‘The oppression of ace people is tied up in the oppression of fill in the blank: Queer people, Black people, Indigenous people, poor people. Liberation of ace people is tied to the liberation of all of these people too. And that is my viewpoint… we all gotta get free.’

- Maureen, A Communication Approach to Asexual People of Color’s Experiences with Allonormativity by Benjamin Brandley

‘To close with the powerful words of a participant, Maureen, who identified as a Black panromantic asexual cisgender woman:
The oppression of ace people is tied up in the oppression of fill in the blank: Queer people, Black people, Indigenous people, poor people. Liberation of ace people is tied to the liberation of all of these people too. And that is my viewpoint… we all gotta get free.’

CHAPTER 4 DISCUSSION, Advocacy and Policy Implications from A Communication Approach to Asexual People of Color’s Experiences with Allonormativity by Benjamin Brandley

‘For many asexual people of color, their existence is invalidated through mythizing asexuality and accusing ace people as illegitimate attention-seekers. As a result, one final way allonormative rhetorics operate as a mechanism of invalidation is by framing the development of sexual attraction as inevitable (Zivony & Reggev, 2023), and thus allosexuality as fateful.’

CHAPTER 4 DISCUSSION, Advocacy and Policy Implications from A Communication, Subcategory B: Asexuality as histrionics from Approach to Asexual People of Color’s Experiences with Allonormativity by Benjamin Brandley

Personal notes: So it turns out the result of asexual exclusionism was just making it even harder for asexual POC to exist on top of the rampant racism. In other news, water is wet.

‘Maggie (she/her), who identified as an Afro-Indigenous biromantic asexual cisgender woman, that she has personally come across “people not believing” her and others when disclosing asexuality. She continued, “not believing [us] specifically because you’re a person of color” because “there’s not as many spaces for us to talk about it or be seen. So when you do speak up, people will be like, ‘Oh, really? …I find that hard to believe.’” Maggie feels that the overrepresentation of white asexuals aids in the propelling of asexuality as myth for aces of color because when white folks “come out, it’s like, well, that’s great for you…. But it’s kinda unexpected for us [people of color], but not unexpected for people like white people.” She clarified that she has experienced this discourse in queer and non-queer circles, across racial lines that “there’s still this shock factor even for us,” highlighting how allonormativity works to impossibilize asexuality among people of color. This subcategory explores the marginalization of asexuality, particularly among people of color, as a myth perpetuated by rhetorics of allonormativity that dismiss asexuality as an impossible and abnormal phenomenon, impacting individuals like Dee, Gina, Vena, and Maggie, who share experiences of disbelief and invalidation from both familial and societal perspectives.’

CHAPTER 2 A TYPOLOGY OF ALLONORMATIVE RHETORICS, Category 2: Inferiorisation, Subcategory A: Asexuality as myth from A Communication Approach to Asexual People of Color’s Experiences with Allonormativity by Benjamin Brandley

‘BIPOC aces should know that we have long deserved better than the colonization of our sexuality. Societal myths, racial stereotypes, and tropes shouldn’t dictate our perception of ourselves. Luckily, in our broad understanding of (a)sexuality, we have many of the tools, knowledge, and resources to begin shifting narratives of sexuality that can ultimately benefit all people of color, whether they’re self-identified as asexual or not.’

- Ebony Purks for Rebellious Magazine, 2021

‘The asexual experience for white people is not the same for racially and ethnically marginalized people. Black aces and other asexuals of color must fight against stereotypes like the Jezebel, the Mammy, the China doll or the Geisha Girl, or the desexualized Asian male trope that have historically stripped our personhood of any nuance. Therefore, the insecurities we harbor that prevent many from even identifying within the community are valid’

- Ebony Purks for Rebellious Magazine, 2021

‘Black asexuality shatters centuries-old beliefs, upheld by caricatures like the Mandingo, the Jezebel, the Mammy, and more. Accepting the existence of genuine Black asexuality would require those who hold so tightly to these myths to do the work of dismantling them. But many people do not want to let go of the racist sexual stereotypes because they are comforted by them, they are comforted by what affords them their social value. The Black asexual threatens to upend everything they think they know about Blackness, and everything they think they know about themselves as allegedly superior. Black asexuality threatens their worldview, which means it ultimately threatens their world.’

- Sherronda J Brown, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality (2022)

Happy ace week to my Black asexuals, Black demis, Black greys, ace studs, ace stems, ace femmes/fish and everyone else in between

Originally posted by phoebedynevors

ALT

Marshall Blount (@/AceGentle on Twitter), Kimberly Butler (@/AsexualGoddess on Twitter) and Alyshia Rodgers have founded SoulAce Day for February 16th 2025 in the US’s Black History Month. The purpose is to celebrate African American asexuality and contributions to asexual art and activism!

‘I had faced then and following made me more “sex repulsed”. But now at 23 my mother understands I’m asexual just like my grandmother who had kids and met the love of her life, no one is denied anything as ace, as they used to tell me. I don’t have to be what a man or anyone wants. I don’t have to package myself a certain way to come out, or be a certain way and stay in. I’m comfortably living in my own skin now and that’s a beautiful feeling. I want the Black community, and the world to be enlightened on things that aren’t their norm, that is my mission.

ugeleh.tumblr.com’

Brown and Gray: An Asexual People of Color Zine (2015)