Fitting Into the Lexicon
When Emily Lyons came out to her family members and friends, it was with a confession that’s often met with an awkward silence...followed by an eruption of questions. The journey of coming out has certainly taken some twists and turns in the last few decades. The path that was once a dusty tunnel to exile is now almost seen as a rite of passage, a celebration lined with cheerers-on of every orientation. But what if your sexuality doesn’t fit the hetero or LGBTQ lexicon? For Lyons it wasn’t about her sexual preference, but lack there-of. Lyons is asexual.
David Jay is the founder of the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN). Articulate and extremely likeable, a charming nerd-type with soft eyes and an intense gaze, in conversation, Jay comes off as very intimate, and perhaps...sexy. When the question of asexuality is posed, he is quick to clarify is that asexuality is not abstinence or celibacy—both of which assume that a person wants to have sex but is denying themselves. Asexuals aren’t anti-sex, they just have no interest. “The political agenda that we have is similar to the LGBTQ community,” Jay notes. “We are looking for awareness, acceptance and to question social norms.”
While the asexuality movement is secure in what it can add to the overall sexual dialogue, for now, most discussions begin with Q&A about what asexuality is. “The only way to explain it is that you might have a sex drive, but you don’t really have a desire to have sex; which is hard to comprehend if you are a sexual being,” says Antony Greene, who would be more androgynous if it weren’t for her sparkling anime-sized eyes and petite features.
Greene self-identifies as a homo-romantic asexual, and as her identity suggests, one can be asexual and still have an aesthetic or romantic preference toward the same sex, opposite sex, or all sexes. You can also be asexual and still have “romantic” partnerships. Greene is in a committed relationship with a bisexual girlfriend.
Asexuals often end up exploring issues of vulnerability and honesty on deeper levels than most sexual couples do. “When asexual people gossip, we don’t just talk about the relationships we are in, we talk about the relationship models we are in,” explains Jay. “Every asexual person ends up with this elaborate world view of how intimacy and their own relationships work.”
The practice of asexuals engaging in mindless sex to please partners, leads to what just might be the human rights issue behind asexuality: the issue of consent and rape. If an asexual is never interested in sex, but is physically able to have sex, the line on date rape may be less than clear. However, Jay thinks might be less of a factor in the asexual community. “We have mechanisms to communicate a lack of consent, whereas, some sexual people don’t,” he says, “which speaks to the status of our society’s ability to communicate consent.”
AVEN member Elizabeth Collins, who identifies as a gray-sexual (which she defines as the gray area between asexual and sexual) admits she’s walked that blurry tightrope in the past. “You have to be very careful when you are with an asexual partner because it’s much easier to get into that non-consensual area,” she says.
David Jay is the founder of the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN). Articulate and extremely likeable, a charming nerd-type with soft eyes and an intense gaze, in conversation, Jay comes off as very intimate, and perhaps...sexy. When the question of asexuality is posed, he is quick to clarify is that asexuality is not abstinence or celibacy—both of which assume that a person wants to have sex but is denying themselves. Asexuals aren’t anti-sex, they just have no interest. “The political agenda that we have is similar to the LGBTQ community,” Jay notes. “We are looking for awareness, acceptance and to question social norms.”
While the asexuality movement is secure in what it can add to the overall sexual dialogue, for now, most discussions begin with Q&A about what asexuality is. “The only way to explain it is that you might have a sex drive, but you don’t really have a desire to have sex; which is hard to comprehend if you are a sexual being,” says Antony Greene, who would be more androgynous if it weren’t for her sparkling anime-sized eyes and petite features.
Greene self-identifies as a homo-romantic asexual, and as her identity suggests, one can be asexual and still have an aesthetic or romantic preference toward the same sex, opposite sex, or all sexes. You can also be asexual and still have “romantic” partnerships. Greene is in a committed relationship with a bisexual girlfriend.
Asexuals often end up exploring issues of vulnerability and honesty on deeper levels than most sexual couples do. “When asexual people gossip, we don’t just talk about the relationships we are in, we talk about the relationship models we are in,” explains Jay. “Every asexual person ends up with this elaborate world view of how intimacy and their own relationships work.”
The practice of asexuals engaging in mindless sex to please partners, leads to what just might be the human rights issue behind asexuality: the issue of consent and rape. If an asexual is never interested in sex, but is physically able to have sex, the line on date rape may be less than clear. However, Jay thinks might be less of a factor in the asexual community. “We have mechanisms to communicate a lack of consent, whereas, some sexual people don’t,” he says, “which speaks to the status of our society’s ability to communicate consent.”
AVEN member Elizabeth Collins, who identifies as a gray-sexual (which she defines as the gray area between asexual and sexual) admits she’s walked that blurry tightrope in the past. “You have to be very careful when you are with an asexual partner because it’s much easier to get into that non-consensual area,” she says.
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