Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas - 114 | Angela Chen on Asexuality in a Sex-Preoccupied World

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Sexuality is, and always has been, a topic that is endlessly fascinating but also contentious. You might think that asexuality would be more straightforward, but you'd be wrong. Asexual people, or "aces," haven't been front and center in the public discussion of gender and sexuality, and as a result there is confusion about such basic issues as what "asexuality" even means. Angela Chen is a science journalist and an ace herself, and she's written a new book about asexuality and how it fits into the wider discussion of sex and gender. Precisely because sexuality is so taken for granted by many people, thinking about asexuality not only helps us understand the issues confronting aces, but the meaning of sexuality more broadly. Support Mindscape on Patreon. Angela Chen received a B.A. in comparative literature from UC San Diego. She is a contributing editor at Catapult magazine, and her writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Vox Media, The Atlantic, MIT Technology Review, and elsewhere. Her new book is Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. Web site Amazon.com author page Twitter

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five miles away. Hello everyone. Welcome to the Mindscape podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. We live in a world where there's increasing understanding of and hopefully acceptance of different varieties of sexuality and gender orientation and gender expression, not just the usual boy and girl, getting together, getting married, having two and a half kids. We're increasingly happy with homosexuality, with bisexuality, with bisexuality. Hopefully, transgender people are being more and more accepted as time goes on, though we're certainly not there yet. So what about asexuality? What about people who do not foreground sexual desire in their lives in the way that everybody else does? This is an idea that most of us

have heard of, but maybe are not too familiar with. Asexuality, it turns out, can span a wide variety of manifestations from people who are very romantic and even have fulfilling sexual relationships with their partners to people who are completely repulsed by the idea of of having sex. And it's interesting not just to understand those people and their needs and how they can flourish in this world, but how the rest of us, when we're telling stories or organizing society more broadly, take for granted. The idea that whatever your sexual orientation is, sex is something that you will want to have, and it'll be a success story when it's going well for you. So today's guest is Angela Chen. She is a science journalist, and she is asexual herself, or ace, as they

say in the business, and she's written a new book about this called Ace, What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. It's interesting, if nothing else, just to reflect on the centrality of the idea of sex in our lives and how we think about our lives. So I like that just the idea that coining a term, right, adding some vocabulary to the way that we conceptualize the world changes the way we think about. it in an important way. And asexuality is an example of that, but I think the lessons here are broader. So let's go. Angela Chen, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. So I think asexuality, which we're going to be talking about, which you have a new book coming out. Why don't you tell us the name of

your new book so that everyone can go out and buy it? It's called Ace, what asexuality reveals about desire, society, and the meaning of sex. Ace, by the way, congratulations on that. I mean, it's a good label for a sexuality or some sexual preference. I mean, ACE is a good word, right? Like, you did well in the label. Right. I actually prefer it far more than I like the word asexual, which to me still sounds very clinical. Yeah, clinical or judgey or something like that, right? Yeah. So I think this is one of those cases where the word asexual is probably something where people hear it, and even if they've never been exposed to it before, they think they know what it means.

from reading your book, I know that maybe you don't know, maybe we don't know what it means. So let's just start at the beginning and you can explain to us a little bit about what it means to be asexual or ace. Absolutely. I really think that, you know, with all due respect to the people at the beginning who were building up the asexual ace movement, I really think that there were some issues of semantics here because when you hear the word asexual, you think, you know, without sex, but it's actually a huge umbrella that encompasses so many people, so many,

including people who have positive sexual experiences. So I completely understand why people would say things like, wait, why would you call someone who does have sex asexual? That doesn't make sense. So all those to say, I have a lot of sympathy for all the confusion around the term. So the usual definition, the official definition, is someone who is asexual, they don't experience sexual attraction. And that sounds simple enough, I think,

until you start thinking about all of the things that we get confused with sexual attraction and all of the baggage around that term. I first came across the term asexual when I was 14, and I came across the correct term. And immediately I was like, oh, that's interesting, glad to know that there are people out there like this, let me go wrong with my life. I didn't think I was asexual. And I wouldn't think about it again for another 10 years

and after I'd had to romantic and sexual relationships. Well, yeah, so I mean, I think that from the word asexual, it would clearly follow, it would seem to follow that you don't have sex. But one of the major lessons right from the part of the book is that there are asexuals who do have sex, even who enjoy it. But there is this desire versus attraction dichotomy, which I thought was fascinating. Right, exactly. So I think it's easy often to first explain asexuality in terms of what it is not. So it doesn't mean not having sex. We have a word for that, right?

that's celibacy. It means not experiencing sexual attraction. And I think a lot of people when they think they don't experience sexual attraction, that means, oh, they're disgusted by sex. They're repulsed by sex. But the tricky thing is that's not the case either. I don't actually like using food analogies, but they're really convenient. So I'll have to use one here if you'll excuse me. So I think most of us, we have foods that we like and that we crave. And then we have foods that we just don't like and they don't taste good and we would never eat them. And then there's just foods in the middle where you don't really care so much for the particular pie or something, but because it's part of a routine. It's something your mother made every Sunday. It has all of these emotional,

social interactions. You desire in that way. And I think that's the experience of a lot of people who are asexual, where they don't feel sexual attraction. They don't crave sexual intimacy with other people for physical reasons, but there might be emotional reasons and social reasons, and they're bored, or they want to feel attractive, and that's kind of where all the nuances

start to come in. Yeah, and I get the impression that it's part of the, you know, expanding our horizons a little bit and understanding that there are spectra, there are continuous versions of all of these different things, is that there are asexuals

who are repulsed by the idea of sex, right? And there are others who are into it when they're in love with somebody, and there are others who, Like you say, don't really care one way or the other but are willing to go along. Right. There is this huge spectrum of experiences. And, you know, in the same way where people who aren't asexual, who are called alosexual,

it's not like people who are alosexual want sex all the time either, right? It's never a binary. People's, you know, desires shift. So with asexuality, there's this huge range of experiences. And it can be so hard to separate, you know, the reasons why you might want to have sex with someone. Is it just physical, quote unquote, just? Is it emotional? Is it boredom?

And that's where a lot of the tricky parts come in. Yeah, you know, I once wrote a blog post in one of my more daring moments about the gender tesseract, where I said, like, there's at least four different dimensions on which we can talk about, you know, people's biology, people's sexual identity, people's sexual attraction. And I realized, I said at the time, like, I'm sure I'm missing things. and I think that the amount of sexual attraction was definitely something that I'm missing. But they're all independent, right? I mean, there are gay asexuals and hetero-a-sexuals. Exactly.

You know, there are people who are asexual, and like you said, they're attracted to the same gender or all genders, and, you know, sexual orientation, I think doesn't have to be the same as romantic orientation. That's one of the distinctions that people who are asexual make. You might not be sexually attracted to anyone, but you might still feel that romantic attraction. that crush, that emotional desire, and that is what we call romantic orientation.

