THE ‘A’ WORD
In conversation with asexual activist Yasmin Benoit and fellow aces Daniel Walker and Richard Ng
I ‘‘wish people would approach it as a positive thing, as opposed to me telling them that I’ve just been afflicted with a sudden illness,” states Yasmin Benoit, a model, writer and asexual activist. More often than not, the letter ‘A’ stationed at the end of the LGBTQIA+ acronym is forgotten about or, worse, wilfully ignored. Although representation and visibility is slightly improving, asexuality (applied to a person who does not experience sexual attraction) is still met with confusion, not to mention a flurry of maddening misconceptions.
Yasmin, who created the# This Is What A sexual Looks Like movement and also helped establish International Asexuality Day, proved to be the host with the most when Attitude asked her to lead a discussion centred on her community.
The 24-year-old trailblazer and Attitude 101 ‘listee’ was joined by fellow aces Daniel Walker, also 24, of YouTube channel Slice of Ace, and Richard Ng, 25, to shine a light on the many different shades of asexuality – Yasmin identifies as aromantic (not desiring of romantic relationships at all), for instance, while Daniel is homoromantic (romantically attracted to the same gender), and Richard, heteroromantic (romantically attracted to the opposite gender) – as they debunk some of the most prevalent ‘myths’, including the assumption that all asexual people don’t have sex.
On discovering the term ‘asexual’…
Richard: I was in sixth form; I think I must have been 16. I came across it pretty much by fluke. It was in some BBC article, and she described her experience of asexuality – she said something like, “For me, asexuality means that I never look at someone and think, ‘Mm, yeah, I’d do that or whatever.’” That really resonated with me, because I’d been to a single-sex school, where there’s lots of testosterone; lots of sexual innuendo; lots of “Would you do this person?” “I’d do them,” “I wouldn’t.” It always seemed like this foreign language to me… When I saw that vocabulary in this article, I was, like, oh wow, that is my experience, that’s amazing, there are other people like me.
Daniel: Mine was a bit later. I didn’t really start thinking about my orientation until I was at university. Up until that point, I think I thought that everyone was, kind of, making it up in terms of wanting sex. Then I was at uni and I thought to myself, oh, people still want sex, so they’re probably not making it up. I went on your usual search of the internet: why don’t I want sex, et cetera, and came across the term ‘asexuality’ and through that came across the Split Attraction Model [separates sexual attraction from romantic attraction and desire], which helped me come to terms with my romantic orientation as well.
Yasmin: I was 15 and, like Richard, I also went to a single-sex school. I was at an all-girls school, which I thought would be a smart idea because I thought, naively, that if there were no boys around, then people wouldn’t think about them, which turned out to have the absolute opposite effect; everyone was 10 times more fixated on them, because they thought they’d been deprived of boys. It actually made it more obvious to me that I wasn’t thinking or feeling the same way as everyone else, because it was such a prominent topic of conversation… People would quiz me about what my sexual orientation was because they noticed – they cared more than I did about what I wasn’t feeling. The theory was that I was a closeted lesbian… Then someone said, “Maybe you’re just asexual” or something and I googled it, and, like Daniel, I went down the rabbit hole of information.
On coming out…
D: I started dating pretty soon after coming out, so they would find out I’m ‘gay’ and then I’ll clarify and say, “Actually, I’m homoromantic asexual,” and then they’d be, like, “Oh, how are you asexual if you want to date someone?” They didn’t know about the Split Attraction Model, so then I have to explain that whole song and dance… that definitely doesn’t help, that there is an expectation not only for men, but gay men to be inherently sexual, and it goes against that stereotype. In terms of people’s reactions, it’s been more curiosity than anything else; lots of questions, which can get very exhausting, but at least no one’s been particularly aphobic towards me.
R: I’ve had a range of reactions. Obviously, the very classic, total lack of comprehension, along with mainly some mistimed remarks, “Oh, asexuality, so you’re a plant” – or something like that. Some people have been quite happy to take it at face value, but maybe tiptoe around it a little bit… Another reaction is disbelief, where it’s a sort of, again, quite a classic, “How do you know if you’ve not tried it yet?” Things like, “Maybe you’ve not met the right person” and even genuinely being told by someone, “Oh no, I think you’re wrong.” It’s a mixed bag, but
“I’ve had remarks, ‘Oh, asexuality, so you’re a plant.’ Another reaction is disbelief” Richard
more often than not, at least more recently, I think I find people do take it and nod, but then they probably park it.
