CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

[Theme Music]  

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

On each Tuesday of this month, in celebration of Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander voices, we are revisiting conversations from our archives that feature AAPI writers, thinkers, artists, and healers. Today we are revisiting a conversation from October 2020 featuring journalists Angela Chen and Sabrina Imbler speaking about Angela’s book Ace, 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. 

Because CIIS' history and identity is indebted to the wisdom traditions of Asian cultures, we are particularly called upon to stand in solidarity with the AAPI community. We hope that in hearing these episodes—again or for the first time—listeners are provided opportunities for connection and healing. 

[Theme Music Concludes]  

Sabrina: Hi Angela. 

Angela: Hi Sabrina, thanks so much for doing this with me. 

Sabrina: Thanks so much for having me. It's funny you know Angela and I actually met on a panel so it's very nice to be seeing you again in the same format, it just brings back old times.  

Angela: Yeah though that was in person so… 

Sabrina: It was in person…we also both live on the East Coast right now, but we are originally from California, so it feels like this panel is almost like a way of visiting - at least that's how I'm thinking about it. 

Angela: Same, same. it's nice to be at a California-based institution. 

Sabrina: Absolutely and thank you to California Institute of Integral Studies for having us today.   

Sabrina: Well Angela, I loved Ace and I thought it filled, you know a big gap in literature that we have about asexuality. It was accessible. It was inclusive. And it was an exploration of sort of the broad spectrum of ace experience.  So, I wanted to ask you know when did you first start thinking about writing this book and what made you decide to write it? 

Angela: I started thinking about in 2015, so a long time ago, and the short answer as to why I wanted to write it was because I…that was when I was realizing that I was ace, and I say realizing because or even discovering. I say discovering because it felt like it was something that I had to go out and search for to understand myself it was not something that was in the air, it was not something that was in the understanding. It was not something that I could just casually glean the way we can for heterosexuality for example. And so once you know once I learned I was ace  and started learning about asexuality I was like this explains so much not just about me and my life, but it just gave me a new way to look at the world and a new lens through which to you know, think about relationships and romance and consent and all these things and there weren't that many mainstream books about it. My Ace isn't the first one I don't want to pretend that it is, but there weren't books that were reported and had those narratives of you know other ace people, so I wanted to do that because I was a journalist.  

And it Ace, has this interesting place in my career because, as you know, I'm primarily a science journalist. Most of my other work is like, you know, what's going to happen with deep fakes and is AI going to take over the world and so I never thought I would write a book like this and in some ways you know, in some ways when I was writing, I was like do I want to be publicly asexual? Do I want to, you know write so openly about my own life and my own identity and I think that was something I was nervous about but it really felt so important to have this book out there because it's so underreported and yeah there needed to be more. 

Sabrina: Did you ever consider writing the book I guess without including a lot of personal experiences more just like a like a bird's eye view, or more reported? 

Angela: I don't think so and I think it's because it was important to me that if this book existed, that an ace person would write the book and that if an ace person writes the book you know, why not include your experience? Why not let yourself be an avatar of, you know like something that may be like a mirror for others and I'm not saying I'm a mirror for others like there are many aces whose experiences are so different, but also since the book has come out people have said ‘oh I like the memoir parts because you were describing when talking about your own life things that I had felt myself’, and so I think that was valuable. 

Sabrina: No that definitely makes sense. I mean I really liked your presence in the book. It felt like you were one of the many people that you interviewed and almost felt like you were sort of in conversation with yourself which was fun. Well I I wanted to ask you know, you know you mentioned when you're searching for this -yeah when you're trying to read books and find literature on asexuality  and, and sort of yeah coming up with with not as much as you wanted,  I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the history of the modern asexuality movement.  You know your book talks about how it's pretty recent and also fairly online. 

Angela: Yeah absolutely. So, the first thing is I always say, asexuality itself and here I should just do a quick definition you know, being ace means you don't experience sexual attraction and there's a whole bunch of misconceptions around that but we'll just go with that definition for now.  So asexual people have been around for a very long time and the example they always cite is that in the 1950s when Kinsey was coming up with his you know Kinsey scale of sexual orientation he essentially interviewed people who were ace , but they didn't fit into his scale where you're you know homosexual or bisexual or heterosexual and so he just made them this group this other group, group x ,and took them off. And so, because the Kinsey scale is so dominant to the way that we think about ourselves and our sexualities it felt like there was no framework for thinking about asexuality.  

And so, in a way I think so much of my book is actually very philosophical and it's about language. You know if you if there's no word for what you are, if there's no you know, social understanding for what you are, how can you explain that and what gets lost when that part of you isn't affirmed. So that's kind of the deeper background. So definitely ace people have been around for a long time. But the internet I think was really crucial for facilitating the modern ace movement. So in the early 2000s there started to be groups of people like there was a Yahoo group  talking about you know being asexual like feeling different, like not wanting sex like what did that mean, and then the group AVEN the Asexuality Visibility Education Network, which is still around that was created in 2001, and that really became this, um this touchstone you know, a place  where people could gather and it was through that that people were discussing what does it mean to be asexual, like literally what does the word mean. Even the word asexual came out of those conversations. Like you can see a world in which people were called non-sexual instead right? So, so much of the modern ace movement and what we take for granted as canon you know the definitions that I use, that other journalists use, that you know academics use, they were created by people who found each other online in the early 2000s. Which is really recent and so you know so much of the discussion is still ongoing. 

Sabrina: Mm..No I mean that's, that's really cool, and I mean I have some questions about how you use and talk about language in the book, but I want to ask those later. And I wanted to ask you know a follow-up question. You talk about how there are still lots of misconceptions about asexuality and so I was wondering if you could sort of yeah, elaborate on how asexuality is still misunderstood in society. 

