This post is mainly in response to Pretzelboy’s comment on my last post, which my reply to got so long that I could not fit it into a comment. His comment is as follows:

First of all, I think you bring up some good points, and I understand why you take issue with my post. However, I think you misunderstood my arguments, so I will try to explain as clearly as I possibly can. Forgive me if I sound overly pedantic or harsh, as I am only attempting to be as rigorous as possible in my explanation, so that I may be easily understood. I am not offended by what you (or anyone) has said.

I realize there is a certain dominant viewpoint both on AVEN and within the transgender communities that people should “be allowed to identify however they want to.” I’ll agree with that (after all, how can anyone really stop someone from identifying in a way that they want to, anyway? It’s kind of an empty phrase, isn’t it?), but what I absolutely do not agree with is the idea that people should expect to believe whatever they want to without being questioned. The idea that people should never question another person’s identity is deeply problematic, to me. I understand it is rooted in the frustration of having an identity that is not accepted by society, and having to constantly explain why it makes sense to others. It’s draining for me, too. But that doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t question me or ask for an explanation when they judge that what I am saying does not make sense.

The problem with this idea that people shouldn’t “be judged” is that it is anti-criticism, and makes no distinction between what is constructive and what is destructive. I think it is incompatible with intellectualism, because it discourages open and productive discussion. It shapes itself into a moral belief that quickly becomes a taboo. But the taboo, I think, is more destructive than whatever might actually be said, because it discourages reason. It leads to censorship, and that leads to stagnation. In a situation where this taboo is enforced by the state or the church, it can lead to some pretty serious consequences (think Galileo and the Spanish Inquisition). And if mideival times have taught us anything, it should be this: that way lies darkness. That way lies madness.

I do not believe that any kind of debate or argument is like war. I do not believe that failure to accept another person’s word that they use to describe their experience constitutes an “attack” on that person. I am not saying these things to be hurtful. I do not think it is worthwhile to accept other people’s identities no matter what–in some cases it is truly immoral to do that, in fact, because leaving things unquestioned leads to greater harm than good. To be clear, I am talking about “acceptance” as in accepting something as a truth. I can accept the fact that you DO believe such and such, but not believe that claim is true personally. The fact of the matter is that there is truth, and there is false. Identity claims are just as subject to that as everything else, even if some things are experienced internally, and therefore cannot necessarily be proven or disproven. Now, you may say that gender is one of these things that can be neither proven nor disproven, and for some gender identities this is so.  Some claims are illogical and therefore unsound. If you claim that you are a purple monkey when there is very clear evidence that you are not, it is not immoral for me to disbelieve your claim; it is reasonable. Is it immoral for me to SAY that I disbelieve it, because it will hurt you that I do not accept the same truth? I don’t believe that either.

Say a man is suffering from a delusion that he is a superhero, and can do superhuman things like fly and stop speeding cars. Is it an “attack” on his identity if a therapist tries to persuade him that he is not really a superhero? No. There is no intention to harm there. In fact, it would be very beneficial in that case if he succeeds, because it would prevent the man from suffering an untimely death. This is an extreme example, and I am not saying that it is similar to this situation. I am using this example to point out that it is possible to not accept someone’s identity without intention to harm or hurt the person. I am not saying any of these things with the intention of hurting other people, although I accept that it is going to happen anyway. I am saying it with the intention of IMPROVING the situation by helping people to come up with a term to describe themselves that is not essentially a logical fallacy. Because if people use terms to describe themselves that are clear and logical, if their identities are not founded upon words that cannot apply to the situation, then it is much more likely that other people will be able to accept their identities, and in the long run, reduce hurt feelings all around.

In some cases–in this case, perhaps, if you (general you) are really so attached to the word “agender”–maybe the identity IS being invalidated, but I think that actually, in the way that most people use it, that term can only apply to identity claims that are valid in the first place. So if your identity claim is really valid (sound would be a better word for it though since it encompasses true/false as well as validity), you could claim that I am invalidating it, but if it is actually not valid, then you could still claim that I am invalidating it, but that would not be a true claim. If that is the case, it would actually be better to re-examine your identity, wouldn’t it? But really, you can dismiss my claim as an “invalidation” of someone’s identity, but dismissing it as such does not prove that the identity in question is valid in the first place. It does not disprove my argument that it is not. So I ask you, how is this claim valid?

I want to make a very important distinction: a person’s EXPERIENCE is separate from their IDENTITY. I am not trying to invalidate or attack anybody’s experience, here.* What I take issue with is the terms that they use to describe that experience. The word agender is extremely confusing, and its use is essentially absurd (for reasons I will explain). There are many other terms which would constitute a better description of the experience (or rather, experiences, because it is clear that there is more than one being described, here).

* In fact, it is not possible to invalidate someone’s experience, because judgements of valid or invalid cannot apply to experiences, only to arguments. I have problems with the terms “valid” and “invalid” being used incorrectly, because they are technical terms and most people do not use them as such. An argument is valid if, on the assumption that all of its premises are true, its conclusion must be true as well. An argument is sound if it is both valid and all of its premises are true.

My argument is about semantics and logic, not about what concepts and experiences are actually meant to be represented (although yes, I argue that from what I can gather, those experiences are not being represented accurately). Further, I am not doing this because the agender identity “threatens” other trans people’s identities. I don’t think some people calling themselves agender is at all a threat to C’s identity as a woman (as she pointed out in her own comment, she does not actually identify as a transgender person–that term as it applies to her is a descriptor, not an identity), and it would be silly to claim that it is. Her identity is pretty solid, and the general idea that one person’s identity can threaten another person’s identity seems pretty far-fetched to me. Maybe you took my comparison with the trendy bisexuals argument a little too far, I don’t know. Still… where I see the harm coming into play when it comes to using the term agender is that it is a very confusing and misleading term. It should not be accepted and circulated because it misrepresents what it is trying to express. If there is a harm it represents for C, that harm comes from the circulation of ideas that impede any understanding she might otherwise get from other people, and it is not just a threat to her, but it is a threat to the ENTIRE trans community, as well as the people who identify as agender themselves (whether they are to be considered part of the trans community or not).

I think you have misunderstood my model of gender identity as well. I describe it as a spetrum because, quite frankly, it IS a spectrum, in that it is a smooth transition from one pole to the other with no clear lines or boundaries. But I am not quite certain where you got the idea that my model of it is one-dimensional, as I did refer to two distinct dimensions which are roughly the same as the Storms model (at least, the modified version from apositive with no markings on it, since again, it is a spectrum). I think you are understanding “agender” in a totally different way than I am, and I attempt to illustrate my understanding of it below.

The way you seem to understand it, “agender” means the gray edge of the illustration. That is very much an asexual perspective, is it not? On the Storms model, that’s where asexuality is (and yes, I realize it is a little bit different, but those differences are minimal), so of course it would be intuitive for an asexual person to understand “agender” as being there, too. That’s probably why so many asexuals create that neologism independently of each other, and of any knowledge of whether or not it already exists, and why they seem so willing to embrace the term.

However! You also point out that all of my arguments are similar to those used by sexual people who do not understand asexuality and cannot accept it as a real identity–a fact that did not escape me when I was writing the post. I chuckled to myself and thought, “Well, yes, I certainly do understand why it’s not making sense to them!” Is the reason why you pointed it out because of an assumption that I would find it troubling? I don’t because although the structure is similar, there is a clear distinction between these two cases. That, and as I said before, I think it is RIGHT that people’s identities should be questioned if they seem unreasonable. In all my dealings with M, difficult though they were to endure, I couldn’t fault him for questioning my identity claim. It was perfectly reasonable that he should do so. The burden of proof was absolutely on me, and I failed to make a clear case. However, that he would, in the end, dismiss all the evidence as a pathology–that was unreasonable.

The difference between (some) sexuals’ perspective on asexuality and ours is that when they say “sexual” they are thinking about many aspects of sexuality, whereas we have a clear and specific frame of reference. We understand asexuality in the context of whether or not one feels sexual attraction. They don’t know that we are not saying that we have no genitalia, or that we have no ability to engage in sexual behavior, or no ability to enjoy it, ever. They don’t have this specific reference anchoring their understanding. But asexuality makes sense when you understand that there is a specific context (the level of sexual attraction), which is, while perhaps not easily quantifiable and not always static, at least relatively clear.

But in the case of the word “agender,” that model does not work. It does not work because we are not talking about attraction anymore. We are talking about IDENTITY, and this creates a semantic paradox. My dislike of the the word stems from a logical contradiction that the word creates. Observe:

1. To claim “I am x” is to claim an identity, if x is an identity label.
2. “Agender” is a gender identity label (as used in the context of an agender person calling themself trans).
3. A gender identity label is meant to express or describe a gender identity.
4. If someone uses a gender identity label, this means that they have a gender identity. (1, 3)
5. To claim “I am agender” is to claim to have a gender identity. (1-4)
6. “Agender” means “without gender identity.”**
7. To claim “I am agender” is to claim not to have a gender identity. (6)
8. This is a contradiction. (5, 7)
—–
Therefore, claiming to be agender is absurd.

