Journal Club: Asexuality in YA

This month, the ace journal club discussed

“Asexuality and the Potential of Young Adult Literature for Disrupting Allonormativity” by Patricia Kennon. (2021) https://www.ijyal.ac.uk/articles/10.24877/IJYAL.41/# (publicly accessible)

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: June 17th, 2022

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!

Writing

Briana Lawrence loves the protagonist of “I Want To Be a Wall”.

Lucy Rose reclaims the Final Girl.

Blue Ice-Tea talked about belonging, and My Beautiful Laundrette (1985).

Jo wrote about ace activism being stuck in an awareness loop.

Videos

Historian Joanna Bourke gave a lecture on abstinence.  A transcript is also available.

Aro Community Activity

The Carnival of Aros May roundup has been published, with the theme “Mental Health“.  The June edition is looking for submissions on the theme “House and Home“.

Carnival of Aces call for submissions: Throwback

The June Carnival of Aces is being hosted by aspec of stardust, and the theme is “Throwback”  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.  We currently do not have a volunteer next month.

Linkspam: May 27th, 2022

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!

Coyote posted the results of the Quoi Identity Survey.

Feral Feminisms released an issue with ace and aro reviews.

Linda Codega reads one of the characters of Our Flag Means Death as ace.

sildarmillion used to think they were biromantic, and doesn’t anymore.

Journal Club: Differences between aromantic and romantic

This month, the ace journal club discussed

“Sexuality, Sexual Behavior, and Relationships of Asexual Individuals: Differences Between Aromantic and Romantic Orientation” by Ana Catarina Carvalho & David L. Rodrigues. (2021) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02187-2 (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: May 6th, 2022

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!

Writing

Ace Admiral wrote about Asexy April, and building communities from fandoms.

sildarmillion explored the distinctions between limerence, infatuation, and crushes.

Yasmin Benoit wrote about the Stonewall x Yasmin Benoit Ace Project, and backlash from gender critical conspiracy theorists.

Elizabeth Train-Brown interviewed aces about coming out.

Aro Community Activity

The Carnival of Aros roundup was published, with the theme “Self-Care/Self-Love“.  The next Carnival of Aros is looking for submissions on the theme of mental health.

Carnival of Aces: 200 Words

The Carnival of Aces for April has been posted by Ulysses.  The theme was “200 Words“.  Please take a look!

There currently isn’t any host for the May Carnival of Aces.  If you would like to volunteer, please see the masterpost for instructions.

Gray Asexuality in mainstream media

As regular readers know, I use Google Alerts to keep tabs on asexuality in mainstream (primarily news) media. In this article, I will survey the alerts for any mention of gray-asexuality, and discuss how it’s presented. This was directly inspired by Coyote’s survey of gray-asexuality in asexuality studies.

Methodology

A blog post with a methodology section! I have Google Alerts set up for “asexual OR asexuality – reproduction”, with a few websites blacklisted to reduce spam. This method is systematic, but not perfect–as noted in my asexuality alert journal series, some links are of dubious relevance, and there are occasionally duplicates. But for the sake of time, I only removed articles if they were inaccessible, or in a non-text format (such as a podcast).

I looked at articles received between July 1st 2021 and December 31st 2021, and searched for “grey” or “gray” to find any mentions of gray-asexuality, grey-sexuality, graysexuality, or any equivalent term. Out of 284 articles, I found 25 articles that mentioned gray-asexuality, including one that was a duplicate.

Linkspam: April 22nd, 2022

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!

Writing

Ace Admiral reviewed some books and manga with asexual resonances, and has many other reviews for Asexy April.

sildarmillion pointed out convergent and divergent attraction in the same character in Love and Basketball.

Blue Ice-Tea reviewed Little Women (2019).

More Pride Emojis responded to Unicode’s declaration that they would not consider new flag emojis.

News & Outreach

The DC Pride anthology includes a short story that reveals Connor Hawke (Green Arrow’s son) as ace.

Journal Club: Grounded Exploration of Asexuality and Disability

This month, the ace journal club discussed

“You Have to be Normal to be Abnormal: An Empirically Grounded Exploration of the Intersection of Asexuality and Disability” by Karen Cuthbert. (2015) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0038038515587639 (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.