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

by Angela Chen

Asexuality is about who you’re sexually attracted to: no one. Demisexuality describes the conditions under which someone develops sexual attraction (after an emotional bond is formed), and gray-asexuality can be about how often someone develops sexual attraction (rarely). It is possible to be pansexual and demisexual, or gray-A heterosexual, or any number of other combinations.

Just as the world isn’t a straight line from homosexual to heterosexual, the ace world isn’t a straight line with ace people on one side, non-aces on the other, and demis somewhere in the middle.

Here is something else that aces want to tell everyone: sexual attraction is not the only kind of attraction.

Breaking the link between aesthetic and romantic and sexual attraction makes it possible to understand each type on its own terms instead of mistaking one for the other. New ways to talk about attraction mean new ways to think about attraction, to more clearly evaluate a bond.

Though I would never say that I am restricted in my daily interactions with allos, there is a palpable difference among aces, a stripping away of defensiveness because I know that I will not need to explain asexuality or represent asexuality or educate others on all the ways that someone can be asexual. I can be myself and also ace, not myself defined by asexuality.

Despite its emphasis on purity culture and the importance of abstinence, religion is not entirely free from compulsory sexuality or the belief that lust is universal and to be otherwise is to be abnormal.

“the failure to examine heterosexuality as an institution is like failing to admit that the economic system called capitalism or the caste system of racism is maintained by a variety of forces, including both physical violence and false consciousness.”

“I wanted sex on an intellectual level. I wanted everything that sex was supposed to bring me.”

The lack of the right kind of sexual behavior is a barrier to connection, so men’s talk and behavior can be less about wanting sex than it is about wanting friends.

Beliefs about the voracious nature of male sexuality are so strong that they can lead ace men to doubt their gender identity.

Incels, however, are not merely lonely. They are also entitled, and here my sympathy ends. Instead of questioning the narrative of masculinity that prioritizes sexual conquest, incels lean into it, misusing evolutionary psychology to make themselves more miserable and falling into reductionist theories about genetic fitness and how the purpose of men is to impregnate as many women as possible.

“If it were just about the sexual thrill, why wouldn’t incels resort to increasingly elaborate forms of wanking?”

Many people feel unattractive and undateable without believing that others owe them sex or resorting to murder. Still, it’s undeniable that the rage of the incels is connected to cultural expectations around men and sex, and that the same is true of the alienation of ace men.

Ace men tell me that people of all genders assume that they are secret incels who hide behind a made-up identity. Such is the trap: Even when a man doesn’t want sex, he can be lumped in with the men who will kill in their desire to have it. Men cannot be simply uninterested; there must always be something else at work.

If sex is a gift from God and wonderful if you do everything right, what does it mean when you do everything right and the sex disappoints time and time again?

Though asexuality has become a sexual identity in itself, it can also be understood as a way of living that simply refuses to care about personal sexuality.

If there were no compulsory sexuality, aces would not need a community for support. It would not be so meaningful for aces to find each other and realize that we’re okay. Any visibility we have is, in some ways, a reminder that compulsory sexuality exists and that it affects more than us, that it can punish anyone seems to deviate from the expected. If aces make a big deal out of being ace and demand to be recognized, if we have created groups of our own, it is because we want a place away from sexual pressure. If we fight for visibility and change, it is because we want that pressure to be lifted for others too.

For so long, women have been encouraged to deny our sexual needs and instead serve the needs of men. Our worth is tied to sex. We are sexualized until we are too old, yet shamed and policed for being sexual ourselves, prevented from exploring what we desire or are allowed to desire—and this is doubly true if the women in question aren’t straight.

Instead of realizing that the problem is the very existence of the charmed circle, liberals simply reversed it.

Overcorrection doesn’t solve the problem. It only redistributes the shame and the stigma.

Liberated sexuality—that is, sexuality free from social shaming—can look like promiscuity or it can look like celibacy.

If asexuality, mine or anyone else’s, comes up in discussion, it must always be qualified. It feels like I can’t say “I’m ace” and let that stand on its own; I must always fight the impulse to tack on frenetic caveat after frenetic caveat.

“I’m ace, but not ace in the boring way that you’re thinking” is still a dart, a subtle reinforcement of all the lessons taught about what it means to be frigid.

I am not sex-positive or sex-negative. I am pro-pleasure, which does not need to include sex at all, and I am pro-sexual choice—real choice.

Show us examples of powerful, enviable women who are openly indifferent to sex, secure in that decision, and not constantly challenged by others. Don’t reinforce the new charmed circle with comments about how polyamory is more evolved than monogamy, or look down on vanilla sex. Stop assuming that sexual behavior must be linked to political belief or that horniness is an interesting personality trait.

I was surprised that he knew the term; it turns out he had learned it from BoJack. Representation not only reflects, but actually changes reality.

“Being a Black asexual woman often feels like living in the shadow of the mammy, a caricature whose asexuality is conceived of only because she is expected to mother everyone around her,” writes Sherronda J. Brown. “Mammy is allowed to be free of the racialized hypersexualization only because it permits her more time, energy, and space to perform her endless duties. She is not allowed to have desire or desirability, not allowed to seek out sexual pleasures and intimacies, because her entire focus should be on her domestic and emotional labor.”

