Asexual Explorations Blog

Temporary open access for two articles

2013-04-21T15:52:00.000-05:00

There's been a fair amount of discussion on tumblr and on The Asexual Agenda about the special issue of Psychology and Sexuality about asexuality, especially regarding the last article, called "A mystery wrapped in an enigma – asexuality: a virtual discussion."

Most of the comments that people made about it weren't especially good, feeling that many of the authors seemed to have only passing familiarity with asexual discourse and communities. I confess that my impression in reading it was quite similar (of course, I hoped that people didn't feel that way about my comments, though I certainly expected some of what I said to be controversial.)

Right now, A mystery wrapped in an enigma – asexuality: a virtual discussion is freely available online, as is the introductory article, Asexuality special theme issue editorial. According to Mark Carrigan's blog, they will be open access (i..e. they're freely available online) until the end of May.

Because many people felt that the comments weren't especially good, Siggy wrote unpacking an enigma, giving his own answers to the questions in the article, and encouraging others to write their own responses. I probably would have taken him up on this if it wasn't for the fact that I was one of the contributors. So if you want to know my answers, now you go read them if you couldn't before.

More of the politics of science

2013-01-28T17:38:00.002-06:00

In introduction to linguistics classes, students are told that linguistics is a science because it takes a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive, approach to language. In introduction to psychology, a different approach was taken. First, the concept of “confirmation bias” was introduced—people have a tendency to look for evidence to support their views rather than for evidence to contradict them, and they are often dismissive of evidence that contradicts their views. Therefore, to be a science, psychology must have research methodologies to help overcome confirmation bias.

Both approaches have their value. I like the approach taken by linguistics, and it has to do with my view on the is-ought problem, combined with my experience that using strongly ought-laden categories for descriptive purposes tends to lead to skewed pictures of things. (I realize that this itself closely relates to my normative judgment that researchers should avoid such analytic categories when possible. But I am not arguing for value-free research [which would make no sense at all, given that feeling a need for research involves epistemic values]. Rather, my position is that scholars’ epistemic values should take precedence over political values [with the exception of ethical obligations to research participants.])

Dealing with the problem of confirmation bias is also very important for science. It has often been said that science is not a process for always getting things right, but it is an inherently self-correcting process. I think this view of science is basically correct (provided that social values/taboos do not make some topic essentially unresearchable, or only researchable from a very limited range of perspectives).

In my last post, I discussed approaches to “objectivity” in research, and indicated my own preference for a) striving for (limited) objectivity, and b) putting epistemic values over political values in our research. Confirmation-bias is a major part of why (limited) objectivity is so difficult. In my view, there are three main means of overcoming it.

1) Be aware of the problem. If we are aware of the problem and strive for limited-objectivity, then recognizing (and trying to counter it) is an important step. But this is not nearly enough.

2) Hypothesis testing. I firmly believe that both quantitative and qualitative methodologies are important for studying humans. Among those studying asexuality, no one thinks we should only use quantitative methods, but there seem to be some who seem committed to only using qualitative methods, and this is something I am wary of because I am distrustful of our impressions of trends and tendencies (salience causes us to overestimate frequency). Rigorous methodologies, including quantification (if done well), allow for more rigorous forms of testing our hypotheses/beliefs.

3) Science is a social enterprise conducted by people of a variety of biases. Everyone has their biases and their prejudices. I’ve got mine, and you’ve got yours. If everyone working in a certain area has the same biases, then you’ve got a serious problem for any hope of limited-objectivity or scientific advancement. If we have different biases, different prejudices, and these are combined with shared epistemic commitments, then there is hope. If I do a study and those with similar views find my analysis convincing, but those with rather different ideologies have differing views, this can be helpful, but it depends on how they respond. If they attack my research on purely moral/ideological grounds, this is a serious problem. If they criticize it on methodological grounds (as is popular in academic arguments), that’s fine, but what would advance the field is if they think that my findings are the result of some problem/limitation with my methodology, and then respond by trying to do a better study with improved methodology. Perhaps they discover that, even with those improvements, my findings are largely replicated. Perhaps they find that, without the improvements, my findings are replicated, but when this or that is controlled for, the effect goes away. Either way, as long as the research is well-conducted, the field has been advanced.

For this to work, there must be a shared epistemic commitment. Personally, I read things primarily because I want to learn (or because I have to read it for a class, a reading group, or because it pertains to something I’m working on, but then I very much hope that I will learn from it). If some researcher has an obvious political agenda, their work is empirically weak, it’s clear that they allow their political commitments to trump epistemic commitments, and I’m not especially interested in working on their particular political cause, why should I waste my time reading their stuff? If I have to read their stuff because academic requirements make me feel obliged, I feel it causes me pain: It can be annoying to read, and I’ve wasted time reading crap that could have been spending reading something more informative.

By contrast, if I have a number of political/ideological disagreements with someone, but they research issues closely related to mine, it is methodologically rigorous, and we share epistemic commitments, then my epistemic commitment will require that I take their work seriously. This is precisely the situation that we need to have to fulfill the third criteria necessary for achieving (limited) scientific objectivity.

If a field puts its political commitments above its epistemic commitments, the consequence is that they tend to be ignored by people who don’t already agree with them, and they run the risk of creating echo chambers. This especially concerns me because my experience has been that a dangerous temptation to which many activists are prone is to consider complex issues from a narrow range of concerns, and to consequently have a high tolerance for collateral damage and low regard for the law of unintended consequences: Pain that they cause others is OK because it is done in the name of justice.

Some thoughts on the politics of asexuality research

2013-01-27T17:20:00.000-06:00

When I first discovered asexuality, one thing that greatly frustrated me was how little research there was on the subject, and how there was a lack of quality information available to people wanting to know more. Since 2007, there has been a lot of improvement in the amount of community-developed literature on asexuality (and increasingly on demisexuality and gray-As), and there has been much more academic literature produced on the subject, with an increasing number of people researching it.

The standard by which I judge academic articles on asexuality has long been, "OK, tell me something I don't already know." Most articles don't do a very good job at this. Several of the early pieces seemed to tell us little beyond what people who'd read AVEN's FAQ already knew, but I'd hoped that this would change over time.

I'm not sure that it really has, and I believe that part of the reason for this concerns academic activism.

Obviously, everyone who publishes on any topic does so for some reason(s), and sometimes this involves aiming to bring about some sort of social change. I have long known that much of the work that I do constitutes a form of academic activism, and I do see potential benefits from academic activism, but also potential dangers, depending on how it is conducted. I probably take a different view on what is appropriate/inappropriate academic activism than some, but I think it is important for asexuality researchers to think critically about how to do (and not do) academic activism.

Most of the academic work on asexuality is presently coming from three general areas: psychology, sociology, and gender studies/communication, as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1: Number of English language academic works on asexuality per year.*

Feminism and queer theory are overtly political, and that work clearly has political goals. I strongly suspect that some of the research on asexuality coming from psychology was motivated partly from the backlash against the promotion of FSD (i.e. if you're wanting to challenge what you see as the over-medicalization of female sexuality, studying asexuality is a good way to do it). My own research is partly motivated by a desire to promote better understanding of asexuality and increase academic visibility.

