Asexual Petition for my University

[Trying To Ace It]

Hi! I am a Student at Rutgers University who is Aromantic and Asexual. For a social action project at School, I decided to set my sights on the idea that psychologists can be misinformed about asexuality. I decided to petition the university (specifically the Psychology Department) to put more funding towards research and education on Asexuality. I would be more than pleased if people could sign my online version of my petition. I put the link below

Feel free to ask me questions!

 

https://goo.gl/forms/fgcBOwO9d3Y6hnG92

[Agent_Smith]

What would an example of what people would potentially research?

[Guest Falco Peregrinus]

Hi @Trying To Ace It! Welcome to AVEN!

Have some...

 CAKE 

 

The link isn't working for me. Is there any chance it's dead? Thanks!

[Trying To Ace It]

@Falco Peregrinus Thank you so much! The link should work. Its definitely not dead.

 

@Agent_Smith An example of research would be into its relation (and lackthereof) with sex disorders. Psychologists tend to confuse asexuality with being a sex disorder, and there are not enough studies about that. There was only one I did find that addressed it, but there doesn't seem to be a lot, probably because asexuality has only recently gained visibility. 

 

[Trying To Ace It]

Here is the link in a hyper link format!

[Flute16]

Do they see your email?

[Lunala]

Signed! 😀🍰

[Trying To Ace It]

@Flute16 Any emails collected are just for purposes of proving that you are an actual person. No one is going to use the email for spam purposes

[Trying To Ace It]

@Lunala Thank you!

[LeChat]

17 hours ago, Trying To Ace It said:

...An example of research would be into its relation (and lackthereof) with sex disorders. Psychologists tend to confuse asexuality with being a sex disorder, and there are not enough studies about that. There was only one I did find that addressed it, but there doesn't seem to be a lot, probably because asexuality has only recently gained visibility.

Hi. Do you mean studies like some of these  (done by Lori Brotto), about the differences between asexuality and sexual disorders? Researcher, Anthony Bogaert, also published asexuality studies in 2004, and, asexuality was also removed as a disorder from the DSM, a few years ago. I've come across other researchers' online presentations that discuss sexuality, including asexuality.

 

I'm surprised that there are still psychologists who aren't aware of asexuality. To me, asexual studies that have been around since 2004 is a long time that it's been published among sexual researchers in scientific journals. It seems to me that it's due to the fact that they don't read or keep up with their field's current, psychological research that's been published in psychology journals, nor attend professional psychology conferences and workshops.

[Lonemathsytoothbrushthief]

31 minutes ago, InquisitivePhilosopher said:

Hi. Do you mean studies like some of these  (done by Lori Brotto), about the differences between asexuality and sexual disorders? Researcher, Anthony Bogaert, also published asexuality studies in 2004, and, asexuality was also removed as a disorder from the DSM, a few years ago. I've come across other researchers' online presentations that discuss sexuality, including asexuality.

 

I'm surprised that there are still psychologists who aren't aware of asexuality. To me, asexual studies that have been around since 2004 is a long time that it's been published among sexual researchers in scientific journals. It seems to me that it's due to the fact that they don't read or keep up with their field's current, psychological research that's been published in psychology journals, nor attend professional psychology conferences and workshops.

You may bring up those studies, but next to the amount of research needed to keep up with everything from personality, conduct, developmental etc disorders, learning disabilities, intersections with race, class, gender, other sexualities etc in comparison there's not very much research. It's also fairly obvious when you look at the number of citations-I've had a few times I wanted to find papers relating to things like autism and asexuality, and the few papers I found were 1) pretty small scale(every psychological field from what I know has the problem of confining its results to what can be said of a sample of participants living near universities/institutions etc which conduct the research at first, and students etc are only getting more diverse in a few areas, but aren't representative when it comes to factors like class which might be quite significant) and 2) made a lot of hypotheses and speculation about how they fit into research areas elsewhere which imo shifted the focus a little from the data we need first. Same as everything else, asexuality could do with more research.

