rainwaterspark (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rainwaterspark) wrote2016-11-14 02:50 pm
rainwaterspark) wrote2016-11-14 02:50 pm
Entry tags:
Asexual representation in fiction
I was reading a conversation on a blog about this issue, and well...I have thoughts. This is going to be more like a bullet-pointed stream-of-consciousness rant than an organized essay, so bear with me.
- Q: "Where are all the asexual female characters?"
I wanted to start with this because I think one's perception of there being *tons* of male asexual characters may be skewed depending on what one's reading. If you look at publishers like Dreamspinner Press/Harmony Ink and Riptide Publishing, well of course most of the asexual characters there (not that there are a ton) are going to be male, because those publishers started out by publishing M/M romance/erotica, and DSP still only publishes M/M romance/erotica.
However, if you look a traditional publishing, you'll notice a different story. There are even fewer explicitly asexual characters in traditional publishing, but of the ones I know of, they are overwhelmingly female. See: Quicksilver by R.J. Anderson; Clariel by Garth Nix; Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire; the upcoming Tash Hearts Tolstoy by Kathryn Ormsbee.
And...look, there's a huge gender stereotyping issue here.
I'm not saying "don't represent asexual girls/women." However, asexuality is often stereotyped as something "only girls/women identify as." Part of it, I'm guessing, is that men are less likely to identify as asexual due to the pressures caused by toxic masculinity and the expectation that men are hypersexual. (Also, I have a strong suspicion that men who technically fit the definitition of asexuality, but are sex-positive or sex-neutral and are willing to have sex to please their partner, just won't identify as asexual to begin with.) But part of it is plain old vintage misogyny: for years, women were *expected* to be *sexually passive* and/or have a low sex drive. (If you really want to see this in action, look no further than the vitriolic acephobia on Tumblr: acephobes assume all asexuals are "women who don't want to f**k their boyfriends and therefore think that makes them queer.")
Given that context, having asexual male characters in fiction is revolutionary. It's pushing back against the narratives of sexism and toxic masculinity. This is not a bad thing, for sure.
- Q: "We need more asexual romances with gray-aces/sex-positive aces!"
...I've strongly considered not saying anything about this issue at all, considering that it's hard to make the point I want to make without seeming like I'm trampling on sex-positive aces and ace-spectrum people who rarely experience sexual attraction. And yet it's been bugging me a lot, so here goes.
My gut reaction when hearing a question like the one above is: "If you want a story about an asexual character who enjoys sex in a sexual relationship, is there much of a point in making the character asexual to begin with?"
Full disclosure: I'm not a gray-ace and I'm sex-averse. Probably that makes my experience of asexuality different from aces who enjoy sex/experience sexual attraction. But my sex repulsion is strongly linked with my asexuality—not in a causal sense, but that I can't separate one from the other. I suspect that other sex-repulsed asexuals might share a similar experience. It's also, by far, my sex repulsion rather than my asexuality per se that has caused me to receive grief from heterosexual people. If I told my mom, for example, "I don't experience sexual attraction, but I'd be willing to have sex with a partner," she would stop bothering me about my sexual orientation. Period. Also, I'd like to remind everyone that according to a survey, over 50% of asexuals reported being sex-repulsed, so sex repulsion disproportionately affects asexual-identified people.
Like...it's a given that not all allosexual people are sex-crazed horndogs, yes? And that there are plenty of allosexual people who would rather not have sex unless they're in a serious relationship. So the boundaries between "a romance between an ace person who still enjoys sex with their non-ace partner" and "a romance between two people in which lust isn't written as a driving force in the relationship" are pretty fuzzy to me.
(Which is, by the way, the reason why I wrote my novel as an asexual romance and yet still felt compelled to explicitly state that my protagonist was asexual—because I knew that, even though I didn't write my protagonist as experiencing sexual attraction at all, non-asexual readers are unlikely to pick that up.)
I get that the lack of sexual attraction itself is a sticking point in some relationships (after having read some Reddit posts). But by far the ostracization of asexual people and asexual relationships seems to me to be centered on not having sex/not enjoying sex. And, on a personal level, the biggest struggle I face as an asexual person is fear that I will not be able to find a romantic relationship because I am sex-repulsed.
Basically, if we're talking about deviations from heteronormativity/compulsory sexuality, a romantic relationship without sex is far more likely to be seen as "other" than a relationship in which "we have sex sometimes when my partner's willing."