Angela: Absolutely. So, I think the easiest way to talk about it is how I misunderstood it. So, I came across the word asexual when I was 14 and it was you know a person who doesn't experience sexual attraction, and I was like great that's interesting but I thought I was straight I didn't think I was ace because I thought that not experiencing sexual attraction meant that you weren’t interested in sex, so that you hated sex, but it's not. You know to really understand what asexuality is, you have to understand what sexual attraction is, and when you say that people are like, ‘oh like that's so obvious it's when I want to have sex with people.’ But then it's like why? Like don't you sometimes want to have sex with people for emotional reasons? Don't you sometimes want to have sex because you're bored or feeling lonely? So, like the easiest way to put it is there are people who are asexual, and they're sex-repulsed, you know, they're not interested in sex. There are people who are asexual and sex indifferent, and there are people who are asexual and sex favorable. You know, just because you don't experience sexual attraction doesn't mean that you necessarily avoid sex entirely, and there's so many emotional reasons to have sex and there's just so much complexity there, and I think that's what leads many people to not realize they're asexual when maybe they are.  

I mean that was the case for me, because in our society, and again this goes back to language, we really think about like sexual desire, and sexual attraction, and romantic desire, and aesthetic attraction like all of these things we bundle up. And so, it's very hard to think about them systematically and realize like, ‘what exactly is it I'm feeling?’ ‘Is it a mix of like, aesthetic attraction and emotional attraction, sexual attraction is there no sexual attraction?’ So, all of those things make it hard for people to understand their asexuality, and that's why there're so many misconceptions and there're also more common misconceptions, like that asexuality is the same as celibacy, which it’s not. Celibacy's behavior, sexuality is like you're feeling your attraction. Or that people who are asexual is caused by disability or caused by sexual trauma or that asexuality is the same as aromanticism, which is more like not wanting relationships. So still even you know 20 years on there's so many misconceptions that like we still need to be having this conversation. 
 
Sabrina: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, when I first started this book I thought that I had a good understanding of asexuality, and I feel like each chapter sort of like put an entirely new, like, Post-It on the wall and when I had finished it, it was just this enormous wall of like Post-Its of just like ways to be ace that I had never thought of before, or like never encountered. And yeah, I'm I'm so excited that Ace exists and like hopefully will serve as like a kind of guidebook for a lot of people who are questioning or are just interested in sort of learning more. Yeah, I wanted to you know ask a little bit about compulsory, compulsory sexuality, and you know the assumption that everyone is like a sexual being who experiences sexual attraction. You talk a lot in the book about how it you know it manifests like unassumingly but almost insidiously in a lot of aspects of everyday life, like conversations with friends or therapy or encounters in medicine. So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.  
 
Angela: Absolutely. So compulsory sexuality builds off Adrian Rich's idea of compulsory heterosexuality, and like you said, it's the idea that everyone you know has sexual desire, wants to have sex with other people. Even if you're not having it. It's not based on whether you're actually having sex or not. And so, one example, I interviewed a man named Hunter who comes from this religious family and you know growing up was all very purity culture and abstinence culture, but despite that there was a lot of compulsory sexuality. The way he put it he was like everyone knew that you couldn't have sex until you were married, but that sex was good it was gift from God and there was this assumption that everyone was fighting against, you know this desire to have sex. So Hunter actually when he was in college at some point picked up this book about fighting you know taming your sexual desires, and then later on his friends were like oh it's actually not fair that you were asexual he didn't have these sexual desires that other people had. But in the moment like when he was in college, he was just like oh it's easier for me like he didn't realize that experience was fundamentally different from other people's. So that's kind of a narrative example.  

But there's so many other examples in everyday life you know I've heard from aces who say they go to the doctor, and the doctor will be like oh are you sexually active you know birth control et cetera et cetera and they'll be like no I'm asexual and the doctor would be like is are you like are you okay like were you traumatized. A big example, and which might be interesting for  this audience is therapy like I think many aces say it's very hard to find ace-friendly therapists because there's always the assumption that if you don't experience sexual desire or you don't want to have sex that it's because you're repressed somehow, or it's because something happened to you that you need to work through in therapy. So often I hear from aces that their experience is invalidated by therapists and I mean, of course there's always this line, right, like of course in many cases people's discomfort with sex does come from you know other issues, but it doesn't always have to be the case. So those are some of the big ones that I can think of but I think just the everyday experience of aces who hear all the time that, ‘oh are you, are you a prude? Are you frigid? Is there something wrong with you?’ Like always just show how much compulsory sexuality there is. 
 

Sabrina: Absolutely I mean yeah and that's that's part of why like awareness is so important because I'm sure that a lot of these people haven't you know read about asexuality or properly engaged especially as like therapists should to understand yeah like what is just okay, and not something that needs to be fixed.  Well I you know you bring up Hunter, who's one of the characters in your book and, Ace includes you know just a vast number of interviews with members of the ace community who all have just these different experiences and something that I really enjoyed like, again, using Hunter's experience as an example, was sort of learning or unlearning alongside people as they sort of dismantled the things that they were taught to believe about themselves. And then sort of like came to an identity that they felt really happy with and they found you know that they were at peace with. But there are so many interviews in the book and I was curious if you could talk a little bit more about how you met those people and sort of developed trust and relationships with your sources. 
 
Angela: Absolutely. So, from the beginning I knew this is going to be a heavily reported book. When I was selling it, I think there was one publishing house I was interested in it maybe as a memoir and I knew that I didn't want to do that because, because there's really not enough ace representation and so when there's not enough ace representation, any one book feels like there's a lot of pressure on it, and a memoir would be my story right? And I didn't want people to think like I didn't want to become the face of asexuality when there was so many other experiences that needed to be told. So, I knew I was going to find you know gender non-conforming aces, and aces of color, and disabled aces to talk about their various experiences and how asexuality intersects with their other identities. For me, a lot of it was talking to people that I knew and putting the word out because I'm a member of the ace community I know other aces, I know ace organizers. So, a lot of it was just saying, ‘oh can you you know ask your networks if they're people who'd be willing to talk to me.’  

