Hold a table for us at 7:00.

One of the first rumored-to-be-asexy relationships can be seen in Henry James's The Bostonians, an 1886 novel that deals with the devotion between two women, Olive and Verena — the work even gave rise to the term Boston marriages to describe women who lived together in love with one another without having sex.

A rugged landscape, two rugged men—stetsons, corduroy and denim—both gazing terse and tight-jawed at the Wyoming mountainscape. . . . This is Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, but it could have been called Secret Sex Lives of the Marlboro Men.

[T]he release of semen from the penis predominantly symbolizes a forceful masculine operation, an orgasmic ‘rush’ – ejaculate refers to a sudden happening, an ejection – while the ‘loss’ of blood during menstruation is viewed as a more or less passive occurrence. Even the metaphors employed to depict these two aspects of corporeality serve to situate them on differently gendered poles. Man ‘spoofs off’ or ‘shoots his load’, while woman ‘gets her visitor’, ‘has got her monthly’.