Definitions of Arousal and Sexual Desire from Scarleteen

Someone in the asexual tags on Tumblr linked to this article recently and I thought it was really good. I don't remember who it was, but if it was you, I will happily add the credit.

Sexual Response and Orgasm: A User's Guide

It defines five aspects of the sexual response, but there were two I found particularly interesting, desire and arousal:

Desire, in a sexual context, is the strong physical, chemical, intellectual and emotional wish or want to participate in any sexual activity; to experience a desire or urge for some kind of sex. Desire for sexual activity is like being hungry in order to eat: if you aren't hungry, eating doesn't tend to feel good. It's a matter of having a sexual appetite at a given time. If you don't have a feeling of sexual desire, sex either with our self or with a partner isn't going to feel very good. We achieve desire any number of ways, but it is generally not primarily physical, but instead also sensory -- based in all or any of our senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, taste - emotional, intellectual and, when we're talking about sex with someone else, interpersonal.

We must usually experience desire to feel sexually aroused. People sometimes describe sexual desire as being "hungry" or "horny." We may feel sexual desire towards a particular person, or we may feel it simply in and of itself, a kind of free-floating feeling of wanting to be sexual.

It sounds to me like the description of sexual desire here, when person-oriented, is sexual attraction. (For that reason, I disagree that sex without sexual desire isn't going to feel very good, because I know that some aces speak from experience and say otherwise.) I like the distinction between person-oriented desire and "free-floating" desire, especially in conjunction with the distinction between desire and arousal. Here is how arousal is defined:

Arousal is a state of sexual excitement that sends messages to your brain which create physical changes and sensations in your whole body as well as your genitals, readying us for sex of any kind.

When we're aroused, our blood pressure rises, our heartbeat and breathing quicken, and our body becomes far more sensitive and receptive to touch. Sometimes users write in to us saying they just "aren't feeling anything" with various kinds of partnered sex or masturbation: if and when that is the case, chances are that person just isn't all that aroused. We can be aroused by physical stimulus as well as by intellectual, emotional or hormonal stimulus, and arousal is usually about a combination of those things. We can be aroused by all of these things, or only some of them, or even just one of them at any given time, with or without physical stimulation. For instance, we might become aroused by being kissed or touched, but we may also become aroused simply by the sound of someone's voice, our own thoughts or our creative imagination.

It's important to note that we don't all experience the same things as seeming sexual. We're also not all aroused by the same things. What seems sexy or arousing to any one of us differs from person to person based on our individual personalities, our life experience, our particular body sensitivities, and what we were raised to interpret as sexually or sensually exciting.

But when we are aroused, we all usually have some fairly similar bodily responses.

One of the primary physical responses to arousal is called vasocongestion, which means the increased flow of of blood to the genital tissues (and/or breasts and nipples), and the condition of those tissues becoming swollen with blood. This is how the penis becomes erect, and how the clitoris and labia also become erect, and the vagina produces a slippery lubrication. As arousal continues folks with a vagina, the uppermost third of the vaginal canal also expands and loosens a bit, which can result in an emptier or larger feeling inside the vagina.

These three categories of things make a lot of sense to me, and I feel kind of validated that someone else finds the distinctions between the three worthwhile. I've never experienced the kind of person-oriented sexual desire that the author describes, but arousal and "free-floating" desire have seemed to me like two sides of the same coin. One is largely physical, and the other is largely mental. Sometimes they occur together, but, in contrast to the experiences of the author, each also occurs without the other. In my experience, sexual desire without arousal makes it hard to have a satisfying sexual experience, while arousal without desire means I don't really want to have any sexual experience. (The existence of aces who have sex clearly shows that not every ace feels like me.)

I like these definitions because they make sense to me, as an ace, and they lay out distinctions that have been important to me, that I rarely find discussed. Reading this article has helped solidify my understanding of sexual attraction (sometimes it's hard to understand things you don't experience!); now I think of it as sexual desire oriented towards a person or a group of people.

Thanks, Scarleteen, for having an easy-to-understand and ace-friendly article!

