Factually! with Adam Conover - Understanding Asexuality with Angela Chen

Episode Date: December 9, 2020

This week, journalist and author Angela Chen answers every question you have about asexuality. She and Adam discuss the difference between asexuality and aromanticism, explore how aces fit into the LGBTQ+ spectrum, share how pop-culture has influenced the growth of the ace community, and differentiate between asexuality and sexual dysfunction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello everyone, welcome to Factually. My name is Adam Conover, and this week I'm doing an interview with a writer named Angela Chen. She published a wonderful book called Ace, What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. And as you'll hear in our conversation, she does an amazing job explaining what asexuality is, how it works, and why it's something we ought to understand. how it works, and why it's something we ought to understand. Now, I think it's just inherently fascinating to learn about and understand the incredible diversity of humanity when it comes to things like gender and sexuality. There are just so many ways to be a human.

It's the coolest thing ever. And I feel that we have all benefited massively from the movements that have publicized and normalized those pieces of sexual diversity. But at the same time, I'm also aware that some people are put off by that. You know, they're like, well, why are you going to tell me about how different everybody is? We're in this bizarre situation where, you know, people will agree with the statement that I support rights of sexual minorities to live their lives without discrimination, but they'll still be kind of pissed off when they need to learn somebody's pronouns. You know, to which I say,

you know, get over yourself. Just learn the pronoun. It's not that hard. People who are mad about pronouns literally spend more time discussing them than people who just use them. So if you just, you know, use this one little syllable word, you can stop worrying about and go about your day. You know what I mean? Keep it simple for yourself, my God. But look, the fact remains that people are confused and concerned about the proliferation of new language and new labels that we have for describing this diversity. And here's the thing, I'm a neophyte on these issues. I'm not the person who should be laying down the law

about this to anybody. That's why we've got wonderful experts on this show to help do it for us. But I do wanna let you know how I think about language, because one of the things I think a lot of people misunderstand is that these labels are not meant to be mandates or prescriptive. Labels like these are tools, tools that we use to understand the majestic diversity of human experience and that we would be impoverished if we didn't have. of human experience and that we would be impoverished if we didn't have. Because the fact is, gay people, straight people, ace people, trans people have always existed. They've always been a part of human society. These people are real. They've always been around. But our societies simply haven't always had words for those identities. And so people haven't known that

they existed in a way that allowed them to talk about it, that allowed them to have conversations about what these things are and what they mean. But here's the thing. Many societies have had them for hundreds or even thousands of years. In many Native American cultures, there's an identity called two-spirit. The spirit can either be male, female, or intersex, but either way, they socially occupy their own gender category and their place in society. And this is a word with a long, long history.

Likewise, on the Indian subcontinent, there's a long-running tradition of the Hidra, which is similar to trans, and again, is an old, old word and social category. Now, the existence of these categories help people in those societies make sense of themselves, right? How's them go, oh, wait, I'm this. There's a category in my society for what I am. Aha, I can adopt that and be that. And it also helps other people in that culture, in that society, understand them. Having a word for it is simply a basic way of saying, hey, this is a type of humanity that exists so that you can go on and have a further conversation about it, interrogate what it means, and have a conversation with the person in your life who identifies with it. By contrast, if you don't have that word,

you can't even begin to have that conversation. So the way I look at all this new language around sexual identity that is permeating our society is as a gift because it allows us to have a deeper conversation than we were able to before. And if those words didn't exist, we would be likewise impoverished. We would be unable to talk about these things or learn about them. So that's the spirit in which I'm entering into this interview. And I hope that you'll join me because the truth is that asexuality is a very poorly understood phenomenon in our culture, and it's one that I certainly didn't understand very well before I had this conversation. So I'm really excited for you to hear it. Angela is an incredibly

clear and thoughtful communicator on this issue, and I know you're going to learn a lot and really enjoy it. So please welcome, without further ado, the writer, Angela Chen. Angela, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me on. So let's just start absolute basics. I'm going to play the part of the ignorant. I am an ignorant person, but I want let's start from zero. What is asexuality? You know, that is so hard to answer. I'm sorry. I'm going to you know, and that's why we're having this conversation conversation because I can't just tell you the simple definition, but let's just go with the simple definition first. Right. So in a sexual person, it means you don't experience sexual attraction. So when I say that, like what comes into your mind, like, what do you think it means when

someone doesn't experience sexual attraction? Uh, I guess I would, I would think about the emotion of physical arousal and the physical response that one has or that I experience. I would say they probably don't experience that. They don't get horny is what I would say. Yes and no. Okay, good. Because I'm embarrassed even saying that because I said that and I'm like, that's so stupid. No, no, no. I totally get it. And you're not far off. I but it is a little bit different. I think the way I would put it is that if people don't get horny for other people.

So there's actually a difference between libido and sexual attraction. So libido is kind of like you just want to have an orgasm and you have that feeling like of wanting sexual release. And you can have that when no one else is around. Like sometimes people just get horny and it's not about. I've done this before. Yes. Yes. Most people have.

Right. And so ace people can have a libido. Some do. Some don't. But some ace people masturbate, for example, and they do sometimes want basically to have an orgasm. But sexual attraction is basically horniness directed toward an object, toward a person. So even if you maybe sometimes want to masturbate, ace people don't feel sexually attracted to other people. You know, I have people who are not ace, allo, and they'll be like, oh, like I just saw that person and immediately want to have sex with them. And I'm just like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like that just does not compute for me. But,

and here's the key thing. A lot of ace people still have sex because there's so many reasons to have sex that are not related to just being sexually attracted to people, right? Like this is not an ace thing. It's like people have sex because they're bored. You have sex because you want to feel sexy. You have sex because you're feeling insecure and like, you know, make you feel better about your body. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's so hard to understand asexuality. One, it's like, why would you call people who have sex asexual? But two, for a lot of people, we don't realize that there's so many emotional reasons to have sex. And so we think we're not asexual when maybe we are. Does that make sense? I know I threw a lot there. Yeah, no, it does. But what you're describing is a very subtle thing. Like another reason to have

