25 Sonntag Okt 2015
Posted in Asexualität, English Musings
Schlagwörter
Dieses Outfit hier war beim Fotografieren oberzickig, und ich sollte das wissen, denn ich bin schließlich eine Zicke.
This outfit was a bitch and a half to photograph, which I should know – I am a Babe In Total Control Of Herself, after all.
Happy AAW! Fröhliche Awareness Week! XO
24 Samstag Okt 2015
Posted in Asexualität, English Musings
Schlagwörter
Abendessen und Theater.
Dinner and a show.
23 Freitag Okt 2015
Posted in Asexualität, English Musings
Schlagwörter
Angeblich gibt’s Schulen in den USA, wo es verboten ist, als weibliches Wesen BH-Träger zu zeigen. Das Outfit von gestern zeigt welche. Der Schulleiterin Prof. Snape DeWinter gefällt das nicht.
I’ve not checked my sources, but I’m told some US schools get upset over girls showing bra straps. The outfit yesterday did show bra straps, so Headmistress Snape DeWinter does not approve.
22 Donnerstag Okt 2015
Posted in Asexualität, English Musings
Schlagwörter
Querstreifen machen angeblich dick. Ich bekomme davon vor allem gute Laune.
Ostensibly, horizontal stripes cause you to look fatter. I like them anyway.
21 Mittwoch Okt 2015
Posted in Asexualität, English Musings
Schlagwörter
Die Woche ist halb um. Abends: Sport ist Mord.
Week’s half over already. Outfit for relaxing in unrelaxed pose.
20 Dienstag Okt 2015
Posted in Asexualität, English Musings
Schlagwörter
Draußen ist kalt wie sonst im November. Die Dienstag ist noch nicht um, im Gegensatz zu Metallica’s Behauptung hier, der Sommer allerdings schon.
As opposed to Metallica’s claim here, tueday’s not yet gone. Summer’s over, though.
19 Montag Okt 2015
Posted in Asexualität, English Musings
Schlagwörter
Herzlich willkommen zur diesjährigen Asexual Awareness Week.
(English below.)
Unserer Flagge wird immer mal wieder vorgeworfen, sie sei langweilig. Ich finde die Farbkombination jedoch äußerst praktisch, deswegen werde ich also sieben Tage lang Outfits vorführen, die schwarz, grau, weiß und lila sind. Und Ihnen dabei einen Einblick in mein äußerst dekadentes Schlafzimmer gewähren.
Erstens: Montag.
Wir meinen es ernst mit der Sichtbarkeit, deshalb zunächst ein ernstzunehmendes Outfit. (Und nein, es nicht so unvorteilhaft, wie Ihr Male Gaze Ihnen vorgaukelt.)
Welcome to this year’s Asexual Awareness Week.
Some may find the colors of our flag boring, but I’m actually very much in favor of them. Thus, I shall present a week of outfits in black, grey, white and purple. (You’ll also gather insights into my highly decadent bedroom.)
First off: Monday.
We do mean business with ace visibility. (And no, this outfit isn’t as unflattering as your Male Gaze says it is.)
03 Donnerstag Sept 2015
Posted in asexuality, English Musings
Schlagwörter
The first conference for German speaking asexuals took place last weekend in Stuttgart, Germany. (German summary here.) It was organized by AktivistA – a German association for asexual visibility. Te conference targeted asexuals as an audience, in order to provide 201/301 exchange and further offline networking.
The event started out at Friday night with a meet-up in a restaurant, the actual conference took place on Saturday, and on Sunday we had the option of breakfast with or without a hiking tour or city tour. Mostly of interest is Saturday, so I will keep to that.
The weather was hot, like most days this summer here, that is, around 35°C or 95°F. We lucked out with the place – a café and meeting space for queer people – because even without air conditioning, it was actually comparably cool inside.
