Yasmin Benoit, 23

Model and asexuality activist, @ theyasminbenoit

“Most people don’t know what asexuality is, but they still have an opinion about it”

My activism started with me trying to bring more diversity to the fashion industry, especially in the alternative genres because that’s my style.

Once I had a platform, I realised I could use it to speak about being asexual because there’s such a lack of representation for us. At first, I started mentioning it casually, now it’s snowballed into me being a very unlikely face for it. I’ve written articles, featured in documentaries and spoken at universities and businesses, to try to increase the visibility.

Most people don’t know what asexuality is, but they still have opinions about it. People will be very quick to say: “Oh, well you just haven’t found the right person yet” or “there’s probably something physically wrong with you, you should go to a doctor about it… it’s a psychological disorder” or “you must be ugly and no one would want you anyway.”

I know I’m not what they expect an asexual person to be like but there is no typical asexual person. The stereotypes aren’t accurate, you don’t have to be a nerdy white kid, or socially awkward, or frumpy, or anything.

Asexuals are just normal people. I launched the hashtag # thisiswhatasexuallookslike to give agency to asexual people, to showcase how diverse we are as a community and to break down the rigid idea that the media has about us.

Asexuality activism has been a bit slower to progress than other areas, partly because people don’t care and don’t want to listen, and also because the asexual community is waiting for people to start caring, whereas my approach was: “Let’s make them care about it.”

Once people include us in the conversation, then we’ll be able to move on to other things.