And is it something where, you know, so let's say you're a straight ace. So you might be romantically attracted to someone of the opposite gender. And then is it more likely you would want to be sexually involved with them also? Or is that just up in the air? I think it can vary. I think that if you're if you're heteromantic, you're a straight ace. and you are romantically involved with someone, I think that for some, that can increase, you know,

your willingness or your desire to have sex with them. For others, you might be a straight ace and your sex repulsed, and that doesn't change at all, whether you want to have sex with someone or not. And I, again, a lot of my questions are going to be like, I think what I understood is this, am I right or am I wrong? So the idea that one of the distinctions between being ace and being aloe, is aloe sexual?

Is that the opposite? Yeah. So is that for alosexuals, there's just something called, you know, free-floating sexual desire. Like you would like to have sex and, you know, you're not sure with who or you don't have any target in mind. And that's the kind of thing that doesn't exist for ACEs. Yeah, I think that it's all about having the target. So people can have different libidos, right? and that's not attached to sexual orientation.

You can be gay and have a high libido or be gay and have a low libido. And you can be ace, actually, and have a sex drive. You can have that feeling inside your body where you just desire sexual release. But what's different is that aces don't have that toward a person. You know, sometimes you can be alosexual and you can just, you know, feel sexually frustrated

and it's not toward a person. And I think most people have experienced that. But sometimes you can be alosexual, and it is prompted by a person or it's caused by a person. Whereas for ACEs, even those who do have a libido, and not all ACEs have a libido, but for the ones who do, there's never a desire to get other people involved. I think one person I spoke to described as not feeling any different than having an itch on her arm. You know, there's an it on her arm.

She'll scratch it and just take care of it herself. Why would she ask someone to come over and scratch the itch on her arm? You know, it's just a different way of thinking and experiencing the world. Okay, good. I get it. I was actually wrong, so I'm glad that you clarified that. I mean, we're going to get sort of the clinical stuff out of the way first so people know the ground that we're walking on here. I mean, how well is this understood the phenomenon of being ace?

Is this something that psychologists and sexologists have been studying for a long time? I don't think this is well understood even now. So there is some clinical research on it, and I think the clinical research on it is growing. But one problem is, as we said, the word asexual is so broad. And therefore, when you're doing research, if you pull in all these people that are all asexual, but of such different experiences, some are sex repulsed, some have sex, you know, some have sex drive, some don't, then I think that will really muddy up your results, right? And that will have consequences for what we can know. I think another issue when it comes to sexology is that for a long time, we just have this bias that everyone naturally has a sex drive, experience, a sexual attraction. And if you don't, then it means that it's some kind of disability or there's something wrong with you or maybe you're a victim of sexual assault or trauma.

And because of that, so much of the research in this area has been gone through that lens instead of seeing it as just another part of human variation. So that's one reason that it hasn't been, those are some reasons that it hasn't been very well understood. I think it's been better understood when it comes to looking at in a more sociological sense rather than a medical sense rather than a medical. sense. But even then, even though the orientation's been around for 20 years, in some ways, it really flies under the radar still. Yeah, no, I mean, it absolutely does. One of the things, this is skipping ahead a little bit, but one of the things you talk about in the book is the representation of aces in fiction and popular culture, which is basically almost nothing, right? There isn't that much. Absolutely. Usually when there are aces, they have a very specific stereotype. You know, for male

ACEs, if they're not explicitly ace, it's usually a character like Sherlock Holmes, you know, someone who is extremely rational and he has better things to worry about than sexuality. With women, there's often these tropes of, you know, people who are quirky, and that's why they're not interested in sex. So they're childish. And a lot of the representation in pop culture, it's on the fringes. It's not really, it's not like major literary fiction, for example. You'll see it a lot in Y.A. or you'll see it a lot in science fiction. It's almost never discussed in what we consider really mainstream or almost prestigious forms of pop culture.

And I think the effect that has on it is that it can make the orientation itself seem like it's on the fringes and seem like it's something that's for children or something that's not part of normal everyday life. Todd Chavez being the obvious shining counter example here, right, on BoJack Horseman. Yeah, Todd Chavez. And the thing is, I know that the showrunners for Bojack Horsman actually reached out to someone who was part of an ace group in Los Angeles. And they asked her to consult and asked her some questions about asexuality. So they definitely were trying to do their due diligence.

And Todd has done so much for the ace community because of Todd, because of explaining and debunking some of these misconceptions, There are more ace people in the world. I know someone who discovered that she was asexual because she actually was writing an article about how the asexual community reacted to Todd. It's actually very meta, you know, in the case of writing this article, she realized, oh, I didn't think asexuality meant this,

but this applies to me. But even with Todd, you know, he's kind of like a hapless, childish character. He's literally a cartoon. It's still a little bit on the edges of culture. Hey, everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and I Heart Audio Book Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary, massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science. And what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth? I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get tears. as I'm narrating some of these sections

and it's like, okay, yo, yeah, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me

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Medical advice. Eligibility required seaside for details. But you didn't mention Zonker Harris from Dunsbury. Would he qualify? I am not familiar with that. I have to say I'm not the best at, I'm not, I just am not familiar with that. Yeah. I mean, I thought of it only after, you know, reading your book and Zonker.

So if you're not familiar with Dunsbury, Zonker's been a character who's been around since the 70s. and while everyone, like, you know, the Dunesbury cast is sort of grown up slightly and had relationships and everyone else is sleeping around and everything, he never has. And I think in more recent years, like, it's become a topic and people, you know, have asked him about and he's like, I don't believe there's any such thing in sex. I think it's just a myth you people are joking about to me. But he's a bit of a, you know, sort of otherworldy character anyway. And he didn't, he's never been explicitly labeled like that in the comic. Yeah, that's really interesting because there's a lot of discussion about the importance of explicitly labeling characters.

