Ace Activism Opportunities: Health Care

[This is part of a series on opportunities for ace activism. See the masterpost here.]

The world of “health care” is a huuuuuuuuuge opportunity for ace activism, so I’m just going to briefly touch on just a few of the areas that can be explored.

  • Develop workshops on providing ace competent care.  Train doctors on what asexuality is, how to approach potentially asexual patients, etc.
  • Get the DSM-5 fixed.  The move from the DSM-IV to DSM-5, with its explicit mention of asexuality in an an exception for FSIAD and MHSDD, was a huge step forward, but there are still problems.  The mention of asexuality is hiding in scare quotes in a footnote that doesn’t even show up in the Desk Reference.  The exception calls for people to be “self-identified as asexual”, which is hard to do if you’ve never heard that asexuality is A Thing™.  The criteria for FSIAD and MHSDD both require “clinically significant distress”, but there’s no allowance for that distress being caused by everyone constantly telling you that you’re broken for not wanting sex.  Then there’s a more fundamental question about whether or not these are actually “disorders” at all.  Ace activism was instrumental in getting the improvements in the DSM-5, so it’s time to be making noise about getting some changes in the next edition.
  • Explore various ways to suppress or eliminate various bodily functions and features that many aces could do without.  Look at techniques for skipping periods with birth control pills.  Are there ways to safely get rid of erections?  Can an unwanted libido be turned off?  What options exist for hysterectomies or castration?  Are they safe?  What’s the process for obtaining one?  Are there processes/procedures/regulations/restrictions that stand in the way and need to be changed?
  • Work to end the pervasive and incorrect idea that everyone wants sex, that everyone who is lacking in sex is miserable, and that the only path to happiness is through lots and lots of sex.  Throw out the blanket “fake it ’til you make it” style advice.  Throw out the failed anti-depressants and sunless tanners being relabeled as sex cure-alls.  Don’t try to fix what isn’t broken.
  • Explore issues involving single people and medical care.
  • Look at tests and procedures which may not be necessary for people who are not sexually active.  For instance, are pap smears worthwhile for people who’ve never had sex?  Should guidance around those sorts of things be changed?  Should there be more outreach to aces letting them know the risk and giving them guidance for refusing potentially unnecessary or unwanted procedures.
  • Fight against conversion therapy, in all its forms.

Ambassadors From Aceland

[This post is a submission to the September 2019 Carnival of Aces, on the theme “Telling Our Stories”.]

In the years since I discovered asexuality, I’ve heard a lot of stories and I’ve told a lot of stories.  But one thing I’ve noticed is that we’re often reluctant to tell our stories.  Sure, we’ll freely tell the story of how we learned we were asexual or how we came out, but beyond that, stories don’t get told in the same way, if they’re told at all.

Some stories don’t want to be told.  They’re kept guarded and secret until they burst out in a moment of despair or are offered in a moment of empathy.  These stories are not freely told, but rather, they are paid for in pain.  Rarely, these stories are opaquely hinted at to keep them from getting free on their own.

Then there are the stories that we “tell”, but never really tell.  They’re short, surface level anecdotes, and we only “tell” them when prompted.  We’re giving answers or making points, but aren’t really telling stories.


Telling our stories is one of the most important things we can do.  They show others who we are.  They show others that they are not alone.  And sometimes, they show us that we are not alone.  Every piece of the asexual community started when a story was told.

I am like this.

I am like that, too.

So it makes me sad when I see stories that don’t get told or that only get told part way.  We are here because of the stories that have been told, and it is our duty to tell our stories for the future.

A few years ago, there was an “Asexual Story Project” website that I hoped would bring some of these untold stories to light, but most of what ended up there was the same single paragraph story of the lightbulb moment or tales of coming out.  Short and to the point and safe.  Then there was a book called “47 Asexual Stories”.  Quick responses to a questionnaire, typically no longer than a paragraph.  Short and to the point and safe.

Short and to the point and safe.  That’s all most of our stories get to be.


“How I Learned About Asexuality” or “How I Came Out” are stories that get told so frequently because they are universal stories and touch on key moments in our journey.  But we also tell them because they’re typically uncontroversial.  They’re a story you can quickly tell to a group of strangers in the back room of a former coffee shop in Seattle, and they’ll get you.  We expect them to be personal and unique, so we allow them to be personal and unique.  Whatever it entails, it’s not wrong, it’s not something that reflects poorly on asexuality.  It’s just a quick tale of what happened.  It’s short and to the point and safe.

Beyond that, and our stories become shorter and more general.  Details become meta and abstract.  We don’t tell our stories, we tell about our stories and end there.  It’s like we’re trying to win Hemingway’s Six Word Story competition.

  • Had a girlfriend.  That didn’t work.
  • I had sex.  It was boring.
  • Why does she even love me?
  • I’ve got a sex free kink.
  • Don’t you dare try touching me.
  • I was broken.  Now I’m not.

Short and to the point and safe.

We dare not tread beyond these narrow confines.  Anything further and the I disappears, replaced by a “Some do, some don’t” we-ness.  We fall into generality, into a 101 lecture.  We become Ambassadors from Aceland:  No longer individuals, but representatives of our community, forced to present the approved party line, to provide the big picture so people don’t get the wrong idea about what asexuality is.  We censor ourselves or sprinkle our stories with “Not All Aces” caveats, because that’s what an Ambassador does.

