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zine call for submissions: feeling alienated from (or not included in) ace spaces or asexuality


Omnes et Nihil

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Omnes et Nihil

As an ace person ( i.e., someone under the broad asexual umbrella ):

  • Have you ever felt alienated from, or silenced in, any ace space(s)?
  • Have you ever felt aliened from aceness or asexuality or ace community generally? 
  • Have you found any ace spaces ( online or offline) inaccessible to you? 
  • Are ace communities and spaces ( online or offline ) missing what you’re looking for? What do you wish you could find but have had difficulty finding?
  • What would are people just not ( yet ) talking about ( enough ) in ace communities and spaces? What’s missing from ace discourse?

 

If so, this is a zine for you to share your experiences about it!  Words, poetry, images, etc. ( to be printed in black-and-white / greyscale )

“F-ace-ing silence” is an ongoing collaborative zine of internal ace community alienation… ( Issues #1-4 available [ here ] along with a more detailed description of my editorial approach ). It is both online and has a small print-run. This is a call for submissions for the last issue (either ever or before an extended hiatus).

 

Please e-mail contributions, questions, comments, etc. to: rotten [dot] zucchinis [at] gmail.com

Deadline: September 30th, 2017 ( The deadline is somewhat flexible, but I won’t know to wait for you unless you don’t tell me, so if you're interested, please let me know!)

 

Please include a contributor bio* and name / pen name with your submissions and some content warnings if relevant.

For accessibility reasons, please try to format any prose submissions in very short paragraphs ( 50-80ish words, ideally with no paragraphs over about 100 words ).

 

*Contributor bios are about giving you, as the content-creator some context to help people understand where you are coming from. For this zine, it typically includes how people identify in terms of a/sexuality and/or a/romanticism, and gender--if relevant/applicable. It would also include other things that you'd want a reader to know about to help them make sense of your piece. I do specifically ask that people include general info about their age / age range and also about their racial/ethnic background (unless people have a good reason not to do that) because a) these things matter when it comes to understanding people’s experiences & b) that info is important to be able to see whose perspectives are represented and whose are missing.

 

Edited to add: What is a zine?

 

A zine is a diy (do-it-yourself) "publication". The word "zine" is short for "fanzine" which is itself short for "fan magazine" (which is why it's pronounced "zeen" and not "zyne"). Fanzines [e.g., source1 and source2] were “fan magazines” created by sci-fi fans, sports fans (or fan clubs), or music fans, etc., which dramatically grew in popularity in the 70s Punk scene, and continue to be part of diy counter-culture(s). Basically, they are (typically) little booklets of writing/art/poetry-- content of some sort. Here are some general resources to read up on zines [e.g., zinewiki ; wikipedia ; Art Gallery of Ontario]. More info in the cut:

 

Spoiler

 

Physically, zines are typically smaller than books-- sometimes very tiny and sometimes closer to book-sized, and there are different ways of putting them together or folding them [e.g., like these].

 

Zines are particularly associated with some ilk of counter-culture– people who don’t see their stories or ideas represented in mainstream media creating media for themselves and each other.

 

In the early 20th century, sci-fi fanzine-type stuff were sort of the bulk of early zines and had a *lot* of participation from women, but that genre went in a different direction mid 20th century, e.g., slash-lit and fan-fiction (which are still domains with large participation from women). There was a (re)surgence of zines in the 70s associated with Punk subculture (in the UK, and the US and Canada, and probably elsewhere too, but I don't know much about that). Especially since then, zines have also been associated with some kind of politicised, often-anarcho-informed, communitiy-focused, fringe sensibilities. 

 

Zines were especially popular among people who were excluded from their own subcultures because they allowed people to build sort of a sub-culture of resistance within their larger (more hostile-to-them) sub-culture. For example, as Punk subculture in the places I mentioned was hyper-focused on white working-class straight cis men, it was pretty hostile to a lot of people who were part of it. Some of the people who faced a lot of hostility and exclusion within their own subcultures that were creating zines, themselves, also resisted *that* hostility via zines… through their own zines and the development of off-shoot subcultures. A significant part of the Punk fanzine tradition was from people specifically outside of the cishet world– gender misfits especially. For example, zines were central in the development of things like “queercore”. 

 

If you're interested in some ace zines, check out the Ace Zine Archive.

 

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Asexuality IS NOT AN UMBRELLA!!! You have Tumblr misinformation.

 

Asexuality is one thing; not desiring sexual activity with anyone. The sexual people who are excluded normally have terms for it. The Gray spectrum exists for a reason; so people can use it. The eronious phrase asexual spectrum does not refer to Asexuality itself being a spectrum but to things on the lower end of the sexual spectrum; specifically Asexuality and the Gray spectrum. Really, it needs to be renamed the Subsexual Spectrum or just completely gotten rid of as it serves no real use. The Gray spectrum consists of abnormal sexual people in terms of the point in time in which they desire sex.

 

More so, your question should be "why isn't the Gray community a thing?"

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7 minutes ago, Star Bit said:

Asexuality is NOT AN UMBRELLA!!! The sexual people who are excluded normally have terms for it.

This this this this this.

 

Zero is not a spectrum.

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Omnes et Nihil
58 minutes ago, Star Bit said:

Asexuality IS NOT AN UMBRELLA!!! You have Tumblr misinformation. Asexuality is one thing; not desiring sexual activity with anyone. The sexual people who are excluded normally have terms for it. The Gray spectrum exists for a reason; so people can use it. The eronious phrase asexual spectrum does not refer to Asexuality itself being a spectrum but to things on the lower end of the sexual spectrum; to Asexuality and the Gray spectrum. Really, it needs to be renamed the Subsexual Spectrum or just completely gotten rid of as it serves no real use. The Gray spectrum consists of abnormal sexual people in terms of the point in time in which they desire sex.

 

49 minutes ago, Homer said:

This this this this this.

 

Zero is not a spectrum.

 

I really don't know why you're talking about "tumblr misinformation". Firstly, AVEN's front-page definition is about not experiencing sexual attraction and doesn't mention "not desiring sexual activity with anyone". Despite this, AVEN has always also made it clear that (despite its attraction-focused definition), asexuality includes people who come to asexual identities because of not wanting to have sex with people-- so asexuality including diverse experiences has existed pretty much since the beginning the community and long before tumblr even existed. Since it seems from your profiles that you joined AVEN in 2014 and 2016, you might not be aware of some of the asexual community history (which has nothing to do with tumblr). So, as someone who was around for much of it, I'll share some of it.