I, there were a couple listservs that I reached out to…there… at one point I think I might have posted on on Reddit for like a very specific, I think demographic that I was trying to reach, but with all of them I think the fact that I was ace was really helpful, you know, it was like I understand where you're coming from we're not you're not going to spend time educating me I'm not going to ask you invasive questions. I'm not going to come in assuming that asexuality isn't real and I think with that, and I think being pretty open about how I was going to use their story, and how and why I was interested in talking to them, and what like what I wanted from them essentially, I think that kind of honesty and forthrightness also helped them build trust. And also, because the book is not in any way intended to be a gotcha book you know at points I'm critical of the ace community, but I'm not critical you know of the people who are being very vulnerable and sharing their stories. So, I did fact check with them at the end to make sure I got everything right. 
 
Sabrina: That makes sense. And what has been their, like, reception of the book upon its publication? 
 
Angela: I think most people have been, have been happy with it, you know? I definitely think that at least the people that I've interviewed and who have read it so far seem to be happy with how they were portrayed and happy with kind of the arc of the book. 

Sabrina: Mm..I mean that's, that's a relief! [Angela: Yeah!] [Both laugh] Yeah, as a journalist I'm always very scared if people are going to hate the story.  

Well something that I really appreciated about you know the ace people who do show up as sort of large and prominent characters in your book is a lot of them experience the world at an intersection of lots of different identities. You know, you speak with aces of color, disabled aces, trans aces. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about sort of why that diversity of perspectives was important to share. 

Angela: I think that sexuality always intersects with other facets of your identity. You know, I think sexuality is psychological, I think it's parts of it are biological, I also think it's very social. And so the social part was important for me to influence because it intersects with these questions of power and you know the question of who gets to be asexual, or who finds it easiest to claim to be asexual is a complicated one that has a lot to do with the history of how power works in the U.S.  

So, to be specific you know I talked to aces of color, and asexuality at least the online groups, seems pretty white. Often times, you go to meetups, it seems pretty white, and there was and I think a lot of that is because whiteness is associated with sexual purity, you know, whereas we have these, we have these stereotypes, which of course are wrong, these stereotypes you know that Black people and Latinx people are hypersexual, or that Asian women are somehow simultaneously hypersexual and submissive at the same time. And all of these stereotypes can make it really hard to to claim asexuality than if you were white. You know so, I interviewed someone who was Asian and they said you know why who was socialized as an Asian woman and they said, ‘why would I identify as asexual when it was already assumed?’ Or I interviewed someone who was Black and then she said there were just so few people in the Black community and asexuality felt like it was a white thing and she was really questioning herself she was like, ‘oh am I actually asexual or do I just really, really hate the way the media portrays Black women as hypersexual and so I'm just like making up this orientation you know kind of as a response to that?’  

You know when you don't get to be the default then you have all of these questions and those bad effects makeup of the ace community and that you know in the same way that sexuality any kind of sexuality intersects with race. That's the case for asexuality too and I think it's even more complicated when it comes to disability, because those are two communities that have really had, they've been marginalized in different ways. People have long thought that asexuality, or what looks like asexuality is some kind of medical disorder. So, for a long time aces were like, ‘oh you know we, we're not disabled, we're not sick, we're perfectly fine and healthy.’ And at the same time the disabled community has often been desexualized against their will. You know people think they don't want sex, people think they're asexual when they're not. And so, they're saying you know we we do want to have sex don't you know desexualize us and so for disabled aces it feels like there's this intersection of these kind of complex political movements. So, all of that you know asexuality doesn't exist in a vacuum it connects to so many things so I thought it would be interesting and important to explore that. 

Sabrina: Definitely, yeah, I mean I think it also just helps like cement the book is just really like a broad sort of exploration of the ace experience. I mean yeah, I guess society really is the villain in a lot of these cases. I mean when you talk to someone about their experience of their own asexuality you know you're encountering them generally at a point and like a certain understanding of their experience when you do that interview. So, I was curious to know like you know when you were including your own experiences or using yourself as a case study, what that was like, and whether your understanding or relationship to your asexuality sort of changed as you were writing the book. 

Angela: It did change in some ways you know, I think that I've internalized a good amount of acephobia and obviously I'm not proud of that and I think I'm aware of it. But I think that I wasn't aware of the extent to which I internalized it until I interviewed these two women Selena and yaz Yazmine who are you know they're ace and the women of color and they're both just I guess they both kind of just like didn't care about being ace. You know for me, I am so sensitive and I'm always like what people think of me, will they think that I'm boring, will they, you know, like, all the negative stereotypes that people have about these people I feel like I absorbed and that I cared about and they were just like, ‘well I'm a non-conformist anyway, who cares what allo people think, or you know well like I'm ace but I dress very provocatively and I do it for me and I like that allo people are confused by it’  

So, I feel like talking to them it was it really showed me, okay your way of being, your constant anxiety about how allo people see you, you know that doesn't have to be the way that it is. And so, I think that definitely you know just throughout the process of meeting the people that I was interviewing, and talking to them, it gave me a lot more empathy for myself in a way. I think often it's much easier to have empathy for others, than for you, and so I would talk to people who would talk about their struggles which were maybe the same doubts or struggles that I had and I'd be like ‘it's okay, like you shouldn't worry about that’ and it made it easier to say for me, or I’d see other people who didn't care, I'd be like okay I, I can be like them too. 

Sabrina: Yeah, no, that's really beautiful. I love that. And well something else that I that I wanted to ask you know I I also write about myself in the public, and it can be pretty scary, and I, you know, I know that you're a professional science journalist, and I wanted to ask…earlier you mentioned like sort of being yeah like unsure if you wanted to come out as ace, and in the book you know talking very like intimately about experiences that you have. How did you sort of negotiate that line of like what you wanted to share and what you felt was important to share while also maintaining personal privacy? 

Angela: I think for me it was mostly I I think I wrote like the reported and analytic parts of the book first. And then, I would look at a spot and be like is this some place where my personal experience would be useful. You know, for example there's I think there's none of me in this, in the chapter about disability. I'm not disabled, that wouldn't be right. But in the chapter on feminism and kind of the tensions between sex positive feminine asexuality that is something that had affected me and that is something where I felt like elements of my story or my framing could be useful. So it was mostly about what would serve the purpose of the book. I don't think there was any part of the book or any part of my story in the book where I was like this has to be in it because this is a story I have to tell, except maybe the story of how I figured out about my own asexuality, that seemed very relevant. But it wasn't like I was trying to put the recording into a memoir. It was more like elements of the memoir were there to kind of help me be a guide and kind of provide perspective for areas of the rest of the reporting and analysis. 