In my view, scholars' our primary commitment in research should be epistemic, not political. We should seek first of all to better understand things, and to promote better understanding in others. Trying to improve society through research is acceptable only if done in this framework. Because this involves striving to be “objective,” and “objectivity” has gotten a bad name in many areas, I want to discuss this matter: I've generally found that people adopt, roughly, one of three main stances towards "objectivity."

1) Researchers should be unbiased and objective (like me), not prejudiced ideologues (like people who disagree with me).

2) While view-from-nowhere objectivity is impossible for humans, more limited forms of objectivity are both possible and desirable. At least most of us have had the experience of reading works that were fairly "objective" and others that were less so. We've read authors who fairly and accurately portrayed a variety of views, including ones the author(s) disagreed with, and we've read authors who present caricatures of opposing views. We've read authors who openly acknowledged issues/data that are potential problems for their analyses, and we've read authors who try to sweep under the rug potential confounds, alternate hypotheses, and problematic data, hoping that readers won't notice. In both, the former is felt to be “more objective” and this limited sort of objectivity, though often difficult, is desirable and something scholars should strive for.

3) View-from-nowhere objectivity is impossible, so I'm free to be biased as all get out. (Often, this will mean freedom to be biased towards what they view as morally good.)

As a caveat, I would like to distinguish between being objective and claiming to be objective. My experience has been that people insisting on how oh-so-objective they are almost always have a rather obvious agenda and either a) they're hoping people don't notice this, or b) they hold to Type-1 objectivity and are oblivious to the matter. Of course, those who adopt (2) have an agenda as well, if we regard "better understanding a topic" and "doing educational work to make others more informed" as agendas (which I think they are, though they are generally less partisan agendas. Of course, scientific debates sometimes become partisan as well, but they at least generally have the virtue of the potential to ultimately be resolved with more research and new generations of researchers open to new ideas).

I very much favor Type-2 objectivity, and authors taking this approach are the ones whose work I most appreciate and find most informative. This is the approach that I hope most people studying asexuality will take, but it can be difficult to do so. In a future post, I intend to discuss means for striving for limited-objectivity.

*Figure 1 includes English language monographs (1); journal articles [including editorials] (20); book chapters (4), doctoral dissertations (1), and masters theses (3). For journals published online ahead of print, articles are coded based on when they go to press. Two articles currently in press as well as one published in 2013 have not been included.

2013 Call for Papers about Asexuality: National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA)

2013-01-16T21:39:00.000-06:00

2013 Call for Papers about Asexuality National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) November 7-10, 2013, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

The NWSA Asexuality Interest Group welcomes papers for the 2013 NWSA annual conference. These asexuality-related themes are orientated towards the full NWSA 2013 CFP which can be found here: http://www.nwsa.org/content.asp?contentid=27 If you are interested in being a part of the 2013 Asexuality Studies panels at NWSA, please send the following info to the designated panel organizer (listed under each theme) by Monday, February 11, 2013:
*Name, Institutional Affiliation, Mailing Address, Email, Phone
*NWSA Theme your paper fits under *Title for your talk
*50-100 word abstract We will try to accommodate as many qualified papers as possible, but panels are limited to 3-4 presenters. NWSA will make the final decision about which panels are accepted. Presenters accepted into the conference program must become members of NWSA in addition to registering for the conference.

Theme 1: The Sacred and the Profane
• What is secular? Spiritual? Religious? Sacred? How do these terms work as we begin to open a dialogue between asexual communities and celibate communities? What are the challenges asexual people face from religious communities; what are the challenges celibate people face from asexual communities? Where do we understand the place or non-place of the sacred, religious, or secular in these conversations?
• How do the sacred and religious inform identity in a global context? What paradigms deemed central to asexuality or celibacy shift when these terms are incorporated? How does the common assertion of celibacy as choice and asexuality as inherent become troubled when we move the terms to a global context, or between religious and spiritual connotations?
• Is feminist critique inherently secular? Can feminist frameworks provide key insights into religious beliefs, affects, and practices that go beyond secular versions of insight and knowledge? Can feminist frameworks enhance how we understand celibacy and asexuality both within and without religious beliefs and practices? • Is there more overlap or disconnect between celibacy and asexuality when understood from perspectives of indigenous studies, queer studies, and/or trans studies? And how does this tension between the terms challenge the meaning of sex, desire, sexuality, the sacred and profane?

Please submit materials to theme organizer Karli June Cerankowski at karlic@stanford.edu

Theme 2: Borders and Margins
• How are the borders and the margins of asexuality studies being constructed over time?
• In what ways does asexuality studies “traffic” in the objects, knowledges, preoccupations, desires, and/or body of disciplines of study, identities or movements?
• How has the field of asexuality studies been shaped by or enhanced by utilizing women's and gender studies methodological approaches or pedagogical perspectives? How does this relationship and its converse exist or manifest (or not) in the visibility of asexual interests?
• How have shifting geographies of technology, labor, economy, and migration impacted study of asexuality? How might these new forms of “encounters” be studied and enacted through asexual movements in the future?
• How do the actual geographies of women’s and gender studies locations—in institutions of higher education, in surrounding neighborhoods, communities, cities, towns, and other spaces—renegotiate the borders and margins of the discipline?

Please submit materials to theme organizer Aasha Foster at aasha.foster@nyu.edu

Theme 3: Futures of the Feminist Past
• What are the visible and invisible feminist and queer histories of asexuality?
• What are asexuality’s archives and how do they bear on the present asexuality movement and community?
• Given the difficulty of tracing asexuality historically, what strategies of historiography can we undertake to render asexual histories? How might feminist and queer historiography help us in telling asexual stories?
• How might the definitional parameters of asexuality be questioned, complicated, and rethought when searching for asexuality historically? What possible overlaps might there be between asexuality, celibacy, frigidity, and singlehood?
• How could we account for moments of anti-feminist asexuality and what are the points of encounter between feminist and non-feminist modes and moments of asexuality?
• In what ways does asexuality complicate our relations to the past, to history, and to temporality?
• What new categories, methods, and strategies might an asexual history call for?
• Who and what are the subjects of asexual histories and feminist & queer asexual histories? How might various affects, including loss, mourning, desire, and hope be mobilized by these histories?
• Finally, what is at stake in telling asexual stories and seeking asexual histories? How does the past bear on asexualities’ presents and futures?

Please submit materials to theme organizer Ela Pryzbylo at przybylo@yorku.ca

Theme 4: Body Politics
• What role does the body play in communal articulations of asexual identity? How do members of asexual communities understand the relationship between embodiment and asexual identity?
• Given that asexual identities have primarily been articulated in online spaces, to what extent are communal articulations of asexual identity detached from the body? At the same time, how have bodies remained relevant and/or present in online asexual communities?
• What is the relationship between asexuality and medical/psychiatric categories like hypoactive sexual desire disorder?
• What is the relationship between asexuality and disability rights politics and/or disability studies?
• Does asexuality facilitate particular types of bodily practices, such as types of bodily comportment or bodily presentation? Does asexuality facilitate particular ways of relating to the bodies of others?
• What does theorizing about asexuality have to offer theories of embodiment in general?

