Source of book: Borrowed from the library
I read this book at the recommendation of a longtime online friend (we met through our blogs), who I finally got to meet in person when my wife and I visited New York City last year. She was as lovely of a person in real life as she is online. (I have met a number of friends online and later in person, and this has held true.)
In any case, she came to realize that she is demisexual, which is considered to be on the asexual platform, in part after having a series of online discussions with our three-person book club about dating and how that works with neurodiversity. I learned quite a bit from these discussions as well. In any case, she said I really should read this book, so I did.
I have a feeling I am going to end up arguing a bit in this post, so I want to make clear at the outset that I am NOT arguing with the author or this book. Angela Chen, if anything, goes out of her way to anticipate all the nuances, the counter-arguments, the diversity of experience, and so on. She is borderline OCD on fairness and accuracy, and I appreciate that.
With one minor exception, which I will discuss below, I thought that this book is thoroughly helpful to those of us who are allosexual (experience sexual attraction) in understanding those who are not. I will take in on my friend’s authority that the book is also helpful to asexuals and demisexuals in understanding themselves and the issues they face in society.
My one exception is simply one of experience. The author is of a different generation, cultural background (she grew up secular rather than Fundie), and socioeconomic level than I did, and I think our experiences in society differ somewhat. This is not a knock against the author, just an acknowledgement that some of what she describes as far as cultural pressures regarding sex sound rather foreign to me. I’ll get into that more later.
I’m not going to try to summarize the book, other than to say that it is an exploration of what asexuality is, and how it runs up against social norms and societal expectations in a way that is unpleasant and even traumatic for asexuals.
The book is not an advice book, but she does get into at least some anecdotal experiences of asexuals in relationships with allosexuals. Her stories are interesting, although the unfortunate lack of research means that there isn’t much hard data to look at here.
As an attorney who has done a lot of divorces and who has known inside information on more breakups than I can count, I have a certain perspective on the pitfalls of “mixed-orientation” marriages. The author anticipates a lot of the same things, and I believe we are in essential agreement about the need for communication in any relationship and the need for sex to be treated just like any other issue: based on consent, but also the subject of negotiation and compromise to meet both partners’ needs.
So, getting into the meat of it a bit: asexuality is a sexual orientation, and another example of variety in human nature.
A person who is asexual does not experience sexual attraction, although they may experience romantic attraction or aesthetic attraction.
For an allosexual like me, this is a bit harder to imagine, although at least in my case, since I am not attracted to males, I can kind of understand the way it might feel.
The book spends a decent bit of time exploring these differences, and it really makes sense. Sexual attraction is not the same as romantic attraction. I am strongly heterosexual, and find most women sexually attractive to some degree or another. This does not mean that I want to have sex with them, just that I experience attraction.
That is a huge difference for me, because I am not particularly interested in sex without romance or relationship. But I still have feelings of attraction that I may have no particular desire to act on.
Understanding this separation in my own life I think helps in understanding asexuality as well. I can see where a person might have a desire to have sex with someone for reasons other than sexual attraction. Perhaps in exchange for a romantic relationship, or to feel close. Or, like the author did before she understood herself, having sex to prove she was “normal.”
I want to highlight a few lines before I get into some of my own perspective on relationships. First is a paraphrase of David Jay, an asexual advocate.
Aces weren’t inherently better than allos, and aces who didn’t masturbate weren’t better than those who did. It was all variation, not superiority, not inferiority.
This idea will run through the entire book. Our society tends to look down on asexuals as somehow “broken” or inferior, and that is a problem we all have responsibility to address. Sex is a potential part of life, but it is far from the most important to most of how we interact with each other.
The stories are in many ways the most compelling part of this book, and they are quite varied. I definitely laughed at the one involving the guy raised Fundie, with all the moral panic about porn and “lust” - and none of that made sense to him as an asexual.
I have run across this myself personally and in my practice. A certain number of Fundie-raised kids hear over and over about how hard they have to work to avoid having sex before marriage, and they just never understood it. Either because they were gay, or because they were asexual.