Sabrina: Definitely. I mean, it almost felt in a very positive way like a Christmas Carol where you were sort of taking me through and showing me scenes and then as soon as like I was like oh wow like you would pop up again and I would be like oh like Angela's back like yeah just like a personal anecdote and I really love that structure…  

Angela: It's interesting… I was just going to say it's interesting to see you know the different responses to kind of the memoir parts, because definitely some people have said you know that's the part that I love the most, and that was so interesting. And then other people have been like I love the analysis but like I could do without her personal story, which is fair. And what's also really interesting is that you know some of the critiques I've gotten, is about the memoir parts, is about how I guess in a way it's like calling me kind of normie? It's like saying it's like saying, ‘oh like her worries about being a good feminist, or her worries about you know like, how other people perceive her you know like why does she worry about these things?’ And I see these critiques and I'm like, ‘yes that is true.’ Like why do I worry about these things? And I think I expected that kind of critique you know the you shouldn't care about these to begin with. But I wanted to be honest, and the truth is I've been programmed. I do worry about these things and I do worry about these kind of very normie topics. And so that's why I kind of said you know, even though I want to be a mirror, I completely acknowledge there's so many aces out there who have such different experiences who come at it in a different way. 

Sabrina: Absolutely, I mean that honesty is so important if you're talking about your personal experience and like yeah I guess it would be like you can't expect yourself to be like an ideal like transcendent you know person who has already figured it out and like gotten rid of all of that internalized acephobia, because…yeah I mean maybe some people are like that but I I really enjoyed those moments of  yeah of honesty and I mean so much of the book is sort of negotia is about negotiating what society like the the square or whatever society is trying to put you in and like figuring out where you actually want to push out of that and like where you want to step out of that box. So, I yeah, I really appreciated those moments. [Angela: Thank you]  

Well I you know, as an Asian, fellow Asian woman who grew up in California, like in a very Asian community. I was really interested in the parts of the book where you talk about how your race  intersected with your journey towards identifying as asexual, and you know as you mentioned earlier, you talk about pushing up against stereotypes of Asian women being you know passive, submissive, or doctors or engineers. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you've navigated, and continue to navigate, those cultural experiences and expectations both within and outside of the Asian community. 

Angela: Yeah absolutely. So, I you know, as you mentioned, I grew up in northern California, in Sunnyvale, and I moved here from China, Wuhan, actually a city now everyone knows where that is. So, I moved here from Wuhan when I was five. And I think for most of my life I really felt like race didn’t matter because it is a pretty Asian area right, and it I never like no one made fun of me and like I wasn't treated as strange or exotic or anything. And so, it just felt like race didn't affect me, and then later on throughout my life I was like race does affect me in more subtle ways because of these expectations you know that Asians are not creative, or Asians are software engineers, or Asians are boring. And for what it's worth, my parents are software engineers, and I did take violin lessons. So that feeling of there being a clear path for what it means to be Asian, even in a pretty Asian you know neighborhood and a pretty Asian demographic. That did affect me.  

And then when it came to asexuality, it felt like it was something that was reinforcing these other stereotypes. You know I felt like I was pretty affected by the stereotype that Asians are quiet, and they keep their head down and then of course you know being a woman, there's often many stereotypes about women being quiet and submissive. And then asexuality is often associated with the lack, you know, it's in the it's in the word itself. Asexual, like this lack, and you don't have something other people have. And you know maybe aces are cold, and so it felt like this cascade in which if I maybe if I weren't Asian maybe if I weren't you know a woman, like I wouldn't have had that but I definitely think that race and gender really intersected for me when thinking about how the sexuality, sorry, thinking about how the different factors kind of mix. And you know I've spoken to other Asians aces, and many of them say they have they feel the same thing you know and that even though that even though they feel secure in their aceness, a part of them at the back of their mind is like ‘oh is it because Asians are supposed to be like this?’ You know is it supposed to be, am I just bowing to stereotypes? And I think that's just another question that many minorities have to have to ask themselves constantly when negotiating this. 

Sabrina: Mm…Do you think you still are asking yourself these questions? 
 
Angela: Um…About whether…I still think about how race plays a role in pretty much every part of my life. I think in terms of whether race plays a role in my asexuality, I don't think so, I think now I've actually become more interested in whether other people members my family are ace, and they don’t know but that's like that's a whole different story! [Sabrina: laughs] I don't know about your family, but my family does not talk about this kind of stuff so, but like that's something I'm interested in so for me it's become much more micro rather than macro. But I don't think I question that much if I'm really ace or not anymore. 

Sabrina: That's a really fun way to think about your family. Yeah well when I came out to my family as queer, there was like a rough year and now, I just get like Facebook messages to like queer roller skating, and I'll be like thanks mom like I'm not gonna go to this, but I do appreciate it. [Angela: laughs] [Angela: yeah] Well something that you know I I expected Ace to do when I started was to offer you know a guided deep dive on the many facets of asexuality and the different you know ways that it can take form in someone's lives, but what I didn't entirely expect the book to do was to make me like rethink the entire way that society has overvalued and almost like deified sexual relationships as the foundation of like a ‘real’ or like important relationship. So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how asexuality destabilizes that. 

Angela: Absolutely. So, on one of the most basic levels I think asexuality destabilizes this question of what even is like romantic attraction right? Because when you're thinking…like how do you know if what you're feeling towards someone is platonic or romantic, most people will say I know it's romantic because I want to have sex with them. Again, doesn't matter whether you're actually sleeping with them. It's that feeling of you know sexual attraction that makes you know its romantic. But then there are aces who are sex repulsed or sex indifferent and they still experience romantic attraction. So the question becomes, okay, so then what is romantic attraction then if that's not the dividing line, what is? How do you tell the difference between romantic and platonic attraction?  

