Ace

 
 
Ace
What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex

by Angela Chen

Beacon Press

2020

 

 

I read a graphic memoir and a quick guide to asexuality last year, but Ace is the first book I'd recommend to someone else. I think it would be useful for anyone wanting to better understand asexuality for personal reasons, and honestly, would be good to read for anyone studying sexuality academically.

 
Chen is asexual herself, and conducted interviews with other aces, their partners, and some sociologists and other academics. The book is structured in three parts - first discussing the concept of asexuality; then looking at how it intersects with gender, race, and disability status; and finally looking at relationships, especially for couples where only one partner is ace. In each section, Chen recounts her own experiences, shares the stories of others, and weaves in academic concepts where appropriate. A running theme is that the asexual perspective can also illuminate aspects of sexuality that are true for everyone, but not always as easy to see.

 
Chen talks about the difficulty of realizing that you don't feel something most other people do, even when that something is as ubiquitous as sexual attraction, the desire to have sex with another person for the sake of feeling physical pleasure. Chen notes that we tend to act as though sexual attraction is always (or at least usually) felt at the same time as romantic attraction, aesthetic appreciation of someone's appearance, and desire for friendship. We also tend to act as though sexual attraction is the only reason people have sex. Neither is really true, and we sort of already know that, but non-aces rarely think about it.

 
Even though we know that there's natural variation in the amount of sexual attraction that people feel, we tend to act as though everyone both will and should form relationships on the basis of mutual sexual attraction, that sexual relationships are more important than non-sexual ones (with marriage legally and socially regarded as a person's most important relationship, and given special treatment in a multitude of ways), that sexual relationships are what make us 'real' adults and full participants in society, and that people in a romantic relationship kind of owe each other sex whether they really want it or not.

 
Chen discusses the fear she and many other asexual women feel, that wanting sex is seen as cool and feminist, so she fears her absence of desire will make her seem conservative, prudish, frigid, repressed. She discusses male ace's problem - that others find it much harder to believe that a man feels no attraction. She talks about navigating racial stereotypes, and the fraught relationship between the ace and disability communities. In brief, asexuals fear being stereotyped as 'sick' or 'broken,' in need of a cure or fix, and disabled people fear both being seen as undesirable and as not experiencing desire themselves.

 
Chen also talks about relationships between asexual and non-ace partners. She notes that asexual people can still want friendship, companionship, stability, commitment. They may want children. They may want to be desired by someone, even if they can't reciprocate. 

 
These relationships sound challenging, though Chen observes that almost all couples will experience some degree of mismatch between their levels of desire, and that couples who have enough reasons to stay together can live with an ongoing challenge, especially if they're willing to talk about it. And while she is insistent that no one should ever feel required to have sex they don't want, Chen also notes that people, including non-aces, are sometimes perfectly willing to have sex they don't actively desire because of other motives, such as wanting to please their partner or to strengthen the bond of the relationship.

 
I appreciated Chen's honesty about her own faults and doubts, the thoughtfulness of her writing, and the balance she struck between writing for other asexuals and for the benefit of non-ace readers.