 

Also, this research needs to be considered on a smaller scale first: before information is out there about how different communities respond to asexual people we can't really generalise too much, and that sort of research about how a local community might respond to someone coming out as ace would be useful to therapists etc who might be involved in helping them if they're in a difficult situation.

[Lonemathsytoothbrushthief]

@Trying To Ace It With my above points, I actually think that it's not necessarily useful to ask for education about asexuality from your psychology department-there's still a lack of research and as with any community, if we tried to come up with some points which asexual people agree on the loudest and most obnoxious people would come out on top 😛 same as in any community of strangers more or less. Instead I would have phrased it as "This petition requests the Psychology Department at Rutgers University to put more funding and resources into research on the topic of asexuality with an emphasis on including members of its community, and the implications which an understanding of asexuality gives towards treating and defining sexual disorders."

[Trying To Ace It]

@Lonemathsytoothbrushthief  You make an interesting point. However, part of my goal is educating budding psychologists as early as possible instead of waiting until they become totally misinformed professionals spreading bad information. 

[Lonemathsytoothbrushthief]

41 minutes ago, Trying To Ace It said:

@Lonemathsytoothbrushthief  You make an interesting point. However, part of my goal is educating budding psychologists as early as possible instead of waiting until they become totally misinformed professionals spreading bad information. 

I just wasn't sure how much information is really out there to educate people on in the first place-I mean we know what aphobia looks like online, but I wouldn't be prepared to give advice to someone coming out to a family member like that irl because I never experienced difficulties in that area of my life. So based on that, I just don't know what that sort of education would look like. Also,  specifically in psychology I'm not sure how firm a view asexual people have on things like people getting treatment for hyposexuality etc.  I guess the way I'd imagine it is extra funding for asexual researchers to do research on various aspects of asexuality in different departments, as well as educate other researchers on their concerns, but even then I still think that education needs to be grounded in more research than is out there. Maybe I'm wrong but still.

[everywhere and nowhere]

You know what? I don't really agree that there is necessarily a difference between asexuality and sexual disorders. At least sometimes the difference is external only, lies in a person's feeling being deemed pathological. I prefer a more radical approach: questioning the very idea of sexual disorders, of "normal" and "abnormal" sexualities (the only truly abnormal sexualities are those which don't include clear consent), "normal" and "abnormal" libido. People who "have a sexual disorder" also deserve a right to feel at peace in their skin and to not want to change their feelings. Yes, they also have a right to want to change their feelings - but much more often people who don't have a problem with their sexuality are pressured to try therapy than people who do have a problem with it are told to cherish it intead.

[Trying To Ace It]

@Nowhere Girl I am inclined to agree, in a sense. In psychology, The general idea of what institutes a "disorder" and what makes just "a quirk/unique pattern of behavior" is whether the behavior or symptoms are hurting the patient or those around them. Whether a psychologist actually believes this, or does and is not listening to what their patient says, is the issue. In an article covering asexuality, psychologists quoted their said they were afraid there were people who claimed asexuality as a label but were actually just people who were "damaged" that were "staying in their own comfort zone", and that therefore they should be treated. My response to this has been (1) are you even sure this is happening? Do you have studies to back that assumption up? and (2) Why can't they be comfortable? Unless their "disorder" is really affecting them, why bother someone who has found solace in the idea that maybe sex isn't necessary?

 

This could, of course, lead to an entire debate on its own.

[everywhere and nowhere]

53 minutes ago, Trying To Ace It said:

Why can't they be comfortable? Unless their "disorder" is really affecting them, why bother someone who has found solace in the idea that maybe sex isn't necessary?

That's it. I just couldn't agree more.

[Pramana]

Currently much of the psychological research into asexuality is conducted by people at Canadian universities. I've read that it's difficult to obtain funding for sexuality studies in the United States, so Canada has become the centre for North American research.

[ButterflyBlues]

Will our names be posted publicly?