 

Interestingly enough, back in the old days on AVEN before the language of “grey” and “demi” existed, “asexual” was an umbrella term for a whole spectrum of people we didn’t yet have the language to properly express. It wasn’t explicitly called an umbrella term because the language didn’t exist for that. While AVEN had its “a person who does not experience sexual attraction” definition of “asexual”, it also went out of its way pretty much from the get-go to make clear that asexuality represents a complex domain of human experience along a spectrum and that it’s up to people to decide for themselves if they were in fact “asexual” ( based on whether that label was useful ).

 

I don’t know how early AVEN’s Big FAQ’s went up, but the archives from February 2003 already have FAQ items that clearly describe experiences we would *now* call “grey” and “demi” while saying that people who have them might find the term “asexual” useful– that it’s up to them to decide ( i.e., *just like* it is for people who experience no sexual attraction– AVEN’s standard definition of asexuality ): all are equally asexual. [full text here]

I don’t find anyone sexually attractive, does that mean I’m asexual?

By the definition, yes it would, but it’s up to you to decide if the label is useful to you and what, if anything, being asexual means to you.
 

I can see that people are attractive but I don’t really feel the need to have sex with them, where do I fit?

Many asexuals can see that other people are aesthetically attractive to them but see this beauty as no different from looking at a beautiful painting or a stunning sunset.

Others might find other people sexually attractive. These asexuals have a low sexual intensity, while they are aware of their attractions they are not motivated to act upon them further than looking.

The important distinction between asexual people and sexual people is that asexuals are not motivated to be sexual with the people they find physically attractive (and may not find anyone physically attractive at all).
 

I’ve only really been attracted to about three people my entire life but when I was I wanted to have sex with them, would I be sexual or asexual?

That’s up to you to decide. I think most people would agree that being attracted to very few people would qualify as a ‘low sexual intensity’. It’s likely that sexuality plays a relatively small role in your life, experiencing no attraction toward almost everyone you meet will give you a lot in common with other asexuals.
 

I’m only really attracted to people after I get to know them, what does that mean?

Most sexual people can see that someone is sexually attractive to them from looking at them, this is attraction to appearance and to body types. Other people, including some sexual people, are primarily attracted to a person’s personality. They couldn’t know that the other person was attractive to them until they got to know what their personality was like.

It is common for asexuals to not connect desire to bodies but to instead feel a need to be close to someone after getting to know them as a friend (although 'love at first conversation’ is perfectly possible). If this isn’t your experience, don’t worry! There’s as many different ways to experience asexuality as there are asexual people.

While language has evolved, and we now have more specific terms for various asexual spectrum experiences, “asexual” did in fact used to be an umbrella term in its own right and continues to be used that way in many contexts, especially outside of ace communities (for example, in popular media articles and videos or in academic research… "asexual" still often is used as an umbrella term. )

 

There were even the old-school models of primary and secondary sexual attraction from 2006 (which I haven't really seen talked about in years) [source] including the archaic ABCD model [source].

 

Consider also the “asexual” in the “Asexual Pride Flag” (from summer 2010 [explanation ]) and in the “Asexual Pride Ring” (from 2005 [explanation]) actually *is* being used an umbrella term. The Asexual Pride Flag in particular includes a grey stripe for greys and demis (as distinctly *separate* from the white stripe of non-asexual allies).

 

Because of some of the shifting language, "asexual" doesn't really function so well as the umbrella term anymore. Many greys and demis don't feel included and many asexuals don't feel like the identity should be an umbrella term. Because of that, “ace” was adopted specifically as an umbrella term for an ace conference in San Francisco in June 2011 when the group decided they needed an umbrella term. David Jay suggested it (re-purposing "ace" from asexual symbols and puns that were not in common usage anymore, like the ace of hearts and ace of spades which have more recently seen resurgences and puny phrases like  “asexuality is ace!”).

 

People liked "ace". They used it for the conference. And its usage spread, online after that. (Actually, as it started to spread, circa 2012-2013, there was considerable resistance against it from some people, for sounding too “silly”. People don’t seem to make that argument so frequently these days.) Tumblr has had a role in adopting "ace" as the umbrella term presumably, as did many other spaces.

 

Having said that, not everyone on AVEN is necessarily familiar with "ace" as the umbrella term, hence the explicit mention of "asexual umbrella".

 

At any rate, asexuality is a diverse non-linear spectrum of experiences, all of which fall under the "asexual umbrella". This has been well established within the community since long before tumblr even existed. And trying to deny the existence of the asexual umbrella on AVEN no less (or even blaming it on tumblr) is simply historically inaccurate.

 

Having said that, from your response, it seems clear that you feel very comfortable expressing your views in this space. The "f-ace-ing silence" zine isn't about the kind of comfort / entitlement to asexual communities or spaces you seem to be displaying. I hope you find more relevant and meaningful places to explore your experiences.

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Omnes et Nihil
1 hour ago, Star Bit said:

Asexuality IS NOT AN UMBRELLA!!! You have Tumblr misinformation.

 

Asexuality is one thing; not desiring sexual activity with anyone. The sexual people who are excluded normally have terms for it. The Gray spectrum exists for a reason; so people can use it. The eronious phrase asexual spectrum does not refer to Asexuality itself being a spectrum but to things on the lower end of the sexual spectrum; specifically Asexuality and the Gray spectrum. Really, it needs to be renamed the Subsexual Spectrum or just completely gotten rid of as it serves no real use. The Gray spectrum consists of abnormal sexual people in terms of the point in time in which they desire sex.

 

More so, your question should be "why isn't the Gray community a thing?"

And since you seem to have added the last sentence after I quoted your original post to respond:

 

1) The grey community is a thing. It's also part of the ace community. If some greys were to want to write about that very topic, it would probably relevant to this zine.

2) Policing of aceness to try to exclude grey and/or demis from ace spaces (when greys and/or demis have always been part of ace spaces-- called simply "asexual" back before the term "ace" was used, when "asexual" *was* the umbrella term) is one of the very types of alienation or silencing that has been written about in past issue of the zine.