And it's so interesting because at the end of the day, like I ask everyone this, no one can really even explain what romantic attraction is. I I know aces who are aromantic. I am not aromantic. But they're  aromantic and they're like no one can tell me what they're experiencing that I'm not experiencing. What does it even, what does it even mean? And when I was writing the book I was reading a bunch of you know psychology and sociology studies that were about like that were academics looking at this question and one academic had made a list of all of the things that, around the world cross-culturally, they had determined separated romance from you know romantic versus platonic attraction. It was things like getting jealous, and idealizing them, and like wanting to be exclusive. And one person I interviewed was like, ‘oh but I can experience all of these with friends. I can be very jealous with friends.’ And there's exceptions too right if you're poly then you don't necessarily want to be exclusive.  

So what's really interesting is there are not only aces who are aromantic but they're aces who say that they can't even tell the difference between platonic and romantic attraction, like the difference does not even compute to them. And I think that questioning that you know philosophical divide and thinking that maybe they're not mutually exclusive, but there's some blurry overlap I think that's so interesting. So that's one example and I have some others if that would be helpful. 

Sabrina: I mean no, that totally makes sense, and I think that like I love…romance is a lie, like I don't know if I could define it and yeah I mean so much of this book made me like rethink my own experiences and like things I've always taken for granted, which I really appreciated. But I guess like since we're on the subject of you know, I guess these like what a close relationship could look like. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about queer platonic relationships, which pop up in the book as sort of a form of, a very important and like integral relationship that has a lot of passion, but you know doesn't include sexuality…[Angela: yeah] or sexual attraction. 

Angela: Absolutely, and just on your point about rethinking romantic relationships. I think that that's exactly what I want people to do when they read the book, because you know one person I quoted they said something like, ‘at one point in my life I was like do I actually want a romantic relationship with you or do I just love you platonically and I just want to be validated socially, you know, by that love.’ And that's such an interesting question and I think most of us thinking back on our lives can maybe apply that to some relationship of some kind that we've had. But anyway...  

Sabrina: I mean absolutely! I feel like that's why I dated men for so long, or at least cis men, because I was like I want I want to be validated. [laughing] 
 

Angela: Right, no, absolutely. So on to queer platonic relationships. So, it's a term that was developed around 2010 I think though you'll have to check the book to to fact check. [Sabrina: It was by S.C. Smith right?] Yeah, S.C. Smith was a great journalist. So, in 2010 and it was basically an idea like a word for a new kind of relationship that did, that came out of frustration with this world that always centered romantic relationships. And so queer platonic, I think for some people they truly do feel differently inside, for their queer platonic partner than they do for their you know romantic partner or for their platonic friends, but I think for other people it is a way to get away from language and expectations.  

You know, we when we think of the word friend, I think all of us have, we've all been conditioned to understand what that is. And we think of the word romantic partner, we've been conditioned to understand what that is. And even if you think you don't, I think there's no way to get around that you know, like with a romantic partner, if I know people who said if they see the romantic partner less than like three or four times a week they're like is it not working out because there's this expectation that you see them so often. And with a friend you know, usually we don't have that define the relationship talk because that's just not part of our framework and our script for friendship the way it is for romance.  

So anyway, a queer/platonic relationship or partnership I think for many people is a way to set the own terms of how you want to relate to someone. One of the people that I interviewed they said something like, ‘for us it was about being able to have these really explicit emotionally open conversations. What am I to you? What are we to each other? When can I expect you to be there for me? What do we call, what do we call each other?’ So it wasn't so much I think about unique feeling as about creating that structure and creating that container for a relationship that's not affected by these labels of like friend and partner and best friend and sex buddy or you know whatever expectations you come up with and I think that's so powerful because I do think we're trapped by language and I do think that we overemphasize romantic relationships in a way that can be limiting and I think that this idea is so  interesting as a way to get around that. 

Sabrina: Yeah, I mean I I love the idea of sort of building your own containers so that you don't have to like miscategorize what is a really important and fundamental relationship in your life with a term like friend which like people dismiss. [Angeal: Mhm,right] Yeah and I I mean I also I guess like aside from queer platonic relationships  or you know different kinds of ace  partnerships I love the idea of doing a define the relationship talk with friendships, like that feels like every relationship should have that. I feel like I listen to a lot of advice columns where people are like you know ‘oh I'm not sure if like my friend really likes me, like they're not texting me back or like I feel like I reach out more than the other person and it just feels…’ I I guess communication is is always good, but I feel like I want to start having define the relationship talks with my friends. 

Angela: I would love that, and then, but the truth is I will confess that I don't have them with my friends. Like I talk a big talk, but I don't know if I walk the walk…but again, because I feel like I'm shy. [Sabrina” Mhm] You know like in this society, where there are many people who are still afraid to say I love you to their friends, even friends they clearly love and support. It almost feels like too much to ask to be sitting down and being like you know what what are we to each other? I think that many of us are afraid of being perceived as extra, or not chill, or too much, and when that's not built into friendships the way it is built into relationships then it's just even harder to have the emotional clarity and strength to do that. I mean we see this with romantic relationships too, right, like so often someone, usually the woman I feel like in heterorelationships, will want to have a define the relationship talk but then she'll be like ‘oh will I come off as I don't know too sure of what I want’ or I don’t know, ‘will I come off as like too pushy?’ So taking that, I think you have that dynamic even more so when it's in the friend or platonic realm. 

Sabrina: No, that that definitely makes sense. I also wonder if I would walk the walk but for now, I really like the idea. [Angela: Yeah liking the idea is the first step to walking the walk] [Both laughing] It's just like that meme of the person like walking with the bag up the hill or up the staircase. Well so one of my favorite parts of the book  was the section on consent, and you know I identify as allosexual, and it was one of the parts of the book that made me sort of step back like I I was reading a PDF but in in another world I would have closed the book contemplated my own experience. I think I just like minimized the PDF. [Angela laughs]  But it was really interesting how you talk about how like asexuality you know textures consent beyond like the traditional yes or no binary  and and the way that you write about it sort of like talks about how consent can change what like sexual rights and self-determination look like in any relationship. So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how asexuality, yeah, destabilizes these traditional binaries of consent. 

