Just Ace Things™

women of colour are hypersexualised and objectified in different ways because of our race, but our universal experience is based on how our culture promotes the idea that our bodies are for male consumption. as an asexual woman of colour, it means that our lack of sexual attraction is seen as something to be conquered, or fixed, or a wrong to be righted. for white men, it’s another space to colonise. 

so when the predominantly white ace discourse brings up again and again that “acephobia isn’t real” calls ace people “straight people who don’t have sex”, you’re erasing the way many ace woc are trying to navigate our bodies and sexual agency as asexuals. don’t derail this by saying what we face “isn’t acephobia, just misogyny”, we’re facing intersections of both that have arisen from a culture of compulsory heterosexuality and white supremacy. many asexual women of colour have talked about it and you do not get to silence our voices. 

But it will not, under any circumstances, confirm someone’s asexuality.

Because asexuality is not about whether or not you like sex. It’s about whether or not you experience sexual attraction.

Stop telling asexual people to “give it a try.” 

Stop questioning asexuals based on their sexual history or lack thereof.

Like, having depression or trauma or dysphoria or whatever made you choose to call yourself ace isnt your fault! But its also not aces fault, for accepting you and allowing someone calling themselves ace to be a part of the ace community!! Thats what communities are supposed to do!

When I was younger I just assumed I was a lesbian, and involved myself in lesbian communities. I talked to other lesbians about my disconnect with womanhood (spoiler alert; it was the trans in me making that disconnect), and they told me that thats normal and okay, that I can still be a lesbian regardless. When I accepted the fact that I like boys, I just figured it was on addition and identified as bi. Other bi people told me that my strong preference for guys was okay (it was the gay, actually). Then I realized that I was just trans and gay and now here i am today.

Did I choose to identify with those labels to avoid dealing with my own personal problems? Oh absolutely I did. I clung HARD to both when I was younger, because it was easy. Has this happened to other people? Of course, plenty of other trans people have gone through other sexuality labels! Is this lesbians and bisexuals faults, since they treated us as if we were lesbians/bi? Absolutely fucking not.

Yall need to calm down and actually acknowledge the fact that communities are supposed to help and support people within them! They arent supposed to try to steer you away from them. Do you guys expect every community to disclaim every resource with “but also you might not be this so ://”? Because all that is doing is ostracizing people that arent “cookie cutter” examples in the community, and thats wrong.

Nearly none of us get our labels exactly right on the first try. I didn’t. I know maybe 2 people who kept their very first one, out of literally hundreds I’ve met who were either not cis or not straight.

But blaming the communities who accepted you, took you in, gave you resources to self-discover, and sheltered you as one of your own for your own mistake is not okay. You don’t get to blame others for your mistake. It wasn’t their fault. 

Have sex

Enjoy sex

Hate sex

Be sex repulsed

Have a libido/sex drive

Masturbate

Sometimes experience sexual attraction

Have relationships

Love

Experience other forms of attraction (romantic, platonic, aesthetic, etc)

Get married

Have children

Asexuality is:

A spectrum

A sexual orientation

Part of the LGBT+ community

At least 1% of the population

Not something new, just more known about now

Not a choice

Not a disorder

Not a side effect of medication or mental illness

Not celibacy

⚪️ Very

⚪️ Hella

⚪️ Extremely

*Slams hands on table* okay you fucking assholes, time to talk about a big pet peeve of mine. I reccomend all y’all read this, because they might try to reconsider the actual harm they’re doing to “real lgbt people” with their discourse.

I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people. Things are not black and white. Consider the impact of what you’re doing.

First of all, wether I’m an inclusionist or exclusionist doesn’t matter. Wether or not you think cisgender heteromantic aces or cisgender heterosexual aros belong in the LGBT community, is irrelevant for this post, doesn’t matter for this post. In the end, even the straights don’t like the ace folks anyway.

But this post is for the people who claim to support the lgbt aces. I want you to know the harm you’re doing to them. Because to me it seems you guys throw the term “cishets” in the direction of all ace people. It’s everywhere in the ace tag, it even made it’s way to the cishets tag. You’re starting to make it sound like asexual = cishet. How harmful wouldn’t that be to an LGBT person to read?

Imagine you’re a lesbian girl, one that struggled with her identity as a lesbian like most of us (like me), and she just happens to not be interested in sex. Of course she would feel out of place because of that - specially when her peers are starting to talk about it more openly, which I can imagine would leave an asexual person uncomfortable without them even knowing about it. Wouldn’t it help her immensely if she could find other people who feel the same? To make her realize she’s not alone, that it’s not bad to understand that side of her life.

But when she tries to seek the asexual community, she sees the posts the tags are flooded with. Calling asexuals straights, calling them cringy, calling them names all around. I mean, imagine a gay boy seeing that? A trans person, bi people? Imagine them reading about themselves like that? If you treat aros/aces that bad, you think queer people who are ace/aro will just ignore it? Will be okay because it’s not for them? No, jfc, of course they’re gonna feel it. It is for them. You’re calling them names. ALL OF THEM, not just some of them.