** In case this needs further unpacking, I derive this from comments like this one, made here by mad_scientist: “The definitions change between groups, but I think around there, it’s accepted that agender (or genderless) is no gender identity.” Then that was echoed by the next poster, who seemed to share some of my own reservations with the term. And yes, this argument deals with only one definition of the word, but this is the definition that seems most appropriate to me given the individual parts that the word is constructed from. I will address the other definitions later on.

Given the premises of this argument (specifically 6 & 7), it should now be clear why in my illustration, there is a point outside of the spectrum which represents agender. What someone who is claiming to be agender is claiming: that they are both outside the model of gender, and inside it at the same time. It is not logical to claim this.

It WOULD be logical to claim not to have a gender identity IF we lived on a planet with no concept of gender (I believe the inhabitants of any such planet would necessarily have a form of reproduction that is not sexual  as well, but that is a different argument, and barely relevant). But if there is no concept of gender, there can be no claims one way or the other about it. Nobody would take a stance on gender because it would not exist. It would only be logical to assert a gender identity label if introduced to the concept by a species which does have different genders (and different sexes).

C pointed out another case in which it might be logical to claim not to have a gender identity: that is, the case of a sentient robot, which is non-humanoid and not made to emulate a human gender in any way. In this case, though–in both cases, really–”agender” could not be classified as a gender identity. It would instead be a descriptor, something which is applied to the being from an outside source.

Neither one of these circumstances is the case, here–and if it is true that some of you are aliens and robots, well. That’s an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, so why haven’t you stepped up, yet? Some may feel that is their metaphorical reality, and indeed asexuals in particular are inclined to compare themselves to aliens (and proof of this is currently emblazoned right on AVEN’s front page, with Omnes et Nihil’s excellent post about Planet Asexual). And sometimes robots or androids too (Data, even though he is less relevant when it comes to gender, and WALL-E). But it is only metaphorical. Asexuals are not really aliens. There are humans who are asexual. There are animals who are asexual, too. There is significant evidence that this is a natural phenomenon, and the only reason why asexuals feel so alienated is because of society’s assumption that it is not so, that all humans (and animals) feel sexual attraction.

There is not so much evidence that humans can be so far removed from gender. One thing that differs here from the case of asexuality is that asexuality specifically refers to ONE CLEARLY DEFINED dimension of sexuality, which is level of sexual attraction. But gender is a HUGE thing, and gender is also an insidious thing. It is part nature, part nurture; part of it is rooted in the subconscious, and part of it is an ideal that people consciously aspire to achieve (many ideals, actually, all of them different). And as so many cisgendered people have demonstrated time and time again, being gendered requires no actual understanding of what this gender thing is all about. To claim to be so totally removed from it is, in my view, a pretty extraordinary claim, which is much, much bigger than the claim asexuality makes. How can it be that agender people are completely outside the box? Humans are consumed within it. And the fact that “agender” is considered a gender identity indicates to me that people who identify as such are actually not so completely outside the conceptual box after all. And to anyone who thinks they are: you are the one making the claim that you are, and you are the one who must find proof to support your claim. If you can find none, you should not be surprised that there are people out there who find it difficult to believe you.

(And by the way, if anyone says they have the soul of an alien, that’s awesome. You should totally go sign up at Something Awful and start a thread about it!)

But EVEN IF we were to ignore the contradiction and say that it is a logical claim (to do so, we must accept that it does not and cannot mean to have no gender identity, but instead simply means that the identity refers to a weak identification with gender concepts as presented to a person by society–which does not encompass the full range of gender–see my reply to Sea), where exactly would agendered people fit on the model? It seems like they could pretty much put themselves anywhere except areas which are pretty clearly female, and areas which are pretty clearly male. It’s not clear because the definition is not clear. It conflates two (or three?) different meanings. Remember AVENwiki’s definition that states that agender and gender-neutral are synonyms? And this thread where one poster said that it can be a synonym for gender neutral, or a synonym for genderless, or a synonym for neutrois?

Well, which is it? What the heck is this term *actually* referring to, here? It can’t be all three at once! And why would anyone want to accept it, if it is that vague? If you look at that thread supposedly explaining it, nobody has a clear explanation. And the fact that only two people even bothered to try is somewhat telling, isn’t it? Plus, that third poster expressed a desire to avoid the term. If a term is so confusing that people are actively avoiding using it, what good is it doing?

Personally, I think that a term is only useful if it is clear, specific, logical, and fills a void (if it is a neologism). If another term can explain something better than the one you’re using… shouldn’t you consider adopting that term instead? There are a number of other terms which have already been created and seem to fit better–not necessarily the same term for each person, of course, but still, I cannot imagine a case where there ISN’T a term that fits better. And if there’s not a term for it already, I’m SURE there’s a better way to describe it than a way which creates a paradox like that. Come on, people, you can do it!

Might I suggest, instead of genderless, gender-clueless? After all, it does seem to be what all these descriptions of what it’s like to be agender are getting at, what with all the “I don’t have any concept of genders” and the “why are people so convinced gender exists?” doesn’t it?

But seriously, I think the trans community already has a TON of very vague and misleading terms to deal with, including, perhaps, even “gender identity” itself. Let’s not add one more, shall we?

And you know, I really want to address the idea of gender identity being a choice or not a choice here, I really do, but I think now’s not the time. Still, it’s a good topic to bring up, and the main reason why I labeled my model a *simplified* model of gender identity. On that note, this is what C said to me this morning about gender models: “I’m also trying to imaging a 3-d chart for gender and I think at the top and bottom it’s gonna be goat and alien gas monster, respectively.” I just thought it was a humorous comment that will perhaps show that she’s not as grumbly as she seems to be. In fact, I suspect that if she ever did troll AVEN, she’d be too cute and goofy about it for anyone to actually take her seriously.

And finally, I’d like to say thanks very much for taking the time to have a discussion with me about this, especially since it’s kind of a brave move. Not a whole lot of people seem to be willing to jump in on it right now! (I know you’re all reading this! ) Can’t really blame them for it, but anyway, I appreciate a good discussion where I can get it, especially with someone whose opinion I respect so much!

This might be a post which will generate some heated debate, maybe make some people start to hate me, but you know what, guys? I fucking hate the word “agender.”

I see people calling themselves this fairly often in the asexual community–in fact, roughly 18% of the respondents to my survey on asexuality and gender said they do identify with the term. If you type it in on google, the very first result is a post on AVEN. The next is AVENwiki. All the others are unrelated definitions: the name of some calendar tool, the name of a support group for transgender individuals, half of the name of a group that seems to be of feminist bent, a typo. None of them actually even give the word a definition at all–it’s just a mish-mash of “gender” and “agenda” that makes a catchy business/product name. Using it as a real word doesn’t seem to be at all popular outside of the asexual community.

But AVEN’s definition just doesn’t make sense to me. Do try to hear me out. But, be warned that this is quite a ranty post, and if I had posted it on AVEN’s gender forum (since when has there been a separate gender forum, anyway?), it probably would’ve gotten me kicked because I am not being accepting of the way everyone constructs their identity no matter what, or at least gotten the post moved to the Hot Box, which I am even less fond of than most of the forums on AVEN. (I quite agree with Henrik from A Life podcast about the problems with AVEN being the face of the asexual community. Just thought I’d include a plug!) I’m going to include some results from the gender survey I did back in February here, and I just want to preface this with a little disclaimer, reminding everyone that was not an academic survey at all, so don’t get on my case about my lack of objectivity, kay? This is a blog, not a research institution–it’s founded on personal opinion, and mine is that there is a severe problem with using the term agender. But really, do try to hear me out.

The reason why I am posting about this now is because C mentioned something yesterday morning about a person who identifies as both trans and agender. “Frankly, it’s insulting,” she said. “The last thing I need is someone who is cisgendered calling themself trans.” I’m sure some readers must have the instinct to gut her for that comment, but try to suppress it. Her reasoning is along the lines of my reasoning on trendy bisexuals. If you recall the argument, it was about how so-called “trendy bisexuals” are defining sexual orientation based on behavior rather than their actual level of attraction, and using that behavior as a ruse to attract their real targets: heterosexual men. In doing so, they are confusing people about what a sexual orientation really is, which leads people of all non-normative sexual orientations to suffer.

C is afraid that something similar is going on when people refer to themselves as agender. To her, it shows a confusion about what gender is, which confuses the people she has to deal with when she has to come out as trans to others, and it makes things especially difficult for her when people label themselves as both agender and trans.

And I must say I do agree with her on this point, because it is a logical contradiction to claim both identities at once. A trans person is one who has a strong cross-gender identity, “cross-gender” here referring to that which is not their biological sex. It implies that there is a strong gender identity (which doesn’t match physical sex). But to be agender is to be without gender, that is, it implies that there is a LACK of a gender identity. Therefore, how can a person be both trans AND agender?

Now, understand that I’m not talking about neutrois, here. I think that is an acceptable term; however, it’s definition is somewhat murky. Let’s take a quick look at what AVENwiki has to say about the difference between them:

“Agender (also referred to as “gender-neutral”) is a term used to describe persons with neither a female or male gender. This person can be any physical sex, but their body does not necessarily correspond with their lack of gender identity. Often, these people are not concerned with their physical sex, but some may seek to look androgynous. Sometimes, an agendered person is also neutrois.”

Neutrois is a term used to describe persons who are agendered and also seek to be without the physical characteristics of their sex e.g. genitalia, breasts, body and facial hair.