sex might be to please someone else. Because you know that that person wants to have sex and you want that person to be happy and to feel something that they want to feel. So what you're describing is it seems like a very subtle thing in a way, or we have to get really close on the definition of it. And it strikes me as something that might be hard to even identify in oneself. I know you've written about your personal experience with that. I wonder if you could share that with us. Yeah, absolutely. So I do want to say that there are people who are asexual who are sex repulsed. So they're the ones who are like, I always knew I was different. I was not interested

in sex. It was just something that I knew that I didn't want to do. And I totally get that. But that wasn't the case for me. I actually came across the definition of asexuality sometime in my teens, the correct definition. And I was like, okay, great. And I just never thought about it again. It didn't make me think that I was asexual. I hadn't had sex yet when I was 14, but I had crushes on people. I had a physical type. I could talk with my friends about who I thought was cute. I assumed that one day I was going to have sex. It seemed interesting to me. So how could it be that I was asexual? And all of that is like, I've now realized all of that is different from what sexual attraction is. But because I could just essentially blend in and use language the same way and talk about hotness the same way, it actually hid my own

asexuality from me. And you're right. That's, it's so subtle because sex is so bound up with so many other things. And we don't talk about it in that, in like bodily specific ways that's necessary for people to understand, oh, what actually is attraction? Am I feeling sexual attraction? Am I feeling just emotional attraction? It's all so nuanced. Now, I've got a lot that I want you to break apart and thank you for indulging me in that. But I want to ask first, you said you talked about people that you found cute. And so could you break apart how that's different from sexual attraction? Because to me, that sounds like the same thing. Like, oh, that person's cute. When I say that, it means I want

to have sex with them. Right. And I mean, I think a lot of what I read about my book is about language because we use words in so many different ways. We don't realize we're using them in different ways. So ACEs basically, we talk about sexual attraction and they talk about aesthetic attraction, which is basically you find someone attractive. We don't want to sleep with them. So the example I always give is maybe you are a straight woman and you think that like Gigi Hadid is more beautiful looking than Bella Hadid. You know, you can you can be so straight and have a type of someone your own gender and not want to sleep with any of them. But you can be like, oh, I prefer redheads anyway. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. I find George Clooney to be the most attractive movie star, male movie star.

I love to look at George Clooney. I like to go see a movie with George Clooney in it because I get to look at him. But I also know I don't want to have sex with George Clooney. I'm not attracted to George Clooney in that in that way. But I have an aesthetic appreciation. Is that sort of what you mean? Yeah, exactly. And I think that's, you know, again, going back to language, like, I think we don't talk about things so specifically. And so it's like, oh, if I have a type, if people look different from me, and I can tell who's cute and who's not, then how could I be asexual? Yeah. Well, so how did you come to that realization for yourself? You know, to make a long story short, essentially, I was in my first relationship in my 20s. My then partner wanted to be in an open relationship. And I was so insecure about it. And I, the insecurity made me really mean, which I'm not proud of. And just for years afterward, I was like, Okay, why was I so mean? And part of the reason is because I was, you know,

it's because I was jealous, right? And I was like 22. And these are reasons have nothing to do with sexuality. But one day after having these conversations about like, what sexuality is and what he felt, I realized it was because I didn't have personal experience of sexuality. So I only wanted to sleep with someone after I was in love with them. And after I was ready to have to change my life for them. So when he was like, oh, let's have an open relationship. Oh, everyone's attracted to everyone else all the time. Oh, it's so normal. I was basically imagining that. And, you know, I think that would make someone so much more jealous than being like, oh, they're just they just want to sleep with someone, you know, because you were, you sort of didn't understand what he wanted. So you were projecting a different sort of, like him making that request meant something different to you potentially than it did to him.

Exactly. It meant something totally different, but I didn't even know that it was different. Like he was like, oh, I want to have sex with other people sometimes because we're going to be in a long distance relationship. And I was like, oh, he's just going to fall in love with all of them because that was my experience. Like that to me, like sex and love were really the same thing, which sounds so naive. But once I realized like, oh, our experiences are fundamentally different. I've never experienced this kind of sexual attraction that he talks about.

That was when I started thinking more about asexuality and realizing that I was ace. That was when I started thinking more about asexuality and realizing that I was ace. Yeah. And you write about the experience of still wanting to be loved and wanting to be needed and having all of those emotions that one has about relationships. Can you just speak about that division at all as well? Just again, help us separate out those pieces. Yeah, absolutely. So asexual doesn't mean you don't want relationships. There are some people who are aromantic and they aren't interested in dating or romantic relationships, but there are some people who are asexual and they're heteroromantic. So they're interested in romantic relationships with this, you know, the opposite gender, basically sexual orientation, just swap out the sexual part for the romantic part. And so I think that many, many aces do want romantic relationships. And there's this common misconception that if you're asexual, you're also aromantic because we just conflate the two so closely. Well, let's talk a little bit more about what makes it so difficult to recognize this or that it took you a while to figure it out. And is that because of,

you know, the assumptions that our culture has around sexuality, that everyone is sexual in this specific way? Yeah, I think there's two parts of this. One is that took me a while to figure this out because of everything that we said, the way that we talk in generalizations about what attraction is, the way that we blend different kinds of attractions, the way that you can have and enjoy sex for reasons other than sexual attraction. But it took me a while to accept this once I figured I was ace

because of all of these stereotypes you have about people who are asexual. I think, especially in certain, you know, cultural pockets, sex is really conflated with passion and virility and being masculine and being a liberated feminist. And so there's that question that, oh, if you don't experience sexual attraction, then you're boring or you're frigid. Maybe you're sexually repressed by the patriarchy. boring or you're frigid. Maybe you're sexually repressed by the patriarchy. Maybe there's something wrong with you. You know, I've talked to a lot of aces who have been in therapy and then their therapist insisted they needed to like work on some trauma that made them asexual

