Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture

by Sherronda J. Brown

It is not insignificant that Walsh uses “asexual” to besmirch and rail against those who refused to enter into monogamous heterosexual relationships, marriage, and servitude to men.

There are, in fact, social ramifications for not making oneself desirable to men in a system where men carry institutional power over women and other marginalized genders.

Compulsory heterosexuality and male supremacy teach us that we should accept the bare minimum—ill treatment, poor communication, emotional immaturity, and even hurt, discomfort, and sometimes feeling emotionally or physically unsafe—from heterosexual relations with men.

This trope is a more common one than some may realize. A number of antagonists, villains, criminals, killers, and otherwise amoral or unpleasant characters are coded as asexual or aromantic, and their abnormal nature is framed as being directly linked with their asexuality or aromanticism.

When dehumanized based on the perceived absence of “uniquely human” characteristics, people are considered animalistic. When dehumanized based on the perceived absence of “human nature” terms, people are seen as mechanistic.

Asexual people are accustomed to hearing dehumanizing rationalizations for why asexuality either cannot possibly exist or for why asexuals are deviant, with variations on the claims that asexuality “goes against (human) nature” or that “sex is what makes us human.” But many asexuals have taken this in stride, (half-jokingly) concluding that, if we are not human, then surely we must be displaced gods.

But the absence of heterosexuality—presumed or apparent—does not inherently give way to or definitively indicate a same-gender sexual attraction or desire.

Those who are single at heart instead prioritize and delve deeply into aspects of their lives outside of the sexual and romantic, finding profound satisfaction in remaining unpartnered and reveling in their solitary nature. This means that they have no interest in or intention of centering or restructuring their lives around sexual or romantic partnerships, because not doing so allows them to be their happiest, most prosperous, and most authentic self.

The gift and curse of this moment is that people are so obsessed with identity that they want to put you into a category as opposed to letting folks say who they are. [It’s] a very Western and new notion that sexuality is an identity. That’s very, very recent and has a lot to do with capitalism and what is possible in the West.…

My hope is that we will collectively do more to interrogate our preconceptions of other people’s sexual identities and how compulsory sexuality implores us to project certain sexualities onto others to begin with—particularly when that projection is a response to their “failure” to meet cisheteronormative and chrononormative expectations of heterosexual relationships, gender roles, marriage, and nuclear family-making. Such projection only serves to reinscribe suffocating ideologies of binary gender and sexual performance, presentation, and expression.

2001 Asexual activist David Jay founds the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), which would ultimately become the most prolific and well-known asexual community hub.

2005 AVEN community members decide on a black ring worn on the middle finger of the right hand as a symbol for the asexual community.

2010 The asexual pride flag is introduced.

2011 The documentary (A)sexual is released.51

2013 The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) changes the diagnosis of hypoactive sexual desire disorder to include the exception for people who self-identify as asexual

Asexuals are actively prioritizing nonsexual forms of connection, honoring our capacity to create long-lasting bonds and express love, appreciation, and commitment in various ways. To revisit Frances Chapman’s quote from her off our backs essay, “Asexuality is an orientation that regards a partner as nonessential to sex, and sex as nonessential to a satisfying relationship.”