Always Keep an Ace Up Your Sleeve

With less than 1% of the population identifying as asexual, it really isn't surprising that it is one of the least understood sexualities around. We're getting pretty good at thinking about homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality - and we're even getting much better at understanding gender and gender identity. Blind heteronormativity is, slowly but surely, being whittled away by a more individualistic, inclusive ideology that is sort of starting to realise that maybe, just maybe, everyone is different and everyone is entitled to their own sexual and gender identity. Nuts!!

But there's a grey-and-purple elephant in the room that we're only just starting to look at properly. Asexuality is difficult to define, hard to explain and about as convoluted a sexual spectrum as you can find. The Ace community is definitely out there - but I personally have never met another person outside an online community who has said they identify as Ace. And judging from a lot of the conversations within Ace online communities, I'm not alone in that.

Asexuality differs greatly in its challenges from its allosexual cousins, including heterosexuality, homosexuality and other sexualities. It's much harder to rally around a non-cause than a cause, as the atheist community understands. Atheism is, put quite simple, a lack of theism. There is cause for atheists to gather together to fight religious fundamentalism and expound secular values, but it has been quipped many times that organising atheists is like herding cats. I purport that it is similar for Aces.

In a lot of cases, we have learned to just shut up about our sexuality. Some of us came to recognize a growing sense of difference as we navigated out teen years. I was far more interested in books than boys as a teenager, and this led to my mother repeatedly claiming that I must be a lesbian. 

Thanks, Mum. Didn't know that not having sex with boys automatically meant you must be having sex with girls? I must have missed a memo there! As a young adult, friends would want to know if I was secretly gay. This suggested to me a fundamental misunderstanding of sexuality at its core, a misunderstanding that is all too common. I never EVER 'came out' as heterosexual. In this world, you seem to be hetero until proven otherwise - heterosexuality is your default browser so to speak.

Which is, of course, ridiculous. Everyone was asexual when they were a child; by the definition of asexuality that is, very, very simply, 'does not experience sexual attraction'. Asexual teens and adults just go one developmental stage further. Why is it so hard for allosexuals to understand?

I can only imagine how annoying 'hetero until proven otherwise' must be for gay people. But imagine, if you will, how confusing it is for asexual people who haven't quite figured themselves out yet. If you're gay, you can hold onto that identity - you can cleave together with others who fight a similar battle, and you have an alternative answer to heteronormativity.

Imagine being Ace, and being told you should be explaining to people whether you're straight or gay. Can we get a "none of the above" box, please? Then, continue your imagining to include the sometimes confused, sometimes dismissive, sometimes rude and sometimes exceedingly condescending responses we almost invariably get when we try to explain ourselves.

You just haven't found the right person yet.

You're just being coy - there's nothing to be ashamed of!

Were you abused as a child?

Maybe your hormones are out of whack?

None of the above would be acceptable responses to someone coming out as gay. And of course, the gay community has had their share of persecution through the ages (coming back to the point about it actually being an ALTERNATIVE to the norm rather than just a LACK of the norm - it's easier to openly persecute and act rather than an omission).

But even non-bigots... even otherwise intelligent, otherwise caring, otherwise generally open-minded people are coming out with the above erasure-lines (and worse... far, far worse), which makes, I think, asexual erasure one of the more insidious forms of bullshit people who are outside the norm have to put up with.

All we can do is continue to buck ourselves up, if you will, and remind ourselves that our sexuality is indeed valid. Those of us who feel particularly passionate about it should continue to talk about it - whether to our friends and family or just online, it doesn't matter. The more we can encourage discourse around asexuality, the more we're setting the stage for all the Aces who will succeed us... the children of today, the kids not yet born, even our compadres out there who haven't found asexuality as an identity yet.

Let's pave the way for them - by paving the way for ourselves.

Let's not back down during difficult and upsetting conversations.

Let's be proud to be Ace.