Please submit materials to theme organizer Kristina Gupta at kgupta2@emory.edu

Theme 5: Practices of Effecting Change
• What does it mean to create visibility about asexuality? What are the strengths and limitations of identity politics surrounding asexuality?
• How do we teach about asexual identities, communities, and movements in women’s and gender studies classrooms?
• How do social movements--such as antiracist, feminist, and LGBT movements--relate to asexual movements? How do asexual activists and scholars take inspiration from and work with other social movements?
• What do asexual communities have to learn from radical queer and trans communities? From polyamorous communities?
• What are the interpersonal, contextual, institutional, and ideological factors that constrain and/ or nurture the legibility of asexuality as an identity and social movement?
• How might we harness new technologies and media in our efforts to create visibility and awareness about asexuality?

Please submit materials to theme organizer Regina M. Wright at wrightrm@indiana.edu

New paper: Picturing Space for Lesbian Nonsexualities: Rethinking Sex-Normative Commitments through The Kids Are All Right (2010)

2013-01-16T17:06:00.002-06:00

Gupta, Kristina. (2013). Picturing Space for Lesbian Nonsexualities: Rethinking Sex-Normative Commitments through The Kids Are All Right (2010). Journal of Lesbian Studies, 17. 103-118.

This article examines representations of lesbian nonsexuality in the film The Kids Are All Right and in responses to the film by feminist and queer scholars. In some moments, the film offers a limited endorsement of lesbian nonsexuality, placing pressure on the category lesbian to include nonsexuality and asexuality. However, in their responses to the film, many feminist and queer scholars rejected nonsexuality as an aspect of lesbian experience, placing pressure on the category lesbian to exclude nonsexual and asexual women. Asexual activism challenges scholars to question their sex-normative commitments and to keep the category lesbian open and flexible.

MA Thesis: Performing asexuality through narratives of sexual identity

2012-10-14T11:00:00.001-05:00

Sundrud, J. L. (2011). Performing asexuality through narratives of sexual identity. MA Thesis.

This thesis explores the social construction of asexual identities through everyday narrative performances and critically examines the marginalizing effects of heteronormative discourses. This thesis posits narrative performance as a framework for understanding asexual identities within a heteronormative society. Drawing upon oral history and ethnographic methodologies, this thesis examines the narrative performances of three self-identified asexuals and explores four themes within each narrative: 1) the breach of heteronormative expectations, 2) the creation of commonality among individuals within the asexual community, 3) the negotiation of heteronormative discourses within the family, and 4) the construction of future-oriented liminoid narratives of asexuality. This thesis advances the claim that asexuality is a social identity by which asexuals narrate their past within a heteronormative society and envision a queer future.

Some thoughts on the asexual blogosphere

2012-09-13T12:47:00.002-05:00

Back in July, Siggy posted on his blog and on AVEN a proposal for an asexual group blog, requesting volunteers:

We need to revitalize the asexual blogosphere. Based on my observation of other blogospheres, here’s how to do it: create an authoritative blog. This would be the blog that every asexual worth their salt needs to read, the monarch of the asexual blogosphere. I’m not just throwing this around as an idea, I will actually do this. I volunteer to spearhead it. And I want more volunteers to help run it.

I was interested, and so I volunteered. My first post was about Bullshit and Asexual Politics, and later I started a series about AVEN. After I posted the first and already had a draft of the 2nd, I was removed from the group blog and a post was made "sad news" announcing my removal. While that post gave a supposed justification for my removal, it was several days before I found out the actual reason. Probably like the majority of people on AVEN, I am politically left-leaning, but am very much not sold on tumblr style "social justice" activism. I label this SJism. Basically, what I have in mind is a tendency to focus on in oppression and privilege, especially being oppressed entitles one to speak on some subject, whereas having privilege dis-entitles someone to speak on it. No doubt, many adherents will object to this term, but I use it because I had positive connotations with "social justice" before it was co-opted to have its present meaning on tumblr. Now, I don't much like SJism, though I won't go into the reasons as these are basically the same as those of most left-leaning people who don't much like such approaches.

In addition to being removed from the group blog, I was banned from commenting, although on account of some people protesting in the comments, I was later allowed to comment on other parts of the blog, with the understanding I wouldn't be allowed to defend myself regarding my removal. As such, the closest I could do was comment by proxy through friends, and the actual reason (after I learned it myself) was posted by Ithaca, and confirmed in the comments by Siggy as "a sufficiently accurate description."

So Andrew has apparently been removed from the blog for the following reasons: a) He doesn’t much like SJism, b) He sometimes finds it difficult to constructively engage with some SJers (but not others) and that in such cases, he thinks it’s best to ignore them to avoid flamewars, and c) He thought a fair amount of the content on the blog was inappropriate for a Asexuality 201 blog

This whole affair has prompted me to ask something that's been in the back of my mind for a while: When I first starting blogging, SJ asexual blogs (and I'm using this expression loosely) existed, but they weren't the only ones around, but my impression has long been that in the years since then, SJers have increasingly come to dominate the asexual blogosphere. This strikes me as somewhat odd, given that people with views similar to my own--left leaning but very much not sold on SJ ideology--probably makes us the majority position on AVEN and probably also among AVEN's PT/admods.

And yet, in the asexual blogosphere, it is sufficiently "extreme" to get me removed from a group blog aiming to something that "every asexual worth their salt needs to read."

My question for readers is this: Why?

Update on asexuality at the NSWA annual conference

2012-07-11T11:15:00.000-05:00

In January, I posted a CFP for papers about asexuality for the the National Women's Studies Association's (NWSA) 2012 annual meeting. The deadline for submissions has now passed, tentative approval/rejection was given to proposals, and then the deadline for presenters to accept (and register for the conference) at the end of June. They now have a (tentative) schedule posted online. There are now scheduled two panels about asexuality and an Asexual Interest Group meeting.

Decolonizing (A)sexuality: Contesting Contemporary Western Sexual and Gendered Norms Fri, Nov 9 - 5:20pm - 6:35pm

Asexual Intersections: Asexuality and Gender Ideology
*Kristina Gupta (Emory University)

Masculine Doubt and Sexual Wonder: Asexually-Identified Men Talk
About Their (A)sexualities *Ela (Elzbieta) Przybylo (York University, Toronto)

Surveying Asexuality: Variable and Changing Gender Stereotypes in Asexual Identity Formation *Andrew Hinderliter (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) Moderator: Karli Cerankowski (Stanford University)

Rationale: Scholarship on asexuality addresses the question: what epistemic possibilities do identity and subject formation provide for decolonizing knowledge? Specifically, this panel draws on asexual identity and subject formation as a site of subjugated knowledge to trouble contemporary western conceptions of sexual and gendered norms by: 1) exploring the extent to which asexual identity challenges hegemonic gender ideology; 2) examining the ways in which asexual-identified men challenge taken for granted assumptions about masculinity and sexuality; and 3) considering the role of changing and variable gender ideologies in asexual identity formation through using mixed-methods approaches.

