Nebula Reads: Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society and the Meaning of Sex, by Angela Chen

Written by nebula galaxy

Hello and welcome to the third post in my Nebula Reads series! Since the Ace journal club was reading a chapter from this book this month I decided to read the whole book and it was !!! so good. I read a library ebook copy (so my page numbers might be slightly off) but I put a physical copy of the book on my wishlist to add to my library because this was the first time I had ever read something about asexuality where I felt like I actually fit into the story of what asexuality is.

About the author: Angela Chen is a science and technology journalist and currently a senior editor at WIRED. Some of the other topics she’s written about include economics, bioethics, and mental health. Here’s an interview with her if you’d like to learn more.

There was a lot in this book but the parts that resonated with me the strongest that I wanted to write about first were chapter 2 about asexuality generally, and chapter 7 about romance, because the concept of romantic attraction has always been such a Big Topic to me. So that’s what I’ll be covering here! (And as a heads up, this post does talk about sex-related concepts.) But definitely check out the book yourself to learn more about compulsory sexuality and intersections between asexuality, race, and disability, because all of that was super interesting and important.

Brief list of topics/table of contents because I did go on some tangents and this post got kind of long; you can click on these to skip to that part of the post:

Chapter 2: Explanation via Negativa

One of the super important things in this chapter is a history about the asexual label. The most well-known definition today is the “lack of sexual attraction” definition, but the ace umbrella covers lots of diverse experiences, including experiences that don’t totally line up with this definition. (I know I’ve seen a source saying that there was also an early definition that asexuality was lack of sexual orientation or lack of sex drive/libido, although I can’t find the source now, but the point is that people have lots of different experiences and we shouldn’t be policing the definition so much.) And of course, the “lack of sexual attraction” definition also includes people who experience some or occasional sexual attraction or only experience sexual attraction under certain circumstances, like having a strong emotional connection first.

The decision to frame asexuality as a sexual orientation, like heterosexual, helped to distinguish it from conduct, as a way-of-being. Like an identity. (Stay tuned for future thoughts on the whole sexual-orientation-as-identity thing.) But it was also a trap, because to explain what it means to not experience sexual orientation, aces have to use a language of lack and describe something they often don’t experience. It frames asexuality as being deficient. (19)

I think this might be one of the reasons why I don’t often publicly identify as asexual, even though reading this book made me feel like yeah I’m Definitely For Sure asexual. I don’t like trying to explain something about myself and having other people feel like they’re the expert on sexual attraction and there’s something wrong with me that I don’t understand something “basic” to humans and now they’re going to explain it to me regardless of whether I want them to. (Although to be fair, this scenario has happened more with romantic attraction than sexual attraction.) At this point, I feel like I’ve done my research and do understand what sexual attraction is.

Sexual attraction vs. libido

Chen also emphasizes the sexual attraction vs. libido distinction a lot, which I really appreciate. That conflation is one of my pet peeves in a lot of the asexuality 101 posts and cake metaphors. Although like I said above, it’s totally fine with me if someone identifies as ace because of a libido reason rather than because of a lack of sexual attraction. I just don’t want these two things to be conflated and assumed for every person who identifies as ace. This conflation is also part of why some people who might identify as ace don’t currently – because they think they don’t “count” as ace if they have any kind of sex drive, or if they’ve ever experienced any sexual attraction, or if they can recognize when someone might be seen as conventionally “hot.”

I’m going to share some of Chen’s definitions because I thought they were very helpful:

“Simply put, sex drive (or libido) is the desire for sexual release, a set of feelings in the body, often combined with intrusive thoughts. It can come out of nowhere and for no obvious reason and not be about anyone.”

– p. 20

“Sexual attraction, then, is horniness toward or caused by a specific person. It is the desire to be sexual with that partner—libido with a target.”

– p. 21

I think that helps illustrate why someone could have a high sex drive and still be asexual—it’s about whether it’s directed at a specific person.

Side note: rethinking how we talk about sexuality?

