Radio Interview on WNPR

Today I was on the Colin McEnroe Show on WNPR in Connecticut. They did a spot on asexuality and I was one of four guests:

• Kathy Way (asexual resident who lived locally and inspired the topic)
• David Jay (founder of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network)
• Anthony Bogaert (author of Understanding Asexuality and psychology professor)
• Julie Decker (me!)

You can listen to the broadcast here. I weighed in on asexual discrimination and representation in the media; if you're listening for my part, I am brought in during the last quarter of the program.

Kathy Way: Photo by Chion Wolf

Kathy Way listens to the program locally and decided to send them a question about why they've never discussed the topic on their show. And they decided to do just that, inviting her on!

She discusses in the spot how she doesn't really engage with the asexual community herself, but that it was just very special to her to discover it existed and that she wasn't alone. David Jay agrees and says he felt very isolated growing up, and that's part of the reason he created the organization--to help people connect and understand that being the way they are could be just fine.

I appreciated that the person they included from the academic side was Tony Bogaert, because it happens too often that those "sex researcher" shoes are filled by someone who is given a platform to ramble about how we are probably repressed or not willing to accept our sexuality. Bogaert is always very supportive of our community and has actually talked to us and listened to us. It's great to have a non-asexual perspective from a learned person who isn't out to tell us we're wrong about ourselves.

I got to discuss how discrimination can look when it affects asexual people, what it means to so often be a punchline or be viewed as robotic and mechanistic, and whether there is asexual representation in mainstream media. It was a positive experience and I'm glad it turned out so well.