Tag: queertheory

Actually Important Asexual Culture You Should Know

Since I usually write about my silly little ace life, I thought it would be cool to share some important aspects of ace culture that are beyond funny stereotypes about cake and rings. So, this post is a bit more legit. It’s not all garlic bread and puns. These are important roots for the ace community and we get a bit into queer theory (which is my favorite thing probably ever – besides Conan Gray of course). 

  1. AVEN and David Jay

David Jay is probably one of the most well-known asexuals in the community. Tired of asexuality being ignored, he created AVEN (Asexuality Visibility Education Network) in 2001 for aces and allos to gain education and talk to each other. It’s currently the biggest platform for asexuals to gather and communicate on the forums. There are over 130,000 members as of 2021, and I’m sure that doesn’t even include the daily visitors who check it out as I do. 

As an asexual who frequented AVEN at the beginning of my sexuality crisis I can confirm that AVEN is actually a really special place for a lot of aces. There’s a great sense of community and it’s really nice to read stories and experiences of other aces when being ace can feel isolating. Plus, there’s book and movie recommendations, canon ace characters, surveys to fill out, and people to meet. AVEN is responsible for advocating for the DSM to change HSDD to be more ace-inclusive and not pathologize those who identity on the ace spectrum. 

Although this is probably one of the most well-known parts of ace culture, it’s arguably the most important due to its prevalence in ace spaces and the work AVEN has done for the community. 

  1. A Prude’s Manifesto 

“A Prude’s Manifesto” is a spoken word poem by Cameron Awkward-Rich, and although often heard about in the ace community, is often brought up in books on asexual/queer theory. This is one of the most prevalent asexual poems and probably one of the only ones you would find if you were to look up asexual poetry. The main idea of this poem is that Rich discusses things he would do rather than have sex as well as self-love, romantic relationships, religion, and asexuality. It is funny and beautiful and of course politically charged. 

The poem begins with Rich saying “Here is a list of things I like more than having sex” followed by “reading,” “peeling back the skin of a grapefruit” and “riding my bike away from parties.” He says that “Love is a girl who slept beside me barely touching for two years.” Some of my favorite lines are “When I touch her it is with someone else’s hands,” “The best love I have ever known was sin or sacrilege,” and “I have been made ghost and reborn as flesh.” 

Anyway. It’s just a stunning poem, and the spoken presentation adds such a personable layer. You should listen, and then probably listen again. 

  1. Ace Zine Archive 

I’m going to be so real with you guys, I just recently found out about this. I’m currently reading Asexual Erotics which I mentioned in my last blog post, and that book discussed this archive, which I immediately Googled and checked out. It’s a super cool website where you can find online zines (a shortened magazine type publication) about being asexual. Some of the zines are artistic, while others are more prose and education based. 

These are super cool to check out and it’s nice to see asexuality turned into artwork and other mediums. One of my favorite ones was on the intersectionality of asexuality and race, which was especially cool and interesting. You can check it out here: zine! (I recommend downloading to be able to see it best.) 

  1. Kinsey Scale X

The Kinsey Scale is a test to determine where one lies on the sexuality spectrum. One could score from 0 to 6, the former being heterosexual, to the latter being exclusively homosexual. However, there is a secret seventh option which is “X.” This is a marker for those who do not experience sexual attraction. This is incredibly interesting because although the test does count for the ace community, it labels them in a way that ostracizes them from the rest of the queer community by giving a letter instead of a number. On the actual graph itself, there is no actual spot for the ace community. 

Although this scale was invented to show the fluidity of sexuality, I would argue it is binary and allonormative in nature. It assumes people are having sex and that they would fall into a category that can be prescribed a label. However, even though there are some flaws within this test, I can’t ignore the fact that Kinsey was doing research for the queer community that would be important later on. 

Researchers acknowledged the existence of asexuals yet often left them out of further research. Later, in the early 2000s, more research was done on asexuality and it has been slowly included more and more into research on sexuality and in queer spaces. 

