asexuality

I'm an affectionate person, almost everyone I've dated or been friends with commenting on that. But whenever I am out in public with my fiancée, I become self-consciously affectionate. Not because I'm concerned about what nasty thoughts people might think about seeing such queerness, but because of what they fail to think.

This post is about what I consider to be one way of being the change I want to see. I think of it as a small public education intervention that I do almost every day.

A few posts ago, in Slut Shaming and the Empowered Young Woman, one reader commented on the way that asexuality is written out of a lot of the most visible debates on what it means to be mature, empowered, and sexually self-aware. She also observed that asexual feeling, identity, and relationship practices are so nonexistent in pop culture that it’s almost impossible to know where to begin analyzing it. In her high school experiences as well as in mine, dating was one of the biggest status symbols you could achieve, and it was fairly well assumed that dating was the gateway to rounding those bases and scoring a home run, as it were. (I’ve never been too clear on that base analogy, and the fact that it doesn’t really seem to translate for GLB people isn’t its only problem.) As The New Goodnight Kiss documents, for some young people, sex has become a lot more openly casual than what I remember. But that activity still has a lot to do with teenaged pecking orders, even as it may also have to do with fulfilling experiences of sexual freedom or the development of positive relationships for some young people. So what about asexuality and youth culture? How do kids learn to associate certain values with being sexual and not being sexual?

The result of prevailing cultural attitudes is that autistic people are perceived as inherently non-sexual. Not as asexual—the mainstream paradigm erases the experiences of asexual autists right along with those of other queer people on the spectrum.

Start your weekend off right: with compelling articles from around the web!

• Bitch contributor s.e. smith discusses asexuality on Tiger Beatdown.
• Katha Pollitt writes for The Nation about the DC Abortion Fund and the right's vendetta against Planned Parenthood. (via AlterNet)
• ColorLines shares three scholars' thoughts on fighting homophobia in hip-hop.
• Check out journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau's piece at The Daily Beast about reporting on sexism in Italy.
• In These Times interviews Sady Doyle, founder of Tiger Beatdown and Bitch contributor, about blogging and online activism.
• Jill at Feministe hopes everyone who celebrates had a happy feminist Passover.
• As the New York Times searches for a new columnist, Feministing has a plea: "Don't hire another white dude!"
• The Root interviews our recent Bitch High Five candidate Joycelyn Elders, who was forced to resign for saying sex ed should include information about masturbation.
• We're keeping our fingers crossed for the Uniting American Families Act, "a bill which would allow same-sex couples to sponsor their partners for legal residency in the U.S."
• 90s Woman praises Heather Corinna's book S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College. I'm personally a fan as well, and we have a copy in the Bitch Media Community Lending Library!
• One year after the BP oil spill, Ms. talks about the danger of the status quo as explored in Antonia Juhasz's new book about the disaster, Black Tide.
• Also at Ms., look at this profile of Bitch contributor Mandy Van Deven's, Joanne Smith's and Meghan Huppuch's group, Girls for Gender Equity, and book, Hey, Shorty! A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets.
• Shakesville shares an excellent quote by Ms. Geena Davis about the power of gendered media images.
• Nick at Original Plumbing reflects powerfully on reconnecting with family members.
• At the ACLU blog, one rockin' woman recalls confronting a street harasser.
  
• Bad news: QUILTBAG-oriented site Queerty has "come to a close."

What have you been reading? Share away!