Asexuality: Prevalence and Associated Factors in a National Probability Sample

This is the beginning of an attempt to make the research on asexuality more accessible. I'll be going through the relatively small body of literature on human asexuality and summarizing the papers, pulling out what I think are the most important and interesting points. It is not my intention to thoroughly critically analyze every paper, but to present thought-provoking and informative material. Bogaert's 2004 paper identifying the 1.05% seemed like a good place to start.

Carnival of Aces Roundup

The theme for September was unity and diversity in the asexual community. Next month will be hosted by Concept Awesome, and the prompt has already been posted. Asexual Agenda is looking for people to host future months of the Carnival, as currently, no one has signed up past October. If you're interested, head over to the Masterpost.

Without further ado, the submissions!

Carnival of Aces: Call for Submissions

I'm hosting the September 2012 edition of the Carnival of Aces here at Confessions of an Ist. The theme for this month is diversity and unity in the asexual community. I prefer to choose very open-ended themes, so anything dealing with that topic is acceptable. You might consider racial diversity, gender diversity, religious diversity, age diversity, the importance of diversity and/or unity, the relationship between diversity and unity, whether or not the asexual community seems either diverse or unified to you... etc.

To participate in the Carnival of Aces, simply write a blog post dealing with this theme, and get me the link either here in the comments or at greenchestnuts at gmail dot com, by October 1st. I'll post the roundup shortly after that. Posts must be written during this month to be eligible for the Carnival.

Also, Asexual Agenda is looking for bloggers to host the Carnival in future months. Hosting is easy and does not require a substantial time commitment; you make the initial call for submissions, advertise the Carnival throughout the month, and then make a post with all the links you've received within the first few days of the next month. You get to pick the theme, and other bloggers usually help promote the Carnival. Nearly any platform is fine for hosting-- Blogger, Wordpress, Livejournal, Dreamwidth, Tumblr, etc. (You might run into some problems trying to use Twitter, though.) So please let them know if you're willing to host. You can find a list of past Carnivals and themes, and sign up, at the above link.

Ageism and Asexuality

How old is old enough to be asexual?

I've written a lot, lately, about how sexism affects asexuals and our perceptions of asexuality. A lot of that sexism and misogyny centers around themes of experience, whether that's using a woman's lack of (the correct kind of) sexual experience as evidence that she's not really asexual, or using the fact that she has engaged in sexual experience as proof that she's not really asexual. The first part of this double-bind, as well as the more general idea that people with more experience can explain people with less experience to themselves, is rooted in ageism, but today I'm going to talk about ageism and asexuality more explicitly.

The Trevor Project is "the leading national organization preventing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth." One of their affiliates defines this more specifically-- "TrevorSpace.org is an online, social networking community for LGBTQ youth ages 13 through 24 and their friends and allies." The New York Times's "Coming Out" project features stories from teenagers as young as 15. The "It Gets Better" project is specifically aimed at teenagers. While there are many fair criticisms to be made of "Glee," no one seems to be arguing that its characters are too young-- or were too young, when the show began-- to know they're gay. As for heterosexuality, its undeserved status as the "default" sexuality means that rarely, if ever, is anyone who says they're straight told they're too young to know that for sure. Knowing that you're straight as a teenager is considered completely normal.

So the idea that teenagers know their sexual orientations-- even minority sexual orientations-- is clearly not a controversial one in general. When it comes to asexuality specifically, studies indicate that the average age of first sexual attraction, for both straight and gay children, could be as early as ten, so we know that most teenagers have had ample time to determine whether or not they've felt it. We also know that the same 2004 study that gave us the 1% number found that asexual respondents were, on average, slightly older than non-asexual respondents, so we know that asexuality isn't something teenagers experience and then grow out of.