Queering Asexuality Studies: Examining Queer and Trans Practices and Experiences in Virtual and Non-Virtual Asexual Communities Sat, Nov 10 - 10:50am - 12:05pm

Asexual and Gender Non-Conforming Identities in Online Environments
*Regina M Wright (Indiana University, Bloomington)

Trauma and Asexuality: Uncovering a Digital “Archive of Feelings”
*Karli Cerankowski (Stanford University)

Asexuality, Stone Identities and Touch-Me-Not Discourses
*Aasha Foster (New York University) Moderator: Nathan Erro (Louisiana State University)

Rationale: Much of asexual community building has taken place through online social networks, starting from the website Haven for the Human Amoeba, and then becoming popularized through the forums on the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN). Asexual online communities have now expanded even further into YouTube collaborative channels such as Hot Pieces of Ace and throughout the blogosphere, most predominately on LiveJournal and Tumblr. Each of these papers engages with both virtual and non-virtual asexual communities as they overlap with queer and trans communities, in order to reveal the political possibilities for thinking through gender and sexual identity in the digital age.

Asexuality Interest Group Meeting
Sat, Nov 10 - 12:50pm - 2:05pm

National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) 2012 Call for Papers about Asexuality

2012-01-31T10:20:00.001-06:00

National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA)
2012 Call for Papers about Asexuality

November 8-11, 2012, Oakland, CA.

Papers on any topic at the intersection of women’s and gender studies and
asexuality will be considered.

At minimum, your submission should fall under one of the following themes
for NWSA 2012:
*Revolutionary Futures
*Traveling Theory
*Social Networks, Power, and Change
*Decolonizing Knowledge
*Creative Awakenings

For more information on the themes, visit: http://nwsa.org/

While this is an open call, topic suggestions include:
* Asexual Intersections (including with LGBTIQ, Race, Nationality,
Disability, Appearance/Beauty)
* Online Asexual Communities (AVEN, LiveJournal, Tumblr, etc)
* Asexual Activism & Visibility
* Teaching Asexuality Studies
* Asexual Discourses and Theory
* Asexual Research Methods
* Asexual Literature
* Asexual Artists & Artwork

If you are interested in being a part of the 2012 Asexuality Studies panels
at NWSA, please send the following info by February 13, 2012 to Regina M.
Wright: (wrightrm@indiana.edu). Please make sure receipt of your submission
is confirmed.

Your submission should include your:
*Name, Institutional Affiliation, Snail Mail, Email, Phone.
*NWSA Theme your paper fits under (and asexuality studies topic area/s if
yours fits any of the above).
*Title for your talk, a one-page, double-spaced abstract in which you lay
out your topic and its relevance to this session.
*AND a 100 word truncated abstract (NWSA requirement).

Each person will speak for around 15 minutes, and we will leave time for
Q&A. In order to present with your name in the program, you must become a
member of NWSA in addition to registering for the conference.

Survey for asexuals 25 or older

2012-01-06T15:19:00.002-06:00

My name's Andrew and I'm writing my doctoral dissertation on asexuality, and for the first part of my research I am wanting to better understand how asexuals understood their asexuality before the rise of online asexual communities. This will help us to better understand the history of asexuality and the conceptual resources people have drawn on for understanding asexuality.

To participate you must
1) presently identify as asexual
2) be 25 years of age or older, and
3) and have lived most of your life since age 12 in English language contexts.

Asexual Identity Online and Before.

I know that there are a lot of you who like taking surveys who may be disappointed about not meeting the eligibility requirements. (Based on the results of the AAW11 census, the eligibility requirements probably exclude about 85% of aces active in online English language communities.) It's not because I don't care about people outside the above demographic, but because of the specific issues I'm wanting to investigate with this particular survey.

Edit: I got the number of responses I was aiming for a much faster than I anticipated. Since I now have 200 responses I have closed the survey. I want to thank everyone who participated.

The presence of absence: Asexuality and the creation of resistance

2011-12-06T00:49:00.003-06:00

Hughes, L. (2011). The presence of absence: Asexuality and the creation of resistance, gnovis, 12.

This paper investigates the existence of asexuality or ace identity. The aim of the paper is twofold, to examine the emergence of a seemingly impossible identity and to consider the consequences of an asexual space in a sexual discourse. Since the term ‘asexual’ proves problematic in its dependence on the existence of sexuality, the first half of the paper attempts to renegotiate a definition of asexuality, focusing on the power of the term “ace”. I then explore the work of three exemplary authors, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Lillian Faderman, and Michael Foucault, who prove successful in constructing an alternative discourse to the dominant sexual regime. Using their work, I argue that not only does an asexual space help individuals articulate their existence; it also creates resistance against the dominant power regime. Outside of academia, I argue that technology takes the reins, as the Asexual Visibility and Education Network’s (AVEN) online presence continues to raise awareness and expand the asexual community.

Asexy Pioneer: Asexuality Versus Eroticism in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!

2011-12-06T00:45:00.001-06:00

Erro, N. (2011). Asexy pioneer: Asexuality versus eroticism in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, Inquire: Journal of Comparative Literature, 1.

No abstract.

Petition about DSM-5

2011-11-01T09:59:00.003-05:00

A little over a week ago, the Society For Humanistic Psychology (Division 32 of the American Psychological Association) started a petition regarding DSM-5. It started without any big announcement and has spread largely by word of mouth, email, and a bit of blogging.

Having been put up on October 22, it already has nearly 3000 signatories, mostly mental health professionals. The open letter/petition addresses numerous problems with DSM-5. Some of these are problems that already exist in DSM-IV and are of the "easy to point out, but virtually impossible to fix in our current state of knowledge" variety. Others are particularly bad proposals for DSM-5 which they fear would be worse than the status quo, rather than better. A major part of it concerns turf battles among mental health professionals, and some history is in order here.

In 1977 (in preparation for DSM-III, published in 1980), there was a presentation by Robert Spitzer and Jean Endicott on defining "mental disorder" that defined "medical disorder" and claimed that "mental disorder" was a subset of that. Over the past several decades there had been a number of attacks on psychiatry (collectively these are often called anti-psychiatry) which argued that psychiatry is not a legitimate branch of medicine and that the concept of "mental disorder" is a metaphor at best and an outright lie at worst. Spitzer and Entidott's proposed definition was intended to challenge anti-psychiatric critiques, but it created quite a reaction among psychologists who feared that the American Psychiatric Association was doing turf-warfare, trying to get a bigger slice of the mental-health-funding pie. As a result, the "subset of medical disorders" language was not included in DSM-III and Spitzer had to write an editorial for the APA Monitor to alleviate the fears of concerned psychologists, insisting that the goal was not at all to devalue the work of psychologists or for psychiatrists to try to assert dominance in the mental health field.

