Tomorrow I'm going to be going to my second 'official' meetup, which is in the same place and pretty close to the same time -albeit a year on- as the last one. I've also tried my highest to attend a few others and met awesome asexual outside of the official meetup setting.
One of the things that I'm struck with (and was almost put off by last year) is the fact that I'm quite young. Apart from the wonderful world of not being able to get very far under my own steam, I remember looking at the meetup threads on AVEN and seeing people in their twenties worrying that they were too young to attend. Where did that leave me? What would there be to talk about? I was a bit ambitious in fact that I decided to get over the location barrier by hosing my own darn meetup, and I remember feeling sick with worry as I travelled up- I'm pretty you'd now, and this was a year ago! Everyone was brilliant, though, and didn't even mind that I ended up leading them on a wild goose chase, amongst other things (a my two posts from last year show). AVEN's quite a close-knit community, in he sense that even though the membership spans thousands, you see familiar faces and can build up a picture of everything. It's not a forum for people who share love of an obscure hobby, it's where people quite often end up discovering themselves and puzzling out new and shiny things to do with their gender and sexuality how it pertains to them (yadas, step forward, please). It's a lovely experience to meet a small crossection of the people who make all this up, and I've come away with a couple of new friendships I though I'd never have.
One of my resolutions of 2011 was to attend at least one more meetup (which I can cross off tomorrow!) and I'm definitely planning to, age gap or not.
This time around, though, I'm not even pretending to organise the meet, and for that I am very grateful.
What are your thoughts on asexy meetups? Have you attended any, organised any, or bailed out from them? Do you worry you're too young or too old?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, because my Internet isn't safe anymore. Please excuse typos, but feel free to point them out for correction.
Sydney's meetup has regulars from their late teens to early thirties. (There used to be one regular who's a bit older, but she stopped coming after an incident with a stalker on the site. What a shame.) Age never seemed to be an issue for anyone.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'm used to being a token youngster in my other social circles. (Bike riding groups tend to consist mainly of middle-aged white men. I'm 21, Asian, and female assigned at birth. I get all the attention.)
I'm personally quite happy being the token youngster - I'm also involved with various little social circles where I'm the token 'girl' or the the token' teenager. I'm almost positive that it isn't the case in AVEN meetups, but I do know that in a few environments (fashion subculture meets etcetera) people can feel somewhat threatened by younger members. I sometimes find myself trying to curb my enthusiasm a little or stop myself from being a complete chatterbox in such situations.
ReplyDelete