You know, oftentimes if you want to make a character that's gay, you don't have to have them say, I'm gay, right? You can just show them with, you know, someone of the same gender. But with asexuality, if someone is single, then most of the time you just assume they're alosexual and just happen to be single. But I think in the case you just mentioned, because he says he makes these comments about asexuality, I think that's one way, which doesn't, explicitly have to say it, but that still does the cross, in my reading, at least, from what you've just said. No, it does sound like it. I mean, I wonder, I'm not sure how much

credit to give to Gary Tudot, the cartoonist, but I mean, maybe he knew people like that or something, or maybe it was just an accident and he just never came up with a good storyline. You know, the intent of the author is always hard to figure out. But I also do want to get on the table. You tell this wonderful slash horrible story about

the infamous house episode, which is probably a more typical representation of asexual. on TV. Right, absolutely. So in the episode, there is a woman who says that she's asexual, and then one of the characters says this to House and House says something like she's definitely not asexual, you know, plenty of people don't have sex, but the only people who don't want sex are sick, lying,

or dead. And the entire storyline is just him, well, one of the side storylines is him trying to figure out whether there's a medical reason for her lack of interest in sex. this, of course, being the show house, there is. So she's not asexual. She's pretending to be asexual because her husband is asexual and she wants to be with him. But then the other twist is that her husband isn't even asexual. He apparently has some kind of brain tumor that can be easily fixed. And once they fix that, then they're just going to be too happy alo people. I think to this day, and definitely before Pod Chavez on Bojack, that was probably the most

mainstream high-profile depiction of asexuality in which house someone who's supposed to be really smart and knows everything and sees through the stuff that no one else can seize through is essentially declaring that asexual people are sick lying or dead and he's right at least in the context of the episode did they actually i never saw that episode in particular i've seen other episodes but did they use the word asexual or did they just talk about the impossibility of people not wanting to have sex They use the word asexual. At the very beginning, the woman is, sorry, at the very beginning, I think they're talking about birth control or something. And then one of the doctors says, you know, every method is available. And then she says, I'm asexual. And she even goes into this little spiel saying, you know, it's not celibacy. It's our orientation. So it's very explicitly about asexuality, not just low sexual desire or not wanting to have sex. I mean, I asked that because one of the points that came across from your book. And I, so as a non-asexual, myself, but someone who was just fascinated, I had a lot of philosophical resonance with your book

because a lot of it is about the right way to categorize things in the world, right? And you make the point that just the existence of the word asexual, the fact that there is a category, suddenly like can set off bells of recognition in your brain. It's like, it made me think of when Susan came out, Kane came out with that book on introverts. And suddenly people could say, oh, It's not just that I'm a weirdo who doesn't want to go to parties every night. I'm an introvert. I have a label. Now I'm okay.

Absolutely. I think in many ways a lot of my book is about language and the ways in which we don't talk on a specific enough level. So early in the book, I talk about my own experience. And growing up, I didn't fit this mold of what it looked like to be asexual. I was not repulsed by sex. It seemed very interesting to me. As a teenager, you know, I would talk about crushes with my friends. even to myself, there didn't seem to be anything different.

And it was only much later that I realized that we were using the same words, but we met different things. You know, when they said, oh, he's hot, they were, I think they were experiencing something sexual. They were feeling that physical pull. And I would just mean, oh, I would say, oh, he's hot. You know, I had aesthetic preferences, but it wouldn't be, it wouldn't feel physical. But we don't talk like that. We don't get to the nitty-gritty.

There's so many generalities. and so it can be so hard to figure out exactly what your experience is and how it can be different from other people. But yeah, with the word asexual, I think once you know the word, then you know how to search for it, and that's where it leads you to all these resources. It's a lot like a lot of experience I have with science journalists where you'll be looking for the name of the discipline.

You'll be like, oh, I know there's something that's kind of like chemistry and kind of like physics, and then once you realize, oh, it's material science, you know, there's an entire field, field like that, then that's when you learn so much and you know where to go and who to talk to you. But before that, you're just Googling things like, what is something that is like chemistry and like physics, you know? Right. Yeah, it could be very hard if you don't have that vocabulary.

And it's related. You just brought up another, you know, closely related thing, which is the idea that you don't necessarily appreciate that other people are seeing and thinking about the world in a very different way. It made me think about, do you know, about affintasia? Yeah. It's funny you mentioned that because in earlier draft of the book actually used that exact analogy. Oh, good. So explain to us the analogy. It's great, I think.

Right. So I used the example. So at one point, there was some engineer who wrote this viral Facebook post about Afentasia. And he was talking about how he was 30 years old and had just discovered that other people can see images in their mind. But he couldn't. And he would say, you know, when people would say imagine a beach, he would think about the idea of a beach. He didn't realize that other people were actually seeing images in their head. And what's funny is I actually have a very weak visual imagination myself. So this hit home in many ways. And yeah, so there is that philosophical aspect to it. Like what I said, you know, what other people are saying sexy or hot, what do they mean? How would you know that they don't mean what you mean if there's not glaring differences?

You know, the way we use language, it's shared. It's so hard to know what's the same and what's different. Yeah, the fact that you know you could have, I mean, there were even visual artists who have effentasia and like they never realized that people were not being metaphorical when they said, you know, visualize an apple or something like that. And our culture is just, you know, besotted with the language of sexuality and desire and lust and libido. And I don't know, you tell me, but growing up AST, is that, was that something that you thought you did appreciate and didn't realize until later, like they were talking about something different?

Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, there was no indication at all that my experience was different in any way. And if anything, as a kid, you know, I was kind of cheeky, I'd kind of a raunchy sense of humor. And this reminded me of the story of a woman that I interviewed. And she grew up pretty religious in a small town in Oklahoma. And she and her friends were atheists from a young age. And they would go to church. And, you know, they would sit there and, you know,

do whatever, but they would kind of look at each other and put their eyes, you know, like, we're performing this, but no one really believes in this. And then later, it was the same for her with sexuality, where, you know, people would say, oh, he's so hot. And then she would play along, and she was the first person to make a joke about like a naked Greek statue that they've learned about in history class, you know? But for her, she always thought it was the same thing. She was like, oh, we're just performing this, but no one really cares. And then she said that once, you know, her best friend, I think when they were 16, had sex for the first time and they were talking about it.

And this woman was like, oh, was it horrible? I didn't traumatize you. And her friend was like, no, no, it was good or mediocre at least. It wasn't traumatizing. It was your first time. Right. Right. And it was the first time she realized that she had thought that everyone was in on the joke,

but everyone else actually experienced sex being a big deal. Yeah. No, I mean, it's amazing. So to go back to the clinical side, things, you know, that House episode reminds us that we have a long history of classifying deviations from the norm as mental disorders or somehow disabilities. And I forget, is asexuality essentially still in the DSM as something that we would try to treat and cure? It is. You know, the DSM seems to change quite a bit, but the diagnosis that most closely matches is hypoactive sexual disabilities.

disorder, though it's in the latest version has been split up into male and female forms. And essentially, some of the criteria sound just like asexuality. It's, you know, lack of sexual interests, lack of sexual fantasies. It basically, it really, there's nitty-gritty stuff, but in general it lines up. And so you can make a very strong argument that asexuality is in the DSM. The funny thing is that in the late 2000s, a task group recommended that there be an exception, that you couldn't be diagnosed or shouldn't be diagnosed with this disorder if you identified as a sexual. And I think that was an interesting move toward acknowledging sexual variation,

but to me it still seems kind of philosophically confused. Well, exactly. I mean, it raises questions that honestly I think are difficult to answer, at least for me. I mean, there are such things as mental disorders, but we have this history of classifying, like I said, all sorts of just deviations from accepted behavior, even if they're completely harmless. You know, obviously being gay for a long time was in that classification. And so how should we decide like when people are perfectly fine and living their lives and

everything is okay versus when we should treat them and try to fix them in some way? I feel like these ideas should be separated. So the reason that I thought the asexual exception doesn't make sense. is because to me it's like saying that if you identify as homosexual, then you're fine. But if you happen to experience same gender, same sex attraction, then you have a disorder. You know, it seems like this weird semantic thing. To me, I think that it's fine to have low, to have low sexual desire, not experience sexual attraction. That's not a deviation.