Thirty years later, the DSM-5 people are doing a number of things which are setting off similar fears. Yet the fact is that physicians make up a small portion of the mental health professionals who use the DSM. Fears of turf wars remain, and one gets the suspicion that the DSM-5 folk aren't really all that sensitive to the political/guild concerns of those other guilds that use their book.

Interested readers, especially those who are mental health professionals or in related fields, are encouraged to go read the petition and sign it if you agree with it.

Spitzer, R. L. (1981, October). Nonmedical myths and the DSM-III. APA Monitor, pp. 3, 33.

Spitzer, R. L., & Endicott, J. (1978). Medical and mental disorder: Proposed definition and criteria. In R. L. Spitzer & D. F. Klein (Eds.), Critical issues in psychiatric diagnosis (pp. 15-39). New York, NY: Raven Press.

History of asexuality group

2011-10-02T09:42:00.001-05:00

I've recently created a google group for people interested in the history of asexuality. In my own view, the history of asexuality can usefully be divided into three categories. First, the history of asexual communities as "asexuality" is (generally) understood since the establishment of asexual communities in the past decade or so. Second, is cultural history involved leading up to the creation of such communities. Third, there are historical and cross-cultural categorizations similar to asexuality.

While I'm not limiting this group to any one of these, I expect the focus to largely be on the first of these (and a little bit of the second, especially in the years prior to the formation of [online] asexual communities). I've met a number of people participating in asexual communities who've been doing some important work in piecing together bits of the history--generally this has been for blog posts, the AVENwiki, or issues pertaining to the history of AVEN that are relevant to questions about how the site is run. The main purpose of the group is for people who spend time digging into the history, reading through old threads, websites stored in the Wayback Machine, and other sources for piecing together bits of the history.

If anyone wants to join, please email me and let me know so I can add you.

Asexual scripts: A grounded theory inquiry into the intrapsychic scripts asexuals use to negotiate romantic relationships

2011-09-22T14:28:00.006-05:00

Haefner, C. (2011). Asexual scripts: A grounded theory inquiry into the intrapsychic scripts asexuals use to negotiate romantic relationships>Asexual scripts: A grounded theory inquiry into the intrapsychic scripts asexuals use to negotiate romantic relationships. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, California.

Abstract: This grounded theory inquiry sought to generate a mid-range theory proposing how asexuals negotiate romantic relationships. Two online surveys were posted on the Asexuality and Visibility Education Network (AVEN) website. Sixty-four participants completed either 1 or both of the surveys for a total of 74 responses. As demonstrated through thick description culled from the data, an important feature of negotiating romantic relationships for the participants in this study was a process called naming. There were 3 areas of naming found in the datAa: Naming the Norm, Naming Asexuality in Relationship, and Naming Asexuality for Self. Though the areas of naming identified in this study represent the internalized meaning of being asexual in a sexualized society, the areas of naming also correspond to the 3 categories of scripting identified by Simon and Gagnon and explained in sexual script theory (SST). The areas of naming suggest that the heteronormative paradigm, with its prescriptive model of what a romantic relationship is and how individuals should engage in romantic relationships, affects asexuals at many levels including experiencing themselves as different from the norm, engaging in or choosing not to engage in romantic relationships, and perceiving themselves as asexual beings.

The author identifies as asexual, and as far as I know, this is the first doctoral dissertation on asexuality. Expect it to be the first of many, as I am aware of several asexuals pursuing doctoral level degrees who are planning on doing their dissertations on asexuality.

Edit: I realized that I had forgotten to include a link, so I have now added one.

Asexual Awareness Week 2011 Census

2011-09-14T00:25:00.001-05:00

As part of the preparation for Asexual Awareness Week 2011 next month, a census of the asexual community is being held and to goal is to have as many people to fill it out as possible.

This survey is only intended for people who identify as asexual, demisexual, gray-asexual, or any combination of these. If you do not identify as one or more of these, please do not take this survey. This survey is entirely anonymous, but if you are uncomfortable answering any question, please feel free not to answer it.

AAW2011 Asexual Community Census

The upcoming PT election on AVEN

2011-09-10T17:37:00.003-05:00

On AVEN, nominations are currently going on for the new Project Team (PT). Beginning this next term, there are a few important changes:
1) No one can be on PT and be an admod at the same time.
2) Terms are for 2 years, rather than one.
3) There are now four general positions and one position for a specific Research Contact position.
4) When someone steps down, their replacement will be elected to a 2 year term starting from when they were elected (which should help stagger elections so that to avoid the possibility of the whole team getting replaced all at once and thus not having anyone to show them the ropes.)

The requirements for being the Dedicated Research Contact are as follows:

Research is a little different to other PT activities, in that it requires a specialist on the team. Thus, to run for the position of Research Contact, the candidate must be qualified in a field relevant to asexual research. A minimal set of requirements are
(i) to hold or be in the process of obtaining a Masters Level degree or higher in a relevant field,
(ii) a familiarity with the existing research literature on the subject of asexuality,
(iii) a sound grasp of the field of online research ethics.

If anyone is interested in running for either of these positions, the nominations threads are here:

Project Team nominations (general positions)

Dedicated Research Contact nominations

Because of the research issues, I think that joining the PT can be a good way for undergrads and graduate students wanting to get involved in researching asexuality in a few years to get a feel for the field and to make contacts with people researching asexuality.

Asexuality and Mental Health

2011-09-09T21:20:00.001-05:00

In honor of national suicide prevention week, I thought that I ought to share the results of some data I recently discovered.

Lucassen, M. F. G., Merry, S. N., Robinson, E. M., Denny, S., Clark, T., Ameratunga, S., & Crengle, S. (2011). Sexual attraction, depression, self-harm, suicidality and help-seeking behaviour in New Zealand secondary school students. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 45(5), 376-383.

Their analysis was based a large-scale sampling secondary students in New Zealand. The study required everyone taking it to identify themselves as either male or female (thus preventing analysis for transgender youth), and in the sexual orientation question, people were asked if they were sexually attracted to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, neither, or unsure. Around 2% said neither. (2.4% of those 15 or younger, and 0.7 of those 16 or older, although the population of asexuals is small enough that this still allows for considerable room for random error, especially as the 16 or older group was much smaller overall.)

Anyway, here are some numbers for asexuality and ethnicity (absolute number in the sample followed by percent of total in parentheses.)

NZ European 69 (1.3)
Maori 10 (1.3)
Pacific 531 (3.6)
Asian 768 (4.3)
Other 346 (2.1)

Neither-attracted had comparable levels of depressive symptoms as opposite-sex attracted people, which was considerably less than that of same-sex-attracted, both-sex-attracted, and unsure groups. The neither-attracted group had a rate comparable to (and sometimes lower than) the opposite-sex-attracted people for reported deliberate self-harming behavior, and having seriously thought about attempting suicide, and suicide attempts. Rates for same-sex-attracted, and both-sex-attracted youth was considerably higher. (The "unsure" group sometimes patterned with the heterosexual group and sometimes with the same-sex-attracted and opposite-sex-attracted groups.)

While it is problematic to try to generalize this data to other populations in other countries (although the trends they report on for heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual groups is similar to what has been found in the US), the data that we do have suggests that asexuals are not at elevated risk for suicide.