We had thirty plus guests – not everyone was there for every event, but most people attended the talks. People hailed from all over the country and even from Switzerland, and their ways of finding us had been also quite diverse. Most had read about the conference in the AVEN forums or on facebook, but there were a small number who’d heard about the conference via queer uni groups or elsewhere in the interwebs.
The timetable didn’t quite allow for the distance between the conference center and the café where we had reservations for breakfast and dinner. It was also not as easy as planned to provide the vegan guests with decent food.
In the morning – half an hour later than hoped – we offered a short guided city walk and, at the same time, a kind of unconference discussion group. This turned out to be a not so good choice, because the people on the walk were missing out on getting to know the others.
Our two hour midday break was also too long – four planned talks/workshops plus a short film were a lot of information to take in within only four hours in the afternoon, so some people were asleep for my slot of time.
The talks themselves were quite above reproach, though.
First, Fiammetta offered insights into the ace activities in some European countries, namely France, Italy and Spain, though most people on the Spanish AVEN forums actually hail from Mexico and Argentina. Visibility-wise, Italians know how to use connections to pride organisations, while the French made April 26th the day for asexuality. As a side note, France has no regional meet-ups like Germany, but usually tries for a nation-wide meet-up in rotating places.
Second, there was a workshop/discussion about asexuality and queerness, because any anouncement of AktivistA attending a pride event tends to garner pages of heated discussion on the German AVEN forums. „Too many naked males, too much about sex.“ „I don’t feel queer.“ etc. If you know some German, Mandelbroetchen has a slightly biased summary of the results.
Also, to note: We’ve yet to encounter significant opposition by LGBT* groups or online individuals, which means that we actually have the opposite problem to the English speaking ’net.
A guest from Freiburg, Annika Spahn, gave an insightful talk about the out-of-date diagnosis „frigidity“ and its almost zombie-like re-emergence as HSDD, among others. Obviously, sexologists have quite the interest in creating norms for female sexual desire. They (dare to) describe „too much“ as well as „not enough“. At the same time, medical professionals and the pharmaceutical industry work at optimizing humans, sometimes by declaring things illnesses that are actually caused by society.
Lastly, I provided some information about demisexuality and gray-As, given the dearth of decent material about the subjects in German.
Less attention was needed to watch a 30 minute documentary by three BAs from Bremen. (More later, including link.) Information wise, the film is decent, and also manages to provide a little insight into ace diversity by acknowledging aromantics as well as the sex favorable-indifferent-averse spectrum.
Andrzej recorded two of the talks. We’re going give a heads-up once the films are available on YouTube.
Both AktivistA as an association and the guests were quite pleased with the overall results, so we’re planning another event for 2016.
11 Freitag Apr 2014
Posted in asexuality, English Musings
Schlagwörter
After all this time, a Carnival post. German version to follow. Anyhow, seeing the April 2014 carnival is about comparing ace experience to other experiences, I remembered some interesting quotes from something I proofread for a friend:
„If a psychologist runs into a person they cannot squeeze into the definition of normal, they either resort to psychobabble or pick out a good disorder. “
„Psychology views (…)s as part of the “lunatic fringe” because the studies they use to base their worldview of “normal” upon rely upon what the majority does– […] This is more than simple rarity; it saying that what the […] do should be the definition of normal and is a proper measuring stick by which mental soundness should be judged.“
„(…)s are unique and rare–just like {…}. Rarity can be taken for disease, though this is a logical fallacy.“
„(…)s themselves feel like there must be something wrong with them because they don’t behave the way they “should,” i.e. the way the majority behaves. Thus they are more open to accepting others’ opinions of their shortcomings, reasonable or not.“
„Lack of societal acceptance may actually contribute to real mental problems which are not intrinsic to the (…)’s mental make up, but spring from a lifetime of ill treatment at the hands of others.“
All those quotes about (…)s – who are, in this case, INTP Myers-Briggs types – were written by Anna Moss, an INTP friend of mine from Alaska. They’re excerpts from „The Secret Life of INTPs“. She’s selling the e-book from her website.
