Haven for the Human Amoeba

BOY GEORGE ATTRACTED TO FEMALE FRIENDS

Homosexual pop star BOY GEORGE is sexually attracted to his female friends - but refuses to stray into the "dark" world of having a romance with them.

The former CULTURE CLUB frontman prefers the intimacy derived from asexual friendships with women, because he fears sex complicates a relationship.

George, 43, says, "There is a flirtation and definitely an attraction between me and my female friends, but you can be more intimate and vulnerable with people when you remove the sexual aspect.

"Sex adds something dark to a relationship, it always complicates things.

"I share an apartment with my friend CHRISTINE, and we're like an old married couple. It's unconsummated, but we borrow each other's eyeliner."

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George, 43, says, "There is a flirtation and definitely an attraction between me and my female friends, but you can be more intimate and vulnerable with people when you remove the sexual aspect.

Boy George has certainly had his share of troubles, so I am glad that he has found some comfort with asexual romance. I guess it doesn't surprise me since, besides eyeliner, he might find that he shares values and attitudes with women. I would guess that perhaps female friendships might come easier for him.

I would like to be married or in a relationship with an Asexual. If there ever was any confusion, this means a NON-sexual relationship. I've been single for what seems like an eternity. As much as I need down time I still like someone in the house and I like sharing life with someone too.

I agree. There is something to be said for having a life partner. I have been divorced for a few years now and welcome my privacy but sharing experiences and emotions and dreams is nice. And so is seeing the growth in a person over the years, how they change and yet stay the same.

One of the first things I missed about being divorced was sleeping in an empty bed. I enjoyed the warmth and comfort of snuggling as we fell asleep. The sex was boring - a price that had to be paid. It would be nice to have a marriage with love but without sex.

Chris

I'm beginning to wonder if this proverbial "biological clock" isn't another sociological obligation that is put upon us by others rather than something everyone has to have.

I would so. There is a great deal of cultural and social pressure to have children. Doing so is the expected norm, and there is much fretting if a person strays too far from the norm.

Chris (the one in Iowa)

TV portrays Asian Americans as anti-social: study

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - A dearth of quality prime time television roles for Asian-American actors is fuelling the image of an asexual, isolated community obsessed with professional status, according to a study. Lending a twist to the usual complaints by minority groups of negative stereotyping, the report highlighted the fact that the tiny number of regular Asian American characters in TV dramas uniformly hold high status jobs, often in medicine or law enforcement.

The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, a Washington-based civil rights group that commissioned the report, said that even such apparently "positive" imagery carried inherent problems. "The truth is that our community has an equal number of people who are struggling below the poverty line," said the group's president Karen Narasaki. "They face the same problems and challenges as members of other minorities, but they don't have the same resources directed at them because of this idea that they're all high-performing graduate students," Narasaki said. Asian Americans account for about five percent of the US population but only 2.7 percent of regular prime-time television characters, according to the study, which was carried out by a team of University of California researchers. They found that characters from other ethnic backgrounds were four times as likely to have strong romantic or family relationships, implying that Asian Americans were "asexual and isolated." Such an image was reinforced, they argued, by the almost total absence of Asian American characters from prime-time situation comedies. Given that sitcoms generally feature family and domestic settings, the invisibility of Asian Americans implies they "are missing from the American social fabric, not even seen as neighbours or friends of families," the study said. "It also contributes to the inability of other Americans to connect with them as people like themselves, with the same dreams and problems," Narasaki said. The study examined the websites and one episode of each prime time series airing in the second half of 2004 on the US national broadcast networks.

Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse.

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They found that characters from other ethnic backgrounds were four times as likely to have strong romantic or family relationships, implying that Asian Americans were "asexual and isolated."

I am glad that this study was done and that its findings are being given attention. Perhaps it will result in a more well-rounded portrayl of Asian-Americans in U.S. television.

But I am bothered by the article's use of the word 'asexual'. It is not used as a positive thing, as life choice, but as a description of a stunted, unrealistic, life.

Does it bother anyone else?

Chris

I guess it is time I came out of the closet as an asexual. I think I am dating a man with a heart condition just so I can avoid sex. The whole sweaty, bodies clasped desperately, saliva, and other fluids flowing. . .wait I am starting to turn myself on. . .no seriously. . .I am a reformed sex addict, now that I understand what makes me want to hop into bed. . .I don't want to. I still have desire, but it all seems a hassle. . .just trying to figure out why someone wants to go to bed with me. . .it is all a mystery. I wonder who sent me the invite?

Aimee

Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act: answers to common questions

What is the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA)? GENDA is a bill that adds the category of gender identity and expression to the already existing New York State human rights laws. The current law makes it illegal in New York State to discriminate on the basis of age, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, sex, marital status and other categories in the areas of employment, housing, public accommodations, education and credit. This act would extend current law to ban discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression as well.