Now, it’s problematic that the definition given for neutrois relies on the definition for agender. But if what you really mean by “agender” is “gender-neutral” then say THAT!

It doesn’t make sense to say that neutrois are agender, because neutrois HAVE a gender identity: neutral*. And that identity is strong enough that they will change their physical appearance as much as possible to express it. Neutrois, as far as I’m concerned, should be able to call themselves transgender. But they shouldn’t be saying they lack a gender identity. Yes, they lack an identification with male or female, but not identifying with either pole on the spectrum is not the same as having no gender identity whatsoever!

* More specifically, desiring a body that has no sex characteristics.

It’s a poor choice of words that really shouldn’t have caught on. I think there is a reason why it did catch on in the asexual community, though. A few reasons, actually. First of all, I think there is an attachment to the a- prefix among asexuals, and a propensity to use it whenever we try to come up with a new term that’s defined by a lack of something or other.  I think the asexual community tends to attract only the group of people who find that term acceptable. There are probably quite a few people who would fit our definition who do not like that term, and would feel more comfortable with calling themselves nonsexual, or even anti-sexual instead. Maybe their definition differs somewhat from ours, or maybe they just haven’t tried to define it. Maybe they feel that using the term “asexual” is far too confusing for its adoption to do much good, and the reasons why they reject the term is I think somewhat similar to the reasons why I can’t accept the term agender. But what I’m getting at is that there’s a certain mindset among asexuals, a certain acceptance of these particular things that makes it somewhat intuitive to use that particular prefix, and to define things in terms of a lack of something, in general.

A word like “aromantic” is all right, although there is considerable confusion about what a romantic relationship is, so the distinction between aromantic and romantic is not always clear. In this case, however, I think it is not a good idea to think that this concept SHOULD be defined by a lack of identification with either male or female.

But I think it needs to be broken down further. Because among people who call themselves agender, there are people who don’t identify with male or female because they feel more in the middle of the spectrum (neutral/androgynous), and there are people who don’t identify with male or female because they lack a strong gender identity (i.e. the non-neutrois, those so indifferent to gender that they do not desire to physically change the body that they have at all). I think the former are using the wrong term, and the latter… well. Aren’t they really saying they’re just apathetic to gender roles/stereotypes?

This is where C feels that cisgender privilege is rearing its ugly head. This is what really upsets her, and makes her think about trolling AVEN’s gender forum. This is one reason why she is, despite dating an asexual, not particularly positive about the asexual community in general.

There is a big difference between the way that she understands gender, and the way that people who identify as agendered do.

What the term “agender” implies is that the people who it refers to are beyond gender. That they are breaking free of “the system,” which essentially implies that gender is a social construction. There’s a revolutionary feel to it, which I’m sure is one reason why the idea of getting beyond gender is attractive to some. There may be some willingness to concede that gender has a biological basis, but the general idea is that if you have a very weak identification with gender, then you are free of it. The idea that agendered people are trans seems to work on the assumption that cisgendered people are strongly gendered.

I want to include a few of the interesting open-ended responses I got from my survey. One participant who identifies as agender said this:

Thanks for looking at this! I have my own theories why you can find people questioning their gender easily in the asexual community – they’ve already questioned their sexuality compared to societies expectations. Many more people would be transgendered if they thought about it, and many asexuals have.

I will admit I do not really understand this perspective, myself. How can you think yourself into being transgender? Perhaps you can think yourself into rejecting gender stereotypes, but to actually change what inclinations are intrinsically there, from birth? (And I will be the first to admit that it is very difficult to distinguish socialization from intrinsic inclination, but still.) The only people who must be able to do that are those who are not strongly gendered individuals in the first place. C certainly didn’t think herself into being transgendered; it’s an extremely painful circumstance for her, and if she could be otherwise, she would be. She has encountered plenty of cisgendered people who think that she is thinking herself into being trans already, including her own mother. Her only response is, “Why would anyone choose to be transgender?” Another trans woman I know echoed this response: “I wouldn’t wish being trans on my worst enemy.”  Gender is not a conscious decision, for either of them. It comes up in dreams, it was there long before they actually had any concept of gender or understanding of it. It is not a result of thinking about it for a while. In fact, C very actively for many years tried to convince herself that she wasn’t bad enough to transition, and only finally decided to do so because her choices were transition, or suicide. A comment like this one shows a very different conception of gender than the one she has. That’s why she thinks there is a measure of cisgender privilege at work, here.

Another participant who identifies as agender said this:

Gender is really interesting! Mostly because I can’t figure out why everyone is so convinced it exists.

Since I took the title of this post from that comment, I thought it necessary to include it here. This hearkens back to the idea that gender is socially constructed, and if we could just dismantle gender stereotypes, gender differences wouldn’t exist. I’m by no means attributing that attitude to the person who said this, by the way, just pointing out the similarities between them. That person may be perfectly able to accept that other people feel very differently about gender (in fact, probably does), and is just trying to point out their own confusion based on their lack of a strong gender identity. But there are others who do feel that gender really doesn’t exist, for anyone. That it is only a concept. Those people tend to be extremely harsh towards transgendered individuals, and yes, this is another reason why C thinks that is cisgender privilege talking. I think it shows a certain naivete, really, along the same lines as the sexuals who refuse to accept that asexuality exists, just because it is very far removed from their own experience.

The person who made that comment seems to me to be owning up to that naivete, and acknowledging that they don’t understand it really, but are trying. This attitude is quite similar to the attitude that a lot of asexuals have about sexuality, isn’t it? Because it is not innate to them, they are bewildered to discover its existence, but accept it and try to understand nevertheless. I think that makes it intuitive to asexual people who have this very weak sense of gender identity to call themselves agender. I still think it is not the right thing to call it, but I can sort of understand the lines of thinking, here.

I think one misconception that leads people to call themselves both trans and agender is the idea that cisgendered peoople necessarily have a strong gender identity that is in line with their biological sex. That really just isn’t true. C’s mom told her something along the lines of how she didn’t have a strong gender identity as her biological sex, either–in turn, misunderstanding that it wasn’t that C didn’t have a particularly masculine identity, it’s that she identifies strongly as a girl. C’s mom may have been thinking about gender identity in terms of gender roles and gender stereotypes, but that’s not what it’s about. You can identify as a woman but still be masculine. It’s a misconception about what gender identity actually means, I think.

Many people–most, perhaps–are actually not conscious of their gender identity. The concept is not as intuitive to other people as those who would call themselves agender seem to think it is–though yes, there is an ideal image of what it means to be a man or woman, and many people try to live up to whichever it is they perceive themselves as. Gender really isn’t something people usually think about unless they have reason to. In the case of transgendered people, they HAVE to think about it, because there is a mismatch with their bodies and it causes great psychological distress. Their identity is innate, deeply rooted in the subconscious. Cisgendered people start thinking about it because they don’t fit into the role or the stereotype, or because they are in a context where the concept is brought up, not because they really have a huge problem with the way their bodies are. It’s not really an intrinsic identity, at least for those who are weakly gendered, but one that is consciously realized only after they have thought about it for a while. Because people go through a very similar process with asexuality, it may seem logical to them, upon thinking about gender for a while and realizing that their gender identity is not that strong compared to other people’s, to reject the idea that they have a gender identity at all. And then, since they now identify as agendered, think that they fit under the umbrella term “transgender.” But that idea is based on a faulty premise, because when talking about trans stuff, that’s not really how the identity formation works.

I suspect I’m not really being very clear here, so to make it a little more so… From my perspective, if you were perfectly fine identifying as whatever your biological sex is for the however many years it was that you did so, EVEN IF you defied gender roles and stereotypes, and you had no desire be physically gender neutral before that realization, and especially so if you still have absolutely no desire to present yourself as androgynous or be rid of/change your sex organs… you are pretty much a cis person who hasn’t realized that you aren’t trans. That means your body and your gender aren’t mismatched.

Essentially, being transgender means that your body and your gender identity are innately mismatched. You would have noticed it very early on if there was actually a mismatch–at the very least, by puberty, and even then that’s fairly late to discover it–even if now, you think it would be better if you physically were not sexed. It is the dissonance that makes someone transgender, not the conscious identity or lack thereof. Hardly anybody (who is trans-positive, anyway) would claim that C was not transgender before she realized it consciously, after all. That is why I am not really sure that “gender identity” is even a good term to use to explain these things; it doesn’t really capture a huge portion of transgender experience.

Another reason why asexuals may be particularly inclined to believe this: some of them think it would be a better world if there was only one sex, and gender didn’t exist. If sexual reproduction didn’t exist. It’s an ideal–an intellectual ideal. Not the same kind of ideal as a trans person’s ideal body, which is an extremely emotional subject, and possibly closer to an identity than an ideal, but using either word is problematic. Some trans people are less attached to that ideal than others, but there is a certain point of detachment, I think, that distinguishes people who are really trans from people who think they are trans because they don’t really understand what it means to be trans (i.e. have unrealized cisgender privilege).