In this context, it becomes obvious that telling asexuals they're not old enough to know their sexual orientation is rooted in both ageism-- the idea that anyone who can communicate about it is "too young" to know their sexual orientation-- and anti-asexual ideology-- the way this standard is applied to asexuals much more frequently than it is applied to members of any other sexual orientation. When I came out to my family, one of the responses I received amounted to "It's just a phase," even though I was in my twenties and had been dating men and describing myself as a straight woman for several years prior to that. Asexual people-- usually women-- who are in their thirties still report being told that they're "too young" to know their sexual orientation, or that they're just "late bloomers." The fact that asexuals from this same age group are also told that they're too old to have a sexuality, that their lack of sexual attraction is simply what happens to people in their thirties, shows that the point is to invalidate asexuality by any means necessary.

Ageism is a problem for the asexual community, but it seems to be a symptom of a deeper problem, which is, of course, the suspicion and distrust with which many people regard the concept of asexuality. For whatever reason, they think it cannot possibly be valid, and so they resort to any way that they can to invalidate asexual identities, whether that's ageism ("You're too young to know you're asexual." "You're too old to call yourself asexual, that's perfectly normal at your age.") or the experience argument ("You can't be asexual if you've never been in a 'real' relationship/never had sex/only had one sexual partner." "You can't call yourself asexual if you have sex.") or sexism ("All women are asexual, you're just normal") or arguments about one's romantic orientation or gender identity ("You're not asexual, it's just internalized homophobia/dysphoria/transphobia") or arguments about the patriarchy ("You've just been brainwashed into denying your sexuality.") Ageism is just an excuse, a tool to use to dismiss asexuality; if it weren't that, it would be something else. The bad news is that it's not going to go away until asexuality is accepted, but the good news is the ageist argument against asexuality is so implausible that there's no reason to listen to anyone who makes it.

Sexism and Asexuality, Part Four: "Real Relationships"

 So far in this series, I've written about how sexism kept me from realizing I was asexual, how asexual women don't get a pass from sexism, and how telling women they're not really asexual plays into a sexist narrative where women can't be trusted to know about themselves. This week, I'm going to write about the popular troll phrase, "Asexuals have just never been in 'real' relationships," and how this phrase is simply another way of coercing women into unwanted sex.

I wrote about one problem I have with this phrase back in March, but today I'm going to go deeper. The idea that they're only asexual because they've never been in a "real relationship" is something asexuals hear a lot; it should probably have a spot in the next edition of asexual bingo. So what constitutes a "real" relationship? In the eyes of most of the world, and the people saying it, a romantic relationship, and probably one that includes sex-- which is something many asexuals don't want to have.

Telling people they have to engage in unwanted sex before you consider their desires valid is a form of social coercion. It creates pressure on them to engage in unwanted sex, and it contributes to rape culture. When applied to women, it's a form of sexism as well, since women already face disproportionate pressure to engage in unwanted sex. Women's desires are already invalidated on so many grounds; adding more, telling women they have to check off "x" box before you consider their desires and experiences valid, is misogynistic.

Unfortunately, this phrase is found within feminist communities as well as outside of it. If your idea of feminist activism involves telling women you won't believe them about their sexual orientation until they have sex they don't want to have, you are not being a feminist, you are being a mouthpiece for the patriarchy. Go directly to feminist jail, do not pass feminist go, and do not collect two hundred feminist dollars. Go to your room and rethink your feminism. Women's desires and identities are not something on which you can place conditions. An orientation doesn't need "x" amount of relationship experience to make it valid; romantic desire doesn't need "x" amount of sexual desire to make it valid; platonic desire doesn't need "x" amount of romantic desire to make it valid.

Feminism means trusting women to be the authority on our own identity and desires, against a background of misogyny that tells us women shouldn't have any desires and need men to tell us what we want, anyway. Feminism means listening to women about our own experiences and identities. And feminism means not coercing us into unwanted sex by refusing to believe our own accounts of ourselves until we have it.

Sexism and Asexuality, Part Three

Now, I'm going to discuss the sexism inherent in telling women they're not really asexual.