I don't have anything against gray-ace/demisexual romances, but I'd prefer if they're explicitly labelled as such. We are far from any kind of saturation point regarding sex-averse asexual characters in fiction, and to me, it's still very necessary to have more romances that show alternatives to sex in a romantic relationship are possible.
- Q: "Where are all the asexual female characters?"
I wanted to start with this because I think one's perception of there being *tons* of male asexual characters may be skewed depending on what one's reading. If you look at publishers like Dreamspinner Press/Harmony Ink and Riptide Publishing, well of course most of the asexual characters there (not that there are a ton) are going to be male, because those publishers started out by publishing M/M romance/erotica, and DSP still only publishes M/M romance/erotica.
However, if you look a traditional publishing, you'll notice a different story. There are even fewer explicitly asexual characters in traditional publishing, but of the ones I know of, they are overwhelmingly female. See: Quicksilver by R.J. Anderson; Clariel by Garth Nix; Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire; the upcoming Tash Hearts Tolstoy by Kathryn Ormsbee.
And...look, there's a huge gender stereotyping issue here.
I'm not saying "don't represent asexual girls/women." However, asexuality is often stereotyped as something "only girls/women identify as." Part of it, I'm guessing, is that men are less likely to identify as asexual due to the pressures caused by toxic masculinity and the expectation that men are hypersexual. (Also, I have a strong suspicion that men who technically fit the definitition of asexuality, but are sex-positive or sex-neutral and are willing to have sex to please their partner, just won't identify as asexual to begin with.) But part of it is plain old vintage misogyny: for years, women were *expected* to be *sexually passive* and/or have a low sex drive. (If you really want to see this in action, look no further than the vitriolic acephobia on Tumblr: acephobes assume all asexuals are "women who don't want to f**k their boyfriends and therefore think that makes them queer.")
Given that context, having asexual male characters in fiction is revolutionary. It's pushing back against the narratives of sexism and toxic masculinity. This is not a bad thing, for sure.
- Q: "We need more asexual romances with gray-aces/sex-positive aces!"
...I've strongly considered not saying anything about this issue at all, considering that it's hard to make the point I want to make without seeming like I'm trampling on sex-positive aces and ace-spectrum people who rarely experience sexual attraction. And yet it's been bugging me a lot, so here goes.
My gut reaction when hearing a question like the one above is: "If you want a story about an asexual character who enjoys sex in a sexual relationship, is there much of a point in making the character asexual to begin with?"
Full disclosure: I'm not a gray-ace and I'm sex-averse. Probably that makes my experience of asexuality different from aces who enjoy sex/experience sexual attraction. But my sex repulsion is strongly linked with my asexuality—not in a causal sense, but that I can't separate one from the other. I suspect that other sex-repulsed asexuals might share a similar experience. It's also, by far, my sex repulsion rather than my asexuality per se that has caused me to receive grief from heterosexual people. If I told my mom, for example, "I don't experience sexual attraction, but I'd be willing to have sex with a partner," she would stop bothering me about my sexual orientation. Period. Also, I'd like to remind everyone that according to a survey, over 50% of asexuals reported being sex-repulsed, so sex repulsion disproportionately affects asexual-identified people.
Like...it's a given that not all allosexual people are sex-crazed horndogs, yes? And that there are plenty of allosexual people who would rather not have sex unless they're in a serious relationship. So the boundaries between "a romance between an ace person who still enjoys sex with their non-ace partner" and "a romance between two people in which lust isn't written as a driving force in the relationship" are pretty fuzzy to me.
(Which is, by the way, the reason why I wrote my novel as an asexual romance and yet still felt compelled to explicitly state that my protagonist was asexual—because I knew that, even though I didn't write my protagonist as experiencing sexual attraction at all, non-asexual readers are unlikely to pick that up.)
I get that the lack of sexual attraction itself is a sticking point in some relationships (after having read some Reddit posts). But by far the ostracization of asexual people and asexual relationships seems to me to be centered on not having sex/not enjoying sex. And, on a personal level, the biggest struggle I face as an asexual person is fear that I will not be able to find a romantic relationship because I am sex-repulsed.
Basically, if we're talking about deviations from heteronormativity/compulsory sexuality, a romantic relationship without sex is far more likely to be seen as "other" than a relationship in which "we have sex sometimes when my partner's willing."
I don't have anything against gray-ace/demisexual romances, but I'd prefer if they're explicitly labelled as such. We are far from any kind of saturation point regarding sex-averse asexual characters in fiction, and to me, it's still very necessary to have more romances that show alternatives to sex in a romantic relationship are possible.