Y: I have overwhelmingly been met, after I initially came out, with straight-up disbelief, and that is something that lasted until
2019. It literally took for me to be in the Metro newspaper with the words “This Is What Asexual Looks Like” over my picture. I guess it took for the media to validate it before people took it seriously… It can get some messy reactions; I’ve had times where I’ll be sitting at someone’s house, drinking a cup of tea, talking about a TV show, and then the next thing you know, I’ve got six people asking me about how often I masturbate and what’s that like. I’m, like, “I’m just here to drink a cup of tea, that’s not what we’re doing today.” It invites some very inappropriate, sometimes aggressive, sometimes very uncomfortable reactions.
D: The reason why I maybe haven’t had as negative reactions as you two may have done is that I’m very careful with who I come out to and how I come out to them. I’ll do it in levels. If I really don’t think it’s going to be OK to come out to someone, I just won’t mention it. For example, if I’m talking about my boyfriend, I might just call them my partner. But then if I think they’re generally OK, I just come out as gay… I’m a lot more cautious about coming out as asexual because of that. I know that they’re probably not going to know what it is, and I don’t know how they’re going to react.
Y: You don’t get an “Oh, right…” reaction when you say it, as you would with an orientation that people recognise, and think is legitimate. I [also] think it’s interesting how the different intersections will influence your experiences in the way your asexuality is perceived… As a Black woman, I think it’s harder for people to compute my asexuality, just because Black women are very hyper-sexualised. Richard, how has that been for you?
R: East Asian men probably have the very opposite thing where we’re generally stereotyped in a very desexualised way. Even before I came out as asexual, I remember someone at school telling me she’d always seen me as a Ken doll, and by Ken doll what she means is, no genitalia, and I’m sure a part of that was the East Asian stereotype. In terms of me coming out as asexual, though, I guess people are more willing to accept it coming from someone from my particular background, perhaps.
On finding community…
R: There is definitely an element of isolation, which I felt. The first time I did start interacting more with the community and going to meet-ups and the Pride stuff you’d organised, Yasmin, I was really surprised at how much I had missed. I hadn’t realised, to an extent, it was something I was missing from my life, consciously, until I experienced it. And when I experienced it, it was, like, oh, wow, it’s something that doesn’t need to be explained; people just get it. I’d underestimated how powerful that was.
Y: I think a part of the asexual experience is not actually getting to interact with your community much in real life. We’ve probably been quite lucky to have the opportunity to do that, because a lot of people, depending on where you live, don’t have the opportunity to physically see people within your community. There is something, kind of, almost unhealthy about being in a community that you never see… outside of little social media things.
D: Having a group of people that you know will be able to relate to you in some way is, it’s the kind of thing where you don’t know how much you need it until you have it. It’s very relieving to be able to spend time with people who understand your experience, and even though the community is so diverse, there’s still things you can relate to and it gives you a break from the outside world in some senses.
On the biggest misconceptions…
R: For me, the biggest one is this idea of, “You couldn’t possibly know that you’re asexual, because sex is a good thing and if you had experienced it…” There’s lots of things in that. Firstly, equating sexual orientation with sexual activity, whereas I personally don’t engage in sexual activity, but obviously some asexual people do… If I say I’m asexual, they’ll refuse to accept it because, as it happens, I’m a virgin,
I’ve never had sex, and they will read into that, this sort of, “Oh well, you are naive about this, you couldn’t possibly know that you’re asexual, you’ve just not met the right person.”
Y: Whenever people say to me, “If you haven’t had sex, you can’t know” – especially if a guy says that, a straight guy – I’m, like, “Well, how much gay sex did you have before you realised you were straight?” Usually, you quickly find that they didn’t have much gay sex before they determined they were straight… Also, when they say you haven’t found the right person yet – there are loads of asexual people who have found the right person and they’re still asexual; they’re in love with the person, they have a family with the person, they’re in a platonic relationship, they’re soulmates.
D: What I have seen quite a lot recently is the misconception that asexuality means that the person is inherently non-sexual.
