No, We Don't (TW rape culture)

(originally posted on Tumblr.)

D. A. Wolf at the Huffington Post asks, Do We Owe Our Spouses Sex? By “we” she apparently means “women married to men”— a nuanced and less stereotyped discussion of the ways in which differing libidos and levels of sexual attraction affect other groups did not make the cut, more’s the pity. She mentions “rumblings of resentment” from women doing more than their share of housework, childcare, or income-earning, but then mentions that these women just “feel… we’re carrying the greater load” (emphasis mine). She moves on from this point, because apparently redistributing the workload to be more equitable and less gendered is not nearly as easy an answer as pressuring women into having sex they don’t want.

“So let’s talk sex — sex as marital glue, sex as physical necessity, sex as a reminder that we are alive, no matter how complicated our daily struggles may seem.”

Uh-huh.

Physical necessity? Not so much.

Marital glue? Frequently, yes.

Reminder that we are alive? Not going to touch that one.

Moving on, Wolf quotes Dr. Yvonne Fulbright, writing about the recent decision of a French judge that a man owes his wife money for not having sex with her, as saying, “Whether married for two years or twenty, husbands and wives have the right to control their bodies, including abstaining.” Wolf’s response is, “Mulling over her viewpoints, I disagree.” She disagrees that husbands and wives have the right to control their bodies. Really? REALLY. Someone else’s libido and sexual desire trumps my bodily autonomy? Don’t we have a word for that… a phrase… it’s on the tip of my tongue, I think it rhymes with “ape culture.”

She goes on to ask, “What if there is virtually no affection or no sexual contact in marriage— then what?” These two are not the same things. Affection takes a myriad of other forms besides sexual contact— unless we want to argue that the only people who ever show each other affection are those who are having sex with each other? No, thought not.

She continues, “How would you feel enduring one year, three years, five years — without being touched by the person you love?” Again, not the same thing as sexual contact, which I suspect is what she means.

And now we come to the crux of the article! “Might that mean that we owe our spouses sex?” Nope! Not ever!

“In the years since my marriage ended, I’ve become reacquainted with the importance of sex as a fundamental element of loving, and being loved.” Not universally!

“I believe it’s a matter of being caring — and smart — if we want to keep our relationships intact.” Aaaaand ending with a dose of implied “people who don’t have sex with their partners don’t care about them,” topped with a serving of “relationships = sexual/romantic relationships.”

The thing is, I agree that sexual compatibility is important in most sexual/romantic relationships, and a lack of it can cause a lot of unhappiness. It’s important to have open discussions about these things, and to communicate to potential sexual partners your desire or lack thereof. See what I did there? It’s not actually necessary to support rape culture or erase non-sexual intimacy to make that statement. Amazing!

Women are told that we can only express our sexuality in very specific ways— the old sexy-but-not-sexual trap. We’re supposed to desire men, but if we initiate sex, we’re “wild” and “slutty.” We’re supposed to be continually available to men, and receptive to what they want to do, but never have needs of our own. Apparently a history of shaming women who actively initiate or desire sex or even want it too much*, that stretches back to the beginning of written history, doesn’t seem to Wolf like it could have anything to do with the issue she writes about. Apparently the solution to “men feel like they’re not having enough sex with their wives” is not “change the fact that women are condemned for having sexual agency” or “redistribute the workload so women have more energy to engage in sex if they so desire” but “write an article reproving women for not being sexually available and reinforcing the notion that husbands are entitled to their wives’ bodies.” Awesome!

So, to sum up: No, we do not owe our spouses sex. No one ever owes anyone sex. Ever. EVER.

*of course, we’re also shamed if we want it too little.

What Is Wanting?

(Originally posted on my Tumblr.)

In the English language, we use the word “want” in different ways. Is it possible to decide to want something?

If I am riding in a car with my friend, I can say, “Will you pull in here? I want to run in and get some milk.”

If the waitress is asking for my decision between two rather mediocre choices, I can say, “I want the zucchini pie.”

If a coworker asks me to take a break and go out for something to drink, I can say, “No, I want to finish this today.”

These are all common uses of the word “want.”

