Dan Savage Can Suck It

I've written this twice today, so it becomes a blog post. :) The first part of the conversation was this: PRISM threw out the idea of having Dan Savage as our keynote speaker for our Queer celebration next year. I dislike that idea, primarily because of this, from his column, published in February. "NSNA" is the person who wrote to him.

"With all the minimally sexuals out there making normally sexuals miserable, NSNA, it should be obvious to all regular readers that there’s not exactly a shortage of people who aren’t interested in sex. With that being the case, why would you even contemplate inflicting yourself on a normally sexual person? Why not go find another minimally sexual person? You’ll be doing your minimally sexual self a favor, you’ll be doing your future minimally sexual partner a favor, and you’ll be doing all normally sexual persons everywhere a favor by removing two minimals—you and your future partner—from the dating pool."
This hurts my feelings. I will be pissed if PRISM has him come speak. Slim chance, I hope, but I will be pissed. The response was, is this so wrong? Shouldn't people be compatible? They could. There's nothing wrong with wanting that, but that doesn't have to be the be-all-end-all of every relationship.

Here was my response:
For one thing, he doesn't take into account the idea that people could be happy making compromises. I've sifted through some of the other things he's written about asexuals as part of this conversation PRISM is having, and without exception he's sarcastic and dismissive. His schtick is being an abrasive jerk and that's okay because nobody's making me read his column, but I don't want that for our keynote, because respect for everybody needs to be the default for speakers we bring to campus.
As for the problems I have with his ideas: He explicitly says that it is cruel for an asexual to even think about being in a relationship with a sexual. In response to another letter from somebody who is making that kind of relationship work, he does say that if that works for them, then okay, but he starts his response with "I think your boyfriend must be either a fool or a fag." He explicitly says he doesn't believe that the boyfriend could be happy with an asexual- that it's just impossible.
"Why would you even think of inflicting yourself on a sexual person." The wording here really sucks, because it makes everything I feel wrong and mean. If I even think about liking a sexual boy, I'm doing a bad thing. And removing myself from the dating pool would be doing everyone a favor- meaning then they won't have to deal with me. I won't be around to "fool" them because they assume that I'm straight. I never tell people I'm straight. I'm not fooling anyone- they assume and they're wrong. But in this paragraph, it's all my fault. What he's writing here blames asexuals for wanting to be loved and finding a dating pool consisting almost entirely of sexual people. What other choice do I have? If I knew any asexual boys, maybe I could be interested in them, but I don't. And everything he writes here blames me for that and tells me I'd be doing everyone a favor if I spent the rest of my life alone. {End of my response}

This has left me having one of those evenings where I'm almost having to convince myself that there's nothing wrong with me, and that's hard. Even a friend who's always been a good ally in the past, and who still is, can't see a problem with what's being written here.
It makes me feel alone- if even my allies think he's right, maybe he is, I think to myself. Even allies wouldn't be able to bring themselves to love somebody like me, and in theory don't they already? Don't they, or do they not really understand? What if I had them all wrong?
I'm so, so glad that I'm not the only asexual person in PRISM when we're having this debate. For some reason, this hurts worse than anything, maybe because my allies are haivng problems seeing why I'm upset- I'm not getting any of the support that I believed I could expect from these people. That hurts as much as the crap Dan Savage is spewing up there. I feel let down by them, and it makes me question whether I can rely on them when it's really tough, when push comes to shove- like it's doing now. When I ask them to choose between believeing the validity of my feelings and believing the validity of Dan Savage's arguments, what if they choose him?

This conversation is far from over, and I haven't heard from everybody who was in the meeting tonight where this was discussed. The reactions may be totally different when we have a chance to really get into this matter next week.

Third-Wheeling It

So, I have relationship problems. (Uh, what else is new with me? Not much.) My own relationship problem in the sense that it deals with the relationship between my best friend and I, but also his relationship which can be defined in the more traditional sense- with a girl.
So, I'm going to attempt to clarify for myself as well as for anyone reading why I am so upset when he gets into a new relationship. Not angry, but sad is probably the word I'm looking for here. I guess the reason would be that when he starts a relationship, guess where the sun starts to shine out of? Yup. So, I can look forward to seeing her every time I see him, I know I'm going to hear about everything they do together as well as plenty of things she does alone and tells him about. He likes to pass on interesting stories and to talk about things that interest him- especially the girlfriends.
The crazy thing is, I always get along with the girlfriends really well. He has yet to date a girl I didn't like and get along with. So what am I so sad about? I guess I feel like I lose my friend for a while when he partners with someone. I don't get him to myself until they break up and when we're in a group together he (and this sounds incredibly childish in my head) pays attention only or at least mostly to her. I feel like I have to turn cartwheels to get his attention to talk about something. I perpetually feel like I'm interrupting "their time" together.
I proabably could file this one under jealousy, too. We're really close and spend a ton of time together and it's like he starts dating and I lose all that time I used to enjoy with my friend.
So, an ongoing "thing" (I'm really sorry, I have no idea what else to call it) is that I'm always a nice number-two person. My problem here is that with the friend in question, we're each other's number-one people, the brother and sister, we always go to each other first with ideas and thoughts and to spend our free time... until he starts dating again. And then, just like that, I'm number two. He doesn't stop calling me, he doesn't leave me out of things we might have done together, he doesn't disappear. But I lose my number one. I feel like I'm being cheated on. (For the record, until I typed that I had never been able to pinpoint the reason behind the way I feel about his relationships. Just so you know the depth of what you're reading.) I still consider him my number-one person (family doesn't count, they're a category of their own) but he doesn't consider me his number-one anymore. It's like being left- over and over and over again and always making up in the end.
I don't know what I hope to gain from this post. I'm using it to figure out my feelings and so I should throw in this- that I connect this feeling to being Asexual. I feel that if I were sexual I would understand how somebody could have a new number-one so quickly. I don't- whenever I've dated, my friends were still my number-ones, which I sincerely hope never hurt one of the boyfriends. (Not like there were many anyway.) I feel like if I were sexual I could have my own number-one who I was dating and then we could be each other's number-two people and then it would be equal.
But I'm not and I feel really left behind and I have no way of explaining it to this person so that he'd understand. I don't even think of him changing because it is impossible and would result in resentment towards me, destroying our friendship. I don't know what to think.
End angsty post. Thanks guys.