One of the points here that I very much agree with and thought was well stated is that when we talk about society having “compulsory sexuality,” we really are talking about compulsory HETEROsexuality. That is, Patriarchy. This is an inherently political belief, as Adrienne Rich put it.
Make no mistake: Sex is political, and its meaning is always changing. The world is big and complicated and the amount of compulsory sexuality, and the way it is expressed, changes according to context.
Later in the book, she mentions another facet of this.
One more time: sex is political. The questions of who deserves pleasure and what is considered transgressive and the very definition of sex are political.
Oh yes. One of the reasons I decided that Evangelical sex rules were shit was that I realized that pleasure was considered political. It was primarily reserved for higher status males, while female pleasure was at best ignored, and at worst treated with horror and revulsion. Apply this as well to LGBTQ people, and it really does tie together.
The author also talks about compulsory sexuality in queer spaces, and I will have to simply confess lack of any experience here. While I do have LGBTQ kids who occupy those spaces, that isn’t the same as being actually involved. And, for that matter, nobody really is pressuring the Dad Guy to be sexual. This is one of the areas I alluded to above - my experience is going to be different than the author’s experience.
Another observation by the author, that I have noticed myself:
The politically conservative are often also sexually conservative, at least in their public personas.
That last bit is important. Mormon Utah has a high - and kinky - porn usage rate, for example. It’s all about the public persona, not the private fantasy or behavior. Another example is the fact that Grindr use goes way up when Republican events are in town. And that’s before you get to Don Lemon’s experience. (Just one reason I have zero interest in hearing conservatives lecture about sexual morality.)
I didn’t take as many notes on the chapters primarily exploring identity and desire from the Ace perspective, although that was interesting. Where I started finding myself jotting stuff down was in the chapters on the relationship of Aces to Allos, and the nuances there.
The author makes the point that in our society at large, people are considered “incomplete” without a romantic partner. This has bothered me for some time, not least because I have a number of friends who are single for a variety reasons. Everything from “haven’t found a suitable partner” to “I’m just not interested in a relationship.” And each of these people brings plenty to the world - they are not “less” because they are not partnered.
It is ghastly to believe that we are only human when we can experience one specific emotion or when others feel that way about us. Regardless, the desire for romantic relationships is often necessary to prove one’s morality, and so aros are judged, their humanity denied.
It is in this chapter, on aromantics (not to be confused with aromatics…), that the author admits her ability to be objective was stretched the most. And I feel a similar way. Here is where we start to get into the “politics” of bad relationships, so I will be arguing a bit. (And not with the author, again - she gets it.)
Yet, the one group I felt knee-jerk skepticism toward were men like David, who are aromantic but not asexual. I am a woman who has spent a decent chunk of my life listening to friends’ horror stories about men, many of them jerks who wanted nothing but sex. Part of me remained suspicious that “aromantic but not asexual” was a cop-out for an immature man trying to justify bad behavior.
Again, since she insists on being fair and objective, she explores this. There is a gendered stereotype in our more feminist time that a woman who is “aro-allo” is independent, and perhaps even admirable; while the male equivalent is a dipshit “fuck-boy.” Both are stereotypes, and not particularly helpful. But they DO illuminate one of the significant pitfalls that I see here, that needs to be navigated with more than just a surface analysis.
In another part of the book, the author notes that, at least as far as self-reported orientation, a significantly high proportion of asexuals are female or non-binary. She does note that, given social pressure, men may be less willing to admit to asexuality, which is fair: masculinity in our culture is very connected to virility and sex drive.
That said, I think it is also plausible that in fact there are more female asexuals. Which ties in with that question of where does orientation take us?
As noted above, we tend to see men who want to fuck but not have a relationship, whether romantic or more committed, as having poor character. In fact, Incels tend to be this way, right? They feel entitled to have a hot woman available for sex simply because they are male.
This means that a lot of men will and are finding themselves having to go without a partner altogether, because they do not offer anything to entice one.
