It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I went out for a moment and told my family. After college, I moved to East Bay, just outside of San Francisco. I got an internship for an online game page that I didn’t pay, but it was exciting. One day, they asked me to quit my intern duties and they asked me to write something about one of my favorite video game franchises, Mass Effect. There had been an article criticizing a recent promotional crusade that encouraged others to vote on how the box art of the female edition of the protagonist deserves to be seen in the sequel. As the article was written through a queer woman, I was asked if I wanted to write an article in response. It was my first chance to write an editorial, but writing it also meant that I had to reveal who I was in a very public forum for the first time. I took the resolution to write the piece through the drawing from my point of view and the day the article was published I called my parents and went out with them. They divorced at most of my life, so it was two phone calls and a double dose of anxiety. Even on the phone, it was scary, but it was a big relief.
At the time, I felt like that was it. I was absent and, from that moment on, things would be easier, without challenges, without obstacles, with nothing to stop me. For a long time it was true. I felt safer writing things from my point of view as a gay woman and felt a general convenience that exists in the world. But until the end of my twenties, I knew nothing was finished yet. Even though I was happy who I was, something was wrong, anything in the back of my brain that I still didn’t look like. I wasn’t interested in the things that deserve to be of interest to me. I’ve been looking for dating apps for a while and have never met anyone I’ve been bonding with; I didn’t like going to nightclubs at all. My sexual reports went from smart to bad, as well as others’, however, things were a little out of place. Nothing’s stuck.
I was aware of asexuality long before I knew myself as an ace, however, I had never imagined it on my own because I simply thought I was too clumsy or shy when it came to dating. I attributed my displeasure at nightclubs and informal dating to my social anxiety. Otherwise, why wouldn’t meeting strangers in dark rooms with strobe lights and deafening music appeal to me? My foray into dating sites and apps has never been more successful. No matter how good someone is, things didn’t fit and the maximum apps just seemed like an extension of the club’s culture. The concept of dating seemed like an arduous task and, in a way, it is. I also believe that my insecurities may simply be the product of the sexual abuse I had suffered when I was about two years old. These things haunted my brain for years until I was thirty.
One thing that helped me settle for my ace identity was to delve into the reports of other asexual people online. Even though I knew what it was, I hadn’t taken the time to pay attention to the reports of other people who were asexual and why they knew themselves this way until I questioned things about myself. Once I did, I learned many facets of the asexuality that was implemented to me. There is also a website, asexuality.org, created in particular to teach others about the subject. If you do not already receive it or if you are wondering if you belong to the asexual category, I strongly recommend that you visit this website. As I learn about their resources and pay attention to the stories of other people I discovered online, things were settled. Gradually I began to realize that, although I first knew myself as anexual, what I felt was more like a disappearance.
“Disemlessness does not feel any sexual charm to others unless a strong emotional connection has been established. This is included or relevant to the grey sexual category, as other people who are demisexual would possibly necessarily feel asexual when they are not similar to anyone, and the link usually takes a long time to establish.”
There are some who do not see other sexual/semi-sexual gray people as a component of the asexual community, but I do not agree with that feeling. As sexuality is a spectrum, we can’t expect other people to fall into the same category all the time.
I wish the resources were in place to develop me. The Internet was just one thing when I went to school and high school. The concept of being online is a luxury and, in fact, there aren’t many articles or video content that explain what asexuality is at the time. As a locked-down child, there is virtually no representation of queer characters on television or in the videos with which I can identify with development. Stumbling on Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s revivals looked like gold. These days, you can watch compilation videos of the entire arc of the queer story of a program or watch an entire series in one day. Having had to dig deeper and scrape each and every drop of queer representation, I can simply, I am grateful that a new generation has a wider diversity of resources and media resources. Many of the things I’ve discovered useful in recent years are short films and documentaries made through asexual people, which explain what it is and what its reports are. Traditional gay media don’t necessarily work well when it comes to representing asexuality.
“Sex Sells” is a major adage in the way things are advertised in the media. Once young people succeed at a certain age, things start to move from young stories to stories of young people who waste their virginity or aspire to do so. I don’t forget to see countless exhibits and videos in which having sex was the main purpose of the protagonist or at least a motivating thing in what they did throughout the story. I grew up with five children during puberty, the year of American Pie’s release was difficult.
It was hard to escape discussions about sex even in church. One night, in a youth organization, our youth pastor gave a candid speech about sex, saying how wonderful it was and that we all deserve to wait until we got married to have it. This concept of abstinence was something else I trusted to justify why it wasn’t asexual before accepting it. Abstinence and celibacy are wrongly equated with as-many identities because many other people believe that asexuality is all that doesn’t come with sex. In reality, the concepts of abstinence and celibacy are a selection of consciousness, while identity in the asexual spectrum is more about your desires. Desires that are an integral component of who you are.