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@Omnes et Nihil And you don't seem to know that the definition of Asexuality is widely debated, and more and more people are pushing for a desire based definition, which is why they've recently removed the definition from the forum's banner. Some also use 'sexual activity'  rather than 'sex' in the definition because the spectrum of sex can appear gray when it's not direct genital stimulation but still partnered. Past that, AVEN itself DOES define Asexuality as no desire for sex; in their FAQ they define sexual attraction exactly as such. Secondly, the phrase sexual attraction is cultural. In other versions of AVEN (e.g. German) they explicitly define Asexuality as no desire for sex.

 

Asexuality back in the day WAS NOT used to refer to the unnamed Gray spectrum. Again, you have misinformation. Back in the day the creator of AVEN first defined Asexuality as "no attraction to anyone". His definition existing doesn't mean it was right. Over the next few years it went over slight changes. The definition of Asexuality was created by PEOPLE (and recently at that), not Gods. People can be wrong/not see all the implications their wording can have, and new words can need alterations. Back in the day Asexuality DID refer to only asexuals, but then other people started to find the site and say they desire sex but X unusual thing AND THEN they dubbed the Gray spectrum. Those other people never went by asexual.

 

BUT then recently people have been reading the loophole in AVEN'S definition and going "I don't find anyone sexually enticing but still completely desire to have sex for sexual or emotional pleasure so I must be asexual because I feel abnormal" when those people are completely average sexual people consisting of half the population. The reason they think they're abnormal is because of the media's inaccurate depictions of sexuality, as well as people assuming male and female sexuality are the same when they're not (for the majority). What the media depicts is how a majority of males are, thus the minority of men and majority of women secretly feel they're "broken". Really they do; it's more common than you'd think and they only end up divulging this info in couple's therapy. Sexologists prove this ratio of responsive sexual desire and spontaneous sexual desire under multiple studies.

 

Sexual people of any kind are welcome here, but that doesn't make any of them ace!

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In my view, asexuality functions as a metacategory analogous to sexuality, and so incorporates a wide range of phenomena which separate people from sexual society. This is the interpretation favoured by queer theorists, and while personally I prefer to write "metacategory" instead of "spectrum" or "umbrella", I am not against using those latter terms.

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1 hour ago, Omnes et Nihil said:

And since you seem to have added the last sentence after I quoted your original post to respond:

 

1) The grey community is a thing. It's also part of the ace community. If some greys were to want to write about that very topic, it would probably relevant to this zine.

2) Policing of aceness to try to exclude grey and/or demis from ace spaces (when greys and/or demis have always been part of ace spaces-- called simply "asexual" back before the term "ace" was used, when "asexual" *was* the umbrella term) is one of the very types of alienation or silencing that has been written about in past issue of the zine.

 

1 hour ago, Omnes et Nihil said:

 

 

I really don't know why you're talking about "tumblr misinformation". Firstly, AVEN's front-page definition is about not experiencing sexual attraction and doesn't mention "not desiring sexual activity with anyone". 

Well actually on the very same front page (in the General FAQ) AVEN defines sexual attraction as 'the desire for partnered sexual contact with someone else'.. So when it says 'no sexual attraction' it means 'no desire to connect sexually with others', and yeah.. the lack of desire to connect sexually with others is what asexuality is. 

 

And since my phone quoted two of your posts by accident and i now can't delete the one I wasn't intending on replying to: asexual is asexual. Grey and Demi are different things. 

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1 minute ago, FictoVore. said:

 

Well actually on the very same front page (in the General FAQ) AVEN defines sexual attraction as 'the desire for partnered sexual contact with someone else'.. So when it says 'no sexual attraction' it means 'no desire to connect sexually with others', and yeah.. the lack of desire to connect sexually with others is what asexuality is. 

Well, I don't desire to connect sexually with others because I'm sex-averse, but I'm not asexual because I sometimes experience sexual attraction (hence why I write gray-asexual in my profile). Are you sure you understand what you're talking about here? Can you provide some references to support this claim? There are dozens of science papers which all define asexuality as a lack of sexual attraction, so that would seem to be what it is. Unless maybe you're talking about something different?

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Omnes et Nihil
11 hours ago, Star Bit said:

@Omnes et Nihil And you don't seem to know that the definition of Asexuality is widely debated, and more and more people are pushing for a desire based definition, which is why they've recently removed the definition from the forum's banner. Some also use 'sexual activity'  rather than 'sex' in the definition because the spectrum of sex can appear gray when it's not direct genital stimulation but still partnered. Past that, AVEN itself DOES define Asexuality as no desire for sex; in their FAQ they define sexual attraction exactly as such. Secondly, the phrase sexual attraction is cultural. In other versions of AVEN (e.g. German) they explicitly define Asexuality as no desire for sex.

 

Asexuality back in the day WAS NOT used to refer to the unnamed Gray spectrum. Again, you have misinformation. Back in the day the creator of AVEN first defined Asexuality as "no attraction to anyone". His definition existing doesn't mean it was right. Over the next few years it went over slight changes. The definition of Asexuality was created by PEOPLE (and recently at that), not Gods. People can be wrong/not see all the implications their wording can have, and new words can need alterations. Back in the day Asexuality DID refer to only asexuals, but then other people started to find the site and say they desire sex but X unusual thing AND THEN they dubbed the Gray spectrum. Those other people never went by asexual.

 

BUT then recently people have been reading the loophole in AVEN'S definition and going "I don't find anyone sexually enticing but still completely desire to have sex for sexual or emotional pleasure so I must be asexual because I feel abnormal" when those people are completely average sexual people consisting of half the population. The reason they think they're abnormal is because of the media's inaccurate depictions of sexuality, as well as people assuming male and female sexuality are the same when they're not (for the majority). What the media depicts is how a majority of males are, thus the minority of men and majority of women secretly feel they're "broken". Really they do; it's more common than you'd think and they only end up divulging this info in couple's therapy. Sexologists prove this ratio of responsive sexual desire and spontaneous sexual desire under multiple studies.

 

Sexual people of any kind are welcome here, but that doesn't make any of them ace!

10 hours ago, FictoVore. said:

 

Well actually on the very same front page (in the General FAQ) AVEN defines sexual attraction as 'the desire for partnered sexual contact with someone else'.. So when it says 'no sexual attraction' it means 'no desire to connect sexually with others', and yeah.. the lack of desire to connect sexually with others is what asexuality is. 

 

And since my phone quoted two of your posts by accident and i now can't delete the one I wasn't intending on replying to: asexual is asexual. Grey and Demi are different things. 

