Photo courtesy of trollhare via Flickr.
March participants, pictured above, hold up an asexual flag and a sign at a Stockholm pride event.
By Madhavi Rao ’24
Features Editor
Ace Week is a global campaign working to raise awareness for asexuality both within the LGBTQ+ community and in the general public.
Previously Asexual Awareness Week, Ace Week, celebrated in the last full week of October, ran from Oct. 22-28 this year. Ace Week was instituted by activist and organizer Sara Beth Brooks and the founder of the Asexual Visibility and Educational Network, David Jay, in 2010. Despite these efforts, asexuality is still a misunderstood and underrepresented identity, even within the queer community.
“Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction, while celibacy is the lack of sexual behavior,” asexual author and scholar Angela Chen explains in her book “Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex.”
“To the best I can tell, sexual attraction is the desire to have sex with a specific person for physical reasons,” Chen added. People who are asexual can still experience romantic attraction, aesthetic attraction — the appreciation of one’s physical appearance — and emotional attraction. Many asexual people also choose to participate in romantic or queerplatonic relationships with allosexual — those who experience sexual attraction — or non-asexual people.
Queerplatonic relationships, or QPRs, mix aspects of romantic, platonic and sexual relationships. Each QPR is unique, and the individuals involved in a QPR define the terms of the relationship together.
The Coalition for Asexual/Aromantic Awareness at Mount Holyoke College held an information session and workshop in collaboration with Planned Parenthood Generation Action to “promote awareness, visibility and community” for asexual and aromantic identities — commonly shortened as “ace” and “aro.” CFAA also held a Halloween affinity event for aro-ace people during Ace Week.
However, other than the events held by the CFAA Board, there was a lack of commemoration of Ace Week on Mount Holyoke’s campus this year.
Oftentimes, the responsibility of raising awareness for and celebrating asexuality falls onto asexual people.
“I’ve talked with several students who don’t have a lot of knowledge about asexuality, and those interactions have always ended with positive, informational conversations about it,” CFAA Social Chair Autumn Gebhardt ’26, voiced. “I’m always happy to talk about my identity and what it means to me, and the students I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with have always been eager to learn.”
Conversely, this willingness to educate people is not shared by everyone in the asexual community. “I don't share my ace identity with many people. Usually, I feel like it isn't information that I owe to people,” an asexual Mount Holyoke student who wished to remain unnamed explained. “Also, most of the time I am not in the mood to explain to people what asexuality is or what it means to me.”
The terms sex-favorable, sex-indifferent and sex-repulsed are used to describe a person’s individual relationship with the act of having sex. For instance, someone who is sex-repulsed finds sexual activity undesirable or, as the name implies, repulsive. These terms can apply to anybody, not just people within the asexual community. However, there are often assumptions that all asexuals are sex-repulsed and that no asexuals have sex.
“Often people are either afraid to ask about it, or they make incorrect assumptions,” the unnamed student continued. “For example, some will assume that asexuality means abstinence or that it is an identifier only used by people who are sex-repulsed. People are often unaware of the nuances of ace identities.”
“For much of society, if someone reveals they are asexual, then they must also be a ‘virgin,’ have no interest in sex and/or possess no desire to have sex,” Michael Paramo, founder of interdisciplinary journal AZE, which publishes “reflections of asexual, aromantic, and agender people,” stated in a post about the asexual experience on the online publishing platform Medium. “In the general public mindset, attraction can only be sexual.”
Asexuality is a spectrum, not a binary. It blurs the lines between romantic, platonic and aesthetic attraction and thus results in various complex and multifaceted identities within the community. The spectrum includes identities such as gray-ace, in which individuals experience sexual attraction on occasion, and demisexual, in which individuals experience sexual attraction only after forming a strong emotional bond with another person.
Intersecting identities can complicate how asexuality is viewed and treated by the larger queer community. “It’s really interesting to be asexual and biromantic as both ace and bi people get looked over in the LGBTQ+ community often,” CFAA Co-Treasurer Holly Wrampelmeier ’26 stated.
“As an asexual lesbian, I often feel like I exist in two completely different queer worlds, and I don’t always feel comfortable being open about my two queer identities simultaneously for a variety of reasons,” CFAA Social Chair Gebhardt noted. “When I’m interacting with queer people I’m unfamiliar with, I tend to lead with the fact that I’m a lesbian because it’s something I know they’ll understand.”
The asexual identity is closely tied to the aromantic identity, and both these identities disrupt normative ideas of romantic and sexual attraction. Aromantic, or aro, people do not experience romantic attraction. Similarly to asexual people, aromantic people can still experience other forms of attraction, such as sexual or emotional attraction. Aro identities also exist on a spectrum and are not mutually inclusive with asexuality.