or who are prescribed hormones with the idea that this was some kind of, you know, medical disorder. I, there's someone I talked to who actually got blood tests in high school because she was convinced that before she knew about asexuality, she was convinced she was dying because in sex ed, they were like, oh, this happens to everyone. Everyone's gonna get horny. And she was like, oh, I must have cancer. Like there's so many, you know, there's so many conditions where it's like the side effect, you know, is like lack of sexual attraction. She was like, something is wrong with me. You know, a lot of aces really talk about feeling alienated and broken because of the assumption that all normal people want, want sex, whether they actually have

sex, you know, it's wanting it that often makes you normal and exciting and, you know, able to have a passionate life. Yeah. It's, uh, it's one of those things where, and I'm, you know, really, I apologize if I'm speaking out of my depth, but, you know, the category, for instance, of homosexuality that we have in our society is at the very least a bucket that we had to put people in. For much of our history, it was an unfairly maligned and sort of taboo bucket, but it was something that people knew existed, or at least many, many people knew existed. But this is an example of something

where a lot of people just don't have the bucket at all, or culturally we don't, like we lack the language in somewhere, or not always the language, but just the conceptual framework and that's sort of a a different problem yeah that's that's almost a little trickier to get around because the how many times have you had to have the conversation that the first seven minutes of this podcast right where i was just like okay but what's the difference between this and this

and what's the difference between that and that And you have to like build this scaffolding before you can even, you know, people can understand what you're talking about. So often. And that's totally it's invisible. So people don't know that exists and they think that there's just something wrong with them, whether it's a medical issue or whether it's because of some trauma that they buried, which isn't to say that you can't be asexual if, you know, those are the case. And the other part of it is that I think the word is just misleading. You know, if I were, if I were younger and if asexual was an option on those surveys that you take, which most of the time it isn't, but if it was, I would never have put that I was asexual, you know, like it's kind of what I was saying. Like if I'm someone who is not repulsed by sex, how would, why would I think

of myself that way? And I think that's why so many of the numbers on how many people are asexual are so flawed because people don't know what it means. And, you know, even since publishing my book, people have reached out to me and be like, oh, I thought I knew what it meant. You know, I'm part of the queer community and I'm, you know, pretty up on this kind of, you know, conversation, but this is the first time I've seen it described this way. Maybe I am ace. So every time people are always like, oh, how many ace people are there? And I'm like, I can tell you the official numbers, but I can guarantee it's much higher. Just as one example, I have a friend who realized she was asexual

because she was reporting a story about how the asexual community was responding to an ace character on BoJack. That is so meta, but it just shows thatual community was responding to an ace character on BoJack. That is so meta, but it just shows that, you know, BoJack Horseman has an ace character like that character itself raised the number of ace people there are in the world. Wow. That's amazing. My friend Raphael created that show. I'll have to tell him that. I mean, he's probably heard it already. But that's amazing. Let's talk about the community aspect of it. How long has there been something that you would call the asexual community? And I'm really curious about this definition, right?

That you said, you know, people come to you and say, oh, I didn't know what it meant. Does the definition, is the community coming together sort of creating a definition in a way like how does that process work yeah so you know there have been people who we would today call asexual for a long time it's not like of course we invented asexuality but the modern like actual movement began in the early 2000s and that's and it started on a listserv so it's very much you know story of the power of the internet to bring people together to talk about their experiences. And that definition I gave, you know, not experiencing sexual attraction is kind of an early definition that these people in 2000s, these activists built together because you can totally see asexuality meaning something else. You can see

asexuality being tied more to behavior. You can see the word maybe meaning like being sex repulsed, but it was really focused on attraction because that's the way that other sexual orientations are, right? You know, being homosexual, being heterosexual, they're tied to sexual attraction. So being asexual, it sounded like it made sense because it was also tied to sexual attraction. But then it becomes this weird thing because ace people have to explain what sexual attraction is, even though they've never experienced it. And then they have to be like, I don't experience this, but it's also OK. There's nothing wrong with me. So it just gets complicated, you know.

But absolutely, like the early community, you know, was very much facilitated by the power of the Internet, which is good and bad. It's good because it helped create a community i think it's bad or rather the downsides are that sometimes people unfairly are like it's an internet orientation it's you know i look down on it which of course isn't fair yeah and it's a messy difficult process uh for you know in those, figuring out what those what those definitions are. Yeah. Is there how is the asexual community situated, would you say, within the larger queer community? I fully believe that aces are queer and, you know, the LGBTQIA, the A stands for ace. But I think that my opinion aside, there's still questions about this. And some people are like, well, you're not visible in the same way that, you know, other members of the queer community are.

Is there a float at the Pride Parade? There has been. You know, there's Ace Pride and, you know, aces have been integrated into World Pride and all of that. But there is this sense that our struggle or our activism is different. And it is different. But I think aces are not heterosexual. Even if you're heteroromantic, you are not heterosexual. And you still feel all

of these pressures to be sexual. You still feel all of these you know, it's in the air. You have all of these stereotypes, all of these misconceptions. Consent can be really tricky to navigate if you're ace. And so aces are queer. We are outside that heterosexual norm. You said that you believe we know how many aces there are, or at least on a survey. What are those numbers and where do they come from? So I think the most common number is about 1%. And this is from this 2004 study of men in Britain.

And there are other surveys, I think, that have shown anywhere from 1% to 6%. Recently, the Trevor Project found that about 10% of LGBT youth say that they identify as on the A spectrum. So there's been a few studies, but like I said, most of them have the same kind of methodological issues where people don't really even understand what asexuality is. So you think so one percent of the entire population based on these studies. But because there may be people or there almost certainly are people out there saying, well, I'm not going to check the box. But, you know, it's because they the definition is not clear to them. You think the number must be higher? Right them. You think the number must be higher. Right. I definitely think the number must be higher. Well, let's talk a little bit about the state of scientific research on asexuality.