I really have no interest in this conversation, but I'll do my due diligence and respond.

 

While I am well aware that the definition of asexuality is still being debated (as it always has been), any arguments about definition (especially about desire-based ones) need to be made in the context of why the attraction-based definition was specifically and deliberately chosen (and is still on the front-page banner and FAQs). But don't pretend these discussions are merely descriptive. They are and always have been prescriptive arguments about what asexuality *should* be and who should be included and excluded (and by whom).

Spoiler

 

AVEN adopted the attraction-based definition back in the beginning very deliberately, for two explicitly political and practical reasons:

  1. so that asexuality could be expressed in the same terms as other sexual orientations (and therefore fit into the political context as an intelligible sexual orientation-- at least eventually), which were already being framed in neoliberal terms of (involuntary) attraction
  2. because the Official Nonlibidoism Society (then under the name of the "Official Asexual Society") had a monopoly on "no sexual desire" language, and were deploying the "no sexual desire" criterion as a defining feature of asexuality in order to exclude people they did not feel belonged as part of the asexual community. (People even had to fill out a survey to prove they were sufficiently politically "anti-sex" in order to gain membership.)

The choice to go with "no sexual attraction" wording was a deliberate decision on the part of the founders (which included but were not limited to David Jay alone). The purpose when choosing a definition was to use something that would be more *inclusive* than the desire-based definition of non-libidoists because AVEN was created explicitly in opposition to this kind of identity-policing. In order to maintain that perspective, a strong emphasis on self-identification was established on AVEN-- the "nobody can tell you if you're asexual, you need to decide that for yourself" kind of thing. (And all this took place years *before* tumblr was created.) It's very strange from that perspective to see how these discussions have played out since then, but that is another story.
 

The "no sexual attraction" definition was actually intended to include people who are asexual for reasons of sexual attraction and/or sexual desire-- and it did function that way for a long time. The political context of now is very different than it was in the early 2000s and also in 2007, and the discursive framing of the arguments is also very different.

 

Since Non-Libidoist Society shut down in 2007, people sympathetic to that perspective have defaulted to AVEN. There was a lot of tensions on AVEN when that happened and back-and-forth of hostility. A friend of mine gave up modding AVEN when terms when they were consistently having to use terms like "anti-anti-anti-sexual" in their modding duties around conflict. Since then, there has been a swinging pendulum of people policing ace identities from both sides. Part of why there's such an increased emphasis now on redefining asexuality in terms of desire (or of including this explicitly) is because we've seen waves backlash where some people were using the "no attraction" definition to try to exclude aces who were ace because of no/low sexual desire (even though that's completely in contradiction to why the definition was coined in the first place.)

 

Nevertheless, "asexuality" absolutely was used to refer to people who later identified as grey and/or demi, and people who described experiences we might now refer to as such. And a lot of those people explicitly *did* self-identify as asexual. That isn't misinformation: I was actually there for that. Greys and demis (not named because the language didn't yet exist) were an integral part of defining asexuality and building the community and many were asexual, called themselves asexual, were accepted by the rest of us as asexual and worked toward building the asexual community. That's not a "loophole". It's how the community came to exist, and it's inaccurate to conceal/deny that or edit that out of the history because it doesn't fit a story that's convenient for specific political purposes.

 

The issue of "receptive" desire is a little more complicated, but not remotely relevant to any of this, since overwhelmingly "only experiencing receptive desire" isn't how people come to or define grey or demi experiences/identities. It doesn't sound like you understand what those terms mean, so I'm not going to get into it.

 

Having said that, greys and demis were explicitly part of why the term "ace" was coined/adopted as an umbrella term in 2011 (people really weren't using it as an identity label before then). It's historically and semantically false to claim that greys and demis are not included in "ace". And taking a word (like "ace") that was coined specifically by a group of people that included greys and demis to be used for themselves as a group... and trying to use it in a way that specifically excludes a large part of the people who created it for themselves = an act of discursive violence. Ace *is* an umbrella term and always has been. Using "ace" in a way that excludes greys and demis is (trying to be) changing it into something else.

 

[this post continues in the next post because it was too many characters to post at once]

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Omnes et Nihil

[continuing on from my previous post because it was too many characters to post at once]

 

I have no interest in debating definitions of "asexuality" or particular interpretations of texts (which could go on ad infinitum), and that is certainly not the purpose of this thread.

 

Since there's already a lot of straw flying around from scarecrow arguments, I'll clarify a few things:

 

Spoiler
  • "Not wanting to have sex" is a perfectly valid experience for someone to define as asexual, and I have already explicitly said so. However, it is not the only valid experience for someone to define as asexual.
  • I actually never said that greyasexuality and demisexuality were types of asexuality. All I did was provide an explanation / definition for "ace" as encompassing the entire asexual spectrum / umbrella.
  • Having said that, sure, I do believe that people can be both grey and asexual and/or demi and asexual (just like people can be greyromantic and aromantic simultaneously). There are many things that might mean-- none of which I am especially interested in getting into now. Nevertheless, that point is basically irrelevant to where/how/whether people fit under the ace/asexual umbrella.
     
  • There isn't going to be a single definition or experience of asexuality that will apply to everyone. There never has been. That has nothing to do with tumblr or academic authority or anything else.  (I am also quite familiar with the academic writing on asexuality-- but that literature is not especially relevant per se to this zine: a zine is a dyi publication, and sort of by definition a "counter-cultural" artefact). 
     
  • The "meaning" of asexuality will be determined by communities using it-- so identity policing and appeals to various authority and arguments in favour of specific interpretations of various texts are prescriptive-constitutive and not merely descriptive.

 

But all of this is beside the point, and not something I have any particular interest in discussing further.

 

The point is that I am collecting submissions for "f-ace-ing silence" issue #5.

  • The zine is open to relevant submissions from anyone who is ace (i.e., "ace" = anyone under the asexual umbrella and/or on the asexual spectrum).
  • Aceness includes greys and demis, whether or not anyone in this thread wants to acknowledge that. This zine is open to people of all identities under the ace/asexual umbrella-- "asexual", "greyasexual" "demisexual" and others.
  • Interestingly, to-date, "f-ace-ing silence" is the longest running ace compilation zine (at least among those known to the Ace Zine Archive).

