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

I’m not an Amazon “pseudo-critic”, an academic, or a mental healthcare provider. I’m just a middle-aged straight lady who haltingly identifies as being on the “asexual spectrum”. It has made me crazy for YEARS. If you’re like me and have longed for clear-cut information and deftly-related stories about what it’s like to realize that you might be “ace”, THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU. There’s a great deal of bizarre and misleading info about asexuality out there in the world, both on and offline. Trying to identify asexual characteristics and behaviors within oneself can be absolutely maddening, because it’s such a misunderstood orientation. Ms. Chen writes from her personal perspective relating to her own struggles and questions about asexuality. This book answers a lot of questions for those of us who are coming to identify themselves as ace, such as: what about romance/love? what about sex? what do I tell my husband/wife/partner? am I some kind of broken weirdo? And the most agonizing question for folks like me: why does the entire world revolve around sexual intercourse?! Chen has bravely written from the asexual point of view, so this book gives the ace folks and non-asexuals something to chew on. My experience reading this book was one of gasping recognition, on just about every page. There were stories about every type of person/personality/orientation who might identify as asexual: straight, gay, trans, they/them, vanilla, Christian, etc. This book helped me to understand that asexuality is NOT a “disease” and I’m not disables, weird, or incomplete without sex. I don’t need to be medicated. I’m so immeasurably grateful to Ms. Chen for writing this book. It’s going to help a LOT of people understand and learn not be frightened by asexuality, either in themselves or their loved ones.

I\’m not asexual but I am interested in the construction of sex and romance in society and this book gets at the heart of modern attitudes around the two. It was very well-researched and brought in many different perspectives (looking at asexuality and aromanticism from legal, sociological, philosophical, etc. standpoints and as they intersect with race, disability, gender, etc.) in a highly readable format. I also loved the integration of first-person narratives. Would definitely highly recommend!

This book has been so meaningful to me and has given me the words to describe my experience so much more eloquently that I could myself. I did not realize I was ace until I was in my 30s and even now it is something I\’m coming to terms with talking about openly. It just wasn\’t something that was widely spoken of as a legitimate orientation when I was younger. I didn\’t even know the term. Now that I have the language to talk about it, I have found others in my social circle that also identify as ace (funny how we unconsciously found each other). Even if you aren\’t ace, this book so clearly describes many of the issues modern American society has regarding sexuality and how much sex someone is or isn\’t having. Good food for thought for anyone especially given that this does tend to be an \”invisible\” orientation.

At only 188 pages it\’s a quick and easy read. Tackles its topics on a broad level — there\’s a lot to cover, given how sexuality intersects with race, gender, religion, and politics — sprinkled with details from individual testimonies, including many from the author herself. The author assumes (correctly, I think) that people who pick up this book already bring a liberal worldview, an understanding of sex-positivity, and a willingness to nuance the modern American status quo.

