By Cat Cotsell, provided for International Asexuality Day 2022.
This piece is based on my segment from the plenary at Canberra’s first queer conference, Canberra Together, in 2019.
I’m going to share some results with you.
In a survey conducted by members of ACT Aces in 2019, we noticed some patterns and recurring themes in the experiences of people that identify on the ace spectrum. Those experiences included the following:
- Being called a liar.
- Being accused of disappointing their mother.
- Being told, “You’re too pretty to be asexual”.
- Dating out of a sense of social expectation.
- Exclusion from social events.
- Being targeted or mocked by friends, family, or peers.
- ‘Coming out fatigue’, or reluctance to come out following repeated negative experiences.
- Being told they must be ‘fixed’.
- Being threatened with, and/or subjected to, sexual harassment or violence.
- Having medical professionals and/or therapists disbelieve, or place inappropriate emphasis on, their sexual history.
- Having their orientation attributed to mental illness.
- Having their orientation attributed to past trauma.
This list is full of experiences any member of the LGBTQIA+ community would recognise. That is interesting, because exclusion specifically from queer spaces was one of the most highly reported forms of discrimination in the survey.
There is an attitude that asexual people are disqualified or somehow exempt from queer experiences. Many respondents were told that asexual people face no oppression, or that they were “invading spaces that belong to actual queer people”. Multiple individuals described feeling more welcome in the queer community while identifying as a straight ally or other orientation.
For the most part, where exclusion was described, it took some form of rejecting asexuality’s legitimacy. Of the respondents that had experienced at least one incident of verbal or emotional abuse, over three quarters reported being told that asexuality is “not real”.
I emphasise that, at this stage in the conference, we had not yet completed the analysis and were only noting patterns. With that said, if you accept these responses at face value, acephobic views are out there and they are not uncommon. It certainly doesn’t help that the majority of survey respondents interacted with online groups, which is where much of the exclusionary interaction took place, often because they had no access to in-person support groups.
One line from the personal accounts that stuck out to me was when one woman, who identified as asexual and romantically attracted to women, was told, “Why don’t you just say you’re a lesbian?”
This question illustrates the friction between asexual people and queer exclusionists. The A, by itself, doesn’t count. Aces are not the only LGBTQIA+ demographic to face pressure to legitimise their identity by reinforcing or replacing it with other labels. We aren’t the only demographic to have our identity treated as a challenge or a temporary obstacle. And we have plenty to bring to the table in terms of relating to queer issues.
Accepting that asexuality is real, and not just a special name for abstinence, means challenging the assertion that sex is a primal and essential human drive. This is where people often pause. We are raised to have the implicit understanding that a normal lifestyle, and especially a normal relationship, involves sexual attraction. By implication, we are taught that withholding sex means withholding something that one’s partner has a right to expect. As a result, asexual people experience pressure to participate in acts they might find distressing or traumatic.
Where this was reflected in the survey, it was often explained as being a consequence of the person not feeling equipped to defend their lack of sexual attraction. When we position sex as an essential part of humanity and of reproductive health, it has ramifications not just for a person’s private life, but for their medical treatment. Using the survey as a gauge, it was pathologising, alongside abuse and complications around becoming a parent, that caused the most problems across demographics.
When I say ‘pathologising’, I mean the designation of a person’s sexual orientation, sex characteristics, or gender identity as a disorder or a symptom. This positioning enables people to view it as something which can be, or needs to be, fixed.
People reported being lectured, called a liar, and having their parents sent out of the room by medical care professionals. They were misdiagnosed, which in some cases led to complications (“you are sexually active whether you admit it or not”, one adult woman was told by her doctor, who had mistaken a UTI for an STI). People were told by therapists, OBGYNs, and other professionals that their asexuality was a symptom of psychosis, hormone imbalance, autism spectrum disorder, and more. People had their appointment time eaten up by unsolicited advice on their asexuality when the appointment was supposed to be for an unrelated issue. People were subjected to relationship abuse via what could be coyly termed ‘corrective therapy’.
And this isn’t even mentioning all the parents, stepparents, friends and partners. Whether or not derisory interactions come from a medical professional, they all add pressure on individuals to see themselves as having a problem rather than an orientation.
I’m not going to further describe the negative experiences reported in the survey, not because they fail to add weight to the argument for inclusivity and support for asexuals, but because I don’t want the chief takeaway for any reader to be that the asexual experience is defined by confusion, isolation and misery.
There is a profound amount of dignity in simply owning your libido, whether it be in constant overdrive or basically non-existent. Sex positivity isn’t only for those who enjoy it. The power of consent is not diminished or determinable by how much sex a person has, or why they choose to have it. Pride is supposed to be a joyful and resounding rebuttal of shame, so just like shame, it looks different for everyone. Just ask the woman who responded to our survey in order to tell us about her handmade birdhouse, painted in the colours of the ace flag and hung in her front yard.
The vast majority of recognition, both culturally and academically, for asexuality has taken place in the past ten years. In terms of queer history, asexuality as it is currently understood is a young thing. The most recent edition of the DSM acknowledges asexuality as an orientation and discourages professionals from using it as the reason behind a diagnosis or treatment. Many people still won’t have encountered the word ‘asexual’ outside of a biology textbook, but the world is changing, and it is making room for us.
Events such as 2019’s Canberra Together, which actively invite groups like the ACT Aces, are invaluable in tackling oppression and exclusion. Events that are designed with space for all in mind will go the furthest in making positive change.
And hey, maybe one day we’ll get to that utopian culture where the kid who cycles through multiple labels a year on their journey of self-discovery, and the adult who has identified as asexual for over ten years, both receive the same amount of respect for their identities. We’re all human, first and foremost, after all. And what that means is up to us.