This zine will be proceeding as is-- i.e., open to people of all ace identities, including greys and/or demis-- regardless of anyone's objections to that on this thread. (Ironically, the responses to this thread have demonstrated one of the very many reasons why this zine was necessary to begin with.)

  • If you're not interested in this zine, don't submit to it.
  • If you're interested in creating a zine with a different scope than this one, by all means, please do so.
  • If you'd like to debate the definition of asexuality or aceness, or would like to debate the narratives or interpretations of ace history or the AVEN FAQs, please do so on threads dedicated to such things.
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You're 100% entitled to your opinion. And if you're willing to accept that at least 40% (probably a lot more) is asexual based on how extensive the 'broad ace spectrum umbrella' label is, then more power to you! I'd be interested to know how exactly you define a sexual person though. To you, what makes someone sexual (ie, not under the 'ace umbrella')?

 

Please don't just say 'they experience sexual attraction' because everyone defines sexual attraction differently based on their own personal biases (regardless of what 'scholars' have to say on the topic).. What *behaviours* and feelings actually make someone sexual, according to you?

 

Also, I have no idea what a zine is. I was more interested in the idea of a 'broad ace spectrum umbrella' and how much of the population that actually includes. :) ... I mean, by the whole ace umbrella thing, I'm asexual. But when you take asexuality on its own as a single thing (the lack of desire to connect sexually with others) I'm not asexual at all. So explaining the difference between what's 'sexual' to you, and what falls under the 'ace umbrella' could help people know whether they should submit a story or not. If that makes sense?

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1 hour ago, FictoVore. said:

You're 100% entitled to your opinion. And if you're willing to accept that at least 40% (probably a lot more) is asexual based on how extensive the 'broad ace spectrum umbrella' label is, then more power to you! I'd be interested to know how exactly you define a sexual person though.

Do you have a source for this 40% figure, or are you just making up numbers?

Behaviourist psychologists would define a sexual person as a person with a stable pattern of preferences that directs their sexual desires towards people of the opposite gender, the same gender, or both genders.


Given that most people are heterosexual, I have no idea how 40% of people are alleged to fit under the asexual umbrella. In addition, it seems to me that use of the term asexual and associated language will be worked out in practice by the people who want to use it. I highly doubt that 40% of people will start to affiliate with the term "asexual", although at the end the day it's up to the people to decide.
 

1 hour ago, FictoVore. said:

Please don't just say 'they experience sexual attraction' because everyone defines sexual attraction differently based on their own personal biases (regardless of what 'scholars' have to say on the topic).. What *behaviours* and feelings actually make someone sexual, according to you?

Sexual attraction is defined as a stable pattern of preferences based on a person's appearance/traits/attributes/movements/etc. which could evoke a sexual desire for that individual. In the context of sexual orientations, this is specified in terms of attraction based on gender. Therefore, most people know what sexual attraction is, because most people experience sexuality partly in terms of gender preferences with respect to sexual partners. And even if gender preferences aren't relevant for a person, usually other factors such as age, appearance, or personality will matter in this regard.

Behaviour doesn't equal orientation, so how is your last question even relevant?
 

1 hour ago, FictoVore. said:

Also, I have no idea what a zine is. 

Do you have access to Google?

I sympathize with the OP, however, in terms of losing interest in this debate. In my experience, desire-only arguments usually turn into anti-scientific propaganda motivated by definition policing, because there is zero scientific support for the desire-only definition. There are, however, some interesting arguments from feminist social constructivist authors for including lack of sexual desire as an independent definition of asexuality, although those authors usually also accept the attraction-based definition. Again, probably more a question to be worked out in practice, given pragmatic use of language.

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2 hours ago, FictoVore. said:

You're 100% entitled to your opinion. And if you're willing to accept that at least 40% (probably a lot more) is asexual based on how extensive the 'broad ace spectrum umbrella' label is, then more power to you! I'd be interested to know how exactly you define a sexual person though. To you, what makes someone sexual (ie, not under the 'ace umbrella')?

 

Please don't just say 'they experience sexual attraction' because everyone defines sexual attraction differently based on their own personal biases (regardless of what 'scholars' have to say on the topic).. What *behaviours* and feelings actually make someone sexual, according to you?

 

Also, I have no idea what a zine is. I was more interested in the idea of a 'broad ace spectrum umbrella' and how much of the population that actually includes. :) ... I mean, by the whole ace umbrella thing, I'm asexual. But when you take asexuality on its own as a single thing (the lack of desire to connect sexually with others) I'm not asexual at all. So explaining the difference between what's 'sexual' to you, and what falls under the 'ace umbrella' could help people know whether they should submit a story or not. If that makes sense?

I've just added an explanation of zines to the original call for submissions, so you and anyone else can read up on that if they're so inclined.

 

Clarifying "ace" again-- for the scope of the zine:

 

"Ace" or "under the asexual/ace umbrella" or "on the asexual spectrum" basically refers mostly to anyone who is asexual, grey-a and/or demisexual (or just simply "ace"-- not otherwise specified). As I've said already in this thread, "ace" in particular was specifically coined to mean all those things.

 

I'm not making up the term "ace umbrella" or "asexual spectrum". Those are community terms (which don't come from academia and are only very recently even starting to be picked up by academics-- and most of the academics I've seen using those terms so far are themselves ace). I'm actually surprised that you don't know what I'm talking about.

 

If people identify as some variety of ace (e.g., mostly that means "asexual", "grey-a"/"grey" and/or "demisexual", or simply "ace") and have something relevant to say (i.e., something on topic as described by the call for submissions), then the zine is open to them. This is an internal community zine. If you're a non-ace ally (or anyone else who's non-ace), then this isn't the zine for you. I don't think people really need any definitions to know if the zine is open to them.

 

(Not) Defining "Sexual":

 

I wouldn't define a "sexual person". I don't think the non-ace folks in the "For Sexual Partners, Friends and Allies" subforum for example, need a definition to know who they are. I don't think it's the kind of thing that requires a definition per se. And they don't seem to spend much airtime debating how to define themselves. People certainly don't need me to define "sexual" (or "non-ace") in order to know if it's appropriate for them to submit something to the zine. It's a zine for ace folks.