Chen also talks a little bit about how we might want to rethink how we talk about sexuality. We usually answer the sexuality question with something like “gay or straight or bisexual” but there are also memes like “my sexuality is beautiful women in suits” or other very specific things. (I did a quick search on this and see that it was a twitter meme in like 2018, but I missed it because I was always on tumblr.) As Chen writes, this signals “a belief that sexuality can be very specific,” but “there is little serious, systematic discussion, at least among the general public, about what these other components of sexuality might be.” (22) Sexuality could be organized around a lot of different things besides the gender(s) someone is attracted to.

My person (who will now be known as Red) and I were talking the other night about (1) the historical shift from sexuality as something you do to something you are, and (2) how sexual orientation is organized around the assumption of a stable, binary gender. And right now, among LGBTQ+ people, gender is seen as more fluid while the sexual orientation based on gender is still treated like it’s stable, or fixed, which doesn’t really make sense.

And we’ve been talking about how we might experience attraction in a way that doesn’t match up with our genders or the genders of people we’re attracted to, kind of like in the Dean Spade article I read recently. And all of this in the context that there was an intentional push to separate sexual orientation from gender identity in order to get more mainstream acceptance for gay men, and not everyone experiences their sexual orientation and their gender as separate things (source: David Valentine – Imagining Transgender).

So basically, there are lots of possibilities for how to think about attraction(s) besides the gender(s) you’re attracted to, and this entire system where Gender and Sexual (or romantic/other) Orientation are completely separate, but your orientation is still based on gender categories, just doesn’t work for some people. Like me. It doesn’t account for all of my experiences, and I’m not willing to keep going in a loop of trying to find The Right Identity Category That Accounts for Every Possibility. This thought is still in progress but it feels potentially very exciting and liberatory so I’m putting it out into the world to see if it resonates with anyone else.

Chapter 7: Romance, Reconsidered

I was so excited to read this chapter I actually skipped ahead to read it before I read the rest of the book. To give you a picture of how long I’ve been thinking about this, the question of what is romantic love has been one of The Biggest Questions in my life, and I was writing about it in my diary way back in like 2010.

Like, how do you tell the difference between platonic or romantic without relying on sexual attraction? So many asexual people say they are 100% sure when something is romantic attraction, like it just feels different, in a way that they just know.

Side note thoughts: Romance as Humanity for the Unassailable Asexual

It’s ace week right now and I’ve already seen a post going around about how someone is asexual but that “doesn’t mean they don’t feel love or romance” – which is another thing we talked about in ace journal club this week: the fact that ace people feel like they always have to qualify being asexual with how they don’t fit stereotypes. (I’m not saying it’s bad – I do this too. But I do want to think about why it’s a thing and what the implications are.)

In chapter 6, Chen mentions the idea of the “unassailable” (also called “gold-star”) asexual, the asexual who has no doubt about their identity and there are no other factors that could have possibly “caused” their asexuality.

“The gold-star asexual will be the savior of us all, the one who can prove that asexuality is legitimate simply because there is not a single other factor that could have caused their lack of sexual attraction.”

– p. 97

Chen cites blogger Sciatrix (https://shadedtriangle.proboards.com/thread/18) and says,

“The gold-star ace is healthy in all ways, between the ages of twenty and forty (since elderly people are assumed to be asexual anyway), and cis, as well as sex positive and popular, write Sciatrix. The gold-star ace is beautiful so as to deflect accusations of being a bitter incel. They can’t be religious because that would mean they’re just repressed. They do not masturbate and have no history of sexual problems. Many have tried sex before but, after that, never, ever changed their mind about being ace or felt the slightest bit of sexual curiosity. (Bonus points if they’ve been in committed relationships before).”

– p. 98

So you have this idea of a “real” asexual person who doesn’t have any other possible “cause” of their asexuality. I think that there’s an implied assumption here that lack of romantic attraction or romantic relationships is another factor that can be seen as an illegitimate cause of asexuality. Like, “maybe you aren’t really asexual, but there’s something wrong with you that you don’t feel romantic attraction, and that’s making you asexual.” I’m not sure. It’s a thought I had while writing this blog post, so I’ll have to think about it some more (and hopefully hear from others on what you think!).

At the same time, there’s a stereotype that asexual people never feel romantic attraction, which is why ace people who do feel romantic attraction feel the need to clarify that immediately. (In my case, I think I was also afraid that if people knew I was ace, they would assume I wasn’t interested in dating, and then I would never get asked on a date, etc.)

