Asexuality at the WorldPride 2014 Toronto Recap

Saturday, June 28th, was the International Asexuality Conference at Toronto’s Ryerson University. It was a big hit! A lot of people turned out for it! AVEN has a photo and video thread as well as a thread for conference feedback. A simple search for “asexuality conference” on YouTube will bring up some of the discussions. I’m sure more will be posted as well, and I’ll try to post more information as I find it. TheStar.com reported that the conference hosted the “largest gathering of asexuals ever”!

About thirty or so of us went out the dinner after the conference. Ivy had to leave for an interview with Canadian TV (I posted the link below)! I have also added a few more of her many web residences, and if you’re interested in more asexual news, I would suggest keeping up with her @swankivy account! The Bibliophibian posted a review of Ivy’s book that will be released in September of this year: The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality. Ivy has also published articles around the Internet on asexuality and her websites will guide you to them and keep you up-to-date. For example, here’s one she recently got published on TheToast.com: “‘Enjoy Your Houseful of Cats’: On Being an Asexual Woman”.

For the purposes of archiving, AVEN had a Facebook page and hashtag set up, and here are all the tweets tagged with #awp2014: https://twitter.com/hashtag/awp2014 And speaking of books, I would also like to include this free Smashwords ebook I recently discovered: What Do You Mean You’re Not Interested in Sex?: American Life and Law from an Asexual Perspective by Amanda C. Lee.

The WorldPride parade on Sunday was pretty amazing and a lot of fun to march in! I will have to post some photos on AVEN as soon as I have more time to sort them. It was a really great experience seeing so many people witness some real awesome asexual visibility! (Also, sorry it took me so long to get this post together; I’ve been swamped with work, school, housework, etc.)

Click here for the CTV News Video “Asexuality Conference held in Toronto,” featuring Julie Sondra Decker.

Reblogging: Call for projects at the International Asexual Conference

Reblogging: Call for projects at the International Asexual Conference

Got a project idea for raising asexual vis awareness? Want to attend the largest North American ace gathering in history? Click here to read more.

See you in Toronto!

Asexuality Studies Tumblr, AVEN CAKE, and More News

The Asexuality Studies Tumblr has recently begun and, in the author’s words, is directed mostly to the following audience: “Help! I’m in a freshman English class and I want to write about asexuality! What do I do?” Users are encouraged to submit any questions regarding “existing research, community statistics, or community history.”

Also, AVEN CAKE is having an Un-conference and after-party/AVEN Prom on Saturday, April 12, 2014, in New York City. Visit their WordPress site for more info!

Both resources have been added to the link list on right sidebar of this website for further reference.

Reminder: Paper and panel submissions for the Regulating Intimacy Graduate Symposium are due April 30, 2014. The symposium will be held October 17–19, 2014 at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Please click the above link for more information.

Lastly, Columbia law professor Elizabeth F. Emens published an academic article earlier this year regarding asexuality: “Compulsory Sexuality.” She says “Part III.E discusses jurisdictions with anti-discrimination laws covering asexuality (especially p. 362 and thereabouts), as part of Part III’s broader discussion of how U.S. law looks through the lens of asexuality.” The article PDF is free to download.

Upcoming Conferences: Mark Your Calendars Now!

2014 National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Annual Conference
This year’s topic: Feminist Transgressions
Date and Place: November 13–16, 2014, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Click here for conference registration info.

27th Creating Change Conference, provided by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
Date and Place: February 4–8, 2015, at the beautiful Sheraton Downtown Denver, Colorado.
Click here for updates as they are posted.

Asexuality in the News

I found some recent mentions of asexuality in the news that I wanted to share. I hope these will invoke some intellectual discussion regarding human sexuality. Here they are in no particular order:

1. “DINEEN: A Look Into My Sex Life” by Bailey Dineen at the Cornell Daily Sun.

2. “Why Some People Become 30-Year-Old Virgins” by Christina Sterbenz at Business Insider.

3. “New Group to Bring Awareness of Cornell Asexual Community” by Emma Ianni at the Cornell Daily Sun.

Asexuality at WorldPride 2014!

Spread the word! The topic of asexuality will be featured at the Human Rights Conference at World Pride 2014 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We have entered LGBT academia and we’re here to stay!