It's true that the misogyny in which we all exist shapes our choices, and that no choice is made outside its influence. If I said, "I've decided I want to drop out of graduate school and find a nice breadwinner to support me and stay home full-time raising his two point five children while baking every day and putting on heels and pearls to meet my husband at the door with a martini, and this has nothing to do with misogyny because it's my choice," people would be justified in their skepticism; this hypothetical choice (while not a choice that wins, because no choice a woman makes can win in the patriarchy) is a choice that plays right into some very strong stereotypes about women.

It's also true that even our perception of our own sexuality is shaped by the patriarchy, and it can be hard to determine what is a genuine desire and what has been written onto us. For women who have desires that seem to "cooperate with the patriarchy," this can create a lot of conflict about how to embrace their desires in a healthy way.

With these two things being true, however, anyone who wants to tell a woman that her sexuality is false, or unduly shaped by patriarchal stereotypes (because no person escapes this shaping entirely), is treading very near to enacting a misogynistic narrative of their own. Telling a woman that her sexuality is not what she says it is plays along with a narrative that suggests women are never really mature enough to know themselves, and that they need some kindly stranger to instruct them, whether about what to wear or how to smile or what to eat during pregnancy or what their sexual orientation is. Telling a woman she's wrong about her own sexuality plays into a narrative where what women know about themselves doesn't matter, because who they are and what they want are irrelevant as long as they play along with the script. It's possible to do it well… but it's not likely to happen. An outsider might be able to more clearly see the cultural forces to which a woman is subjected than the woman herself, but their potential for more unbiased perception in one area is balanced by an inability to perceive what's in the woman's own mind.

To argue that a woman's sexuality is the result of patriarchal forces, you must be able to argue that that sexuality falls in line with patriarchal norms, and as I have previously discussed, asexuality is not a "patriarchy-approved" female sexuality. Applying standard criticisms of choice feminism to a woman's sexuality also runs into the further and larger problem that sexuality is not freely chosen. There's debate about the extent to which sexual orientations are inherent, but most people (at least in my cultural context) who aren't conservative Christians agree that one's sexual orientation is largely or entirely not a matter of choice. You cannot logically criticize a woman for her choice on a matter in which she had little or no choice.

I know that I didn't choose to be asexual. I don't know if I was "born this way," but I was "this way" by the time I was a teenager, and when I discovered the concept of asexuality, many years later, a lot of things from my adolescence suddenly made sense. What I have chosen is to accept my asexuality. I've chosen to accept that there is nothing wrong with me and that I am not repressed or broken. I've chosen to accept and affirm that, even though I live in a patriarchal society and my experiences are shaped by misogyny, I have enough agency to know my own desires; I am as able as a straight woman, a bisexual woman, a pansexual woman, or a lesbian to discern my own sexual orientation. I've chosen to accept that I do not need to have lots of (undesired, unenthusiastic) sex, or violate my own boundaries, in order to discover my "real" orientation.

These are the choices I have made, and on these, I both welcome and defy criticism. If you have a problem with these choices that I have made, or with the similar choices of any other asexual woman, I suggest you consider, deeply, what the alternative would look like.

Note: While I did not end up quoting Cliff Pervocracy in this entry, I want to thank her for putting some vague ideas and feelings I'd been having into very clear and concrete words.

Sexism and Asexuality, Part Two

I've heard it said that for a women to be asexual means for her to conveniently conform to the demands of the patriarchy, but that's very untrue.

Asexuality is a free pass out of exactly zero of the thousands of ways the patriarchy polices female sexuality. My not being sexually attracted to men isn't excused because I'm also not sexually attracted to women. The sex toys in my dresser aren't condoned because I'm only using them on myself. The fact that I want intimacy from people-- from men, even-- without wanting to have sex in return doesn't meet with approval. That I enjoy being attractive, without wanting to attract anyone and without being attracted to anyone, puts me squarely in that illogical category known as "being a tease," just like millions of other women who dare to do something for themselves rather than for a male audience.