Angela: Yeah absolutely. So I think so much of the way we think about consent is predicated on the idea that everyone has this baseline of sexual desire. And there's also this idea that you know if if I don't want to have sex with a stranger at a bar that's totally fine. I can say no to strangers every day for the rest of my life. But can I say no to my spouse every day for the rest of my life? There really is this idea that you know, entering a relationship means giving up a measure of consent, and I think some of that comes from the idea that okay, everyone is sexual so if you love your partner and you're a sexual person why would you say no for no reason?  

You know, aces talk about the good enough reason, it feels like you need to have some kind of excuse like I'm sick or you're mean you can't just say I don't want to, because that doesn't compute it's like if why would you just not want to? So these assumptions are really embedded to how we think about consent, and I think aces argue, and I completely agree that if we think that no one is entitled like no strangers entitled to sex even if they're super attractive and they're Gandhi levels of moral like they're not entitled because it's you know your body and I think that should be extended to relationships too, you know. If we believe that for strangers, we should believe that for partners, and of course partners have the right to prioritize their own you know sexual needs and I completely respect that. But I think it's really important to you know that sexual rights don't change, or sexual rights are not given up when you enter a relationship, and right now so often they are, and right now so often the lower desire partner is seen as the problem and they need to fix it even though the problem isn't low desire if the problem is incompatibility and the compatibility you know it takes two to tango, takes two to be incompatible. So, it's, it's not just one person's problem it's a shared problem.  

But going back to the like you know the binaries of consent, we really think about like yes and no, or like yes means yes or no means no. But it's not yes or no right, because there's a huge spectrum of sexual experiences that are partially consensual and also partially coerced. And I think we need to think about that. And also one problem I have with this yes means yes kind of enthusiastic consent idea is that if you make enthusiastic consent the only like real consent then it kind of implies that many aces who don't or can't give enthusiastic consent can't consent at all. In reality, we should be thinking about levels of willingness. And Emily Nagoski, who's a sex researcher and writer has this great framework where she talks about enthusiastic consent, and willing consent, and unwilling consent. And I think that's so much more subtle and so much more useful than being like yes or no and then you're like bound and locked into what you said once at the beginning of an encounter. 

Sabrina: Absolutely yeah. I mean, I I found that model really helpful. Yeah well, so something else I I wanted to ask is sort of about the, the ethics of writing this book and who your audience was because something that you know was thrown a lot around is you know, it's not the job of people of color to educate white people. You know it's it's not their job to yeah explain it to people who oppress them or misunderstand them. So, I was wondering like is it your job to educate allosexuals about the ace community? 

Angela: I don't think it's my job to educate allosexuals. I don't think it's any ace person's job to educate allosexuals, but I do think that if someone doesn't do it, I'm not sure aces will educate themselves. So, for me, it's kind of like a matter of pragmatism and I do think about this a lot. You know, for me, it's, it's like am I like, how do I write this book in a way that is explaining to aces, sorry, explaining to allos but not pandering to allos, and for me a lot of it is like the validity of asexuality is not up for debate.  

What I realized doing interviews that I have this kind of mental tic in which someone will like ask me a question about an argument and then I'll kind of explain what the other side thinks to try to be charitable, and then go into my argument for why they're wrong. And I realized I just stopped doing that because I think it gets taken out of context. But that's not what I did for this book, like I really started from the thought that like the validity of asexuality, the value of asexuality is not up for debate. But as for the question of you know, ‘is it my job to educate.’ No, but I think many people's lives, you know, people of any orientation would be better if they understood more. And so, I'm glad to be trying to help spread that. 

Sabrina: No absolutely, and I mean it feels so important that a book like this is written from someone from the ace community. Yeah and and it is not your job, but I'm very happy that you wrote the book. Well something else that I wanted to ask I guess is you know there as you mentioned earlier like when you were searching for books that could sort of explain or talk more about ace experiences, it you know you you didn't find that many.  And so, you tried to sort of fill that gap but no one book can be exhaustive. So, I wanted to ask like what it's like to sort of have that pressure, and if you were afraid of any kind of criticism from the ace community. 

Angela: Yes, I am and was, and that pressure is terrible. And you know the thing about me is that you know I was talking to someone about this, I just worry a lot about things I can't control. [Sabrina: Same] And you know there's no way I can, there's no way I could have had a book that represents all the ace community. No but like even if the book was a thousand pages long, I couldn't do that even if there were ten books, I couldn't do that because it's just so diverse. But of course you know, and I think I said pretty clear like this book is not representative, I said it on the first page, it was you know the author's note this book is not representative, but this is I did the best I could and we should have more. But despite that you know I do think that people will see it and maybe think this doesn't represent my experience, and that's f, and that's fair. But I think we should just be thinking structurally right you know instead of putting all the pressure on to one person any person why is it that we don't have more books about other parts of the ace spectrum. Why is it that we don't have a book about aromanticism, and you know I'm a journalist, you're a journalist and I think both of us you know, you have a book coming out, so I think both of us know a little bit about publishing. A lot of it are these structural issues. I've talked to people, writers who said the agents tell them you know asexuality doesn't sell. Aromanticism doesn't sell. I think most people in the publishing industry, gatekeepers, I'm pretty sure are allos and so they have a very narrow and often unimaginative idea of what ace or a-ro content could mean.   

So just for one example, I recently published a story in the Atlantic, which was based partly off the last chapter about three-parent families you know, an ace man who is also aromantic, and who is in a three-person like unit, and is the father to someone who he’s not the biological father too, and he has to do a three-pin adoption, and it's so interesting and the story did super well. So, I think it showed that there's a lot of hunger for these ideas you know, base ideas of how to connect beyond the traditional romantic structure. How to build family beyond the traditional romantic structure, but oftentimes gatekeepers aren't appreciating that or seeing that and therefore one book about asexuality sells and then that book has to be everything to everyone. And then I'm sitting here you know or I'm not able to sleep at night so really we should be like thinking about structural change, you know, there need to be more books and there's so many books that should be written that I am not qualified to write and other people would be. 

