A while ago, I wrote about being in a new job and not quite knowing if (or to what extent) I wanted to be out to friends and colleagues. This is, I suppose, a follow-up to that post, three months later. There are a lot of things they don’t tell you about being queer and … More The strange state of being neither in, nor out
This is possibly a bit of a contentious topic, but I have been wondering for a long time whether describing asexuality as ‘a lack of sexual attraction’ is the most effective way of communicating what it’s all about – especially to the broader, non-asexual population.
I’m just testing the waters a bit here – I have been meaning to write a longer series on how we talk about sexual attraction in the ace community for a while now, but haven’t quite gotten to where I want to be with it yet. So these are just some thoughts that come to mind, rather than a definitive argument or anything like that. I’d be interested in hearing other people’s comments and thoughts in response.
The thing about ‘sexual attraction’ is that it’s a nebulous thing, that defies definition even for a lot of allosexual people (who you think would be experts on it, but who most of the time have just as little idea of what it actually entails as we do) … More Is ‘lack of sexual attraction’ the best way of describing asexuality?
There aren’t many books out there that are a) about sex and sexuality, and b) ace-friendly. So when I first came across Australian journalist Rachel Hill’s book The Sex Myth: The Gap Between Our Fantasies and Reality last year, I was pretty excited, but also slightly nervous. (The nervousness I blame on all those anthropology textbooks I had to read for university one semester that told me that sex was inherently what makes us human – and, well, most of what is written about sex in general.)
Turns out that I really didn’t have to worry in this case, because The Sex Myth is one of the most ace-friendly books about sexuality and sexual culture (for lack of a better term) I’ve ever read. So I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on the book here – alongside copious quotes to illustrate why I like this book so much.
The Sex Myth is all about the role that sex plays in our lives and our society – and critiquing the way that sex has become so all-encompassing, so fundamental to our identities and self-worth and ideas of success, that is has become more powerful and more elevated than all other things we do … More Book Review: Rachel Hills, The Sex Myth
A life unexamined 