATELY AND NOT FOR TOO LONG. OCCASIONALLY WE HUG, AND WE HOLD HANDS IN PUBLIC’ Link to post Share on other sites
KendraPM Posted April 1, 2017 Share Posted April 1, 2017 That's so cool! Link to post Share on other sites
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