And I think that in many cases, if you're that, even if it's fine, maybe it's okay to change it. Maybe it's okay to want to enhance it for your relationship or for various reasons. I'm a really big believer in bodily autonomy, and I'm not necessarily against diagnoses. But I think in this case, when there's been a long history of pharmaceutical companies trying to sell libido-boasting drugs, most of them not successful, when the language is so stigmatized, when it's presented in a way that seems like you have to fix it, like it's. the subjective fact that there's something wrong, I think that should be, I think that should be addressed. And I mean, like you say, we're in a culture that valorizes sex a lot. I mean, at the same time as we're slightly titillated and made uncomfortable by talking about it, it's clear that the default is to think that wanting sex is good, having sex is good, being

good at sex is good, you know, and having a high sex drive is good. And where does that come from? You right? And, you know, are we, is one of the lessons of the ACE movement that that was just a sort of mistake all along to think that way? And we should be more open. I think the situation is complicated. Everything you described exists, but it also exists alongside, you know, slut shaming. And sexual repression is real.

And, you know, people's sexuality are controlled. So these things exist in different pockets. They exist in the same pocket. Obviously, I'm not trying to deny that purity culture also exists. I think there's a lot of different. causes of this kind of culture. I think evolutionary psychology in a way is, like people often say, oh, you know, we evolved to have sex.

It's so natural, even though I don't personally find that a very compelling reason to do something just because we might have evolved to do it. But people do say that is one reason. Another reason is simply, I think, sex is titillating and sex sells. And, you know, there's so many ad campaigns around the idea of sex equals vitality, and so it compounds, and it's all around us. With the ACE movement, I don't think ACEs are interested in desexualizing everything. Aces obviously don't hate people

who have sex. We're fine with that. It's more the idea that there is a, there's a real imbalance. And I, at least speaking for me, I think the answer is just more messages of different kinds. You know, I don't want to stop people from talking about how much they love sex, but it's skewed, can we have more message from the other side? Can we have more representation and fiction and pop culture? So multiplicity of messages, I think. So it's not, in many ways, I don't think it's a mistake that society is sexualized. I think for many people, it's joyful. It's just there needs to be more than one way. When people turn to telehealth or weight loss, they're looking for real support. That's why more people are choosing orderly meds.com. Orderly meds connects you with real

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Yeah. I mean, it made me think in some ways on the philosophy side of things of a podcast interview I did with Lori Paul about transformative experience. And her idea was, you know, you try to be rational about choices you make, but some of those choices will actually turn you into a different person whose preferences are different. And she likes to use the example of being a vampire. You know, you might not want to be a vampire, but once you're bitten and turned to a vampire, you like it. But it's clearly a metaphor for things like having children or going to graduate school or something like that. And she doesn't have any easy answers, but the point is so if you're someone who doesn't have sexual desire, that's one thing.

And then there's another thing is, do you want to have sexual desire? Like, are you, do you want it because you think that that would be good? And it's like learning a new musical instrument? Or do you want it just because society is telling you that you should want it? Absolutely. And I think that's something that almost all ace people struggle with at some time, especially at the beginning of realizing they're asexual. And, you know, I think this comes up a lot in discussing about libido-boothin drugs, you know?

Is it a violation or a birxual? betrayal of who you are if you take those, is that will that mean that you're giving into the societal pressure that definitely exists? And the answer, I mean, I don't have a perfect answer. I think it's very, I think it's very complicated. And I think the only thing that people can do is, first of all, you know, on a macro level, try to, try to release some of the massive pressure to be more sexual. But then on a personal level, you know, you make your own decisions. For some people, maybe their orientation is not that important to them, and the relationship is more important to them, for example. For other people, maybe they think, oh, this is a part of who I am, this is my

identity. I don't want to change that, and that's totally fine, too. I think people should be able to make their own decisions, essentially, even though we are all, not all, but even though most Aces are disadvantaged by these societal pressures I mentioned. Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, I'm very much in favor of people making their own decisions. On the other hand, we all know people are terrible at making their own decisions, but I can't think of any better system than letting them do it. Neither can I. You know, and I think there's so many parallels. Many years ago, I wrote this piece for Aon, the magazine, and it was about anti-love drugs, and it kind of touched on similar topics.

And one thing I pointed out was, you know, for example, women who get breast implants, oftentimes that's because of these really narrow beauty societal standards that I think we should don't get rid of, right? Like, I don't think, I think it's a good thing to get rid of the saddle standards. At the same time, I think it would feel weird to ban women from being able to get breast implants. You know, I don't think it's a perfect analogy, but I think some of the same questions are there. And it's not an easy question to answer. Do we have any idea of how many people are ACE? It's complicated. The number that is thrown around all the time is 1%.

And it's based on a survey from more than a decade ago by now. But like I said, because there's so many confusions about what it means to be ACE, I think the number honestly is much higher. You know, earlier in life, I would never have put as my sexual orientation on a form. In many places that is not even available, you know, as a sexual orientation on many forms. Many people don't know what it means. So how can you know whether that's you or not? Right. And is it just trying to get the nomenclature right?

Is it an orientation? Is that right? because it's different than being gay or straight. It is a sexual, it is a sexual orientation, yes. Okay. Can it be temporary? Can people go through phases of being asexual and then come back? Or is it something that we should think of as more deeply rooted

and whether your libido comes and goes is a different thing? That's an interesting question. And I think one that is still being discussed, and not just with asexuality, but with many sexual orientations. You know, I think most people think of sexual orientations, whether it's being gay or being straight or being sexual, as this deep thing in which it's who you are and how you've always been is who you are deep down. Whereas I personally think it's much better to think about sexualities in a much more fluid way. You know, if someone is gay and then later they are with someone of the opposite gender, I don't think that means they were never gay or that, you know, that period of their lives was fake somehow. I think that. I think that. people go in and out of different sexuality throughout their life. For the purposes of research, I think many people used to have this requirement that asexuality was lifelong, but it wasn't caused by anything else. It was not related to disability or sexual trauma, but I think that it's actually