But then I see something like these:




















































This is an entirely different kind of want. This produces the desire for some sort of action— I want to make and eat that dessert, I want to cuddle those cats. This produces awareness of some sort of lack— I am aware viscerally that I do not have that dessert to eat nor those cats to cuddle in a way that I am not viscerally aware that I do not have milk, zucchini pie, or a completed task at work.

Yet both are accurate uses of the word want. Is it also accurate to label the latter experience as desire? Or is that an inaccurate use of the word, or does its standard use in sexual contexts render it inapplicable here?

Sometimes people say, “How can you be asexual? You want to have sex!” Well, yes. But it’s zucchini pie want, milk want, not cat want. It’s not the same thing at all, to me, and yet we use exactly the same word for it.

Thoughts?

(Photo credits: Graham Cracker S’mores Candy, Cats on Windowsill)

Model Clash: Defining Sexual Orientation (Warning, Ace Erasure)

I need to get better about xposting things in a timely fashion. Originally from my Tumblr.

I've heard people suggest multiple times that anyone who's not queer is straight, therefore aromantic asexuals (and heteroromantic asexuals) are straight. I always thought that, as a woman, being straight would require me to have at least some minimal interest in men that I didn't have in women, but that's neither here nor there.

I've also encountered a different model that postulates that sexual orientation refers to the gender(s) to which you are attracted, not whether or not you feel sexual attraction to that/those gender(s). Most people have seen one iteration or another of this in the past few weeks, but one example can be found here (NB demisexual erasure-- link goes to privilegedenyingasexuals). What I find particularly significant is the repetition of "gender(s) you are attracted to."

While I know other aromantic aces experience things differently, I don't experience attraction in a gendered way. The forms of attraction of which I am most aware in my everyday life are emotional and aesthetic, in that order, with intellectual attraction popping up occasionally. (I made a post riffing on the types of attraction last week.) I’m emotionally, aesthetically and intellectually attracted to people irrespective of their gender, to people of multiple genders. These are the most significant attractions I experience and they are the ones around which I form my relationships (well, not so much aesthetically on that count). So, according to the second model, where sexual orientation is determined by the "gender(s) you are attracted to," I would be… pansexual?

I do not identify as pansexual for many reasons, most of which are extremely obvious and some of which boil down to "because I'm not pansexual." That is not the point of this post. (I would like to take a moment in passing to note that this model of sexual orientation also erases all asexuals: very few or no people are attracted to no one at all. Therefore, if sexual orientation is defined as the gender(s) to which you are attracted, under this model, no one is asexual; all asexuals have been redefined as heterosexual or homosexual or pansexual or what have you. I'm not sure why there is this urgency about telling asexuals they are really something else, but even this problematicity, the erasure of all aces under this model, is not the point of this post.)

The point is this: aromantic asexuals cannot be both straight and pansexual. It is inaccurate to classify them as either, unless they identify that way, but there is clearly a logical flaw with a system that identifies them as both. Aromantic asexuals who do experience attraction in a gendered way, and experience, say, emotional attraction primarily to members of their same gender, cannot be both straight under the first model and homosexual under the second model. These models cannot logically coexist, and this clash points to a larger number of problems with our various models of sexual orientation.

The problem with the first model is simple: aromantic aces not being queer (by virtue of our sexual and romantic orientations, that is) does not make us straight. It's become pretty apparent that binaries are a bad way to represent basically any form of gender or sexual identity-- you're not male or female, you’re not gay or straight, you’re not a man or a woman. Why, then, should queer or straight be the only options? Aromantic aces are neither queer nor straight (again, by virtue of our sexual and romantic orientations); we experience heterosexism but not homophobia. We’re another category.

The problem with the second model is more complicated, and is shared by other models of sexual orientation. Say there are numerous axes along which one can experience attraction: sexual, romantic, emotional, aesthetic, etc. Any model that defines sexual orientation along more than one axis is going to be unable to cope with people whose attractions along those axes don't match up. The more axes you include in the model, the more people are going to be completely outside of the model. Thus, when you attempt to define sexual orientation as attraction along any and all axes, like in the definition I linked, you end up with things like aromantic asexuals being classified as pansexual, or as homosexual. (This is also related to the problem I mentioned with the first model, which is the need to make asexuals fit in the categories that already exist. There's no need to attempt to classify aces as "really" heterosexual or straight or gay or "really" bisexual, unless we ourselves identify that way.)