 

Spoiler

 

[I wouldn't even typically use that term "sexual" as a counter-point to "asexual" (though terminology per se isn't the issue here). There have been a lot of valid critiques about how calling people "sexual" has the impact of sexualising particular people in groups that have already been subject to a lot of forced sexualisation as mechanisms of other forms of oppression (namely racism, homophobia, transphobia and sometimes ableism). So i think that when talking about people who are off the asexual spectrum, it's better to use other words, like "non-ace" or "zedsexual / z-sexual". The terminology isn't really the point though.]

 

The world is not as simple as "asexuals vs sexuals" because not all people are either on or off the asexual spectrum-- there are some people, particularly because of cultural context, for whom the whole concept as it is discursively framed here simply does not apply. But I've written more about that elsewhere if you really want know what I think of that.

 

But more practically, ace identities fit into the discursive landscape as part of "sexual orientation" categories-- while aceness is certainly a "meta-category" encompassing significant romantic orientation diversity, it typically functions as more of a "sexual orientation" pragmatically and politically. Also, things like asexual identity (or any sexual orientation-type identity) are about many things-- and different things for different people and categories.

 

Even if I were to define such things, they are never just about a single set of behaviours or feelings that apply in the same ways for everyone. And there's no reason why a definition of ace anything would parallel a definition of non-aceness. (We didn't create definitions of asexuality for the purpose of mechanically classifying people into "asexual" and "not asexual" categories, to police people's identities. We created these definitions so we could express and articulate our experiences-- experiences that we needed to express because they are different from what they are expected to be, and in ways we didn't necessarily have words to articulate before we created them. That's not the case with non-ace folks' experiences of non-aceness.) Having said that, while I'm interested in ace experiences, I'm not actually all that interested in "what makes someone [non-ace]". I'm inclined to leave that up to them. 

 

But if you really want to know what I have to say about that, you can read some of the stuff I've written about it, because there's a lot of it. (You can even read it in zine format!)

 

 


I'm not sure about what the 40% means because the sentence is grammatically unclear. Do you mean 40% of the ace community is "asexual" , as opposed to grey-A or demisexual (because that doesn't seem to be the make-up of the community)? Or 40% of the general population is ace? (because that's off by maybe a factor of 10). I'll clarify so at least we're on the same page. But beyond that, this isn't really the place for that kind of conversation.

Spoiler

 

  • If you want numbers when looking at the general population, academic studies that have looked at numbers of asexual spectrum people have come up around 2%-7% depending on what they're measuring-- though some of the numbers, like the 7% one doesn't have much to do with what we'd call asexuality in the context of ace community. (Bogaert's infamous 1% were just people who had never experienced sexual attraction to anyone ever, not even once). The largest-scale study that I know about that would capture asexual spectrum folks was the University of California System Campus Climate Project that had 4.6% of their responding students and staff pick "asexuality" in a context were other options were "bisexual", "gay", "heterosexual", "lesbian", "queer", "questioning" and "other" (so many greys and demis presumably picked "asexual"-- especially because people are so used to seeing "asexual" used as an umbrella term by non-ace folks. For this study, there were 104,208 participants in total, of which 4,743 claimed "asexual" as their best-fitting forced-choice label.
     
  • If you want what percentage of asexual spectrum people identify as "asexual" as opposed to grey or demi, actually that's probably closer to 60% than 40%. According to the 2014 AVEN communtity census (which is better demographic info about us than the academic researchers have at this point in time), if they remove the non-ace participants (the survey was open to non-ace allies), there were 10,880 participants, of which about 6 991 (approx. 65%) were "asexual" , about 1 577 (approx. 15%) were demisexual and about 2 303 (approx. 21%) were (non-demi) grey-A.

 

 

And I think at this point I've given more than sufficient explanation as to who is being invited to submit things to the zine.

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ooooooh boy

 

I've been wanting to make/take part in an asexuality related zine of some kind for a while but I'm not so sure anymore ... welp.

 

I'll actually say that while I actually tend towards agreeing with some of the people who have argued with OP (I've been leaning towards a more desire-based definition for some time), I don't think this thread was the right place for such a debate, and especially not for throwing around accusations about Tumblr-related misinformation. Possibly this is just because people are misunderstanding what a zine is, how it functions, and what its purpose is... but I'd have actually suggested that some of the people who posted here should submit pieces in essay form about their thoughts on what it means to be 'ace', about its definition today, and about how they feel about being included/excluded in the community, but it's definitely up to OP about who to curate in terms of submissions for the zine... 

 

Anyway I'm more of an illustrator than an essayist so i'm stepping out. I feel like I'm often bad at putting my thoughts into words and tbh it's hot messes like this that make me not wanna take part in anything to do with ace community visibility since it's so often fraught with these sorts of debates.

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9 hours ago, gaogao said:

ooooooh boy

 

I've been wanting to make/take part in an asexuality related zine of some kind for a while but I'm not so sure anymore ... welp.

 

I'll actually say that while I actually tend towards agreeing with some of the people who have argued with OP (I've been leaning towards a more desire-based definition for some time), I don't think this thread was the right place for such a debate, and especially not for throwing around accusations about Tumblr-related misinformation. Possibly this is just because people are misunderstanding what a zine is, how it functions, and what its purpose is... but I'd have actually suggested that some of the people who posted here should submit pieces in essay form about their thoughts on what it means to be 'ace', about its definition today, and about how they feel about being included/excluded in the community, but it's definitely up to OP about who to curate in terms of submissions for the zine... 

 

Anyway I'm more of an illustrator than an essayist so i'm stepping out. I feel like I'm often bad at putting my thoughts into words and tbh it's hot messes like this that make me not wanna take part in anything to do with ace community visibility since it's so often fraught with these sorts of debates.

First, there are a number of different ace-related zine projects, if you're looking to submit to a zine. (This reblogs calls for submissions for ace zines and zines with ace content as the curators see them, and the somewhat-outdated list here is a good place to start searching because these projects might still be ongoing even if the "deadlines" have long passed.)

 

Second, this zine is totally open to images or comics, etc. (as it said in the call), so if you're interested, please do submit something! One thing about a zine format (which is one of the reasons this is a zine project and not a blog project) is that zines don't have "comments" sections, so it's a lot harder for people to express their hostility or any backlash against pieces in the zine. So zines are often safer than forums for this kind of content.

 

If people in this thread want to submit relevant things, I am totally open to that. I would simply be surprised if people whose main concern about / interest in the call for submissions seems to be that they don't want greys and demis included under the asexual/ace umbrella were to have relevant experiences they want to share in the zine. To be clear, people writing about why they believe greys and demis *don't* belong in the ace community are actually not on topic.

