All About That Ace

Hiii, Community! How are we? As always, I’m happy to be here with you.

In my last post, I did some writing on a presentation by our Research Team here at the Digital Archive Project. It was pretty serious, so I was thinking today we could get a little personal. I’ll be talking a little more about myself. In our next Community Chat, you can tell me about yourself too. It’ll be next week so stay tuned for the details.

Today, I’ll be talking about asexuality. From Twitter alone, it seems like asexuality is one of the most misunderstood and overlooked communities under the LGBTQ+ umbrella.

Now that I think about it, I’m surprised I didn’t write this sooner. I love to talk about asexuality because I know lots of people don’t know what it is. I have a feeling most of you reading this will learn something new and honestly, I’m excited to begin. 

Let’s start with the definition. I, like other asexual people I’ve met, have had to define asexuality for ourselves based on our experiences and the research we’ve done. So here’s the definition I ascribe to: an asexual person is a person who experiences little to no sexual attraction. Some people define it as experiencing no sexual attraction or experiencing sexual attraction under very specific circumstances. The latter is my understanding of graysexuality. People tend to get defensive when they hear this definition. They say things like “It’s not like I want to have sex with everyone! I also have conditions”. Eventually you’ll see the difference.

Asexuality is a spectrum. It shows in the definition.

An asexual person is a person who experiences little to no sexual attraction.

Demisexuality falls under this spectrum and so does graysexuality. I have a feeling people have heard more about demisexuality than they’ve heard about asexuality. I googled the term so I could make references and sound like a serious writer. To my greatest surprise, the Wikipedia definition was actually a good one. It reads “Demisexuality is a secual orientation in which an individual does not experience primary sexual attraction — the type of attraction that is based on immediately observable characteristics such as appearance or smell and is experienced immediately after a first encounter”. 

Demisexual people feel sexual attraction and desire after forming an emotional connection with another person. This is different from deciding or preferring to wait to get to know someone before you have sex with them. The former is pretty much out of your control and the latter is a choice. So to the haters, there’s a difference. Asexual people aren’t trying to act like they’re special. 

You wouldn’t believe the things people tell asexuals on the internet. I would know because I practically live on Twitter, yet I’m still not sure what it is about asexuality that gets people so worked up.

Allosexuals are people who experience sexual attraction. To some of them we’re childish, sick or just a bunch of attention-seekers. It’s funny, you could say the same thing about people who experience sexual attraction. Imagine if every time someone said “weather for two”, or posted that messy haired bratz doll meme, an asexual person said something like “Grow up” or “Does the whole world need to know?” 

Everybody should just be, abi?

Sexual health educators have worked hard to counter outdated patriarchal and hyper-religious beliefs about sexuality among young people. Instead of using those messages to encourage people to safely engage in sexual activity when they’re ready, people turn this teaching around and use it against asexual people. “It’s normal and healthy for adults to desire and engage in sex” becomes “If you’re over 18 and you don’t like sex, there’s something wrong with you”. Tell me I’m not the only one who sees what’s wrong here.

I once saw a tweet that read “You fuck small and people want to argue with when you say you’re asexual”. The responses were in two genres. One, allosexual people viewing asexuality as a joke - they often say things like “Sex? Oh no, me I’m asexual” and laugh. And two, an allosexual person asking me “But why are these labels important?” I thought the answer to that was obvious: because they’re them and you’re you. Everyone decides what’s important to them. Also, what’s the big deal about labels? They’re words. You couldn’t possibly be upset that words exist to describe a myriad of human experiences and those words are being used, could you? Wow.

You tell people you’re asexual, that asexuality is a spectrum and they respond with something along the lines of “ei this one too is a thing?”. They act like you’re doing too much by identifying as what you are. I don’t think allosexual people realise how much they sound like homophobes when asexuality is mentioned. I’m not sure what triggers them so much. I tell myself it’s because they once met an asexual person who didn’t want to have sex with them and they never got over it. Tragic, but must you take it out on the rest of us?   