What is gender identity and expression and how does it differ from sex and sexual orientation? Gender identity and expression refer to the way people self-identify and present their masculinity and/or femininity to the world. Often, but not always, this corresponds to the person’s sex as assigned at birth, so that a person born biologically male or female often dresses, adopts a hair style, and uses a name and pronoun in ways that reflect the culturally accepted roles associated with their birth sex.

Gender variant is a term that describes anyone who differs from conventional gender norms on a regular basis, such as tomboys and feminine men.

Transgender is an umbrella term used to designate a community of people who regularly present in a gender different from the sex assigned to them at birth and who live a significant part of their lives in that gender. This includes people who have undergone medical procedures to change their sex and those who have not.

Sexual orientation refers to one’s romantic and sexual attraction. Gender variance is not in itself any indicator of sexual orientation. Just like everyone else, gender variant and transgender people may be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual or asexual.

Why is this legislation necessary? Through its Human Rights Law, New York State prohibits discrimination against groups of citizens who face widespread social hostility and unequal treatment. Unfortunately, people who present their masculinity and/or femininity in a way that differs from the stereotypical gender roles traditionally associated with their birth sex are not explicitly covered in statute, though there clearly is a need. There are many documented cases where social antagonism against gender variant (including transgender) individuals and their families, has led to many being denied and fired from a job, harassed in the workplace, faced with a “glass ceiling,” harassed and faced with eviction by their landlords, steered away from certain areas when looking for a home, denied rooms in a hotel, refused service in a restaurant, given inadequate medical care and otherwise treated as second-class citizens solely because of their gender identity and expression.

Isn’t discrimination based on gender variance already prohibited by the law No. Neither federal nor state statutes specifically ban discrimination based on gender identity and expression in employment, housing, public accommodations, credit or education. While at least two New York State courts have found local or state prohibitions on “sex,” “gender,” or “disability,” discrimination to apply to transgender people, those precedents do not necessarily apply to the full range of gender variance and are not binding on the entire state. Because sexual orientation and gender identity and expression are different, courts generally have not interpreted sexual orientation non-discrimination laws to include discrimination against transgender people.

Is there precedent for prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity and expression? Yes, in both the public and private sector. Five states have enacted similar comprehensive non-discrimination laws: California, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico and Rhode Island. Two other states (Connecticut and New Jersey) have interpreted their human rights laws as prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity and expression. Over seventy localities across the United States have also passed local gender identity and expression non-discrimination laws, including New York localities like the City of Albany, City of Buffalo, City of Ithaca, New York City, City of Rochester, Rochester School District, Suffolk County, and Tompkins County.

A growing number of private employers have adopted their own policies of gender identity and expression non-discrimination. New York companies with such a policy include American Express, Bausch & Lomb, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Eastman Kodak, Goldman Sachs, IBM, J.P. Morgan Chase, Keyspan, Lehman Brothers, MetLife, The New York Times, PepsiCo and Pfizer. The Office of the New York State Comptroller is an example of a public employer that also has a policy prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity and expression.

Do New York’s elected officials support a law prohibiting gender identity and expression? All 63 candidates, both Democrats and Republicans, endorsed by the Empire State Pride Agenda who won their races in the 2004 election cycle, stated their support for a state human rights law to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and expression in the areas of housing, public accommodations, credit, education and employment.

Would employers lose their ability to enforce dress codes or otherwise deal with disruptive behavior? No. Employers would still retain the right to enforce dress codes and require appropriate dress by employees, with the employee being required to dress according to the guidelines appropriate to the employee’s gender identity. Likewise, the law would not prevent businesses from firing transgender people who are not able to meet the requirements of their job.

Would the law require that all public bathrooms be unisex? No. Since gender identity and expression non-discrimination laws have been interpreted as requiring only reasonable accommodation for gender variant employees, employers have already successfully dealt with the issue of restroom usage on an individual basis. There has never been a reported problem regarding the security of women’s restrooms in those jurisdictions in which similar laws have been adopted.

Would the law force owners of small and family-owned businesses to hire transgender people? No. Nothing in the law would alter the exemption that already exists in the human rights law for small businesses with fewer than four employees.

Would the law apply to people renting out a room in their home? No. The current human rights law exempts single family and owner-occupied two family homes. Nothing in this law would alter that exemption.

How would the law apply to religious groups? Nothing in the law would alter the religious exemptions that already exist in the human rights law, nor would the law supersede a religious institution’s First Amendment right to hire and fire according to the tenets of its religion.

