What: Model, Activist, Writer
When: June 10, 1996 - Present
(Image Description: a photo of Benoit from the waist up with the words “# This is what asexual looks like” over it. She is a black woman with a medium dark complexion. She has long straight dark hair, excellent eyebrows, and dark eyes. She is wearing a leather/latex tank top/spaghetti strap top and pants/a skirt of the same material. She has her arms akimbo. End ID)
Benoit is a model, writer, LGBTQ+ Activist, and a self proclaimed metal head.
She works hard to spread awareness of asexuality and dispel myths about us using her platform and her sizable social media presence (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter). She is often a contributor to queer media and writes often on asexuality as well as fighting hard for visibility and representation for asexuals, Queer POC, and POC in general. Her YouTube channel is particularly of note in which she deals with the ongoing problem of aphobia despite the hate and bile she gets in return.
(Image description: a photo of Benoit in fishnet stockings and a shirt with the Venus symbol with devil horns on it. She is snarling and has her hand in her hair.)
I have a lot of quotes from Benoit because she is extremely eloquent and points out a lot of things I, at the very least, relate to.
“It has nothing to do with how you look—that’s something I get a lot—people are like: ‘Oh but you’re good looking, you don’t need to be asexual,’ which tells me that people think that there is an asexual look and that it isn’t a good one, and two that asexuality is a choice that people take when they can’t get dates or that they can’t get laid.“
“You barely see asexual people as it is, let alone a black asexual person…I think that representation is definitely very important because I think the LGBTQIA+ community in general is pretty whitewashed in its representation…Even in the LGBTQIA community, I find that people tend to cut out the A or think that the A stands for allies.”
“One of the benefits of being asexual is definitely that you don’t have to worry about–if you’re aromantic—you really don’t worry about relationship stuff.”
-Yasmin Benoit, all from a Pink News interview, November 2018
(Image Description: a photo of Benoit at some kind of a show or ceremony. She stands in front of a wall with a logo reading “Diva” repeated all over it. She is smiling with her hands on her hips and wearing a short black dress.)
“I may not be in the first four letters, but I do not relate to the heterosexual experience in the slightest.”
“[On modeling as an aromantic asexual] I believe one comment [on one of her photographs] was ‘that girl looks like she’s about as asexual as a stray dog’. And I’m not entirely sure what that means!? Are stray dogs particularly sexual creatures? They were like ‘if she’s asexual why is she getting her picture taken? Why is she wearing those clothes?’ You obviously don’t understand what modelling is, you have to get your picture taken, you have to wear the clothes…I do think people outside of my circle find it kind of difficult to comprehend. And even for me IN it, it’s difficult to navigate sometimes! People see that I do lingerie and are like, ‘oh she’ll probably just take any job.’ But I’m VERY specific [with the jobs I take]. I’ll be like, ‘lingerie in what way?’…If you see a girl on the cover of GQ in a bra, she’s not selling the bra. The bra is irrelevant to the equation, it’s her that you’re supposed to be looking at. So I’m always like, ‘am I showing off a product, which is kind of the point, or am I supposed to just be showing off myself?’ I’m kind of picky over whether the images are aimed at titlating somebody or if they’re aimed at commercially making the clothes look as good as possible – which is my goal with it. From within the industry, it’s complicated, especially because of my body shape. If you have anything above an A cup then you’re pretty much in the lingerie category. And everything you do is seen as being more sexualised. It’s interesting navigating it from within and to people outside of it as well.”
“The only reason I noticed I was asexual was around the time everyone else realised they weren’t asexual. I remember coming back from the summer holidays thinking, what’s happened to everyone?”
“I want people to understand that asexuality is literally just what it says on the tin…Don’t approach it with all of these other ideas of how it’s supposed to be or how the story is supposed to end… it’s literally just normal people, every type of person, every country, every background, every occupation, it’s not just young confused teenagers, it’s not just people who look a certain way. It’s a diverse group of people and the same thing as you’d expect from any other community. It’s not a psychological problem, it’s not a physical problem… for a lot of people it’s not a problem! It’s literally just one element of a normal person’s life. So just treat it like that, without any of the extra baggage that people feel the need to throw on top of it.”
-Yasmin Benoit, all from a The Nopebook interview, March, 2019
*She does not have a Wikipedia page
(Image description: a photo of Benoit wearing fishnet stockings, a fishnet undershirt, and a long t-shirt with a cartoon whale on it. Around the whale in block print it says “Asexuwhale”. End ID)
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