 

Third, I never said that asexuality shouldn't be defined in terms of desire. What I said (in response to someone else's comment denying that asexuality can be a spectrum-- which, has no bearing on whether attraction-based, desire-based, or other definitions of asexuality are used) is that:

 

  1. the attraction based definition of AVEN was specifically and deliberately chosen in order to be *inclusive* of people who were asexual for reasons (i.e., by "definition") of attraction and desire and for other reasons (because that's how that functioned discursively at that point in time)
     

  2. greys and demis (though the language did not yet exist) were always intended to be part of the community, were always part of the community and for a long time legitimately (and uncontroversially) used the term "asexual".  [I know this because I was part of the community back then, yet this was weirdly called "misinformation" by people who presumably-- based on their recent AVEN membership years-- were not.];
     

  3. (more to the point), no matter how people feel about greys and demis using the term "asexual" now, the term "ace" was specifically adopted for the purpose of being an umbrella term to include people who are asexual, grey and/or demi (and this was done because "asexual" wasn't functioning as an umbrella term as well as it used to). [Again, I was around when this happened in 2011, though clearly people have more recently been using "ace" on AVEN in a way that excludes greys and demis, even though this is in direct contradiction to its purpose, and therefore doing so-- given that greys and demis participated in its original claiming as an identity/descriptor and created it as an inclusive term-- is taking something away from some of the people who created it in the first place.]
     

For the record, I don't have any objections to desire-based definitions of asexuality. I have objections to *only* defining asexuality in terms of desire, because it has always been-- and I believe should always be-- inclusive of diverse experiences: people can be asexual (or any variety of ace for that matter) for reasons that may be about attraction, desire, (dis)interest in sex, the way they do relationships, genuine affiliation with asexual or ace experiences, among other reasons. [I am not looking to debate this, just stating my opinion, since you seem to be reading me as having aligned myself with a particular way when I in fact had not given any definition.] But other than making sure that the zine-space I create is open to everyone under the ace umbrella, I'm not interested in definitions or arguing about them.

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22 hours ago, Omnes et Nihil said:

 I would simply be surprised if people whose main concern about / interest in the call for submissions seems to be that they don't want greys and demis included under the asexual/ace umbrella were to have relevant experiences they want to share in the zine. To be clear, people writing about why they believe greys and demis *don't* belong in the ace community are actually not on topic.

See... the point I would make here (and that I would think the others might possibly make) is that the reason I don't feel I belong in the "Ace Community" is because I have historically felt that due to the wideness of the definition, nobody knows what my identity means. I joined this forum in 2012 and found it really difficult to fit in or find my place. I only started posting again this year despite lurking around periodically over the gap of five years, because I just couldn't figure out why I didn't seem to fit in at AVEN despite almost certainly being asexual.

 

While I understand the initial intent behind AVEN's policies, It is my feeling now that because we do not have a single definitive definition and the umbrella is so wide, it means different things to everyone. I think this really hurts the asexual/demi/gray communities because it just renders the "ace" identity/labels meaningless altogether. I understand anyone can use the label as long as they mentally squeeze themselves in somewhere, and I don't particularly want to criticize this (since I understand this would be harmful to those questioning), but because it's so damn hard to tell what people mean by "ace", I have found it more comfortable to tell most irl strangers and casual acquaintances that I'm a lesbian or just 'queer' because I'm just so tired of being misunderstood / trying to explain what asexuality means to me. Is this not also a reason for why someone would feel alienated from ace spaces?


I do disagree with the person who says that (a)sexuality is not a spectrum, because it absolutely is, but I think there needs to be a more concrete definition of what it means to be asexual and what it means to be gray/demi - and what these terms mean on the whole within the entire spectrum of sexuality. Additionally,  I do believe that the term 'ace' has definitely moved on from its original 'umbrella' meaning.

 

I could have written or drawn a piece about this, but I think this could likely be read or interpreted as saying that greys and demis should be excluded, especially if i were to include my experiences in a mixed relationship with a sexual-identifying partner who ... to a lot of people here.. could be read as being "demi" or "gray".

 

I want to be clear that I don't think people who identify as demi or gray should be excluded, and their voices are certainly relevant in a zine like this, but I personally think such terms need to be established as separate things in order for me to feel Included and accepted and for this community to be meaningful at all. Given what has been said here, and how what I am saying might be interpreted, I am unsure if this is an appropriate topic in your zine about alienation from the ace community despite it being about my feelings of alienation from the ace community.

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6 hours ago, gaogao said:
22 hours ago, Omnes et Nihil said:

 I would simply be surprised if people whose main concern about / interest in the call for submissions seems to be that they don't want greys and demis included under the asexual/ace umbrella were to have relevant experiences they want to share in the zine. To be clear, people writing about why they believe greys and demis *don't* belong in the ace community are actually not on topic.

See... the point I would make here (and that I would think the others might possibly make) is that the reason I don't feel I belong in the "Ace Community" is because I have historically felt that due to the wideness of the definition, nobody knows what my identity means. I joined this forum in 2012 and found it really difficult to fit in. I only started posting again this year despite lurking around periodically over the gap of five years, because I just couldn't figure out why I didn't seem to fit in at AVEN despite almost certainly being asexual.

And you are not one of the people whose main concern about or interest in the call for submissions seems to be that they don't want greys and demis included under the asexual/ace umbrella. You had other concerns about the thread/cfs and seemed genuinely interested in the zine.

 

6 hours ago, gaogao said:

While I understand the initial intent behind AVEN's policies, It is my feeling now that because we do not have a single definitive definition and the umbrella is so wide, it means different things to everyone. I think this really hurts the asexual/demi/gray communities because it just renders the "ace" identity/labels meaningless altogether. I understand anyone can use the label as long as they mentally squeeze themselves in somewhere, and I don't particularly want to criticize this (since I understand this would be harmful to those questioning), but because it's so damn hard to tell what people mean by "ace", I have found it more comfortable to tell most irl strangers and casual acquaintances that I'm a lesbian or just 'queer' because I'm just so tired of being misunderstood / trying to explain what asexuality means to me. Is this not also a reason for why someone would feel alienated from ace spaces?

It's absolutely a reason for feeling alienated. I never said it wasn't, and the argument trying to explain that makes me think you still really have no idea what my perspective is.

