Jump to content

Article in "Details" magazine


Flour

Recommended Posts

I've been meaning to post this for so long, so I hope this hasn't been posted already... I'd be really surprised if it hasn't been posted yet since AVEN is a big part of the article, but I did a search to make sure and didn't find anything. So, hopefully, this is brand new... and if not, I'm so so sorry for the repost. :)

It's from a magazine for men, so the article is directed to males, but it applies for ladies too.

If you want to see it in picture format or see the pictures in the article (which are neat), click the links, otherwise, you can just read it here in the post.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v226/sai...ality/page1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v226/sai...ality/page3.jpg

Pictures:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v226/sai...ality/page2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v226/sai...ality/page4.jpg

My apologies for any typos.

The Asexual Revolution

Neither gay nor straight, a growing number of men are coming out of the closet--as asexuals.

As a North Carolina college student unhitched her bra and spilled her breasts into the Appalachian air, the 22-year old man we'll call Jodie (he'd rather his real name not be used) was faced with a life-altering decision.

All through high school he'd been waiting for his hormones to surface, for sex--sweaty, groping, face-contorting sex--to become at least a minor priority. But as much as he tried to work up some enthusiasm for the act, the trash talk in the locker room and reams of porn flipped through with his football teammates did nothing. For a while he even assumed he was gay, but the truth was that the post game showers never got him licking his lips over a bulging jockstrap. Three years into college and the campus co-eds weren't getting a rise out of him either. Build like a Frigidaire, with the sandblasted good looks of a young Redford, Jodie was getting asked out all the time--to no avail.

But this one was more aggressive, opening her shirt in the dorm room and cooing seductively, "Don't these do anything for you?" Staring eye-to-areola at her offerings, Jodie was forced to admit: not a damn thing. "I had to come clean with myself," he recalls. "There's something broke inside of me."

And with that, he jumped into the uncharted realm of sexuality's fourth dimension. Jodie now calls himself an asexual, a misunderstood breed of guy who, forced to choose among a man, a woman, and both, picks none of the above. He's not interested in sex, has never masturbated, and has never even been kissed. And yet he doesn't seem primed for a five-state killing spree. In fact, he's so well-adjusted that you couldn't knock the smile off his face with a tire iron. As he says, "How can you miss something when you have no idea what it really is?"

In a society whipped into a frenzy by the leather bridle of S-E-X, asexuals are an isolated bunch. They certainly don't deal with the same bile as gays do, but they face a task nearly as daunting: getting people to take them seriously. "There's very little research right now," admits Dr. Deborah Tolman, director of the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State University.

All that could be about to change. Last month the Journal of Sex Research published a report suggesting that one in 100 people may be asexual. Considering that homosexuals amount to only an estimated 3 percent of the population, it would seem as if asexuals are suddenly everywhere. But as to the origins of asexuality, scientists still have no clue. "One possibility is they have low levels of sex hormones," Tolman says. "In other cases, there may be some history of trauma or abuse. Or it could be a more or less conscious choice."

As in any tribe, members of the asexual community (or amoebas, as they sometimes call themselves) have their share of psychic wounds. But given how off-the-charts their sex lives are, the most remarkable thing about many of them may be their utter contentedness. If only everyone were so cool about it. In general, if you announce that your libido is on permanent leave of absence, you're greeted with a gut laugh. And then the patronizing assumptions begin: "You must be gay, right?" Or "You just haven't met the right person yet."

"It's like telling a straight guy he'll wake up a lesbian," says David Jay with a mildly annoyed snicker. The 22-year-old Patton of the asexuality movement, Jay has been helping asexuals come out of the closet for the past three years. "When you come out as gay it's like, 'Let's have a party,'" Jay says. "When you come out as asexual, it's, 'Mom, Dad, everyone... we need to have a 40-minute lecture about my life.'" If Jay has his way, homos won't be the only ones throwing down on National Coming Out Day.

Though he hates to admit it, Jeremy Adams occasionally flogs the dolphin. Waking up in the morning with a logjam in his boxers, he finds the urge to splurge just too strong. But he's also developed other strategies for dealing with the predicament. "When I start to feel horny I do yoga," the 32-year-old explains. "It dissipates the sexual energy through the rest of the body."

Leave it to an asexual to make jacking off sound like the Pythagorean theorem. See, not only do asexuals ignore the old in-and-out, but some of them find the whole load-blowing process a little silly. "Imagine the most ridiculous thing you can. Then imagine that it's all anyone in the world cares about," says David Jay, on the phone from St. Louis. "That's what it's like to be an asexual." A graduate of Connecticut's Wesleyan University, he's in Missouri mobilizing voters on college campuses. During his off hours, though, he's rallying an entirely different group of constituents.

In 2001 Jay assembled asexuality.org, a sparse, text-heavy Web site that he called the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN). AVEN became the first sizable community for asexuals on the Internet, but Jay was frustrated at the lack of interaction, so the following summer he added a forum, allowing members to communicate via e-mail and message board. In the two years since, nearly 2,000 people have logged on to declare their asexuality.

Through information gathered in meet-ups, pamphlet-seeding, and correspondence, AVEN has looked at how asexuals differ among themselves in their experiences of attraction, arousal, and relationships. For example, Jodie--a self-described romantic--says he can be attracted to a woman emotionally but never physically. Adams, quiet and stingy with his words, sees a couple holding hands and wonders, What's the point?

A small number of AVEN members hold mild contempt for "the sexual," seeing themselves as clear-thinking, sexless superiors. But an early October overhaul of the site--in response to a spoke of 400 new members who joined right after publication of the one-in-100-study--takes that attitude to downright revolutionary conclusions. "We have all been told that sexuality is an integral part of happiness, that sex is something we have not necessarily because we want it but because we need it," reads the battle cry on the new AVEN blog. "All of us, sexual and asexual, have been lied to."

E-mailing from an impromptu media tour of Britain, Jay seems more than ready to take this battle to the mainstream. "This has always been about giving people who aren't interested in sex the tools to start talking about it, and now it's happening on an unprecedented scale," he says. "As the gay-rights movement question our assumptions that heterosexuality is normal, asexuality poses some of the same questions. Mainly: Why is sexuality important at all?"

At least two answers spring to mind. But you have to think twice about your chances of winning an argument with people who are immune to the power of an exposed pair of tits.

By Bart Blasengame

Pgs 186-189, December 2004, "Details"

Link to post
Share on other sites

"Flogging the dolphin?" :roll: I still can't figure out why he said I am quiet and stingy with my words. This has been posted before but that was a while ago.

Link to post
Share on other sites

So he interviewed you about it then? What was that like and how did he find you? Must've been neat to talk to someone who was actually looking to learn about it. Most of the people I talk to about it don't particularly care/try to understand.

Maggie

Link to post
Share on other sites

He posted in the Announcements forum asking for people to interview. He interviewed me over the phone and through email.

Link to post
Share on other sites
what kinda yoga does he do? i wanna do it so all the sexual energy can go to better use.

Look on Amazon.com or any other book site for a book called Ancient Secret of the Fountain of Youth by Peter Kelder. It explains the technique along with a routine that helps one feel better.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...