Haven for the Human Amoeba

Hi Jay....I said this in a playful way, but you're right. People who think sex is ridiculous, demeaning, or nasty, should say so!!

X.

Sorry, I don't have your E-mail. Can I quote you in my article as saying "For Valentine's Day, I plan to love myself just as I do every day"?

-BRC

This is the final copy of my asexuality article. Hope it's ok with everyone..

Every species on the planet has members who, for whatever reason, never get it on. Humans are no exception, weve been not having sex for about as long as weve been having it, but it has only recently been acknowledged that some people simply do not experience sexual attraction. How recently? As little as a year ago the local campus militant flaming asexual (yours truly) had, after about 4 years of looking, failed to find so much as one other asexual out there. Over the past year the number has jumped to around 100. This may not be impressive to those of you accustomed to running into droves of your sexual brethren on a daily basis, but take into account the difficulty of building a community around something that has been considered nonexistant. Only those asexual people who have been together enough to recognize their sexual identity, creative enough to derive an understanding of it completely from scratch, economically capable enough to access the internet and lucky enough to happen upon one of the few asexuality sites out there and outgoing enough to make contact can be counted. Despite these obstacles the rate at which asexual people are appearing is increasing rapidly, with 5 new people in this past week. Due to some odd combination of social factors it seems that a new sexual orientation is emerging not from the closet but from the woodwork.

The emerging group of asexual people is extremely diverse, coming from a wide variety of backgrounds with an even wider set of opinions on what exactly asexuality is. In the Haven for the Human Amoeba, the Internets largest asexual discussion group, the members range in location from Arizona to Australia, and range in age from 16 to 60. Everyone seems to agree that asexual people do not experience sexual attraction and dont feel compelled to form sexual relationships, but outside of that its open territory. Some asexual people experience sex drive, some dont, some date, some dont. Some identify with queer communities, some say they are oriented to like a specific gender, some kiss, some have sexual experience (which they havent enjoyed), some want to have children. Some dont. Most asexual people agree that asexuality is a matter of degree. That is to say that there is a full spectrum of sexual intensity, of how sexual people are, and asexual people just happen to be towards the bottom of it.

So what will asexual people be up to this Valentines day? Probably the same things as most of the single people here at Wes, in fact in micro chasms around the world asexual people may be starting to change what Valentines day means. As one asexual from Atlanta puts it for Valentine's Day, I plan to love myself just as I do every day. For asexual people the barriers between sexual romantic love and nonsexual platonic love are almost nonexistent, and those who celebrate Valentines day seem to do so by celebrating love in a much broader sense than simple romance. Romantic love, which is generally associated with sexual monogamy and sexual affection, is being freshly examined and redefined from an asexual perspective. Asexuality implies that sex is not necessary, a simple idea which could radically alter the way that we think about love.

I don't know, can anyone here imagine the Asexual version of Will and Grace? I'd rather not see it happen.

Ok, Platonicpimp, I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not so I'll risk looking like a fool. Will and Grace, it seems, is the prime examples out there of asexuality in the mass media (not directly, its an implied batman-robin type thing.) It is, after all, about a primary nonsexual relationship. Sexual relationships appear, come and go but the nonsexual relationship always seems to take precedence. This is something that they're always struggling with, how much are they going to let their relationship become like a marraige and how much are they going to hold out for some primary sexual relationship to come along? There have been some markedly asexual issues coming up in the mass media as of late, Will and Grace is one example (about the closest you can get to a sitcom about asexual people for a populous who doesn't know what asexuality is). There's a(rather crappy looking) movie called "Forty days and forty nights" scheduled to come out sometime soon which focuses pretty directly on nonsexual versus sexual intimacy. Either there are some closeted asexuals speckled around hollywood or the issue of asexuality is for some reason working itself into the social subconscious (it would explain the burst in asexual activity over the past year. See my article.) Can anyone think of any other examples? I don't watch that much TV...

"Queer as Folk" hinged around a nonsexual relationship (allbeit one with sexual tension)

"X-Files", for about as long as they could hold out before the fans beat down their door...