Anyhow – I don’t know whether I can draw an analogy. Plenty of minority groups share the feeling that they are, somehow, wrong.
It just struck me as interesting that this experience is also shared by certain personality types. I’m a self-diagnosed INTJ with INFP tendencies. Meaning, simply put: I’m an introvert more interested in theories and big pictures than in details and day-to-day happenings, who somewhat prefers using logic when making decisions, and usually needs a bit of time to mentally adjust to changes of plans.
Things this leads to: I sometimes see behavioral patterns when there aren’t any, leading to me being miffed without reason. I react strangely when asked to host a cocktail party on short notice, even though I’d actually like to. I utterly dislike household chores and tidying up.
I forget important stuff like buying food, or eating, because I’m distracted by something that’s happening in my brain. Being around big numbers of people exhausts me, so I need a lot of alone time. My preferred activities are reading and writing, followed, oddly enough, by dancing.
I have only a handful of friends – the more contacts I have to juggle, the more panicky I become. This is also the reason why I don’t have a tumblr. Sometimes I can’t for my life figure out appropriate responses and thus put my foot in my mouth. Sometimes I resent how patient I have to be and how I have to tone down my vocabulary when talking to customers in the pharmacy.
Apart from sex, I also don’t get how someone can willingly go out and socialize for several evenings in a row.
Anyhow. Obviously, this is not majority-worthy behavior. Or actually socially accepted behavior.
Sometimes I wonder whether my alienation to others is due to my asexuality, my introversion, the head-in-clouds IN leanings or the fact that I, for my life, can’t manage to be as sensitive as „normal women“ are supposed to be. Sometimes I wonder whether or not my personality and asexuality are aggravating each other.
But, meh. It’s not like I can actually change these things. Nothing will make me a talkative social butterfly who’s always up to date with the newest happenings.
26 Donnerstag Dez 2013
Posted in English Musings, Queeres
Schlagwörter
aesthetic attraction, asexuality, Ästhetische Anziehung, Femme!
This month’s blog carnival topic is „change“, and at first this was so vast a field that I had no idea what to write.
Then Siggy made some enlightening observations about aesthetic attraction, which made me consider how that has changed for me since I started identifying as ace in early 2011.
The short version is: I now ogle women.
When I was a teenager, I believed myself to be straight. I’d get those crushes on boys who were way out of my league, and therefore, in retrospect, safe – meaning they’d never notice me anyway, so if I mooned over them, I wouldn’t have to follow through with the physical affection part.
So. Until I was in my twenties, my self definition was of a straight, but mistrustful asshole (given the rare disappointments I’ve caused) who was also incompetent at flirting. As I once told a colleague, I have never had bad experiences with men, however, I might be some guys‘ bad experience…
Obviously, she laughed back then, and didn’t realize that I was rather serious about this assessment of my behavior, which does, thanks to my feminine looks and my rather expressive dancing, occasionally border on “ice queen”.
In my late-ish twenties I stumbled over the term „asexuality“, and struggled with my self image for a couple of years, until I was ready to admit that I was even further from the majority than I thought. I now categorize myself as ace/aro.
So first the “straight” part of myself was irrevocably gone, then I learned about the varieties of attractions that exist. Along the way my unconscious decided that I was now free to enjoy aesthetic attraction, upon which I started to notice interesting looking persons, or people who moved in ways that I liked, regardless of gender.
Apart from this thought barrier that came crumbling down, I’ve also started to realize how I, as a woman, have learned to assess other women from other women. We silently crow in triumph at finding someone fatter than we are at a party, we criticize a conventionally pretty woman’s bad style to make ourselves feel less inferior, or judge someone’s looks as plain or unfortunate. All to make ourselves feel better.
I am still doing this despite the fact that I’m not vying for a husband, or even a romantic partner. Which just goes to show how ingrained that way of thinking is. Actually, I find it kind of creepy.
I’m quite grateful to now be able to look at others envy-less, at least some of the time.
Der Torheit Herberge 