“With people I don’t know really well, my sexuality itself feels like it’s running on scripts based on my perception of their perception of what my identity should be, and it gets really messy,”

For allos, sex is so natural an explanation for behavior that other reasons, such as wanting to dress creatively for its own sake and wanting to be seen just to be seen, can be hard to fathom. “I’m like ‘I want you to stare at me, but I don’t want you to fuck me, and they have nothing to do with each other,’” Selena continues. “And then allos are so funny because they just insist that those have everything to do with each other.”

The longer I grapple with identity, the more I realize that there is a fine line to walk between acknowledging the assumptions of the dominant power and centering ourselves, between being honest about our awareness of the white allo gaze and also taking time to consciously turn away from that watch.

Disorders of desire are about seeing difference and calling it a problem. Asexuality is about embracing variation and avoiding the language of disorder, even if being asexual can be inconvenient.

Scientists spent a long time trying to find the “gay gene,”43 yet the same amount of effort has not been spent trying to find the straight gene. Straightness is considered the ideal, so people rarely bother to wonder whether that’s nature or nurture, even though it’s both and even though straightness, as Adrienne Rich made clear, is often conditioned instead of chosen.

Straight people are rarely treated like they’re close-minded for knowing their sexual orientation, but aces are assumed to be unsure and always on the brink of finding the person who will change everything.

“I think people go in and out of heterosexuality and homosexuality and queerness in various ways, and why can’t that also be true for asexuality?” asks Cerankowski, the gender studies scholar. “There are different circumstances under which people might find themselves identifying with different sexualities, and I do think we have to allow movement and fluidity as we think more complexly about sexual identities.”

True sexual liberation means having many choices—no sex forever, sex three times a day, and everything in between—that all feel equally available and accepted, and that all can lead to happiness if they are right for you. Context matters, but there will be no sexual act that will is inherently liberatory or inherently regressive, no sexual stereotypes of any kind.

As convenient as it is that allos can use sexual desire to distinguish the categories, this is also a constricting way to evaluate the world, and allos can seem as bewildered by their feelings as aces. For them, emotional intimacy and excitement can be confusing or nonsensical if they don’t include sexual attraction. Many allos have shared with me their puzzlement at feeling like they were in love with friends despite no sexual attraction on either side.

Asexuality destabilizes the way people think about relationships, starting with the belief that passionate bonds must always have sex at the root.

Language betrays us by making sexual attraction the synonym for fulfillment and excitement itself. When describing different types of social energy and intimacy, like the mind-meld of creative collaborators or the trust between pastor and congregant, there are few metaphors that don’t resort to the sexual. Wanting to be “intimate” with someone—even emotionally intimate—can seem lewd. Being in a “relationship” with a friend sounds sort of odd. A thesaurus search for passionate offers as synonyms wanton, lascivious, libidinous, aroused, sultry, and, well, sexy.

Developing and normalizing language that lets us talk frankly about emotional intimacy without it seeming like a come-on will help the world come into focus.

Better language will protect us from confusing intention or misinterpreting emotion when that might be inappropriate, and it allows us to enhance the energy that is present without trying to turn it into something else. It will let us talk about relationships for what they are, not what they resemble.

“In past relationships, I was like, ‘Do I actually want a romantic and sexual relationship, or do I just have a really intense platonic love for someone and I wanted to have some sort of validation that I was significant in your life the way you are in mine?’”

people think of romantic and platonic love as two distinct categories, but, frequently, there is overlap and no clean separation, no one emotional feature or essential component that makes a relationship one or the other. There is attachment, and there is the desire to have sex, and there is infatuation, and it all can be felt in all sorts of circumstances and all types of relationships, shaped by different expectations and called by different names.

Nagoski’s model is better than “no means no,” which assumes that someone is saying yes unless otherwise stated. Unlike models that emphasize enthusiastic consent (“yes means yes”), it doesn’t imply that aces who can’t give enthusiastic consent are unable to consent at all, which would wrongly place us in the same category as children and animals. It expands the “yes means yes” slogan by pointing out all the possible varieties of yes.

As someone who identifies as sex-indifferent I really appreciate the categories of consent framework and wish more people would learn it

The balance between willing and unwilling can be delicate, but distinguishing the two is imperative.

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“I’m autistic and people are always telling me that 95 percent of communication is nonverbal and tell me it’s important to make efforts to understand that,” says Lola Phoenix, a writer in London. “And then when it comes to consent it’s suddenly like, ‘Why didn’t they say something? No one is a mind reader!’ That’s really hypocritical.”

SERIOUSLY THO

Relationship rules are not natural law. Natural law cannot be defied. Gravity will pull you back to the ground no matter how much thinking and questioning you back do about physics. But though sex and relationship have biological and physical components, they are also interpretations that come from our mind and the minds of others, so it is possible to reframe and start anew.

“For me, there’s a baseline of pleasure and there are so many other things about a person that makes them worth it,” she says.

Sexual desire is frequently about ego and not libido.

When it comes to sex, many people don’t ask why enough. Casting sex as a primal, biological need often hides the fact that, as Selena noted, it is just as often motivated by emotional desire.

People want to experience an emotion and get stuck on the known way to reach it. Yet there are many ways to reach a feeling, if you can figure out which feeling you’re searching for.