A federal appeals court on Tuesday declared California’s same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional, putting the bitterly contested, voter-approved law on track for likely consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that a lower court judge correctly interpreted the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court precedents when he declared in 2010 that Proposition 8 was a violation of the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

It’ll be interesting to see how this progresses from here (and it’s an election year, yay!). A majority of Americans now support same-sex marriage rights. Marriage equality has moved incredibly quickly — what was a divisive wedge issue only a few years ago now seems like a foregone conclusion. I suspect that if the GOP decides to hammer the “OMG TEH GAYS!” issue this year, it’s going to backfire, because American voters want to talk about jobs and the economy, and are significantly less interested in scapegoating gay people than we were six or even four years ago.

Marriage has also been held by the Supreme Court to be a fundamental right — the most famous case is Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated anti-miscegenation statutes, but the Court has ruled on marriage many times over and has rarely found reason to restrict consenting adults from marrying each other. There also aren’t a whole lot of compelling arguments against same-sex marriage — it hasn’t been found to be harmful to anyone, whereas blocking partners from getting married can cause actual harm to the individuals and their children. Without putting forth a legitimate reason to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples, the anti-equality people are at a real disadvantage.

There’s little doubt that the pro-Prop-8 folks will appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court. And a lot of us on the pro-marriage-equality side are nervous about that; we know that the conservative justices are guaranteed “it’s constitutional” votes, but the liberal justices and moderate justices are less of a guarantee. My prediction, though? If the Supreme Court rules on this, the judges are going to be facing strong legal precedent in favor of marriage equality, coupled with a rapidly-shifting social consensus that has situated gay rights as “the new civil rights” (and yes I find that characterization squicky for a lot of reasons, but I think it’s fair to say that’s going to be the perception of the more moderate justices). Given the lack of good legal reasoning to deny marriage equality, and given the justice’s sense of themselves as history-makers, I think the moderates are going to look around and say, “I really don’t want to be on the wrong side of history on this one.” Especially given the fact that Kenny wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, the case that overturned a Texas law outlawing homosexual “sodomy”? I think he’ll see the shifting tides and get himself firmly onto Team Gay. The most optimistic part of me thinks that Roberts will do the same (something that literally no one else I have ever met agrees with, but).

Obviously there is quite a bit at stake here. If the court rules that Prop 8 is Constitutional, the marriage equality movement will be set back decades. That is understandably terrifying. But I’m feeling optimistic. Cautiously optimistic, sure. But optimistic.

As it currently stands, many asexual people often describe the sex-positive movement as unsafe for them. This is a problem that needs to be addressed by the community.

One strategy to help change this is to talk more about asexual people’s concerns, and more generally about things that affect low-sexual-desire people. Obviously, many people feel unwelcome in a movement that rarely addresses their issues and where the people often don’t even know basic information about asexuality like vocabulary, definitions or common issues. This would also serve to make a lot of the anti-asexual and sex-normative attitudes in the community visible. For example, when discussions of asexuality occur in public places, concern trolling about the health of asexual people often abounds — up to and including outright denial of asexuality — as does demonization of asexual people in romantic relationships. I imagine that individual sex-positive people who want to root these out just don’t know where to find them, whereas for an asexual person it can be like stumbling through a minefield.

That said, I imagine “talk more about asexuality and our issues!” isn’t all too informative to someone who may have no idea what we talk about or where to find out.

So — if you’re interested, I’m giving you a little introduction to asexuality online — links to some of the blogs, explanation of some of the common issues and stuff we talk about. I think there’s some topics that are really of interest to more than just asexual people, and some which sexual people could really benefit from as well. And — to be honest, in general I feel as if any movement that claims to be about sexual freedom as a whole that almost solely concerns itself with the issues of people with average-to-high sexual desire is going to be missing vital issues, and that it will often end in new sexual obligations and norms. I think sex-positivity needs asexuality, needs to talk about this side of the coin and the issues people face here. But even if you disagree, I hope you’ll find some of the material and discussions of use.

Asexual Blogs

Writing from Factor X, by Sciatrix. She’s a bit less active now, but she used to do weekly linkspams and there’s a good blogroll.

Asexual Curiosities, by SlightlyMetaphysical

Asexy Beast, by Ily

Shades of Gray, by Elizabeth

Charlie the Unicorn, by Charles

Hypomnemata, by Minerva

Confessions of an Ist, by Aydan

Love from the Asexual Underground, by David Jay. DJ is pretty much the face of asexuality, as he’s the founder of AVEN — the main community. His blog is mostly inactive, but he’s written some amazing things.

Verbs not Nouns. This has a particular focus on asexuality and kink.

This is just an overview — you can find a lot of other people via blogrolls (Sciatrix’s is large and up-to-date). There’s also an asexual blog carnival, the masterpost of which is on Writing From Factor X.