I really appreciate this book partly because it felt personal. There are parts of it that shift away from personal narratives to discuss history, fact, definition, or neutral events, but most of it came through a specific perspective that compares, contrasts, and relates the content: it\’s the perspective of the author. And that\’s not a down side at all–it reminds us that the broad spectrum of ace experience, ace history, ace definition, and ace justice is always ultimately personal. We are each one person in the thick of all this, finding our way. I like how the beginning contrasted a repulsed person\’s very obvious aceness with a more confusing self-discovery that had the author struggling to pick apart what attraction is and why it was not the same thing as being interested in or willing to consent. The focus on developing language for it and understanding ourselves through it was really refreshing. And as we read more about the history, the \”trap\” of defining ourselves through lack, the evolution of a population that was dawning in its specific organization as the internet emerged, and the things we share despite extremely variable experiences, we can understand it in macro by looking at it in micro. I was head-nodding a lot at the descriptions of how various types of attraction break down and why it\’s important–even if a lot of people have experienced their aesthetic and sensual and romantic and more typical attraction toward the same people in a way that seems synchronous, ace people might find a few of those off the table and only some of them remaining, and don\’t know how to proceed because they\’re told they \”can\’t\” want one thing and not the others. But it\’s so interesting that non-aces who do experience typical attraction but NOT some of the other things that often go with it might also find these concepts useful and applicable in their lives, and I loved the discussion of that, along with so many oh-so-relatable examples about not finding \”hot\” people hot at all when they do the \”hot\” things and not being able to recognize the \”energy\” everyone is supposedly putting out and receiving. I appreciate the care taken to acknowledge the effect of a person\’s socioeconomic and cultural status on their experience, too. I especially like how in Chapter 3 there was an examination of how straightness is WAY more than just an orientation that happens to be the most popular one! It\’s a huge institution designed to influence our choices, from who we mate with to how we present ourselves in society (and what is good to attract, while there are other things we \”should\” want to avoid appearing like). Straightness can seem insidious and oppressive if it\’s used against a person, and even for those who haven\’t been particularly harmed through its pervasiveness have certainly had it inform their process of coming to an adult identity and \”deciding\” what they like. The discussion that follows from this about what\’s expected of us in relationships and how it affects ace people is really nuanced and rang very true. Sometimes it can be hard to understand from outside how it can hurt so intensely and so pervasively to be told Every Single Healthy Person Is Interested In This and how terribly it can affect you if so many people take this as given when they enter into a relationship with you (or realize it has been true all along when they already had a relationship with you). What that assumption does to a relationship, how it makes them see you differently, how the urge to \”fix\” ace people because of narratives about what we have to want can manifest from violence to condescending media representation, how the things that hurt us the most are often done in the interest of \”helping us.\” I have probably been hurt the most in my life by people who think they\’re hounding me and interrogating me for MY own good–and it really is amazing how few of them have ever considered whether THEIR basic assumption about straightness could be fundamentally mistaken. Their utter unwillingness to consider such things is really telling; we live in a society that enables such people to never question this \”basic\” belief, and it really is tragic that so many of us have been hurt by people who claim they want to help us. The exploration of why this orientation needs to be talked about was really special too. I liked that there was a pretty extensive discussion of various experiences of people who thought something was wrong with them and what that did to their lives, and why it\’s not the same as people just wanting \”recognition\” for no reason if we live in a society that CENTERS the thing we don\’t experience. I\’ve personally encountered the aggressive, HA-GOTCHA screed of \”IF I DON\’T LIKE SOCCER LIKE MOST MEN, DOES THAT MEAN *I* DESERVE A GROUP FOR SOMETHING I\’M NOT INTERESTED IN!?\” plenty of times, from people who seem really inappropriately angry that someone like me might be getting attention they don\’t ~deserve~. Yes, sir, if your life was deeply affected by and shaped by your lack of interest in something, and you\’d had people trying to pressure you into it for decades, and your society was set up to make you think something was wrong with you if you didn\’t like it, and you were urged to undergo physical and mental interventions to get you to start liking it, and everyone you talked to had an exaggerated, intense judgment of you for what you weren\’t into (which may or may not lead to disrespect, harassment, intentional triggering, or violence), well . . . yeah, sure, I think you very well \”deserve\” a group. (But I also wouldn\’t be in the comments field of a \”I HATE FOOTBALL AND NO ONE UNDERSTANDS\” organization telling them they don\’t deserve to have that conversation, because if they want to have it, I\’m not invested at all in taking it away from them. The reverse is not true.) I never took the liberties the author took with trying to jump-start a typical coital experience, but I very much recognized the pressures she mentions: that women, if they are not adventurous in that way, are assumed repressed, and that if we believe we are not repressed and yet still don\’t want it, we need to access some kind of intervention or therapy to get us in touch with ourselves, with the supposition that that desire IS in us somewhere and we will never know our \”real\” selves if we don\’t realize that everyone (including women) desires these couplings. I was actually once harassed and shamed on Twitter by someone who insisted that being ace is inherently an anti-feminist and oppressive identity! The person said it was utterly irresponsible of me to \”trick\” women into thinking they could have no desire and that could be okay, and that I was shamefully undoing decades of women\’s lib to reiterate conservative ideologies that let women be okay with \”not admitting\” their carnal appetites and being ashamed of their desires. Obviously any real feminist should understand that the issue is about choice, not about how often and to what extent you say yes. If you don\’t have the freedom to say yes on your own terms, yes, you\’re oppressed. And that includes also being able to say no whenever it suits you. If \”no, always, forever\” isn\’t available as an option, it\’s not really choice. I liked the information about sex-negative feminism from the early 1980s because that was new information to me! I recognized its effects in the reality of