I know you're a you're a journalist on this subject. What what is the research that has been done? Is this a topic that science has been investigating? This is a topic that scientists have been investigating. that science has been investigating? This is a topic that scientists have been investigating. And I just want to say there's a difference between research on asexuality and research on desire disorders.

Like, you know, there's a long history of research into, you know, why aren't people horny enough? And, you know, it comes at it from a perspective of thinking that as a problem. But talking specifically about research on asexuality, there has been some, though there's not a lot. And again, there's also this challenge in doing this research because asexuality is so broad. So you have people who are celibate.

You have people who are not celibate. You have people who are sexual pulse. You have people who have a lot of sex. And then I think that makes it hard for scientists because it's like if you include all of them in the diverse experience, then is this somehow confusing or muddying your results? So I think that's like an important thing to think about. But, you know, I think one of the really important studies showed that asexuality is not a, is not a sexual dysfunction. Essentially what they did is that they had some self-identified ace women and self-identified non-ace aloe women.

And, you know, they showed them erotic imagery and then they asked them, you know, how much, you know, how attracted did you feel? And they also did measurements of vaginal arousal. And the results were basically the same. So it's not like people who are ace have trouble getting sexually aroused. Anecdotally, talking to a lot of ace men, most don't seem to have problems with getting erections. They don't have problems with erectile dysfunction. So I think that's one thing that's really interesting to me. In terms of demographics, I think one thing that's really interesting is that the ace

community is really diverse in terms of gender, gender presentation. A lot of the ace community is trans or non-binary. A lot of the ace community is, um, is neuroatypical as well. And what's also interesting is, as I mentioned, a lot of aces do masturbate and there've been some studies on this and a lot of aces have sexual fantasies and a lot of aces are interested in BDSM and kink as well. So a lot of the things that we think about as just really sexual things that are totally tied to sexual attraction, aces actually also experience. That's really fascinating. But tying that into what you were saying about trans folks, people on the neurodiversity or who identify, I suppose, as neurodiverse is there's I feel a broader story in our society where attributes that were previously categorized as disorders, we are seeing more as differences between people that are value neutral and differences that should be accommodated and or embraced. And I wonder if you could speak to that specifically vis-a-vis asexuality. That's absolutely true. So in the DSM, which is essentially the big manual psychiatric disorders, there has long been a disorder that essentially

sounds like asexuality. You know, right now they call it hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and they have male and female forms. And so for a long time, asexuality or that experience has been seen as a disorder, has been seen as something that is a deviation, something that needs to be fixed in the same way that homosexuality was also once in the DSM and wasn't dropped until the 1980s or so. And now I think definitely there is more and more acceptance that having low desire or not experiencing sexual attraction, it's not necessarily a disorder. It's not necessarily something that needs to be fixed. It's not inherently something wrong with you. It's just another form of human variation.

You know, some people have very high sex drives and experience a lot of sexual attraction. Some people are just different. And I think that kind of acceptance is great. Now, there obviously is still such a thing as sexual dysfunction, right? Or is there a version of this disorder that you mentioned, hypoactive? I forget the rest of it. But where for some folks, that is a problem that they have in their lives. Oh, my gosh, I wish I felt this way. Or there's, you know, where they experience something that they would like to have fixed.

That is there is there a division that we can draw there? Or how do you think about that? The way I think about it is really sociological. You know, people ask me this all the time, you know, how do I know, like, what is the boundary between asexuality as an identity and between me having this kind of disorder? And that's a much better way to put what I was asking. Thank you. Yeah. And for me, to me, it's like, how do you see yourself? And what does this quote unquote disorder mean to you? Because a lot of people who now identify as asexual were once people who has some kind of, you know, desire disorder, not sexual dysfunction, because that's different. That's about arousal, but just like a desire issue. And so for me, I think it's all about how do you how do you see that? Because do you see this as a problem? Do you see this as something that needs to be fixed or do you see this as a form of human variation? So I think these are social categories, right? And you can

flip between one and the other depending on your attitude. Another thing I want to mention is that actually DSM, they have two exceptions. So one, they talk about distress. So kind of they basically say, oh, if you're distressed by, you know, your lack of sexual attraction, then you have this disorder. If you're not, maybe you're asexual. But that doesn't make sense because you can be asexual distressed about it, not because it's a disorder, but because I mean, just because there's prejudice. Yeah. Right. Like you can be gay and have mental health problems, not because being gay is that so on. And have mental health problems, not because being gay is that, so on. And the other thing is that they actually have something called the asexual exception, which basically says if someone is asexual, do not, you know, diagnose them with this disorder. Like if someone identifies as asexual.

And I'm glad we have that. But it also, it seems weird philosophically, right? It's like saying, okay, if someone identifies as homosexual, they're fine. But if they experience same-sex attraction, then maybe diagnose them with this disorder, right? It's like, is it a problem or is it not? You know, I think there's room to think a lot more critically and about to what extent, you know, we should be making the borders that we do between the condition and the identity. Yeah. Well, it's difficult because you're talking about, you're getting down to a really granular human level. Like at the end of it, it's like, okay, you need to really talk to the person who you're treating and understand how they feel about it and how they situate themselves in the larger world and and the context of their life and how exposed have they been to these ideas

and etc like it's it's very very messy humanness at the end of the day uh and it's the sort of task that a manual often seems like it could never be up to. Absolutely. And I think that that's one of the conversations that happen when we talk about desire drugs. So in the past five years, the U.S. FDA has approved a couple of drugs that essentially are for women and essentially supposed to make women more horny and raise their libido and help them experience more sexual attraction. And I think for me, I'm not categorically against these drugs. For me, I think the issue is when someone, a woman goes in and wants to prescribe them and the doctor is like, oh, you you clearly have this condition. Let me give them to you instead of being like, have you considered that this isn't a problem? Have you considered that maybe you're asexual?