What I mean by that is, asexuality is defined by a lack of sexual attraction, but that is completely separate from a lot of other things which are sexual; for example, having sex or masturbating or watching porn or even dressing in a way that society would >
“As a Black woman, I think it’s harder for people to compute my asexuality” Yasmin
“Somebody from a TV company said, “Why would we do anything on asexuality?” Yasmin
see as sexual. People assume that if you’re asexual, you must completely desexualise your appearance, and you can’t masturbate and you can’t watch porn, whereas I feel like – I don’t know, it’s not a standard other orientations are held to. I know, maybe, when you look at it at face value, it may be a bit confusing, but the only thing that defines asexuality is sexual attraction and all these other things are linked in some way, and maybe your asexuality will affect the way that you approach a sexual relationship if you do end up having that, or the kind of porn you watch, for example, but that doesn’t mean a hundred per cent of asexuals will be nonsexual, if that makes sense?
Y: The assumption that asexuality means having no sexuality, I think is how a lot of people interpret that, and at the same time having no interest in anything sexuality related, being almost terrified of it, and also being anti-sex when it comes to other people, especially when it comes to our place in the LGBT+ community… Some other misconceptions I’ve noticed, I think there is one – people associate it with being not just a physical issue, but a mental issue, that it’s a side effect of, like, your personality or an experience that you’ve had.
R: My parents are actually GPs and when I first came out to them, I can’t remember exactly how, but there was this sort of like, “Maybe you need to see someone about this.” I don’t know, latent testosterone or something like that.
D: I definitely see people assuming it’s a mental health issue, or you’re depressed, that’s what’s causing your asexuality. Or even in some extreme cases, that when they find out someone is asexual, they assume someone must have been traumatised, which, one, is not an acceptable thing to just bring up in conversation, because if that person had been traumatised, then you’re probably traumatising them more by reminding them of it; but also, it doesn’t affect your asexuality the majority of the time. I do know someone who identifies as asexual who had something traumatic happen to them and it didn’t change their orientation, it just gave them trauma, which is completely unrelated.
On representation…
D: Off the top of my head, Sherlock Holmes and Dexter come to mind, the latter of which is psychopathic.
Y: Whenever you have a TV show or a movie and there’s a character that doesn’t have any sexuality at all, they’re depicted as having no sexual interest in anybody, it’s usually the bad guys that get that. The emotive characters, the good guys, are the ones experiencing those kinds of feelings. Then you’ll have your Voldemorts, your aliens, your Data from Star Trek, and they’re, like, “I don’t really understand human intimacy, I don’t understand human connection, I’m incapable of feeling this, I’m completely detached and sometimes that manifests in me being kinda psychopathic.” Or it’s treated as being something that needs to be resolved by the end of the storyline; it’s like they have this problem and if they don’t fix it, then they’re just going to live totally not fulfilling lives.
R: I definitely recognise the trope of asexual characters – or characters with undercurrents of, maybe you’re asexual – and they’re typically broken in some kind of way. A particular correlation I see is characters who are socially inept, essentially.
D: Society sees sex as pretty much integral to the human experience, so when someone doesn’t feel sexual attraction, for example, suddenly all their other human traits, like empathy and happiness, just go to the wayside as well, because you can’t have a proper functioning human without sex apparently. But, obviously, that isn’t true.
On lack of visibility…
Y: Asexual visibility now and asexual visibility 10, 20 years ago, it hasn’t really picked up that much in comparison.
D: If you look back to, I guess, the start of the LGBT+ community and Stonewall, people fighting to get rights for gay people, it’s kind of always been about sex in some way. The problem that a lot of homophobic people have with gay people, for example, is sex… so then that is a very important topic for gay activism and has been for decades. So, I think when the conversation in the LGBT+ community is so centred around sex and that aspect of it, it makes it harder for asexuality to break through and our voices to be heard. Not to mention the fact that there are fewer of us and therefore it is just harder for us to get our voices out there in the first place.
R: I think it’s partly a storytelling thing…
Sex and sexual drive and sexual attraction between two characters falling in love is a really key impetus and lever in stories. We’re told so many stories like that, it becomes hard for people to conceive of a world where that actually isn’t a thing.