 

6 hours ago, gaogao said:

I could have written or drawn a piece about this, but I think this could likely be read or interpreted as saying that greys and demis should be excluded, especially if i were to include my experiences in a mixed relationship with a sexual-identifying partner who ... to a lot of people here.. could be read as being "demi" or "gray".

You certainly still can draw something, and please do! It would actually make an interesting companion / counter-point piece to something someone else is working on.

Spoiler

[Also, if someone actively identifies as sexual (or otherwise as "non-ace" or "non-asexual"), then I'd say it's pretty inappropriate for anyone to try to define them otherwise-- e.g., as demi or grey-- regardless of "definitions"... which is one reason I view definitions as sign-posts to help people navigate and not rules to follow mechanically to classify people into categories.]

 

Some stuff not directly related to the zine / relevance of content to the zine:

Spoiler

 

 

6 hours ago, gaogao said:

I have found it more comfortable to tell most irl strangers and casual acquaintances that I'm a lesbian or just 'queer' because I'm just so tired of being misunderstood / trying to explain what asexuality means to me.

Given that this is your experience, it's also interesting/curious to me that you want a "more concrete" definition of asexual, because both "lesbian" and especially "queer" have much less concrete (and even more hotly contested) definitions than "asexual" and encompass much more broad diversity of experience-- people are able to understand what "lesbian" and "queer" mean even without concrete or agreed upon definitions. (I mean "interesting" and "curious" in their literal senses of "I find this interesting" and "I don't really understand this but would like to".)  But this isn't really the place to discuss that at any length.

(Though I am open to a conversation elsewhere about it.) In any event, it doesn't have anything to do with the relevance of your potential piece to the zine.

 

6 hours ago, gaogao said:

Additionally,  I do believe that the term 'ace' has definitely moved on from its original 'umbrella' meaning.

Specifically on (parts of) AVEN, yes, but that's not the entirety (or even majority anymore) of ace community. Part of that might have to do with the AVENwiki defining "ace" strictly as "asexual" and omitting any information about the origins of its usage as an identity term/descriptor.

 

 

Since there still seems to be some confusion so I'll try to explain:

 

1) Stuff that's about someone's feelings of internal community alienation is pretty clearly on topic (even if the reason for the alienation stems from the diversity of the community or might be traced back to definitional ambiguity)

 

2) In contrast, stuff that's arguing or assuming greys and demis should be excluded-- even if the reason someone came to believe this is alienation-- is not on topic because:

  • it's coming from a place of (unjustified) entitlement to a community and language that was created by and for people who included (people we would now call) greys and demis,
  • privileging asexual identity over grey and/or demi within the context of that community (which was built for and by people who included (people we would now call) greys and demis,
  • trying to take the community away from greys and demis who were part of its creation, for the sole purpose/benefit of asexuals who are somehow more deserving of it or entitled to it than greys and demis

While both might have something to do with subjective feelings of alienation, scenario 1) is about feeling aliened and sharing personal experience while scenario 2) is about (unjustified) entitlement to a community and a devaluation of those deemed to somehow be "less legitimately" part of the community (even if sentiments are perhaps motivated or justified by a subjective feeling of alienation)-- and of trying to take something away from others it rightfully co-belongs to.

 

Hopefully, the difference is now clear?

 

Edit: I found a shorter way to describe the difference in the context you seem to be focused on:

 

1) This isn't working for me with all of us here together

vs.

2) This isn't working for me with all of us here together, so they should gtfo of my community [in a context where "they" and "I" are equally entitled to / have equally legitimate claim on the community in question-- unlike, say, a context where a trans person is saying this about a cis ally in a trans space, to name an example with which I'm familiar].

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9 minutes ago, Omnes et Nihil said:

It's absolutely a reason for feeling alienated. I never said it wasn't, and the argument trying to explain that makes me think you still really have no idea what my perspective is.

I'm not sure you understand my stance either, since the argument was an attempt to explain why I would encourage the people who have argued with you in this thread to write a piece about their experiences and personal sense of alienation... and then gave an example of how that might apply to me using my experiences as an example. Which, according to your clarifications, would still be on topic.

 

13 minutes ago, Omnes et Nihil said:

You certainly still can draw something, and please do! It would actually make an interesting companion / counter-point piece to something someone else is working on.

I've got a lot of other projects going at the moment (mostly fanzines) but I'll consider it especially since I think it sounds like what I'm saying could merit some discussion :)

 

Re: other stuff.

 

Spoiler


15 minutes ago, Omnes et Nihil said:

if someone actively identifies as sexual, I'd say it's pretty inappropriate for anyone to try to define them otherwise-- e.g., as demi or grey-- regardless of "definitions"... which is one reason I view definitions as sign-posts to help people navigate and not rules to follow mechanically to classify people into categories

Agreed - but from what I understand, from talking to both people who could identify as either, the experiences of many individuals who identify as 'sexual' and 'demi' are almost exactly the same, which is confusing and imo spreads a lot of misinformation about experiences of sexuality and is based on a misunderstanding of what is/isn't actually "normal" for sexuals. 

 

16 minutes ago, Omnes et Nihil said:

Given that this is your experience, it's also interesting/curious to me that you want a "more concrete" definition of asexual, because both "lesbian" and especially "queer" have much less concrete (and even more hotly contested) definitions than "asexual" and encompass much more broad diversity of experience-- people are able to understand what "lesbian" and "queer" mean even without concrete or agreed upon definitions. (I mean "interesting" and "curious" in their literal senses of "I find this interesting" and "I don't really understand this but would like to".)  But this isn't really the place to discuss that at any length.

(Though I am open to a conversation elsewhere about it.) In any event, it doesn't have anything to do with the relevance of your potential piece to the zine.

By 'more concrete' I mean I kind of think asexuality itself needs to be defined somewhat separately from 'demi/gray', though all these things also fall under an umbrella of low sexuality (what people term the ace umbrella). The terms 'lesbian' and 'queer' do have contested definitions as well, but I feel that people are pushing Asexuality to mean wider and wider things to the point that we have a bad reputation in queer/LGBT circles. You can see this in many of the debates about whether aces feel they are part of the queer/LGBT community (which I think they are). In any case, I know this isn't very clear but I have to go and I'm not really here to debate this as you say, so we could discuss it elsewhere... though I get nervous about talking about my opinions lmao. 


 

 

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