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

by Sherronda J. Brown

Compulsory sexuality is the idea that sex is universally desired as a feature of human nature, that we are essentially obligated to participate in sex at some point in life,

and that there is something fundamentally wrong with anyone who does not want to—whether

Compulsory sexuality and rape culture result in people being pressured into sexual situations because of the assumption that they should want to have sex and that there is something wrong, unnatural, and inhuman about not wanting it to the extent that others expect or not wanting it at all.

Sex is so often regarded as a property and a “right” owed, as a demand that we are obligated to fulfill, that many people feel entitled to sex—and