And, I mean, I’m not gonna get into the fact that cyberbullying even a small handful of people, many of whom are young, is bad, but okay.

This is what your discourse is doing. You’re attacking the people you claim to protect. Attacking, and making them feel even more broken than heteronormative society already makes them feel. How can I not feel bad? It doesn’t sit well with me that someone would say they protect gay people, and then turn around and shame a percentage of them. If you really support the lgbt aces, let them talk about being ace. If you claim cishet aces just need their own community, let them talk about being ace. Stop butting into their posts with your insults, stop ruining everything they make with aphobia and negativity. Where do you want them to go? What are we supposed to be aiming for here? Will the community be suddenly saved if every last aspec person dies out?

My ace ass: 

My bi ass:

my pan ass:

My lesbian ass:

My gay ass:

My trans ass:

Bc exclus don’t support LGBT aces/aros, they begrudgingly support LGBT people in spite of their asexuality or aromanticism.

The Golden Orchid association (1644-1949) - a group of women in China that included lesbians, bisexuals, and “women who wanted to avoid both marriage options, and any romantic or sexual partnership” that today we would call asexual or aromantic. 

Another Golden Orchid association link (which, interestingly, describes what appears to be a poly relationship). 

Personal experience of a queer-identifying person noting that aces were part of the bi community in the 80s and 90s.

A book published in 1999 supports the previous link of someone’s personal experience, and notes that asexuals could be considered part of Kinsey’s “Group 3″ (the bisexuals) because they were “about equally homosexual and heterosexual” and “have no strong preferences for one or the other” just like bisexuals. 

Another book that supports the personal experience source by noting that asexuals were considered part of the bisexual “Group 3″, which was published in 1999.

Another post of someone’s personal experiences of asexuals being part of the LGBT+ community in the 90s. 

A source from 1999 noting that, while some female-female relationships in the early to mid-twentieth century were obviously lesbian relationships, not all of them were, but that it would be a mistake to label them all “friendships”. It specifically notes that asexual partnered relationships also existed. 

This book describes a series of interviews done in 1990 by Catherine Whitney who interviewed heterosexual women married to gay men, and found that they were often asexual. It also describes how, in 1990, Ann Landers (a very popular advice columnist) asked her readers if married couples could enjoy a full life without sex and was flooded with 35,000 responses from people of all ages who had little or no sex and didn’t miss it. It also describes how “Boston marriage” was originally coined with a not-necessarily-always-accurate implication that such a relationship between women was nonsexual, but that later on the assumption was reversed to imply women in a sexual lesbian relationship, and how that caused some women involved in such relationships to hide the asexual nature of their relationships for fear of being called frauds by the larger lesbian community.

This 1997 book that states “To be a Kinsey 3 (bisexual) is to be equally attracted to men and women, i.e. completely bisexual…it is also to be equally unattracted to men and women, i.e. completely asexual. Bisexuality is never about two, only about one – asexual, or self-fulfilling – or three – continuously and equally attracted to both men and women”.

Proof of asexuality being considered as a concrete, distinct orientation before 2000:

One of the first online posts about asexuality in its current use, was made in 1997. 

A study on anorexia and bulemia in gay and bisexual men done in 1999 found that 58% of anorexia patients were asexual. 

The 1997 Australasian Gay & Lesbian Law Journal mentions asexual as a “relevant sexual identity”.

A 1983 issue of the Journal of Sex Research studied the Mental Health Implications of Sexual Orientation among heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and asexual people. 

The article “Asexuality as Orientation: Some Historical Perspectives” describes different historical studies on asexuality, including a study from Johnson in 1977 where the word asexual was used to describe women “regardless of physical or emotional condition, actual sexual history, and marital status or ideological orientation, [who] seem to prefer not to engage in sexual activity”. It also describes a 1980 study by Storms who included asexual as one of four orientation categories when mapping out sexual orientation. It also describes a 1983 study by Nurius that found out of 685 participants, 5% of males and 10% of females were asexual. It also describes a 1990 study by Berkley et al. that included questions “related to homosexuality, heterosexuality, and asexuality” and included four items (out of 45) that were specific to asexuality. 

This book published in 1922 contains a lot of what I personally would describe as narcissism and pseudo-science, but acknowledges asexuality nonetheless: “In addition to the ordinary distinctive males and females, we have asexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, and old women of both sexes.”

This book from 1996 that notes “A transsexual may have a heterosexual orientation, a homosexual orientation, a bisexual orientation – or an asexual orientation” and clarifies that “a very small number – are asexual or bisexual.”

This book mentions a study by Malyon in 1981 that noted the options available to gay and lesbian teenagers choosing whether, or how, to come out by “[describing] three possible modes of adaptation in adolescence: repression of sexual desire, suppression of homosexual impulses in favor of heterosexual or asexual orientation, or a homosexual disclosure.”

