music, books, love and kindness

I ordered The Invisible Orientation through my local library and it just arrived. This book is so much more than I thought it would be and so amazingly helpful.

It is also far more complex and delves into all kinds of areas I never thought of before.

For one thing, I would never have imagined asexual people faced so much judgement. Or that many people automatically assume asexual people have a past of sexual abuse (absolutely not true.)

some of the  misconceptions about asexuality...

What is wrong with our culture that we must sexualize so many things? That love without sex is seen as somehow problematic or "freaky," but sex without love is okay?

 

 

At the risk (okay, "risk" is probably too understated here) of over-sharing, I don't think it's exaggerating to say Julie Decker's book is a Godsend.

 

While I don't believe in pigeonholing or only feeling validated only after someone else validates you, I feel some kind of peace in knowing there is such a state as being asexual and lesbian...in that a lesbian can be romantically attracted, but not sexually, to another woman.

 

It doesn't necessarily make anything easier, but it is still nice to feel less alone. When I typed "asexual lesbian" in Google, I got tons of search results.

 

And, just as being a virgin doesn't make a person any less gay than it would a straight virgin less straight, asexual people shouldn't be denied their orientation just because they've never had sex...

For such a short length (184 pages before the "resources" sections begin), there is a lot covered and lots more to read. One of the best sites listed is this one:

http://www.asexuality.org/en/

And articles like this one are referenced:

http://gnovisjournal.org/2011/11/21/lily-hughes-journal/

For a long time, the story goes, we supported a sexual regime, and we continue to be dominated by it even today (Foucault 3). Sexuality manifests itself in discourse as desire. A constant thirst that can never be quenched, sex is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. Whether through condemnation or glorification, sexuality protrudes into every crack and crevasse of society. It disguises itself as a secret or, even more cunningly, as a tool for resistance, designed to revolt against sublime virginity. Sex, however, is only desire—a concept that holds no more truth than God or reason. Yet, just as religion builds unseen structures to order society, so too does sexuality. Through desire, sexuality orders a world in which its imagined existence controls and contorts the behaviour of its inhabitants. What, then, is sexuality without desire? Surely such a thing could not exist. To remove desire from sex would be to remove sexuality, and sexuality cannot be removed because it refuses to be located, operating only at an invisible level. However, whether through smokescreens and mirrors or some biological hiccup, the impossible has happened....Read more at the link above. ^