I don’t usually do this sort of post, because most of the time I’d rather write up my own post and insert links as relevant. But right now I’m drained. My last post took a lot out of me, and I don’t even know that I actually finished writing out all the points that I wanted to cover in it. Originally it was going to be a two-parter, but the first part took so long that by the time it was finished, the carnival was already over. There may be a second part to it later, but we’ll see.

In the meantime, here are some things I want to mention that I don’t have the energy right now to make a full post on:

Asexy Stuff

• SwankIvy’s book, The Invisible Orientation, is out! I haven’t had the chance to read it yet, but I’m looking forward to it. Please try to request that your local library (and queer resource center, if you have one) get a copy!
• The August Carnival of Aces (on the Unassailable Asexual) round-up is here. The September carnival will be hosted at Grace of Diamonds, and the topic is “Asexuals, Advocacy, & Allies.”
• Siggy posted something at The Asexual Agenda about doing visibility work, specifically on representing sex aversion to sex-positive audiences. I’m in on this project with him, and we’re looking for some input about how best to go about it. I’d like for sex-averse people to go and read the post and recent comments to give us some feedback. (Please note: sex-positivity here refers to the political movement. It is not about personal feelings about sex, and definitely not being “more than willing to have sex” as I recently saw it mis-defined. This specific sex-positive audience is probably more likely to value consent but perhaps not always realize the ways in which some of the rhetoric of the sex-positive movement devalues it and plays into compulsory sexuality.)
• Two links on countering bullshit evolution-based arguments against asexuality: a more comprehensive one from SwankIvy; and one from biologist PZ Myers (which was meant to counter arguments against homosexuality, so he doesn’t actually mention asexuality but it applies equally well). Quote:
  

  “If evolution is all about competition, how come reproduction in sexual species requires cooperation between two individuals to occur? Have you ever noticed that reproduction isn’t actually literally replication? You take your complement of 20,000 pairs of genes, and you throw half of them away, splice the remainder into different combinations, and then you merge those with the similarly mangled set of genes from another person, and you produce a unique individual. Not a clone of either of you — someone completely different.

  That should tell you right away that you aren’t the focal point of evolution. You are a test platform for a battery of genes, genes that are shared with other members of your community. Evolution sees the propagation of a pool of genes that tends to produce successful individuals; look up inclusive fitness sometime. You share genes and combinations of genes with your siblings, your cousins, and more distant relatives — there’s more than one way for your population to propagate itself than for every individual to maximize the number of offspring they produce.”

• Pretty old links at this point, but this discussion of the problematic aspects of the term “sex-favorable” mirrors some of my own thoughts about it, so I thought it was worth mentioning here. Still trying to think of a way to get out of the tendency to frame/read it as indifferent/repulsed dichotomy. Too historically entrenched to come up with an easy solution.

Other Stuff

• [TW] Debunking Some Skeptic Myths about Sexual Assault – “why was a conference notorious for having a sexual assault problem hosting ‘Who’s Lying, Who’s Self-Justifying? Origins of the He Said/She Said Gap in Sexual Allegations’?”
• [TW] What if rape at university wasn’t impossible to prove? – in support of these two posts by Maria Marcello.
• [TW] Why is it easier to invent an anti-rape nail polish than find a way to stop rapists? – “So long as it isn’t me isn’t an effective strategy to end rape.”
• What It Means to Choose Recovery – “Imagine yourself walking on a tightrope; some days you will be perfectly balanced, some days you will lean towards healthy, and some days you wont. And thats okay. You will constantly be on the tightrope.”
• Ferguson: Some Concrete Actions You Can Take – However, I’d like to note that this sort of oppression isn’t new just because white people are paying attention to it, when they (we) haven’t before. It’s important not to perpetuate further violence via erasure. See these two posts from Gradient Lair.
• Universal Snuggle-Care, Motivated Loneliness, and the Benefit of the Doubt – On Nice Guys:
  

  “The attention of paramours is not a reward for good behavior, but something you get by convincing someone that they want to be around you and share more of themselves with you than they share with their friends. That’s its own task, with its own rules and its own challenges.  You might resent that fact for a long time before you understand it, before you figure out that being “a nicer guy than Henry” does not, in fact, mean you have already done everything you need to do to earn someone else’s most intimate trust.  But when you recognize that a whole slew of habits, quirks, and preoccupations are telling the objects of your desire that you would likely make them regret letting you into their worlds, no matter your virtues, you will get better.”

• Excellent post on the gender gap in schools and sexual harassment: “The girls figured out I won’t report them if they hit boys who are sexually harassing them, I’ll only report the boys.  This led to an increase in how often girls got the last word and boys got smacked in my classes, and, also, to a DECREASE IN HOW OFTEN GIRLS GOT SEXUALLY HARASSED.”

That’s all I’ve got for now, although I’m pretty sure some of the links I had wanted to post slipped through the cracks. I am going to try to use Twitter to start sharing links more often, so feel free to follow me there.

One final note… I’m aware I’m very slow at responding to comments sometimes, especially those hosted elsewhere, where I generally don’t have the same reminders visible to me as I do here. I just get overwhelmed trying to do too much and follow too many conversations at once. Sorry!