The gender-bender is now more of a corkscrew. Asexuals have been added to the list which comprise the hetero, homo, bi, poly and even pan-sexual. Unlike the rest, who have no problem with sex and differ only in who or what they want to have it with, asexuals simply don’t want it. It’s not that they can’t, it’s just that they won’t. It’s not because they want a hormonal holiday. Or because they want to withhold foreplay as an instrument of power play. Or because they have a headache, real or feigned. It’s just that they can’t seem to arouse any interest in the sexual act. Ever.
Big deal, you may say, citing all the evolved souls before and after Gandhiji. But asexuals haven’t consciously willed themselves into abstinence. They are genetically unwilling. Unlike the yogis who achieve the greatness of abstinence, or unfortunate spouses who have abstinence thrust upon them, this lot is simply born abstaining. You can either pity them or envy them or both at different times, depending on the prevailing state of your bedtime sorties.
Asexuals come closer to Platonic love than to heartless abstainers or misogynists because they reportedly see themselves as ‘hetero-romantic’ or ‘homo-romantic’. They are also presumably consumed by all the other genres of hidden trysts even if consummation isn’t even remotely on the agenda.
Asexuality is not new, its documentation is. Asexuals had organised themselves as a registered community as early as 2001 with the launch of a UK-based website. It gathered 50,000 followers worldwide in less time than it takes to say, “No, thank you”, in 50 languages. But it was only last month that they held their first non-academic conference, at London’s Southbank University. There’s also been a recent book, Understanding Asexuality. Its Canadian author breaks it up into two types, those who have no sex drive at all, and those who, like Master Bates, have it but direct it only at themselves. Our overworked sexperts may want to tweak their advice in the light of this ‘semenal’ research.
The London conference hoped to have asexuality “recognised as a valid sexual orientation rather than a disorder or something people have to hide”. This is the point being made with increasing emphasis by all the differently wired groups who comprise the ‘Guys, Let’s Be Tolerant’, or GLBT, community. But despite their passion and parades, the great unwashed, uninformed and unrepentant masses insist that everyone must be heterosexual, or else face the hate-rosexual.
Sometimes even the fully acculturated can be caught offguard. Like the courageous Teresita ‘Bai’ Bagasao who later became a UNAIDS country director. At a conference, she introduced herself to a delegate, saying, “I’m from the Philippines, and i’m Bai.” To which he responded, “I’m from the US, and i’m Gay.”
You may be alarmed/relieved to know that the number of asexuals is not as insignificant as a one-night stand. Latest estimates put it at a full 1% of the population. These stats are from Britain, where the only stiff anatomical appendage used to be the upper lip. Remember the 1971 comedy, ‘No Sex Please, We’re British’? Or the chapter titled ‘Sex’ in the hilarious book How To Be An Alien by Hungarian immigrant George Mikes? It comprised just one line: ‘Other people have sex, the English have hot-water bottles.’
That country has since achieved libidinous liberation, but will its erstwhile colony hope for reverse engineering for its own crown jewels? Here’s a thought. True asexuality could finally free the Indian male from his congenital sindrome of sex on the mind — and in any place where he can forcibly impose it. You could call it a retrosexual revolution.
JOCELINE TAN. Laughter, of course, is alien to this UMNO Spin Mistress, as we have often heard that laughter is the best medicine except for treating verbal diarrhea. Nah, she still hasn’t got it despite many volleys fired at her. Haven’t we been entertained by her political humor that has gone beyond chortling at stupidity? She still has not realized that an UMNO friend in need is normally a pest! Can I suggest this new code of conduct for journalist like her, like a law that requires types like her be hooked up to lie detectors! On reflection wouldn’t truth detectors be more economical? Humor was in the air as Khairi, Adnan Yakob and Reezal Merican etc shared with the UMNO delegates. But all that escaped our
the ghost of the dead pregnant woman is standing in front of Najib and co,
he can’t help weeping and shouting
” which of you have done this
I can’t say I’ve done it
never shake your gory locks at me!”
Najib himself brought out the emotions in those listening to his speech when he said: “We were born here where our first cry was heard. Where our families began and where we charted our future. With the grace of God, this is where we will rest eternally.
he can’t help weeping and shouting
” which of you have done this
I can’t say I’ve done it
never shake your gory locks at me!”
Najib himself brought out the emotions in those listening to his speech when he said: “We were born here where our first cry was heard. Where our families began and where we charted our future. With the grace of God, this is where we will rest eternally.
“Fill this blessed land with people who love peace. Prosper this land with overflowing bounty. Have reverence for good deeds. Defend our sovereignty and Putrajaya because a new dawn will bring new hope for our beloved country.”