Of course, many ace people don’t feel romantic attraction, and one of my favorite people is in fact aroace and doesn’t experience romantic attraction at all. (See also: “asexual people can still enjoy having/want to have sex” – I know someone like this too and it’s real and it’s also used against ace people who don’t enjoy having/want to have sex.) I’ve also known people who are aroallo, who feel sexual attraction but not romantic attraction. Aroallo people face terrible stereotypes like “wanting to have sex without a romantic connection is evil,” and these are the stereotypes I’m thinking about in the background of this post.

When I see posts about asexual people that emphasize that “asexual people can still feel love and have romantic relationships” it’s like, yeah, that’s true, and I understand why you’re saying it and might even say it myself, but it’s frustrating that we have to always qualify ourselves with “I’m X but I’m not like those other X people.” (And when “love” is seen as the essence of humanity, it’s like we’re saying “I’m not like those other soulless people; I have more humanity.”)

All of this has been in the background when I’ve thought about whether I experience “romantic attraction” or if I experience a huge pressure from society to label my feelings as “romantic attraction,” or if I’m overthinking it all and it’s definitely romantic attraction but I didn’t want it to be (“maybe I was just too scared to be a lesbian” – quote from my diary, 2015).

Anyway, back to chapter 7 and romantic vs. platonic:

The big question is: what’s the difference people feel inside when they distinguish between romantic and platonic?

Allosexual people can simply be like, “I don’t want to have sex with you, so it’s only platonic.” Although looking at the world that way can also be constricting, and even allosexual people can feel confused and “like they were in love with their friends despite no sexual attraction on either side.” (108)

Chen writes about different theories of how people have tried to explain the difference between platonic and romantic, but ultimately, what resonated me was:

“The difference in feeling is real, but the feelings do not always fit neatly into the mutually exclusive categories of ‘platonic’ or ‘romantic.’ (Strangely, the word platonic, as used colloquially, seems to only be defined by what it is not: it is the union of nonsexual and non-romantic.)”

– p. 113

Importantly, people experience “romantic” and “platonic” differently. One relationship can be platonic for some people while the same relationship would be romantic for other people. (Also, shoutout to how “platonic” colloquially doesn’t really have its own meaning separate from the idea of being not-romantic. This is part of why I personally don’t subscribe to the romantic/platonic binary.)

Another idea that I felt was !!! worth sharing (where she cites CJ Chasin), was the idea that a lot of times, people will be accused of being romantically attracted to each other and in denial about it. But what if denial goes both ways, and you’re really in denial about the possibilities of platonic intimacy? (112)

Here’s another thought that I thought was super insightful: Chen writes that in her own experiences of romantic vs. platonic love, she “found that much of the contrast stems from different expectations and all of the heavy, complicated emotions that go with such.” (115) She writes about how her platonic friend lives a few states away and they only see each other maybe twice a year. There is little expectation that they will work together to make their lives converge again. In contrast, with her romantic relationship, there is an assumption that they “will stay together for the rest of [their] lives.”

The social designations of “friend” and “romantic partner” mold the “platonic” and “romantic” feelings.

This feels a little bit like the strand of relationship anarchy where people talk about separating relationships from societal expectations of what they should be.

Chen clarifies that she is not claiming that romantic and platonic love are secretly the same, or that romantic love is deeper than platonic love. She writes, “I am saying that people think of romantic and platonic love as two distinct categories, but, frequently, there is overlap and no clean separation, no one emotional feature or essential component that makes a relationship one or the other.” (117)

I was very !!!! feeling seen in this quote. After all my obsessing over whether my feelings for various people were romantic or platonic, I came to the conclusion that the romantic/platonic binary is a social construction, meaning that we put our feelings in these boxes and use these boxes to think about and interact with the world but our feelings don’t inherently come in this two-box format.

Boxes can be useful for interacting with the world and these seem to work for a lot of people—maybe even most people—but they don’t work for me. I’ve spent way too much time analyzing my relationships and holding them up against what’s defined as “romantic” or “platonic” and trying to figure out if my relationship fit one or the other or if I should be changing how I interact with people in order to fit the boxes better.

