meridian_rose

Thanks to everyone who read my asexual awareness posts and took away the messages I was trying to give. I wanted to bust some of the myths about asexuality and talk about relationships and representation and I wanted to give links to articles of interest, including further reading.

I had some wonderful supportive comments for which I'm very appreciative. Some of you have learnt things or found links of interest and that's fantastic to hear :D
However I had issues at the DW version the posts. Despite my best attempts to draw from particularly good literature on the subject, some people still can't accept that asexuality isn't just celibacy. They claim that asexuality is just too complicated to grasp. Worst of all was the comment about the article on relationships. I quoted from an article on the word "zucchini" which shows it was a word adopted by the asexual community themselves (therefore not a slur), something to describe a deeply committed but non-sexual relationship, and the takeaway was that "zucchini is a vegetable…comatose people are vegetables…maybe asexual people are emotionally numb" [ie vegetables].

Are people really so wilfully ignorant? So obtuse they can't grasp the difference between wanting to have sex but not and not wanting to have sex at all? Suggesting that asexual people are emotionally stunted so we call ourselves vegetables? I just can't.



I shouldn't complain. It could be worse. SwankIvy, well known in asexual circles, and about to have a book on asexuality published under her birth name of Julia Decker, got featured in UK tabloid The Daily Mail. Instead of interviewing her, they grabbed an old photo of her in a bikini from her facebook page and misquoted and misrepresented her statements from other interviews and past papers. This has led to unwanted attention and harassment on her author page at facebook from assholes who want to marry her and "turn her straight" amongst more messages.

So this is why we need asexual awareness week. It's why we still need Gay Pride. Until ignorance is abolished and people stop judging on the basis of sexual attraction, we need both spaces to exist without criticism and outreach to educate people. In the meantime, I'm grateful to all of you who embrace and accept all forms of sexual orientation as valid ♥