To me, it's about like education, right? It's about it's about the fact that asexuality is so invisible that we still consider, you know, this experience to be a disorder. So I'm not like ban any of these drugs. Well, right now I don't think they work very well. The science on them is not very good, but theoretically, if they worked, I wouldn't be like, you need to ban them. Like people should never try to change their, you know, it's more like, why do you want to change it? Like what forces are making you feel like you have to change it? Because that person going to the doctor saying, I have this problem, I don't feel this way and I feel that I should, at the very least, should be alerted to the fact that this is a part of human variation that they could choose to identify as and come to that realization themselves or not. At the very least, they should have that opportunity.

Right. And there's so much you can do just at the subtle level of language, like with these drugs. What if they were marked as sexual enhancers instead of sexual fixes, right? That enhance is something that you want to make it better instead of assuming that there's something wrong with you that you need to become well. But of course, so much of the marketing around it is about how this is destroying your life and you need to be normal. And once you're normal with this drug, everything will be fine.

Yeah. There's a lot of parallels, I think, to neurodiversity as well in terms of how we think about what is it, what is a difference versus what is a deficiency versus what is a disorder? And how do we think about those? How do we think about those drugs in that context as well? Absolutely. And, you know, when we talk about neurodiversity, you know, we've stopped thinking about it for the most part as a deficiency. And we, I think we've started thinking about it as, you know, what can these different points of view tell us about the world? And I think that's absolutely true for asexuality too. You know, it's not just like,

we're aces are like, quote unquote, normal people who have something missing. Like, I think we do see the world differently and in interesting ways that maybe allo people just don't see it. Ooh, okay. I got to ask you about this. This is a really great avenue, but we got to take a really quick break.

We'll be right back with more Angela Chen. OK, we're back with Angela Chen. So right before the break, you were saying that you feel that aces have a view on sexuality that perhaps the rest of us could benefit from. And I love that. Please elaborate on that. I mean, there's so much. So earlier I was talking about how aces separate romantic orientation, sexual orientation. Right. But I think that's something that everyone could do. I've talked to my friends who aren't asexual and they're like, oh, maybe I'm actually bisexual, but I'm heteroromantic. Like, how would your understanding of your own sexuality change if you separated those things? Or another one that I like to think about is I think asexuality really helps us question what exactly is the difference between platonic attraction and romantic

attraction. So I think most people, if you want to sleep with someone, you're like, okay, that's how I know that I'm romantically attracted to them. But, you know, by definition, aces are often indifferent or repulsed by, you know, sexuality, but they can still experience romantic attraction. So then what is it? You know, like, how is it actually different from platonic attraction? And I think we think about those two things as mutually exclusive and think about those two things as like, it's either one or the other, but I think there's actually a lot of overlap. And I think that's so much of what we experience as romantic or as platonic is so shaped by our expectations for what a romantic partner is supposed to be

like. And it's so shaped by this language and frameworks so what if they were actually overlapping and what if there's no clear boundaries between them like how would that change how we think about our relationships or another thing is that i think it's really common that when you have two friends who are super close people are like they're either secretly banging or they secretly want to bang or they do deep down, but they don't even know it. Right. Yeah. Like I've talked to a lot of non-ace friends who are like, oh, like, am I secretly in love with my best friend and I don't know it? Do I secretly want to sleep with them?

And I think asexuality just brings in all these questions where it's like maybe something can be very rich and passionate without having sexuality at the bottom. We think so much about how sexuality is the same as passion. So every time there's a relationship that has some kind of charge or energy to it, it becomes like, we're like, oh, there's a sexual spark, but what if it's actually a different kind of spark? And I think it can be harmful too. Like, I think, I mean, one of the examples that I think about is sometimes you see people talking about like relationships, inappropriate relationships between like professors and students or like teachers and students. And there absolutely can be that kind of like special energy when you really get along with your mentor. But I think people feel that and they're like, oh, it's secretly a sexual energy. And that's where, you know, the boundary crossing begins. Yeah. This is almost like the anti-Freud,

right? Where it's instead of everything being sexual, it's like, wait, no, things can be like non-sexual in this very, maybe non-sexual relationships are something that we should think more about. Like what that makes me think about is work relationships, for instance, that can be unhealthy and intense and passionate's maybe the wrong, not the word I would apply, but, you know, complex and fucked up, but non-sexual, right?

Where you've got people who have like, you know, if you've ever known people who seem to have like kind of a weird psycho drama going on and you're like, God, you two just need to not be around each other because you're fucking each other up. But that can happen not sexually. Like you can just be two people in a workplace, like getting too weirdly involved with each other. And that could be a useful thing for us to be able to label. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's so many kinds of relationships

you can have with so many different kinds of people that can be fucked up in so many different ways. You know, like there is no end. There's a rainbow of fuck-up-edness. Exactly. But I think that whenever things become like intense like that, it's so common to be like, it's because I secretly love them. It's because I secretly do whatever. And once you step intense like that, it's so common to be like, it's because I secretly love them. It's because I secretly do whatever.