Women cannot express our desires, be they romantic or sexual or platonic, without being shamed and belittled, and being asexual doesn't change that. We're not supposed to have desires. We're supposed to be sexualized, and sexy, but not sexual; available to men, but with no desires or demands of our own except for those which serve their fantasies. Asexual women don't get a free pass out of that. Some asexual women, certainly, do have no sexual desires, but I suspect there are very few asexual women who have no desires at all. And asexual women are no more sexually available to men than are women of any other sexual orientation. Therefore, we fail at the two primary components of patriarchially-sanctioned female sexuality: available (no more so than any other women) and without any desires of our own (no). The patriarchy isn't exactly falling all over itself to give us cookies.

As an asexual woman, I am too sexual to be "proper," because I enjoy sexual pleasure (and, even more scandalously, on my own terms and for no one's benefit but mine). I am also not sexual enough, however, because I am not sexually available to men. I do not receive any sort of approval for being asexual; I have not unlocked some sort of magic guide to negotiating through the worst of the patriarchy by being asexual. I put up with the same objectification, fight the same fights, and live in the same fear as the equivalent white allosexual woman of my socioeconomic class. And all this, by the way, is while being celibate. If I were currently sexually active, I would have to wade through the same garbage as my allosexual counterpart.

The thing about the patriarchy is that there is no way to win. It is an obstacle course constructed to be unwinnable. Not everyone loses as badly-- for many women, their race, class, sexual orientation, religion, and/or position on the gender binary clear many obstacles away-- but no one wins. To say that any particular group wins simply means you aren't paying attention. There is no way to satisfy the demands of the patriarchy, because the demands of the patriarchy are conflicting and mutually exclusive. It is literally impossible. None of us win-- not allosexual women, and not asexual women.

Sexism and Asexuality (Part One?)

This is a story about my younger self, and about how sexism (and homophobia, but mostly sexism) affected my identifying as asexual.

I grew up thinking I was straight, because straight was default and everyone was straight until proven otherwise. I wondered occasionally if I were gay, because I realized that I liked women and men about the same, but I decided I wasn't gay because I didn't want to have sex with women. I did wonder if I might be bisexual, but I concluded that I liked guys so that made me straight. I didn't hear about asexuality for years.

I didn't date much in high school. I dated more in college, always men. One relationship had a noticeable lack of physical chemistry (even for me), and, while my boyfriend didn't give a lot of reasons for breaking up with me, I was pretty sure it had something to do with him wanting to go farther and faster physically than I did. I don't remember thinking there was anything remarkable about this; I just concluded I was a little weird for not wanting to do that stuff, and that we were incompatible.

I had another boyfriend who told me he wanted me, wanted to have sex with me. I had no idea how to process this. I simply had no framework for understanding a statement like that. I had no idea what it felt like to want somebody. There were people I missed when they weren't around, but I didn't want to have sex with any of them, and my boyfriend was clearly talking about something far more physical. I was taken aback; I had noticed that other people were having much more sex than I was, and that there was something different about them as opposed to about me, but I hadn't thought about what that was very deeply. I was more of a conservative Christian (and more judgmental) then than I am now, so I had put some of it down to different morals, but most of it I had just attributed to different life choices.

But my boyfriend at the time was also religiously conservative, so I knew that couldn't be it. My conclusion was that that tired old chestnut, that men want sex much more than women do, must be true. I was kind of surprised to realize this, but the evidence seemed clear: he wanted me, I had no idea what he was talking about but didn't feel anything like that for him, he was the guy, I was the girl. I couldn't think of any alternative explanation for such a marked difference in our feelings. Not only did I not want him, I couldn't conceive of wanting him or anyone else.

Once I realized that my boyfriend and I had significantly different levels of interest in each other sexually, which was something I thought was gendered, I became concerned about tempting him. After all, if what I thought was a sexist trope about women just not being interested in sex was apparently true, then maybe all that stuff that went with it, about "provocative" women being "bad" women, was true too. I wasn't concerned that my boyfriend was going to pressure me for sex if I was too tempting, but I still didn't like the idea of unintentionally turning him on. I didn't like the idea that something that was platonic to me, like cuddling, could be sexual to him. So I let many of my desires go unfulfilled, and convinced myself that if we could just get to a stage in our relationship where we felt like we "could," morally, have sex, whether that was an engagement or what, then everything would be okay. I focused on sex as the thing that would bring the intimacy I wanted, even though I didn't really want sex.

