Facebook is a lousy, no-good, meddling Yenta. I can’t update my status, post photos on my Wall, or play a simple game of Bejeweled Blitz™ without the site trying to fix me up with strange men, “suggesting” we become friends just because we have an acquaintance in common. If the virtual blind dates weren’t bad enough, the website is constantly trying to get me laid with its sidebar ads for Christian men, and Jewish men, and recently-paroled conmen. Listing myself as 24 and single on a social network site was evidently tantamount to standing on the corner of Hollywood and Vine in neon green fishnets.

It shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise. My generation doesn’t date; there’s only casual sex and cohabitation. Whatever happened to romance? To inviting a girl to dinner, holding the door open for her at the restaurant, laughing at her jokes, offering to pay even if she orders dessert, and walking her back to her door with no pressure for anything beyond a goodnight kiss?

It’s probably my own fault for checking the box on the Facebook profile page that asks what I’m interested in. There are only two choices; no box for decoupage, collecting tropical fish, or Civil War reenactments, just Men and Women, implying ‘romantic’ interest. While you’re allowed to pick either/or, there is no convenient box labeled, ‘Men, I Think, but Mostly in a Platonic Way, with the Added Bonus of Flowers, and Hand-Holding, and Nights Spent Cuddling on the Couch Watching Lost.’ At least Facebook doesn’t ask for the status of my virginity (still very much intact.)

There isn’t a box for Asexual.

We, the non-sexed, are few and we’ve been silent too long. In American society it’s simply not acceptable for a person with all her working parts to shun sex, because despite our over-populated planet, human beings are compelled to breed and assume that everyone has the same biological urges. No one outside of the convent chooses to abstain forever – except that asexuality is not a choice any more than homosexuality is.

That’s right, Facebook, I don’t need your ads offering to find me a soul-mate through the ‘alignment of my vibrations.’ I’m not interested in your desperate ‘California Millionaires.’ And don’t give me that, ‘I’m just trying to increase connectivity,’ bullshit – there’s no way I’m going to join the group, “Good Girls Wait for Their Wedding Night,” or “I Just Haven’t Found the Right Man Yet,” no matter how many times it shows up on my dashboard. Asexuality is not the same as celibacy. It’s a complete and utter lack of interest in intercourse. I don’t want to have sex – so get over it.

I realize the concept is unfathomable to sex enthusiasts. My own family, who have never seen me bring a boy home for Thanksgiving, or listened to me talk about my wedding day, who keep trying to set me up with men who are actually gay, can’t wrap their heads around it. Who can blame them? Sex is a part of life, even those whose sexual encounters are infrequent understand it to be natural. Despite having a name for my state of being, there isn’t a vocabulary to go along with it. How does one explain the absence of feeling? I don’t think I can make it any clearer than to say, “I want the romance and chocolates, but you’ll never see me naked.”

Listing myself as available and interested in men, when my interest doesn’t extend past whatever base kissing is, feels misleading. Leaving the box blank is an announcement to the Internet that I’m off the market, when I’ve never really been on the market. While it would be nice to change my status to read, ‘In a Relationship,’ one day, I doubt it will happen.

It’s not easy to live outside the box of foregone conclusions. I have resigned myself to a solo career, but that doesn’t mean I welcome it. I would love to wake up one day and understand what it is I’ve been missing so I don’t have to live my life alone – but it doesn’t work that way. Maybe there is someone out there for me, someone equally indifferent towards the horizontal polka, but I don’t know how to find him when we can’t identify ourselves to the public without facing scorn.

I guess the first step is admitting I don’t have a problem. I’m asexual, so put that in your box and check it.

Categories: Asexy, Hollywood Jane Speaks

This entry was posted on Monday, April 12th, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under Asexy, Hollywood Jane Speaks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.