A K Andrews - Ace & Proud: An Asexual Anthology

An asexual is someonewho does not experience sexual attraction. Unlike celibacy, which peoplechoose, asexuality is an intrinsic part of who we are.

AVEN website

Imagine that youlive in a world where everyone is obsessed with pie. The lyrics to every Top 10song either revolve around the acquisition of pie, the consumption of pie, orheartbreak over lack of pie. Teenagers in high school classrooms can barelyfocus on their schoolwork because theyre busy fantasizing about eating pie. Poetswrite odes to pie, and beautiful oil paintings of pie hang in the halls ofevery museum and art gallery on the planet. In short, human society is shaped,defined, and ruled by this baked dessert.

But theres one small problem: you dontlike pie. Its not like you have any particular vendetta against ityou justknow it isnt for you. You may have even tried it once or twice out ofcuriosity, although the experience wasnt exactly satisfying. You know thatmost people look at pie and feel an overwhelming urge to consume it, but youfeel nothing. Its just pie, for heavens sake! Whats all the fuss about?

Now replace pie with sex, and youve just peekedinto the mind of an asexual (or, ace) person. Its not a perfect analogy,obviously, but I think you get the picture.

A lot of people believe that asexualityisnt real. They argue that disinterest in sex isnt a natural condition, butrather a medical issue that requires treatment, or a psychological problemcaused by childhood trauma. But asexuality is very real, and its not a problemthat needs to be overcomeits a sexual orientation, just like heterosexuality,homosexuality, or bisexuality. And its not as uncommon as you might think. Recent studies estimate that one personin every hundred is asexualmeaning that, with a world population of over sevenbillion, there are approximately 70 million asexuals alive today.

But despite this huge number of asexualpeople, you rarely hear about asexuality. Thats because its not an issuethats really on the public radar yet. And that makes a lot of sense, becausewhereas something like gay marriage causes a lot of controversy and attracts alot of media attention, there arent really any controversial subjects surroundingasexuality.

Ever so slowly, though, asexual awarenessand visibility is increasing. Its happening through word of mouth, through ahandful of asexual characters popping up on TV (like Sheldon Cooper from TheBig Bang Theory, or the titular protagonist of Dexter), through thehard work and dedication of organizations like the Asexual Visibility andEducation Network (AVEN), and through projects like this anthology. Its goingto take time, but were all working toward creating a world where everyoneknows that asexuality existstoward creating a world where no one will have tospend years thinking theyre broken because they dont want to have sex and dontunderstand why they feel that way.

This anthology began the way many passion projectsdoI went looking for something, couldnt find it, and decided to create itmyself. In this case, I was looking for a book containing a collection ofpersonal essays about asexuality; stories from real asexual people about real lifeexperiences that I could identify with, empathize with, and hopefully learnfrom. Since that book didnt seem to exist yet, I took matters into my ownhands. After posting a call for submissions on the AVEN forum, I spent monthscollecting stories, corresponding with authors, and editing submissions, untilfinally I created the book youre reading right now.

In the pages of this anthology, youll find17 autobiographical stories from asexual writers around the world. (Note thatsome of the writers have chosen to use pen names in order to preserve theiranonymity.) These stories are:

Rebecca Nesor shares her experience as a 21stcentury asexual teenager, which involves an amusing anecdote about phoneshopping and Minecraft.