ABSTRACT
Asexuality, following Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), may indeed be an identity, orientation, or sexuality. As an online community, AVEN brought people together around a shared language and a sense of shared identity. Together, “AVENites” helped put asexuality on the map; with the goals of visibility and education, members of AVEN have worked diligently to bring discussion and awareness of asexuality into dominant discourses of sexuality. Sex-normative ideology has made us not only suspicious of same-sex romantic and intimate relationships, but also of single people, aromantic people, and asexual people. The turf war over romantic friendships is only one symptom of a sex-centered society that disavows the possibility of true asexual intimacies. “AVENites” helped put asexuality on the map; with the goals of visibility and education, members of AVEN have worked diligently to bring discussion and awareness of asexuality into dominant discourses of sexuality.