Last month I found a pamphlet on non-heterosexual identities. It includes this definition: "Sexual orientation involves whom one is attracted to sexually, emotionally, physically, and/or spiritually." This is a good example of the problems I am talking about of defining sexual orientation along multiple (and rather arbitrary, in this case-- what is spiritual attraction, exactly?) axes. For example: a heterosexual man is attracted to women. Does this mean, going by this definition, that he is never emotionally attracted to other men? Is it even possible to form friendships without emotional attraction? It is possible to be in a sexual relationship without being sexually attracted to your partner, so by analogy, perhaps it's possible to be in an emotional relationship without being emotionally attracted to your partner. I question, though, whether this actually happens very frequently. Is it really accurate to say that heterosexual men are only ever emotionally attracted to women, and no other gender? If it's not accurate, then what happens to this definition when people experience attraction to different genders along different axes of attraction? Another example: assuming that physical attraction approximates something like aesthetic attraction, is it accurate to say that heterosexual women only ever are aesthetically attracted to men? What about an asexual man who is aesthetically and emotionally attracted to men? This definition seems to imply that he's gay, but it's extremely problematic to categorize him as so. Even models that only use two axes of attraction, sexual and romantic, have their own problems. There are people whose sexual and romantic attractions are not oriented towards the same gender(s), for example, someone who is attracted romantically to women and sexually to men.

Other problems of using multiple axes of attraction as determinants of sexual orientation include: how do you pick which axes to use? The definition I quoted from the pamphlet seems somewhat arbitrary in that it includes spiritual attraction, the meaning of which is unclear, but excludes romantic attraction. Not everyone forms their primary non-familial relationships along axes of sexual or romantic attraction; not everyone forms their relationships with the same amount of "input" from each axis. Another problem with these models is that they generally tend to erase demisexuals and grey-asexuals, who may feel that their sexual orientation has less to do with who they experience attraction to and more to do with the circumstances under which they experience attraction. A third problem with this type of model is the issue of whether or not people who orient towards or are attracted to the same gender(s) along potentially different axes have similar enough experiences to be considered the same sexual orientation. A man who is not sexually or romantically attracted to anyone but is emotionally attracted to men will almost certainly not have the same experience as a man who is romantically and sexually attracted to men. A person who is aesthetically attracted to women, men, and other genders will not have the same experience as a person who is sexually attracted to women, men, and other genders. A woman who is romantically attracted to men will not have the same experience as a woman who is sexually attracted to men.

Many of the models that exist of sexual orientation, and ways to characterize one or more sexual orientations and gender identities, conflict with each other. They are also problematic in their own right, break down with regard to certain identities or combinations of identities, and erase people who are demisexual or grey-asexual. They don't work consistently-- hence combinations of models that classify aromantic asexuals as both straight and pansexual, or as both straight and homosexual. This is a separate problem from the trend towards disallowing "none of the above" as an option and attempting to squeeze anyone who doesn't fit into the existing boxes, into those boxes anyway, instead of letting them open up their own boxes. Both ideas are problematic.

Ace Stories

One of the difficulties about being ace is invisibility. Our stories aren't out there, not even for each other. I've been wondering for a while what sort of problems asexuals and others under the asexual umbrella face, and, in a rather haphazard way, compiling stories from places like Tumblr and LiveJournal. As I am not a member of AVEN, I hadn't looked there; however, this week I read through some threads at AVEN and was really shocked by what people were reporting had happened to them because of their asexuality/asexual-umbrella identity.

I compiled a rough account of what I read in three parts on my Tumblr. Trigger warning for rape culture, sexual assault/harassment/rape, sexual orientation conversion attempts, and general anti-asexual ideas:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Sexual Orientations: Not In Short Supply

Sometimes I come across remarks that amount to, “Why does everyone have to split themselves into smaller and smaller groups? This labeling thing is ridiculous. I mean, c’mon, asexuality? Demisexuality? I’m expected to believe in those now too?”

This is a very silly attitude, and it seems to be based on a number of problematic assumptions. First is the assumption that anybody’s sexual orientation needs your approval or validation to be a real thing. Second is the idea that you “believe in” certain sexual orientations simply because it’s expected of you. The third assumption underlying this general attitude is that if you haven’t experienced it or it doesn’t fit your worldview, it must not exist. But underlying all of this seems to be a scarcity model of sexual orientations.