An ideal representation of the pop culture of someone who identifies with the asexual spectrum implies a verbal exchange just about what it looks like in an adult environment, whether through a romantic date or a platonic friendship. Although there are other asexual people like me who identify as demisexual and therefore still feel a form of sexual attraction, there are many other asexual people who have no preference for sex or romantic dating, and also identify themselves as aromatic. Often, those who manifest a lack of sexual/romantic interest are treated as if they suffered from an intellectual illness. Many problematic stories involving others within the LGBTQIA network have used the representation of what is as an intellectual disorder as a conspiracy tool. This is something we’ve recently noticed that has gone back a bit in the last few decades, but it hasn’t completely disappeared. There are some moments in the media that have caught my attention as an asexual user in recent years.
To date, my favorite step towards asexual representation in the mainstream media has come from the sci-fi video game The Outer Worlds, released in 2019. Parvati Holcomb is the first non-playable character you can invite to accompany you through the story. In her non-public quest, she has a weight on a mechanic at one of the stations in the area she visits. It’s up to you to help him chase that person, and if he does, Parvati becomes very fair about how other people have treated her because of her asexuality. Although he never says it correctly, it’s very transparent that he’s talking about and seeing this kind of very rewarding representation. Your character is also a bit asexual by default, as you can participate in many aspect missions with your teammates, but you can’t fall in love with any of them. Apart from the games, I think there are only a few TV examples that are equally significant, and no, one of the moments doesn’t come with Jughead in Riverdale.
In episode seven of the third season of One Day at a Time, Elena and his wife Syd devise a plan to get a hotel room so they can have sex. When Elena discovers that Syd has had sex in a certain position, she panics a little and begins to talk about her insecurities. When Syd is going to convince her, they say, “We can do it next month, next year. We can never do that if that’s what you want. Whatever happens, I love you.” If you’re looking for an example of how to communicate with an asexual audience even when your characters are good, this kind of discussion is vital. Sending the message that you can enjoy it without having sex with someone you’re on a date with is a vital message to send especially to a younger audience. There can be a lot of pressure among peers for young people to have sex in adolescence, which can put them in very bad condition if they rush to do things before they are in a position and accept as true with the wrong people. It was great to see a scene in which a character who had been in a position where he sexually enjoyed was aware of the apprehension of some other character and did not press it.
Sex Education, an exhibition that basically describes intense sex, has managed to arrive with a significant asexual situation in its maximum motivating season. When Jackson, the school’s most popular boy, is cast as Romeo in the school play, Florence, who plays Juliet, feels the tension of her casting partners to give her a chance. She enies the help of Otis, the main character, who offers him sexual recommendations for a small fee. Florence tells her that they cared about the play because she thought it all about love, but the truth is that it’s all about sex and that she doesn’t need to have sex.
Otis tells him to pass at his own speed and has not yet discovered the right user. This recommendation is unfounded for Florence and after other confrontations with her casting partners who took her to sleep with her co-star, she enlists the help of Otis’ mother, Jean Milburn, a sex therapist played by Gillian Anderson. When Florence tells Jean that she feels damaged because she doesn’t need to have sex, Jean takes the opportunity to teach her, and in turn to viewers, what asexuality is, noting that it is a valid sexual identity. Jean is also moving on to deliver a line that is helping Florence settle for her asexuality and also serves as an example of the messages that will be sent about sex in general. “Sex doesn’t complete us. So how can you get hurt?
No matter how asexual they realize who the others are, their delight is no less valuable than any other presentation story. Every asexual user has a moment when popularity takes hold. When she still sees who she is and the piece of the puzzle that has been lost all her life discovers her place.
For me, this moment goes back almost 3 years, just after thirty. He walked down an augmented sidewalk overlooking the Las Vegas Strip holding a giant barn. This was my time of year at ClexaCon and I had the opportunity to locate two friends with whom to share my room that year, whom I had met at the convention. We had discovered a bartender who served generously and walked through the city laughing and sharing the feeling of happiness that had just spent a day celebrating the strangest thing that made us happy. It’s reminiscent of my center now, in those dubious times of self-isolation.
We had discussed our reports at the conference, as well as the things we were passionate about in television and movies that would be released later this year. At the beginning of the conference, we became friends with a woman we’d met in a queue for something. She was cute and she and I had met for breakfast this morning, which had been nice. My friends and I talked about our walk and it was quite transparent that I also liked it a little bit, which led to a discussion about the fact that I was watching her back at the conference. Honestly, it was the furthest thing from my brain at the time and made me think.
Is that what other people should do right? Listen to someone you meet on vacation and connect? She was cute and cool, so maybe I’m chasing her more, right? None of this seemed very vital to me because it wasn’t what I wanted. That’s when I uttered aloud, words I’d been repeating quietly on the back of my head for almost a year.
“I am asexual”
There was a brief pause while my friends let the news calm down. It didn’t take them long to explain their and the fact that it was anything in me that they accepted was amazing. We stayed a little longer in this place, admiring the view of the bustling streets of Las Vegas at dusk.
I closed my eyes and, for the first time in my life, it was myself.
REI is a cooperative owned by its members (not a company!) It launched its Force of Nature initiative in 2017 to make the outdoors a place where more people can feel not only welcome, but also lively and fully capable.