Star article

[slatterly]

I just found the Toronto Star article on their website, but I have to pay them money to get the full text. Has anyone got a copy of the article? I did an interview for the reporter, and I was wanting to see how it turned out.

[Shivers]

Wait, WHAT??

it's up on the website already??

*goes and looks*

As far as I know, it's not to be published til this friday.....

[slatterly]

The excerpt is here, dated, umm... three days ago.

Heh, I knew it was supposed to come out on a Friday, I just didn't know which Friday. I'd been under the impression it would be just a week or two after the interview.

(Checking back over that page, the text says it was published in The Spectator. Oops. I guess it appears in the Star next Friday?)





2013 Mod Edit - For future reference:

Just saying no is easy; Asexuals live their lives happily without having -- or wanting -- sex

The Spectator - Hamilton, Ont.
Author: Mary Duenwald
Date: Jun 22, 2005


Asexuals might have sexual urges and even masturbate, but they do not want to have sex with other people, said David Jay, 23, who founded the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (called AVEN by its members) four years ago, when he was in college. Asexuals often feel romantic attraction for other people, Jay said. It just doesn't involve sex.

Asexuality, she noted, is distinct from celibacy, which implies a conscious decision to stifle a desire for sex. What appears to be the only published study of asexuality -- which defined it as a lifelong lack of sexual attraction to either men or women -- found that 1.1 per cent of adults may be asexual. The figure was drawn from a survey of 18,000 Britons who were interviewed in 1994 about sexually transmitted diseases. The data were reanalysed by Dr. Anthony F. Bogaert, a psychologist at Brock University in St. Catharines, who published his findings last August in The Journal of Sex Research. Bogaert found that 44 per cent of those expressing no interest in sex were either married or living with partners or had been in the past.

Yet a small and still unpublished survey of 1,146 people -- including 41 who described themselves as asexual -- conducted in online interviews by Nicole Prause, a graduate student in psychology at Indiana, found that asexuals do not resist having sex because of fear. Rather asexuals "only lack the excitatory drive," Prause said in an e-mail message.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

Sorry guys :

Buy Complete Document.

[Shivers]

Okay, yeah.... I knew that wasn't the Star article.

I'm gonna be photographed for the star article!

[slatterly]

I'm gonna be photographed for the star article!

My mom wouldn't let me be photographed. ;___; She thinks I'm gonna get stalked. Giving the interviewer my real first name was a dash of rebellion.

But at least she let me be interviewed in the first place. That was pretty awesome.

[Shivers]

Okay, folks. Anyone interested, pick up the Toronto Star this Friday. (July 8, 2005) There will be an article in the paper then.

[kbrd143]

And for those of us, ah, not in Toronto? :roll:

[Goonie]

And for those of us, ah, not in Toronto? :roll:

good question ol' chap

[Shivers]

The Toronto Star is one of Canada's largest papers. I'd imagine most well stocked news shops would carry it.

Buuuut..... if anyone really wants a hardcopy version, PM me or MSN/etc me. I'll pick up a couple extra copies and mail them around.

[Goonie]

I was jokingly going to say to send it off... are you sure you are willing to do that?

*lives in the sticks*

[Cate Perfect]

I WANNA PICHA OF SPOCK IN DA PAYPA!!

And after I read it I'll send it to Liver--who has a gigantic scrapbook of AVEN media stuff.

Cate

[Live R Perfect]

YAY! :D One more for my Visibility Archive! :)

*needs a bigger folder*

[kbrd143]

The Toronto Star is one of Canada's largest papers. I'd imagine most well stocked news shops would carry it.

Except, of course, here in America where we don't care what any of you wishy-washy foriegners have to say. I mean: really. If you were truly serious about life and world politics, you would have had the foresight to be born in a real country. . . . Like America. Canada? What's that? Oh, a running gag by those South Park boys, right?

No, my local stores are apparently not very well stocked. . . :roll:

Buuuut..... if anyone really wants a hardcopy version, PM me or MSN/etc me. I'll pick up a couple extra copies and mail them around.

Oh, me!! Meeeeeeee! *hops up and down* I wanna picha! I'm still waiting for that pinup, after all. . . . :D

[Orbit]

Great! Can't wait to see it - hopefully someone can scan it in!

hawke

[Shivers]

Oooookay.... um, so, that's 4 people (KAW, Cartoonist, Cate and Liver).