Also, you will probably stumble across words you don’t know. The asexual community has an abundance of vocabulary and uses other terms (e.g. libido) in very specific ways. Charles has a nice glossary, or there’s the AVEN wiki. (AVEN is often what will get recommended first and foremost for asexual info. The main site has good information, if somewhat out of date, but the forums have some problems and I don’t recommend them.)

Topics of Interest

* Workable models of consent for the asexual community. This is sort of complicated — on the one hand, there are asexual people who have sex, who may enjoy having sex or really don’t mind having sex or do it to please their partners or whatever, and a lot of them wouldn’t pass the enthusiastic consent test and a lot of them would be rather upset about being told they’re unable to consent to sex. However, on the other hand this ties into …

* The compromise problem. Asexuals are very vulnerable to a certain kind of rape culture — the type where in a romantic relationship you owe sex to your partner, because refusing to have sex is bad and wrong and abusive. And in asexual communities, there’s a lot of talk about compromise — essentially, having sex with your partner even though you yourself don’t have an intrinsic desire for it. As you can imagine, this can go to very bad places. This is another discussion a lot of sex-positive spaces don’t manage very well, because there’s often very little empathy for the asexual partner (or, in related discussions, the partner with less sexual desire) in that situation. In fact, they are frequently demonised when this comes up. There’s also very little empathy for the fact that for asexual people, this ties into …

* The numbers problem. A lot of asexuals identify as romantic (generally with an orientation prefix — heteroromantic, homoromantic, biromantic) and still fall in love with and want to date people. They experience romantic attraction but not sexual. Dating only other asexuals is often very unrealistic: we’re a very small, very invisible, very diverse orientation. For a homoromantic woman, the dating pool consists of homoromantic or biromantic asexual women — an estimated 0.1% of the population before you factor in asexual invisibility. I’ve met all of one other asexual in real life without specifically flying to visit them. Dating people outside the asexual community is often the only option, and that means that the issue with sex has to be addressed.

* Also related to numbers: some people identify as aromantic, i.e. experiencing no romantic attraction. And some, like me, go “hold on a second, what’s this ‘romantic attraction’ thing and where are you drawing the line between it and platonic relationships? I don’t understand! How do you tell the difference between romantic love and friendship love and …”

Of late, we’ve been calling this wtfromantic (although I still like calling it “romantic orientation of divide by cucumber” and other people may have their preferred terms) for Makes No Sense, Does Not Compute, Wrong Question. What we’ve been talking about a lot is things like relationships that don’t fit the romance/friendship binary; emotional commitment; partnership and intimacy outside of romance; etc. This has some interesting intersections with polyamory.

(Some specific vocabulary you may run across on this topic: “queerplatonic” is for a deep emotional connection/relationship that isn’t romantic, “zucchini” is a queerplatonic partner, and there’s a variety of vegetable puns based on that ranging from “squash” for a queerplatonic crush to “courgetting” for queerplatonically flirting.)

* There is also some discussion about sex-positivity. What you may not know is that there’s often pressure for asexual people to identify as sex-positive and act in certain “sex-positive” ways in order to prove we’re not slut-shaming and anti-sex. (Our identity frequently gets interpreted as being inherently slut-shaming and/or anti-sex, even when it is explicitly described as being about personal feelings, not behavior. This happens especially often to demisexual people.)

I don’t identify as sex-positive. This is primarily because of having been made to feel utterly unwelcome sex-positive feminism, but it’s also partially backlash against this. I’m tired of feeling as if not playing cheerleader for the wonders of sex (for sexual people) mean I’m anti-sex and making asexuality look bad, and I’m tired of seeing asexual people being told that they can’t talk about their own negative sexual experiences under the guise of compulsory sex-positivity.

That said, in the past year or two I have seen more people outside the asexual community actively attempting to engage with asexual issues in a constructive manner. I have a lot of hope that this trend will continue!

Good Examples of Ally Posts

Mary Maxfield Brave talks about her experiences in asexual spaces, and what sexual people can learn from asexual communities.

Heather Corinna of the sex education site Scarleteen asks for input on asexuality-inclusive sex ed.

Chally talks about asexuality on Feministe.

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, popularly dubbed the Kill-the-Gays bill, is back before the Ugandan Parliament. It could be brought for a vote in the Lower House at any moment.

Now is the time to urge the State Department to follow through on its December promise to help support LGBTQ human rights throughout the world.

Contact the State Department and the White House to urge the following:

• The US should apply swift diplomatic pressure on President Yoweri Museveni and Uganda’s diplomatic community to bring this bill to an end once and for all. It is not enough to send it back to committee. We are not going to forget about it, and Uganda’s LGBTQ community cannot continue to live under threat of execution.