Wouldn’t the law give transgender people special rights or create a slippery slope towards banning discrimination based upon eye color, etc.? No. As with the rest of the human rights law, all this law would do is mandate equal treatment and create an equal playing field. Identifying categories within human rights laws has been how state legislatures for decades have provided for equal treatment of other groups of citizens who are treated unequally. The historical experiences of gender variant and transgender individuals in New York State include social ostracism and legal marginalization. In fact, some transgender people face multiple oppressions based on race, ethnicity, and class as well as gender identity and expression.

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To be learning something is the greatest of pleasures, not only to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind, however small their capacity for it.

--ARISTOTLE--

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Oh, I remember the fight for SONDA and the unhappiness within the transgender community that they felt excluded.

So is GENDA supposed to patch the hole in SONDA?

Does GENDA provide coverage to asexuals that SONDA does not?

What are the chances of GENDA being passed?

I just want to know if there is an asexual lady interested to commit an asexual realtionship. I am 29, white latino, brown eyes and hair, loving new age musci, outdoor activities and romantic stuff...drop me a note, I really need to find my soulmate in this crazy world. byes

"just trying to figure out why someone wants to go to bed with me"

Low self-opinion? You not them.

I guess it is time I came out of the closet as an asexual. I think I am dating a man with a heart condition just so I can avoid sex. The whole sweaty, bodies clasped desperately, saliva, and other fluids flowing. . .wait I am starting to turn myself on. . .no seriously. . .I am a reformed sex addict, now that I understand what makes me want to hop into bed. . .I don't want to. I still have desire, but it all seems a hassle. . .just trying to figure out why someone wants to go to bed with me. . .it is all a mystery. I wonder who sent me the invite?

Aimee

http://www.geocities.com/jnthnbrnnn/

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just trying to figure out why someone wants to go to bed with me. . .it is all a mystery.

LOL... I think not. You have a wry sense of humor, you photograph well... and by your own words you are highly experienced. I know plenty of men who would be attracted to yo.

I wonder who sent me the invite?

oooo.... that *is* a mystery! Perhaps we can coax this person out of hiding.

Chris

I just want to know if there is an asexual lady interested to commit an asexual realtionship.

There is a website to help asexual people find a good relationship. It is http://www.asexualove.net/

You can browse the people listed and you can add your own ad. And its totally free. :)

Chris

May 2005 question up at asexualove.net - online contributions welcomed. See here: http://www.asexualove.net/forms/community.html

Much thanks to Chris for letting bigbanlover know about the website. I haven't had a chance to check in with this group for some time.

Craig - Australia ----------www.asexualove.net---------- Asexual Personals mail@... --for asexual people on their own terms--

Sex or Gender

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 5/10/2005 "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)

In nature, male and female are distinct. She-elephants are gregarious, he-elephants solitary. Male zebra finches are loquacious - the females mute. Female green spoon worms are 200,000 times larger than their male mates. These striking differences are biological - yet they lead to differentiation in social roles and skill acquisition.

Alan Pease, author of a book titled "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps", believes that women are spatially-challenged compared to men. The British firm, Admiral Insurance, conducted a study of half a million claims. They found that "women were almost twice as likely as men to have a collision in a car park, 23 percent more likely to hit a stationary car, and 15 percent more likely to reverse into another vehicle" (Reuters).

Yet gender "differences" are often the outcomes of bad scholarship. Consider Admiral insurance's data. As Britain's Automobile Association (AA) correctly pointed out - women drivers tend to make more short journeys around towns and shopping centers and these involve frequent parking. Hence their ubiquity in certain kinds of claims. Regarding women's alleged spatial deficiency, in Britain, girls have been outperforming boys in scholastic aptitude tests - including geometry and maths - since 1988.

In an Op-Ed published by the New York Times on January 23, 2005, Olivia Judson cited this example

"Beliefs that men are intrinsically better at this or that have repeatedly led to discrimination and prejudice, and then they've been proved to be nonsense. Women were thought not to be world-class musicians. But when American symphony orchestras introduced blind auditions in the 1970's - the musician plays behind a screen so that his or her gender is invisible to those listening - the number of women offered jobs in professional orchestras increased. Similarly, in science, studies of the ways that grant applications are evaluated have shown that women are more likely to get financing when those reading the applications do not know the sex of the applicant."

On the other wing of the divide, Anthony Clare, a British psychiatrist and author of "On Men" wrote:

"At the beginning of the 21st century it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that men are in serious trouble. Throughout the world, developed and developing, antisocial behavior is essentially male. Violence, sexual abuse of children, illicit drug use, alcohol misuse, gambling, all are overwhelmingly male activities. The courts and prisons bulge with men. When it comes to aggression, delinquent behavior, risk taking and social mayhem, men win gold."

Men also mature later, die earlier, are more susceptible to infections and most types of cancer, are more likely to be dyslexic, to suffer from a host of mental health disorders, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and to commit suicide.