Which brings me to the idea of queerplatonic partnerships, the partnerships that are designed to question that binary. I don’t personally use the label, partially due to “platonic” being in the name (even though they don’t have to be 100% platonic), and partially because I don’t really like labeling things. But this part of the chapter was also super important to me, especially in thinking about friendships that violate platonic norms.

For one person who was in a QPP, “[t]he QPP was about being vulnerable and boldly asking for something back, about that intense relationship and the security of explicit validation.” (120) This made me realize that in most friendships, you don’t do this. But I have.

Chen writes that in friendships, many people are hesitant to say “I love you,” and there is no “defining the relationship” talk, and no advice industry for friend breakups. Usually, “defining the relationship” only comes up in romantic relationships, and checking in about the relationship only comes up when there’s a problem. (I was talking about this with a friend while watching Riverdale and losing my mind at how this exact thing happened. Character A would be like, “can we talk?” and Character B would immediately be like “uh oh, there’s a problem,”—just emphasizing how people don’t talk about things to the point where wanting to talk about something signals a problem.)

But Chen writes, “[q]ueerplatonic partners take a type of relationship that is usually taken lightly and decide that it is important enough to merit unusual and potentially awkward conversations. Relationships of many kinds can be important enough to risk those talks, to set expectations and dig in.” (122)

I remember doing this as a teenager—sending texts to my best friend, where I was vulnerable and wanted explicit validation that our friendship was important to her too. (And it was.) Or sharing things about myself without knowing how she would react; things I didn’t share with anyone else. I asked another friend about this once, although I had no idea how to talk about it or what to call it. I asked if she ever sent “risky texts” to friends, and her reaction was kind of like “wtf no I wouldn’t do that.”

It wasn’t until more recently that I started to understand that other people don’t do this with friends. Or at least they say they don’t. (I think this happened alongside me adjusting how I make new friends and focusing on being So Casual and Neurotypical about new friendships to not scare people off, to the point where I barely ever make new friends beyond super surface-level casual acquaintances.)

I started to communicate with my close friends that our relationship was very important to me and I wanted to talk about it to understand if we were on the same page, or specifically what their page was. And I’ve gotten feedback from friends that maybe more friendships could benefit from conversations like this.

These feelings of wanting to have this conversation with friends also comes from amatonormativity and how “couples often pair up, marry, and then seclude themselves into a new, separate unit, sometimes retreating from their prior community of friends and family. With this as the norm, it becomes harder and harder for aros to build the social network they need,” and there are feelings of frustration when you “both value friendship more and become frustrated when others don’t value it as much.” (133) (I vaguely identify as arospec in the sense that my experience of “romance” is non-normative.) This also made me think about Heartstopper and how character A always emphasized to character B that their friendship was The Most Important to them and they didn’t want it to be overshadowed by romantic relationships.

Defining the Relationship Without a Preconceived Social Role

Finally, Chen writes that instead of relying on labels, it’s more effective to skip directly to asking what you want in a relationship (“around time, touch, commitment, and so on”). She writes, “[i]f everyone is behaving ethically, it doesn’t matter if a relationship doesn’t fit into a preconceived social role, if it feels neither platonic nor romantic or if it feels like both at the same time.” (122)

This was particularly cool to me because as I’ve written above, I don’t vibe with the platonic/romantic binary but I also don’t necessarily like saying a relationship is neither. This quote to me opened the possibility of a relationship being both platonic and romantic at the same time. Because I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive and I’m tired of always being pushed into a “third option.” (Although I do love the “secret third thing” meme.)

Following the trail of thought that relationships can be important and valid even when they don’t fit a preconceived social role, Chen cites some interesting ideas that siblings or very close friends should have the same rights as those in civil partnerships, and the state should recognize more types of unions. On a related note, I have a blog post planned where I write about legal issues with polyamory and how legal recognition pushes relationships to conform to certain norms in order to access benefits, so stay tuned for that.

Anyway, this book gave me So Many Thoughts! I am also still taking recommendations for other things to read + write about, and I bought this year’s NaNoWriMo shirt, so now I have to do it and will be writing so many more blog posts next month. I’d love to hear if you have any thoughts on anything here or anything related 🙂

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