Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Asexuality on the BBC


Jenni Goodchild, a 21 year old student in Oxford, was interviewed a few months ago by the BBC about "how it feels to be asexual in an increasingly sexualised society". As well as being a student, Jenni is also an active member of the asexual visibility and education network (AVEN) the biggest community of asexuals online.

Last night, 16 January 2012, the interview was released on an episode of « How sex works » on BBC3. The series aim is to look at the different physiological, neurological and psychological effects of sex.

Jenni talks about some of the most common reactions she’s had when talking about her asexuality - "People say 'well if you've not tried it, then how do you know?'" - and how it is possible to be in a relationship with someone ‘sexual’ by putting forward another important point, romantic attraction - "[Romantic asexuals] don't experience sexual attraction, but they do experience romantic attraction. So they will look at someone and they won't respond sexually to them, but they might want to get closer to them, to find out more about them, to share things with them."
Her boyfriend is also interviewed about their relationship -"The first time that Jenni mentioned in conversation that she was asexual, my initial thought was 'hmm that's kind of odd."
Tim and Jenna spend a lot of time together focusing on the romantic aspects of their relationship, such as baking cake !

It was nice to see someone other than David Jay being interviewed - outside the US - about asexuality.
And a thumbs-up to the BBC who did a very good job, they couldn’t have done much better. We need more visibility like this !
Here is a link to the episode. It's a link that is only available in the UK. For those who only want to watch the part about asexuality, it's around 17 minutes.