Asexual Awareness Week 2011 to include screenings of “(A)sexual” documentary

2011-08-29T21:12:00.001-05:00

For Immediate Release

Asexual Awareness Week 2011 to include screenings of “(A)sexual” documentary

August 29, 2011 – Asexual Awareness Week is excited to announce that part of this year’s events will include several screenings of the new documentary “(A)sexual”. The film will be shown in cities around the United States in the month of October. Organizers who would like to bring the film to their city should contact sbb@asexualawarenessweek.com for more information.

A fundraising campaign to pay for the copies of the film, as well as an online advertising campaign, will be announced later this week. The fundraising goal is $1,000. “I know the asexual community can raise this money to secure these screenings of (A)sexual and the online advertising campaign,” said Sara Beth Brooks, who is helping organize the screenings. “Angela Tucker and Arts Engine are great allies. We are working together to make sure that this film is used as a resource to promote awareness of the asexual community in as many cities as possible.”

Cities that have already confirmed screenings include Las Vegas, NV, and Bloomington, IN. More cities will be announced as they are added.

Other projects that will be happening during this year’s Asexual Awareness Week include a demographic survey called the “Asexy Census,” a series of guest blogs, a small online advertising campaign, and a website. The committee has also drafted open letters to academic researchers and the LGBT community which will come into circulation soon. The website is expected to launch within the next week and will be at www.asexualawarenessweek.com.

Asexual Awareness Week is an international grassroots project to promote awareness about the asexual community across the globe.

Feminste and the recent "pedophilia conference"

2011-08-19T21:06:00.008-05:00

Earlier this week, Salon ran an article called Redefining pedophilia with pedophiles' help about a symposium held this Wednesday in Baltimore (not Boston) called Pedophilia, Minor-Attracted Persons, and the DSM: Issues and Controversies that was organized by B4U-ACT, a 501(c)(3) organization with aims to make compassionate mental health care available for minor attracted people.

Because there has been a lot of misinformation about the symposium swirling about, B4U-ACT recently posted on their website a more accurate version. It opens:

The purpose of B4U-ACT's August 17 symposium in Baltimore was to contribute to a more comprehensive and accurate DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) by bringing together a range of clinicians, researchers, academics, and minor-attracted persons to discuss key issues regarding the entry for pedophilia. This was successfully accomplished, as 38 people participated by listening intently to stimulating presentations and contributing to lively discussions.

B4U-ACT’s position is that the DSM should be based on accurate information about people in the general population. It should be "sensitive to the needs of clinicians and their patients" (as advocated by the American Psychiatric Association, or APA). Minor-attracted people should be involved in its revision (also advocated by the APA).

B4U-ACT believes that everyone benefits when a variety of reasoned perspectives is heard. Therefore, speakers were allowed to express their views freely and openly. B4U-ACT does not necessarily endorse all of the views expressed. Our policy of free and open expression is in support of the APA's position that DSM revisions should involve input from "diverse perspectives, disciplines, and areas of expertise," and that "patient and family" groups be involved. Speakers and attendees specialized in psychiatry, ethics, psychology, philosophy, social work, linguistics, and gender studies.

Blogger Kristin Rawls authored a very prejudiced and misleading guest post on feministe.us called Salon Flubs Reporting on Child Predators. The author's motivation is clearly stated at the beginning:

I had an emotional—even a visceral—response to the article that I discuss here.

What this actually means is that because she had strong feelings, moral indignation is an acceptable substitute for actual facts and representing a group based prejudice-based stereotypes are an acceptable substitute for understanding actual human beings.

In terms of even basic factual issues, it can't even correctly identify the city the symposium took place in (it was in Baltimore, not Boston. B4U-ACT is based in Maryland--not Massachusetts--a fact that is very obvious to anyone who actually bothers to read their website. At the bottom, Rawls says:

*Speaking of which: Residents of Boston, had you heard that there’s a big pedophile convention going on in your town?

It was a one day symposium with 38 people in attendance.

The title demonstrates the assumption that "child predators" is a perfectly acceptable substitute for "people attracted to children." Now, the fact of the matter is that a large portion of MAPs obey the law. How many, we do not know for a number of reasons. First, if an MAP commits a horrific crime, it makes the news. If they abide by the law, we never hear about it. If they are actively working to help people in their communities, we never hear about it. Because of the truly hateful stereotypes about them, the vast majority are afraid to admit their attractions to anyone (even if they are law-abiding). The result is that most of us know virtually nothing about real-live MAPs and rely instead on images we get from sensation media reporting. Second, virtually all research on this population is based on people in the criminal justice system (which systematically excludes law-abiding individuals. A major reason for this is that the alternative is almost politically impossible in Anglo-America, although I hear that there's some important research on the subject coming out in Germany.) If you portray them as human beings, you'll take a lot of shit for it. Third, mandatory reporting laws make it unethical for researchers to ask the necessary questions to find out how many abide by the law.

People do not choose to be attracted to children any more than people choose to be attracted (or not) to men or women, or both or neither. We live in a society where MAPs, when coming to understand their attractions, only find images of "people like themselves" as being monsters, predators. (If you want to understand the effects this can have, go read pp. 4-7 of Understanding and addressing adult sexual attraction to children: A study of paedophiles in contemporary society by Sarah Goode.)

Later in the Rawls article, we find more hateful stereotypes:

To her credit, the author does hint at the fact that the conference might serve as a place for pedophiles to conspire and swop tips[about whatever it is she imagines they do]

Right, just like when Jewish people get together they swap tips on how to swindle people, or how when black men get together they swap tips on how to rape white women. (To justify this claim, there is a post from the website boychat, but it is interpreted through prejudicial lenses rather than by trying to actually understand. Having a YF [young friend] need not imply any sexual relationship. In fact, I know one MAP who finds that having boys in his live is a major part of how he refrains from acting sexually with them--his attraction isn't just sexual, it is also emotional, spiritual, and a number of other things. By focusing on the other forms of attraction, he is able to sublimate his sexual desires.)

At the end of the article Rawl's agenda becomes clear:

All I know is: Cue the Christian Right, because they’re about to be all over this story. I begged Cara to let me write this because we need to start talking about it before they pick it up and use it as one more piece of ammunition in their crusade against basic civil rights—and against families and children. We’re going to have to keep saying it until it no longer needs to be said: Gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans*, queer: These are not—and never will be—synonyms for “pedophile.”

First of all, if Rawls had actually done any research on this (and I'm talking about doing a search in google news), she would have found an article in the Daily Caller from Monday, Conference aims to normalize pedophilia, in which the person quoted more than any other actually condemns empathy.

Rawls point', boilled down to its core, is that treating people attracted to children as human beings in bad for her politics, and so feminists must rise up and dehumanize them. Attempts to get to know them as people (which this symposium provided opportunities for during lunch, breaks, and discussion periods) must be condemned. I do hope that this call to dehumanization is actively resisted.

