Eris Young

A richly woven tapestry of ace stories, exploring what it means to be asexual. Including interviews with people across the ace spectrum, this love letter to the ace community offers support, advice and inspiration to help show you are not alone.

What It Means to Be Asexual, Aromantic, Demi Or Grey-Ace

Ace Voices

Jasper

We became close friends at that time and started dating which I agreed to because I thought that was the normal way of doing things (you know the typical “becoming good friends with someone of a different gender means you will date them eventually” bullshit). At that time, I didn’t realise that I wasn’t interested in dating. I knew right away that I wasn’t “in love” with him but I thought these feelings would come along eventually (I, again, thought “forcing” myself into the relationship long enough would make it work). I started becoming extremely uncomfortable in the relationship, even though he was super nice and caring towards me. I knew that I wouldn’t be happy in the relationship, so we broke up.

I rarely say “I’m aromantic”, not because it’s any less important than my asexuality (in fact I feel like my aromanticism impacts my daily life more…), but rather because it involves more explaining and often more “having to justify myself to others”.

When you come out as a-spec to an allo person, especially someone like a family member who has a personal stake in your continued participation in compulsory sexuality, it’s easy for them to simply refuse to believe you. They can try to convince you that you don’t know yourself, or choose to pretend the conversation never happened. And because living as “openly” a-spec is not visible in the same way as starting to date someone of the same gender as you, or changing your gender presentation, many of us remain invisible even after coming out to the people close to us.

A great deal of this comes from the history of the gay rights movement, and from the way that sex and sexuality have been policed, weaponised specifically against allosexual LGBT+ people throughout Western history. Queers have been fined, imprisoned or even killed because of who we have sex with, since even before “homosexual” or “queer” were constructed as identities. The ability to fuck in peace and safety has been a rallying point – often a life-or-death struggle – for the queer community for as long as that community has existed, and despite the victories of decriminalisation and marriage equality in many Western countries, there are still many places in the world where homosexuality is punishable by fines, imprisonment or even death.

And just as the assertion of women’s sexual agency, and the status of a woman as sexual in her own right regardless of the presence of a man, has been a cause around which feminists have organised for decades, demands from the queer community to be able to love who we love, and fuck freely in safety and dignity, have created within most LGBTQ+ spaces an atmosphere of radical, often compulsory, sex positivity.

This attitude, in turn, has led to a perception within these spaces that equates asexual and aromantic ways of being, as far as they involve an absence of visible queer sex or queer coupling, with the kind of anti-sex moral conservatism associated with the persecution of allo queers.9

When I say “a- spec joy”, I’m talking about understanding– and believing– that regardless of what kind of relationship you are in, or what kind of feelings you feel, you are complete as you are.

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