Difference between revisions of "AVEN"

Revision as of 16:08, 31 December 2006

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) was founded in 2001 with two distinct goals: creating public acceptance and discussion of asexuality and facilitating the growth of an asexual community. Since that time we have grown to host the world’s largest asexual community, serving as an informational resource for people who are asexual and questioning, their friends and families, academic researchers and the press. AVEN members throughout the world regularly engage in visibility projects, included but not limited to distributing informational pamphlets, leading workshops, arranging local meetups and speaking to interested press. The AVEN community centers around the web forum, which provides a safe space for asexual and questioning people as well as their partners, friends and families to discuss their experiences.

Sections of AVEN

In general, AVEN is divided into the static content and the community forums. The static content is based in the /home/ directory and carries general information about asexuality, including Asexual Perspectives and several FAQs. The community forums are based in the /discussion/ directory, and are places for asexuals and their sexual friends and allies to congregate, discuss asexuality, socialize, and figure out ways to spread asexual visibility.

The AVEN forums and other resources are available in many languages, including Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portugese, Russian, and Spanish.

Other sections of AVEN include:

• AVEN FlashChat
• The Asexual Visibility Store, featuring T-shirt designs and other products created by AVENites.
• This Wiki.

Administration of AVEN

The AVEN website is hosted and administrated by its founder David Jay (known on the forums as AVENguy). Since that time, additional people have taken on duties related to the site.

Forum Moderators

The AVEN discussion forums are patrolled by a large number of administrators and moderators. It is their job to keep the forums civil and to ensure that topics are in their proper forums, as well as to lock threads that are duplicates or that have degenerated into personal insults. Some moderators take care of a specific area of the forums, while administrators take on more general and sweeping duties such as deleting spam accounts. The term 'admod' is occasionally used on the forums to refer to the entire administration and moderation team.

New moderators are elected by the whole of AVEN on a case-by-case basis when a new position becomes available or an old moderator resigns. They are initially elected to a single section of the forum, but are often moved around to different ones as the need arises. New admins are chosen by the entire admod team.

The current moderators of AVEN are:

• Amcan (Admin)
• anticulus (Welcome Area; Just For Fun)
• AVENguy (Admin)
• Cipher (Site Comments, Celebration Time!)
• FelineFanatic (Announcements; Alternate Language Forum; Census Forum; The Library)
• ghosts (Asexual Relationships; Philosophy n' Politics)
• Gorax (Asexual Musings and Rantings)
• Goonie (Just For Fun; Admin)
• Greybird (Open Mic; Off-A; World Watch; Visibility and Education)
• KAW143 (Admin; Welcome Area; For Sexual Partners, Friends & Allies)
• Kelly Kelly (Admin)
• LonePiper (Asexual Musings and Rantings)
• Silly Green Monkey (Meetup Mart; Mod Forum)
• sonofzeal (Asexual Q&A; Celebration Time!)
• SpirallingSnowy (Hot Box)
• Tanwen (Older Asexuals)
• winter (Admin)

Project Team

The Project Team is a new group of volunteers dedicated to managing other parts of AVEN besides the forums - static content, side projects, and additional visibility work. The first eleven project members were elected in the week of June 15 to June 22, 2006. (Relevant thread) Re-elections are expected to take place every six months. New projects that the Project Team has begun thus far include this Wiki, the AVEN Newsletter, the AVEN Pen Pal exchange, and a T-shirt design contest. Project Team responsibilities are not assigned as specifically as moderator responsibilities, but most members have one or two projects that they personally look after.

Current Project Team members:

• AVENguy (static content, general administration)
• Cacille (no specific duties)
• elizapotter03 (no specific duties)
• Hallucigenia (AVENwiki and AVEN newsletter)
• Hu (static content, penpals)
• Islander9 (no specific duties)
• Kallan (no specific duties)
• Neurovore (no specific duties)
• Jesh (pamphlets, static content, store)
• SpirallingSnowy (no specific duties)
• Triple A (internet outreach, pamphlets, surveys)

Resigned Project Team members:

• AmoebicMe
• Xenius13 (under the name Ataraxia)
• Dargon
• Hexpiral
• Nugan

History of AVEN

Asexuals have always existed, but until the invention of the Internet, they seldom had ways to connect with each other and share their experiences. In the early and mid 90's, asexuals would occasionally post on sexuality-related newsgroups expressing their disidentification with sexuality, but search functions weren't good enough and it was hard to locate like-minded people.

AVEN was created by David Jay in 2001. At first, it was simply a front page giving a definition of asexuality and asking for e-mail from those who understood. One e-mail directed Jay to the Haven for the Human Amoeba, a Yahoo group on asexuality that had existed since 2000, but was only just starting to take off in terms of posts. (Haven for the Human Amoeba still exists, but is very inactive.)

Due to the structure of a Yahoo group, every comment someone made was emailed to everybody else, and as membership and activity in the Haven for the Human Amoeba grew, this became an awkward way to do things. There was demand for a website on asexuality with a better community structure, and several websites emerged with competing ideologies. Some websites catered to antisexual views. Others held that the only real definition of asexuality was nonlibidoism. AVEN was reconstructed in the hopes of becoming a more inclusive option, based in sex-neutrality ("sex is great if you're interested, but if you're not interested, you don't have to worry about it") and the belief that anyone who identifies as asexual is validly asexual, regardless of sex drive or other factors. (See Collective identity model.)

The first AVEN admin who wasn't David Jay was chosen when Jay took a trip to Ghana. The forum at this point had about 100 members. The first moderator elections were held a few months later.

AVEN Culture

AVEN has over 9000 registered members on the English site alone, and approximately 11,000 total. Of these members, more than half have posted at least once, and a tenth have posted more than 125 times. Among more experienced AVENites, especially in the Just For Fun section of the forum, traditions have sprung up such as offering cake to new members, quacking in response to puns, and colouring things purple (the colour of the English-language AVEN forums). Some of these traditions can be difficult to understand for an outsider.

Many AVENites bond strongly with the likeminded people that they find on the AVEN forums, and among those AVENites who experience romantic attraction, a surprising number of AVEN couples have formed. The most famous of these couples is Cate Perfect and Live R Perfect, both asexual and now married.

See also

• AVEN Birthdays