Anyone else? I might pick up a couple spares anyways, but no promises.

[kbrd143]

Quick! Everybody jump on the bandwagon while he's feeling generous!

"Okay, Sir. . . And postage for 4200 newspapers comes to. . . . One thousand five hundred fifty four dollars. Will that be cash, check or charge?" :roll:

[Shivers]

Put it on my visa.

*holds out a card with the name Keith on it*

[The Evil Cashew]

Spock i think Cate said that she would give hers to Liver?

i hope i can get one.. i know the Local Tim Hortons has a paper machine thingy taht i can get one out of... but i am going to London tomorrow so they would FOR SURe have them..

~Cashew

[VivreEstEsperer]

See what I get for not going to AVEN for a few days, I miss this thread. I want one! :)

...Do they usually post their articles online?

...it'd still be cool to have a hard copy but online is better than nothing.

[slatterly]

They do, but you have to register. I just made an account to read it, I can change the password and give it to people if they want to see.

(Or is that immoral? I dunno.)

[Goonie]

goes to the web page....

[The Evil Cashew]

Hey just read the article. its not bad. its fair. they don't go bashing us or anything but still kept the "Maybe they are jsut confused" undertone. I think it could have been worse. Good job Spock and Cijay! (And anyone else they might have spoken to but didn't mention by name)

Good picture Spock! (even though my paper has a spot on it and it looks like you have a BIG dot in the middle of your forhead)

~Cashew

[Goonie]

The joy of no sex

As asexuals come out of the closet, researchers wonder if they're simply sexless or just confused They say they're just made that way and don't see any reason to change, Megan Ogilvie writes

Cijay Morgan is not broken, she is not confused and she is not afraid of intimacy.

She just has no interest in sex.

The 42-year-old Edmonton woman is a self-professed asexual, someone, she says, who doesn't have any sexual feelings for another person, male or female.

Morgan has never been troubled by the lack of the one thing that makes the world go around: a sex drive.

"I'm really happy with who I am and what I am," she says. "I feel 100 per cent complete."

Other asexuals echo Morgan's feeling of contentment. They say asexuality is a way of being, not a fleeting phase.

"We're just the same as everybody else, we just don't have sex," says Norman Baker, a 21-year-old restaurant manager from Burlington."I've had sex, but it's just not for me," he says of his experience with his ex-boyfriend. "It was boring and, quite frankly, disgusting."

Baker describes himself as asexual and bi-romantic, meaning he enjoys platonic relationships with both men and women. With his wide grin and easy-going, open manner, Baker has no trouble making friends. But anything beyond that makes him uncomfortable.

"I like relationships and I do the dating thing — hugging, cuddling on a couch — but nothing more than that."

That fits the criteria that Brock University's Anthony Bogaert, a leading expert in human sexuality, includes in his definition of asexuality: someone who doesn't have sexual desire and is not worried about it, someone who doesn't have sexual desire and is worried about it, and someone who becomes sexually aroused and masturbates.

While an aversion to sex might seem alien to most of the population, a growing group of people — brought together by the Internet — are coming out of a new closet. They're proclaiming their disinterest in mating and distaste for sex — with anyone.

"It's not a choice," explains David Jay, 23, who three years ago founded the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, or AVEN. "We say we're born with it and we don't want to change."In an age where sex sells and arousal can be bought in a pill, patch or even a perfume, asexuality has drifted below the surface of society's collective consciousness. But online forums, primarily AVEN in North America, have provided a meeting place and a voice for asexual people.

"I put together AVEN because I had been struggling with my own identity," says Jay, who works for a non-profit organization in San Francisco. "I have been thinking of myself, one way or another, as asexual since I was very young. But I had no context to figure out what that meant and no resources or community to turn to." AVEN has 4,300 members who range in age from their early teens to early 60s. New members rejoice at discovering a community that accepts them, a place where they are comfortable expressing their asexuality.

"I stumbled across it (AVEN) two years ago and felt absolutely liberated when I found out that I wasn't the only one and that there was a whole community of asexual people," says Morgan, who has never met another asexual in person. "For the majority of my life, I thought I might be the only one this way."