In her book, "Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man", Susan Faludi describes a crisis of masculinity following the breakdown of manhood models and work and family structures in the last five decades. In the film "Boys don't Cry", a teenage girl binds her breasts and acts the male in a caricatural relish of stereotypes of virility. Being a man is merely a state of mind, the movie implies.

But what does it really mean to be a "male" or a "female"? Are gender identity and sexual preferences genetically determined? Can they be reduced to one's sex? Or are they amalgams of biological, social, and psychological factors in constant interaction? Are they immutable lifelong features or dynamically evolving frames of self-reference?

In the aforementioned New York Times Op-Ed, Olivia Judson opines:

"Many sex differences are not, therefore, the result of his having one gene while she has another. Rather, they are attributable to the way particular genes behave when they find themselves in him instead of her. The magnificent difference between male and female green spoon worms, for example, has nothing to do with their having different genes: each green spoon worm larva could go either way. Which sex it becomes depends on whether it meets a female during its first three weeks of life. If it meets a female, it becomes male and prepares to regurgitate; if it doesn't, it becomes female and settles into a crack on the sea floor."

Yet, certain traits attributed to one's sex are surely better accounted for by the demands of one's environment, by cultural factors, the process of socialization, gender roles, and what George Devereux called "ethnopsychiatry" in "Basic Problems of Ethnopsychiatry" (University of Chicago Press, 1980). He suggested to divide the unconscious into the id (the part that was always instinctual and unconscious) and the "ethnic unconscious" (repressed material that was once conscious). The latter is mostly molded by prevailing cultural mores and includes all our defense mechanisms and most of the superego.

So, how can we tell whether our sexual role is mostly in our blood or in our brains?

The scrutiny of borderline cases of human sexuality - notably the transgendered or intersexed - can yield clues as to the distribution and relative weights of biological, social, and psychological determinants of gender identity formation.

The results of a study conducted by Uwe Hartmann, Hinnerk Becker, and Claudia Rueffer-Hesse in 1997 and titled "Self and Gender: Narcissistic Pathology and Personality Factors in Gender Dysphoric Patients", published in the "International Journal of Transgenderism", "indicate significant psychopathological aspects and narcissistic dysregulation in a substantial proportion of patients." Are these "psychopathological aspects" merely reactions to underlying physiological realities and changes? Could social ostracism and labeling have induced them in the "patients"?

The authors conclude:

"The cumulative evidence of our study ... is consistent with the view that gender dysphoria is a disorder of the sense of self as has been proposed by Beitel (1985) or Pfäfflin (1993). The central problem in our patients is about identity and the self in general and the transsexual wish seems to be an attempt at reassuring and stabilizing the self-coherence which in turn can lead to a further destabilization if the self is already too fragile. In this view the body is instrumentalized to create a sense of identity and the splitting symbolized in the hiatus between the rejected body-self and other parts of the self is more between good and bad objects than between masculine and feminine."

Freud, Kraft-Ebbing, and Fliess suggested that we are all bisexual to a certain degree. As early as 1910, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld argued, in Berlin, that absolute genders are "abstractions, invented extremes". The consensus today is that one's sexuality is, mostly, a psychological construct which reflects gender role orientation.

Joanne Meyerowitz, a professor of history at Indiana University and the editor of The Journal of American History observes, in her recently published tome, "How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States", that the very meaning of masculinity and femininity is in constant flux.

Transgender activists, says Meyerowitz, insist that gender and sexuality represent "distinct analytical categories". The New York Times wrote in its review of the book: "Some male-to-female transsexuals have sex with men and call themselves homosexuals. Some female-to-male transsexuals have sex with women and call themselves lesbians. Some transsexuals call themselves asexual."

So, it is all in the mind, you see.

This would be taking it too far. A large body of scientific evidence points to the genetic and biological underpinnings of sexual behavior and preferences.

The German science magazine, "Geo", reported recently that the males of the fruit fly "drosophila melanogaster" switched from heterosexuality to homosexuality as the temperature in the lab was increased from 19 to 30 degrees Celsius. They reverted to chasing females as it was lowered.

The brain structures of homosexual sheep are different to those of straight sheep, a study conducted recently by the Oregon Health & Science University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Sheep Experiment Station in Dubois, Idaho, revealed. Similar differences were found between gay men and straight ones in 1995 in Holland and elsewhere. The preoptic area of the hypothalamus was larger in heterosexual men than in both homosexual men and straight women.

According an article, titled "When Sexual Development Goes Awry", by Suzanne Miller, published in the September 2000 issue of the "World and I", various medical conditions give rise to sexual ambiguity. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), involving excessive androgen production by the adrenal cortex, results in mixed genitalia. A person with the complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) has a vagina, external female genitalia and functioning, androgen-producing, testes - but no uterus or fallopian tubes.

