Ramblings of an Asexual

By Harriet Steele

Pronouns: Any

The reason why sexuality and identity are so often talked about is because, in one way or another, it is exciting. It’s exciting to realize a part of yourself, daunting definitely but also liberating. To discover a whole community of people who experience the world in a similar way to you – whose perspective on sex doesn’t need any clarification because it’s the same as yours! There is affirmation when a TV character uses your word, your label, your identity as theirs and you feel a little more seen, more recognized, more visible. There’s a sense of possibility when thinking about the future and being able to continue this story of self-discovery over the years we have on this planet, to continue growing and changing. To be asexual, as I understand it, is to lack sexual attraction, for me, this extends beyond attraction to other real-life people and encompasses a general entire lack of interest in participating in anything sexual be that in a fictional, self, or partnered manner - there just really isn’t any appeal. Now, this might sound a bit of a dull or limited path through life, but I can assure you that the future course of my life feels just as full of opportunities and potential as any old sexual life has.

As a sexual orientation, asexuality has gradually become more spoken about, more known over the past couple of years, with vocal asexual activists, such as Yasmin Benoit, pushing the identity more into the mainstream sexuality discourse. We even have some media representation now! There’s Todd from BoJack Horseman, Jughead from the Archie comics, Florence from Sex Education to name just a few of the well-known examples. And these characters are wonderful, the visibility and education they provide for the asexual community at large is incredibly important and very much appreciated. My problem however is that BoJack Horseman has now finished, Jughead was made canonically allosexual (feeling sexual attraction) in the hugely popular TV series Riverdale, and Florence has seemingly vanished from Sex Education in Season 3.

In a club in my second year of university after having a roughly 10-minute-long conversation with a person I knew about my asexuality I was posed with the question: “But what do you do for fun then?” And I fear this might get to the crux of the asexual apathy I have been experiencing recently. A dissatisfaction, not with my asexual identity – I once wrote in a different article for a blog called Queermunity that I love being asexual and I very much stand by that feeling – but rather with the world surrounding me. A world that still seems to assume that my answer to that question should have been blank silence, a sad realization that I do nothing for fun because I don’t have sex or sexual attraction. But I don’t believe such a realization of self-dissatisfaction is ever going to come from the person who doesn’t feel sexual attraction because to this person’s apparent disbelief and shock there is in fact more than one fun thing a person can do to pass the time. As I responded at the time, “Is that all you do!?” According to most mainstream media, the answer is “yes”, which quite frankly is getting a bit boring now and I don’t think helps anyone in the long run.

In my experience, the asexual community and identity has a lot that it can offer to people. I don’t mean and would never say that everyone should be asexual or renounce sex – if nothing else such a statement would just make me a massive hypocrite as I critique others for telling me I just need to have sex and I’ll be right as rain. No, rather I am referring to the greater appreciation of fluidity and nuance that the asexual identity can hold within it and can encourage other people to develop. If you take sexual attraction out of the equation, then what are you left with? Really rather a lot to be honest. There is emotional attraction, aesthetic attraction, sensual attraction, intellectual attraction and I’m sure many others for various different people – sometimes these are all directed at the same person…sometimes they aren’t. Recognition of these multiple forms of attraction could encourage recognition of the equal standing and validity of multiple types of relationship and really if there is anything that the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us all, other than how to make banana bread of course, is that most of us need and desire multiple forms of human connection. And amongst these different forms of human connection lies the possibility that they are all directed at different people. Now, I’m not saying that all asexual people develop specific forms of connection with and feel different attractions towards different people in a much greater capacity than allosexual people. Rather, I am suggesting that asexuality and the asexual community might be able to act as some form of light, a beacon to recognizing that these distinct forms of attraction even exist.

In my personal opinion any expanding of our understanding of human sexuality and the nuances that exist within it can only be a good thing, can only add to an appreciation of human differences and the discovery of additional aspects of our own identities. My asexual journey is in part testimony to this, after finding out that asexuality itself existed and was a word that I could identify with and take for my own I discovered the idea of the split-attraction model: one’s sexual orientation and romantic orientation are not necessarily synonymous with one another. Whilst this discovery of the distinction was something that I have now made a couple of years ago I am still entirely unclear what my romantic orientation might be, I’m leaning towards aromantic, but I believe that this is still one part of my identity that I am discovering and am in the process of realizing. When I eventually stumble upon my ‘romantic truth’ so to speak this will almost certainly have an impact on what else I might do next with my life however as of currently I am perfectly content wandering around the sidelines of identity stability. I wonder how many other people would claim a specific romantic orientation as distinct from their sexual orientation if they heard about it? As the split-attraction model is something that is most strongly talked about within the asexual community it doesn’t seem an extremely bold statement to suggest that asexuality and asexual individuals might have many things to contribute to the conversation about sexuality, if given the opportunity to both say them and to explore them more thoroughly as valued members of the queer community.