That relationship ended before engagements or marriage became an issue. I figured out that the tired old chestnut about men wanting sex much more than women want sex was actually a tired old chestnut and not a universal truth-- and what astounds me, looking back, was that I knew a lot of women who were having and enjoying sex. I had them as examples right in front of me. But I had no other way to interpret my experiences than through the lens sexism offered me, because the lives of my friends offered no way to account for my desires, or rather, my lack of sexual desires.

Looking back, I wish someone had sat me down and said, "Aydan, you know how you've never wanted to do anything sexually with any of your boyfriends?" And then, after I had finished sputtering and making excuses, had said, "Have you ever thought about what that means? Aydan, it's not them, it's you."

And I wish someone had sat me down and said, "You don't want what most people want, and that's okay. What you do want, you're probably not going to find in these relationships. Maybe you should stop trying, and figure out a way to get what you really do want." It might have saved me some heartache, and something worse.

Because I'm not saying that I stayed in bad relationships because I didn't know I was asexual and aromantic. But I am saying that if I had realized, had known what those things were, had realized that asexuality and not sexism explained my experiences-- I might have made different decisions.

So, younger self, if you or someone like you is reading this, you should know that it's okay to want what you want, even if it's not what everyone else wants. Your desires are valid whether or not they are sexual. Make decisions based on what you want and not what you think you should want. Figure out what it is you want, and try to figure out a way to get it.

More Black Widow and Feminism

(Crossposted from my Tumblr)

I found some good discussion posts about the Avengers in general and the Black Widow in particular, from cleolinda and Jim C. Hines:

So I Saw the Avengers
Those who are about to be flamed salute you
Black Widow and Power
(Related) Criticizing our Fandoms

I came away from the movie with a different interpretation of Natasha in general and those scenes in particular than these two writers did, but I am glad they made their posts.
While I’ve written what I see as the problem with this scene here, my take was that Natasha was playing Loki during the whole of the interrogation scene. When she turns away, it’s not because he’s touched a nerve, it’s because she wouldn’t get away with it otherwise. I see her horrified reaction her as very much like her fear when she’s being threatened by the Russians— the ease with which she takes them down strongly indicates that she was faking being afraid. Similarly, I thought she was faking all of her vulnerability.

And in that context, this scene becomes a major triumph for Natasha and a major loss for Loki. Loki shows his misogynistic colors, as were hinted at in “Thor,” obliquely threatens Natasha with death and rape at the hands of her best friend, and then calls her what amounts to “whining cunt.” And Natasha, as I read her, was unmoved. It’s as if Loki’s saying “Hahaha, I know what your vulnerabilities are because you’re a woman! So I can throw frothy misogynistic rage at you and it will upset you!” And Natasha takes his assumptions about her, uses them against him, and gives him the metaphorical finger. His loss of control, his misogyny, unseats him.

Similarly, I didn’t see Natasha’s power or skillset being bound up in gendered manipulation, in making herself vulnerable and exposing herself to torture, as Jim C. Hines did. We do see her do that, but her other powers are equally, if not far more, impressive: she beats up three men while tied to a chair, she flies fighter jets, she’s comfortable and competent in hand-to-hand combat (when Coulson calls her, we see a flash on the screen of her and Hawkeye in a firefight), she thinks on her feet, and she can hold her own with the likes of Captain America. She’s also brave and audacious, throwing herself into situations that make multiple male Avengers go, “What are you doing?” She doesn’t need to make herself vulnerable in order to achieve something; it’s just one more tool in her arsenal.

The fact that Joss Whedon takes delight in the misogynistic slur in his script, however, is gross. I’m getting the impression that Joss Whedon is kind of Steven Moffat 2.0.

ETA: Many of the commenters on the “Black Widow and Power” post said the same thing I was trying to say, but better. I recommend the comments on that post in particular.