Ace (2020)

Science journalist Angela Chen takes a dive into the “A” section of the ever-growing LGBTQIA+ coalition—asexuality. As a self-described asexual herself, she includes personal details of her own experience as well as numerous interviews with others on these complex spectrums. I found myself, as a perhaps out-of-touch fogey, quickly bewildered by the intersectionalities of romance, gender, sexuality, and more. Chen has also read widely in the literature of gender and related studies, pointing ways for further reading. As I should have expected, most of my understanding of asexuality was incomplete at best. Chen also talks about another wrinkle, related but distinct, which is a spectrum from romantic to aromantic. An asexual person may be romantic—that is, seeking a type of emotional fulfillment in others—and an aromantic person may be sexual. In fact, that’s exactly a stereotype of men’s sexuality. People are also situated on a straight / gay scale as well. It gets complicated, but Chen does a pretty good job of sorting it out. The personal stories were much more interesting for me than the theory. If I were younger, I might have been more interested in the theory; I was often intimidated by gender and sexuality in the past. Chen also examines issues of sexuality and asexuality among disabled people. I think the basic point here is the importance of self-awareness and honesty in clearly understanding one’s needs and desires. It’s all made more complicated, of course, by the values of society at large, which are often still both intolerant and at the same time crudely hypersexualized. Chen discusses the issues of asexuals being considered sex-negative, prudish, or even sick, physically and/or psychologically. In one of the most interesting sections, she makes a point of differentiating asexuals from incels, who define themselves as involuntarily celibate. She explodes one of the biggest myths about asexuals, which is that they are celibate as a rule. That’s not true at all, she says. Many have and acknowledge desires for intimacy, which they find in ways other than sex. Ace gave me a lot to think about in terms of sex and how centered it has been for me for a lot of my life, and how ubiquitous and constant social pressure is for just that. How harmful and wrong it is to pity people without partners. How many ways there are to partner with people. And more. Good stuff here.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.