The Implausibility of Offline Meetups, and Idle Dreams for the Future

This post is for the July 2017 Carnival of Aces, the topic of which is “Ace-ing it up offline.” It has been cross-posted to Prismatic Entanglements.

I live in an area with very little (visible) ace presence. Although I have met other ace people around me, and I know there must be more I haven’t met yet, there is no real local community here, so my opportunities for meeting other aces have mostly been limited to a few short periods of searching online sites like Acebook and OKCupid, and pure coincidence. So far, the handful of meetings I have managed have only ever yielded shallow connections, as most of the aces I’ve met in person have ended up moving away less than a year after I met them (or after they came out to me as ace), as younger people in my area tend to do.

To date, past attempts to start ace meetup groups in this area have all ultimately fizzled out. Meetups in general just don’t tend to work out too well here, because the people who might attend are so spread out that any attempt to make a group is definitely going to inconvenience someone. Some of the people who want to attend live several hours away. There just isn’t a large enough, or connected enough, population to support a regular ace meetup group here.

Okcupid Questions Asexual People Might Want to Answer, an Ace Dating Resource

Okcupid is my favourite dating site or app because of its questions feature. Okcupid questions let you state your preferences and deal breakers and figure out how a potential date feels about the same questions before you’ve ever even talked to them. I like this feature so much I’m often tempted to ask dates I meet on other sites to make an Okcupid account just so I can browse their questions (I haven’t done this though, yet…).

In this post I’ll go over the basics of Okcupid questions, including a list of questions asexual people might want to answer. Since aces come to identify as asexual for a variety of reasons I’ve tried to be as broad and inclusive as possible, including questions that gauge interest in sexual behaviour, sex drive, sexual attraction, flirting, kissing, cuddling, bdsm and more. If there’s enough interest in a future post I’ll delve into more detail about how to best use the questions feature to your advantage. After you put in the initial effort I describe skimming a profile on Okcupid for basic compatibility takes about 30 seconds.

Question of the Week: July 25th, 2017.

Have you ever been caught out by your own internalised prejudices?

One example for me is even as a girl that loves tech, I have approached a guy in a video games store to ask a technical question instead of a girl, only to be redirected to her because she knows more about that topic.

I have done the same thing with other asexual folks, assuming they would never be interested in kissing or cuddling or even sex because that was the dominant narrative I was used to hearing, even though it wasn’t even the one that matched my own experiences.

Ace Tropes: Online research

This is part of a series on tropes in fiction with ace characters. To link or follow this series, please use the “ace tropes” tag on this blog.

Relevant clip starts at 0:52. This scene from Shortland Street shows Gerald looking up “celibacy” and then clicking on a wiki about asexuality. In the next episode, he tells a doctor about it, who does online research of her own.

The most common way for people to learn about asexuality is to go to the internet. So when fictional characters do online research, it’s truth in fiction.

Looking back and looking forward on our 5th anniversary

The Asexual Agenda was founded five years ago today.  To celebrate, we held a discussion about our blog, ace blogging, and ace communities in general.

Siggy: I am the only remaining founding member of The Asexual Agenda, so I’ll start out with a look towards our past.  The goal of the blog was to further upper-level discussions of asexuality, and to stimulate other ace blogs. I’m very self-critical so I’m not always sure we have been successful.  Although I’m always impressed with our contributors, I think most of them were impressive before joining our team.  And ace blogs seem to have become less active in the past year.  But I’m pleasantly surprised that we’re still here after 5 years, and I still hear from readers who appreciate what we do.

What do the rest of you think?  Have we been successful at achieving our goals?  Are there any highlights you’d like to mention?  Where do you see The Asexual Agenda–and other ace communities–going in the future?

Sara K.: I think The Asexual Agenda has been very successful as a hub for ace blogging (particularly ace blogging which is not on tumblr). I think the most important thing The Asexual Agenda has done to connect the ace blogging community is the linkspam. Though the Carnival of Aces is older than The Asexual Agenda, it is The Asexual Agenda which has kept it going and that has also done a lot to stimulate ace blogging.

Did you know we have a twitter?

Twitter has a thriving asexual community, and is a great place to connect with other asexual people and learn about the cool projects people out there are working on.

If you would like to follow us, we will be tweeting from @aceagendablog.

Let us know your other favourite ace twitter accounts in the comments – or tweet them at us!

Question of the Week: July 18th, 2017.

Are there any songs which you feel resonate with you as an ace?

I can’t think of any myself so I’m very curious about possible responses to this question. Songs that resonate most with me get me inspired to write, but are often based in feelings or dynamics I don’t experience myself.