Dying Alone

I think this is an asexual's biggest fear. With 'coming out and being laughed at/ignored/disbelieved/put in therapy' as a close second, I think that asexuals spend a lot of time and energy worrying about being alone forever. This worry definitely gets a lot of press on AVEN, I think, and it's not an illogical fear. But I also think that, while 'dying alone' is a valid worry, especially for an asexual, we spend too much time thinking about it. This is why:

To my way of thinking, whether we are alone at any point in our lives is something we can control. Maybe we can't control whether we have a romantic partner and certainly not all of us want that. Maybe we can't control the fact that our friends will get married and be the sexual people they are and might spend less time with us than they used to, and maybe they'll even leave us entirely. But we can control how we spend our time and how we get involved in our communities. We can control our relationships with family members and with neighbors and we can form new relationships in non-traditional ways with people we've never even met.These are some of my suggestions for combating the problem of 'dying alone'.

1) Stay close with your family. I've never wanted kids of my own, really, but I'm totally looking forward to being the fun aunt to my brothers' and sister's kids. I love my own aunts and I enjoy spending time with them and if they ever needed me I'd be right there to help. By being a good aunt, I can have a relationship with younger members of my family who will want to be there to support me and help me out when I get old.

2) Get involved in your church or community service program. Big Brothers, Big Sisters, as I understand, pairs up kids who need mentoring with adults willing to mentor. By getting involved, you can have a non-traditional relationship with a younger person. With a little luck, you could end up having a very good relationship that might continue past their childhood years.

3) Stay close to your friends. Several recent conversations on AVEN have centered around the idea of friends getting into sexual relationships and ignoring their non-sexual relationships. I think to an extent, people are always going to spend more of their energy on their marital relationships. But just because my parents are best friends doesn't mean they don't also have friends other than each other. Maybe as an asexual, without a single sexual partner to focus on, I will just need to cultivate a wider circle of friends in order to increase the chance that somebody will be available to talk or spend time with me. I should probably also learn to plan ahead in order to find time with friends who have busy family lives.

4) Join stuff. Becoming a hardcore member of a group focused on things you're interested in, an asexual can find people with similar interests who are dedicated to spending time together on a regular basis. If you get really involved with a club or group that's close knit, you can bet the group will take care of each other outside of meetings, too.

5) Have an unusual relationship. This is probably the hardest, but it's my favorite option- I'd love to have a partner to spend my life with. Ideally, I think we'd be like live-in best friends. We might have our own rooms, but because we would live together, we could share vacations, or a mortgage or pets... but unlike a traditional marriage, maybe my partner would be another woman (who I wouldn't be attracted to, cause I'm romantically interested in guys) or they'd be a man who I just didn't have a sexual relationship with. If both parties were happy with it, I actually think this sounds like a lot of fun.

The Only Gay Eskimo

I've been downloading music (er... copying it from Youtube? Can I even admit to that?) and one of the songs I "downloaded"(/copied illegally) was the song 'The Only Gay Eskimo'. It's one of those songs that I'm not sure is actually in good taste, but I think it's pretty funny.

The lyrics go like this:
"I'm the only gay eskimo
I'm the only one I know
I'm the only gay eskimo
In my tribe."

And then the singer goes on to describe the trials and tribulations of this gay eskimo. Frighteningly, I think I kind of identify with this song. I've finally met somebody else who's ase, but we're not close friends. We just say hi when we pass each other. We've got lots of stuff to talk about when we spend time together- we just never do. Gay, straight, bi, whatever- all my friends are sexual. And until I came out to them, they didn't know that asexuals existed although they all say it makes sense that we do.

It can be isolating to be the only person who thinks the way I think and who wants the things I want in life. When my friends sit around talking about boys, I don't understand the attraction and I never will. Being in college, they don't just talk about who's pretty... they talk about guys always in terms of sex. Knowing that they mean 'attractive' in a different level than I do makes me reluctant to join in their conversations. I don't want to end up saying the wrong thing, something I don't mean, and be misunderstood. So I get left out of the conversation. It's embarassing to realize I'm the only one who doesn't understand a topic of conversation. It's lonely to realize I'm that nobody agrees with me or understands what I am saying. And it's really freaking awkward when somebody follows up what I thought was an innocent comment with 'That's what she said!" I try to laugh along. I try to see it as funny. What other option do I have?

That's the price I pay, I guess, for being the only gay eskimo.