Ace

Angela Chen, who identifies as asexual, draws on memoir, interviews, and cultural criticism to argue that asexuality illuminates how sexual norms constrain people of every orientation. The book moves from personal discovery through the social forces shaping ace experience to the implications for relationships, consent, and community.

Chen opens with a scene from her mid-20s: Over lunch with her friend Jane, she asks what sexual attraction feels like. Jane describes feeling jittery, warm, and drawn to physical closeness with strangers. Chen realizes that what she had called sexual attraction was something different: aesthetic appreciation and emotional desire rather than a physical pull toward another person. She first encountered the term "asexuality" at age 14, defined by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) as the lack of sexual attraction, but misunderstood it to mean hatred of sex. A decade later, a painful open relationship with a man named Henry forced her to confront what she did not know about desire, and she returned to the concept. She contrasts her gradual recognition with that of Lucid Brown, a nonbinary visual artist who experienced sex repulsion from childhood and found immediate relief upon encountering the word "asexual." These two experiences illustrate the spectrum of ace identity: Chen argues that asexuality exists on a continuum and should not be held to higher standards of legitimacy than any other orientation.

The second chapter traces the development of ace community and language. Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, working in the 1940s, encountered people who reported no sexual contacts or reactions but relegated them to a separate category rather than revising his model. Decades later, early internet communities, including AVEN, founded by college student David Jay in 2001, built the frameworks still in use. Chen distinguishes sexual attraction (desire for sex with a specific person) from sex drive (a bodily urge unconnected to any individual), and from aesthetic, romantic, and sensual attraction. She introduces terms the community developed, including demisexual (experiencing sexual attraction only after an emotional bond forms), gray-asexual (experiencing it rarely), and aromantic (not experiencing romantic attraction), arguing these distinctions offer everyone more precise language for understanding desire.

Chen introduces compulsory sexuality, a concept central to the book. Building on feminist theorist Adrienne Rich's idea of compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory sexuality is the set of assumptions that treat wanting sex as universal and necessary, framing those who do not as broken. She illustrates this through Hunter, a man raised in a devout Christian household who found sex after marriage unintuitive and disappointing despite following every prescribed step. Hunter spent years searching for an explanation before discovering asexuality. Chen examines how compulsory sexuality intersects with masculinity, noting that far more women than men identify as ace, likely because asexuality more directly threatens male sexual stereotypes. The same pressure that alienates ace men also fuels the incel (involuntary celibate) movement: Both groups are constricted by the belief that real men must have sex, though they respond in opposite ways.

Chen critiques how certain strains of sex-positive feminism, while rightly championing women's sexual equality, created new pressures. The insight that women are conditioned to suppress desire distorted into the belief that sexual inhibition is the only reason women do not want sex, making indifference a political failure. She profiles Lauren Jankowski, an ace fantasy writer whose older male writing coach, Chris, used the language of female liberation to undermine Lauren's asexuality. Chris told Lauren she could not be a writer or a feminist without embracing sex, and when she did not reciprocate his romantic interest, he called her a failure. Chen recounts her own one-night stand at 22, motivated not by desire but by a need to prove she was not "repressed," and reflects on how overcorrection from sex-negative to sex-positive norms redistributes shame rather than eliminating it.

Turning to race, Chen notes that the ace community is overwhelmingly white: The 2014 Ace Community Survey and a subsequent 2016 global survey, in which over 83 percent of respondents identified as white, reflect both the whiteness of early ace leaders and the way racial stereotypes interact with sexuality. White people are often assumed to be sexually "pure," while Black and Latinx people are stereotyped as hypersexual, so people of color who identify as ace must contend with the suspicion that their orientation merely confirms or reacts against racist tropes. Chen profiles Vesper, a Black ace blogger who describes feeling more vulnerable discussing asexuality with other Black people because the identity is closely associated with whiteness, and Selena, a trans Asian woman who cannot discuss her asexuality apart from her race and gender.

The chapter on health and disability challenges the pathologization of low desire. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders includes hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), whose criteria sound strikingly similar to asexuality. Chen surveys pharmaceutical attempts to create libido-boosting drugs for women and critiques a notorious episode of the medical drama House in which a doctor "proves" asexuality is either a lie or a brain tumor. Meanwhile, the disabled community has fought the opposite assumption: that disabled people lack sexual desire entirely. Chen profiles Cara Liebowitz, a disability activist with cerebral palsy who identifies as ace and finds herself caught between these two communities. She introduces the concept of the "gold-star asexual," the impossible ideal of someone whose lack of attraction has no other possible explanation, and argues that chasing this standard excludes the very people the community should embrace.

Chen explores the boundary between romantic and platonic love, arguing that sexual desire is not the reliable dividing line people assume. She introduces queerplatonic partnerships (QPPs), relationships involving explicit commitment beyond conventional friendship without being sexual or necessarily romantic. She examines amatonormativity, philosopher Elizabeth Brake's term for the assumption that a central romantic relationship is necessary for human flourishing, noting that over 1,100 federal laws benefit married couples while those without romantic partners face legal and social disadvantages.

On consent, Chen argues that ace perspectives expose gaps in mainstream frameworks. She profiles James, a programmer who repeatedly consented to sex with a girlfriend because he believed loving partners must say yes sometimes. Only after learning about asexuality did he recognize his consent as compromised by unspoken social rules, an example of what philosopher Miranda Fricker calls hermeneutical injustice: harm caused when marginalized groups lack the concepts essential to understanding their own experiences. Chen critiques the popular slogan "rape is not sex, it's violence," arguing it fails to account for consensual-but-unwanted encounters, and presents sex researcher Emily Nagoski's four-category model of enthusiastic, willing, unwilling, and coerced consent as a more useful framework.

Chen examines how aces navigate romantic relationships, challenging the assumption that sex is a purely natural act. She argues that couples benefit from questioning which needs sex actually fulfills, since people often pursue sex as a shortcut to intimacy, validation, or feeling desired rather than for physical release alone. She profiles Anna, a trans woman who grew up Mormon in 1960s Utah and spent decades following scripts that did not fit. After Anna's 20-year marriage ended, she discovered both her asexuality and her gender identity, finding AVEN online and beginning to transition. Anna's story illustrates how identity can remain obscured for a lifetime when no language exists to make it visible.

The book closes with Chen's vision for ace liberation: a society where saying yes, no, or maybe to sex requires no justification. She calls for incorporating asexuality in sex education, reforming marriage law, training therapists not to pathologize low desire, and creating diverse ace representation in media. She profiles Jay's path to co-parenthood through a three-person arrangement with friends Avary and Zeke in California, where three-parent adoption is legal. Chen frames ace liberation as inseparable from dismantling rape culture, misogyny, racism, and ableism, arguing that a world welcoming to aces respects genuine choice for everyone.