Aro and ace people radicalize notions of love and connection. Through queerplatonic relationships — also known as QPRs — people within the aromantic spectrum and the asexual spectrum form bonds that are not necessarily sexual or romantic in nature.
“These relationships transcend the bounds of what is typically found in friendship alone, even when ‘romantic’ as a descriptor seems wrong,” Chen wrote in her book. “The queer part is not about genders, but about queering that social border.”
“I also think of this alot with my child and his friends, and the extent to which parents and teachers need to make accessible a range of options that otherwise might be made invisible,” Mary Lyon Professor of Humanities at Mount Holyoke, Kate Singer, said. “What are the things I can say or do to help them build a life where they are not automatically forced into specific forms of sexual or romantic relations? How can I help them give voice to their own organic senses of relations and intimacies without accidentally putting shapes or words in their mouths?”
Due to the complex identities under the umbrella of aromanticism and asexuality, aro-ace people tend to be ignored, misunderstood and rendered invisible within queer communities. “The queer community tends to center sex and romance in a lot of their discussions about their experiences and identities, and they don't always know how to support people who don't experience those things,” the CFAA Board expressed in a group statement in an email sent to the Mount Holyoke News.
“I do think that [lack of aro/ace awareness] has to do with how Western White Anglo culture has for so long been dominated by capitalist biopolitical heteronormativity that privileged the pursuit of sexuality as viable adolescent work/activity,” Professor Singer explained.
“I also think for some time,” Singer continued, “(e.g., when I grew up) expressing gay/lesbian/bi sexuality -- among ourselves, in public, in culture -- was so important as a part of activism and of self-identity, but which might sometimes inadvertently set a trap for thinking about queer intimacy as sexual.”
“Many people simply don't know that [asexuality] exists as an identity, which can lead to them thinking that [asexuals] are ‘broken’ in some way,” the unnamed Mount Holyoke student expressed. Until 2013, asexuality was considered a mental disorder and was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, created by the American Psychiatric Association, as “Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder.”
“As someone who thinks about the histories of sexuality and gender,” Singer said, “I would want to think about the persistence of a revenant, mistaken structure within US culture that inadvertently positions ACE or even ARO as a lack or absence of something rather than another way of being in the world.”
While asexuals are considered a part of the LGBTQ+ community, there is still a long way to go before asexuality is properly recognized and asexual people feel included within the queer identity. “While I do feel welcome on campus, including among queer people,” the unnamed student stated, “I don't think I have felt specifically welcome in the queer community on campus.”
“Being aro/ace is such a unique identity: not queer ‘enough’ yet still queer, making our existence in wider queer spaces awkward, to say the least,” CFAA President Journey Freedman ’26 explained.
“All of us have witnessed or experienced ace and/or aro hatred within the queer community in one way or another, and it’s hard to sideline those experiences when entering wider queer spaces,” the CFAA Board said.
Often, it is among fellow asexuals that ace students feel welcomed and seen. “Coming to college knowing an aro/ace identity club existed made me so excited; I would meet others like me! I wasn’t alone!” Freedman exclaimed. “I need this club, and I know so many others need the space it provides, too.”
The unnamed Mount Holyoke student seconded Freedman’s statement. “Being ace on campus feels pretty comfortable, but if I hadn't found other ace people early on, I think it would have felt lonely.”
“A club for us queer ‘outsiders’ is vital so that we may not only exist, but thrive,” Freedman affirmed.
Like with other queer identities, there is still a strong community of asexuals within Mount Holyoke. Asexual affinity spaces offer a sense of protection and vulnerability to students.
“I know that I am welcome in other MHC queer spaces, but in practice, I tend to stick with my other queer friends and only go to CFAA events,” Wrampelmeier noted.“This is out of fear that my identity will be ignored or invalidated outside of spaces that I know are safe, even though I know that Mount Holyoke is a very accepting space.”
Although asexuality is often called the “invisible orientation,” there are ways for asexuals to find each other and reassure each other that they are not alone. One method is by wearing physical identifiers — aces wear a black ring on the right middle finger, and aros wear a white ring on the left middle finger. The rings are symbols of solidarity and a way of displaying identities that are often dismissed and forgotten.
“Shoutout to all my fellow ace and aro-spectrum Mohos. I see you with your black and white rings! I see you with your sneaky flag-colored outer space stickers!” an unnamed student on the Mount Holyoke student forum MHC Web Weaver — @mhcwebweaver on Instagram — exclaimed. “You inspire me and make me feel seen. Happy Ace Visibility Week! Whether you wanna be visible or undercover, keep being you and know that we’re so happy you’re here.”