From our Tumblr: Asexuality will be represented at the WorldPride Human Rights Conference, 25–27 June 2014. The presentation will be entitled “From bananas to zucchinis: How talking about asexuality can contribute to queer and trans* positive, comprehensive, sexual education”.

See also: http://worldprideasexuality.tumblr.com/ More info will always be available at AVEN.

The Asexual Spectrum: Identities In The Ace Community

Extremely busy with school at the moment, but hopefully you have seen the Huffington Post’s “six-part series on asexuality,” which features some excellent resources for anyone interested in learning more about asexuality. For now, enjoy this awesome infographic! Preview text from the Huff:

“Aces say that asexuality, like sexuality, exists on a spectrum. Most asexuals, when asked, will identify two orientations: a sexual one and a romantic one.

“‘[The asexual lifestyle] allows you to see how sex and romance can be decoupled,’ said Anthony Bogaert, a professor at Canada’s Brock University and an authority on asexual research. ‘It allows you to see that when we automatically couple up romance and sex, as if they’re naturally together, that’s not true.'”

“Love Without Sex” Web Interview/Discussion

Originally aired November 26, 2012, this Huffington Post web interview discusses asexuality from a very honest and layperson viewpoint. There are no aggressive arguments here, and I think it would make a great resource to share with family and friends. You can view and post comments as well. Hosted by Janet Varney.

Guests include:
David Jay (San Francisco, CA), Founder, AVEN
Maddox (San Francisco, CA), LGBT Advocate and Educator
CJ Chasin (Windsor, Canada), Ph.D. Student in Applied Social Psychology, University of Windsor
Angela Tucker (Brooklyn, NY), Documentary Filmmaker

The webpage also cites an interesting resource: “Does Asexuality Fall Under the Queer Umbrella?” by Allison Hope, PR specialist and journalist, May 16, 2012. I think this particular matter is going to come up more and more as asexuality permeates into LGBT issues. It may take a while, but we’ll get there.

On a related matter, the (A)sexual documentary is now available in the USA on Netflix, according to Jeremy44 of AVEN. Click here to view the forum thread.

Back from a librarian vacation of sorts…

I apologize for the long gap in posts here, I have been busy working full-time (finally!) and studying for my master’s program in library science, and I did realize from the get-go that I wasn’t the best blogger… Surely we have some new ace webpages out there now, from the time Bogaert’s book was published (August) to Christmas. Speaking of which, I hope everyone’s holiday(s) have been just wonderful! I have yet another four-day weekend before me for New Year’s so I will be catching up on some reading and will hopefully have some reviews for you very soon.

By now you have most certainly seen the updated design for AVEN (which may look a bit like my idea: “Proposed Idea for AVEN Website Re-design”?) that definitely brings the site together much better than before. I have found a couple broken links, such as the “Learn More” button when accessed from the Forums homepage, and the link to Comments (“Updated 28 Dec · 0 comments”) from a user’s profile page. Nevertheless, I think the design is well on its way to utilizing AVEN to its fullest extent. Feel free to respond here about the AVEN upgrade.

Another topic I wanted to address is AsexualNews.com. Most sites in the asexual community are personal sites such as blogs or Tumblrs. Whether you consider yourself a member of the asexual community, how would rate the news on AsexualNews.com? Where do you get your asexual news, if you seek it out at all? AVEN forum thread regarding this issue: “What is Your Opinion of AsexualNews.com?”

Interview with Anthony Bogaert

Another AVEN Digest link, Storm Watch: The Mystery of Sexual Attraction — and Asexuality interviews author of Understanding Asexuality, Anthony Bogaert. Bogaert gives a nice introduction, which is great press for the asexual community. I’m very pleased that he has published this book, forever placing us a real orientation in academia. Enjoy!

Asexual Prejudice?

Here is a recent article, “Prejudice Against ‘Group X’ (Asexuals)” by Gordon Hodson and posted on AVEN Digest Oc.t 8, which I think would quite interesting to follow up on, as Hodson mentions near the end of his article. He also lists some good references and further readings at the bottom of the page, which includes two of Bogaert’s articles. I will be following up with a review of Bogaert’s book as soon as I finish it. I purchased the Kindle edition for about $28.

I also found a Bundlr page: An Introduction to Asexuality which has links to some good references, especially for “101” materials. Just had to share!