Month: February 2014

Some Love for the Aromantic Sexual People Out There

I need to briefly take a break from your regularly scheduled programming to express my love and enthusiasm and admiration for aromantic sexual people who take their nonromantic/nonsexual relationships so fucking seriously that those relationships are the emotional center of their lives.

Aromantic sexual people who passionately love their friends.

Aromantic sexual people who want a nonromantic/nonsexual primary partner or partners.

Aromantic sexual people who are so loving and caring and tender with their friends, family, and nonromantic partners–more loving and caring and tender than just about any romantic-sexual person is with their nonromantic companions.

Aromantic sexual people who want to build a family out of nonromantic relationships.

Aromantic sexual people who put friendship above sex.

Aromantic sexual people who want or have queerplatonic relationships and queerplatonic partnerships that they take as seriously as any marriage.

Aromantic sexual people who are down to be in deep nonromantic/nonsexual love with asexuals.

Aromantic sexual people who want or have not just one important nonromantic partner but more than one.

Aromantic sexual people who want to commit to a long-term nonromantic/nonsexual partnership.

Aromantic sexual people who are pretty much First Class Friends.

Aromantic sexual people who are totally available for and capable of emotionally intense, physical intimate/affectionate friendships.

Aromantic sexual people whose passion basically gets channeled into nonromantic/nonsexual love.

*Same goes for greyromantic sexual people.

You are all fucking wonderful, amazing, magnificent, and necessary in the world. I would be your Friend/Queerplatonic Companion in a heartbeat. The fact that you have so much nonromantic, nonsexual love in you is FUCKING INCREDIBLE. Thank you for existing.

Asexual Celibacy is Not Sexual Celibacy.

Asexual celibacy and sexual celibacy are completely different. Sexual people may assume that as a celibate asexual, I can easily connect to the dialogue and practice of celibacy that already exists in sexual society, but they’re wrong.

My celibacy is voluntary, amoral, secular, sensual, erotic, permanent, emotional, feminist, and political. My celibacy is not based in self-denial but in self-expression. My celibacy is everything that sexual people’s celibacy isn’t.

My celibacy is not about saving sex for marriage. My celibacy is not couched in the amatonormative, romance supremacist ideology that proclaims romantic/monogamous/marital love is the only appropriate context in which to fuck and that sex should be “special” and therefore only happen within a romantic relationship because all romantic relationships are inherently “special.”

My celibacy is not romantic.

My celibacy is not about pleasing a deity or religious organization that considers most sexual behaviors immoral.

My celibacy is not a rejection of intimate, emotional, loving, physically affectionate relationships.

My celibacy is not a rejection of all physical touch. It is not a rejection of sensual touch or even physical intimacy that could be construed as “erotic.”

My celibacy is not temporary. My virginity isn’t something I’m looking to lose.

My celibacy is not in compliance with a patriarchal system that seeks to control female bodies and female sexuality through the virgin/whore dichotomy. My celibacy is not about purity, chastity, or complying with male objectification of my body as something they either do or don’t have sexual access to. (I don’t actually identify as a woman but I get read as a woman, so I feel like the woman-specific politics of celibacy still apply to me.)

My celibacy is a choice I make to please myself. My celibacy is my default, natural state of being because I am an asexual. My celibacy coexists with my desire for passionate, emotional, committed, physical, intimate love. My celibacy serves to create the connections I do want: nonsexual relationships with other celibate asexuals. My celibacy is rebellion against sexual society, an expression of loyalty to myself as an asexual and an act of prioritizing asexual desires and needs and feelings above sexual people’s desires and expectations—which is itself political.

I am a celibate person who is anti-marriage, who supports consenting adults having whatever kind of sex they want to have in ethical circumstances*, who actually feels a whole lot more comfortable around casual sex than romantic sex. I am a celibate person who supports and identifies with all forms of nonmonogamy. I am a celibate person who wants to be extremely physical, affectionate, and sensual in loving relationships—not just in one normative “romantic” primary partnership but in several different alternative friendships. I am a celibate person who is independently spiritual but not religious. I am a celibate person who conceptualizes my celibacy and asexual celibacy in general as radically political in a culture that espouses compulsory sexuality, sex as “healthy,” sex as normative, sex as human. I am a celibate person with strong erotic energy, and I express that erotic energy freely. I am a celibate person who invites intimacy, sensuality, and love into my life. I am a celibate person who loves passionately. I am a celibate person who is apparently sexy, despite being asexual.

