Asexuality Article about AVEN Founder

[-1=e^ipi]

I saw Zeke Hausfather post this article on his twitter. I occasionally look at Zeke's twitter for climate change related posts.

 

With respect to the article, it makes a few claims, which I find puzzling.

• It describes asexuality as a movement: this seems a bit odd to me because it is a sexual orientation. Would we also refer to the 'gay movement' or the 'straight movement'?
• It says that Jay identifies as asexual: I don't have issues with the claim, people can identify with whatever they want, but this wording seems odd to me. Usually people don't say 'I identify as gay' or 'I identify as straight'. They would say 'I am gay' or 'I am straight'. Should I starting saying that I identify as asexual?
• The article claims that the nuclear family is capitalist: I'm not sure I agree with this claim, although I do understand that this claim is made by various people in universities, particularly with respect to people that use critical theory, which comes from marxist Frankfurt School. But you also have communist societies with nuclear family structures, such as in North Korea, so I don't see anything inherently capitalist about nuclear families. Furthermore, various communist regimes, such as in Cuba, also engaged in significant repression of sexual and gender minorities in the past. If anything, they are uncapitalist, since people within the same nuclear family often don't exchange money with each other for goods and services and often don't distinguish between the ownership of capital among family members.

[LeChat]

28 minutes ago, -1=e^ipi said:

...With respect to the article, it makes a few claims, which I find puzzling.

• It describes asexuality as a movement: this seems a bit odd to me because it is a sexual orientation. Would we also refer to the 'gay movement' or the 'straight movement'...

Hi. Interesting article.

 

I think the reason why it's described as a "movement" might be due, partly, to the activism and research that was done, years ago, in order for asexuality to be recognized as a sexual orientation and not a sexual disorder; it wasn't always seen as an orientation.

 

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/asexuals-push-greater-recognition/story?id=6656358

[-1=e^ipi]

But then wouldn't 'asexuality recognition movement' or 'asexuality visibility movement' be more appropriate? 'Asexuality movement' seems a bit like language some conspiracy-theorists/conservatives would use to describe the 'gay movement', such as by arguing that people aren't born gay and saying that 'the gay people are coming to convert your children'.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, -1=e^ipi said:

I saw Zeke Hausfather post this article on his twitter. I occasionally look at Zeke's twitter for climate change related posts.

 

With respect to the article, it makes a few claims, which I find puzzling.

• It describes asexuality as a movement: this seems a bit odd to me because it is a sexual orientation. Would we also refer to the 'gay movement' or the 'straight movement'?
• It says that Jay identifies as asexual: I don't have issues with the claim, people can identify with whatever they want, but this wording seems odd to me. Usually people don't say 'I identify as gay' or 'I identify as straight'. They would say 'I am gay' or 'I am straight'. Should I starting saying that I identify as asexual?
• The article claims that the nuclear family is capitalist: I'm not sure I agree with this claim, although I do understand that this claim is made by various people in universities, particularly with respect to people that use critical theory, which comes from marxist Frankfurt School. But you also have communist societies with nuclear family structures, such as in North Korea, so I don't see anything inherently capitalist about nuclear families. Furthermore, various communist regimes, such as in Cuba, also engaged in significant repression of sexual and gender minorities in the past. If anything, they are uncapitalist, since people within the same nuclear family often don't exchange money with each other for goods and services and often don't distinguish between the ownership of capital among family members.

David Jay has been all over the place during the last decade. He was in a documentary a while back saying monogamy isn't something asexuals are capable of because monogamy is restricted to sex (grr), then by the end of the documentary he was crying saying he was going to have to be forced into monogamy (and sex) just to be loved.. Then after that he started making statements like "asexuality is anything you want it to be!!!" 

 

He's the founder of AVEN, sure, but while he claims to be the founder of the word asexual as a sexual orientation (he said that in the documentary anyway, that in his teens he came up with the word) but there's a song from the early 80s all about a guy who's in love with an asexual girl (the song literally describes the girl as lacking a desire for partnered sex, and calls her an 'asexual girl') .. so it was in use to refer to sexual orientation long before teenage David Jay came on the scene.

 

So yeah I don't really think anything he says these days can be taken with much more than a grain of salt unfortunately.

[Janus the Fox]

1 hour ago, PanFicto. said:

David Jay has been all over the place during the last decade. He was in a documentary a while back saying monogamy isn't something asexuals are capable of because monogamy is restricted to sex (grr), then by the end of the documentary he was crying saying he was going to have to be forced into monogamy (and sex) just to be loved.. Then after that he started making statements like "asexuality is anything you want it to be!!!" 

 

He's the founder of AVEN, sure, but while he claims to be the founder of the word asexual as a sexual orientation (he said that in the documentary anyway, that in his teens he came up with the word) but there's a song from the early 80s all about a guy who's in love with an asexual girl (the song literally describes the girl as lacking a desire for partnered sex, and calls her an 'asexual girl') .. so it was in use to refer to sexual orientation long before teenage David Jay came on the scene.

These days Documentaries take way too much creative liberties and edit or manipulate facts to grab an attention of an audience.  While DJ has made massive strides in the early years for now something for the last 20 years, such modern documentaries don’t tell the whole facts and mix fiction.

 

A big shame with any documentaries these days.  Like I’d only have to tune in to the Discovery or History Channel and find nothing factual or straight up fiction, where a quick internet search provides with vastly more information to learn with instead.  Even in subjects closest to me I’ve formally got university certification for, for a documentary to deviate down conspiracy and ‘aliens’ when talking about the techs development and history, it’s already lost feet deep in salt to me.   

[LeChat]

I get the frustration about asexual documentaries, lack of historical facts about asexuality from the 1900s, etc., that are now known, online, through an internet search; I think what that's down to is that the internet didn't exist until, recently, so all of this more current info and info about all obscure songs from the 80s didn't exist, online, at the time, and it took a while for someone to read/discover these facts in a book and to write/upload the info, online, to share the info with the world.

 

Sure, that info existed, but not many people knew about it because that info was only available in physical, academic textbooks that few, and not everyone, had access to (e.g. college professors, psychologists, etc.)

 

Even in the 90s, not everyone in the world had a computer at home or internet access. So, many people's knowledge was more limited to their local area or part of the world, only with whatever was playing on their local radio (which was usually only mainstream, pop songs, which didn't have any lyrics about asexuality). LGBT+ sexual orientations, including asexuality, weren't taught in K-12 schools, the way they are, now.

 

Like the link I showed, earlier, even in the 2000s, there were some psychologists, psychiatrists, etc. (i.e. health professionals) who said they thought asexuality wasn't a sexual orientation.

 

What it meant was that David Jay and other early, asexual activists helped spread the knowledge that they were learning and reading throughout college, to others, online. There were a lot less Americans, as a percentage, who had college degrees and attended college/universities at the time, than there are, now, in more recent years, so that's why others uploading college academic info to the internet became more of a huge, life-changing thing for others, spreading more knowledge that others didn't--or wouldn't--have been able to access, say, due to high costs of attending a college/university.

 

Basically, it was a process of discovery; a lot of young asexuals in their 20s, like David Jay, at the time, were still learning about themselves, still entering relationships--or not--and still trying to figure out what they wanted in life. So, sometimes, how a young adults feels or thinks they know about themselves at that age, ends up changing, later on, when they're older, have had more life experiences, etc.

[Homer]

Every other post on here starts with "I identify as". I have no idea why that is.