more helpful to think of it as a fluid thing and that people can go through periods of being more and less asexual. And again, on a more macro level, I think it's pretty clear as people grow older, you know, they're more likely to go through phases of being asexual. Yeah, yeah, sure. And it does raise, once again, this difficult philosophy problem having to do with identity, right? I mean, on the one hand, we want to say our identities are important. They shape who we are, how society looks at us and things like that. On the other hand, we want to say, and I should be free to change it and still be someone who I am. And so I think that, you know, in many ways, tell me what you think, but I think that in many ways, you know, society is becoming gradually more comfortable with both acknowledging, identity and letting it be a little bit more slippery than it would have been in a more rigid past. I hope so. I think that in many ways, and I think this is just me speaking for myself, as sexuality developed as a response to all of these recital pressures to be sexual, what I call compulsory sexuality. If these pressures didn't exist, then I think there would be much less

need for people to find community, to have this sense of shared culture, to use the asexual label. So I personally think my dream is that one day we don't have the DSM entry that corresponds as a sexuality, but we also don't need as sexuality as an identity because you can just say whatever you want and people won't doubt you and people, you won't need this community to validate your choices because you won't be so much on the fringes. So I hope society is moving in that way. And I think, I think that's the way I'd like society to move in. I guess another thing to be clear about is there would be a difference between being fully and happily and self-actualized as an ace versus just having your sexuality repressed away,

right? I mean, both of those things are possible, I take it, but they're different things. Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is something that comes up a lot when we're talking about gender, specifically with women. Of course, there's this trope of the sexually repressed, sexually conservative woman who has been shamed into being repressed. And I think that happens for a lot of people. and I think that's a shame. I also think that sometimes people who are sexually conservative, it's not because they're repressed. It's just because that's how they are.

And so it's important to acknowledge that both exist and that both people might need different things and that we could just be respectful of what each might need. I mean, maybe it's time to move into having the clinical stuff out of the way. We can be a little bit more personal about it. I mean, what is it like, either from your perspective or from the many people who you interviewed for your book, I mean, what does it like to discover that this is an identity that you have

and to sort of wonder what you're supposed to do next when in a society that is just not built for you? It's really different. There's one person I interviewed who really fits the mold of how the media portrays asexuality, meaning they felt from an early age that they were different. They hated the idea of sex. They were freaked out by it. And then one day they discovered asexuality from a Dear Abbey column.

And they said, you know, immediately this word made sense. oh, there's other people like me out there. Oh, I don't have to have sex one day if I don't want to, even though people are always telling me that I'm going to want it and that I'm going to become a different person. And so there are people like that who really embrace it because it shows them that the way that they felt different isn't bad. It is something to be ashamed of,

but there's other people like them out there and they can find support. There's also people, and I think I personally fall more into this category, where it just brings up a lot more ambivalent. And, you know, ever since I have been promoting the book and I publish an excerpt, people have been reaching out to me and saying, oh, I've never seen asexuality described the way that you described it, even though I knew about the term and the orientation. I'm thinking whether I might be asexual and I have so many complicated ambivalent feelings about it. On the one hand, I think it's a relief because there's a feeling of recognition, you know, that, oh, these things I thought that might be weird, that's still there. But on the other hand, you know, if you didn't feel that strange or different growing up, which I didn't, then you, I think you can get saddled down the baggage, you know? One minute you're just an alo person who maybe has some strange, quote unquote, experience of sex.

The next minute you have to think, oh, is just a whole identity? And there's all of these perceptual about what it means to be asexual. Like we talked about the word it's associated with being, you know, prude. Are you approved? Are you repressed? Are you not vital because, you know, you live a sexless or possibly sexless life? It can bring a lot of baggage and a lot of complication, too. Yeah, I mean, but I like the fact that it's, or that you bring, I like the fact that you're bringing up the fact that it might be different than coming out as gay or something like that or trans, where there may have been much more strongly all along some feeling that you didn't fit into the category you were supposed to. Whereas being. ace can kind of creep up on you. You can, you know, you can have a raunchy sense of humor and feel everything is okay. And it's suddenly like there's a whole new conceptual world that opens up. Absolutely. And I think it's interesting because the question of coming out can be different too.

For ACEs, I think that it often can feel unnecessary sometimes, you know, not for everyone, of course. But when you tell your parents, for example, that you're asexual, it does feel, it does feel, it does feel, inappropriate almost, I think, in a way that's not true because, you know, when you're talking about sexual attraction, I think it feels like it's talking about your sex life in this like very direct way. And so I've talked to people who say, you know, I feel strange about coming out. I don't think I, I, or I didn't, you know, if they might be gay, for example, I didn't feel weird about coming out as gay, but I work in a conservative place. And it really does feel like I'm trying to talk to my co-workers about my sex life in a way that's not true for, you know,

other orientations. So there's these strange nuances there. And another thing just to let people know, I mean, it's perfectly possible for an ace to be in a loving romantic relationship with an alosexual person. But maybe there are, you know, there are difficulties there, but you know, there are difficulties in all relationships. So it's the kind of thing you've got to learn to work through. Absolutely. Of course there's difficulties there. And one thing that I think about is that, as you mentioned, there are serious difficulties in every relationship, you know, money, kids, who's going to take care of the parents, that kind of thing. But sexual difficulties really have a stigma around them almost. You know,

I feel like many people feel comfortable talking to friends about money troubles or, you know, how are we going to raise the kids. But there seems to be something like pathetic and sad about having sexual difficulties or a sexual mismatch, even though that is so common. And it's, I think, very rare for two people to have the exact same like. level of libido forever. So I think oftentimes sexual compatibility is framed differently. I think many people are taught to expect, you know, you're going to have differences of opinion when it comes to homes and parents. But there's not these conversations about, is it okay to have sexual compatibility if other things are more important or is that settling?

You know, there's a shame around that. But so in your research, you found a lot of successful examples. examples of relationships between Aces and ALOs? I think it depends on what you mean by successful. I suppose the short answer is yes. Like I don't think these people are any less happy than Aloe couples. I think it can be much harder, honestly, for Aces to be in relationships with Alo's. I think there can be a lot of pressure.

And I think especially for people who at one point didn't know that they were asexual. And so there was a lot of pressure, you know, you're the low-desire partner, why do you have this problem? Why won't you fix it? It's your responsibility to fix it. There was a lot of that kind of dynamic in the relationship, which I think isn't fair because, you know, the incompatibility is from both people. If both people had the exact same level of desire, whether it was higher or low, it wouldn't be a problem. So therefore it should be a shared problem, you know, with shared responsibility instead of it all going on the lower-desire partner. And so especially for people who didn't realize for a long time,

there was this feeling of frustration and guilt and shame. And people can still have that even after they realize that they're ace. So I have found a lot of examples. I think everyone that I found has really had to become very good at talking to people about difficult subjects, which in the end is a good life skill for any long-term relationship. That's true. And we can imagine various strategies and compromises that such couples might want to choose to pursue. So I take it that it's at least easier to imagine aces just being,

aces who are interested in romantic entanglements to find them with other aces. It is, in theory. I think in practice, and it is in theory, and there are some ace dating websites out there. I think in practice, as anyone knows, sexual orientation is not the most important factor in compatibility. And most aces, I know, actually do try to date aloes and see if. there's a way to make that work. Oh, that's interesting. I mean, is that just because there are more of them,

or is there something about, you know, that they actually find attractive? I think it's mostly because there's just more of them. I think there really aren't that many aces out there. And so you're, and not only that, but we don't, you know, aces are all spread out, right? So it's not like we have, we all live in the same place. Or, you know, it's not like we have geographical enclaves.

