When Aline discovers the concept of asexuality, they are relieved… and scared.
When Aline discovers the concept of asexuality, they are relieved...and scared. They experience phases of doubt and denial before they can truly understand this term and make it their own. In this episode, they look back on the birth of the concept and of the asexual community, thanks to the AVEN website created by David Jay. Aline explains why words are important tools and how they have helped them.
This episode features excerpts from the TV show Sex Education produced by Eleven Film and Netflix.
Aline: I couldn’t remember when was the first time I said “I’m asexual,” so I searched for answers. I scrolled through my WhatsApp conversations, my emails, my texts. And I realized that, for a very long time, my head was a mess.
When I was with my friends, I could talk about my asexuality with pride, but if an hour later I was in front of colleagues, friends of friends, or people I found cute, I would find ways to avoid using the A word to describe myself. I’d say stuff like, “I guess I understand what asexuality is about,” or “I think maybe I’m a bit on the asexual spectrum?”
But eventually, I found a sense of clarity and confidence.
And it’s largely thanks to the articles I read about asexuality. They helped me understand what that word really meant. What the ace community put into it. It changed my life.
OPENING THEME—FREED FROM DESIRE
[Clip: “Asexual: People whose sexuality is characterized by the fact it doesn’t exist, they have no desire, it doesn’t interest them…”]
Aline: When I discovered the term asexual I was 24, and no one around me had heard of it. To be fair, it had only been a few years since the ace community has embraced the word.
Once again, David Jay, who talked about the medicalization of asexuality in the previous episode, was involved. He started using this word in the 90s, when he was just a teenager living in Saint-Louis.
David Jay: And so I started using the word asexual around that time to describe myself...
Aline: He had never heard of that word before but it seemed right. My experience was not the same. At his age, I never thought to look for a word that defined how I was different. Actually, I never thought such a word even existed.
I thought I was late, that I hadn’t found the right person, but I never thought I had a specific way of experiencing things. I saw my asexuality as something that was missing, not as something that existed, as something others could also experience, as something that could be named, studied, appreciated.
David, on the other end, realized early on that there might be more out there. Once he had access to the internet, at the end of the 90s, he started looking for answers there.
David Jay: And so I went onto Yahoo and Lycos and Alta Vista, like the pre-Google search engines. And I would type the word asexuality in and I would get back papers about plant biology, which was not helpful.
Aline: One day, in 2001, when David was already in college, a friend who went to Stanford told him about a new search engine: Google.
David Jay: My first search was for the word asexual, and I found an article called "My life as an amoeba"…
Aline: Amoebas are unicellular organisms. They don’t have distinct sexes and they reproduce without mating.
David Jay: …That was a description of someone and their partner, both of whom were ace, and it was just such a profound moment of transition for me because suddenly the other people talking about this experience, suddenly I didn't have to be the only one making it a reality. And I couldn't even finish reading the article, I had to get up and walk around campus.
Aline: And he wanted others to be able to get that feeling too.
David Jay: I created a website, at that point I got webspace from my university. And it said AVEN.
Aline: AVEN stands for Asexual Visibility and Education Network.
David Jay: And it had a definition of asexuality and it just said to email me if you want to talk about this. And it was really basic. And I started getting emails from people. I added forums to the site. We moved from my little dinky Wesleyan webspace to the domain name asexuality.org. It became a place where people could come and share their stories and read stories of other people and become validated.
Aline: Almost ten years after David started it, I discovered AVEN’s website and found the definition that changed my life.
[Book pages turning]
There are traces of the term that go way back, even though the word hasn’t always had the same meaning. It was used for the first time at the end of the 19th century, shortly after the words homosexual and heterosexual were created.
Since then, it’s been found in trans magazines in the 50s, in an interview with David Bowie in 1974, and in academic articles in the 90s. So the word would appear here and there from time to time but because there was no mainstream interest and no internet, it remained niche.
I would have liked to have the same impulse as David and the others. To have named and looked up asexuality when I was younger. But I wasn’t ready.
When I discovered asexuality, I thought the concept was interesting but it wasn’t really what I was experiencing. How could I be asexual if I had sex? If I did like it when I had the right partner?
I felt like the word was a barrier, that it marked a strict boundary between normal people—those who experience sexual desire—and those who don’t. The concept of sexual desire wasn’t very clear to me.