And then there’s queer people telling us we’re not queer. Some of the reasons allosexual queer people refuse to accept that asexuality is a queer identity is because queerness is unfortunately so linked with violence and oppression, that it’s now being used to define it. Someone asked “but what oppression do asexuals face?”. Sigh. Queerness has to be more than a struggle. It has to be, guys. 

Imagine someone standing at the gate of homosexual heaven and asking “If you went out on the streets and told people you’re asexual, would they attack you? No? Then you’re not one of us”. Ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s very much giving ✨Oppression Olympics✨

I think everyone who is viewed as different by society, is treated differently. And at the end of the day, everyone wants to be treated like they belong. 

Asexuals are a part of the queer community and for this reason, I’d like for the queer community in Ghana to know some of the struggles of being asexual.

We’re treated like children 

Adults have sex =/= You're a child if you don’t have or like sex.

We’re viewed as people who need psychological “help”

I don’t have much to say to this one except that sex is really not that big a deal. Imagine taking someone to the hospital and when the nurse asks what the problem is you say “Please help my friend. When he sees attractive people, he just thinks ‘Wow, they’re attractive” instead of wanting to have sex with them.”

We’re told we’re just trying to get attention 

From who? The people we don’t want to have sex with? 

We’re told we’re not a part of the queer community or that asexuality is not a sexual orientation 

Wikipedia defines orientation as a person’s attitude, beliefs, feelings in relation to a particular subject. Basically, it’s how you experience a thing. Need I say more? 

My definition of queerness is anything outside of what is traditionally considered the normal experience of gender, sexuality and ways of relating with other people. I’m sticking with these definitions.   

We’re not believed when we say we’re who we are 

It hurts to not be believed, under any circumstance. Having to explain and prove yourself over and over is not only exhausting, but disheartening. When it comes to asexual people, though, it can get really bad. Some asexual people are coerced into sex because their partners for some reason just can’t fathom the idea that they’re not interested in sex. 

One of the things I like to clarify when I talk about asexuality is that it is not the absence of sexual feelings. It doesn’t mean that asexuals don’t feel sexual arousal or desire. Again, it’s a spectrum. We’re all different.

Some asexual people, like me, can want to have sex but not feel that desire towards anyone in particular. At that point, I ask myself if it’s worth the work and communication. If it is, based on a number of things, I’ll decide to have sex with someone because I want to have sex. It’s always for that reason, and not because of attraction. It’s different from having sex with someone because you feel sexual desire towards a person as a result of your physical attraction to them. So yes, some asexual people have and enjoy sex. Asexual does not mean non-sexual. 

Here are some of my favourite things about being asexual:

• The asexual community

• I usually feel sexual desire once in a year. What a relief. 

• I don’t have to worry about whether someone wants to have sex with me. I don’t want to have sex with them.

• If I make a poor decision, it’s because I make poor decisions and not because I was thinking with my vagina.

• I don’t have to go through the anxiety and awkwardness of sending risky texts.

• I don’t have performance anxiety because I don’t perform :)

I love it here. You see how people think being gay is the worst, most difficult thing in the world but you as a gay person know that it’s homophobes who make being gay difficult? I follow Disabled Nina on Instagram and something she usually says is that it’s not being disabled makes her life difficult. It’s ableism. I bet it’s the same for every marginalised group.

One thing that scares me is the thought of sounding or acting like a queerphobe towards members of the queer community or any marginalised community, really. I know what it’s like to be on the other side and so do you. Don’t do it to asexuals. You might even be asexual yourself. Read more, listen more and if you want to, ask questions respectfully. I think the bottom line is that you don’t need to understand everything to respect it and you don’t deserve an explanation because you don’t understand someone’s experience. 

Thank you for sticking to the end. I hope you learned something from this post and that you’ll try to learn some more on your own. The queer community is bigger than you think. Fingers crossed I’ll see a lot of you at the next Community Chat. It’ll be fun. Talk later!