Search Results for: Asexual

by Chris Bodenner

Tracy Clark-Flory explores the complex world of asexuals:

Many asexual people masturbate — in fact, one study found that asexual people masturbate as often as everyone else. [Advocate David] Jay says some asexuals fantasize while pleasuring themselves, while others simply view it as a strictly physical thing (or as a researcher referred to it in the documentary [(A)sexual], "cleaning the pipes"). Ironically enough, Jay says he finds that his talking about asexuality often makes people with low sex drives feel more sexual. "There's something about really getting into talking about the experience of not being sexual that makes people see themselves as sexual in a way they never have before." Like I said, the lack of a sexual appetite can highlight the nuances of desire.

It can also make you reconsider how we define our connections with other people. If it isn't sex that makes a romantic relationship different from a friendship, then what does?

In response to the Lincoln Tunnel atheist billboard (which reads “You Know It’s a Myth. This Season Celebrate Reason.”) Rami Shapiro responds: The characters found in myths represent aspects of our own psyches. The Virgin Birth is neither a miracle nor a biological act of parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). It is a story about how something … Continue reading Beyond Billboards

A new study out of Bath University shows many straight and gay men kissing asexually in Britain:

A reader writes:

One of your readers notes that they have encountered "LGTBQA" as an acronym. I used to work for a Diversity-focused office at UC Berkeley, where political correctness gets chewed up and turned into guidelines. The acronym we had to use? LGBTIQQAA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, Asexual, Ally). When I left my employment there, they were having meetings about tacking on a "P" for Pansexual, another "P" for Polyamory, and an "I" for something I can't even recall.

A quick Google search produces an "LGBTIQQAA 101" from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse's "Pride Center".  The introduction reads like PC self-parody:

Ed Yong profiles a group of animals called bdelloid rotifers. The have evolved asexually for between 40 and 100 million years: They live in an all-female world in which mothers give birth to daughters who are genetically identical clones. No males have ever been found. Many animals, including aphids, sharks and Komodo dragons, can reproduce … Continue reading Dry Spell

Building off the Dish, E.D. Kain considers sunset clauses for entire branches of government: Too often our government is a self-serving, bloated mega-institution incapable of ever cutting off any of its outgrown limbs. Making more if it temporary – or at least writing in the possibility of temporariness when constructing it – would at the … Continue reading Sunsetting The DHS

Today on the Dish, Andrew followed up on his neoconservative pitch for Palestine, went toe-to-toe with Frum over Turkey, dropped his jaw at Bush's profligacy abroad, sounded off on energy reform, added to a discussion on government inertia, and defended his provocative record. A new paper appeared to prove that the administration prevented a depression. Oil … Continue reading The Daily Wrap

They keep rolling in, you ornery Dishies. A reader writes:

Gosh you are pissing me off today!  Toobin said they have been friends for 30 years, and he couldn't tell you what she is passionate about. If she is so private she doesn't share her own beliefs on many issues, I don't understand how anyone would expect her to share her sexual preference. She hasn't openly appeared with a partner, so whether she is straight, gay or just wants to be friends with a bunch of books is hardly my business.

The other thing I find disconcerting is everyone seems to assume because she is 50 and not married she must be gay? Couldn't she just be single? Maybe she hasn't ever met anyone she wants to marry, or someone who wasn't intimidated by her fierce intellect and ambition. Maybe she, and by extension, the White House are telling the truth, and have said all they are going to say.

I always know when someone has no idea how being gay can affect one's entire life-experience when they use the term "sexual preference." It's like a taste in rock rather than country. They would never use that context about a heterosexual. Another writes:

You are confusing me with your slightly accusatory tone, as if this is a huge conspiracy of silence. How is this the fault of the White House? They might be respecting her wishes. Or maybe she is celibate or even asexual.

When Robert Gibbs was asked a straightforward question about this question yesterday, he replied, “It’s not anything I’m going to get into.” Then this:

“I’m just not going to get into somebody who is doing what that person was doing on CBS’s website. This is about who she is going to be as a justice,” Gibbs said.

But Obama has made it quite clear that he believes that who Kagan is going to be as a justice is directly related to biography. Does Gibbs believe that being gay is utterly irrelevant to someone's biography and life-experience? If he does, he is revealing just how out of touch this White House is with the lives of gay people. Ron Klain won't clarify anything either:

“Elena went through the same vet that everyone else goes through for the Supreme Court is all I’ll say.”

Do they realize how weird these coded non-denial denials are going to sound eventually? A lower-level, twenty-something spokesman, Ben LaBolt, flatly denied that Kagan was gay not so long ago. So why cannot Gibbs and Klain repeat his clear statement? It would end this speculation permanently. Another:

Has it occurred to you that Ms. Kagan may not know her identity?  If she is indeed gay, is it not possible that it is something that she herself has not come to terms with?