Ok, Platonicpimp, I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not so I'll risk looking like a fool. Will and Grace, it seems, is the prime examples out there of asexuality in the mass media (not directly, its an implied batman-robin type thing.) It is, after all, about a primary nonsexual relationship. Sexual relationships appear, come and go but the nonsexual relationship always seems to take precedence. This is something that they're always struggling with, how much are they going to let their relationship become like a marraige and how much are they going to hold out for some primary sexual relationship to come along? There have been some markedly asexual issues coming up in the mass media as of late, Will and Grace is one example (about the closest you can get to a sitcom about asexual people for a populous who doesn't know what asexuality is). There's a(rather crappy looking) movie called "Forty days and forty nights" scheduled to come out sometime soon which focuses pretty directly on nonsexual versus sexual intimacy. Either there are some closeted asexuals speckled around hollywood or the issue of asexuality is for some reason working itself into the social subconscious (it would explain the burst in asexual activity over the past year. See my article.) Can anyone think of any other examples? I don't watch that much TV...

"Queer as Folk" hinged around a nonsexual relationship (allbeit one with sexual tension)

"X-Files", for about as long as they could hold out before the fans beat down their door...

Ok, Platonicpimp, I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not so I'll risk looking like a fool. Will and Grace, it seems, is the prime examples out there of asexuality in the mass media (not directly, its an implied batman-robin type thing.) It is, after all, about a primary nonsexual relationship. Sexual relationships appear, come and go but the nonsexual relationship always seems to take precedence. This is something that they're always struggling with, how much are they going to let their relationship become like a marraige and how much are they going to hold out for some primary sexual relationship to come along? There have been some markedly asexual issues coming up in the mass media as of late, Will and Grace is one example (about the closest you can get to a sitcom about asexual people for a populous who doesn't know what asexuality is). There's a(rather crappy looking) movie called "Forty days and forty nights" scheduled to come out sometime soon which focuses pretty directly on nonsexual versus sexual intimacy. Either there are some closeted asexuals speckled around hollywood or the issue of asexuality is for some reason working itself into the social subconscious (it would explain the burst in asexual activity over the past year. See my article.) Can anyone think of any other examples? I don't watch that much TV...

"Queer as Folk" hinged around a nonsexual relationship (allbeit one with sexual tension)

"X-Files", for about as long as they could hold out before the fans beat down their door...

I'm not sure if this counts, but Ally on the "Ally McBeal" show just became a mother last week without going through pregnancy. Her character had donated some eggs to some science lab ten years ago for money and a guy bought her eggs. Last week, a ten year old girl showed up on her door who was *genetically* her child. Parenthood without the sex :o)

I'm not sure if this counts, but Ally on the "Ally McBeal" show just became a mother last week without going through pregnancy. Her character had donated some eggs to some science lab ten years ago for money and a guy bought her eggs. Last week, a ten year old girl showed up on her door who was *genetically* her child. Parenthood without the sex :o)

So only celibrat, montgomery-ericson and wagonboy showed up to the organizing meeting tonight, but we had an interesting discussion. I'm going to post the meeting minutes to try and entice everyone to come to our next meeting, which is at 9pm EST on thursday next week.

Mintes-

Intro- we agree that we want to form a group dedicated to increasing asexual visibility and to get people to question their sexually-centered views about thinkgs like intimacy.

We brainstorm about how to accomplish this. People at the meeting agree to write personal testimonials sometime this week and post them on the forum. The goal is to get a personal testimonial archive on AVEN with a wide variety of personal stories.

Other ideas include creating a survey for the people in the club to get a better sense of what asexuality looks like across the board, writing articles for any local groups who might be interested and organizing a mass write-in to sex colunmists.

We discuss how to talk about asexuality in articles and discussions. The key is to make asexuality both legitimate and interesting. Asexuality can be proven to be legitimate by talking about instances of asexuality in other species in nature and by discussing a "spectrum" of sexual intensity. Asexuality is isnteresting (and relevant to sexual people) because it provides an enlightening perspective on sexual relationships. Discussing asexuality is like discussing sexuality in the abstract (and vice-versa.)

Next meeting on thursday the 21st at 9PM EST.

Note:

I had technical difficulties with Yahoo! Chat. After a couple of hours of effort, removal of some browsers and installation of others, etcetera, and 3 New Castle Brown Ales, I discovered that Netscape 4.79 worked the best for me. By the way, I had loaded Netscape 6 previously with Netscape 6, and I believe that 6 may have changed some settings which did not allow me to use Netscape 4.79. Removal of Netscape 6 apparently solved my problems. On Yahoo! Help, there is apparently some issues with Yahoo! Chat and Netscape 6.

Don't me ask about Internet Explorer. I removed IE from my computer completely. Reinstalled IE 5.5 and Yahoo! Chat still did not work correctly. I had IE 6.0 before. It did not work correctly as well.

I would recommend that on the day before the next session try using the Yahoo! Chat yourself to see if your browser actually works correctly.