And once you step out of that, like what if you could just see it for what it is, this specific brand of complex fucked up relationship you have with your work friend. It's funny because what you're describing is so various and multifaceted and so specific. And you're talking about, you know, human emotions, human drives, these things that are almost inherently unquantifiable. I mean, you know,

sex researchers and sociologists can quantify them better than we can. But, you know, these are complex things that are very difficult to pull apart. And so part of me has this reaction of saying, well, then why do we have a label? Right. Why do we then apply a label such as Ace to it when even within that label you're describing six or seven different things? But as you're talking, it also makes me realize, well, hold on a second. That label can really make something visible that's been invisible, because the truth is we label, we use labels all the time. We just have a very limited number of them that we apply to everybody. And having this additional way to speak about, you know, human relationships and human identities and what's going around between our ears, what's going on in there,

can be really helpful to lift something up and say, ah, here's something going on that I didn't have a way of describing before. That's exactly it. It's useful because it just connects you to all the other resources. You know, kind of a fun random example is that recently I was like looking for a specific type of outfit and I didn't know how to describe the outfit. So I was like shirts with large sleeves or something like that. And then I found the term and it was like mutton sleeves. And now I could be like, I could go on fashion Reddits and be like, how can you pair this outfit with that? But before that I was just stuck being like, I kind of know what I want, but how do I find people to help me find this shirt? And it's kind of the same here where you know the experience, but you don't have the way of

thinking about it that makes it legible or useful to you. And once you have that identity, you have that community, it connects you to resources. We just, yeah. And I think that's a good thing. One thing I'm very curious about is, you know, with all of the,

you know, with terms like ACE and the other revelations we've had about how diverse, you know, human society is, young people really have, you know, adopted these terms and use them a lot. And, you know, I've heard skepticism about that from some core. Oh, you know, these are kids. They're confused. They're going through phase, you know, and these are very these are things that we've heard, you know, about gay people for years. And it's very, you know, it's a very reductive thing to say. On the other hand, I do remember being 15 years old and it being like, hey, you know, it's very, very confusing time. You're you know, you're you're brand new feeling all these different feelings. Things are very unsettled. And then they you know, they do sort of settle down in a way. And I wonder how you view that. Like, do you view

this language as a tool that the way, the way you're talking about it makes me think, oh, is this a tool that, you know, young people can use to figure themselves out, uh, et cetera. I don't know. How do you think about it? It's absolutely a tool. And, you know, I get this question a lot, you know, like, is my child just too young to know whether she's ace? Like she's 11. How would she know? And I think this connects to my feelings on orientation identities in general. I think people think about phase as this derogatory term, you know, using a pejorative, she's just going through a phase. But what if we thought about fluidity? What I think people are sexually fluid. Sometimes you might be more attracted to one

gender or the other or experience more sexual attraction or less what if you're ace now and you're you decide you're not ace later or you're ace now you decide you are ace later i think yeah what's the problem with that yeah i think all of it should be a tool and a way of describing what you know is true of you to the best of your extent now instead of of being this thing that you have to be locked into and like decide you're never, you know, and once you're like, I have to pick one identity and I can never change. And, you know, that puts so much pressure. What if you can just slip between identities and everyone should, and that should be fine.

Yeah. And that's a useful thing to know about yourself. I mean, if a young person is saying I'm ace and you're wondering, well, is that going to change? Yeah, maybe. But the but the person right now is saying this is what they are. It is true of them now. And, you know, maybe maybe they shouldn't go get a tattoo with it on their face because, you know, be aware that of the fluidity that you're talking about. But that's that can also be a part of the fluidity that you're talking about but uh that's that can also be a part of the human experience that we embrace exactly and maybe they don't change later and if they do change later so they're not ace that's fine too you know like it is what is true for them

right now i don't think any of us can or should even know exactly what we're going to be like for the rest of our lives that's so boring yeah by the way you can get a tattoo on your face if you want i'm not down on face tattoos. And that's fine. You could like, oh, what you know what you could do is if that happens, if you do decide to change later, just put an F in front of it and then it says face. Exactly. And then your face tattoo says face on it and everyone will know what they're looking at. Yeah. Please go for it. Oh, I did want to add one thing, which is, you know, it is totally true that a lot of young people identify as ace.

And I think that a lot of older people are just just don't have access to it. But I've definitely met people who are married and have children and are like, oh, I'm in my 40s. And I started realizing that I was ace. So it's not it's not like young people are more likely to be ace. It's more like young people are more likely, again, internet and everything to have access to understand being ace. Yeah. Tell me about, so, you know, one thing that that occurs to me is a person who's married with children. And then one of the partners says, oh, I'm ace, that it could be a complex thing for the other partner. I wonder if you could speak on those sorts of partnerships and yeah, what they, what they look

like and what are the, yeah, what are the challenges and what are the, what are the joys? Yeah, I think that, you know, aces are not a very high percentage of the population. And so many aces do end up dating aloes. And there are a lot of challenges because as we keep saying, sexuality is so bound up with emotion. Right. I keep saying sexuality is so bound up with emotion, right? And I think that if you are an aloe partner and you hear your partner say, I'm ace, then it can create a lot of insecurity, which is like, oh, are they not attracted to me? Oh, am I unattractive? I think a lot of us use other people's desire for us as a way to tell us how we should feel as a, you know, to boost our self-esteem. I definitely do. Yeah.

And I interviewed, you know, one ace woman who kept having this fight with her boyfriend where he kept being like, it's me. Like, I don't do it for you. Like maybe you just need to like try other men or something. And finally she was like, okay, I love you, but stop being so narcissistic. It has nothing to do with you. Like if you were hotter, I would not actually affect me being ace. And she said that once they had that conversation, it was like this light bulb switch for him. Because I think it's so common for us to be like, oh, they're ace, quote unquote, because of me somehow, you know? And so I think there's so many conversations to be had about, you know, what is the role of sex in relationships? Like, how does it make me feel? What am I using sex for? Why do we have sex? Because as we said, like, there's so many reasons

to have sex that aren't actually about actual sexual attraction, you know, what makes us feel close? Like, how do we, how do we balance our different levels of desire? Um, how do we make sure that everyone's needs are taken care of? Cause it's very common to think of the higher desire partner as the normal one. And therefore it's the problem of a lower desire partner to have to fix it and go to therapy and try new sex toys or whatever, which shouldn't be the case, right? Like this is an incompatibility and both people are responsible for making it an incompatibility. So like it shouldn't be seen as one person's burden. It should be this, you know, evolving conversation. one of each, right, is also common in allo relationships. That's a thing that happens. And it has all those dynamics that you describe. And that's also an area where we could use more acceptance of ourselves and of our partners. And the fact that, you know, again, knowing about

