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Identifying As Ace Prior To The Internet?


will123

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I've read where a lot of younger asexuals researched the 'net to find out why they weren't interested in sex. 

 

I'm not sure what year the internet became commonplace, but I got access to it in late '97 or early '98 (when I was 36). That being said I found out about asexuality the old school way. It was a newspaper article in '05. My 'situation' never caused me to look for answers online.

 

Now to my question for the older aces here. Did you identify as asexual before you knew what the internet was?

 

If yes, what was the source of the info that assisted in your decision?

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We are the same age as I was born in 1962. I work in IT and I got on the internet back in 1988 when a friend at the local university set me up with an account on their academic system. Internet was strictly academic, research and military back then. I even found my email address in an old internet White Pages from that era. The internet community was still small enough back then that it was possible to put such a directory together. 

 

That being said, I only discovered the term asexual as it relates to humans back in 2013. I always knew I was somehow different but it wasn't until I learned that romantic and sexual attraction were separate things that I had my a-ha moment. I wish this stuff was talked about in the newsgroups back then. Probably would have violated some National Science Foundation rule back then. 

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I found out from an old fashioned newspaper article...  but then I went to the internet to look up more about it, and that's how I came to be here at Aven.

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5 minutes ago, thylacine said:

I found out from an old fashioned newspaper article...  but then I went to the internet to look up more about it, and that's how I came to be here at Aven.

The article I was reading mentioned AVEN, so my 'journey' to identifying as asexual was pretty short.

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49 minutes ago, will123 said:

Did you identify as asexual before you knew what the internet was?

I did not, nor for many years into the internet’s existence. However, in the early ‘80s I had a middle-aged co-worker who I thought of as asexual, not because I’d come across the word in the more complex sense we know it today, but because it came to mind as an apt description of him, seeing as he had no known past relationships, dating life, or sexual/romantic inclinations of any kind. 

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I used the internet for years before I discovered asexuality, and then I came across something on-line that lead me here (memory is fuzzy on this, but I think it might have been wikipedia, or google somehow, but not an article in the usual sense of journalism or publication of either analog or digital media).

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I only identified as Ace in 2014, having been given the AVEN address by the NHS. Prior to this I'd never heard of, or looked for, human asexuality 

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

I didn't come to the conclusion I was ace till I looked it up on the internet and ticked all the boxes. It was a slowly dawning realisation that aven just filled in the last piece of the jigsaw.

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Started using email and cumbersome online file transfers back in 1981, and my department at the university trained us all on NCSA Mosaic in 1994. I wasn't aware of asexuality as a "real" thing until I saw an online article back in 2013, which led me to AVEN. I had no idea anyone else was like me until then.

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21 minutes ago, coyote55 said:

I had no idea anyone else was like me until then.

That's what surprised me when I read the article!

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When did asexuality cease being a sexual disorder that needed to be cured? 

That was the first time I heard of it - perhaps in the 80's or 90's?  Of course, homosexuality was also considered a disorder back in the day as well.

I never realized that I was asexual until about ten years ago.

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I first heard about it from a classmate that came out to me. I was 16, so it was around 2000 or '01. I was using the internet at the time, but that's not where I first heard about it. I looked it up online briefly at the time, but there wasn't much info or really a community it seemed. From what he described, it terrified me how much it sounded like me. Denied it for years, and finally fully realized/accepted it almost 3 years ago.  It made me think about it again when someone I knew started talking about it before Pride (I thought I was just an ally back then). Again, this way it wasn't online at first, either. I have read about little ace communities online floating in forums as early as the 80s and 90s. They called themselves things like amoebas. There wasn't a universal popular label for it until much more recently. Good to know that there was something back then, though.

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Not identified before the internet as had internet in 1995 and was 15 then, but at same time didn't go looking on net for answers. Think i came across Aven early this decade but didn't put 2+2 together till last year.

 

I didn't look for or need a name i guess

 

Just another year went past i was still single and wasn't doing a lot to change that

 

 

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Have been using the internet since, probably, around late 90s but, like some posters above, I found the term 'asexuality' much later and by accident almost. I wasn't looking for it: I didn't know it existed. I can't remember what word/phrase/subject  I was searching for, but something must have made me continue reading and I can't resist a bit of research so...

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On 2/15/2019 at 10:00 PM, coyote55 said:

I wasn't aware of asexuality as a "real" thing until I saw an online article back in 2013, which led me to AVEN. I had no idea anyone else was like me until then.

 

On 2/14/2019 at 9:50 PM, daveb said:

I used the internet for years before I discovered asexuality

 

On 2/15/2019 at 11:32 PM, Muledeer said:

When did asexuality cease being a sexual disorder that needed to be cured? 

I was a fairly early adopter of the net and I worked in the library field all my working life so I've done a lot of online research. You'd think there would have been ... something ...!  What was online early on had asexuality parked with disorders. Let's all run away screaming because here's another disorder..  A fairly mainstream online article led me to AVEN a few years ago, but I was not ready.

 

The observations on this thread made me aware that asexuality wasn't something I embraced when I first discovered it: I wasn't raised to embrace my sexuality, and it has taken me "AllThisTime" to get where I am now. 

 

Lucky for me, I'm now an older babe and no one cares about my sexuality!  And I've found a place here where I can explore sexual vs aesthetic attraction / limerance / love / romance and all of that stuff.  

  

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On 2/15/2019 at 10:00 PM, coyote55 said:

I had no idea anyone else was like me until then.

I know that many folks on this site express that same point, but statistically, the chances that only one individual has a characteristic not shared by any of the 7-billion-plus other people on this planet are, well, incredibly low. ^_^ I never once thought I was the only one; rather, I assumed there must be others, but how on earth would I ever find them to even talk about the subject? Well, now I know. :) 

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