More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Angela Chen
Read between
February 11 - February 14, 2024
remember that leaving for sexual reasons does not mean the other person was wrong.
“Rape is not sex, it’s violence,”
rape was often symbolic, motivated by desire for control instead of desire for sex, and is a way for men to control women and keep them in “a state of fear.”
The publication of Against Our Will helped kick off a wave of anti-rape activism and laid the groundwork for modern understanding of rape culture,
Rape and sex are not interchangeable terms. I cannot emphasize this enough.
28 percent of women said their first sexual experience was consensual but not exactly wanted.”
the “duty to sex” in marriage
An attitude that sex is good also ignores the needs of ace survivors of sexual violence.
Members of organizations like GLAAD and the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network obviously mean well, activists tell me, but counseling often veers into the territory of “This wasn’t sex, sex is beautiful, and you will love it again.”
It is not necessary to prove that sex is inherently good. It is not. For some, it is never good and never wanted, no matter how seemingly ideal the circumstance or how caring the partner.
Sex is complicated,
Rethinking consent doesn’t require reinventing the wheel.
they’ve found the kink community to be safer than the vanilla community.
consent is conditional,
“I’m autistic and people are always telling me that 95 percent of communication is nonverbal and tell me it’s important to make efforts to understand that,”
Consent matters after ten years just as much as after ten days, but it rarely looks the same after a decade as it did on the third date.
If someone never wants to have sex, that is okay forever.
the first time she had sex, freshman year of college, she found herself inspecting her fingernails and then wondering why she was thinking about her manicure when she was supposed to be in the throes of passion.
Aces are not the only ones who can have very particular requirements for dating and relationships. Take the Amish and Orthodox Jewish communities, for example. Their cultural rules around dating might seem unusual by the standards of liberal culture, but they solve this problem by dating other members of their communities.
The truth is that if aces were forced to have traditional relationships, many of us would end up alone, or partnered but unhappy.
romantic kissing is still not a universal human act.
Society teaches what sex is, how to have sex, how much sex to have, how to feel about that sex, and what a good sex life is.
Romantic relationships without kissing aren’t normal in American society,
Sleeping in separate beds or living apart or swinging aren’t normal.
Asexuality begins to feel like a twisted, reverse version of the scarlet A, a modern brand that now stands for ace and alone.
not wanting sex for any reason is a death sentence for romance.
she would never have agreed to marry someone who provided merely okay sex.
Noah lived across the park, close enough that on a good day he could run straight through and be at my place in ten minutes. His availability unnerved me.
He is a straight white man from the Northeast who went to private schools and, as a kid, spent summers in France visiting relatives.
Understanding compulsory sexuality does not always let someone stand up for themself, just like understanding racism doesn’t prevent people from being unconsciously racist.
People will pay money to avoid talking. This became very clear when, in my day job as a science journalist, I was pitched a $250 suction-like device that promises to help women want more sex, essentially by simulating foreplay on their genitals. Because the device was geared toward women in relationships, I asked the CEO why the customer couldn’t ask her partner for real foreplay, which is free. I was told that no one had asked that question before. The answer is that women didn’t want to ask their partners. They felt pressured. They’d rather pay money for a gadget than talk.
we want a beach body because of the constant marketing telling us that summer is only a few months away.
Anna was born in the 1960s in Utah, assigned male at birth. The granddaughter of a sheep rancher, she had a proper Mormon family and was expected to be a proper Mormon boy. Instead, she was sensitive and anxious, the target of a father who would scrutinize her and then criticize her for crying.
Mormon children were separated by sex from a young age, with the boys preparing for their eventual missions and going to Sunday meetings to learn to lead the women and the family. Girls practiced for weddings and learned how to keep house.
Maria was Mexican, unlike most other people in Utah, and also Catholic, which was then, as Anna says, “quite exotic.” When Anna went to church with Maria to see what it was like, her parents became worried about her dabbling in Catholicism.
James will take a recipe and find its best form, making a dish like Swedish meatballs over and over until he arrives at “the perfectly optimal way.”
claiming asexuality can be transformative, but the world won’t be a safe and positive place for aces—or for anyone—until compulsory sexuality itself is dismantled.
Teaching therapists and doctors not to assume that a lack of sexual attraction is a sickness
It was to be an unconventional plan: a cohabitating, co-parenting arrangement with three people. David was not part of Avary and Zeke’s marriage, but he would be part of their family—a parent just as equally, and legally too, because three-parent adoption is legal in California.
people interested in alternative parenting, whether because they’re single or poly or want to raise kids with someone regardless of romantic or sexual attraction.
He wanted children but didn’t want a traditional relationship.
Ace liberation is a complicated term. Asexuality is not inherently politically progressive. Not everyone who is asexual identifies as politically progressive, and that does not make their asexuality any less legitimate. But the goals of the ace movement are progressive,