But this “ideal” society, you know… we’re not in it. We’re not physically devoid of sex organs or sex hormones, and we are divided roughly into male and female–although certainly, there is a lot of gray area in between! But ultimately I just don’t think it’s realistic for any human to claim that they are not gendered or beyond gender. Maybe, maybe beyond gender stereotypes and traditional gender roles (though even that is hard to claim)… but not agender. An alien race that is not subject to this kind of physical body could say that, but not humans. I do believe that there is a biological basis for gender just as much as there is for sex, even though the mental does not always match with physical sex. And male and female are not so different as so many people out there want to believe, sure, and there are people who do not fit in neatly with either. But it’s a spectrum that people can’t really remove themselves from, whether they have an identity that matches either of the accepted poles or not. It’s great to challenge gender stereotypes, and I’m quite accepting of people who find themselves near the equator, but I don’t think anyone is actually on another planet, here!

So because of all this, the term agender is confusing and in many ways an inaccurate representation of whatever it is people are trying to get at by using that term. There seems to be a conflation of at least two different things that are being represented when people use that word (gender-neutral identity, and weakness/lack of gender identity/gender apathy).

And yes, when you get right down to it, the reason I cannot support the use of it is because it spreads misconceptions about gender which harm someone dear to me.

I have had to grapple with cisgender privilege myself, and for a time I considered the possibility that I might fit under the transgender umbrella as well. I am not all that strongly “gendered,” in the sense that I feel a deep connection with my genitalia, myself. But really? That term doesn’t fit me. I’m one of the lucky ones. I don’t have gender dissonance. I have blind spots about gender and how it works, and how transgender people experience the world just like every other cis person out there. I try as hard as I can to realize it and minimize it, but I’m not perfect either.

As a parting thought, I will include a link to this, which is always good to read.

ETA: Sorry everyone that this first post wasn’t all that clear. Please do check out my addendum on the subject, wherein I respond to comments and try to explain my model of gender identity with clarity, charts, and proofs.

The baseball metaphor, that is.

While messing around on the intarwebs tonight, I came across this article about finding a positive sexual metaphor. I’d highly recommend that everyone go take a look! In the first part of the article, the author examines baseball as a metaphor for sex in American culture, and just how insidious this metaphor really is:

Baseball is fundamentally oppositional. Both teams can’t win. One team wins and the other loses. As sex, that’s about one partner “gaining” something, and the other partner “losing” something. In our culture, women tend to lose status when they have sex, and there’s a lot of hubbub about women “losing” their “precious virginity.” Men, on the other hand, gain status and respect from sexual experience. This aspect of the model also serves to reinforce gender stereotypes, which are rarely conducive to safe, empowered and satisfying sexual encounters.

Could this have had anything to do with my own fairly intense fear of rape? I was born into the losing team, after all. And the message that I will lose out if I have sex is everywhere, as is the message that the “opposite team” is out to get me–to force or coerce me into having sex without regard for my own feelings about it. In a lot of cases, that really does happen to people, and when it does, doesn’t the baseball metaphor for sex provide the perfect excuse for the assailant? After all, it’s just how you win the game. No wonder there are so many rape apologists!

In its literal sense, baseball can be a fun game, but unlike its literal counterpart, when we’re talking about sex as baseball, there is almost never a switch-up between which team is batting and which is on the field–there is not supposed to be; you are born as either a batter or an outfielder, and that’s where, at least in theory, you stay.  That takes all the fun out of it, doesn’t it? Because if sex happens, somebody loses, and that loser is determined before the game even starts. It’s a predictable, rigid social role. To win the game says nothing about whether the sex was enjoyable for either party. It’s just about whether or not it happens.

This underlying way of thinking has shaped my experiences with heterosexual men, and that’s not to say that they all thought that way themselves, but that this unhealthy power dynamic exists at all has made me extra wary of dealing with “the opposite team”–to the point that I, for the most part, choose to simply opt out of dealing with them entirely, and instead I generally only play with the queer team. It just removes that whole level of uncertainty, that vague sense of wondering whether this person is playing against me, that sense of always having to be vigilant, just in case. Queer people can’t play the game like everyone else anyway; they aren’t allowed to be included in it in the first place.

The article goes into a lot more detail about that, and also proposes an alternative metaphor for sexuality: eating pizza. It’s definitely a much more ace-positive model, since nobody assumes that everybody must eat pizza; while they may be rare, there are just some people who don’t, and that’s fine.

I do think, however, that the metaphor starts to break down a little here:

Eating pizza with a partner is also not a radically different experience from eating pizza alone. The pizza model deflates the myth that masturbation is a lesser sexual experience than partnered sex. Eating pizza alone encompasses the complete pizza-eating experience, just as masturbation is a complete sexual experience. When we do it it with someone else, the fullness of the experience doesn’t change, we simply add communion with our partner(s) to the experience. What’s different is the companionship, intimacy, variety, and possibly the fun of having someone feed you for a change.

I am not sure whether we should classify masturbation as a purely sexual experience. After all, there are plenty of asexuals who masturbate but do not necessarily consider the experience sexual. To some, it may be. To others… the very reason it might be considered okay is because it seems to be a lesser sexual experience (though even then, many find it bothersome). It really isn’t all that involved, when compared to partnered sex, whereas when eating pizza, aside from the initial negotiation of toppings, the actual act of eating the pizza is not different when doing it alone or with a partner. More is required of the person who is having sex with a partner, as opposed to the person who is masturbating. In many cases, a lot more is required. I just don’t think the difference translates well, when we use this metaphor as a vehicle for expression.

I guess the question is really about whether we consider something to be sexual based on sexual appetite, or whether we consider it to be sexual based on which body parts are involved. It seems that people define things as sexual using both of these determinants in different situations. For example, some people think that kissing is sexual–for them, perhaps, it arouses a sexual appetite. But then, to continue the metaphor, people can still eat something even if they have no appetite. Is it the physical act of sex that defines it? If so, which physical act(s) are we talking about, here? Or is it more about the mental aspect of it, the desire/appetite? In some cases, it’s clear how to define it, but in other cases, like this one, it really isn’t.

I also usually have a problem with food-based metaphors for sex because of the idea that having sex is a need, in the same sense that it is a need for humans to eat. I will admit that there is a need for people to procreate, but it is not an individual need, it is only a collective need. Every individual member of a species does not need to procreate in order for the species to survive. However, every individual must eat in order for the individual to survive. So you really have to be careful not to take a comparison of sexual desire with hunger too far. In this case, though, I think the metaphor of sex as eating pizza works okay, on that level, because it refers only to a specific kind of food, and not to food in general. People who don’t eat pizza can thoroughly enjoy other foods, and that’s not weird at all. Likewise, people who don’t enjoy or engage in sexual activities can get plenty of fulfillment from other activities in life!

[Part I]

We were not lovers.

I didn’t know what we were or what we would become. We were in fuzzy territory, the topography a natural blend, unmarked by conceptual boundaries. There were boundaries, yes, but only the kind of boundaries that a river makes as it cuts through stone. There was no sign that said “KEEP OFF” and no assumption that we would be following societal customs about grass. There were no intellectually imposed markings of any kind, really. It was more organic than a hippie convention at the local farmer’s market.

We did not talk again until a day had passed. I was, quite frankly, distracted by my vibrant social life. You see, after spending the summer heartsick and pining, I had gotten back into the swing of things. No longer isolated from scholastic pursuits, I found myself surrounded by people. There were fickle people, people who started to shun me because they happened to catch me in the company of those with whom they were no longer friends. There were people who were with me for just half a season, and only then because of my roommate, with whom I got along quite well. But there were also a few that I am still friends with today. The night after I went on an accidental “date” with C, one of those friends was going through a personal crisis, and so I invited him out bowling with me, my roommate, and a very lively group of foreign exchange students she referred to as the “Chinese Mafia.”

The next day, when I invited C to come out to “the fair” with us (because that’s what my friends told me that it was, but as it turns out it was just a lame corn maze), I thought it might be awkward because of what was going on between my friend and one of his friends who would be there also. I wasn’t really thinking about C that much, aside from the thought that she might provide a convenient excuse to duck out of the way if the feathers started flying. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I thought it would be nice to see her and all, but I worried that perhaps she was a little more eager to meet again than I was. As ever, I was being cautious.

When she showed up around 2 p.m., my immediate impression was of how nervous and awkward she looked–she was mid-transition but had not gone full time yet, and her male clothing did not suit her face. She does have a girlish face, all big pouty lips and pretty green eyes–eyes which were covered up by glasses with those lenses that change into sunglasses when exposed to harsh light, except that they seemed to be broken, remaining permanently a translucent light brown. Her body, too, was covered up. But there was no mistaking her femininity; it pervaded every shy line of her body–the way she held her arms, the way her lips turned up in a cute grin at the sight of me. “What? No hug?” she pouted, a little put off by the way I had, in my continued rush to get ready, just ushered her in. So I hugged her then, and it was not the same as the one from the other night–shorter, more stilted–because now I was much more nervous about it. But it was still nice.

There were a bunch of people from the QSA going, and so we met up with a bunch of them at the maze, and went through it all together. Truth be told, we trailed after them. Neither one of us was particularly interested in navigating the maze, so we held back and walked next to each other, talking about various things. Tentatively, she bumped her hand against mine–a sign that she wanted me to take it. I was not so sure I wanted it to go in this direction–at least not so soon!–but I decided to just go with it to see where it would lead. We walked and walked, hand in sweaty hand, until the others, still ahead of us, found our way out.