  1. White Washing in Ace Communities

This is a topic I’ve more recently come to know about, but it is in fact crazy, and by crazy I mean absurdly racist. Unfortunately, the ace community is made up of predominantly white people. Societally we’ve been known to protect white sexuality, especially for white women. Children and white women are expected to be asexual, while people of color, especially Black women, are hyper-sexualized. 

Yasmin Benoit is a great example of this. She’s probably one of the other best-known ace activists besides David Jay. However, she receives an incredible amount of aphobic and racist backlash as she’s a lingerie model and goth in her daily-presentation. A lot of people don’t understand how a Black woman who is “sexy” in her career could be asexual, especially when there’s a long history of Black women being seen as exotic and animalistic. 

This just goes to show the heteronormative violence in our society that women simply owe men sex for existing. It’s a misogynistic and objectification of women that has long been rooted in our culture. 

There is a stereotypical white, nerdy, cisgender male as a prototype for asexuality. Those who are white, cisgender, overweight, or “ugly,” are also assumed to be asexual as an excuse or assumption that no one would want to date them and therefore are not having sex. This idea that one must look a certain way in order to be sexually attractive and desire sex is rooted in sexism, fatphobia, and obviously white supremacy. This makes it challenging for those who are people of color to be believed and have their identities validated when society has hyper-sexualized POC and desexualized many white people. 

Okay. That’s all. I’m sure you all found this so interesting and cool and probably the best thing you’ve ever read. Until next week! 

More Asexual Books You Should (and shouldn’t) Read

I wrote a blog post a couple months ago about books on asexuality that you should (or shouldn’t) read, and since then I’ve read a few more so it only makes sense that I should make a part two. And as always, I am gladly accepting recommendations/suggestions for books and authors to read!

  1. Refusing Compulsory Sexuality – Sherronda Brown

At the end of the first blog post I mentioned that I was currently reading Refusing Compulsory Sexuality by Sherronda Brown, and oh my god that book changed my life.

Now, this could sound stupid to some, but this book really opened my eyes to white supremacy and how everything (sex, gender, patriarchy, politics) boils down to white nationalism. And sure, I knew about this, but as a white person, I live in a little bubble of privilege and am clearly naive to the difficulties surrounding race, because I’ll never experience life as a person of color. The way whiteness is so deeply tied to society and heteronormativity and sexuality is so deeply rooted it is almost unfathomable. And it is so interesting to learn how asexuality, and especially Black asexuality, goes against these cultural norms. This book discussed race, the hyper-sexualization of Black girls, the fear of the Black phallus, BLM categories on Pornhub, disability, colonization, discrimination of aces in the queer community, asexuality as a white identity, and literally so much more. If you’re interested in critical race theory, or queer and gender theory, I’m sure you would find this book fascinating. 

Rating: 8/10

Would I recommend it? Yes 100%. 

Would I read again? Yes. This book is definitely a scholarly one, so it is not the easiest read, but it is incredibly interesting and super educational. 

  1. How to be Ace – Rebecca Burgess 

Like the last blog post, this was another book that, to my surprise, was a graphic novel. And by now we probably know I’m not the biggest graphic novel fan, but that did mean that I could read this book in a day. As an ace person who occasionally just wants to read a silly little book about another ace person, this was a great option. Rebecca simply just talked about how they realized they were ace and the experiences they had surrounding that (mostly in university) and how that coincided with their OCD and anxiety. The illustrations were cute and it had a happy ending so I don’t have any complaints. 

Rating: 7/10

Would I recommend it? Sure!

Would I read again? Probably not. It was good, and an easy read, but I don’t find myself reaching for graphic novels often. 

  1. The Charm Offensive – Alice Cochrun

When I picked this book up I didn’t expect any characters to be ace, but the main character is demisexual! This book was one I saw on BookTok, and if you know me, you know I have let BookTok screw me over again and again. I see a book on BookTok, everyone says they love it. I get said book. I read book. I don’t like book. I get upset everyone told me to read mediocre book. I go on BookTok. I pick up another book. The cycle continues. 