We can’t talk about who we fell in love with, because some aces are aromantic.

We can’t talk about what feeling repulsed is like, because that would give people the impression that all aces hate sex.

We can’t talk about when we did feel attracted to someone, because being gray or demi makes things too complicated.

We can’t talk about where our “first time” happened, because that would be confusing and not “ace enough”.

We can’t talk about why we want kids, because we all know how babies are made and people wouldn’t understand.

We can’t talk about how we’re fine living alone, because some aces want relationships.

We can’t talk about our own lives, because they don’t fit the story we’re forced to tell.


I saw a post the other day where someone was explicitly asking for examples for things that “make the ace community look bad or lose credibility”.  Beyond the face value horror of deliberately trying to be the respectability police, I wondered how many voices it would silence, how many stories would not be told.  And the responses were things like “Not having a clear definition of asexuality” and “Too many micro labels”.  

A good Ambassador is the flawless representative of the cleanest image.  A good Ambassador sticks to the official story.  A good Ambassador doesn’t rock the boat.

Fuck.  That.  Noise.

It’s your story.  Tell it your way.  Don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks.

There are enough of us around now.  We don’t have to be the Ambassador from Aceland all the time.  No one ever appointed you to that position anyway. We don’t have to waste words by saying things like “This is my personal experience and all aces are different”.  We don’t have to worry about whether or not someone will get the wrong idea about asexuality.  We don’t have to omit things because they’re not ace enough.  There are as many different ways to be asexual as there are asexual people, and it’s time for us to embrace and explore that diversity.

Get out there and tell your story.

Carnival of Aces September 2019: Telling Our Stories

The Carnival of Aces is a long-running monthly asexuality-themed blogging event, run by The Asexual Agenda.  Each month, the host picks a theme and puts out a call for submissions from the community, then collects the submissions into a roundup post at the end of the month.  (Last month’s Carnival was hosted on The Demi Deviant, and the theme was Deviant Identities.)

The theme I have selected for this month is “Telling Our Stories“.

Update! This month’s roundup is now available!

Over the years in ace circles, one thing that has always stood out to me is the power of the personal story of asexuality. More so than the academic encyclopedia articles or silly memes or 101 outreach pamphlet, the personal story is able to reach out and make someone truly feel that they are not alone.

I’ve recently started working on an autobiographical account of my own aceness, in all its awkward and embarrassing glory, and that got me thinking about the personal stories we tell and why we tell them, as well as the stories we don’t tell and why we don’t tell them. We’ll often freely talk about the lightbulb moment where we discovered asexuality, but usually skip the pain and heartbreak and confusion that we encountered along the way. But these are all valid parts of our asexual journey. So what goes into the decision around what we talk about, who we talk to, and how we tell these stories?

That’s what I want to explore this month. Not the personal stories themselves, I want to talk about the act of telling our stories.

Here are a few specific prompts, but please feel free to talk about anything else that might come to mind:

  • How do you decide which stories to tell and which stories not to tell?
  • Are there any stories you wish more people would tell?
  • Are there any stories you’re tired of telling or tired of hearing?
  • Who is your audience? Does the way you tell the same story change depending on who is listening?
  • What medium do you use for your storytelling?
  • Do you ever feel like you can’t tell your story?
  • Do you ever use the veil of fiction to surreptitiously tell your personal story?
  • How do you handle other people who may appear in your personal stories?
  • Why do you tell your story?

Submission Instructions:

There are several ways you can submit your blog post for the carnival:

  • Leave a link to it in the comments below.
  • Email me at:  a c e @ a s e x u a l i t y a r c h i v e . c o m
  • Send an ask or a message me on Tumblr (@redbeardace)
  • @AceArchive on Twitter

Submissions are due by September 30th, 2019. (But I’ll accept latecomers and procrastinators…)

I’ll acknowledge every submission I get, so if you send something in and don’t hear from me within a couple of days, please try again with a different method.

(If you want to write for this month’s carnival and don’t have a blog of your own to post it on, contact me above, and I’ll be happy to help guest host your post.)

SF Unconference 2017 — Session #3: Aces in Fiction and Media

This is a summary of some of the topics discussed in the “Aces in Fiction and Media” session at the 2017 SF Asexuality Unconference.

This session was mostly talking about ace and ace-ish characters in fiction, so much of the discussion was about plot points and storylines that I won’t go into here.  There was also a discussion about something that is very good news and that was very exciting to hear but that I don’t think is widely publically known, so unfortunately, I don’t think I can talk about it here.  (But trust me, it’s awesome.)

Here were some of the items mentioned as having ace characters, whether explicit, implicit, or headcanoned.  (This is not intended to be a complete rundown of all ace characters out there, just a list of those mentioned that I was able to write down fast enough.)

Bojack Horseman

Shades of A

Supernormal Step

Sirens

We Awaken

(A)sexual

Shortland Street

Sex Criminals

Minority Monsters

Heartless

Shadowhunters

And it was recommended to steer clear of:

House (S8E8 Better Half)

The Olivia Experiment

 

Some people wanted to see multiple aces together in fiction, so that it’s clear that asexuality isn’t just a personality quirk of that one character.  Some wanted to see relationship negotiations.  Some wanted to see the ace character be more than just ace, to have hobbies or to have problems (including relationship problems) that don’t stem from asexuality or sex.

And check out the Ace Tropes series, over on The Asexual Agenda.