Sabrina: Yeah, I mean well, hopefully your book sort of opens the gates you know, I feel like once one book sells well like a lot of there's like a you know an appetite for them. And also, everyone should read Angela's story in the Atlantic it's really good. And it also just yeah it does another thing about you know I think you called it like building these containers that don't exist and trying to create and like imagine different ways to live, and and parent, and love. Yeah, I really loved it. I guess I mean I I wanted to ask  what you know some questions about asexuality are that are still being discussed you know you talk about acephobia and a-shame and sort of the difficulty or confusion of what it means to separate like having a low libido from being asexual. 

Angela: Yeah so I think there's just huge swaths of the community that don't get enough attention, and I mean I really think, I'm pretty sure I'm right, I really think there's just a lot more ace people in the world than we think there are, but they just don't know they’re ace because it's so hidden. And so more and more like just since I published the book people will write to me, and some people will be aces being like ‘thank you for the book’, and some people will be like ‘I’ve realized that I'm ace and this is so interesting to me.’  

So, one of those populations is older people. You know I've started hearing from people who were married, and had children, and realized they were ace. And older people often feel like they don't belong in the ace community, or that they're overlooked and I I think they are, not I hope not because of explicit ageism, but just because many aces tend to be on the younger side because so much of it is online and you know that's…I guess younger people are more online so, I think there's so much richness in you know the experiences of older aces and what that could teach us. There's so much richness in thinking about asexuality and all sexualities in this fluid way, you know I think that the way we tend to think about sexualities is that they are they are rigid and they are set and that's why it is a pejorative to say that someone has a phase or you know they're not really bisexual or you know gay or ace and I don't think that's helpful and I think that realistically people's sexuality changed a lot throughout their lives, and when asexuality was first being studied from a scientific perspective, it was always described as like this lifelong life lack of sexual attraction, and now I think we're starting to move away from that and so what does that mean for understanding the ace community and ace identity and what does that mean for how we understand ourselves and and make sense of ourselves.  

So, I think those are some interesting ones and also there's still so much interesting stuff to think about when it comes to aromanticism and how that intersects. There are people who are aromantic and not asexual there's so much interesting stuff about the medicalization of sex and you know all these efforts to make and find libido boosting drugs. So, there's so much richness out there. And I think really like so many of these are not just ace issues right, like these questions of sexual fluidity. How much of a libido you should have etc. They're issues for everyone, it's just there's a different perspective being offered. 

Sabrina: Absolutely, I mean one of the like scariest parts of the book I think was you know the the parts that talked about these drugs that are marketed to sort of like fix a low libido or something that yeah would be prescribed to people oftentimes if the other person and in you know in the relationship who had a higher drive you know…yeah it was very scary and I feel like I'm very pro abolish the phrase ‘just a phase.’ 

Angela: Yeah, yeah, yeah what's wrong with exploring and changing you know, I think all of us are always exploring and changing so…and you know I interviewed someone who identified as asexual and was heavily sex repulsed and later they, you know, they decided, or they found out that they experienced sexual attraction toward one person, their girlfriend, and now they identify as demisexual, and their sexuality wasn't a phase or fake they just, you know, they evolved. So, I think that's a good way of thinking about things. 

Sabrina: Absolutely. I wanted to ask you know what else still needs to be done in your eyes in terms of ace activism, and what you would imagine a world without compulsory sexuality would look like? 
 
Angela: Yeah…so I always think about something that the professor Christina Gupta wrote, which is talking about how you know getting rid of compulsory sexuality isn't about desexualizing everything, though  personally I think much of advertising should be desexualized. But you know it's not about like desexualizing everything. It's about challenging, the I think, the phrase something like ‘unearned privileges’ that sexual people have.  

So, for example on the level of law, one thing I write about in the book is how, and this is not necessarily about asexuality, it's maybe more about aromanticism. But I read about how of course you can give health insurance to a random person that you marry, but you can't give health insurance to your best friend, or like your parent, or your sibling. So, there's all these laws that privilege like romantic and sexual love above other types of love and if those change, I think that would be good for society.  

We talk about medicalization. I think that understanding, you know, sexuality as a spectrum and not saying that low libido, or low sexual desire, or no sexual attraction, is wrong. That is an important point of activism. I'm a staunch feminist, but I think some parts of sex positive feminism really, or some messages from sex positive feminism have mutated into this idea that like the more feminist you are the more sex you have, the more sex you have the more feminist you are, which I don't think ... You know it's become this idea that if you aren’t interested in sex it has to be because of the patriarchy, or it has to be because you're repressed, and sometimes people just aren't interested in sex because people are different. So, like those kinds of pressures I think getting rid of them would be good.  

And I think I really want to emphasize that it's so intersectional, you know like sexual freedom for like I think I read this at the end, you know that a world that's welcome to aces it's it can't be compatible with rape culture, it can't be compatible transphobia, there's trans aces, there's aces of color. You know it's there's so many intersections across other parts of the queer umbrella and just identity in general. 

Sabrina: Absolutely, yeah, I really want to live in that world, and I hope that we can all work toward it. [Angela: yeah] I those are all the serious questions, but I had some fun ones that hopefully you can squeeze in. You know Ace involves so many experience, or so many interviews and anecdotes from different sources, lives and and people's experiences but I know that books can never contain everything that you want it to, so I was curious if there was anything, you know particularly memorable, like an interview or like a nugget of fact that you had to cut out of the book? 
 
Angela: Well, there was one that I cut out that I now wish I hadn't cut out, because I use it all the time when I'm just talking to people. And it's kind of to me it's like the best example of the way in which sexuality is so performative, and the way in which we don't know what other people are thinking. So, it's a story of someone that I interviewed who grew up in small town Oklahoma. Someone that was very religious and early on she realized, well she became atheist. And she and her friends were atheists and so they would all go to church and know they would be praying or you know, whatever they'd be doing [Sabrina: As one does] [Both laugh] Yes, as one does yeah, they'd be going through the motions, but like making eyes at each other being like ‘we have to do this but we know it's we think it's stupid’.  