Note:

I had technical difficulties with Yahoo! Chat. After a couple of hours of effort, removal of some browsers and installation of others, etcetera, and 3 New Castle Brown Ales, I discovered that Netscape 4.79 worked the best for me. By the way, I had loaded Netscape 6 previously with Netscape 6, and I believe that 6 may have changed some settings which did not allow me to use Netscape 4.79. Removal of Netscape 6 apparently solved my problems. On Yahoo! Help, there is apparently some issues with Yahoo! Chat and Netscape 6.

Don't me ask about Internet Explorer. I removed IE from my computer completely. Reinstalled IE 5.5 and Yahoo! Chat still did not work correctly. I had IE 6.0 before. It did not work correctly as well.

I would recommend that on the day before the next session try using the Yahoo! Chat yourself to see if your browser actually works correctly.

Here's the link:

<a href=http://www.geocities.com/gcloci/Preference.html target=new>http://www.geocities.com/gcloci/Preference.html</a>

Tell me if the page looks weird. At home it looks fine, but at work, my home page looks scattered. This page looks okay at work.

Here's the link:

<a href=http://www.geocities.com/gcloci/Preference.html target=new>http://www.geocities.com/gcloci/Preference.html</a>

Tell me if the page looks weird. At home it looks fine, but at work, my home page looks scattered. This page looks okay at work.

May anyone on the forums quote these testimonials for the purpose of promoting asexual visibility?

Platonicpimp - You can quote mine.

X - Thanks for the feedback. The graphic is supposed to be kind of transparent, but that's okay if it sits sometimes. (I'll have to "tweak" it some more later.)

So only celibrat, montgomery-ericson and wagonboy showed up to the organizing meeting tonight, but we had an interesting discussion. I'm going to post the meeting minutes to try and entice everyone to come to our next meeting, which is at 9pm EST on thursday next week.

Mintes-

Intro- we agree that we want to form a group dedicated to increasing asexual visibility and to get people to question their sexually-centered views about thinkgs like intimacy.

We brainstorm about how to accomplish this. People at the meeting agree to write personal testimonials sometime this week and post them on the forum. The goal is to get a personal testimonial archive on AVEN with a wide variety of personal stories.

Other ideas include creating a survey for the people in the club to get a better sense of what asexuality looks like across the board, writing articles for any local groups who might be interested and organizing a mass write-in to sex colunmists.

We discuss how to talk about asexuality in articles and discussions. The key is to make asexuality both legitimate and interesting. Asexuality can be proven to be legitimate by talking about instances of asexuality in other species in nature and by discussing a "spectrum" of sexual intensity. Asexuality is isnteresting (and relevant to sexual people) because it provides an enlightening perspective on sexual relationships. Discussing asexuality is like discussing sexuality in the abstract (and vice-versa.)

Next meeting on thursday the 21st at 9PM EST.

Say what ???

How did the eggs get fertilized?

Is the child hers?

Where did you get this wild story?

This is way, way weird!!!

jay

> I'm not sure if this counts,

> but Ally on the "Ally McBeal"

> show just became a mother last

> week without going through pregnancy.

> Her character had donated some eggs

> to some science lab ten years ago

> for money and a guy bought her

> eggs. Last week, a ten year old

> girl showed up on her door who was

> *genetically* her child.

> Parenthood without the sex :o)

Hey folks! During our chat meeting last night, we thought it would be nice to create a poll/survey. I remembered that this is very easy to do in a "Yahoo Group" so I volunteered to investigate and create a "Group" if necessary. Here is the link to this new group:

<a href=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aha_amoebas/ target=new>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aha_amoebas/</a>

I haven't created a poll yet because I haven't come up with any questions yet, but maybe one of you can join it and create one. The option is on the side bar in that group (listed as "polls").

I was under the impression that Yahoo was going to convert all Yahoo clubs to groups...anybody know anything about that?

X.

Hey folks! During our chat meeting last night, we thought it would be nice to create a poll/survey. I remembered that this is very easy to do in a "Yahoo Group" so I volunteered to investigate and create a "Group" if necessary. Here is the link to this new group:

<a href=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aha_amoebas/ target=new>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aha_amoebas/</a>

I haven't created a poll yet because I haven't come up with any questions yet, but maybe one of you can join it and create one. The option is on the side bar in that group (listed as "polls").

I wonder whether it would be possible to put the chat-meetings on friday or saturday (evening). I'm a European, so there is quite a lot of time shift. 9PM EST is in the middle of the night for me. If it's a friday or a saturday, I can join the chat-meeting. In the week, this is impossible for me.