Sure, there are undoubtedly some women down with fucking and nothing else. But there do not appear to be enough of them to satisfy all the Incel sorts.
But then, let’s look at the reverse here. If there are more asexual women than men, and specifically more asexual but allo-romantic women than men, you have another imbalance.
There will not be enough men willing to settle for a romantic and committed relationship without the sex.
And this is where we come to my practice and what I have seen as a result.
While I cannot confirm whether the women involved have been actual asexuals, or if they simply decided they weren’t interested in sex with their particular husband, I can say that I have seen a not-insignificant number of women who cut their husbands off from sex, expecting that some combination of factors to keep him in the marriage. And then get furious when that doesn’t happen.
Those factors are pretty well understood. Divorce has a lot of stigma in conservative subcultures (even though religious conservatives have higher divorce rates than left-wing atheists), and the stigma tends to be against a man who seeks sex elsewhere. Women usually get custody of children, so a man risks losing most of his access to his kids. Divorce has a negative financial impact on both spouses, and the short-term pain is often felt most by the man. (Long term financial impact is different - in the longer run, women tend to do worse, because of the loss of career experience doing childcare. Once the child support goes away, they are left with less.)
What was even more shocking to me than the sex cutoffs was how often this was paired with “I never loved you, but I wanted a family.” Yikes.
What I see, therefore, is a fundamental dishonesty by some women regarding their sexuality, where sexual interest is an act to get what they want, followed by a cutoff, and fury that a man would leave.
Understand, of course, that when you do divorces, you see the bad relationships, not the good ones. And I am leaving out the equal number of bad breakups driven by entitled and narcissistic men. See above regarding men unwilling to meet a woman’s needs in reciprocal fashion.
So, in this sense, the author’s advice is actually excellent. What is needed is far more and better communication. And negotiation and compromise.
A good point she makes is that no two people will ever be perfectly matched in sex drive throughout their lifetimes. Mismatches are to be expected. (Hey, my wife and I survived five infants - we know.)
Likewise, sex is by no means the most important - and certainly not the only - factor in a good relationship.
I do believe that certain aspects of relationships, like mutual respect and trust and kindness, are essential rights. I don’t believe that a great sex life always needs to be part of this list. Or rather, I believe that people should decide for themselves what matters in relationships regardless of what others say.
And this, I agree with. Mutual respect, trust, and kindness are the non-negotiables of any relationship - including non-romantic ones. I would expect that from a friend, and could not live without it in a marriage. And in fact, that is the real strength of what my wife and I have.
From there, a couple should be free to decide for themselves what they are willing to do or not do.
(One more legal practice note: by far the biggest issue leading to breakups is money. If I were to give marital advice, I would say you can “settle” in a lot of areas, but if you are not financially compatible, you will be miserable and will probably end up in my office later.)
Another point the author makes regarding negotiated sex in a relationship is spot-on. There are so many other issues tied up with sex - humans are psychologically complicated. Check out this bit from the author:
Re-examining desires is not easy for anyone. I, for example, have never had an ace partner or been on an ace dating app. Partly because there aren’t enough people on those apps and I thought I could easily compromise with an allo partner. Partly because, for a long time, I just didn’t want an ace partner. I didn’t particularly care about the physical feeling of sex, but I craved the thrill of being, specifically, sexually desired. I didn’t experience sexual attraction myself, yet I wanted others to have that desire for me.
The hypocrisy is not lost on me. I have always known that I want to be sexually desired because I want emotional reassurance and a sense of my own power. Sexual desirability is one of the greatest assets that a person can have, a form of privilege and protection that makes it easier to move through life itself, a quality that people can covet even if we don’t feel the symmetrical desire toward others.
I very much understand this. I have a complicated emotional history here. I am not attractive. I’m short, with short legs (so I tend toward the egg shape). I don’t have a handsome face. I’m just not the kind that women desire, and this has not improved as I have aged.