ACE as an orientation and being like a natural part of human variability that, you know, doesn't need to be shamed or denigrated is like a step on the way to understanding that, you know, for someone to say, oh, I'm like, yeah, I am low desire or whatever. And that's an okay thing to be. Does that do you see it that way? Absolutely. I think that the, you know, first of all, I totally agree. I don't think I know any couple who have the exact same amount of sexual desire forever. You know, like it's always fluctuating, like who is this couple? But second of all, I think that the aces who are in relationships with aloes have to be extraordinarily emotionally intelligent, you know, because it's hard to have these conversations

because it really gets into insecurities and things you'd rather not talk about. And you can just silently wish that everything worked out. And everyone should be having these conversations, right? Regardless of whatever your orientation is. But because so many ace people are kind of forced to have them, I think it often makes us better at really looking into what is it that we want? Do we want intimacy? Is there other ways to get intimacy? Do you want to feel sexy? Is there a way to do that? How do we want intimacy? Is there other ways to get intimacy? Do you want to feel sexy?

Is there a way to do that? Like, how do we compromise? What this strikes me is that it is a real complication of our sexual liberation narrative in American society that like, you know, we we've had this narrative since the 60s that basically the more free you are about sex, meaning the more sex that you have, the more liberated you are, the more sort of advanced that you are. But that comes with its own expectations and pressures. And what you're talking about is a more even widely liberated perspective where we're taking into account more variations in sexuality that also include variations in desire. Absolutely. I think there's a real tension between certain kinds of sex positive feminism and asexuality. Now, I'm feminist, but in some circles, it can feel like like the attitude is that if you are low desire,

it's definitely because you haven't thrown off the chains of patriarchy. It's because you're so oppressed, you don't even know that you're oppressed. And like I said, sexual variation exists. Of course, sometimes it is because, you know, especially women have been shamed and so on. But other times it's because people are just different. And so I think that, you know, the vision of sexual liberation should be something like, you know, sexual activity for people who want it how you want it, while also not making sex and sexuality a requirement for human dignity. I think that's much more expansive than just more sex is more liberated, is more free, is cooler.

Yeah, that's a really wonderful way to put it. Like a, you know, true sexual liberation would would be an ability to discuss these differences with your partner, even when they mean like a lack of sex, for instance, or a lack of sexual attraction or or. Yeah, I mean, and that's that's not something that's part of our typical story, but it really should be. Yeah, I think true sexual liberation is sexual choice without judgment, you know, and I think once you take off that judgment part, it becomes much easier to have these conversations. But as it is, you know, when you have these conversations between an ace partner and an aloe partner, the cards are totally stacked in favor of the aloe partner because most of the world is, is with you on the side of like, oh, the lower desire partner

needs to fix themselves. So once we think about, you know, sexuality differently, like these conversations can happen in a way that's more fair and yeah, more intimate even. So how do we go about creating that world? Right. Right. Like, I mean, obviously you writing your book is, I think, your contribution to that movement. But how can the rest of us participate and what else do you think needs to happen in American and world society? I think there's a lot of things that can be done both at the personal level and at the structural level. So more structurally, you know, having asexuality discussed in sex ed would be huge. having asexuality discussed in sex ed would be huge. Like I told that story of that person who thought that she had cancer, you know, because no one ever talks about asexuality in sex ed. Having asexuality be a part of those consent conversations. You know, there's so many orgs

doing good work when it comes to, you know, how to talk to your partner and, you know, talking about sexual assault and sexuality and feminism, like asexuality should be part of that. Having more ace characters and, you know, know mainstream media and when i talk about ace characters i really want the storylines to be um to be rich and to go beyond ace 101 right now ace 101 is still necessary because otherwise no one understands you know what it is yeah there's so much more like how do you ace people or people who are aromantic, how do they relate differently? How do they see relationships differently? How might they parent differently?

How do you parent if you don't want a romantic partner and are asexual? There's so much richness there. It's not just... Go ahead. Oh, well, no. I just wanted to know if you could dive into that a little bit deeper because, look, speaking as a TV writer and talking to other TV writers who are want to make a good faith effort to tell these stories. Right. There's always a tension in, OK, we want to represent this sort of character on screen, but we don't want to make the story just about their orientation or say, you know, disability or any any other thing we want to put on screen.

But then if we don't make it about that in the case of asexuality, well, how does the audience even know that this is an ace character if we're not telling that story? And how do we get past that 101? So I'd love if you could just, you know, elaborate on that thought. Like, what is it that you would like to see? Yeah. So, you know, I interviewed a writer. Like, what is it that you would like to see? Yeah. So, you know, I interviewed a writer

who said that she was told by agents that, quote, asexuality won't sell because people think it's boring. And I think that when people think about, you know, what it means to be an ace character, what they imagine is someone who's, like, always been, like, just, like, conflicted about their own asexuality.

You know, like, their, like, their personality is their conflict over their identity. But I think it should be more about how they perceive the world. So for example, in the last part of my book, I profiled David Jay, who's the founder of Avon, a big ace website and advocacy group. And it was about how he built a three-person family. So he is in a three-person family. There's a couple who are his platonic co-parents and they're the biological parents of a child, Tavi. And he is, he is Tavi's father as well, legally too, because in California, you know, three-parent adoption is legal and they all live together. And that's such an interesting way of thinking about, you know, family and what family means and what it could look like, especially if you are aromantic and asexual. And I think that's an ace story that has nothing to do with him being conflicted about his asexuality. So I expanded that into a story for the Atlantic and it got picked up at Good Morning America.

So like clearly like the appetite was there, you know, like we just have to think about a stories beyond like you feeling bad about your identity. It can be about like, how did your identity inform the choices you make in the world and the vision you have for what the world could look like? This is a version of Modern Family That's a lot more interesting. I like that show, but you know what I mean? It's like, uh, we can go a little bit past that show. It was 10 years old now.