Sexual society’s take on celibacy has nothing to offer me, and I think a lot of my fellow asexuals would agree with me. Asexual celibacy is not something that sexual society understands, supports, or respects. In fact, I think it’s fascinating to note that many sexual people endorse sexual celibacy—that which is moralistic, religious, romantic, and temporary—but most sexual people vehemently reject asexual celibacy because asexual celibacy comes into direct contradiction with the genital messages permeating their social ethos. To date, there has been no presence of or place for asexual celibate voices anywhere in mainstream culture, no imagery of an amoral/secular/voluntary/long-term celibacy in the media, and no representation of celibate asexuals in entertainment. Sexual culture has not included an image of celibacy as loving anywhere; sexual people present celibacy as anti-love. The associations that sexual society makes with celibacy does not speak to my experience as a celibate asexual at all. The average celibate sexual person cannot speak to my experience as a celibate asexual, nor do I want sexual people who believe in moralistic/religious/romantic celibacy to use asexuals as tokens for their particular agenda.

What I want to see in mainstream American culture and media is an ongoing narrative of asexual celibacy as I know it to be: celibacy that is loving, passionate, sensual, emotional, empowering, nurturing, healthy, connection-oriented, social, joyful, and liberating—while simultaneously being secular, amoral, and long-term. Asexual celibacy that is all of those things whether it’s romantic or aromantic, partnered or unpartnered.

Links: Real Nonsexual/Nonromantic Life Partnership & Adoption for Friends

I have two very cool articles that I want to pass along that, while not about asexuality or asexuals, represents the kind of family and relationship building that many asexuals want to participate in: the kind that doesn’t involve any sex (or romance, in the case of some asexuals).

First, a judge in New York City recently ruled that two friends–a man and a woman–who live separately with their own romantic-sexual partners, could legally adopt a child together as parents. The child was originally adopted by the woman, and they had to go to court so that the man could also adopt as father and co-parent of this baby, despite the fact that the two friends don’t live together and are not romantically or sexually involved and ARE coupled to third parties. The child already identifies the woman as “mom” and the man as “dad,” even though the two don’t live together and their respective romantic partners are in the picture too, which I’m sure influenced the judge’s decision. This is huge progress that I can’t believe actually happened, and I’m so happy about it. Beyond the actual implications for adoption specifically, this was a statement that in the eyes of New York law, a family can be based on friendship, not on romantic-sexual couplehood or marriage. It’s a step in the direction of redefining family beyond the heternormative Romantic-Sexual Monogamous Couple Who Cohabit and Create a Nuclear Family. I consider this choice that the two parents made–to raise a child together, as a family, despite being friends who have no intention to become a romantic-sexual couple and who have romantic-sexual relationships with other people–an act of relationship anarchy.

Second, I stumbled upon an essay written several years ago (I think in 2005) by a man whose sister had entered a nonsexual life partnership with her female friend. The essay talks about how the two women ended up becoming partners, what nonsexual life partnership meant for them, etc. These two women did have sex lives, but sex was neither particularly important to them nor tied to forming central, emotional bonds. Their romantic and sexual identities are not specified, so I can’t know whether they’re asexual-spectrum or aromantic-spectrum or if they’re allosexuals with low libidos and/or low romance drive. All I know is that they really did place each other in this role of “partner”: they lived together and were committed enough to actually move from one state to another at least once, they were each other’s main source of emotional connection and support, and they viewed each other as partners, not as “just good friends who are hanging out until a lover comes along.” I’ve read stories like this before a couple times, and I’m always thrilled when I do. I particularly like and appreciate that this partnership is both nonsexual and nonromantic. I passionately love the idea of friendship–nonsexual, nonromantic friendship–becoming the basis of a primary partnership. And I think that the women’s reasoning behind their partnering decision, regarding their professional/artistic/political lives, makes a whole lot of sense as well. It reminded me of women in the 19th century who entered into Boston marriages because they wanted to pursue political activism or careers in the arts or some other type of work, and knew that friendship was much more conducive to retaining the freedom and independence and time necessary for that pursuit, while playing the roles of housewife and mother in a heterosexual marriage would’ve prevented them from becoming anything else. I think it’s cool that these two women also stated an openness about adding onto their little family if anyone else wanted to come along and participate in the kind of committed nonsexual/nonromantic union they’ve forged, which poses their partnership in stark opposition to normative romantic-sexual marriage which is usually monogamous.