It was clear, at this point, that she was beginning to become somewhat infatuated with me. How much so, I did not know. I felt rather distanced from her at the time, and uncomfortable showing affection like that in public. The others were giving us looks of surprise every now and then, and though I do not remember whether they said anything in front of us then or only later on, when I was explaining how we met, one of them said, “Wow, look at those two! They are totally canoodling!”

Once we were done at the maze, we made our way back to the dorms with a number of tiny pumpkins that they had given away there. While C and I had been walking around on our own, it seems that tension had been building between three of my friends over some issue or another, I can’t remember anymore. We were hanging out, waiting to see if they wanted to go out to dinner with us or not. At some point, C sat down on a comfy zebra-striped chair that R had salvaged from the newly redecorated art building, and then pulled me onto her lap. I was surprised that she would go that far after only the second time that we had met in person, and while I was a little uncomfortable with it, I wasn’t uncomfortable enough to say anything about it. After I got used to it, it was kind of nice.

Then T and W showed up, irritable at each other and both angry at R. At some point, C and I relocated to my bed, curled up next to each other and held hands, watching the three of them duke it out. “You know, I felt bad for them,” C said of it later, “But at the moment, I was really too happy to care.” Ultimately, T and W stalked off to go do something else, leaving R in tears at my dorm. So the three of us went out to eat together, to cheer her up. This involved a lot of impractically one-handed eating, since C sat next to me and had my hand under the table, and refused to let go for as long as she could help it.

I don’t remember doing anything after that, so we must have each gone home. I returned to my relative solitude wondering what I might have gotten myself into, and whether it would be something that would be good for me to pursue. It bothered me a little that C seemed to be pouring herself into our potential relationship so fast, while I was still processing what had gone on in my previous not-relationship. I do tend to let significant relationships (in a broad sense, including friendships) linger on my mind far longer, perhaps, than other people do–long after the feeling is gone, I still keep trying to work out a system of interaction that might have worked out better than what had actually happened. At that point, I was not sure I was ready to get into a new relationship like that yet. I had not expected to find myself faced with that possibility so soon, nor for C to enter my intimate space so quickly. I understood that she was very affectionate with her friends, as she had warned me about it a little, but still, it took me by surprise. I would like to say it took me pleasantly by surprise, but at the time, I really was fairly neutral. It wasn’t something I had expected, and I wasn’t sure it was where I wanted to go, but it wasn’t so bad either. For a while, I just couldn’t make up my mind.

So, Ily got me thinking with her comment on my last post and subsequent post about how it all started, and I think that’s a worthy topic to explore. I have been one of those people who goes, “Uhh, I don’t know, it just sort of happened,” when it comes to the question of how I started dating C. Maybe explaining the circumstances of our first meetings will help both to elucidate how a friendly outing can unexpectedly turn romantic, and to give me some much-needed perspective on what we started with, and how we ended up this way. I have a lot to say on this topic, so I won’t try to say it all in one post!

It was just over a year ago, now. The girl and I would have celebrated her birthday two days after she broke up with me, and our first anniversary the day after that (if we bothered to celebrate it, that is; she doesn’t like to celebrate arbitrary dates, but I think it might as well be an excuse to have fun–but so much for that idea!). We met on an internet dating site, but it had never been our intention to go on a date. It was supposed to have been an innocent friendly outing to see Kung Fu Panda at the dollar theater, and that was all. “I’m going to be too shy to talk to you when we meet,” she told me over IM. I didn’t quite believe it, because we had already had several fairly long and interesting conversations before, just not in person. And, sure enough, after I suggested that we go and get something to eat–since I was interested in actually getting to know her, albeit as a friend and not a date, and 90 minutes in a dark room just sitting next to one another and watching a movie didn’t really give me that opportunity–sure enough, we got to talking.

And after we had gone through a pot of tea at the local hippie New Age gay-friendly tea and trinkets shop, we didn’t want to stop. So we didn’t. I said that we could stop by my dorm and grab the moldy bread that I had been meaning to take out to the pond, and feed it to the ducks. We kept on talking and talking, and when we were done with the bread we started wandering around campus together. We wandered vaguely in the direction of her car but then never went to it. We kept circling around it, until it was more than obvious that neither one of us wanted her to leave. We kept ending up near the dumpsters, which spawned an inside joke about dumpsters being super romantic.

We talked about all sorts of things, dating being one of them. I told her I didn’t understand how dating worked, and had never really been on an actual date before. I didn’t really know what they were like; all I knew was that traditional dating seemed so structured, so overly formalized. I didn’t understand the game, the etiquette, or the point. Because, after all, from my perspective, it seemed to me like dating, at least in the mainstream world, was aimed primarily at two things: sex in the short term, and marriage in the long term. Neither of which I was even the least bit interested in, so why would I want to bother? Not knowing what the other person was after would have made me extremely uncomfortable, and not knowing what I was supposed to do would make it even more so. I’m sure my date, unless maybe he was someone like M, would have been quite uncomfortable with it too, because of the way I was acting. About three years ago, there was a boy who had a very obvious crush on me, and although he was generally pretty charismatic, always seemed rather weird when it came to me. Eventually, he asked me out on a date, and while I considered going out with him, I had to turn him down because it would have just been too awkward for me, and probably painfully so to him. But it wasn’t that I was uninterested in relationships in general, mind. Only that I would never date someone traditionally.

Then she told me about her dating experiences, which were mostly internet based, but included one case of what struck me as pretty much a romantic friendship, where the two of them were so close they really could have been thought to be dating. The only reason they weren’t, she thought, was because he was too straight to go for someone with a male body, which she still had at the time. It was almost like a more informal version of dating, it seemed. I wondered if dating wasn’t always as strict as it had seemed to me at first. I wondered if my lack of experience was just limiting my perspective on what it was like to go on a date. Maybe it isn’t always like how it is presented in the media, which was up until then my only source for understanding how the dating world worked. Meanwhile, she was telling me that she had been previously involved in a polyamorous relationship with a married couple. She described some of their sexual escapades, which I found interesting but confusing at the same time. When the topic turned to whether or not we would be a good fit for a date, she said, “You’re really not my type at all. So don’t worry, I’m not trying to date you.”

Well, likewise. She wasn’t my type either, or so I thought. But at the same time, I did enjoy her company a great deal, and on many levels she seemed to get me, and what she didn’t get right away, she had already proven through our few weeks of chatting over the internet that she was curious enough and open-minded enough to put a great deal of effort into discussing. Although she wasn’t sure about dating an asexual herself, at least she didn’t have a problem accepting it–she was even intrigued by it. She brought to the table a cutesy style backed by a lively intelligence, an intriguingly unconventional perspective, and collections of sex toys and socks. I wasn’t in the least bit infatuated with her and wouldn’t get to that point for quite a while, but I did like her. I suppose that’s how a lot of people must feel on first dates, now that I think of it.

Apparently, the secret to getting me to date you is to approach me strictly as a friend.

Tired of walking, we went off to find a secluded bench somewhere, hoping that our already hours-long conversation wouldn’t be disturbed anymore by passing people that we knew. We sat Indian-style on top of it, facing one another, and I remember feeling the coldness of the thick marble slab seeping through the seat of my jeans. I don’t remember if I was wearing a jacket; I don’t think I was. Since it had been a hot afternoon and I hadn’t planned on staying outside so late, either I hadn’t bothered to get one, or I had gotten one that was too thin. In reality, we were right near my dorm so I could’ve gone to get a nice warm sweater if I had wanted, but I didn’t want to bother going back there, and risk the awkwardness of seeing people we both knew who would want to invite us to come hang out with them. For some reason, even then we were bothered by people interrupting our private, two-person-only conversation. So I was cold, and my hands were especially so. I folded them together as if I were praying, rubbed them together a little bit to generate heat. She stilled my hands, and covered them with her own to keep them warm.

We kept on talking and talking until it was nearing midnight. She had an early class, so she really had to get home and get some sleep–I had already kept her up past her usual bedtime. Finally, we parted, but before we did, she said, “This is a date, isn’t it?”

I still hadn’t really thought of it as such, but it seemed to be true. “I guess so,” I said. I didn’t know, really. I thought maybe it could be.

We hugged each other then, and it wasn’t like a typical friendly greeting. I had friends that would give me long tight bear hugs, but this wasn’t one of those. It was long and lingering and ever so slightly awkward, but nice, too. I was kind of shocked about it, that our meeting could have run so counter to both of our expectations and intentions. I didn’t have any fuzzy feelings, I wasn’t sure if I would develop them, and I didn’t know what would come of it, but for the moment, I was okay with seeing where it would lead.

[Part II]

Time passes me by lately like water does a fish—I am always in it, it is always flowing around me, but each moment is just something I live in without really thinking about it. I pay attention only to the strong currents and my eventual destination, letting the usual ebb and tide just make its lazy circles about the unconscious.