Kinds of oppression that asexuals face:

Eunjung Kim wrote a chapter titled “How Much Sex Is Healthy? The Pleasures of Asexuality” that describes how “the absence of sexual desires, feelings, and activities is seen as abnormal and reflective of poor health” in Western contemporary culture “because of the explicit connection between sexual activeness and healthiness” and argues that “medical explanations of asexuality as an abnormality that has to be corrected constitute a large part of the stigmatization and marginalization experienced by asexual people.” It also discusses the ways in which some groups, specifically Asian American males, that are desexualized can erase the space for asexual Asian American men to simply exist.

Asexuals also face sexual harassment, rape threats, corrective sexual assault, and corrective rape (which, no, is not a lesbian-only term according to actual South Africans) specifically because they are asexual. 

There was a recent study by the AAU to identify sexual assault on college campuses, and broke down the responders to their survey by sexual orientation, including asexual. The results clearly show that asexuals are not immune to unwanted sexual contact, stalking, intimate partner violence, or sexual harassment.

A chapter of “Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives” that notes the specific way that asexual people are talked to/about: “Because asexual difference cannot be iterated in the linguistic field where sex and a sexed position dominate the discourse of sexuality and desire, the asexual subject is linguistically and visually dismantled and reconstructed in the position of a fetish object. This fetishistic conversion happens because the asexual person is made into an image, or spectacle, for consumption.” and “The difference between the unassailable asexual (someone who lacks all of the traits commonly blamed for asexuality such as past history of abuse, disability, etc.) and the spectacular asexual is that while the unassailable asexual allegedly makes asexuality digestible for a skeptical public and presents an accessible image, the spectacular asexual is always consumed as a fetish object, regardless of mental health, ability, and gender.”

The study “Intergroup bias toward “Group X”: Evidence of prejudice, dehumanization, avoidance, and discrimination of asexuals” is exactly what it sounds like. The article’s abstract states: “In two studies (university student and community samples) we examined the extent to which those not desiring sexual activity are viewed negatively by heterosexuals. We provide the first empirical evidence of intergroup bias against asexuals (the so-called “Group X”), a social target evaluated more negatively, viewed as less human, and less valued as contact partners, relative to heterosexuals and other sexual minorities. Heterosexuals were also willing to discriminate against asexuals (matching discrimination against homosexuals). Potential confounds (e.g., bias against singles or unfamiliar groups) were ruled out as explanations.”

The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality describes many issues that asexuals face, including: how asexuality is seen as “invisible” and lends to people thinking it does not exist, how asexuality is actively erased as “unimportant” or not its own identity, the explicitly and implicitly negative messages associated with a lack of sexual attraction, the fear asexuals face when they believe there is something physically or psychologically wrong with them for being asexual, the belief asexuals face about how they must be deeply flawed since they do not conform to other sexual identities, how asexuals face cultural ideologies that sexuality is biologically based and ubiquitous (that all humans possess sexual desire) and that don’t acknowledge asexuality, that to describe oneself as asexual is a statement of moral superiority or purity or failure to find a suitable partner, that asexuality is an immature state they will “grow out of”, that asexuality is a description of action or a preference, that asexuality is unnatural or unhealthy or has to be a symptom of something else, etc.

Asexuality has been shown in the media in a negative light for decades, reflecting the idea that (for various reasons steeped in classism and racism) any woman who wasn’t willing to marry and procreate was a threat to the status quo, as seen in this 1955 book that notes: “Women who did not marry incurred political and social scorn for another reason. The influx of eastern and southern European immigrants in the United States pushed the question into eugenic terms–the wrong people were reproducing. Educated women came primarily from white middle- and upper-class stock, the most desired element by dominant social norms. When these women refused to marry and reproduce, they forced a new concern into the public discourse. it is not a coincidence that the stereotypical asexual unmarried older woman emerged at this time as a source of popular humor.”

Some people in some religions are very explicit about hating asexuals specifically because they are asexual, seeing asexuality as “a perversion akin to homosexuality and bestiality”. 

Other religions see asexuals as actually sinful if they choose not to have sex with their spouse.

While not every member of every religion looks down on asexuals, many people in portions of various religions choose to view asexuals negatively. 

Some people even recommend asexuals avoid being in a relationship with non-asexuals and assert that “promoting and trying to spread” asexuality, or behaving in an asexual manner, is wrong or unhealthy. 

Because of these religious beliefs about asexuality, that also opens up asexuals to discrimination in various legal ways, including (but not limited to) things like the new adoption bill in Texas. 

Asexuality was implicitly pathologized until very recently, and even now, the DSM-V states that a diagnosis of HSDD may not be given only if the patient has a preexisting knowledge of asexuality and chooses to ID that way.

TL;DR: 

Asexuals have long been considered part of the bisexual community. When people used to talk about bisexuals, it included asexuals because asexuals were the bisexuals too. Bisexual history is asexual history.

Asexuals have also long been considered as a stand-alone orientation that was part of larger non-straight communities and could be studied in comparison to other sexual orientations. 

Asexuals face many of the same issues that other marginalized orientations face as well as issues specific to their orientation. These include erasure, medicalization, misidentification, harassment, rape specifically targeted at them for being asexual, and religious intolerance, to name just a few.