• As with any diplomatic endeavors, the US must tread carefully. Rescinded food and development aid could lead to an immediate violent backlash against the LGBTQ community in the country. Ugandan activists in the country are indicating that they need diplomatic help, but that this should not include lost aid. The Obama administration must put the safety of LGBTQ Ugandans first.

• The United States must end its policy of deporting LGBTQ Ugandans back to their home country. Supporting LGBTQ human rights around the world means prioritizing asylum claims by LGBTQ people from countries like Uganda.

As with any diplomatic efforts undertaken by major powers, the question may arise as to whether it is “neocolonialist” for the US to pressure Uganda. This is not the time for that discussion, as grassroots LGBTQ organizations in Uganda are requesting international support and human lives are now at stake. Not to mention, as Jeff Sharlet pointed out today, discussions of neocolonialism might first turn their attention to US military aid for Uganda (most recently, in the form of drones), as well as the influx of extremist Christian Right agitators from the United States.

If you feel moved to provide financial assistance to the cause, the largest and most influential advocacy organization in capital city, Kampala, is Sexual Minorities Uganda. Helmed by award-winning activist and writer, Frank Mugisha, the organization is the first place to go if you want to help. Give money, and give generously as you are able. SMUG organizers live under threat of death and violence every day. They deserve the full support of LGBTQ communities and activists throughout the West.

Former President of Planned Parenthood Faye Wattleton, Director of MergerWatch Lois Uttley, Feminist Blogger/Litigator Jill Filipovic and Conservative Feminist Scholar Christina Hoff Sommers discuss social constructs, politics, and the glass ceiling. Moderated by Professor Cynthia Estlund. Wine and cheese reception to follow.

Background on FNTT here. Click through to read this round’s contenders. The usual reminder: Comments below are abusive, insulting and may be triggering.

1. Bob Thompson

perhaps if you were better looking, you wouldn’t need a sex toy??

2. john

you lesbian bitch, fuck you

3. Princess Pi

Wow! Why did you have to go and ruin my favorite color, pink?
Maybe you can answer this. I saw one of your members on television as a spokeswoman for Code Pink and could you do no better than that? Besides being an imbecile, she was so ugly my cats left the room in disgust. Please tell me why all you left wing, pro-death, feminatzis are all so very unsavory looking and not to bright, to boot. It embarrasses me to be associated with you by being female. I think your problem is, especially with the pro-death stance, that you cannot get a man in the first place for you to have to make that choice. My husband always says WHAT was that thing? Yes, thing. You would make a better impression and more people might take you seriously if you colored the gray, got a good hair cut, lost the weight and wore some makeup. Can’t you change your name to Code Drab or Code Grey or something more truly descriptive? Oh, and a few courses in effective speaking and charm might help, too. Just saying.

4. Unapologetic PUA

Interesting discussion but completely besides the point. I will say at the outset I have used some PUA tactics and believe they work very well, but not everything works for everyone. What will work for someone who looks like Johnny Depp will not work for someone who looks like Meatloaf. But again this is besides the point.
PUA tactics have to pass a high threshold for working at least at a level high enough that the user doesnt get discouraged. Thus, tactics like negging and being a general asshole will stop being used the moment women stop responding to them. We use those tactics because they work. To some extent, we even care about how you feel because, well, repeat fucks are usually a lot better than one night stands. But caring about you is not the point. There’s a million places where you can go to find out how to care about women. Yes, this stuff works on a certain type of insecure woman, so what? there are lots and lots of insecure women, a lot more than secure women anyway. And yea, it probably makes the world a little bit less ideal, but then I didn’t make the world, I didn’t start the gender wars and I’ll be damned if I will be forced to carry the crosses for my forefathers. In a world full of preventable unhappiness, a couple orgasming is adding to the total joy. So in the words of Kurt Cobain, “Here I am now, entertain me”

5. Mir Losen

I thin Nir will have the last laugh. I think he was correct in his assessment. i think the Egyptians got a little to excited and when just hugging anyone and she took offence to that being a feminist and all. It’s a double standard that exist in this country. They had a woman pat the behind of a clerk who wanted to sue the woman for sexual harassment. He was mocked and laughed at, had the roles been reversed he would be in Rikers serving 15yrs. Another recent incident was a female news anchor mocking..on live TV about her male co-hosts genitalia size..once again had that been a man doing that he would be fired and eight balled from the news industry for life. Egypt has freedom I wish American men could get theirs.

Background on FNTT here. Click through to read this round’s contenders. The usual reminder: Comments below are abusive, insulting and may be triggering. This round in particular includes some choice rape and violence threats.

1. “THE MAN”

you bitches need to shut the hell up and do what your men say before you piss him off and then he will be forced to smack ya’ll around bit.