Y: One time, I was speaking to somebody who worked for a TV company that I will not name and they pretty much said, “Why would we do anything on asexuality? What are we going to talk about? People not doing anything? Why would we talk about people that are not doing anything?” They see asexuality as complete inactivity.
On infantilization…
Y: That is something that I experienced a lot, between when I came out at 15 until 19, and it
was quite a traumatic thing. When you’re an adolescent teenager, there is a very conscious attempt to be older; people don’t want to be seen as kids, and one of the ways they do that is by trying to express their sexuality in blatant ways. Obviously, I wasn’t interested in expressing my growth of maturity in a sexual way, and therefore people associated that with, “OK, she’s slower, she’s less developed, she’s immature, she’s mentally not there yet.” I found [that] in the education system especially, and as a working-class Black girl, when you’re stereotyped as being slow in any capacity, it is a very dangerous thing.
R: There’s the idea of, when growing up, sexual things being like landmarks and – as I said, I went to a single-sex school – essentially a competition; who is going to get the furthest the quickest, and that this is a sign of how developed you are. [We’re] being regarded perhaps or judged to be left behind, or in some sense, some kind of loser – the word ‘virgin’ obviously has a lot of negative connotations. Well, actually, I’m a virgin, I’ve no desire, you know, this doesn’t bother me at all. But it’s such a taboo, even though I absolutely am at peace with it. I know how it’s perceived, so I have a lot of hesitancy when I use the word, because it’s attached to so much stigma.
D: Although I didn’t use the word ‘asexual’ until I was at university, I was honest about the way that I felt, in the sense that people were asking me, “Do you want sex?” “Who do you want to have sex with?” I would just say, “No one, really.” Whilst I didn’t have a word for it, I did essentially identify as asexual at the time. You definitely feel like – I guess, you’re missing something in everyone else’s eyes, because it’s almost seen as a part of coming of age. I, kind of, think that I didn’t change too much going from primary school to secondary school, and the big difference from everyone else, I noticed, was them suddenly being interested in relationships and sex… I couldn’t relate to any of that. It made me feel in a sense infantilised and then you get people mocking you because of it, and you get people asking very inappropriate questions, or, like, shoving a half-naked woman in your face and saying,
“Is this person sexy?” And I’m, like, “I’m trying to do my work, thank you very much.” Then someone walking up to you, deadpan, and saying, “Do you masturbate?” And I say, “Well, no.” I could tell from a very young age that, people were expected as they grow up to be sexual and I wasn’t that, and it was made very clear that I wasn’t that from the people around me, my peers.
On being part of the LGBTQ+ community…
D: With me, I’m kinda in it twice because of my homoromanticism. But I don’t know, I guess online I feel very welcomed within the LGBT+ community because I’m surrounded by people who are either ace, or allies of ace people… On the whole, I think the majority of people are accepting of aces within the LGBTQ+ community; it’s just the vocal minority that aren’t.
R: If anything, as heteroromantic, I am closer to that straight experience. I had that in the back of my head for at least a few years, but then eventually I started thinking about it differently, in terms of, we live in a very heteronormative society and I don’t conform to a heteronormative ideal, and if we look at the LGBTQ+ community as a general banner for anyone who doesn’t conform to typical ideals, on that sort of thinking, actually, yeah, I do think it’s important [to have] some kind of united community for people who don’t fit that ridiculous, traditional picture. In terms of how I’ve felt welcomed, or not welcomed, you see disheartening Reddit threads, people militantly insisting that if you’re asexual, you’re not part of the community, and those are pretty grim.
Y: I started going to Pride when I was 14… and that was the first time I saw an asexual flag. I never really questioned whether I was supposed to be included. In person, everyone is really welcoming, but then I’ll post about that same experience online, “Thanks for having me speak at your LGBTQ+ STEM conference,” and then the comments will be, “But you shouldn’t be there” – it tends to overlap with TERFs, that exclusionary attitude, this idea not only that you’re coming in to ruin it, but you’re trying to jump on the bandwagon, take resources… Things like this, the fact we have Attitude magazine, one of the biggest LGBTQ+ magazines, having a big feature on asexuality, I think we’re getting somewhere.
“I’m a virgin, but it’s such a taboo, even though I am at peace with it” Richard