Pointing an Arrow

I'm going to direct your attention to a post by Ily of asexy beast, a blog about asexuality. This post discusses what romance is, and I think it's worth looking at. She contrasts romance with sensuality, drawing a parallel between them but also making a distinction: sensuality is about immediacy, romance about escape.

I want to call your attention to this blog generally, though, for a few interrelated reasons. First, Ily's voice is one little heard in our culture, and I think wholeheartedly that we should use the blogosphere for a way of sounding the depth (and breadth, but that metaphor doesn't work so well) of human experience and identity. This technology is unique in it's ability to publish and disseminate minority positions of all sorts. Second, Ily's insights into (a)sexuality and other relational stuff is helpful, I think, to anyone at all in understanding human experience. One of the biggest advantages of Ily's thinking is her ability to a phenomenon (say, romantic attraction) and pull it apart and show that it is actually composed of parts, and that these parts can occur on their own. (It's very helpful to realize that feeling strong affiliation and a level of physical comfort with someone of the opposite sex does not mean that you're romantically attracted to the person, for instance.)