2. superman (website: Iamgoingtokillyoubitch.com; email: shoveitupyourcuntbitch@yahoo.com)

There is no such thing as a powerful woman writer.
ditto for all other aspects of life.
because power is a male thing bitchessssss.
:)

3. Rob (email: WomanAreOnlyGoodForSex@hotmail.com)

Woman are only good for two things. Fucking, and making food. Men are BETTER at making food, but us men have to pay for your bags, which men never buy. Necklaces, and other misc. which most straight men never buy. We also got to pay emotionally to put up with your bitching everyday. Even in my workplace I gotta put up with bitching. To be quite frank, back in the old days, cavemen speaking, we used to drag bitchs by their hair and fuck them wherever and whenever. Now bitchs don’t know their place and they only call “Fair rights” when it’s in their favor.

4. Billy Bober

IRON MY SHIRTS!!!!!!!!

5. fuck-a-feminist (email: mydickisbig@mydickisbig.cum)

aww come on rape rulez. Fucking bitches want it you know you do. Oh women are chattel, bitch.

One of the awesome things about writing about sex and relationships is that when my romantic life gets weird, I can feel extra productive about it — not just because I’m learning Exciting Life Lessons, but because it will doubtless yield an excellent column or blog post someday. Sometimes it yields a column almost immediately!

I concluded that I ought to be straightforward about this. Towards the end of the night, I made out with Mica; at one point Miss Zen appeared, kissed both of us, and then went off to do something else. I turned to Mica and told him, very seriously, that I was mostly interested in him. That I liked the Zens, but I just wasn’t into them the way I’m into him. “Is this okay?” I asked. He assured me that it was fine.

Read more by clicking here.

Q. Friend Has Revised One-Night Stand Story: A friend recently called me and said she had a one-night stand after drinking too much. She was beating herself up over drinking too much and going home with a guy she met at a bar. I reassured her that everyone makes mistakes and didn’t think much more of the account. However, since then, she has told many people that she was a victim of date-rape—that the guy must have put something into her drink . She spoke to a rape crisis line, and they said even if she was drunk, she couldn’t have given consent so she was a victim of rape. She now wants to press charges—she has the guy’s business card. I have seen her very intoxicated on previous occasions, to the point she doesn’t remember anything the next day. I’m not sure on what my response should be at this point. Pretend she never told me the original story?

A: Trying to ruin someone else’s life is a poor way to address one’s alcohol and self-control problems. Since her first version of the story is that she was ashamed of her behavior, and since you have seen her knee-walking drunk on other occasions, it sounds as if she wants to punish the guy at the bar for her own poor choices. Yes, I agree that men should not have sex with drunk women they don’t know. But I think cases like the one you are describing here—in the absence of any evidence she was drugged—where someone voluntarily goes home with a stranger in order to have a sexual encounter, makes it that much harder for women who are assaulted to bring charges. Talk to your friend. Tell her that she needs to think very long and hard about filing a criminal complaint against this guy if there’s any way her behavior could be construed to be consensual. Say you understand her shame, but you’re concerned about her drinking, and if she addresses that, she won’t find herself in such painful situations.

Oh jeez. So, here’s the thing about being sexually assaulted: It can be really really really difficult to admit that it happened. In an effort to regain control of the situation, it’s pretty common for sexual assault survivors to initially construe the situation as a “mistake,” or something that was their fault. Sometimes it takes days, or weeks, or years to process what actually happened.

So it’s not clear that this wasn’t assault just because the woman initially said it was a “mistake.” And if she was so devastated by it that she called a rape crisis center and is considering pressing charges, it sounds like there’s a little more going on here than just, “I got drunk and fucked someone unfortunate.” Also? This is how rapists target victims. A good number of rapists do use alcohol to lower their victim’s ability to refuse sex. Those rapists are enabled by a culture that refuses to believe rape is really rape “if there’s any way her behavior could be construed as consensual.” Because there are a lot of things that women do which a lot of people construe as consenting to sex — being alone with a man, drinking at all, wearing “provocative” clothes, flirting, having previous sexual relationships, working in the sex industry, and on and on and on.

If the woman in question was raped, having a close friend tell her that she’s not really a victim, that she’s doing harm to real victims, and that she brought this on herself by drinking is nothing short of devastating. And you know, filing a criminal complaint does not mean that the man goes straight to jail without passing Go. It means that the police will interview the woman and the DA’s office will decide whether or not to press charges. I don’t have a background in criminal law, but it sounds to me like this is the kind of case that would never see the inside of a courtroom, for the exact reasons Prudie specifies. Which doesn’t mean that if she wasn’t really raped, filing charges is a-ok — filing false criminal charges is pretty evil, and gets you in a lot of trouble for good reason. It does mean that wagging your finger at your friend and treating her like a dumb drunk slut is not a particularly helpful response.