Of course, I’m still able to focus on time and its various aspects, bring it out of the background and into the forefront as I am doing now. But that kind of focus might as well be a flash of lighting. For the most part, it passes, and I make neither an effort to live in the moment nor hold fast to hope or memory. Things happen, mostly boring and not worth reporting—or so it was for a while. Unfortunately, no news does not necessarily mean good news, even though I am significantly less likely to update without the motivation of conflict. This past summer, I’ve been beset by a number of injuries and illnesses, including a brief visit to the hospital (which fortunately turned out to mean nothing except that I should take better care not to exhaust myself). Those injuries and illnesses have continued since I started school, which means that I have missed a lot of class and my ability to keep up with assignments has suffered. My relationship with my partner suffered a lot as well—partially, indeed, as a result of my being sick so often—and now we have broken up, albeit somewhat tentatively and while keeping the possibility in mind that we may be able to resolve our differences and work back up to a romantic relationship.

With all this going on, I hadn’t really been thinking about asexuality.  Over the summer, there were still plenty of moments, from time to time, when I would see my girlfriend looking at porn and, upon hearing my comments, she would groan at me and says, “You’re so asexual.” But for the most part, it went unnoticed, and barely mattered.

I have been trying to decide what is different about the part that sex played in our relationship as compared to the part that it plays in a pairing of two sexuals, but I can’t come up with much. It’s not as if it isn’t generally enjoyable, and I can’t say that it isn’t intimate. There were periods when we go without for quite a while before either one of us would crease her brow and say, “Hm. When was the last time, anyway?” That is probably the most obvious sign of my asexuality combined with her relative lack of sexual attraction to me. The thing is, our relationship actually did seem to suffer more during the dry spells than when we were doing it relatively frequently, despite my conviction that sex should not be a necessary part of a relationship.

For a while, I really thought the relationship wasn’t suffering on behalf of my asexuality. It was more of an issue between the two of us that I would rarely be in the mood to watch a movie than it was that I would rarely be in the mood to have sex. And after all, even if it didn’t occur to me to want to generally, it’s not like I had a problem with doing it whenever she would ask. I am far from frigid and unresponsive; and this is why I find it so odd that I have been called “sexually disabled,” because I am entirely capable of normal sexual function. It even comes a little easier to me, from a physical perspective, than it seems to for a large percentage of women who are sexual. Usually, during a typical sexual encounter, I would orgasm at least twice, and a handful of times my partner and I even managed to achieve what seems to be considered the Holy Grail of orgasmic experience—that is, simultaneity. That’s not meant as a brag—I hate bragging, and in fact I do believe that most people who brag about sex a lot aren’t actually getting much of it, and what would be the point of me bragging, anyway, since it would be so misleading?—but I say this just to demonstrate exactly how minuscule a problem it actually was, to my mind. I was with the right person, in the right circumstances. The rest was cake.

No, as it turns out, the problem was initiative. I am not dominant enough to match her submissiveness, and I am not sexual enough to start something that it does not usually occur to me to start. Actually, I am still not sure exactly how it is done, this initiation of sexual activity. Even if I was the one who suggested it, I was always taking my cues from her in the first place: a playful bit of fondling when she seemed particularly receptive to it, a diversion of her attention when she was going to go masturbate (which she seemed to take awry anyway, since she began to get the idea that I had something against her masturbating; an odd bit of irony, isn’t it? that a person who is not so into sex should give the impression that it is not okay for her partner to satisfy herself alone! But in my eagerness to keep her pleased, the simple statement that I would offer myself to her if she was more interested in my body than the computer screen was somehow perceived as an anti-masturbatory remark). The few times I suggested it apart from that, there was this awkwardly deliberate, premeditated quality to it; it felt unnatural, almost forced.

How can I dominate when I barely understand what doms do, or why they do it? She says maybe I should read a lot of books, but it’s not as if I have lacked reading material in that area. In fact, one of my favorite book series—one which she can’t even read because she gets so turned on by it—prominently features characters into all kinds of BDSM, and I read it in part because I find it fascinating. But I am not at all sure how I could apply what I have read to a real-life situation. Actually, I do have some intrinsic sadistic tendencies of my own (to which my sister would be able to attest, since as a child I often expressed them on her), as well as a moderate interest in rope bondage—but as it turns out, none of my interests coincide with hers. And so, my natural instincts suppressed, I am left with no lead to follow. Such situations are then stilted and awkward, and I am constantly wondering if I am doing it right, which doesn’t make for a very satisfactory experience for anyone.

Of course, there was another issue, that being what I physically lack. She is more attracted to men than to women sexually, even if she seems to be extremely disappointed with them otherwise. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder occasionally if that meant she would be happier with someone other than me. We had an agreement that she would be allowed to have a “friend with benefits” if she could find someone interested who was actually trustworthy, and not just after her because of a fetish—she did, once, during our relationship, exercise her prowess at giving blow jobs, and it was never a problem—and, in fact, she was allowed to look for another lover, too, if she wanted. I didn’t expect to fulfill her completely. Still, still. I couldn’t help but wonder. If she found someone else to have sex with, would it mean that she would completely lose interest in me? Had she already lost all her interest in me? I found that I considered that prospect depressing even though I was not even sexual to begin with.

I realized then that sex was becoming for us, much to my dismay, something of a shorthand for intimacy, the way it often is with sexuals. That’s not to say that there was no form of non-sexual intimacy that we shared, and not to say either that there wasn’t the occasional time that we had sex that really wasn’t all that intimate (though those were usually terrible experiences anyway). But on the whole, she was beginning to push me farther and farther away emotionally (and sometimes, she out and out shoved), and for a while anyway, sex seemed to offer a brief respite. But my own private torment was the creeping realization that her degrading sexual interest in me was a mirror of her disengagement from the relationship as a whole.

Nothing diminishes the sharp, cold sting of rejection. Gradually, she was becoming more and more closed off to me. She no longer texted me in the morning to let me know she loved me, and seemed apathetic when I attempted to continue the tradition. And although she would reasonably often profess to being horny, she would no longer ask me to participate, and would even seem to balk at my meant-to-be-courteous suggestion. Was one a symptom of the other? Did they feed off of each other, the slow mounting fog, the thinning breathless suffocation so much like the way the air thins as one approaches a mountain peak, until finally there was no oxygen left? Am I the only one left panicking at the possibility that what we created between us has iced over so thoroughly that there may have been too much cell damage sustained for it to survive?

Such questions plague me, and maybe only me, but my fear of rejection was certainly not unfounded. During this time, I even began to question my own asexuality for a while, since so very much about our relationship resembles a relationship between two sexual people. But upon further reflection and a number of discussions with her about it, I realized that my asexuality was undeniable, and undeniably a part of the problem. In this area, we simply are not compatible. But that is not a huge problem when it is compared to our other areas of incompatibility, which, although they may not be so very many, have been far more harmful to our relationship than a simple lack of sexual compatibility.

Next week, we are slated to see a couple’s counselor so that we might decide whether there is a chance we can resolve some of our issues. I think, personally, that there is a strong possibility that we might indeed be able to do it, if only—indeed, if only—she is as willing to put as much effort into working on them as I am. I am not so confident of that, but either way, this is one sexual/asexual relationship that is not ending purely because of sexual issues, and most likely, we will be able to at the very least put everything aside and be close friends.

Still, it was useful for me, and I thought it may be of interest to my readers, to articulate what sometimes oddly counterintuitive difficulties we have had with regard to sexuality. Maybe someone somewhere will find in my analysis of my weird-ass relationship with this girl I cannot yet bring myself to call an ex a helpful reflection. I figure at the very least, it can’t hurt to add to the available pool of asexual content, which is something I have been neglecting to continue for far too long! I will make no promises about posting more often since I am completely overburdened as it is, but for this moment at least, I am back.

Well, I fail at blogging for this month, but to be fair, I’ve been pretty busy looking for an apartment. I’ve finally found one, and I’ll be moving in with my girlfriend tomorrow. It’s a very drastic change from where I was one year ago, when I first started this blog. Back then, I was suffering the loss of someone I really cared about, whom I had a terrible time communicating with about asexuality. Now, I’m in a committed relationship with someone who understands asexuality pretty well, and with whom I generally have a pretty great relationship with.

I don’t think I would have gotten to this point if I hadn’t started this blog; it’s helped me a lot with just articulating my thoughts about asexuality, and it’s good to get my perspective out there so that maybe reading about my experiences can help others. Thanks to all of my readers, especially those of you who have left me comments or emailed me directly–without you, I wouldn’t have kept this up!

Here, more for my own personal reference than anything else, are some stats for the year:

Top Ten Posts

1. Doing Sex – Tips for the Adventurous Asexual; 646 views
2. Asexuality as a Fetish; 576 views
3. Gender Variation in the Asexual Community: Results; 501 views
4. Why Trendy Bisexuals are Dangerous to Asexuality; 497 views
5. On “Creepy Asexual Guys,” Porn, and Misogyny; 436 views
6. Dating Site Review: OKCupid; 393 views
7. Asexual Masturbation; 308 views
8. Sex as a Responsibility?; 286 views
9. Sex 2.0; 295 views
10. Positive Metaphors: Chandelier Culture; 225 views

Most Comments: Almost-Sexual Frustration

Most Popular Month: March 2009; 2,088 views

Busiest day: Monday, February 23, 2009; 237 views

Total views: 13,873

It’s been quiet here for a few weeks, because the week before last was crazy final-projects-are-all-due-on-the-same-day week, and this past week I was on vacation. So in the next few weeks, before summer school starts, I will try to catch up with blogging, and reply to the emails I missed while I was busy with real life stuff.