People with the rare 5-alpha reductase deficiency syndrome are born with ambiguous genitalia. They appear at first to be girls. At puberty, such a person develops testicles and his clitoris swells and becomes a penis. Hermaphrodites possess both ovaries and testicles (both, in most cases, rather undeveloped). Sometimes the ovaries and testicles are combined into a chimera called ovotestis.

Most of these individuals have the chromosomal composition of a woman together with traces of the Y, male, chromosome. All hermaphrodites have a sizable penis, though rarely generate sperm. Some hermaphrodites develop breasts during puberty and menstruate. Very few even get pregnant and give birth.

Anne Fausto-Sterling, a developmental geneticist, professor of medical science at Brown University, and author of "Sexing the Body", postulated, in 1993, a continuum of 5 sexes to supplant the current dimorphism: males, merms (male pseudohermaphrodites), herms (true hermaphrodites), ferms (female pseudohermaphrodites), and females.

Intersexuality (hermpahroditism) is a natural human state. We are all conceived with the potential to develop into either sex. The embryonic developmental default is female. A series of triggers during the first weeks of pregnancy places the fetus on the path to maleness.

In rare cases, some women have a male's genetic makeup (XY chromosomes) and vice versa. But, in the vast majority of cases, one of the sexes is clearly selected. Relics of the stifled sex remain, though. Women have the clitoris as a kind of symbolic penis. Men have breasts (mammary glands) and nipples.

The Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 edition describes the formation of ovaries and testes thus:

"In the young embryo a pair of gonads develop that are indifferent or neutral, showing no indication whether they are destined to develop into testes or ovaries. There are also two different duct systems, one of which can develop into the female system of oviducts and related apparatus and the other into the male sperm duct system. As development of the embryo proceeds, either the male or the female reproductive tissue differentiates in the originally neutral gonad of the mammal."

Yet, sexual preferences, genitalia and even secondary sex characteristics, such as facial and pubic hair are first order phenomena. Can genetics and biology account for male and female behavior patterns and social interactions ("gender identity")? Can the multi-tiered complexity and richness of human masculinity and femininity arise from simpler, deterministic, building blocks?

Sociobiologists would have us think so.

For instance: the fact that we are mammals is astonishingly often overlooked. Most mammalian families are composed of mother and offspring. Males are peripatetic absentees. Arguably, high rates of divorce and birth out of wedlock coupled with rising promiscuity merely reinstate this natural "default mode", observes Lionel Tiger, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. That three quarters of all divorces are initiated by women tends to support this view.

Furthermore, gender identity is determined during gestation, claim some scholars.

Milton Diamond of the University of Hawaii and Dr. Keith Sigmundson, a practicing psychiatrist, studied the much-celebrated John/Joan case. An accidentally castrated normal male was surgically modified to look female, and raised as a girl but to no avail. He reverted to being a male at puberty.

His gender identity seems to have been inborn (assuming he was not subjected to conflicting cues from his human environment). The case is extensively described in John Colapinto's tome "As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl".

HealthScoutNews cited a study published in the November 2002 issue of "Child Development". The researchers, from City University of London, found that the level of maternal testosterone during pregnancy affects the behavior of neonatal girls and renders it more masculine. "High testosterone" girls "enjoy activities typically considered male behavior, like playing with trucks or guns". Boys' behavior remains unaltered, according to the study.

Yet, other scholars, like John Money, insist that newborns are a "blank slate" as far as their gender identity is concerned. This is also the prevailing view. Gender and sex-role identities, we are taught, are fully formed in a process of socialization which ends by the third year of life. The Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 edition sums it up thus:

"Like an individual's concept of his or her sex role, gender identity develops by means of parental example, social reinforcement, and language. Parents teach sex-appropriate behavior to their children from an early age, and this behavior is reinforced as the child grows older and enters a wider social world. As the child acquires language, he also learns very early the distinction between "he" and "she" and understands which pertains to him- or herself."

So, which is it - nature or nurture? There is no disputing the fact that our sexual physiology and, in all probability, our sexual preferences are determined in the womb. Men and women are different - physiologically and, as a result, also psychologically.

Society, through its agents - foremost amongst which are family, peers, and teachers - represses or encourages these genetic propensities. It does so by propagating "gender roles" - gender-specific lists of alleged traits, permissible behavior patterns, and prescriptive morals and norms. Our "gender identity" or "sex role" is shorthand for the way we make use of our natural genotypic-phenotypic endowments in conformity with social-cultural "gender roles".