Bogaert, one of the few experts on human sexuality who is studying the phenomenon, says asexuality is emerging as a recognized sexual orientation although up to now it was overlooked by the scientific community.

He says there is some evidence that asexuals may have low hormone levels, which could explain their lack of sex drive, but the prevailing theory is that certain brain structures may have developed differently in asexuals before they were born.

The psychology professor recently analyzed data from a 1990 British survey on sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases and found that about 1 per cent of adults reported they had never felt sexual attraction. His research was published last August in the Journal of Sex Research.

"I was surprised by the finding," he says. "It seemed like a large percentage of people who had never been studied or talked about in any systematic way."

Bogaert considers asexuality the theoretical fourth quadrant of sexuality, along with heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality.

His next step is to study the genital arousal — measured by sensitive recording devices placed on the penis or in the vagina — of people who say they are asexual, to see whether they respond to sexual stimuli such as pornography in the same way sexual people do.

Bogaert expects to find a different response but says it's possible that, in some case, asexuals are aroused and attracted but either aren't aware of their feelings or are in denial.

The International Academy of Sex Research's annual meeting is going on now in Ottawa, and asexuality is not on the agenda. But Bogaert, who is there, says fellow researchers have been approaching him with questions.

Much of the research on sexual orientation is based on information provided by self-professed asexuals, which some scientists say is unreliable.

Physiological studies, similar to the one Bogaert proposes, would help researchers understand asexuality, says Ken Zucker, psychologist-in-chief and head of the Gender Identity Service, Child, Youth and Family Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

`I'm really happy with who

I am and what I am. I feel 100 per cent complete'

Cijay Morgan, asexual woman

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He wonders if people who report being asexual become aroused when they're shown sexual stimuli. Will their self-reported orientation match their body's response to a sexual image?

"For a male, if the penis did not react to sexual stimuli of men or women, would it stay as low to neutral stimuli, such as landscapes?" asks Zucker. Such a study may reveal whether self-reported asexuals are indeed indifferent or are sexually confused.

A recent physiological study on bisexuals to be published in the journal Psychological Science found men who said they were bisexual were aroused either by men or women, not both. This suggests bisexual men are confused about their sexual identity, says study lead author Gerulf Rieger, a PhD candidate at Northwestern University's psychology department.

With most other men, he says, sexual identity correlates strongly to arousal patterns. In bisexual men, it does not.

Some researchers have suggested asexuals have a deep-seated aversion to sex, but Indiana University's Nicole Prause disagrees. In a study of 1,146 people, 41 of whom described themselves as asexual, the graduate student in psychology found asexuals weren't easily sexually excited, but they didn't have any sexual hang-ups. They just didn't like intercourse.

When Prause presented her findings at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality in November 2003 in San Antonio, Texas, she reported that some asexuals were having consensual but unwanted sex.

That's how Baker describes his sexual experience.

"Take a step back and the concept (of sex) is very disgusting — swapping bodily fluids," he says. "It's not something you would do ordinarily and it's not something I would do at all."

The personable young man, who would be eminently attractive to either sex, says he has faced a battery of criticism and condemnation from people who don't understand his asexuality.

"People tell me it's not a valid orientation. I've been told that I can be fixed, that I need to just go out and have sex. I've been told it's a mental condition. Or that I need to go out and practise it. Most people aren't willing to extend (themselves to understand) that I might be right about my sexuality."

Baker knows he is still working through his own sexual identity, explaining it this way:

"I can be physically attracted to someone. I can be emotionally attracted to someone. I can be sexually aroused. But not all at the same time. It does not work together."

When he does become sexually aroused, Baker takes care of it by masturbating.

Elizabeth Abbot, a research associate at the University of Toronto and author of The History of Celibacy, believes asexuality is just one point on the continuum of human sexuality.

"You have people like Bill Clinton on one end of the spectrum and you have asexuals on the other end, with most of us somewhere in the middle or veering to one end or the other," she says. "In other words, I don't see it as anything weird or abnormal or lacking."

While the Internet has only just revealed a community of asexual people, Abbot says asexuality likely existed through history.