And because of that, I think it's just, you're surrounded by aloes in many ways you can. Sometimes you just don't have a choice. Hey, everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and I Heart Audio Book Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary, massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science,

and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth? I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo, yeah, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no, at this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude, me too.

Listen to Earsay, the Audible and IHeart Audio Club on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. When people turn to telehealth or weight loss, they're looking for real support. That's why more people are choosing orderly meds.com. Orderly meds connects you with real doctors and access to proven GLP1 medications like semaglutide and terseptatide. No guessing, just a more supportive experience, and all shift directly to your door in discrete packaging. Do your research, ask questions, then visit orderly meds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. That's orderly meds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary now medical advice, eligibility required, C-Sight for details. And, I mean, are there ACEs who don't even want to just

have a partner relationship at all? I mean, they're just introverted and perfectly solitary and also perfectly happy, even though society's going to be judging them all along. Yeah, there are. And this is something that's separate but related. So these people are called erromantic, you know. So you can be hetereromantic, we talked about the sexual orientation, or you can be aromantic. And not all aces are aromatic. Obviously, many want and have romantic relationships. And actually, not all people who are aromantic are asexual either. It was interesting. I interviewed with a book, someone, a man, who is a romantic, but he's not asexual. And there was a whole lot of baggage that, too, especially because of his gender. So, yeah, there are

definitely... Yeah, they thought he was just being an operator, but he actually, we should, if we're being accepting of other ways of living, other modes, it's perfectly possible someone can enjoy and like having sex in a perfectly good faith, good-natured, friendly way, but just not be interested in a partnered romantic relationship. Exactly. And he said that that's what he wanted to do and he really cared about his partners, but he just was not interested in romance. but because of all these ideas that only sociopaths and serial killers aren't interested in romance, you know, that if you're not interested in romance, you just can't love or have no morality, I think that caused a lot of pain for him. You mentioned the idea of a Boston marriage, which I'd never heard of before,

but apparently it comes from Henry James. And I think that you, I might be misremembering, but I seem to think either you or one of the people you interviewed said, like, we should bring back the institution of the Boston marriage. Right. So that was someone that I interviewed. And a Boston marriage is essentially these devoted partnerships of women living together. And it comes from a Henry James novel. And some of these women, I think, were lesbian, but not all of them.

And so one of the people I interviewed did say that that's what she wanted because this woman was erromantic. And she had a lot of fears about what was going to happen to her for the rest of her life. Because if it was aneromantic, then people always ask you, oh, who's going to take care of you when you're old? you know, what if you're all alone? And in practice, this often can be what happens. You know, her best friend who she'd lived with for years had moved out to live with her boyfriend and other of her friends were getting married and she was having this realization that I'm a romantic. I'm not going to be the one who's going out to live with a partner, but my friends are all going to partner up and it felt like she was being left behind. And so she really wanted to see the normalization of

many different types of partnerships and friendships that were devoted and that were treated with just as much respect and a sense of permanence as we treat romantic relationships. I think that there are, it seems to me, a lot of depictions in fiction of couples, especially older, you know, two women living together and very often as basically, you know, functioning as partners, although not romantic partners. And the implication either explicitly from the author or inferred by the audiences, well, they're really lesbians, they just don't want to say so,

right? But this is another mode again that you could be in. Like, they could actually be friends and partners in the old-fashioned sense of the word partners, like managing the house and the finances and so forth without that romantic attachment. Right. And I think what a lot of people say is that

and they can feel just as strongly toward each other and be just as devoted toward each other, even if it's not romantic. You know, it doesn't mean that it's not that friendship is automatically less devoted than romance, though there are many different factors that conspire to make it so. I mean, you mentioned that aces are thin on the ground and therefore it can be hard to find a like-minded partner.

And you also said that the idea of the orientation sort of is 20 years old, which is obviously very, very young. Has the internet and social media communities played a huge role in this self-recognition? Absolutely. So ACEs have existed, or rather people who we today would describe as asexual, have existed for a long time. You know, people will say Tesla was maybe ace or Andy Warhol was possibly ace. But before the internet, I think it was just hard for like-minded people to get together on a mass scale. So it was really in the early 2000s that people started finding these communities and discussing their lives. and, you know, even describing what asexuality meant.

You know, asexuality didn't have to mean, quote, a person who doesn't experience sexual attraction. That's a definition that people made up and agreed on. And it could have been another way, you know, maybe if things had gone differently, I would say that I'm non-sexual and my book would have a different title. That would be confusing because, you know, celibates are not the same. But, yeah, the Internet has really had a huge effect.

And it's been both good and bad. On the one hand, it's facilitated a lot. of as activism, connected people to each other, you know, the usual good parts of the internet. On the other hand, because of the history of asexuality and because of how new relatively asexual activism still is, it's often derided as this internet orientation for people on Tumblr. And I think that in many ways makes it seem less accessible or less legitimate, which is a shame because there are, I'm sure, many people who are not on Tumblr and not very online who would benefit from learning more about asexuality

and how aces view the world. I mean, the birth of a new social movement, larger, small is, I mean, it's kind of like childbirth, right? I mean, it's a beautiful miracle, but it's also very messy and painful. Are there huge ongoing controversies within the community that are roiling people's emotions and very dramatic, or is it more or less a successful story of people coming together and going,

oh yes, we found each other. I think any community will always have ongoing discussions. I think in the earlier years of the community, there was a lot of gatekeeping. There's still gatekeeping, but particularly in earlier years, there's a lot of discussion that if you're disabled, you can't be asexual. Because the idea was people already thought

that asexuality was related to some kind of medical illness, you know? And people were trying so hard to fight that impression. And so it felt like, you know, getting far away from any, anything that could taint that was good. And the same for survivors of sexual assault. There was an idea that, oh, if you were sexually assaulted, then obviously that caused it. You can't be asexual. And I don't think that did the community any services because it just cut people off and it was not inclusive and I don't think it was healthy. And nowadays, you know, there's many, even within the eight spectrum, there's a lot of, there's a lot of gatekeeping

about what makes you ace enough. I think there's actually a lot of discussion when within the larger queer community about the extent to which you are queer if you are asexual and straight. And I think that you are, but I think that's not entirely a settled question. People do like their gatekeeping. I mean, that's much more universal than sexual desire. Let's get that way. There are no A gatekeepers out there in the world. I mean, so from the experience of this movement, are there lessons or advice for the rest of the world. I think

probably most kind-hearted people, once they hear that there are people who are asexual will be favorably

disposed to them. But are there common mistakes that people make in talking to Aces that we could do better to avoid?