Inevitably as the composition and bias of these lists change, so does the meaning of being "male" or "female". Gender roles are constantly redefined by tectonic shifts in the definition and functioning of basic social units, such as the nuclear family and the workplace. The cross-fertilization of gender-related cultural memes renders "masculinity" and "femininity" fluid concepts.

One's sex equals one's bodily equipment, an objective, finite, and, usually, immutable inventory. But our endowments can be put to many uses, in different cognitive and affective contexts, and subject to varying exegetic frameworks. As opposed to "sex" - "gender" is, therefore, a socio-cultural narrative. Both heterosexual and homosexual men ejaculate. Both straight and lesbian women climax. What distinguishes them from each other are subjective introjects of socio-cultural conventions, not objective, immutable "facts".

In "The New Gender Wars", published in the November/December 2000 issue of "Psychology Today", Sarah Blustain sums up the "bio-social" model proposed by Mice Eagly, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University and a former student of his, Wendy Wood, now a professor at the Texas A&M University:

"Like (the evolutionary psychologists), Eagly and Wood reject social constructionist notions that all gender differences are created by culture. But to the question of where they come from, they answer differently: not our genes but our roles in society. This narrative focuses on how societies respond to the basic biological differences - men's strength and women's reproductive capabilities - and how they encourage men and women to follow certain patterns.

'If you're spending a lot of time nursing your kid', explains Wood, 'then you don't have the opportunity to devote large amounts of time to developing specialized skills and engaging tasks outside of the home'. And, adds Eagly, 'if women are charged with caring for infants, what happens is that women are more nurturing. Societies have to make the adult system work [so] socialization of girls is arranged to give them experience in nurturing'.

According to this interpretation, as the environment changes, so will the range and texture of gender differences. At a time in Western countries when female reproduction is extremely low, nursing is totally optional, childcare alternatives are many, and mechanization lessens the importance of male size and strength, women are no longer restricted as much by their smaller size and by child-bearing. That means, argue Eagly and Wood, that role structures for men and women will change and, not surprisingly, the way we socialize people in these new roles will change too. (Indeed, says Wood, 'sex differences seem to be reduced in societies where men and women have similar status,' she says. If you're looking to live in more gender-neutral environment, try Scandinavia.)" Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia. Sam Vaknin's Web site is at http://samvak.tripod.com

© 2004 Global Politician http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=702&cid=1&sid=24

Yahoo! Mail Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour

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hi, i joined the group a few weeks ago, did not

look into it much yet. i'm 29, male, in southern CA, kind of new to the

realization i belong in the group.

i'm looking for people to communicate with directly.

if interested, please reply at rjpx@... -- thanks

I love what Boy George had to say. I agree with him 100%. Sex is a dark side that I do not want. I agree that sex just complicates--- and does not satisfy---a relationship. I am attracted to women, and the attraction is sexual but I do not have any desire to screw. Of course at my age I doubt I could have intercourse without popping cialis, viagra, etc. anyway. For what it is worth, I don't use eyeliner, and I don't consider myself an homosexual man.

BOY GEORGE ATTRACTED TO FEMALE FRIENDS

Homosexual pop star BOY GEORGE is sexually attracted to his female friends - but refuses to stray into the "dark" world of having a romance with them.

The former CULTURE CLUB frontman prefers the intimacy derived from asexual friendships with women, because he fears sex complicates a relationship.

George, 43, says, "There is a flirtation and definitely an attraction between me and my female friends, but you can be more intimate and vulnerable with people when you remove the sexual aspect.

"Sex adds something dark to a relationship, it always complicates things.

"I share an apartment with my friend CHRISTINE, and we're like an old married couple. It's unconsummated, but we borrow each other's eyeliner."

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I also work with lots of people at work. It is quite stressful at times and I love the sanctuary of going home, and being alone. I am 55, and male if important. I have always (since in my middle 30s anyway) felt the way I feel.

I have been, and I still get "horny" for wanting a relationship with a woman I find attractive, and to hug, cuddle, etc. I have never been "horny" for doing the sex act. Like you, I find the act to be quite disgusting. I have never been married because I have never found anyone who does not want sex.

I am mostly introverted.

I have never been 'horny' nor have I ever found sex pleasurable. Doing the act itself disgusts me and for years I did it to satisfy the other person as I have been married twice and I didn't think I could live without being in a relationship at the time. I am a little older now (32 in case anyone wondered) and have not been in a relationship in over 6 years and quite satisfied with myself and my life as a single/unattached person. Yes, we are all different and I have seen on here and other asexual forums different 'degrees' of asexuality but this makes sense as we all are individual. BTW, can't remember who it was but I was working a stream of double shifts and had to sleep for the next double shift, but someone not long ago posted about introversion/extroversion and asexuality and wondered how others here are. One person (sorry, again I can't remember who) said they prefer their home to be theirs and leave to socialize, they don't have ppl over. This is also me. I am with ppl all day and at work (I work directly with the homeless) and when I come home I want to be alone. Alone time is also as important as "getting out", or to me anyway. If I had many days alone, I would not have a problem with it. Hope all are having a good day....

kirtleymd said:

Me again... I wanted to emphasize that I find sex pleasurable and often when I'm in a relationship (especially in the early days) I'm quite horny. It's just that if I'm not in a relationship I don't seem to have any desire for it. This is really what caused me to join the forum - to me it seemed very paradoxical, and I'm starting to get the feeling that a lot of you have paradoxical feelings! In fact, I have the impression that every one of us is quite different.