It brought everyone in the hall to their feet as the tears flowed.“I don’t mind saying it, I cried too,” said Napsiah.
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad who has not missed a single UMNO Assembly since Najib became Prime Minister, was there, listening to every word.He is on the same page as Najib on winnable candidates and he has also spoken out against internal sabotage.
Dr Mahathir said it again yesterday as he was leaving the venue. Just as he was getting into the car, he told the group sending him off: “Please remember, whomever the President picks, all of you must follow.”
What Joceline Tan forgot to mention is that the army is being led to war by a general who is seriously wounded and weighed down by a lot of baggage. This election will be held with the ghost of Altantuya, and the still many other unanswered questions, hovering over the ballot box.
Tears do not win elections. Mahathir cried, too, during one UMNO general assembly but that did not prevent UMNO from losing seats subsequently.
Najib may seem popular but that is because the mainstream media want to project him as such. The UMNO delegates were even given “I LOVE NAJIB” placards. The UMNO strategists probably believe in their own spin. Of course the feel good factor was there, what with free buffet meals, nice hotels, free transport, uniform and perhaps even pocket money from the warlords.
In politics, even 72 hours can be a long time. The real battle is yet to come.The tears at the UMNO assembly could spell something more ominous and depressing when the actual results are known!
He was “an ascetic who… usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness. He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod… [He has] an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists… [He is] a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians…” Those were just the descriptions New York Times reporters Elisabeth Bumiller and Mark Mazzetti themselves bestowed on General Stanley McChrystal in May 2009 soon after he had been appointed the new US Afghan War commander. They had no trouble finding interviewees saying even more extravagant things.
He was “the most influential general of his generation”, “a celebrated soldier with extensive knowledge of intelligence gathering in both Afghanistan and Iraq… [with a] reputation… so formidable, officials said, that it was difficult to rotate him to another military post” and a “biographer who is keeping his name in lights”. That was Bumiller on General (later CIA Director) David Petraeus and, given the press he ordinarily got in Washington, her reportage could almost be considered downbeat.
For both men, though, those were the glory days when things were going spectacularly. Okay, maybe not in the wars they were directing, but in the personal image-making campaigns both were waging in Washington. What about after both went down in flames and shame, though? Once a “celebrated soldier”, it seems, always a celebrated something or other.
As Bumiller had been on the generals beat in the good times, she evidently ended up on the generals-in-shame beat as well. And you know what? They turn out to be whizzes at shame, too. In May, she found McChrystal teaching a course on “leadership” at Yale. He was, she reported in a charmingly soft focus piece, a spellbinding professor (willing to go out and drink with his students, just as he had with his military colleagues). Judging by her article, the former “warrior-scholar” had held onto the “scholar” part of the label – and a knack for (self-)image making, too.
As for Petraeus, on November 20, the Times’ Scott Shane reported that almost all the main figures in the ever-expanding scandal around him had hired “high-profile, high-priced” image managers. That included the general himself who had, in the past, proved the most celebrated military image-manager of his generation – until, of course, he managed himself into bed with his “biographer”. Petraeus, Shane noted, had hired Robert Barnett, “a superlawyer whose online list of clients begins with the last three presidents. Though he is perhaps best known for negotiating book megadeals for the Washington elite, his focus this time is said to be steering Mr Petraeus’s future career, not his literary life”. Curiously, Barnett had represented Stanley McChrystal, too, when the axed war commander sold a memoir in 2010.
It’s rare that a newspaper lays out the mechanics of elite image-making and then so visibly engages in it, but the next day Bumiller weighed in with the first peek behind the scenes at a Petraeus at military dusk. But it wasn’t taps playing; it was – thank you (perhaps) Robert Barnett – opportunity knocking. The general, reported Bumiller via various unnamed “friends” and “close friends”, was dealing with a “furious” wife, but already fielding “offers to teach from four universities, a grab bag of book proposals from publishers in New York and an interest in speaking and serving on corporate boards”. He hadn’t, she informed Times’ readers, even ruled out becoming a TV news “talking head” like so many of his retired compatriots.
While both men evidently continue to engage in the sort of take-no-prisoners PR campaigning they know how to do best, the rest of us should be blinking in stunned wonder and asking ourselves: Just what are we to make of the decade of military hagiography we’ve just passed through? What did it mean for two generals to soar to media glory while the wars they commanded landed in the nearest ditch? Someday, historians are going to have a field day with our “embedded” American world in the twilight years of our glory, the celebrated era when, wartime victories having long since faded away, the image of triumph became what really mattered in Washington.
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