Rees D.

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

Notes • 921 Words • Books, 2024 • 07/06/2024 • View in graph

This article is part of the Perspectives on A-Spec Identity Anthology.

Media This Post References:

• Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex

An engaging exploration of what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual attraction, and what the ace perspective can teach all of us about desire and identity.

There are 983 words in this article, and it will probably take you less than 5 minutes to read it.

This article was published 2024-07-06 00:00:00 -0400, which makes this post and me old when I published it.

It took an estimated to develop this article from conception to publishing.

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex Angela Chen · 2020

An engaging exploration of what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual attraction, and what the ace perspective can teach all of us about desire and identity. What exactly is sexual attraction and what is it like to go through life not experiencing it? What does asexuality reveal about gender roles, about romance and consent, and the pressures of society? This accessible examination of asexuality shows that the issues that aces face—confusion around sexual activity, the intersection of sexuality and identity, navigating different needs in relationships—are the same conflicts that nearly all of us will experience. Through a blend of reporting, cultural criticism, and memoir, Ace addresses the misconceptions around the “A” of LGBTQIA and invites everyone to rethink pleasure and intimacy. Journalist Angela Chen creates her path to understanding her own asexuality with the perspectives of a diverse group of asexual people. Vulnerable and honest, these stories include a woman who had blood tests done because she was convinced that “not wanting sex” was a sign of serious illness, and a man who grew up in a religious household and did everything “right,” only to realize after marriage that his experience of sexuality had never been the same as that of others. Disabled aces, aces of color, gender-nonconforming aces, and aces who both do and don’t want romantic relationships all share their experiences navigating a society in which a lack of sexual attraction is considered abnormal. Chen’s careful cultural analysis explores how societal norms limit understanding of sex and relationships and celebrates the breadth of sexuality and queerness.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Book View →

I bought this book awhile ago before I really started introspecting heavily, but only recently got around to reading it when I’ve been more into reading about asexuality and romantic norms. Overall I’m glad that I read this book and read it at this specific time in my personal and intellectual journey.

• I think that if I read this too early in my journey of asexuality I would not have been able to engage with it as deeply. I think that the language is pretty accessible, but not all the content itself is accessible because it does require a lot of reflection and introspection about social messaging and other things like that.

I’m not sure what her intended audience was for this book when she wrote, but in my mind, I think that asexuals further into their journey or open-minded allosexual people would benefit from reading this book.

• To me, this books seems not entry level but a mid-level book of sorts for asexuality. It is not about figuring out whether or not you’re ace, but more about doing the work to unlearn certain ways of thinking about sex/asexuality.
• I think non-asexual (allosexual) people who are also interested more generally in Relationship Anarchy or de-centering sex can benefit from this book because while our senses about asexuality, the subtitle of the book is really the main focus where Chen is examining sexuality in society through the lens of asexuality.

I think that Chen did her due diligence with research and engages with philosophy and academic thought wherever possible while also doing a great job of incorporating actual ace experience that she collected via interviews.

• The only miss that rubbed me the wrong way was when she seemingly bulldozed past a lot of scholarly work about rape when she rejected the notion that rape is violence and not sex. She wants to say that rape is a type of (bad) sex which is not exactly a controversial opinion, but still not one to be taken for granted.
• She seemed to suggest that inherent in this feminist rallying cry is the idea that sex is good and anything that is bad/violent isn’t sex. I don’t think that this is (obviously) inherent at all and I think is a misunderstanding about what the rallying cry and conceptual engineering around sex is. Chen can obviously hold whatever argument she wants and that’s not my point, I just felt like it was intellectually dishonest.

I had heard of the relationship escalator, but I really liked how she connected that with the sexual bases metaphor that is so common. I had never really thought of it like that and made me think about how bases seems to frame relationships as a game in that it seem a little bit more adversarial, like you’re winning or earning sexual bases.

I really liked how vulnerable she was about her own experience and I think that her experience and her opinions show throughout the book which is great. It is important to note however that a lot of her opinions are informed from her perspective as an Asian woman who identifies as asexual, and who has low sexual desire and engages in sex for emotional reasons. This is a very specific perspective or standpoint to be speaking out of which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it can sometimes be harder to relate as someone who doesn’t share all of those characteristics.

I really liked the the call for ace liberation at the end of the book. I think it is easy to think about asexuality as a personal problem that you have to figure out in order to live your life, but really the fact that you have to do that in the first place is a result of social forces that can be changed.