8th October 2023

I’m 23 now! Crazy!

If I’m being completely honest I have not done as much research as I wanted to this week because I got very caught up in trying to get this storyboarding project I was working on finished (which I did!) and I lost track of everything else. Whoops. However there were still some highlights of the week to mention:

• First seminar of the year! We discussed In Praise of Shadows and Black Girl: their common themes, whether or not they’re still relevant today, the idea of positionality and how researchers’ perspectives are influenced by gender, culture etc, and how to use visual research to communicate ideas in a research project
• Annotated Bibliography briefing – Main thing I took from this briefing is that it will be important to do research into good interviewing practice. In my proposal pretty much all the sources I listed were about the subject I want to research, but this briefing made me realise that I also need to read up on the methodology I want to use. I would preferably like to interview both aspec and non-aspec people about their views on portrayals of sex and relationships in media next term – obviously because this is quite a personal issue it is especially important to follow good ethical practice
• I’m feeling a bit intimidated by the examples of past student’s work and just generally the prospect of finding the most relevant sources. Hopefully this is something I can discuss in my tutorial next week
• Study Café on writing a study plan – Had some useful tips on how to structure time and plan out the research I’m going to do. Not sure how much of it I’ll end up actually using though
• VR Centre trip! Wasn’t really relevant to my research but it was very fun and it was a great experience to get to know the other MA students better!
• The main research I’ve been doing has been rereading Ace by Angela Chen – this book discusses many different issues related to asexuality and has given me a lot of different ideas for directions I can take the project in! In light of our seminar on positionality, I also really appreciate that Chen is very upfront about her own positionality at the beginning of the book. She clearly states that she is writing from a western, American perspective and that most of the people she interviewed are also American or from western countries, and she often draws on her own experiences as an Asian-American woman in her analysis of different issues
• I’ve also gone down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at how religion and in particular Christianity overlaps with societal views on sex and relationships – I’ve been listening to some episodes of the podcast/video series Belief it or Not, the creator of which is on the ace spectrum and grew up in an evangelical community and talks about his experience. In particular, I listened to some episodes he did about singleness, modesty, and purity culture in the evangelical church. Main points I thought were interesting:
• The pressure to get married and have children young - Apparently it’s considered a big issue among evangelical pastors that a lot of single women are leaving the church – made to feel unwelcome or pressured
• Just generally single people are looked down on unless they’re very obviously dedicating all their time to the church
• One point I thought was especially interesting: paradoxically the negative view towards sex leads to things like sexual abuse being treated as not a big deal because all “sexual sins” are seen as equally bad – the example they give is of a pastor who assaulted a child in his congregation, but this wasn’t seen as any worse than someone having consensual sex before marriage
• I also went to see Barbie again – surprisingly kind of relevant to what I want to write about! A big part of the main conflict in the film is the pressure to be in a relationship, especially for men to define their worth by whether or not they can get a girlfriend
• I’m pretty sure I remember when the film came out I saw someone on social media joking about how the “I’m Just Ken” song has done more for men’s mental health than the entire MRA movement. This is all just a passing thought but still interesting

My main concern at the moment is actually figuring out what I want to focus on for this research project and how to approach the issues in questions. Some ideas I have at the moment based on research, seminars etc.

• Stereotypes – stereotypes of asexual and aromantic people and how they overlap with stereotypes about gender, race etc. (e.g. stereotype that men are always thinking about sex and are less interested in romance while women are less interested in sex but are always focused on romance)
• Could also cover misconceptions about aspec identities and how they are spread - Examples could be asexuality being seen as a medical issue, aromantic people being seen as cold or unfeeling
• Examples of these stereotypes/misconceptions in media e.g. movies like American Pie portray sex as necessary to be a “real man” - I mean if I really want to Get Into It I could discuss how ideas like this contribute to things like the incel/MGTOW movements
• How are people affected by these stereotypes? - Promoting biases
• Also intersectionalities that don’t necessarily fall under stereotypes e.g. disabled people often aren’t seen as able to define their own sexuality, asexuality being seen as a "white thing”, desexualisation or hypersexualisation of certain races
• Societal ideas about consent – many people interviewed in Ace about how their experience learning about asexuality report something along the lines of “It’s the first time I heard, ‘You can just not have sex’” – p.8. Now call me crazy but I feel like this is maybe a lesson we should be teaching people even outside the context of asexuality
• Messages about sex and relationships in media – sex and romance portrayed as these really amazing things people can’t live without, sex is necessary for a relationship and for being a mature person, concept of compulsory sexuality, romantic relationships should be the most important relationships in people’s lives
• Different messages depending on different identities – overlaps with stereotypes
• Also how are these messages different depending on culture? For example someone who grows up in a conservative religious community would probably receive very different messages from someone who doesn’t
• Erasure of asexuality – “language is a form of power” – Ace, p.17
• Early representations of asexuality in self-published books and zines – p.18 - Zines are another topic I’m really interested in so it might be fun to try and combine my interests
• Importance of the internet in increasing awareness of asexuality
• Intersection with religion – in Christian communities there is often a lot of pressure to get married young, and while sex is very taboo it is also seen as gift from God (and one of the reasons to get married young)
• Contradictory views about sex in society – seemingly gets pedestalised and demonised – potential benefits to moving towards a more neutral view of sex
• Current state of ace/aro characters – do they fulfil or break stereotypes? What are the potential positive effects of these representations? What are the negatives?
• Different types of representation – representation meant to educate straight people like BoJack Horseman vs representation meant more for queer people themselves like The Silt Verses
• What are the benefits or downsides of different types? And where do you draw the line?
• "You can’t be what you can’t see” – p.75

Other sources referenced in Ace that I might look at:

• Andrew C. Hinderliter (ace researcher) – 2009 letter to Archives of Sexual Behaviour
• Lisa Wade – American Hookup (societal attitudes to sex and relationships)
• Rachel Hills – The Sex Myth (societal attitudes to sex and relationships)
• Combahee River Collective Statement (identity politics)
• Kimberle Crenshaw – Intersectionality
• KJ Cerankowski – Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives
• Victor Karandashev – Romantic Love in Cultural Contexts

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