When I came back to internetland to check up on my blog, I found that a few people had surfed in here from this post, which WordPress thinks is similar to one of mine (though probably not the one I would have chosen as the most similar). How wrong it was! The problem with WordPress’s post-linking feature is that it connects the posts only by topic or certain phrases that they use. There’s no way to filter out diametrically opposed viewpoints on a specific topic.

Anyway, this person posted about the 2002 murder of Gwen Araujo, a 17-year-old trans woman who was killed because her assailants had oral and anal sex with her, and then claimed that they somehow discovered only afterward that she was trans. I really don’t understand how that could possibly have happened, since male genitalia during anal sex is pretty hard to hide.  The murderers tried to reduce their sentences to manslaughter, but really? It was a hate crime, pure and simple.

At least he recognized that, but there were a bunch of problems with the guy’s post, not the least of which was that he confused transgendered women with drag queens and used the wrong pronouns, but the real kicker was this:

I like drag queens. There’s a place for them in the world. Especially in the arts and in gay ghettoes in every big city.

They don’t belong at parties in the suburbs. That’s why she was killed. Because her mother and liberal culture enabled her acting out in the wrong environment.

If I knew a young person like Gwen, I’d say: You should be who you are, lots of people will get a kick out of you. But don’t do that around here, because a small town can’t handle this, and some people will try to hurt you. Study martial arts and only party with people you know and trust.

Now, of course all trans people ought to be (and I’m sure most are) aware that there are plenty of dangerous environments out there which they should try to protect themselves from. Having sex with men without making sure they are okay with trans stuff is really dangerous, but come on, really? To say that trans people just ought to stay out of the suburbs completely? News flash: trans people come from everywhere. They aren’t just born in big cities, and some of them just simply don’t have the means to move to one. Nor is it always the best decision to do so. Some of the biggest cities with the highest populations of trans people actually tend to be more dangerous for trans people for the simple fact that since there are more of them, the cisgendered people around them are more used to seeing them and more able to recognize them as trans. A trans woman who passes very well in the suburbs of a smaller city most likely wouldn’t pass as well in a place like San Francisco. It is way more complex than “small town bad, big city good” and it would be unwise for a trans woman to take the advice of someone who has such a simplistic view of the subject.

Most disturbingly, this attitude seems to condone the murder by implying that it was simply inevitable because of where it took place. It’s like: “Oh, I like you, but you better stay out of my town… for your own good!” Does that not sound like a veiled threat? Apparently, people who “complain about homophobia and violence against the transgendered” are “in denial,” presumably about… what, how widespread it is? Why should people NOT complain about how widespread it is? Even if people ought to just expect to encounter it, that doesn’t make it RIGHT. And if this is a comment on the mother not understanding how people could hurt her “son,” well… what else could she do? Is she just supposed to prepare herself to lose someone that she loves to this kind of violence? Speaking as someone who loves a trans woman, no matter how keenly aware I might be of the possibility of losing my girlfriend to the blind hatred of someone else, there could never be any way that I could be prepared for it. How could anyone? And how could anyone be so callous as to suggest that people should not be bitterly hurt by the violent murder of a loved one? Blaming her for it, and assuming that she never had any concerns about the safety of her child (I’ll bet she actually did, and I’ll bet they were one of her biggest concerns, just like Cupcake’s mother), is even worse.

There is also the sense that trans people transition and live as their preferred gender just to attract the sensationalist attention of the cisfolk who “get a kick out of” them, which is also very harsh, and ridiculously far from the truth. A pretty sizable portion of trans people never want people to know that they are trans, and go stealth after transitioning in an attempt to have a normal life, or as close to it as possible, as their preferred gender. It’s not something amazing and special, except as viewed by outsiders. In reality, it’s much more mundane. But to assume the motivations of a trans person’s transition is to please outsiders is akin to assuming that women only exist to please men.

I’ll cut it short now. I swear I have something more interesting to post than just rants about cruel and misinformed cisgendered people posting about trans stuff, though. I will try to get to it within the next week!

I’m currently reading The Remains of the Day by Ishiguro Kazuo (British or not, out of habit I still put last name first). The main character, Stevens, is a sad, sad man who is completely unable to be spontaneous. He has to think his way through witticisms, practice making them up while he is alone in his room, listening to the radio. If you are familiar with personality types, he is a rather extreme example of an ISTJ who has not developed his shadow functions.

It got me thinking about how spontaneity is often used as a synonym for “fun,” and tends to be viewed as an essential trait for exciting sex. This can certainly pose problems for the sexually active asexual person, whose natural tendencies do not coincide with their partner’s desires. Whether one is spontaneous or not outside of a sexual context, it’s just very hard to be so in a situation that ordinarily one wouldn’t be inclined to get oneself into at all.

So we may find ourselves doing the same thing as Stevens, trying to think through sexual encounters to figure out what we are expected to do beforehand, and then try to simulate spontaneity later on. But does this method work? I’m sure some people will insist that it doesn’t, but I have had some moderate success by doing so. I think the key is to have several different things in mind which you could choose from, but not to let your partner know what specifically you have in mind (although of course, if this is a BDSM scenario, you’d better be clear about boundaries), and then do something that they don’t expect. You ought to be thorough when thinking it out, but don’t succumb to paranoia. Being too insecure about it can get in the way of figuring out what is really going on in your partner’s head. You may be perfectly fine at whatever you’re doing, but not realize it and decide not to do it anymore.

It’s very important to get a clear picture of what your partner wants you to do. Unfortunately, they may not always be forthcoming about that information–tons of people just rely on the assumption that everybody knows what is supposed to happen during sex (it’s the “facts of life” after all), and not be willing to apply so much thought to it, out of the idea that it’s just supposed to happen “naturally” out of instinct. Different people approach sex in different ways, though. Some expect it to mean something emotionally, others just think it’s a way to have some fun–and may see this process of thinking through it beforehand as a damper on that. So figuring this stuff out can be a pretty big problem, and it’s not one I have an easy solution for.

Has anyone else tried this strategy? What has worked for you? For sexual partners, do you think this strategy would be satisfying, or ultimately lead to disappointment?

A few days ago, I posted about Rabbi Schmuley Boteach’s bad definition of asexuality. Now, I want to address the main point of his article.

As Ily has observed, his argument makes no sense. It is inarticulate and illogical, and there are so many gaps where he has jumped from one assumption to the other that the article is quite difficult to follow without making great leaps of inferences.

Essentially, this is an emotional argument, and it must be dealt with as such. There is a sort of reasoning to it, but it’s not the same kind of reasoning as an argument based on logic. The Rabbi looks around him and sees that a good chunk of the population does not share his values, and so he fears that society is gradually becoming more and more immoral. This rant of his (for really, that’s what it is) is just the expression of that fear. It doesn’t amount to anything else, because he has not taken the trouble to check his facts; the entire rant is based solely on his own perceptions of the world around him.

Emotional arguments are very tricky, because unlike simple misinformation, they arise from some sort of emotional need, and serve as a defense mechanism which, when taken away, would leave a person vulnerable.  Franklin from Xero Mag wrote an essay which does a great job of explaining this. I don’t usually like to challenge emotional beliefs, because it tends to lead to a great amount of hostility, and it rarely accomplishes anything, since the person whose beliefs are being challenged will tend to just sit there and vehemently deny everything that I am saying. If a person is very invested in their emotional belief, it is extremely rare that anyone will be able to get through to them. This is why arguments between atheists and Christians (for example) are almost always futile. The only thing that they can usually accomplish is to change the opinion of someone who is sitting on, or very close to, the fence.

Still, I think it’s important to talk about stuff like this. There are a lot of people out there who might start to become aware of the emotional undercurrents in their own heads which are undermining their statements. I think it’s important for people to challenge their own emotional beliefs, and not let their emotional landscapes twist facts way out of proportion. This kind of thinking affects everyone, including the asexual community. Specifically, I see certain similarities between the Rabbi’s beliefs and their rationale, and those held by some asexuals.

Over and over again, we complain about how oversexed society is. Many of these complaints are legitimate, but sometimes, due to the effects of emotion and a very human tendency to notice the bad things while ignoring the good, the scope of the problem becomes so exaggerated in our own heads, that we lose sight of how good we really have it, compared to the other queers. Sometimes asexuality’s rarity and little-known status lead asexuals to think that we are unique in having to deal with certain issues. Which, of course, leads people to accuse the entire community of whining about being so oppressed, and just wanting to be called queer so that we can feel special, if not outright denying that asexuality even exists (though of course they will still do that even if we are being completely rational about it ourselves). While this tendency is present in our community, I think it is comparatively slight; most of us have a decent grasp on the situation, even if it occasionally gets a little bit distorted, and often this is more of a communication issue than an issue with what someone really thinks. What’s more problematic is when someone who is repulsed by sex begins to characterize the act itself as something that’s either always negative, or vastly more negative than it actually is, without acknowledging (or realizing) that those are their own personal feelings, but not necessarily the literal truth.

On the flip side, I’m sure we’re all well aware of how many people have a tendency to characterize sex as something that’s much more positive than it actually is. People insist that, really! sex is wonderful, even though that’s frequently not the case. They simply dismiss people whose experiences don’t match up with that ideal on grounds of being inadequate, or suffering from some sort of sexual dysfunction.