"In many cases they could hide behind celibacy or enter into sexless marriages," she says. But the majority of asexual people found themselves in relationships where sex was expected, if not demanded, to consummate a marriage or provide children.

Even today, marriage may mask asexuality. Bogaert found 44 per cent of British people who reported having no interest in sex were either married or living with partners. Even some AVEN members report having unwanted but consensual sex with their partners.

In any case, it's difficult to know who is asexual and who is not, Abbott says.

"People don't go around saying, `I have absolutely no interest in sex.' They especially don't say that in a society in which you're supposed to have a massive interest in sex and longing to get laid every night."Asexuality needs to be accepted as a valid sexual orientation just like homosexuality and bisexuality, Baker says.

"Let's have people talking about asexuality. Let's have it in sex education classes. Let's talk about it so people know about it and so they accept it."

But it's difficult to accept when some asexuals, Baker included, aren't exactly crystal clear about what they want.

The restaurant manager spends hours trying to figure out what to do.

"I took two days off from life last week to sit and work through stuff," he says.

"I decided I have three basic options: A relationship with another asexual, which would work out perfectly, but we're thinly spread at the moment. A relationship with a sexual and try and find a middle ground, but I haven't had much luck. Or just stay alone."

[Dargon]

"Bogaert expects to find a different response but says it's possible that, in some case, asexuals are aroused and attracted but either aren't aware of their feelings or are in denial. "

""For a male, if the penis did not react to sexual stimuli of men or women, would it stay as low to neutral stimuli, such as landscapes?" asks Zucker. Such a study may reveal whether self-reported asexuals are indeed indifferent or are sexually confused. "

Overall I found it was a pretty good article, but those two lquotes I really didn't like. As is stated in the FAQ, some asexuals can become aroused, and arousal does not equal attraction. I'm no expert, but I am not sure attraction can be measured, and if I could, it would probably be by brain activity, not genital activity.

[Shivers]

Yeah, a couple quotes that I thought couldv'e been worded better. All in all, though, I still think it's a good article.

*ACKS at publicity*

Of course, my mom WOULD buy the first paper she's bought in 4 months TODAY, right? (-:þ

[Goonie]

*ACKS at publicity*

Of course, my mom WOULD buy the first paper she's bought in 4 months TODAY, right? (-:þ

How did that go for you?

[Shivers]

Yeah, here I is.

MOM!!! :shock:

And I'm visiting SpockJr for a couple days... Got up with him this morning, and leave the house with him, to go buy a pack of smokes. I'm half asleep... get the butts... decide "oh what the heck, I'll pick up a Tim Horton's coffee." And a newspaper too!!!

Splorked my coffee all over the place when I see ALMOST THE WHOLE FRONT PAGE of the health section... :shock:

Rush back home here... Get onto google, typing in "AVEN", which was spoken of extensively in the newspaper... And I ended up here... And who's an admin on the site... :shock: SPLOICK AGAIN!!!

I swear I think I only got to swallow about an ounce of that coffee!! I should ask for a refund!

~~~~~~~~

I have to extend very gracious appreciation to two people here: Silly Green Monkey, and David J. for your patience with me. Answering questions... CALMING ME DOWN... probably laughing your butts off at me...

But come one, ya gotta admit. There surely must be a better way to break the news to your Mom than TAKING OUT A WHOLE PAGE AD IN A NATIONAL NEWSPAPER! Right?

To his credit, he did ahem... "mention" this to me last night, but I thought he just meant he wasn't seeing anyone THIS MONTH!

So, ok, we've learned one piece of good news!

My cardio-vascular system can survive ummm... SURPRISES! HAHAHAAHHAHAHAHA

~~~~~~~~~

OK, so IF we can figure out how to activate my account here, I have registered as "Mom", and am looking forward to getting to know some of you. For you certainly seem to be good friends to my son.

Love,

Mom

[Goonie]

*waves to spokies mom*

Well, you have to admit, when spock tells someone, he goes all out

[Shivers]

Pfft!! I told her at christmas! I know cuz I got a tape from Cijay and she asked about it!

*senility alert level 3* (-:þ

But ya. Thats my mom.

[Goonie]

Pfft!! I told her at christmas! I know cuz I got a tape from Cijay and she asked about it!

*senility alert level 3* (-:þ

:lol: