That has changed for me recently. I think there is a lot more to be said on asexuality than complex relationship talk and activism. Of course those things will always be important, but what about the simpler, overlooked parts of our day to day lives? What about who we are outside of our orientations? I’m growing less interested in the politics of asexuality and more curious about the culture of it.
As things are, I don’t much relate to the culture we have right now. I don’t wear a black ring. Sherlock and Dr. Who don’t appeal to me, and I still can’t figure out the whole cake thing. Then there’s the lack of discussion and representation about asexuals of color. It’s hard to connect to a community where I don’t see any representation of myself, you know?
So, that’s why I’m digging this blog back up and approaching things from a new angle. I’m hoping it will help us connect in some different ways. I still believe that communicating is the best way to build community, and I’m looking forward to you all of you getting in on the conversation.
To kick things off, what are your thoughts on asexual culture right now? In what ways do you connect to it and in what ways do you not? What do you feel is missing, and what would you like to see more of? Do you feel one exists at all, or are we still building towards one? I’m curious to hear from you!
In what ways do I connect to asexual culture right now? Uh.... very quietly. *laughs*
ReplyDeleteLike you, I've gotten kind of burned out on discussing unconventional relationships and activism, and I certainly ran out of things I wanted to say on the Internet. So I decided, since I liked the bits of the activism I'd done that involved standing up in front of crowds and talking to people, that I'd try to connect more to asexual communities offline by setting up my own group. It's actually working pretty well so far.
I certainly think there is an asexual culture, and while I think Who and Sherlock and cake are certainly points of reference in it I don't think they're at all the whole of it. I think that actually, the thing I'd call most central to asexual culture is very reductionist view of sexuality that really characterizes most of the communities I've been a part of. And I'd say that ace culture also worries a lot about education and outreach and that it prizes things like volunteering for studies and reading what academia has to say about asexual people. Ace culture is very concerned with what the mainstream might think of it, I think.
I'd like to see an asexual culture that's less worried about visibility and appearances and that puts less pressure on itself. I don't think I've been part of a single ace community on the Net that isn't very conscious of how it presents itself to allosexual people, for example, and even offline there's often a certain attention paid to things like visibility. (This was much more apparent to me when I was getting most of my community connection through a campus LGBT group than it is now, with my purely ace-focused group. It's nice sometimes to have a space to just go and chat and talk ace stuff--or not--without worrying whether I'm going to misstep on how I'm trying to present myself.)
One trend I'm really excited to see is the budding decentralization of asexual communities. Even the fact that I can say now that there are multiple asexual communities with different values and focuses is pretty exciting to me. I'm generally of the opinion that the more communities out there, the easier they will be to find and the better they'll be because different people will be able to find different spaces to suit their needs. And I agree with you that I would like to see more focus on ace POC in the community. A lot of the activism I've seen is very very white, especially in terms of those aces who get interviewed and have photos taken and things.
I’ve found that public speaking about asexuality works very nicely, too! And that’s a great observation about the online activism vs. in the ‘real world.’ There is definitely a lot of wondering how we’re going to come off in the online forum, I think because it’s so permanent and accessible to any kind of criticism later down the line. Everything we say gets picked apart.
DeleteSometimes I feel there’s almost this pressure that all our ideas and stories have to line up or we’ll seem less valid to others. In person I find it’s much more organic. People seem to respond better in Q&A sessions where they can feel comfortable asking whatever questions they want without being chastised by a whole online community for being ignorant about a top. The only downside I’ve found about public speaking is the pressure to try to represent such a vast developing community. It’s hard not to leave anyone’s experiences out.
Small communities could be a good way to take some of the pressure off, perhaps, in terms of how we’re perceived by others. Also, I think it’s good for individual pockets of the community to be able to discuss issues specific to them, such as POC and transgender aces, etc… It’s good a have a safe space.
Also, I think it's much harder for people to dehumanize you and start mocking you in person. When you're standing politely there and smiling while you talk about your experiences, you put a face to the concept and people have to deal with the fact that you're a real person right there who is going to react if they say something intentionally hurtful. (And I'm a short lady and make it a point to be very friendly and smily when I educate, which makes being aggressively nasty to me look like a pretty dick move. And that influences how people behave to me when I panel.) Whereas if they're talking to you on the Internet, they can pretend that you're not real and it's easier for them to mock the hell out of the concept you're talking about.
DeleteTotally agree. It's really difficult for someone to tell me I don't exist or that I'm abnormal when I talking to them face to face and comparing experiences with them. There's not much to gain from being a jerk to someone's face, especially in a panel or group discussion setting. Also the environment, the fact that you're there to learn/educate, makes I different I think.
DeleteGlad you're re-starting your blog. This might sound weird, but asexual culture feels very "young" to me. At 28 I feel like one of the older people in the ace community. There's also a lot of turnover, where people find answers and then don't participate anymore. While I'm not really active on AVEN anymore, most of the people who joined around the same time as me stopped posting much sooner than I did. I feel like in any orientation, there are people going "we're just the same as everyone else!" and a minority that's saying "we're NOT the same, and that's okay." I tend to fall into the latter group, but like Sciatrix is saying, it's the former group that tends to be the public face.
ReplyDeleteInteresting insight. I think a lot of people have also stopped posting on AVEN to become a part of other smaller communities online. I know there is a big presence on tumblr, but I wonder where else people might be gathering online.
DeleteI have seen presences on Livejournal and Dreamwidth--I know there's a small group of people who pay attention to asexual_fandom, for example, and of course there's the LJ asexual community as well. Aside from that, these days my online asexual community tends to be people I know through Skype and email.
DeleteI actually think communities are fragmenting so much that there isn't an "equivalent" huge community on new platforms anymore at this point, though.
I have the same feeling about being "old" and I'm only 22, honestly. I think it's as much a function of having been around in ace spaces for a long time and seen a lot of the arguments before as chronological age, but I might be off-base on that.
DeleteIf Sciatrix feels "old" at 22, and Ily at 28, I must be positively ancient at 39!
ReplyDeleteI have yet to find any offline ace groups in my area, and I'm not interested in joining AVEN, so my primary ace community is Tumblr, and it skews *really* young (at least from my perspective) and that's something I'm aware of most of the time while interacting there. Some other Tumblr characteristics like Sherlock, Doctor Who and other fandoms also put me off, since I'm not interested in that.
I think that smaller online communities are an important development. There needs to be a fairly large and active overall community in order for the sub-communities to stay viable, and that's something that I think is only really happening now. I think this will allow greater diversity of all kinds, including racial and ethnic diversity and a diversity of approaches and views. I don't think there's a real "asexual culture" yet, or it's still in an embryonic form. I think the community needs to keep growing in size first, so that it can spread out more.
I currently have zilch invested in "cake culture" as I started calling it recently. I have absolutely nothing in common with the vast majority of AVEN-style aces, and frankly, I find most of them and their antics extremely off-putting. Double especially with their bizarre amounts of concern spent towards maintaining some sort of purity regarding a true asexuality.
ReplyDeleteAs a white-passing POC, also, I find many ace narratives to be, well... too damn white. With a family of Mexican ancestry, sex and love and family seem to have far more complex meanings than it does to your average white American kid. These are nuances which currently seem to be completely invisible to the ace community at large and it's something I've been working to address a little in my personal life. Where asexuality and white colonialism intersect is messy and painful. These are the sorts of things I want to see explored more, but the community doesn't seem to have collectively matured enough for that yet.
Two things I wrote recently that hearkens back to the points being made here:
http://fistfelt.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/agender-asexual-cultura/
http://fistfelt.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/the-aven-definition-of-asexuality-is-bad/
"maintaining some sort of purity regarding a true asexuality."
DeleteI hear you on that! Looking forward to checking out your posts.
I feel absolutely no connection to the "cake culture" ace community, as I've started calling it. There's too much emphasis on the accouterments, the cues of proper asexuality, for me. And frankly, you're right: it's too damn white.
ReplyDeleteI come from a family of Mexican heritage, so love, sex, and family mean different things to us than your average middle-class, white American, college-bound kid. It had nuace and complexity, and its bound up into cultural narratives that they would never understand. Common queer and "social justice" conceptions of these things also don't often take the POC familial/relationship experience into account either, which is equally frustrating. The intersection of white colonialism with asexuality is messy and depressing.
Currently, the teenaged fandom-like behavior of the wider community is off-putting enough for me to want nothing to do with ace pride, ace events, or meeting ace people in meatspace. I just feel like I have absolutely nothing in common with them beyond the asexuality-- and even then, my flavor of orientation is often miles away from theirs. So much so that I actually feel more comfortable in allosexual spaces than I do in ace ones.
There is a very dire need for ace spaces that are POC-integrated and cover a wide variety of narratives; because right now the favorite is middle-class, white American, college-bound (or degree-bound) kid. There's more to us than that, and I'm afraid that asexuality probably does come across as the "white, monied, socially-awkward kid's orientation" to many people. And I'm not arguing for -more- visibility, but rather more visibility amongst -ourselves-. Once we learn to embrace our different contexts and backgrounds, only then are we going to mature and grow.
Here are a couple posts I wrote about subjects that are similar to what you wrote above:
http://fistfelt.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/agender-asexual-cultura/
http://fistfelt.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/the-aven-definition-of-asexuality-is-bad/
That is a concern of mine, too; that asexuality is viewed as some kind of hipster, white phase for people to adapt. I blame a lot of that on media representation of us. It's also difficult for PoC aces to connect because a lot of ace spaces like AVEN tend to shut down any attempt PoC aces make at connecting with each other and trying to share common experiences. It's like, "hey, stop trying to be special!" But the truth is we are not all the same, and you point out, cultural differences hugely impact the way sex/love/family is viewed, and thus how asexuality it viewed and what it is like to be a poc ace.
DeleteOops! Had no idea my first comment was lost in moderation-- the wordpress login thing was doing weird stuff and didn't tell me, so I thought it'd gotten lost in a refresh or something. Sorry for the double post!
ReplyDelete