my life, but I didn\’t know the specifics, and it was really enlightening to read about! And reading about Lauren, one of the interviewees who was unfortunate enough to encounter a mentor who was aggressive about trying to program her into believing her identity wasn\’t real and if she was ace she would never be a good writer because it meant she lacked passion . . . I\’ve had that said to me and it\’s so baffling. I was literally told once that carnal passion was THE root of all motivation and passion for everyone, so it was impossible for me to be a decent writer if I lacked this. I would need to get in touch with it, STAT. Gee, I wonder why so many people need to believe that specific types of attraction and desire are an inherent part of being human and that we literally can\’t have human desires without it? (And as an aside about Lauren\’s story, what does it say about the predictability of these scenarios that I KNEW the man who manipulated her into thinking she would never amount to anything unless she ditched her ace identity would eventually proposition her, then shame her when she refused? Surprise: another man who somehow thinks he loves a woman but is routinely manipulative and condescending, then FURIOUS when she ultimately will not become the thing he has been trying to sculpt her into.) I love the discussion of the author\’s reasoning for having a one-night stand to prove she was not being held back by Puritan notions about saving oneself. It was really fascinating to me as a person who\’s heard all the same things but was never driven in that direction. I really related, though, to the section about caveats afterwards; that we as aces always feel like we have to qualify our aceness and explain that we\’re ace but not in the BAD way that the other person is probably thinking. (And that reassuring others that the stereotypes about aces aren\’t true for us is indirectly insulting to some other aces and can introduce or reinforce the stereotypes for our conversation partner.) The section on the ace community being \”whitewashed\” was especially important for me to read. As an ace activist who noticed the whitewashing a long time ago and always tries to listen when aces of color talk about their experience, I very much appreciate a whole spotlight on it to hear their stories. The intersection of their racial minority status with their aceness is such an important discussion topic–how much they\’re fetishized or not, what beliefs about them feed into who they become and how they react to their own attraction or perception of receiving attraction from someone else, what kind of unique cultural pressures are they reacting to or perceived to be reacting to–it\’s a lot of the same stuff other people told me during my own research that I by definition can\’t experience because I\’m white. These aces existing in my community and talking about their experiences this way led me to encourage journalists and reporters to include non-white participants whenever they contacted me for my perspective. (I also like to encourage them to reach out to neurodivergent and disabled aces.) I also really like the exploration of ace people\’s choices in how they present themselves. I too have been confronted with \”HA GOTCHA\” commentary about how I absolutely WOULD NOT dress the way I do if I was ace and therefore I am not. In other words, if I ever appear in any way desirable to someone, a) it was calculated, intentional; and b) if my appearance might make someone want to have relations with me, I also obviously want to have relations with someone, if not specifically them. It\’s preposterous, but SO often thrown around as \”proof\” that any attractive ace person is a liar. (And of course, if we\’re not particularly attractive or don\’t, by their perception, \”try,\” then THAT\’S the reason we CLAIM to be ace–because no one wants us. Ta-dah! No way we present ourselves validates an ace identity! Surprise!) The next chapter on disability highlighted similar issues regarding the intersection of removing disabled people\’s agency and the way disabled bodies are thought unattractive–which makes it complicated for ace disabled people to \”own\” their aceness and determine whether it\’s \”really\” just a symptom (and whether you can even divorce it from your physical existence at a certain point), and how some disabled people and some ace people are against seeing the two as possibly intertwined because of how much focus there is in both communities about not wanting to be seen as each other. The discussion of a line between romantic love and friendship love was really illuminating! I related a lot to what the author talked about with regard to compelling female friendships and how they can involve physical and emotional intimacy down to kisses and pet names without it meaning you are attracted to the person, and our cultural obsession with saying you MUST be involved that way (or must want to be) if your care for someone increases beyond a certain strength is really limiting when it comes to relationships so many people really do experience. It has always been weird to me, as the author discusses, that consummate relations without love is accepted as possible but love without consummate relations is treated like an impossibility. I found myself head-nodding in response to people saying they\’d been told it\’s surprising they\’re single; happens to me all the time, and as a woman past 40, sometimes \”you seem great, can\’t believe you\’re single\” is paired with \”so what\’s the secret thing that\’s wrong with you?\” The examination of consent in a relationship was great too. I\’ve had some disappointing conversations with people who literally believe there is a baseline amount of bedroom activity they are guaranteed in a relationship unless the other person explicitly opts out and they agree to that opting out. Otherwise, how convenient, it happens that the Decent Person\’s Consensus On How Much Coitus They Are Owed also happens to be the amount and type they personally want! You don\’t even have to talk about it because the person who won\’t offer it is in the wrong if they won\’t! And counseling will always lean toward figuring out how to make the less interested person accommodate those needs, without asking the more interested person why they feel entitled to expect and demand them from an unwilling partner! I also really liked the nuanced discussion of complicated consent–beyond the yes and no binary. The author is also really gifted in using gently accessible language. It was occasionally just unusually artful for coverage of a subject like this, which I appreciated–it really was a pleasure to read writing-style-wise even though the subject matter itself is also an interest of mine. I like that it was clear and readable while still having some voice and personality and some funny phrasing (references to memes or using irreverent insults was a fun reminder that this is a delightful person\’s perspective, not just a recitation of ace-related stuff). There were several revealing sections where the author shared her personal prejudices/reactions and her analysis of them, or her history of growing through experiences she wishes she hadn\’t had to live the way she did. I enjoyed it and thought it was both an artistic success and a very important book for anyone who wants to understand ace diversity.

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