And then later on she realized the same was true for her and sexuality. Like she was always the first person to like be like, ‘I’d tap that’ or you know like joke about someone's like butt or like make fun of a naked Greek statue. But she thought that it was just all a joke in the same way that everyone was joking, and they all thought sexuality was stupid. So then when her best friend had sex (and they're in their teens at this point). So, when her best friend had sex, this girl was like, ‘h did it hurt? Was it horrible? Did you hate it?’ And her friend was like, ‘well like this was something that I wanted.’  

And it was the first time that this person was like, ‘oh like I thought it was all a big joke, but some people actually want to have sex.’ And I think that's such a good like you know example, because I think it's very close to what my example was, because growing up I always would talk about like who do I think is hot and who I think is not hot and you know who I was [Sabrina: The binary] yeah the binary. [Both laugh]  

I knew who I would sleep with, and who I wouldn't sleep with. And I don't think I realized, I didn't think that everyone else was like joking, but I don't think I realized that we were just using the words differently like when I said hot I was like for me it was like beautiful, like they have nice skin, and like a very defined jawline. And then they were like horny you know like their like experience is different. And I think that's something that was a light bulb moment for me and for a lot of aces that I interviewed. 

Sabrina: Mm…I mean I'm really happy that you shared that anecdote because it it is super helpful and hopefully yeah, it'll it'll become something one day or maybe just you know like a helpful anecdote at panels. Well you know Ace came out but and I you know I in publishing you write your book and then you have to wait like a lot of months before it comes out, so I wanted to ask if you were working on any other creative projects whether about asexuality or non like unrelated projects that you've been working on.   

Angela: There is one anthology that's supposed to come out, I don't even know when maybe 2022, maybe 2021 [Sabrina: Oh, I saw that!] Yeah, it's so it's the something, maybe the 50th anniversary of Helen Gurley Brown's book Sex and the Single Girl, which was this enormously influential book about exactly what the title suggests. And I'm gonna have an essay in there about it, and I haven't written it yet, but I think that what I'm gonna write it about is you know the relationship between like asexuality and aromanticism and you know beauty and power, because you know so often physically attractive aces are told things like, ‘oh it's a shame you're so like your ace because you're so beautiful’ and if you look beneath that you're like wait a minute why is it a shame? Like why I can’t just be beautiful because I'm beautiful. My beauty is not to be enjoyed by you.  

And I think it explores a little bit of the fact that for me, even though I'm ace I've never had an ace partner, but for a long time I didn't want an ace partner because even though I didn't experience sexual attraction, I wanted to be sexually desired by others because it felt like a form of power, and it felt like a form of power that as a woman I'm socialized to believe that I'm supposed to be able to have. And it felt, it felt primal you know like it felt primal, and like uncontrolled and lustful in a way that felt more safe to me than you know other forms of of love I think. And so, this theoretical essay which, I will finish and write in case the editors are watching this, will will be forthcoming, but I think most of my other projects are going to be science journalism. I miss that and I want to go back to that. 

Sabrina: And what topics do you write about in science journalism? 

Angela: I do a lot of stuff on artificial intelligence, so maybe it's more like technology journalism, but I'm interested in like tech ethics. You know stuff like what's going to happen with deep fakes, the surveillance day is coming for us ... 

Sabrina: It is! [Angela: Yeah] Yeah amazing! Well something that I like, a very small nugget that I noticed in the book, was that you mentioned that you know, you had this goal to run a half marathon, which is daunting to me. And you talk about like sort of interrogating why you wanted to run a half marathon is a helpful way of sort of modeling how you would interrogate like you know what you really want when it comes to sex. And by the end of the book you did not run a half marathon. They're very difficult to train for but last week you actually did run a half marathon in 92 percent humidity which sounded unpleasant, but I wanted to ask what that experience was like. 

Angela: Well the experience was horrible [Both laugh] but thank you for reminding me that I had written about that in the book, because as you mentioned you know you write the book and it's like a year it comes out so I actually had forgotten that particular part. Yeah it's interesting because at the like I use that as an example of like something that I didn't really want to do, and then I guess you know since then obviously, I've taken up running and I decided that it was something that I wanted to do, and I think it was just something that I thought was difficult to do, and kind of impressive and I don't know if those are the best reasons to do something but those were my honest reasons for completing the half marathon despite being frankly severely under-trained and I didn't eat anything beforehand. So, it just goes to show that we are always evolving you know and the version of what I thought in the book is like two years old by this point. So yeah, we all change we're all fluid.  

Sabrina: Absolutely. Was there, did you like decide that day to run it, or did you plan it ahead of time.   

Angela: I decided like the night before that I was going to do it because I was like I want to do it and I'm eating a lot of pasta, and then the next morning I was kind of like, well I've eaten all this pasta like I don't want to like waste the carbs that I ate the night before and like the good sleep that I got. So it was interesting because you know…the I don't remember it anymore because it was so terrible like the like… four miles of it were good and then like the last three miles I was like I I can't go on, which actually is similar to the process of writing the book, you know like I truly do not remember much of the process anymore  because it was such a time deadline. I think you know this, but, I wrote the book basically on nights and weekends while holding down a full-time job in journalism, and I think about that a lot in a kind of wistful way, like how would the book be different if I had more time and resources. And I think it's good for what I was able to do, but because of that enormous deadline rush, truly when I think back I it's like a blank in my mind. 

Sabrina: Yeah, I mean you know thinking about it, writing a book on nights and weekends while holding a full-time job in journalism is actually much harder maybe than running a half marathon. [Angela laughs] So I'm very impressed. [Angela: I think it was harder!] Yeah, I'm really impressed that you did both. Amazing, well that was the final question, and I just wanted to thank you again Angela for your time, both in the care and thought that you put into this book, and also into this conversation. I really appreciate it.  
 
Angela: Yeah, thank you so much for doing this. This was fun. Good to see you again, and of course thank you to everyone who came. I'm honored and delighted. 

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities. 
 
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