Uh, that's really, that's really fascinating. Thank you for that. Um, for folks who are listening, who are, uh,

want to learn more about, uh, ACE identity, um, and are maybe having some of those questions themselves, where do you consider they look other than your wonderful book, which is called Ace? Right. So there's another book called The Invisible Orientation by Julie Sandra Decker. That's great. There is the Avon website, which is asexuality.org. Very easy to remember.

And one place that I always like to suggest is this group blog called The Asexual Agenda. And they write about, you know, it's very chatty, you know, it's not like academic and jargony, but they write about a lot of ace topics. And they write about the ways that asexuality intersects with society. So like what we were talking about, like asexuality and feminism, asexuality and dating, asexuality and relationships. And I really think that for someone who's trying to figure out their ace, I don't think it's good to get too much in the weeds about like, what is libido? What is attraction? Because you can just go on forever. And those definitions are so fuzzy. Like, I think the way that many people figure it out is that you read other people's experiences and you're like, that resonates with me. Like that is how I see the world. And that's,

And you're like, that resonates with me. Like, that is how I see the internet. And the interaction with science, I think is really interesting because it's one of those areas where speaking to you and speaking to other folks who identify as ace, it's like the personal experience is at the end of the day, like irrefutable and is like the evidence we need to sort of get ourselves to a baseline level of, you know, further enlightenment, uh, about the topic. Um, and, uh, it, it just strikes me how much, how much unexplored territory there is just again, in between our ears, you know, that, that we, uh, are discovering that's a, I don't know, strikes me as a very beautiful thing. It really is.

And the way I think about it is that there's so much detail in every aspect of our lives, but most of us just see generalizations. You know, like I feel like for me, learning about any perspective, whether it's asexuality or queer studies or various parts of science, it's like, first you look at something and you're like,

oh, it's like a box with four wheels. And then you're like, it's a car. And then you're like, it's a Honda Civic, you know, like progressively showing you more and more of like what you're seeing. And then once you're a Honda Civic, like you can, I don't know, make better decisions about whether you want to buy it or not. Yeah. It's a, it's a 1991 Honda Civic and it's been in an accident. I won't buy it. It's been in a crash. That's true. And that's that's really funny. And this strikes me that, you know, I do feel that oh, I'm this and I'm that and I'm that. Okay. I've categorized myself. Here's my three labels I'm putting on my shirt and that's what I am. And the way you talk about it makes it clear to me that no, that's not what that is. That's a way of centering and thinking about your own incredible detail and diversity of your experience and making it intelligible to other people. But it doesn't like limit what you are.

It helps you get more specific in that way. And it helps you share that with, with other people because how are you going to do that? If not through language, like that's what we need language to do. Exactly. I feel like there needs to be more lightness when it comes to labels, which isn't to say,

you know, invalidating them. But for example, there are so many words that are just adjectives and descriptors that you can apply that don't have to have this heaviness. Like I'm kind of an impatient person, but my identity is not an impatient person. Right. So why can't we use all these other identities? Like they describe me, but they do not necessarily have to encapsulate all of me or limit what I can do. Yeah, it's man, you're giving me a lot of thoughts now. Cause yeah, I was getting ready to wrap this interview up and now I'm like, Oh wait, we're in a really interesting area,

you know, because there are people who sometimes limit themselves a little bit. You know, there are people who say I'm an introvert, you know, they, they heard about that label and Oh, that helped them understand themselves. But then there are people I feel who use that label as as a way. Well, then I'm never going to go to a party. Well, no, maybe sometimes still go. You know what I mean? You can know this about yourself and still push yourself in a way. But yeah, I mean, ideally used.

It's a it's a way that is doing that first thing that's helping us understand ourselves more greatly. Yeah. I think it's always important to strike that balance between knowing yourself and giving yourself permission and room to evolve. You know, I interviewed someone who is ace and she had a friend with benefits and then she said something like, oh, every time I fool around with my friend with benefits, I get kind of worried. Maybe I enjoyed it too much. Maybe I'm not ace. And I was just kind of like, you know, yeah, you know, first of all, you decide whether you're ace. Like, I'm not going to police you. I can't police you. We don't do that. But second, if you're not ace, that's fine, too. You know, like, look at the experience first and then look at the label as a way to describe that

experience instead of making yourself fit into the label. Like you come first, you and your experiences. Yeah. Yeah. The label is there as a tool for you to help understand yourself. And if you change, that can be a wonderful thing and you can use a new label or you can take the label off and not replace it with anything. Or you can keep it on and say, I was a little bit different that day. Exactly. You know, it's, it's like if ACE or anything becomes a set of new rules, you have conform to to gain acceptance, then in some ways I feel like we have failed. You know, I shouldn't be a set of new rules that just replace the old rules of, you know, heterosexuality or whatnot. It should be something that helps you helps you be more yourself with the understanding that yourself changes.

All of us change. That's a really beautiful vision. So we're, because all we want to do is use language to try to express the incredible multivariousness and detail and fluidity of our own like selves, which is ultimately all we are trying to do with language in the first place. Exactly. That's very beautiful. Angela, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show to talk to us about this.

This has been wonderful. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation. Well, thank you once again to Angela Chen for coming on the show. I hope you loved that conversation as much as I did. If you did, hey, please leave us a rating or review wherever you subscribe. I know I say it every week.

It really does help us out with the old algorithm. And hey, if there's something you'd like to see on the show, or if you have a question that you would like me to answer on our upcoming Stitcher Premium Only Bonus Show, please send it to factually at adamconover.net and I will answer it on that show. I want to thank our producers, Kimmy Lucas and Sam Roudman, our engineer, Andrew Carson, Andrew WK for our theme song, the incredible PC creation company, Falcon Northwest for building me the unbelievable gaming PC that I recorded this very episode on. You can find me

online at adamconover.net or at Adam Conover, wherever you get your social media. And until next week, we'll see you on Factually. Thanks so much for listening. And don't forget, stay curious. That was a HateGum Podcast.