I think in terms of just talking to Aces, you know, obviously don't say things like, oh, you haven't found

the right person or, oh, should you go to the doctor? You know, anything that sounds like you think

that asexuality isn't real. That's pretty basic. But in terms of, you know, lessons for the rest of the world, I think there are a lot. You know, I think a weakness of many people broadly is that people think that a community doesn't have lessons for them if they're not part of the community. But even if you're not asexual, I think really questioning what exactly is sexuality, what is sexual attraction? Because it's actually extremely hard to define. And one of the funny things is being an asexual person, you know, you always feel like you have to, your identity is based on not experiencing something, but because you don't experience that thing, then it's hard for you to say what you don't experience, you know, that's another kind of cork of language that comes up with

this whole topic. But I think it's good for everyone to think closely, you know, what is the difference between being aesthetically attracted to someone and being sexually attracted to someone or being emotionally attracted to someone? I think there's a lot of things to think about regarding consent and relationships and these invisible inequality. regarding, like we talked about earlier, how the lower desire partner is the one who is supposed to do all the work and, quote, fix themselves. And there's a lot to think about regarding the ways in which we prove the dramatic relationships and often, you know, often at the expense of platonic relationships. And so just to be super-duper clear, you know, there's no problem

in being an ace and looking at somebody and going, oh, my goodness, that person's very hot. No, there's no, there's no problem at all. Very good. But, I mean, this is why I, I, I, The philosophical implications were fascinating to me because it becomes clear that, you know, we have this tendency to package characteristics or identities, right? And there's this ideal of love and romance that goes along with not just sexual desire, but also friendship and sharing the household and things like that. But in principle, these are all different. And, you know, figuring out exactly how to divide up the different ways and acknowledging that in principle, any of them could be perfectly fine. is a little bit of philosophical spade work we all have to do. Exactly.

And sex and desire are simply so symbolic. You know, thinking about, for example, books for children, sexuality is usually introduced as a way to signal that you are no longer a child. You know, this is how you pass the gate and you are no longer innocent. And now I can sit at the adults table. And what child doesn't want to not be, you know, to not be a child and to know what everyone else knows? You know, sexuality is when you are chosen and loved by someone other than your parents, you know, for who you are. If you want those things, of course, and most people do, then how do you know whether you want to be an adult or you actually just want sex?

You know, basically, I think the big, big lesson of the book in a bisexuality is that sex is coupled with so many things and it doesn't have to be so. And you can decouple them, but it'll take a lot of work. but I think all of us will be able to learn something from interrogating that more closely. Well, you use the phrase compulsory sexuality, and especially in regards to stories and culture and novels and films and stuff like that. The idea that, you know, if you're telling a story, there has to be a romantic sexual component to it. Absolutely. And at one point, I write about my attempt to find a story. Again, that's not why or science fiction or something like that.

in which there wasn't a major romantic plot point in which, you know, love or the pursuit of, romantic love or the pursuit of it or dating wasn't part of it. And I did find examples of that, but all of those were, all of those were of a different genre. So they might be literary, but they were Holocaust novels, or they were war novels, or they were about rehabilitation. They weren't just what you typically call, you know, a general literary fiction novel. The, you know, compulsory sexuality and the same with romance is so embedded that many of us don't notice it at all. And I think that limits the way we think about the possibilities, you know? Like, do I really want romance and sex or do I just want to feel some excitement?

Yeah, no, when I was reading that section of your book, I thought, well, you know, well, what about mystery novels? Like, there are mystery novels where there's not any relationship front and center. But then I got to the point where you say, like, yes, the exceptions are all in other labeled genres, right? And I always wondered what qualified a story as a genre story. And maybe the answer is genre stories are stories that do not foreground sexuality in some way. That's funny. I never thought about it that way. And, you know, the question of genre is this big question that I don't necessarily feel qualified to answer.

I mean, intuitively we know. It's like crime fiction, horror fiction. Yeah, but maybe that you can flip it around. And it's something that, it's a story that grounds something besides love and, kind of like a middle-class life. Yeah, yeah, something like that, like the package. I mean, that's the idea that we have this set of expectations, and they're the norm against which we judge everything else, right?

And, I mean, I take it that this is part of what you hope happens is that there's more variety, more diversity of experiences reflected in our stories and our pop culture. I think so. And I think that there are many people who find it easy to fit into expectations of romance and sex. and it's easy to feels natural, but just because it's easy, it doesn't mean it's actually optimal for them. And so I think that branching out would be helpful,

even if you haven't felt like you were strange or marginalized or different. Yeah, I mean, I'm also interested in this idea of representation and role models because as a scientist, you know, most of my colleagues are men, clearly, mostly white, some Asians, right? Very few African Americans

or anything like that. Very few gay people, although there are some. And the idea that when we think of what a scientist is, we have a certain view in mind. There's this famous study, not really study, but the thing that was done where they asked some children to draw a scientist and they all look like Einstein. And they took them on a field trip to Fermilab

and they met the physicist. And afterward, they asked them to draw a scientist and they wrote this diverse crowd. It can really change people's lives, especially young people, to see people like them out there, either on the TV screen or the movie screen or represented in the pages of a book. Absolutely. And I think it was powerful for me too, though I am far from being a child.

You know, when I was first writing the book and even now, you know, I have embovillant feelings about being ace. And I think that's, you know, part and parcel of any kind of identity, especially one that's lesser known. But as I reported the book and I met people who were both ace and unburdened by the things that bothered me, it helped me. You know, I met people who were ACE and they just didn't care if other people might think that they were crude or boring

or lacking in vitality or any of those circumstances. They just said, oh, well, I've always been different and this was just another way I was different and I didn't really think about it. And for me,

who tends to be a little self-conscious and words about what other people think, even having that kind of, you know, very specific representation, and someone I was interviewing made a difference. Yeah. And it is going to be difficult because you make, I guess you make this point subtextually

when you were talking about Todd Chavez in BoJack Horseman. And you mentioned that the episode in which he is sort of, is most centered on him being asexual is not the funniest or most dramatically interesting one because it has to function as a pedagogical documentary as well as a comedy cartoon show, right? He's like explaining very earnestly what it means. And that's going to make it hard. at the early days to tell the compelling stories that we hope will eventually come. Right. And there's a lot of issues with this anytime I think you want to have

asexuality represented. So, you know, books and representation don't exist in a vacuum. So if you have someone who, for example, is disabled and asexual and you explicitly label them asexual, if people don't bother to learn more about the umbrella of asexuality, I think they'll just assume that all disabled people are asexual or vice versa, right? It's very hard to have representation, both because you have to do all the pedicogy, but because you don't know how much you can trust because it's not quite in the culture yet. And there are also, as you bring out in the book, all sorts of issues about intersectional identity issues where it matters whether you're black or Asian or white or gay or straight or trans or cis or whatever. Like, that's a over and above, whether you're ace or aloe, that's going to come into the mix of defining who you are and what stories you're going to want told about yourself. Yeah, I think being ace, because there's this assumption that everyone is sexual, that's, you know, what gives us our lifeblood.