There’s a distinction between sexual attraction and sex drive, which is also called libido. Sex drive is the desire for sexual release. It’s not just a set of feelings in the body like having an erection or feeling your temperature rise, it’s the desire to act on it, alone or with partners.
Sex drive can be directed toward someone—that’s sexual attraction—or not—that’s being horny. Some ace people have no sex drive, some have a lot. I have a little and that’s one of the reasons why I was confused back then.
Another reason was that I thought the attraction I had for some people was sexual when in fact it wasn’t. You can be attracted to someone on various levels. For example, aesthetically, intellectually, or even physically, which doesn’t mean sexually. You can have the desire to touch someone, to connect with them physically in a non-sexual way.
It’s funny, this was one of the first things I read on AVEN’s website. I was so disconnected from my feelings and sensations that I couldn’t make out the difference between all those attractions in my body.
But back to the word asexuality. It’s not surprising that I misunderstood it at the beginning. When it appeared on the internet, in the early 2000s, there were different definitions, different views, different ideas.
David and the rest of AVEN’s core team viewed asexuality as a sexual orientation, like homosexuality or heterosexuality. An indication of who you’re sexually attracted to. In this case, no one.
And so, like homosexuality or heterosexuality, asexuality wouldn’t say anything of one’s sex life. If an ace person wants to have sex with someone—because they want to get closer to them or because they want to know what sex is—good for them.
David didn’t want to impose his vision though. He wanted people to decide on their own what they wanted to put into the word.
David Jay: We say the word asexual is a tool, it’s not a label. If it's useful, you pick it up and if the tool doesn't quite fit, you change it and we'll respect that you've changed it. And so we not only had, I think, a really good atmosphere for people to explore their own identity, but we started getting new words. We started getting words like grey-a. We started using words like demisexual. We started getting people talking about romantic orientation because they were picking up this tool and changing it and they had permission to do that.
Aline: Someone who’s grey-a—greysexual—when they relate to asexuality but do experience sexual attraction, only rarely and infrequently. Someone is demisexual—demi—when they don’t experience sexual attraction until they have formed a deep emotional connection with someone, romantic or otherwise.
And romantic orientation is about the gender a person is most likely to have a romantic relationship or fall in love with. It’s different than sexual orientation, but for many people who experience sexual attraction, their sexual orientation and romantic orientation are the same.
By focusing on how we experience sexual attraction, those concepts helped me a lot. They got me to realize that asexuality is fluid, that everyone has a different connection with it. In the ace community, we talk about a spectrum, and we use the word a-spec to describe people who are on this spectrum.
After Marie, I had another partner. Her name was Izzy. With her, I didn’t use the word asexual. I wasn’t ready. But it was okay. When I told her I often didn’t want to have sex with my partners, she understood. Instead we found a way to make it work together.
That relationship made me realize that my asexuality doesn’t need to get in the way of an intimate relationship. I stopped being afraid and I started saying, “I’m asexual.”
Little by little, I stopped fighting who I am. I let go of that image I had in my head for so long, of this woman who’s cool and independent because she has an intense and joyful sex life. And I learned to love myself.
Nicolas: So for me, I sensed you became at peace the moment you found that you were asexual.
Aline: That’s my friend Nicolas, who you’ve heard from in the second episode
Nicolas: It’s the moment when, for the first time, you seemed like you were totally aware of who you were. I felt that you had finally arrived at the end of this quest.
Aline: My relationship to others changed. I opened up.
Before, I was afraid people would judge me for being different. For years, I let that fear guide my social life. Letting my guard down also changed me physically. I became less tense. My shoulders got relaxed, and I started sleeping better. I was calmer, more rooted. I felt lighter.
After that change, I still found myself talking a lot about my sexuality. When I’d mention I don’t feel sexually attracted to anyone, people still found it hard to believe.
In those moments, I would pull out the asexuality card, my own magical joker card. Suddenly, I wasn’t someone sharing a weird experience, I was someone who belonged to a group, to a minority, someone who has a sexual orientation shared by others.
When I’d use the A word, I expected to be bombarded with questions. Some intrusive, some skeptical.
It’s violating, but I answer anyway. I felt the need to spread the word about asexuality, so that other people who might be aces know about it, and that their close ones learn how to support them.
I told everyone, besides two people—my mom and my dad. I didn’t feel the need to tell them. Plus, I didn’t want them to wonder about my sex life, like pretty much everyone else does when I mention I’m ace.
