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In a video broadcast live on April 6, model and asexual activist Yasmin Benoit, who lives in the UK, moderated a panel with participants from Belgium, Brazil, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal and Nigeria.
They all fall somewhere on the asexual and / or arromantic spectrum.
Panelists discussed their involvement in the asexual community in their respective countries, at an event for the first International Day of Asexuality.
Their experiences vary, from those who receive a lot of support to those who are in danger.
In Belgium, Martine said she found the support and inclusion of the government and the LGBTQ community.
On the other hand, Jan in Nigeria noted that the laws “criminalize gatherings of sexual minorities”.
But regardless of the location, the issue of visibility was at the heart of almost all of the participants’ responses.
In fact, asexuality, the lack of sexual attraction, has been described as “invisible orientation”.
Little understood
Asexuality tends to be misunderstood and little discussed, there are those who do not believe that someone can truly be asexual or ignore asexuality completely.
Common misconceptions about asexuality include equating asexuality with celibacy (not the same) or saying it’s a choice (it’s an orientation)says Michael Dor, member of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) project team.
Some people mistakenly believe that a person is only asexual if they are never sexually attracted or have sex.
But asexuality it’s a specter in which some may identify as demisexual, for example, meaning that they are not sexually attracted until they form an emotional bond with someone.
It is also not synonymous with aromanticism, which refers to those who are not attracted to romanticism.
Greater presence
Despite the confusion and rejection, asexual voices are growing louder and demanding more recognition.
Individuals, activists and groups began to tell their stories to wider audiences and to march in pride parades around the world.
Now, the effort of asexual activists is to keep pace with this work and amplify asexual voices beyond Western and English-speaking countries, places where much of the asexual activism and stories tend to be. to come from.
As a result, alongside the new international date, initiatives are emerging to bring asexuality out of the shadows, it is easier for asexual people to “come out of the closet” In the whole world.
Not as shocking as before
A limited awareness of asexuality has made it more difficult for past generations of young people around the world, including millennials, to develop their identities.
Anah Charles, 34, who lives in Mexico, began to know that she was different in her relationship with her high school classmates.
While almost everyone worshiped the members of the American youth group Backstreet Boys, Charles I couldn’t find them attractive. They all looked “aesthetically pleasing,” she points out, but she couldn’t figure out what was driving her friends crazy.
It took Charles several years, long after this incident in his youth, to learn about direction and find his place on the asexual / aromatic spectrum.
Without sources or resources on asexuality, Charles says he was “In denial” of not being sexually attracted to anyone.
Even after I first read about asexuality in a post on the Have a Gay Day Facebook page in 2013, I still wondered if there was something “wrong” about it.
Charles submitted to medical and hormonal tests to try to figure out what was going on. I was in perfect health.
The correct diagnosis served as a catalyst for his self-acceptance.
She found more information about asexuality on Facebook and realized how identified she felt.
A day later, she became the administrator of a genderless Facebook group in Mexico.
Likewise, in the United States, 28-year-old Marisa Manuel struggled to name her orientation.
She first heard the term “asexual” when she was in high school, but says she was “wrong” about its meaning.
“Someone told me it referred to people who want to be alone”, remember. “I like to be with people”.
While in college, she met someone identified as asexual, which prompted her to further investigate what exactly he meant.
It happened when he identified a lot with what he discovered and since then he has fully come to terms with his identity, he has continued to write articles about his asexual identity and to read books by asexual authors.
Fortunately, younger generations may be ready to be aware of asexuality earlier and perhaps have more tools to express their identity.
The amount of resources and representation has increased dramatically since Charles and Manuel grew up.
In addition to having more information in writing, people are also more willing to identify as genderless on social media and share their experiences with other users.
“Representation is a resource”
Nail greater representation is key to enable people to recognize and understand asexuality, as well as to normalize this orientation.
“Representation is a resource,” says Manuel.