To end this already long post, I'll post the entire piece that B4U-ACT has issued the following on their website:

Statement on August 17 Symposium

The purpose of B4U-ACT's August 17 symposium in Baltimore was to contribute to a more comprehensive and accurate DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) by bringing together a range of clinicians, researchers, academics, and minor-attracted persons to discuss key issues regarding the entry for pedophilia. This was successfully accomplished, as 38 people participated by listening intently to stimulating presentations and contributing to lively discussions.

B4U-ACT’s position is that the DSM should be based on accurate information about people in the general population. It should be "sensitive to the needs of clinicians and their patients" (as advocated by the American Psychiatric Association, or APA). Minor-attracted people should be involved in its revision (also advocated by the APA).

B4U-ACT believes that everyone benefits when a variety of reasoned perspectives is heard. Therefore, speakers were allowed to express their views freely and openly. B4U-ACT does not necessarily endorse all of the views expressed. Our policy of free and open expression is in support of the APA's position that DSM revisions should involve input from "diverse perspectives, disciplines, and areas of expertise," and that "patient and family" groups be involved. Speakers and attendees specialized in psychiatry, ethics, psychology, philosophy, social work, linguistics, and gender studies.

This kind of scholarly interaction is necessary in light of the numerous unresolved issues raised about the proposed DSM revisions by scholars, researchers, and minor-attracted people. Controversy has arisen over scientific issues, conceptual issues, the purpose of the DSM (to promote mental health vs. social control), and consequences of the DSM entry for society and the people being diagnosed. Information about these controversies can be found at:
http://b4uact.org/science/symp/2011/refs.htm#crit
http://www.asexualexplorations.net/home/paraphilia_bibliography

Speakers addressed a diverse range of crucial issues related to the DSM, and discussion was lively. Keynote speaker Dr. Fred Berlin (of Johns Hopkins University) provided a conceptual overview of pedophilia from a psychiatric viewpoint, and argued in favor of acceptance of and compassion for people who are attracted to minors, while at the same time rejecting adult-minor sexual activity. Dr. John Sadler (University of Texas) argued that diagnostic criteria for mental disorders should not be based on concepts of vice since such concepts are subject to shifting social attitudes and doing so diverts mental-health professionals from their role as healers. Dr. Nancy Potter (University of Louisville) analyzed the concept of "uptake"--that is, genuine listening--and argued that by giving uptake to minor-attracted people, those revising the DSM would strengthen DSM-5 and contribute to more ethical treatment, but that minor-attracted people must exhibit accuracy and sincerity in their testimony. Dr. Lisa Cohen (Albert Einstein College of Medicine) presented data on the psychological correlates of pedophilia based on forensic samples, and argued that use of non-forensic samples would help researchers separate factors related to feelings of attraction from those related to behavior, and support the development of improved diagnostic systems.

In the afternoon, Dr. Renee Sorrentino (Harvard Medical School) discussed legal, ethical, and medical consequences of the proposed DSM-5 entry for pedohebephilia. Andrew Hinderliter (University of Illinois) argued that the medicalization of social deviance blurs the boundary between the helping professions and the criminal justice system, creating the potential for psychiatry to become a means of controlling undesirables, rather than an agent of healing. Jacob Breslow (London School of Economics and Political Science) challenged assumptions about minors and sexuality which currently underlie policymaking and the DSM. Richard Kramer (the only speaker representing B4U-ACT), analyzed sources of stigma in the DSM, presented survey data regarding MAPs' feelings of stigma, and provided recommendations for revising the DSM to reduce stigma.

B4U-ACT is a 501(c)(3) organization that promotes communication and collaboration among minor-attracted persons, mental health professionals, and researchers. Its mission is to increase the availability of accurate information about minor-attracted persons and mental health services that focus on their mental health needs. Inaccurate negative stereotypes force minor-attracted people into hiding, leave young adolescents who are attracted to children hopeless with nowhere to turn, and do nothing to protect children. We have received emails from teenagers as young as 15 who were engaged in self-harming behavior or threatening suicide, and could talk to no one about it, because they were attracted to children. Making welcoming, informed, and empathetic mental health services available is the goal of B4U-ACT.

For more details about the symposium, see http://b4uact.org/science/symp/2011/index.htm. Please direct any questions to Richard Kramer at rkramer@b4uact.org.

For anyone reading this who isn't a regular reader of my blog, my name is on that list. I know what actually went on at the symposium because I was there. And it bears little resemblance to the vast majority of reporting I’ve seen on the matter.

(Comment: Since originally posting this article, I’ve edited and moved some stuff around, but the content remains mostly the same.)

Three new articles on asexuality

2011-08-16T07:43:00.003-05:00

The most recent issues of the journal Sexualities has three articles on asexuality.

Przybylo, E. (2011) Crisis and safety: The asexual in sexusociety. Sexualities, 14, 444-461.

Abstract: This article provides a discussion of the implications that asexuality, as an identity category emerging in the West, carries for sexuality. Asexuality provides an exciting forum for revisiting questions of sexual normativity and examining those sex acts which are cemented to appear ‘natural’ through repetition, in the discursive system of sexusociety. Drawing especially on feminist and postmodern theories, I situate asexuality as both a product of and reaction against our sexusocial, disoriented postmodern here and now. This article also addresses the question of whether or not, and on what terms, asexuality may be considered a resistance against sexusociety.

Carrigan, M. (2011)There’s more to life than sex? Difference and commonality within the asexual community. Sexualities, 14, 462-478.

Abstract: Asexuality is becoming ever more widely known and yet it has received relatively little attention from within sociology. Research in the area poses particular challenges because of the relatively recent emergence of the asexual community, as well as the expanding array of terms and concepts through which asexuals articulate their differences and affirm their commonalities. This article presents the initial findings of a mixed-methods research project, which involved semi-structured interviews, online questionnaires and a thematic analysis of online materials produced by members of the asexual community. The aim was to understand self-identified asexuals in their own terms so as to gain understanding of the lived experience of asexuals, as well as offering a subjectively adequate grounding for future research in the area.

Kim, E-J. (2011). Asexuality in disability narratives, Sexualities, 14, 479-493.

Abstract: This essay explores normative regulations of disabled people’s sexuality and its relationship with asexuality through narratives of disabled individuals. While asexuality has been persistently criticized as a damaging myth imposed on disabled people, individuals with disabilities who do not identify as sexual highlight the inseparable intersection between normality and sexuality. Disabled and asexual identity and its narratives reveal that asexuality is an embodiment neither to be eliminated, nor to be cured, and is a way of living that may or may not change. Claims for the sexual rights of desexualized minority groups mistakenly target asexuality and endorse a universal and persistent presence of sexual desire. The structurally and socially enforced asexuality and desexualization are distinguished from an asexual embodiment and perspective disidentifying oneself from sexuality.

Asexual History graphic

2011-06-19T22:00:00.000-05:00

There's a recent thread on AVEN called A history of asexuality, by an AVENite who's been doing a lot of research in this area. They made a pretty cool timeline about asexuality that I thought readers might be interested in:

Radical refusals: On the anarchist politics of women choosing asexuality

2011-06-04T22:03:00.002-05:00

So, I knew that it was just a matter of time. Until recently, all academic articles about asexuality had been supportive of us. It's not so much that all academics in any field at all are supportive, or even that all who have learned something about asexuality are. I believe that the main factor in this is that those who aren't are too dismissive to care enough to publish on the matter.