Well thank god this book broke that cycle. 

The Charm Offensive follows Dev and Charlie through a split POV as Dev works on a television show – basically The Bachelor – and ends up falling for the bachelor himself, Charlie. This is obviously an issue as Charlie has just realized he’s gay, and is most definitely supposed to fall in love with a woman on the show he signed up for to fix his reputation. This book was so cute. It was funny and sweet and I read it so quickly. Plus, there’s a tiny short story the author published called A Charmed Christmas that gives a quick update on the characters in the future. 

Charlie is demisexual and Dev, who is allo, is nothing but supportive of this part of his identity. The ace representation was subtle, but nevertheless there, and that’s all I could ask for. 

Rating: 8/10. 

Would I recommend it? Yes!!

Would I read again? In a couple years I could definitely see myself picking this one back up for an easy, uplifting read. 

  1. Kiss Her Once for Me – Alice Cochrun

Because I loved TCO so much I obviously had to read another book by Alice. And to (slightly less) of my surprise, the main character was once again demisexual. I would bet a decent amount of money this isn’t a coincidence and Alice herself is demi, so that means I’m probably supporting ace authors by buying her books and that’s a win/win situation!

KHOFM is a Christmas romance, though I think you could read it any time of year. Ellie and Jack had a meet-cute a year ago on Christmas that lasted only a single day, and due to some events we learn about later cause Ellie to run from the situation, leaving this perfect woman behind. In the present Ellie is still heartbroken over this amazing Christmas love affair. However, she is struggling to make ends meet, so she decides to join a crazy fake-marriage plan with her boss who promises to give her part of his inheritance he’ll earn only when he’s married. Ellie and Jack end up meeting again, and Ellie has to figure out if she should stay loyal to her faux-fiancé or follow her true feelings. 

This was super cute and wasn’t as predictable as you might think. Plus, the character’s met at Powell’s Bookstore, and I’m currently writing a screenplay where the characters meet as Powell’s which is a crazy, but cool, coincidence. 

Rating: 7.5/10

Would I recommend it? Yes!

Would I read again?  Like Alice’s other book I could see myself reading this again a couple years from now. 

  1. Asexual Erotics – Ela Przybylo

Asexual Erotics is not for the weak. Be warned: this book is a challenging read. And as someone very interested in queer theory, someone who consumes queer media, reads queer and feminist theory for fun, and is currently in school for a minor in gender and sexuality studies, this book had me scratching my head in confusion. 

This book is incredibly academic. However, it is also incredibly interesting. While there are some paragraphs and sentences my brain skims over with lack of comprehension, there are certainly some amazing lines. Working on Audre Lorde’s theory of erotic, Przybylo defines erotics as “energy of collective struggle to end oppression” and ties this theory into race, lesbian bed death, feminist theory, spinsters, and the asexual child. 

In order to explain this, here’s some sentences I found incredibly interesting: 

“Ianna Hawkins Owens discusses how compulsory heterosexuality has uneven racial histories, such that whiteness has tended to emulate an ‘asexuality-as-ideal’ as demonstrative of a form of innocence, moral, control, and restraint, while black people have often been positioned as hypersexual so as to justify enslavement, lynching, and other instruments of racism.” 

“Kathryn Kent argues that in the postbellum period and the early twentieth century, marriage signified differently for white women and black women such that white women sought self-autonomy through refusing marriage while black women sought self-determination and entry into the public sphere through marrying.” 

I haven’t completed this book in total yet, and I’m currently about half way through. I found the introduction to be interesting, and the first and second chapter to be interesting but definitely more theorizing than actually proving anything. However, the second half of the book covers topics I think will peak my interest, so I’ll let you know when I finish, 

Rating: TBD

Would I recommend it? Yes! However this is not for the faint of heart. 

Would I read again? I can see myself using this as an academic piece in classes and discussions on asexuality. I would probably re-read certain parts and not the book in its entirety.