Either way, people tend to attribute positive or negative value to sex based on their own emotions towards it, while dismissing any cases which do not match up with their idea of the way things are. In reality, sex itself, taken as a whole, is neither good nor bad–it simply is. It can be approached in ethical ways, or it can be approached in unethical ways, and it can have a wide range of emotional consequences for the people involved. It can hold as many different meanings as people are willing to assign to it.

Now, to return to what Boteach was saying…

It is time for the Western world to accept the sad truth that universities are becoming bastions of female-hating lechers who spend four years trying to bed as many women as possible, while making the word “bitch” one of the most used in their vocabularies. Tom Wolfe’s newest novel, “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” chronicles the unbelievable scorn for women that permeates the American campus, and how women have lost all dignity, becoming complicit in their own degradation, as they stop at nothing to become the male plaything.

The greatest cultural story since the 1960s is the decline and fall of the Western male, and how women have accommodated that fall by allowing themselves to be treated like garbage by men. It’s now 60 years after feminism, and there has never been a better time to be a man. To be a guy today is to have your pick of hundreds of women who will sleep with you and expect not only no commitment, but not even courteous treatment. You can burp in their presence, break wind, and they will still go to bed with you. To be a guy is to have women move into your apartment and cook and clean for you, even as you endlessly push off the question of marriage, which you have no intention of addressing anyway. And to be a man today is to have women take off their clothes on television to sell you everything from beer to cars to hamburgers.

Ignoring the inaccuracy about how long feminism has been around, this is pretty overblown. I doubt that every guy out there REALLY has his pick of hundreds of women who are willing to sleep with him. Sorry to break it to you, Rabbi, but guys just aren’t that rare a commodity. To use your borrowed analogy, men can be jelly beans, too. And honestly, burping and farting as a form of disrespect? Both are quite natural and only partially voluntary, and both men AND women should expect to have to do so at some point in front of their significant others. While it may be gross, and it may be more socially acceptable for men to be gross than for women (so they are less likely to try to suppress it–but if anything, it should be socially acceptable for women to do it too), it’s hard to pin disrespectful intentions on an action that is involuntary. Because it’s gross, it may FEEL like disrespect, but that doesn’t mean that’s what was really intended. There’s another good essay by Franklin addressing this, which I think is worth a read. Asexual people ought to keep this distinction in mind when dealing with others’ sexual feelings, since we are particularly prone to being put off by them.

But really, this guy’s version of what is and is not respectful is pretty out there, even aside from the gas. He makes the assumption that commitment means marriage, and that all women want to get married. Personally, I consider it a fairly high level of commitment for a couple to be living together at all–at the very least, they are expecting to be able to deal with each other for a long time, especially if both of their names are on the lease. It may not be the highest level of legal entanglement, but perhaps they have both mutually decided that marriage is more trouble than it’s worth. The implication that he makes is that any woman who would make such a choice is necessarily disrespecting herself. Her autonomy is not a consideration. He suggests that women spend much of their time cooking and cleaning for their boyfriends (a questionable assertion at best–and in his apartment, not one they both share), but does not consider that (assuming that this is actually the case) they might be doing it out of their own free will, and not out of some twisted sense of duty. In his world, she is disrespecting herself by making that choice. He imagines that most women exist in a state of self-imposed disgrace, doing things they don’t want to do out of the hope that someday, their efforts will be appreciated, and they will be rewarded with the holy grail of matrimony. How respectful towards women is that?

Frankly, I think I’m catching a whiff of a Madonna/whore complex. He sets women up on an unrealistic pedestal (which seems to borrow very heavily from stereotypes that feminists are fighting against), and says that anyone who doesn’t worship the same fanciful image of us is being disrespectful, if not downright degrading. And women who don’t live up to that image are participating in their own degradation.

And this doesn’t even address his more serious assertion that the male pursuit of “cheap substitutes for a lost sense of erotic excitement” (read: porn, strip clubs, etc.) leads men to hate women to the point that they would engage in cruel, non-consensual and demeaning acts, like humiliation and rape.

Although I would argue that, in the first place, a sense of erotic excitement is certainly not lost on those men who watch porn and go to strip clubs, that’s not really the point. What he is really saying is that porn, strip clubs, etc. (from here on, I will just shorten it to “porn”) erode the boundaries in men’s minds between fantasy and reality, morality and immorality. On the contrary, I would argue that he is perceiving an external cause for something that is actually internal, and using it to justify his pre-determined notion that porn and strip clubs are sinful and bad.

One of the things I discussed in my previous post was the idea that, because of porn, men are developing fetishes for the demeaning situations shown therein, and become attracted only to women who look like they belong in porn, or women whom they can act out those scenarios on. There are certainly some men out there who have such narrow tastes, but I wouldn’t say that they are in the majority. If porn really caused men to develop such tastes, though, then every man who looks at porn, or at least every man who is really into porn, would be like that. Although really, there is such a wide variety of different types of porn out there, that I’m not sure it even makes sense to argue that porn encourages men to develop narrow tastes.

It makes more sense to argue that porn helps encourage misogyny. And yes, a lot of things in porn can be perceived as misogynistic and objectifying (I don’t believe it is necessarily so, but for the sake of saving space, I don’t want to take up that argument). But to take that a step further (as Rabbi Boteach does) and imply that porn invariably encourages men to engage in unethical acts? Well, that claim is more suspect.

The alleged rape victim had been paid $400 by the Neanderthals who surrounded her to excite and arouse them. And she arrived as the perfect obedient male fantasy, wearing, according to the New York Times, a “negligee and shiny white strappy high heels.” But when even that failed to ignite an erotic charge, one of the highly educated youth allegedly “held up a broomstick and threatened to sexually assault her with it.”

The key here is the difference between fantasy and reality. Most people, believe it or not, more or less have it down (if they didn’t, then violence in video games, television, and movies would have a much more drastic effect than what they really do). They probably delude themselves in certain ways, but it is more akin to wearing glasses of a certain shade than the sort of twisted, funhouse mirror distortions that lead to justifications for rape. I would argue that the types of people who would have trouble differentiating between the fantasies depicted in porn and reality are not having trouble because of whatever fantasy they are indulging in–because after all, plenty of men who aren’t inclined to rape share those fantasies–but because of an inherent difficulty making that distinction, and a code of ethics that is severely lacking.

If these men are, indeed, as the Rabbi is claiming, raping women in violent and humiliating ways, because they have become so desensitized that normal circumstances “fail to ignite an erotic charge” (though that seems to be the opposite of what is really happening), then they do have an ethical alternative. It’s called BDSM. Properly practiced, it’s safe, sane, and consensual, and it offers an avenue to explore more violent sexual fantasies, including rape fantasies, in a way that won’t hurt the submissive (psychologically speaking). The Rabbi makes no mention of this, so I assume he does not understand the subculture’s strict ethical codes, tarring it as sinful with the same brush as he does everything else.

But rapists wouldn’t bother with all of that, because rapists are scumbags. They believe they are entitled to rape, that women are asking for it, and so many other ridiculous things that I am shocked every time I hear a new one. But not Rabbi Boteach. None of this shocks him. He has such a cynical view of everyone else the he apparently believes that all men are evil, and that indulging in any kind of sexual fantasy (or sexual reality–like sex before marriage) will eat away at their strictly society-imposed (religion-imposed?) moral codes enough that they would engage in horrific acts of violence against women. Ultimately, I think it does come down to religion. His nonsensical rant is a way of protecting his religious views, without which he would be left vulnerable, and express his fears that society is becoming increasingly violent and scary as it becomes more secular. And that’s a valid fear, but I think the sense of people becoming more evil than they were in the past is exaggerated by several factors, including a sense of more things being wrong than really are (honestly, burping?), and a likely distorted view of the past as being more “safe” and healthy, on a sexual level. I don’t think everyone is quite so evil as he would suggest, or as insane. Of course there are guys like that on college campuses, but not everyone is, and I don’t believe they are in the majority or even a significant minority. They’re just the most noticeable, because they’re the most obnoxious. And it’s true that misogyny is a very real problem, but I don’t think porn, strip clubs, sex before marriage, or anything like that is the source of the problem. That’s not to say that those things are wholly good, either. It is neither invariably corrupting, nor invariably healthy. It’s all in how you approach it–and people need to be taught not to just avoid it (unless they want to!), but to take a good attitued towards it, with healthy boundaries established and strict consequences for people who would violate those boundaries (by raping, molesting strippers, or any other sort of violence). Frankly, I think “safe, sane, and consensual” ought to be applied to all forms of sexuality, not just BDSM.

I would argue all of this, and I don’t even like porn. I find it gross, and often downright ridiculous. I have a hard time keeping myself from laughing when I look at it. Honestly, how is any of that a turn-on, for anyone? But I understand that other people feel differently, and that just because I feel that way, that doesn’t mean it was meant as an attack on me personally, or women as a whole. I don’t claim that I am able to see everything clearly, or tease out every factor that contributes to misogyny and patriarchy, but I do try to be as clear-headed and rational as possible when looking at these (and other) issues. I think if people learned to apply reality checks to their perceptions more often, it would contribute significantly to cutting down the drama (and propaganda!) out there in the world, which would become a much calmer place. And you know, maybe, just maybe, people would be more willing to listen when we tell them that asexuality exists.