Asexuality Movie

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(A)sexual the movie is on Netflix now so I watched it last night while I couldn’t sleep. In high school I started to explore my own asexuality and found AVEN, the Asexuality Visibility Network. I remember reading an article about David Jay, and being relieved to find a label that worked for me, that seemed to define my position on the sexuality spectrum. But like sex, asexuality just didn’t seem to hold my interest. In college I was too busy studying to worry about caring about my sexuality, it really never seemed that important to me. Lately I’ve been exploring the possibility of sexuality for myself, but seeing the movie gave me a sense of relief, to reinforce that there’s nothing wrong with asexuality in our sexualized society was really powerful and comforting to me.

I was reading about the 10 Most Common Reactions to Asexuality. One thing that’s important for me, but that I didn’t hear expressed in the movie, is that while these are not what define asexuality, you can be asexual for zero, any and all of those reasons. Maybe you’re ugly, repressed, have a hormone problem, and hate men because of sexual trauma. So what? If you’re not interested in sex you get to call yourself an asexual, and if you want you can explore your asexuality with others you should be able to do so.

I thought the movie was really interesting, and a great starting point for asexuality education. I was surprised and disappointed to find the link between asexuality and aspergers because for me it seemed to reinforce a stereotype that asexuals (a word spellcheck doesn’t recognize) are just too socially awkward to find dates. I think the reason David Jay has become such a good spokesperson for asexuality, and why I was drawn to him and the movement, is that he is conventionally attractive and socially adept; showing that his asexuality is a choice, not just the result of social ineptitude. (The article I read in high school described David Jay as having Kennedy-esque good looks and as being extremely well spoken.)

The movie showed many different types of asexuals but in doing so associated asexuality with a wacky freakishness that kept me from using the label for myself (eg. I had to fast forward while a woman hammers a nail into her face). So one drawback of the movie for me was an embracing of a certain kind of diversity, but, with classic human narcissism, what I found lacking were representations of me, and my own type of diversity. As far as I can recall there were 3 black people in the movie, 2 bigoted black guys at the beginning who didn’t believe asexuals existed and one ‘naturally celibate’ woman at the end.

I was also disappointed by Dan Savage’s comments which seemed to undermine the community. His view is that people who are asexual need to disclose this to any potential partner and should not be in relationships with sexual people. His idea is that it’s asexual people don’t need a movement because there isn’t real stigma associated with it, just go do that on your own, no one cares. His second point seemed to really undermine the first point though because without a movement to identify asexuality you wouldn’t know what to disclose at the beginning of a relationship. So many people don’t identify as asexual because they don’t know it exists, if you want people to self identify and remove themselves from the dating pool, or whatever, they need to understand and identify with the language and the language doesn’t develop without a community. That’s what I think, at least. I agree with Dan Savage so much, which is why I was so disappointed that he isn’t supportive of my part of the sexual spectrum.

Asexuality is difficult to define as a sexual orientation precisely because it is non-sexual, you could almost describe asexuality as the right to be left alone if you want to be. SPOILER ALERT Ultimately I found the end of the movie to be pretty sad. To find that David Jay thinks he won’t be able to have a meaningful relationship or raise a child without a somewhat sexual relationship made me really disappointed, but this is the subject of another blogpost to come.

P.S. I don’t want people to think I’m hating on the woman who hammers a nail into her face, she seemed pretty awesome. Aside from just liking her hair and her style and she said one of the things I most identified with in the movie, she said that before learning about asexuality she just thought that she was going to have to have sex at some point but that the thought was so repulsive to her that she figured she would have to drink herself into a stupor beforehand. This is exactly how I have always felt and it felt really refreshing to hear this expressed, and to see her in a relationship with someone who respected and heard this from her. The only other time I’ve heard this sentiment expressed is by a lesbian talking about straight sex, and I never identified as a lesbian. Anyway, it’s always nice to hear you’re not alone.

Music Videos

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I was feeling sick so I watched a bunch of music videos, thought you might enjoy them too:

Stuck in my head since I watched 7 Psychopaths the other night. Back then it was cool to smile when you sang.

Shingai and the Noisettes with a 60s inspired tune:

A seasonal favorite.

The original French:

This is a special treat to those I went to EB with;

Which seems to have the same chord progression as this Decemberists tune, (and maybe ever other folk song in existence);

Forgiveness

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Last week I saw Paranorman, the new animated film by Laika, the makers of Coraline. The movie was kind of a (now) classic story of a child bullied because he is different, but then his gift ends up redeeming him in the bullies’ eyes. This narrative has become a trope in the past 30 or 40 years, from Carrie, to Revenge of the Nerds. SPOILER ALERT: The twist here was in the denouement, instead of just having the movie end with the rubble of the destroyed town, or the underdog who gets the girl, the movie ended with a lesson about forgiveness. If you destroy your tormentors, you’re no better than them for trying to destroy you; you can’t let your pain turn into a monster and take away the empathy you yourself were denied. As much as I appreciate the idea that everyone has a special gift, and that it’s often the same thing that people make fun of you for; it’s really never that simple. Telling nerds that they’ll become the next Bill Gates and girls that’s they’re just too mature for their peers only serves to isolate them further as the think they’re the smarter than everyone else (and as someone pointed out to me, that’s how we end up with the Columbine shootings). No one has a monopoly over pain, popular girls and bullies can feel bullied and misunderstood too; no one survives adolescence unscathed.