What do I mean by that? It often seems that people are distressed by the recognition of a “new” sexual orientation, as if it calls into question the validity of the “old” sexual orientations. It’s as if they’re operating from the model that there’s only a certain amount of sexual orientation validity to go around, and the more we give away to these “niche” sexual orientations, the less there is for the “real” sexual orientations— or, alternately, the greater the number of sexual orientations that are recognized, the more they dilute the validity of the “real” sexual orientations. But this is obviously ridiculous, since no such scarcity exists. There is no inherent value to trying to make people confine themselves to a set number of (often ill-fitting) boxes. We don’t lose anything by acknowledging that people are different. Imagine if this scarcity model were applied to race and ethnicity: “Why can’t you just call yourself white? Why can’t you just call yourself brown? What does it matter where your ancestors were 500 years ago?” (On a side note, according to Wikipedia, the number of people in the world who claim Irish ancestry is roughly equal to our best guess for the number of asexual people in the world. Fun fact!)

If someone tells me they’re dendrosexual, sexually attracted to trees, I’m most likely going to believe them in the absence of a very good reason not to. Sure, it’s statistically unusual and not something I encounter on a regular basis, but my experience isn’t the be-all and the end-all of the world. Why shouldn’t I believe them? If they’re not distressed, and not engaging in non-consensual activity (I’m operating under the belief that trees, unlike animals, have no consciousness and therefore the idea of consent for trees is meaningless), what does it hurt me to believe what someone tells me about hirself? To put it the other way, what grounds do I have for thinking that I’m really justified in telling them no, you can’t possibly be right, I know better than you about you? What possible objection could I make? “But that’s not a real thing!” There’s no evidence for that, and evidence against it right in front of me in the form of someone claiming to be dendrosexual. “That’s not a real thing” is something people used to say, and still say, about every sexual orientation that isn’t heterosexuality. In every case, they were wrong.

We’re not running out of sexual orientations. Acknowledging the validity of one sexual orientation (which isn’t a prerequisite for it to actually be valid, of course) doesn’t call into question the validity of another. Let’s stop acting like it does.

(originally posted at my Tumblr.)

Feed the People, Not the Ducks

After my duck-feeding plans were thwarted, I used the stale bread to make this bread pudding recipe. I think it's a pretty good recipe; next time I would use larger pieces of bread, because there was essentially a layer of scrambled egg stuff on the bottom, try to substitute some brown sugar for the white, and maybe cook it a minute or two longer. This made a good amount for one person, not to eat in one sitting (unless you want to), but it definitely reheats well, and there's not so much of it that you'd be eating it until you get sick.

Making recipes that feed one person well without spoiling is relevant to my interests, so I'll be posting them here from time to time.

(xposted at my Tumblr)

Weasel Words (Trigger Warning, Police Brutality)

(Originally posted at my Tumblr.)

This post, from the NY Daily News: Wall Street protesters cuffed, pepper-sprayed during ‘inequality’ march. This first sentence is, “Scores of protesters were arrested in Manhattan Saturday as a march against social inequality turned violent.”

The relevant bits: “a march… turned violent.” This language implies that the marchers were the ones who turned violent, who initiated the violence. However, reading on, it becomes clear that the violence was almost entirely on the side of the police: the article references “the dramatic mood shift in an otherwise peaceful demonstration,” “80 people carted away in police vehicles and up to five… hit with pepper spray near 12 St. and Fifth Ave., where tensions became especially high,” and “footage of other police altercations.” Multiple witnesses talk about the pepper spraying, police slamming protesters to the ground, and police striking protesters who were already on the ground. In contrast, “one demonstrator was charged with assaulting a police officer.”

By saying “a march… turned violent,” the article takes a supposedly “balanced” look at the facts that, in this case, obscures what really happened and makes it sound like the protesters were the ones who became violent. This is, in my opinion, poor journalism; it’s not terribly surprising, however, since the supposedly liberal media is… not particularly liberal.

