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by
Angela Chen
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February 11 - February 14, 2024
Zakaria did not fit in among her graduate school classmates, aware that she would be labeled as a prude, “a Muslim woman to save, to school in the possibilities of sexual liberation.”
As a Muslim feminist, an identity that some foolishly see as incompatible, she found it hard to explain that she was opposed not to sexual pleasure, but to the way that it has been constructed and the stories about sex that have been taught, the hollow example of more sex as more liberation that sometimes overshadows other issues.
White upper-class women, less affected by racism and classism, are also less likely to see the need for a broader vision of feminism that emphasizes these concerns and, therefore, are more likely to center this narrow vision of sexual liberation as female liberation.
Sex was not the center of Zakaria’s feminism. Sex is not the center of my feminism either, and I do not have time for those who would say that this calls my feminism into question.
I believed that my desire for monogamy and disinterest in casual sex were not preferences worthy of honoring, but political and moral failings that must be overcome. I thought I was weak and stupid.
the #MeToo movement spurred more analysis over the dangers of sex and sexual aggression, with some claiming that the movement has gone too far and others, not far enough.
Don’t reinforce the new charmed circle with comments about how polyamory is more evolved than monogamy, or look down on vanilla sex.
Someone shouldn’t be feted either because their sex acts are very kinky or because their number of partners is very low.
Far more cis women than cis men identify as ace, and many members are trans or gender nonconforming. Plenty of aces are neurodivergent. The vast majority are young.
The whiteness of the ace community—over 77 percent of respondents in 2016 global survey identified as white only3—is glaring, though not necessarily surprising. White people typically have more economic, political, and cultural power than people of color. They are usually given more credit when championing a cause and are more likely to become the figureheads.
“The asexual culture online is very white in a weird way,” says Kendra, a Black ace writer who has contributed to Everyday Feminism and Ebony. “I think as I got more into the community I did start looking for more people of color just because there were so many white things.”
Many early figureheads were white, so a white culture with white artifacts developed.
Asexuality is also associated with whiteness because of the complicated ways that sexuality itself intersects with race.
As Selena’s hair grew longer and she began wearing makeup, it was no longer necessary to counter the stereotype of the sexless Asian man. That stereotype didn’t apply anymore, but as one restriction lifted, another replaced it. Selena now wanted to have less sex to spite the fetishists who were suddenly interested in her new presentation as an Asian woman.
rape as a form of political conquest or slave owners marrying off their slaves and splitting families apart.
Asexuality has been idealized and it has been denied. Both are problematic.
The dominant media is filled with images of many types of white people; white people, for the most part, have the freedom to be anything they like.
Racial stereotypes are complex and exist in multiple directions at once. Asian women are fetishized, as Selena found, and sometimes considered hypersexual. In other contexts, Asian women are desexualized portrayed as the geisha girl or China doll: soft-spoken, servile, and submissive. In the US today, East Asians are considered the well-behaved model minority, enough so that members of the white supremacist far right seem to like dating Asian women.
no one has called me chink or pulled back the corners of their eyes to imitate me or made fun of my food.
In elementary school, I noticed people looking at me when we talked about the Chinese laborers who built the California railroads,
My Japanese friend hated how people would turn to her when Pearl Harbor came up during history class. We didn’t know what it would have felt like otherwise, to be white and represented everywhere, and to never have anyone turn to you during a lesson about what white people have done.
Were we all in China, my parents might have given me the same advice, but there I would not have internalized this specific image of what it meant to be Asian in America, which is a product of the white gaze.
Varys is shrewd and good-hearted and conveniently touts the benefits of asexuality, saying that after seeing what desire has done to people and to politics, he is “very glad to have no part in it.”
remains a mystery whether Todd Chavez is white or not. (He is voiced by the white actor Aaron Paul, and BoJack creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg has said he is “embarrassed to admit” he never considered that Todd might be Latino.
“I’m perceived as a Black cis woman, with large tits and a large ass,” they say. “There’s absolutely no way in hell, societally speaking, that I could possibly not be a sexbot.”
white Americans have long considered Black women to be sexually promiscuous jezebels, the opposite of the pure and proper white lady and a target of racist anxieties over miscegenation.
the opposite stereotype also exists—that of the sexless and sexually undesirable mammy, the racist Southern trope of the Black nursemaid to white children who is safe to employ because she won’t sexually tempt the white master.
It’s hard if you confirm a stereotype and it’s hard if you violate a stereotype and it’s hard if you think you’re violating the stereotype only because you hate it so much.
People claiming that Black asexual men don’t exist because “all Black men want sex.”
“In the environment I grew up in, I’ve heard that being anything but straight is ‘something white people made up,’” May says, “and I’ve heard African Americans talk about how ‘homosexuality was never in Africa before the Europeans.’”
The ace community can be racist. One Black woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told me about an AVEN thread a few years ago that discussed whether an upcoming conference should include a safe space for aces of color. Specifically, it let white aces respond to the question too, and some said no because the safe space would break up the community. When this woman protested that white people should not be deciding on this question, others accused her of being hostile and divisive.
The Black community isn’t free from prejudice either. There can be queerphobia,
To suspect that one’s sexual orientation is actually a reaction to racism is disconcerting. It feels false and fraught, traitorous.
White female aces who struggle with the perception of being repressed can turn to plenty of other white female aces for support. Aces of color can be far more isolated.
both white American and Black American culture can sexualize Black people.
long ago absorbed the idea that Black people are supposed to be extremely sexual and also good in bed.
“I feel more vulnerable with Black people than with white people because I fear that the second I meet another Black person, they can tell that there’s something different about me, something that is unconsciously and invariably associated with whiteness,”
Vesper has long been self-conscious that their hobbies and “that I’m not a Beyoncé fan or whatever” marked them as not Black enough:
To not experience sexual attraction was just another way that people would say I was whitewashed. Literally, my sexuality was another thing that was whitewashed about me.”
White and Asian aces complain about being perceived as prudes
She’s ace and trans and Asian and can be all of these things, yet she still cannot talk about these parts of herself separately.
“It’s impossible to be empowered with one aspect of my identity without also working to be empowered with all of the others,”
Race and gender and sexuality intersect,
It can be easy for Selena to feel culturally homeless, like she’s too trans to be Asian or too Asian to be trans, leaving both identities diminished.
whether it’s weird that a trans person would not experience sexual attraction. (Being transgender is often associated with hypersexuality.)
my ‘nos’ are extremely difficult for people to deal with. Now it’s like, ‘If you’re ace, why do you dress like that, why do you talk like that?’”
“I was a nonconformist anyway and so this was another weird thing to add to my long list of weird personality traits,”
I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something enjoyable when you’re watching your friends crying over a boy or crying over not having a boy.
being ace is the default. Everything else is extra effort.
Of course Toni Morrison knew about racism and how white people think Black people are supposed to be. No matter. For a Black author to center Black people and not write for the white gaze should not be at all extraordinary, yet it felt like it was.