I think the diversity conversation that this country has been having since the 60s needs more of this. One interpretation of Obama’s poor performance at the last debate was that he became placid as a reaction to the angry black man trope. Identity politics can be incredibly useful to create a home and a community for people who feel undermined. But we also have to acknowledge the flawed and frustrating world we live in, we have to accept that sometimes we have to live with our oppressors and find some common ground.

Life is messy, people die before their time, people are mean, people are crazy and relationships end. We can be angry and upset, and we have a right to be, but we also have to move on because we’re only as strong as the things that pull us down.

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Longtime readers might notice that I’ve written about this before. Also, how come no one ever clicks on the links in my blogposts?

Infographics and UIs I’ve Loved

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Some of my favorite characters in movies aren’t people, they’re GUIs (graphical user interfaces). In Iron Man, Stark’s robot butler named Jarvis is represented as a wonderfully snarky and futuristic UI. I recently saw a movie called Sidewalls where the main character was an architect and she would see the sketches behind the buildings. In Stranger than Fiction the GUI transports you into the mind of a compulsive IRS agent. It’s wonderfully appealing, see for yourself:

(I only picked up Pale King because I thought it would be similar, let me know if it isn’t). The recent British Sherlock Holmes show, Sherlock employs a similar trick. All of these UIs, as I’m calling them, display more information on the screen than you would otherwise see, but in a way that doesn’t feel cluttered or unecessary.

Lately I have been really enjoying these older data visualizations at A Handsome Atlas. Infographics and maps overlap in some very interesting ways. Good Magazine consistently does this well, as does the NYTimes Online. Here are some interesting visualizations of New York, and maps made by local artists/designers Sha Hwang and Eric Fischer. It seems like a designer’s job is to balance, usability, aesthetics and economy, is a cartographer a designer too? How is their job different?

Measuring Pain

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Not all pain is visible. There are many different kinds of intense internal pain. The way that pain was always explained to me is as swelling of some sort, some organ or vessel is engorged enough to be too big for its container. There are other types of pain, (strains, psychological pain, etc.), but it seems to me that this type of pain would be good to measure. If you told a doctor you were in pain and then you gave them a measure of it, they’d be more likely to believe you and treat you. If, you weren’t able to measure it using that pain measuring device you would know that it was a different kind of pain and they would be able to treat you better because of it. win-win

Why can’t we measure pain? We understand a lot about pain these days, how it works in the brain, different mechanisms for its transmission, yet we rely completely on patient assessment for pain reporting. It is important (probably the most important thing) to take that into account, but it should not be our sole source of information.

Also this article is amazing:
No Evidence of Disease

In which I worry about my debt

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I think it’s time to talk about my debt, because I certainly can’t stop thinking about it. Doing this masters degree is going to put me in debt. I’ve never had any student loans before, I’ve been able to acquire scholarships and financial aid, I worked through college and my parents were able to help out. Now I’m on my own and by the end of this year I will have almost $50,000 worth of debt. I worry about my debt.

I carelessly missed many scholarship deadlines so I can’t get help in that way and most masters programs don’t give financial aid the way that PhD programs do (this is extra frustrating since I plan to pursue a PhD). The idea is that with the professional degree you should be able to pay back the loan by working in your chosen profession. But what if I decide, after going to school, that I don’t want to be in this profession? I worry.

In order to pay back my loans in 10 years (for 1 year’s worth of a 2-year program), it will be about $500 a month. The theory is that having these computer science skills should raise my income by about that much over my lifetime. But not if I don’t use them. Even if computer science jobs are as recessionproof as they say I may not find a job. Even if I do find a job I can stand, $500 a month is a lot of money. I worry.

It’s hard for me to concentrate on my studies with the weight of this debt on my shoulders. In addition, my chronic health problem isn’t getting any better and I fear the stress of school and debt and work is making it worse. A few weeks ago my net worth went from positive to negative. I worry.

My mother assures me that I’m not alone, that the skills will not be worthless, that the knowledge will be helpful (even if it’s the knowledge that this isn’t for me). There are more scholarships, I could work for the government, and that we will repay my loans together. And yet I worry.

Would I worry less if I was in working retail and living in a crappy apartment? Who knows. I worry that I am putting off life in order to concentrate on school and it will catch up to me. I don’t know how this is going to work out, and not knowing is making me worry..