Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex

by Angela Chen

The biggest difference is that it usually requires much more effort for sex to feel good for aces compared to allos and much less awkwardness for sex to feel boring or uncomfortable. To return to a food metaphor: Imagine the difference between eating when ravenous and being full but willing to share a snack. People can enjoy eating when they’re not hungry, but when the food itself is not satiating hunger, the social aspects need far more care and have to be just so. Not being desired in the right way feels frustrating, and stepping away from this story takes work. But desire of other kinds can be just as heady, its grip just as hard to shake. Willing consent and other forms of emotional desire can be a gesture of caring, a starting point from which to explore and have fun too. The things people do from choice are meaningful and the effort that they take is a sign of a great love, even if they’re not pushed by an uncontrolled, intense physical passion. Few things are more romantic than someone trying hard because they want to make you happy. That is what this is. A switch in perspective requires elevating emotional desire for sex and seeing work as romantic. It also requires everyone paying attention to what we want emotionally instead of just physically and finding new (or other) ways to fulfill those needs.