Anybody else have the same manifestation of asexuality that I'm describing?

Chris

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V V: Eternal WodehouseBOOKMARKV V / New Delhi May 21, 2005Evelyn Waugh said of him: “He created a world for the reader to live and delight in” “What ho!” I said. “What ho!” said Motty. “What ho! What ho!” “What ho! What ho! What ho!” After that, it seemed rather difficult to go with the conversation. Exchange between Motty (Lord Pershore) and Wooster, in My Man, Jeeves. “What a queer thing life is! So unlike anything else, don’t you know, if you see what I mean.” Bertie Wooster, in ibid. “Chumps make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, get a chump. Tap his forehead first, and if it rings solid, don’t hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him.” Miss Winch, in The Adventures of Sally. “(He) was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say, ‘When!’” Very Good, Jeeves. If you see the sales figures of all his books, P G Wodehouse has a huge fan club in India that keeps growing year after year. “English literature’s performing flea,” is how the Irish dramatist Sean O’Casey described him and that is what made him click here: social satire, sly wit, raucous humour glint from the same eye that centred on the upper class world of Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves. So what would you rather do—read his novels again, or his biography, which, as most biographies go, always takes an imaginative leap beyond formal records? Hence never to be completely trusted. Robert McCrum’s Wodehouse: A Life (Penguin/Viking, £20) is different: it rings true—or at least as true as the portrayal of a complex life could be. And it is beautifully written, like a fast-paced story that begins at birth, moves on the middle part, and ends with the death of the protagonist. Wodehouse comes through as just an ordinary bloke. Born in 1881, into an upper class family of colonial administrators, he was brought up in England, largely by nannies, relations and schoolmasters. His parents were away in Hong Kong—between the ages of three and 15, he saw them for barely for six months! Deprived of parental affections, he substituted them with sport and animals. (He had half-a-dozen each of dogs and cats in his Long Island mansion.) Schooling was a big relief. He went to Dulwich College (Raymond Chandler was his contemporary), where he learnt classics and the finer points of English grammar, and took to athletics. All the same he kept to himself and remained withdrawn—a characteristic that remained with him all his life. Unlike young men of his class and circumstances, he couldn’t go up to Oxford because his father, inexplicably, suddenly went broke. To begin with, Wodehouse joined Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, which he hated and soon enough found refuge in writing, first about things he knew—school, life in the bank—and then an invented version of the Edwardian world in which he had spent his formative years. It was this imaginary world that Wodehouse inhabited and which was to give so much pleasure to millions of readers, especially in India. Probably because of a lonely childhood, Wodehouse remained a loner and detached from things and most people. But there were three exceptions: first, his writing: “I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going,” he said in his Paris Review interview in 1975. Second, was his wife, Ethel, and third his adopted daughter, Leonara, whom he adored. Leonara’s death in 1944 from a routine operation was a blow from which he never recovered. (“I thought she was immortal,” was all he said when he got the news.) He went deeper into his shell, buttoned-up, acutely conscious of money even when “the wolf was no longer at the door”. Strangely, he was never funny in conversation, even as he gave hours of sheer fun in his novels.

There are two aspects of the Wodehouse personality that still intrigue. First, his love life. Wodehouse was not a homosexual but he was clearly asexual; sex was not his thing. Ethel and he had separate bedrooms from the first day and this pattern of “together but apart” was maintained right through their lives. This does not mean, McCrum says, that he was not capable of love; it simply means that he was “aworldly”, that is, he was not interested in what was going on around him.

This brings us to his frivolous radio broadcasts from Berlin when he was an intern in a German camp, which led to accusations of Nazi collusion. The British government didn’t think them funny at a time when German concentration camps were filling up with British nationals, though Wodehouse thought them to be innocent fun. Probably they were, but to many they were in sheer bad taste. Wodehouse was ostracised and that finally drove him away to America. Looking back at the whole episode, all you could say is that being apolitical and “aworldly” Wodehouse was just an innocent soul who thought life was just one big joke.

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But my bf is. I'm with him for the last 15yrs of my life.

To make the long story short, we are not having sex for the last 4 yrs.

Makes me crazy....