And while some resources have increased, representation, especially in mainstream media, is not where it should be, he adds.
However, there are other places where the visibility is on the rise.
People with larger platforms, such as model Benoit, drag queen Venus Envy, and Twitch user Sup, openly talk about their asexual identities with their many followers on various social networks.
There is also a growing representation in the literature, with authors identifying themselves as asexual such as Darcie Little Badger, Akemi Dawn Bowman, and Maia Kobabe.
Fictional characters also help, like Todd Chavez from the BoJack Horseman series, of which Manuel has a plastic figure.
Manuel tries to add this to his growing pool of representative images.
On the eve of the international day of asexuality, I created AceChat, an Instagram account where he usually shares stories of people who identify as asexual.
The account has received a positive reception and Manuel only receives messages from people who want to tell their story. There are currently around 100 people involved.
Manuel says the next step is to expand the reach of AceChat. People from France, Russia, Vietnam, UK and Canada have already started to get in touch and translators have also joined the project.
And translation can be essential, as some places have smaller asexual communities, so they have fewer resources and less information available for people who want to learn more about asexuality in their language.
In Moscow, 20-year-old Daniel, who prefers not to say his last name for security reasons, says the asexual / aromatic community he belongs to has only around 50 members.
“Not many people know of terms like ‘asexual'”He explains, perhaps in part because of the intolerance of LGBTQ communities in Russia.
Since many stories and documents about asexuality are in English, Daniel translated them into Russian.
He is convinced that asexuality will gain recognition in the years to come, even in his home country.
“We are not giving up”
Along with the historic struggles of asexual communities to gain visibility, they have also had to strive to be considered within LGBTQ groups.
Charles, who organized meetings of asexual people in Mexico City, experienced this firsthand.
He says his group marched as a collective for the first time as a collective in the pride of 2015 in his city, but the LGBTQ community has not accepted people identified as asexual with open arms.
“There were people from the LGBT community who even felt sorry for us and said ‘how well are you doing“”, He evokes.
“But we are not giving up.”
Groups like Charles and other later educational initiatives have helped change things.
Charles says that when he came back to pride with a larger group the following year, they got “a better reception” because there was more information.
“It wasn’t like, ‘Look, these weird guys, they’re parading again,’ he says. “It was like ‘look at the asexuals they’re parading again.’
Bigger connections
In this struggle for acceptance, asexuality groups have grown and flourished.
One of the most important groups on the international scene is AVEN, founded in 2001 by asexual activist David Jay of the United States.
Michael Dor, who joined the organization in 2009 in the UK, says AVEN was born with two main goals: “build a community and legitimize asexuality as a sexual orientation“.
It currently has 135,539 members, according to Dor.
Today, the opportunities to educate and create visibility have become even more prevalent.
AVEN, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, used the boom in virtual communications during the pandemic to strengthen its global connections.
These international virtual conversations led to the establishment of a day of celebration of asexuality around the world: the International Day of Asexuality.
“We felt that such a day was necessary,” says Dor, adding that the date does not belong to AVEN or to any one organization.
“It really is an international event.”
The creation of the day not only establishes an annual visibility date, it also signals the flowering of a international effort to unite an under-recognized community.
It helps asexual individuals and groups to gain greater access to different resources in countries where information and examples are scarce.
These days, Dor says, there is a growing awareness of asexuality in Asian countries, especially India, he points out, where the asexual Facebook group in India is growing.
New groups dedicated to asexuality have also emerged in Africa in recent years, he adds.
Although this is a good sign of progress, people still misunderstand asexuality.
Manuel says he wrote an article about asexual dating for the Huffington Post two years ago that was well received.
However, when the post was re-shared recently, there was “a lot more backlash,” he says, in the comments section.
Some people told her that she was confused and that she was really looking for friends, not dates.
“It made me realize that no matter how much we have progressed in representation and visibility, it is not all done yet,” he explains.
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