My mother, for psychological reasons of her own, made sure I knew I was undesirable, and insisted that I needed to change my personality to be more “careful” of female emotions, or I would never find a partner. (Which was tied up with her lack of love from her father and her projection of that onto me as another firstborn male.)
So, I have a definite insecurity here. I really, really want to be sexually desired by my partner, because if I am not, it proves my mother was right about me. Yeah, that’s not a great feeling, and it has made negotiation higher stakes for me than perhaps it should be. But even without this, being sexually desired is a great feeling, for sure.
Because of my particular needs and desires, I would probably be miserable with an ace partner, no matter how wonderful they were in other ways. It’s something to think about when deciding on a partner - and something to discuss before making a commitment, for sure.
I wanted to mention a bit of a quote from Audre Lorde here as well, because I love that the author acknowledges that the erotic goes far beyond mere sexuality.
In “Uses of the erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Lorde defines eroticism as “the sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual.” The erotic is an inner resource, a vitality. It is a force that compels us to be close to each other, one that “forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them and lessens the threat of their difference.” This energy - of connection, creative fulfillment, and self-expression - is not limited to the realm of sexuality, even though “we are taught to separate the erotic demand from the most vital areas of our lives other than sex.”
That’s really good, and I think it expresses what I love most about my own relationship with my wife. There is that erotic connection that is about so much more than sex.
That really is one of the things that is great about this book. It makes room for all, and also envisions relationships as flexible, fluid, and negotiated. So much damage has been and is being done by the insistence that there is one “right” way to do relationships, when humans and human needs are more complicated. The best relationships have always been mutual, and mutually created.
I wanted to circle back here at the end of this post to mention the difference in experience.
I grew up in a conservative religious subculture. To their credit, my parents did give me accurate and helpful sex education, and we were able to talk about a lot more than most families in that subculture.
In addition to this subculture, I also grew up in a working-class, mostly minority neighborhood, around kids who were raised differently than I was. One of the differences was the pressures surrounding sex.
For me, all the pressure was “don’t have sex.” Combined with “marriage and kids are the ultimate goal.” So both a pressure against sex, and a pressure for it in the future.
For my friends, many of them had the typical schoolyard machismo pressures, to brag about the size of their dicks, and to claim sexual prowess. (Even when they were, quite obviously, not having sex.)
I missed out on college, never really experienced the “young adult” culture, got married at 24, had kids a couple years later, and so on.
My friends were, for many years, mostly conservative leaning, although there were definitely exceptions.
These days, for Trump-related reasons, I find myself in a more left-leaning crowd. Some of these are the same people as before, but we have drifted left, while others always were leftie. But I find that this is a very “grown up” crowd, and I don’t mean that primarily in terms of age, but temperament.
Where I haven’t ever really existed is in a fully secular, sex-obsessed left-leaning subculture. I assume they exist. I imagine that certain parts of college culture are this way, although I would have been far too nerdy for that.
For me, the people who seem to want to be up in my business when it comes to sexuality are all Fundies eager to judge me for my kids and wife and their failure to meet gendered and religious expectations. I haven’t experienced the same from my left-leaning friends.
And I know it isn’t because I am partnered. I have many single friends, as I noted before, and in our circles, I don’t see much pressure - any really - to get them partnered. This is, perhaps, what I mean by a “grown-up” crowd. We are so over the Jr. High drama of who is seeing who and who everyone would like to fuck. That sounds like a circle of hell to me, not anything I would want to be a part of.
So, in that sense, I wasn’t able to identify with the author’s experience in her subculture of constant pressure for sexuality. I can see it at a distance in the general culture, but not specifically in my own lived experience.
This doesn’t mean she is wrong, just that we have different lives. Which too is fine.
Overall, this is a well written, well thought out book. The arguments and ideas are solid and helpful. And, it has a strong moral core to it that strives to be consistent, giving grace to all, while advocating for diversity, negotiation, and communication. Regardless of whether you are ace, demi, or allo, I think this book can be a helpful way of understanding others.
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