[Restaurant ambiance]
But somehow, I did. It was in 2019. I was with my mother and my sister. We’ve just been Christmas shopping. We were cold and hungry, and we decided to go for some aligot. It’s a delicious dish—cheese blended into mashed potatoes. Like fondue but better.
Anyway, we were having a great time and one thing led to another. My sister asked me how exactly I identify now. At that point, my family did know I was queer. I answered, “I’m asexual.”
My mom asked some questions—not too personal thank god—and I answered. I explained things clearly. I didn't feel any awkwardness or embarrassment.
Now that I’ve told my mom about it, I needed to tell my dad. I decided to do it via a WhatsApp text. It’s easier. I told him how I identify, how I felt, and I added some links.
I was afraid he wouldn’t care, or that he would dismiss it as some progressive nonsense, just like marching at Pride or non-binary pronouns. But he replied, “I’ve watched and read everything you sent me. We’ll talk about it someday. Love, dad.”
We never talked about it. I don’t think we needed to—it made sense to people who knew me. He understood that it wasn’t a whim. That it’s who I am. That I was feeling more at peace after I accepted my sexuality.
My dad passed away in February 2021. I feel like there was nothing left unsaid, no secrets, regrets or misunderstandings. I had told him everything I wanted. I think he left us knowing that his daughter was happy, and that it made him feel relieved, maybe even proud.
Before I even told my parents, I started talking publicly about my asexuality.
At the time, I had a newsletter about pop culture. I published an analysis of how asexuality was portrayed in the media and implied that I had a personal connection to the topic.
Then I started writing for different French publications. I covered the lack of ace representation in tv shows, I got vocal on social media too and was invited to talk about asexuality on TV. I reported on different people who had never had sex.
To write those articles, I joined ace groups on social media and interviewed asexual people. It’s crazy, but I think that up until then, I never actually talked to other aces. I wasn’t ready, I guess.
Talking to people who experience the same thing as me was amazing. For once, I didn’t need to explain myself. I felt normal.
I realized how vibrant and diverse the ace community is. But also how complicated our journeys have been. And that reinforced my pride. I’m proud to be part of this community, to be one of these people who managed to accept who they are and forge their own path.
When talking about how common asexuality is, the number that almost always comes up is one percent. This is based on a survey from 1995. It said that one percent of the British population never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all. To me and many people studying asexuality, this has to be an underestimation. Mostly because, if people don’t know what sexual attraction is, how can they answer that question correctly?
In January 2020, Netflix released a second season of Sex Education. One of the high schoolers in the show is Florence. When Florence explains that there’s no one she wants to have sex with, my heart started to pound. Could she…? Is she…?
Later, Florence enters the office of Jean, the school’s sex counselor. She closes the door, and at once, before even saying hello, she says:
Florence: I don’t want to have sex. I don’t want to have sex at all. Ever. With anyone. I think I might be broken.
Aline: When she uttered those last words, I burst into tears. I wept so hard I had to press pause. It was visceral. I felt like I was that teenager finally finding the words to what I was feeling. When Jean replies…
Jean: Do you know what asexuality is?
Aline: …I went back to crying. And I thought I was at peace with my past. The sex counselor adds:
Jean: Sex doesn’t make us whole. And so how could you ever be broken?
Aline: It was like she was saying that to me. It was like getting a hug, validation and permission at the same time. It fixed something in me. I sobbed in relief. Not just for me but for anyone else trying to figure it out.
Finding the word—acknowledging you’re ace—comes with a huge relief but it doesn’t answer the practical questions. It doesn’t come with a guide, and if you don’t want to give up sex completely, what are you supposed to do? That, on our next episode
OUTRO MUSIC
Producer: Free From Desire is an original podcast by Paradiso Media. Written and narrated by Aline Laurent-Mayard. Produced by Suzanne Colin and by me, Yael Even Or with additional production support from Morgan Jaffe and Molly O’Keefe.
Executive producers are Emi Norris, Lorenzo Benedetti, Louis Daboussy, and Benoit Dunaigre. Sound design, editing, and mix by Théo Albaric. Additional editing by Yael Even Or and Morgan Jaffe.
Studio recordings by Marin Grizeaud and Théo Albaric. Production assistants are Lucine Dorso, Brendan Galbreath, and Sofia Martins. Editing intern is Bryson Brooks.
Original music by D.L.I.D. Our theme song is Freed from Desire by GALA. Cover Art by Super Feat.
This episode features excerpts from the TV show Sex Education produced by Eleven Film and Netflix.