I appeared at the University of Virginia on Thursday, April 10, to talk about asexual relationships as part of the university’s Pride week.

My presentation in the University Chapel went well, including a slide presentation and an interactive talk. I got some really nice questions and got to hear from asexual students who attended my presentation. It was a positive experience all around!

You can see a recording of the presentation on my asexuality channel.

A piece about me has been published in Best magazine in the UK. It is included in the print edition as well as the abridged online version.

The article is written in first person as if I had written it. I did not. I also did not approve the article’s approach or content. I was promised a read-back and did not receive it. I also found out about its publication more than a month after it appeared.

The article contains factual inaccuracies about my life (I do not go out with friends in heels and a dress to have fun, and I would never imply that being asexual frees a person from the experience of jealousy), and its writing style not only contains British conventions I do not use, but employs reductionist and simplistic phrasing and philosophy I would never touch.

A read-back would have prevented this. A more comprehensive debunking is posted here on my blog.

The link to the article:

“I’m a 35 year old virgin”

Grainy scans of the print article (click to enlarge):

The pan-ivy queer conference IvyQ, held this time at Princeton University, invited me to be a speaker this year!

My workshop, entitled Inclusivity and Asexuality: Examining Asexual Participation in Queer Spaces, was held on Friday, February 7. In my afternoon workshop, I spoke to a small crowd about discrimination and prejudice and how it affects asexual people differently than it affects LGBT folks, and discussed how queer spaces can be more inclusive to asexual people and how asexual people can be more aware of the reasons behind opposition to their inclusion.

My program extract:

I really enjoyed talking to a few other asexual people and queer asexual allies, seeing the LGBT space on the Princeton campus, and meeting people who were actually familiar with my work! My asexuality workshop wasn’t the only slot on asexuality, either; David Jay was there as well, presenting a similar workshop the day after mine. (We didn’t get to see each other, though.) I was also lucky enough to be in the neighborhood of two of my writer pals, and got to meet both of them.

Yung Huang and Ronan O’Brien were the two volunteers who assisted me personally several times each and put up with my inability to find my way to anywhere, and even got me swanky shuttle service and a really beautiful, comfortable hotel room. The only thing that could have made the trip better was that the weather was too cold for my wimpy Florida self—there was snow everywhere!—and I didn’t get to record my presentation. All things considered it was a wonderful experience and I’m so glad I was part of it.

An interview with me was posted on the DiversifYA blog today. DiversifYA is all about providing resources for authors to make their young-adult fiction diverse and sharing perspectives about what it’s like to live with different experiences.

I submitted a suggestion last month volunteering myself as an asexual interviewee, and Marieke Nijkamp accepted my offer and sent me her questions. Marieke told me she’s gray asexual herself (an orientation that usually suggests being somewhere between asexual and non-asexual), and she discussed it in a roundtable shortly before my interview posted, so that was a nice connection!

Anyway, here is my interview: DiversifYA: Julie Sondra Decker.

I received a few quick interview questions from someone at The Daily Mail today, mentioning without detail that they were doing “a piece” on me, so I answered the questions briefly. However, most of the article that got published a few hours later did not come from those questions. I had a few problems with the content as well.

You can read the Daily Mail article here:

“Asexual woman on how she never has, and never will, have sex.”

Problems with it:

1. That title: Very poorly written. Take out the appositive phrase “and never will,” and you have a sentence that says “Asexual woman on how she never has have sex.” In the title? Ouch.
2. Also the title: I have never stated that I “will never have sex.” I don’t think I will, because I don’t think I’ll ever be attracted to anyone that way, but I don’t make dogmatic statements like that.
3. Also the title again: On the page, the full title is “‘Men say I need a good raping’: Asexual woman, 35, on how she never has, and never will, have sex.” I’m very put off by their need to put the word “rape” in this title.
4. The photo: Grabbed from my Facebook photos without asking me to provide a photo or asking for the credit. The photo is of me in my bathing suit. It is nine years old. (It was featured on my Facebook because I was writing a novel even while on vacation. I guess they used it to get a good thumbnail for the views?)
5. I’m repeatedly referred to as “the blonde” which sounds weird to me.
6. A bunch of the quotes were mined from the Salon article published about me in 2005, a Huffington Post article, and one of my YouTube videos.
7. It contradicts itself by saying I started calling myself “nonsexual” at 15 (changing to “asexual” later when the community settled on the term), then later saying I called myself “asexual” at 15.
8. The statements about my family are false. My mom joked about how I’m probably a closet lesbian, because I cuddled with my girl friends in high school, and though she asked me to get a personal exam before going to college and asked the doctor about my lack of interest being a sign of pathology, she did not drag me around to doctors trying to see what was wrong with me.
9. I don’t have a degree in psychology. I have a degree in elementary education. I took enough classes in psych to have a minor, though.

Some of the quotes from me are just fine, and overall the article may be a little unfocused but still has some interesting stuff despite its inaccuracies and weird choices. Throughout this week I’ve been finding out I’m in the media without being told by the authors, though. I found this one when someone commented on my YouTube that they’d seen me in The Daily Mail and I had to Google it.

The Huffington Post is celebrating Asexual Awareness Week and now I’ve appeared in an article again. This time, instead of being a nameless contributor to the collaborative video they featured, the article focuses entirely on me and embeds my “Asexuality: An Overview” video.

Please read it:

“‘Asexuality: An Overview’ By Julie Decker Explains A Frequently Misunderstood Identity”

The embedded video was a new addition to their material, but the rest of the article was recycled somewhat from June’s comprehensive Huffington Post article.