I'm normal, he's not.

I came here to see if anyone has something to share with me, why somebody chooses to be like that, or if it is a desease, or if there is suffering envolved.

Anyway, I'm still with him despite his condition.

Now i'm kind of the same, since I do not have anyone else in my life, but I wish I had...

Please reply

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How can you call yourself normal and him not when you choose to stick with a relationship that doesn't work? If your b/f chooses to abstain from sex, then by extension so do you by refusing to leave him.

I think you've got self-esteem issues. Why is he the one with the problem? I think you're the one who isn't normal. You're sticking with some one whom you view as inferior just to feel better about yourself.

But my bf is. I'm with him for the last 15yrs of my life.

To make the long story short, we are not having sex for the last 4 yrs.

Makes me crazy....

I'm normal, he's not.

I came here to see if anyone has something to share with me, why somebody chooses to be like that, or if it is a desease, or if there is suffering envolved.

Anyway, I'm still with him despite his condition.

Now i'm kind of the same, since I do not have anyone else in my life, but I wish I had...

Please reply

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But my bf is. I'm with him for the last 15yrs of my life.

To make the long story short, we are not having sex for the last 4 yrs.

Makes me crazy....

I'm normal, he's not.

I came here to see if anyone has something to share with me, why somebody chooses to be like that, or if it is a desease, or if there is suffering envolved.

He is normal for himself. You need to get a divorce and find someone who suits your needs better. You and he can still be friends.

It's not a "choice", it's a lifestyle.

It's not a disease, it's healthy.

There's no suffering.

Therese Shellabarger - Civis Mundi - tlshell@...

It could be a simple hormonal imbalance, a side effect of depression (and/or anti-depression medications), or it could be a symptom of relationship problems.

Or it could be just the way he is.

No it's not a disease, nor painful, nor all that abnormal (It's not common, but it's not uncommon either)

Have you talked to him about the issue?

But my bf is. I'm with him for the last 15yrs of my life.

To make the long story short, we are not having sex for the last 4 yrs.

Makes me crazy....

I'm normal, he's not.

I came here to see if anyone has something to share with me, why somebody chooses to be like that, or if it is a desease, or if there is suffering envolved.

Anyway, I'm still with him despite his condition.

Now i'm kind of the same, since I do not have anyone else in my life, but I wish I had...

Please reply

VerylostBB

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Hi .

Thank you for replying...

Just FTR, I'm 43 now and we get together when I was, 28. We are both brazilians and he now is 40.

Yes, we talked about it, since the beginning I noticed that he was not very found of sex, but i think i thought i could get him inspired, or something... I have my sex life in order, I always love to make love...

Did not work obviously, all these years we have had very little sex, and the talks that we had and reactions were always diferent, in diferent stages of our life.

For the last years he assumed that he has a problem, he called stress, we did try to be away from each other for almost two years, I was then with somebody, that made me feel woman and live again, although the relationship was based in sex only, I think was becuz I was craving that so much....That guy was not for me anyway and I left him.

When my bf was living by himself he tried to sleep with a bunch of girls , with no sucess, an ex-roomate told me details, that he had to masturbate all of them he could not get erection, but he tried...

We talked about this also, and he cried, he said for me to wait , that he will get better... I mention many , many times that he needs to see a doctor or psycanalist or something... we do not have the money and also I think he does not believe on this stuff...

I know i used the "normal' thing term but I know I have also problems, just want to understand what happened on the way here, I lost myself completely, I cannot leave him, I do feel sorry for him, I do feel sorry for me , I do not want to betray him, sometimes a "joke" with him that I will do that and he looks like a lost soul....

A strange tought always comes to my mind, that if I do not have sex with no one, I'm an abstinent , even though I do not want to be one, this prevent me from AIDS and other deseases...Is that so crazy to think??

I know my strory sounds absurd, and I do not tell this to no one, my mom knows, he knows, that roomate of him knew something was wrong but not exactly what, and now you people...

I will think about all the things that you said, thank you for your honesty....

VeryLostBB

It could be a simple hormonal imbalance, a side effect of depression (and/or anti-depression medications), or it could be a symptom of relationship problems.

Or it could be just the way he is.

No it's not a disease, nor painful, nor all that abnormal (It's not common, but it's not uncommon either)

Have you talked to him about the issue?

But my bf is. I'm with him for the last 15yrs of my life.

To make the long story short, we are not having sex for the last 4 yrs.

Makes me crazy....

I'm normal, he's not.

I came here to see if anyone has something to share with me, why somebody chooses to be like that, or if it is a desease, or if there is suffering envolved.

Anyway, I'm still with him despite his condition.

Now i'm kind of the same, since I do not have anyone else in my life, but I wish I had...

Please reply

VerylostBB

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