Adventures in Vegetarianism

I can't walk by the lobster tank at the grocery store without wincing and having brief visions of going all Elliott-from-E.T. I know that lobsters have roughly the mental capacity of bugs, since they are basically giant aquatic bugs, but it just doesn't feel right to keep them penned up like that, awaiting death (don't get me started on the manner of cooking a lobster...). I'm sure they don't mind the tank, I just... well, I wince.

I also usually don't have any reason to go by the meat section, just because of what I usually buy and how the store is laid out, but yesterday I was grabbing something from a frozen food case, and I happened to look to my right, and it was just like... "Oh. That's a dead chicken. Wrapped in plastic."

(Cross-posted at Musings of an Ist.)

Rewriting History

This morning, browsing a link from a link from a link, I found this article about how some Indiana Tea Party groups want to replace sitting Republican Senator Lugar with a more conservative candidate.

Among the motivations listed are that, and I quote, Lugar "Voted for Obama’s controversial Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which pumped billions of dollars into ailing banks and financial institutions during the 2008 financial crisis." The article as it stands now does not read that; it has been corrected. I cannot find a screencap and I did not save it when I originally found it. However-- the problem with the article as it read is apparent, yes?

President Obama was elected at the end of 2008; he took office at the beginning of 2009. How, therefore, could he have created a program that took effect in 2008? Am I the only one who vividly members that one of the presidential debates was nearly canceled so that the senators could go back to Washington and work on TARP? TARP was, in fact, signed into law by President Bush on October 9, 2008.

Googling "Bush TARP" turns up 7,530,000 hits, while Googling "Obama TARP" turns up 11,800,000 hits. Such Googling also turns up this article from the Pew Foundation, which indicates that more than half of Americans cannot correctly identify which president signed this widely-reviled bill into law. I've seen people blaming Obama for it before, but never so blatantly, and never in a published news piece.

Things like this are literally rewriting history. I'm glad the article was corrected, but appalled that, with TARP as such a hot-button issue three years later, less than half the country actually knows the president to whom it should be attributed.

Telling People How To Identify

I am reblogging this from my Tumblr since I think it's a point that's getting lost in the acrid, vitriolic arguments happening on Tumblr right now.

It’s not okay to tell people what their identity is. It’s insulting, belittling, condescending, arrogant, and dehumanizing. There’s a difference between policing the borders of your own community, and policing someone else’s identity. One is your right. The other is none of your business.

For example, it’s not okay to tell a homoromantic asexual woman that she’s a lesbian— that’s up to her to decide. It’s not okay to tell a man who’s sexually attracted to men and women that he’s bisexual— off the top of my head, there are at least four common labels that include this definition, and which one he wants to identify with is his business, not yours. It’s not okay to tell a woman of mixed African and European heritage that she’s white, whether she likes it or not. It’s not okay to tell someone questioning his gender identity that, since he’s not trans, he must be cis. It’s not okay to tell a woman with depression that, since she’s “clearly” not abled, she must identify as having a disability. It’s not okay to tell a man that he’s “x” religion since he’s not “y.” And it’s not okay to tell a heteroromantic asexual person that zhe must be straight, no matter what your opinion on whether or not asexuality is inherently queer. Even if you think heteroromantic asexuals are not queer, queer and straight are not the only options. No matter what the other options are, it’s not your business to tell someone which one applies.

These are not perfect analogies. I am not arguing that the problems asexuals face are the same as the problems people of color or members of ethnic or national minorities face, the problems that people who aren’t cis face, the problems that people with disabilities face, or the problems that religious minorities face. I am giving other examples of telling someone what their identity is to illustrate how problematic it is in general. If someone comes by my blog and says, “I’m asexual, and I experience sexual attraction to this person and this person,” I’m within my rights to say, “Actually, you don’t sound like you’re asexual*, because asexuality is not experiencing sexual attraction to people.” I have no right to say, “You’re not asexual. You’re grey-a,” or, “You’re not asexual. You’re gay.”

So if you have a horse in the “are asexuals inherently queer” race, and you want the asexual community to listen to you, don’t try to tell people what they should identify as. (Also, please stop using “attraction” if you specifically mean sexual and/or romantic attraction, and “relationships” if you specifically mean sexual and/or romantic relationships, but that’s a different issue.)

*This is an instance where we need better terminology— I don’t mean to erase people who identify as on the asexual spectrum but are not asexual in the strict sense.