Journal Club: Asexuality and the autism spectrum

This month, the ace journal club discussed

“Brief Report: Asexuality and Young Women on the Autism Spectrum”, by Hillary H. Bush, Lindsey W. Williams, and Eva Mendes (2020). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10803-020-04565-6 (requires journal access)

The journal club meets once a month on Discord, using text or voice as club members prefer. We discuss a variety of academic works in ace studies, ranging from gender studies to psychology. Don’t worry about journal access, we can provide access. If you’re interested, please e-mail me at asexualagenda@gmail.com for an invite.

Our discussion notes are below the fold.

Linkspam: April 16th, 2021

On Fridays, we will share links to news, blogs, and anything else we find interesting.  We can’t catch everything, so you are invited to self-promote in the comments!

Ace Blogging

Louise Chase observes that video games are falling behind in asexual representation.

Aces NRW interviewed activists from Poland, Denmark, Netherlands, and Nepal (German and English).

Coyote wrote about kinds of compulsory romantic orientation.

Community Activity

More Pride Emojis is a campaign to get more pride flags, including the ace and aro flags, recognized by Unicode.

Carmilla DeWinter released Das Asexuelle Spektrum, the first book on asexuality in German.

Aro Blogging

The Carnival of Aros for April is currently seeking submissions on the theme “Self-care, Self-love and Aromanticism”

Calls for Participants/Support

Someone is looking for Black survey participants for a class project.

Restored Carnival of Aces: “Doubt and Asexuality”

The Carnival of Aces has been around for many years, and some of the blogs that have hosted carnivals have gone defunct.  In some cases, I find the carnivals archived on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and I mirror them here for easy access.

July 2013: “Doubt and Asexuality“, originally hosted by A Fine Line.

Autochorissexual: A sesquipedalian examination

Asexual, gray-A, and demisexual are three “canonical” groups of the ace spectrum, the three categories that get mentioned when you want to enumerate the kinds of aces. But that’s not really all there is to it. There are numerous other labels—sometimes called “microlabels” or “neolabels”—which may either elaborate on the canonical labels, or even replace them entirely.

In the past, I’ve criticized neolabels for filling glossaries without actually getting used.  If people use them, and like them, that’s well and good, but if people don’t use them why are we making misleading glossaries?  On the other hand, some words in these glossaries are more popular than you might think, and today I’m going to talk about one of those.  Today I will look at aegosexuality, also known as autochorissexualism.

“Aegosexual” describes people with sexual fantasies but who don’t locate themselves within those fantasies.  I’m going to take it for granted that this is a real and valid experience, and one that is not particularly difficult to understand.  Instead I will focus on something I have had more difficulty understanding: why do people use uncommon labels like this one to describe very specific experiences?

Carnival of Aces: Dreams

The Carnival of Aces for March has been posted by Constance Bougie.  The theme was “Dreams“.  Please take a look!

The next Carnival of Aces is being hosted by demiandproud.  The theme for March is “Queering, or Acing, a New Normal”.  Get your submissions in before the end of the month!

The Carnival of Aces is hosted by volunteers each month.  If you would like to volunteer, please see the masterpost for instructions.

Linkspam: April 2nd, 2021

On Fridays, we will share links to news, blogs, and anything else we find interesting.  We can’t catch everything, so you are invited to self-promote in the comments!

Ace Blogging

Kierha reviewed Lucifer.

Coyote explained “the SAM” as a failed critique of essentialism.

aceadmiral has a field guide to identifying comings out in the wild.

Sarah Z explained the history of “All or Nothing”, a failed Indiegogo project (video).

Community Activity

International Asexuality Day is on April 6th, and will start with a livestream event on April 5th.

Aro Blogging

The Carnival of Aros roundup for March, on the theme “Intersectionality and Inclusivity”, has been posted.

Journal Club: Alcohol and asexuality

This month, the ace journal club discussed

“Understanding Alcohol and Tobacco Consumption in Asexual Samples: A Mixed‑Methods Approach”, by Caroline Bauer, Sasha L. Kaye, and Lori A. Brotto (2020). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31863316/ (Publicly accessible on academia.edu with account)

The journal club meets once a month on Discord, using text or voice as club members prefer. We discuss a variety of academic works in ace studies, ranging from gender studies to psychology. Don’t worry about journal access, we can provide access. If you’re interested, please e-mail me at asexualagenda@gmail.com for an invite.

Our discussion notes are below the fold.

Linkspam: March 12th, 2021

On Fridays, we will share links to news, blogs, and anything else we find interesting.  We can’t catch everything, so you are invited to self-promote in the comments!

Ace Blogging

aceadmiral wrote about the romance of the unromance.

Community Activity

Love Without Sex? / Liebe Ohne Sex? is an animated short film on asexuality. (German with English subtitles)

Aro Blogging

bringonthepigeons wrote about their relation to aromanticism and aplatonicism through neurodivergence.

Queerious Minds created an interview series with aromantics for ASAW.  All four interviews are now up: Tate Lin, Arlo, Constance, and Vesta.

The sexual recession: An ace perspective

I’ve written many articles for various blogs, and there are a few that I published elsewhere that I wish I had also published on The Asexual Agenda. I’m going to slowly repost these here.  This article was published in 2018, responding to an article in The Atlantic from the time.

“Why are young people having so little sex?” asks the title of a new article in The Atlantic. The article is also summarized in video form. The article reports that the number of high-schoolers who have had intercourse declined from 54% to 40% in the period from 1991 to 2017. The author writes,

But now some observers are beginning to wonder whether an unambiguously good thing might have roots in less salubrious developments.

Linkspam: March 5th, 2021

On Fridays, we will share links to news, blogs, and anything else we find interesting.  We can’t catch everything, so you are invited to self-promote in the comments!

Ace Blogging

Kierha wrote a review of Understanding Asexuality.

Ace Admiral has a cheeky glossary of ace terms.

Community Activity

Volume 4, Issue 2 of AZE was published.

Aro Blogging

AroWriMo has a compilation of works submitted this year.

AUREA has a recap of ASAW 2021, and notes on finding a therapist as an aro.

Swankivy interprets a character from The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home, a Welcome to Night Vale novel, as aromantic.

Calls for Participants/Support

Researchers from the University of Toronto are seeking participants in a study on the development of asexual identity and psychological well-being.  The study takes the form of an online survey, open to asexual people of at least 18.