I think everyone is always questioning, oh, am I actually as sexual or have a, am I just shy? You know, am I actually a sexual or am I scared of the people that I conceivably could be interested in? But if you are not white or if you are not a cis, then there's all these other questions of identity related to that. I interviewed a woman who is black and asexual, and I should mention that the asexual community is fairly white. And she said that she started thinking she was asexual. And then she went and saw that everyone else was white,

and she was kind of like, oh, am I actually asexual? Or do I just hate the fact that there are these racist stereotypes? of black women as hypersexual. You know, is this my real, you know, quote unquote, natural orientation, or is just some kind of reaction against racism? And because there weren't that many black aces, it was hard for her to find someone to discuss this with. So all these issues really compound.

And there is, I mean, you're touching on the sort of causality or even the free will aspects of it. I mean, is it even a valid question to ask, do I feel this way because of some essential notion of who I am versus causal factors that made me this way. Like, it's not at all clear that there's any difference to be distinguished there.

I think the way that I think about it is that it is good to question why you might be some way because it might be that you are this way because you've been shamed into being uncomfortable with sexuality. And if shame is what is, you know, impeding your life,

then I think it's good to work through that and, you know, discover sexuality and be happy. I think, so I think it's good for everyone to question. And I also think it's not good when people become so fixated on asexuality that it becomes a cause for anxiety. There was one person I interviewed who, though she was asexual, liked to, had a friend with benefits. And after every time she fooled around with this person, she would just be worried and kind of being like, oh, am I actually asexual?

Am I a bad asexual? Yeah, like my answer to that. That would be, you know, first of all, you can figure that out on your own. But even if you discovered you weren't asexual, that's fine too, you know? Like, you don't need to be in this community forever. It's complicated, but I don't feel like I don't want identity to become this really rigid thing where you're afraid to explore things you might enjoy because you might discover you're not asexual. So that's one part of it.

I think the problem to me isn't that people question, that the questioning only goes in one direction, you know? The assumption is that you are deluded if you think you're asexual. and so you need to always be questioning, whereas there's almost, I'm pretty sure, no questioning, whereas there's very little questioning of aloe people, whether they might be sexual. So it's the asymmetry, again, that bothers me when it comes to questions of causality. No one is ever shocked when they find out that someone is alosexual, right? I mean, that's not something that is immediately referred to the DSM for diagnosis. But, I mean, at the end of the day, like, we want to let people live their lives if they're not hurting other people, right?

I mean, most of this advice stems from that general principle. Is it fair to say? Yes, absolutely. And so the last thing I wanted to ask you about, because this is a different kind of episode than we usually have on Minescape, the book that you wrote is a different kind of book than most of my guests have written, those who have written books. And you mentioned yourself in the book that there were times that it was hard to write. I mean, maybe not, you know, made you sad, but at least like the level of honesty is a little demanding, you know, and you're a science writer by training. Like, was this a different kind of experience for you?

And is this, are there lessons there for other people who want to talk about their experiences? It definitely was. Like we said, I'm a science writer. And though this book is personal in that I talk about my life. talk about my relationships, there was some resistance in some ways to writing this book because what I like to talk about is science and technology and biotech. I'm not a very natural in some ways writer to explore sex and gender. And it was difficult because it's not just that the self-disclosure was difficult because I write essays and so I'm used to self-disclosure. It was

the fact that I always wanted to manage other people's perception of me. And, you know, know, I talked about this defensiveness. You know, I don't want to be seen as a killjoy. I don't want to be seen as this really disapproving person. So even as I was writing a book about why these dealings were unfair, I felt them anyway in the process of writing the book. So eventually, I think I just had to realize that if you're going to write about yourself, in some ways you have to throw yourself under the bus.

You have to stop managing other people's perceptions because that's going to make you pose too much and care too much about looking good, and then you're not honest, and then, you know, it's PR. It's PR for yourself, and it's not useful. So I had to go through some of that in the revision process. Or you can just be a theoretical physicist and never reveal anything about yourself in your writing as a professional. That's a much more comfortable route I found. If only that route were available to me. Well, you know, there you go. But the other thing, I guess I think that I already said this is the final thing, but this came up while you're just talking. I mean, there aren't that many books about asexuality, and you've written one, and it is a topic that for the people who are involved is very personal and very intertwined with who they are.

Did you feel some sort of pressure to get it right and be a good champion for the people? That's something I don't feel myself when I'm writing about quantum mechanics of the Higgs boson. I felt enormous pressure. It's a double-edged sword because if there were hundreds of books on asexualism out there, of course, it'd be less likely that a new book would have been sold and published, right? Yeah. But I think that when you're one of the first ones, and this book is still one of the first ones, there is, as you say, that pressure and that manifests in many ways. So even in the way the book is written in the topics, you know, I knew I couldn't write a book about asexuality without talking about race, without talking about disability, because there were not. out there, you know, and it had to, in some ways, be a little bit more academic and more broad.

And because it had to be broad, there were, you know, these fascinating tangents that I couldn't talk about and that ended up on the cutting room floor. And I definitely did feel a sense of responsibility to my, to the people that I interviewed. I'm critical of parts of the asexual community writ large in the book, but the people that I spoke to were also open. And I really worked carefully with them to make sure, you know, I fact check really careful. and I was paranoid about getting everything right because I don't see this as a gotcha book. I'm not revealing, I'm not proving something bad about asexuality.

We're not there yet. You know, maybe one day there'll be a gotcha book about asexuality. But here, yes, I did feel that pressure. Not necessarily to be a champion because I think it's okay to be ambivalent and to have questions and to be critical, but to try to show as diverse a landscape as I could. Well, if my experience with the public discourse is anything to go by, I'm sure people will hear about your book, read it, understand what you're saying, and compliment you on your intelligence and discernment.

So I wish you luck with that process of recognition. Thank you. I look forward to that. I hope it's true. I'm sure it'll be true. So Angela Chen, thanks so much for being on the Mindscape podcast. Thank you again for having me.