Still, I had expected when the dismissive/hostile finally did take notice and respond in the academic literature, it would be an proponent of pathologization, the sort of person function as the designated hater in media articles. Instead, it has come from radical feminism.

Fahs, B. (2010). Radical refusals: On the anarchist politics of women choosing asexuality. Sexualities, 13, 445-461.

This article examines how women consciously choosing asexuality might inform both radical feminist politics and anarchic concepts of positive and negative liberty. By resituating some of the lesser-known narratives of the 1960s’ and 1970s’ radical feminist movement (e.g. Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto and Boston’s Cell 16 and No More Fun and Games), asexuality is shown to disrupt key intersections between sexuality and the state, particularly institutions that control reproduction, pleasure, and women’s bodies. Using interview data with Cell 16 members, content analysis of early radical feminist writings, and theoretical and historical analyses of separatism, the piece argues that, by removing themselves from sexuality, women can take a more anarchic stance against the entire institution of sex, thereby working toward more nihilistic, anti-reproduction, anti-family goals that severely disrupt commonly held assumptions about sex, gender, and power.

Up to this point, when I have announced articles, I've decided to that I should keep my opinions to myself regarding what I thought of the article. This one has convinced me not to do that anymore, largely because I feel that it needs to go in my bibliography, but also needs a comment/warning.

When I first saw this article some months ago, I saw the abstract and figured it wasn't relevant to us. But later, it was suggested on the Asexual Studies listserv and I also talked to someone who felt it should go in my bibliography, so I decided to read it.

From seeing the title and reading the abstract, it was clear that "asexual" is being used to mean celibate and not how we understand it. I assumed that this was because this is how the term is used in the literature she discusses. As it turns out, this appears to be wrong. Fahs distinguishes between "asexuality" (meaning permanent celibacy) and "celibacy" (meaning temporary celibacy). This distinction is not made in any of the quotes that she gives from the literature she discusses. Indeed, there, they just use "celibacy" to mean "celibacy" so probably Fahs just made up the distinction in order to use the word "asexuality."

In the paper, Part I is "Sex and Pleasure as Freedom" and Part II is "Remembering Radical Histories." I don't know that much about radical feminism from the 60s, and some of the stuff in the paper was interesting, but I felt that the asexuality/celibacy distinction imposed onto the texts was utterly forced. Basically, the texts talked about celibacy and Fahs tries to force "asexuality" onto them.

Then in Part III (Asexuality as a political identity and strategy of reform), the paper begins to completely and totally suck through "misreadings" so awful that I suspect to them be deliberate falsifications. This falsification is used in order to critisize asexual identity in order to promote her agenda. That agenda can be seen in the beginning of that section:

When examining asexuality and separatism, their political use differs greatly from their implications for pathology, identity, and sexual classification. Most existing research on asexuality, for example, asks questions that have relatively little social and political significance. For example, some studies address prevalence rates, with most research reporting that between 1 and 6 per cent of the American population describe themselves as asexual, with numbers rising consistently during the past five years (Bogaert, 2006; CNN, 2004).

Now, almost everything she says later about the "social and political significance" of asexuality is based on the definition that she herself invented at the beginning of the paper. Taking a careful look at this passage however, the utter disregard for getting the facts right is staggering. The 1% figure came from Bogaert's 2004 paper; it relied a British sample--not an American one--and it operationalized things in terms of lack of sexual attraction, not asexual self-identification. Furthermore, "asexuality" only can have anything to do with separatism (in the sense Fahs discussed about) if we mean it in her sense of "permanent celibacy" which is NOT the meaning these others are using, as so citing them as such is simply dishonest. There is nothing in the things she cited to say anything about numbers rising in the past five years. The 6% percent figure was a CNN poll which probably got linked to on AVEN, which is why the number is so high, so no one seriously thinks this should be taken as an estimate of prevalence.

What I believe is going on in this paper is that Fahs is aiming to exploit the visibility and currency that "asexuality" has gained in the literature (i.e. Bogaert, Prause & Graham, and Scherrer's work) and through the visibility and education work of the asexual community and then to use this to in order to advance her own ideological agenda, which is accomplished largely through equivocation, misrepresentation of others, and possibly even outright lying. If she had just said "celibacy" (which is what she is talking about and is the term used in the radical feminist literature cited in Part II), the paper wouldn't have had a Part III. So instead she created a new meaning for "asexuality" (that I've never seen anyone else use before) and then force it onto how others use the term.

This paper is academic dishonesty plain and simple. It should never have been published.

Edit: On doing a little more research, it seems that this article was discussed on AVEN last fall around the time that it came out. Not surprisingly, people didn't like it much.

Hypersexual Disorder

2011-05-11T15:10:00.000-05:00

One proposed addition to DSM-5 has been Hypersexual Disorder. Formerly, it was being proposed by the Paraphilias Subworkgroup for inclusion as a new disorder, and they have now retreated from that somewhat, and the Sexual Dysfunctions Subworkgroup is now considering including it in the appendix. (All this was made public with the recent revamp of the dsm5.org site).

On this subject, there was a recent article on asexualnews.com titled Asexuals should worry about the inclusion of hyperactive sexual desire disorder.

I wrote a follow-up to this (also on asexualnews.com): Hypersexuality in the DSM: A threat to constitutional rights and copy-pasted it in the feedback section on the dsm5.org site.

Interested readers are encouraged to go check these articles out!

New Paper: Theoretical Issues in the Study of Asexuality

2011-05-10T14:17:00.002-05:00

Chasin, CJ DeLuzio. (in press). Theoretical issues in the study of asexuality. Archives of Sexual Behavior. DOI: 10.1007/s10508-011-9757-x

Abstract: Academic interest in asexual people is new and researchers are beginning to discuss how to proceed methodologically and conceptually with the study of asexuality. This article explores several of the theoretical issues related to the study of asexuality. Researchers have tended to treat asexuality either as a distinct sexual orientation or as a lack of sexual orientation. Difficulties arise when asexual participants are inconsistent in their self-identification as asexual. Distinguishing between sexual and romantic attraction resolves this confusion, while simultaneously calling into question conceptualizations of the asexual population as a single homogenous group. Arguments are considered in favor of exploring diversity within the asexual population, particularly with respect to gender and romantic orientation, proposing that the categorical constructs employed in (a)sexuality research be replaced with continuous ones. Furthermore, given the recently noted bias toward including only self-identified asexuals, as opposed to non-self-identified asexuals or “potential-asexuals,” in research about asexuality, the nature and meaning of asexual self-identification are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the theoretical importance of acknowledging asexual self-identification or lack thereof in future research into asexuality. This article discusses what these current theoretical issues mean for the study of asexuality and sexuality more generally, including a brief consideration of ethical implications for research with asexual participants. Finally, directions for future research are suggested.