When I was thirteen or fourteen, I hesitantly approached my mom and her friend, who were cooking together in our kitchen.
"Mom?" I said. "I have a question. How is it that sleeping together makes babies? Like, if you just lie in the same bed…it doesn't make sense."
Her friend started snickering, which I expected.
"Go get the Mayo Health Clinic book," my mom told me.
I did, and she opened to the pages that had illustrations of both male and female reproductive systems. When I still didn't understand, she demonstrated to me with her hands how babies get made. I was horrified! I fled the kitchen and the conversation in disgust while my mom and her friend chortled behind me, and this story is fairly frequently retold within my family.
I didn't know then that I was asexual. In fact, I didn't even know that humans could be asexual. I was growing up in a conservative family deeply mired in purity culture, and the only education I received on the topic of sex or sexual orientation was solely focused on how to avoid sexual sin. The way we talked about it, I was convinced that sexual desire was going to awaken within me at puberty and be a raging fire inside me that could not be controlled. I was terrified of this happening to me and then being forced to sin against my will, betrayed by my own body as if I wouldn't have any say in the matter. So we prepared by learning how to stay far away from boys both physically and emotionally; we prepared by cultivating fear of men, fear of intimacy, and fear of our own bodies. And I waited.
I waited and waited and waited, and I went through puberty, and I stopped being a teenager, and still, this mysterious, powerful desire had not yet fallen out of the sky and hit me. Honestly, I sorta thought I was maybe just really great at purity. Perhaps this big struggle that everybody else had was actually exaggerated; maybe they were just weak Christians, and I was stronger in Christ. And mostly, I just didn't think about it at all very much. I had a life to live!
When I was twenty, someone used the term "asexual" to refer to me as a joke, which was the first time I had ever heard the concept. At first, I thought they were calling me a self-reproducing cell! But I Googled and discovered a whole community of people who experienced attraction in ways similar to mine, which blew my mind. There was a word for me, a place where I fit. I felt validated, seen, and known. This gave me knowledge that I was not alone and language to communicate my experience.
I promptly started using the term to explain myself to others. When people asked why I wasn't dating, that was my answer. When people asked why I didn't understand innuendos, that was my answer. Any question about romance or sexual or gender identity that was my answer. I simplified everything and did not even try to explain nuance because I figured I would be single forever, so it didn't matter. And I always got the same reaction from people - don't worry, you'll meet the right person eventually and change your mind!
And then…you can guess…I started dating a boy. All my claims about being asexual seemed like a lie to people, and they were sure now that I had met someone, I was going to become normal. But I did not. I was still asexual. It complicated the relationship as we tried to sort out expectations and boundaries. All the usual Christian advice on purity didn't seem super relevant to me, and mostly, people did not seem to believe me when I told them about how I was experiencing things. Especially since I had sacrificed nuance in all my explanations from the beginning, it was hard to make myself seem believable now that I was obviously romantically interested in someone. I had to backtrack and try to correct the assumptions I had allowed while also trying to figure out how to navigate romance as an asexual person who loves Jesus.
Sometimes, people will ask me why I need a word for being asexual. They will ask me why it even matters. They will ask me why it is included under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. After all, it's not like asexual people are getting discriminated against, right? And I want to start by saying that suffering is not comparative. All pain matters. The biggest struggle I have had as an asexual person is continually being doubted. I am not believed, not by Christians, not by non-Christians, not by anyone. Several years ago, I was at the doctor's office getting some shots, and they wanted to give me one to protect against STDs. I told them I was asexual and had no plans to be sexually active. The doctor looked both ways in the empty room, leaned close to me, and said, "Honey, I'm not your mom. You can be honest." Our world is so saturated by sexualized things that most people don't seem to even be able to comprehend that someone like me exists. Even when I'm standing right in front of them explaining myself, they're still sure I must be confused! I just haven't met the right person, clearly.
Slowly, over the past decade, since I first heard the term "asexual," I have been learning to understand myself better and to explain myself more accurately. I have learned to start with a description of what being asexual means as a concept, and then what it generally means for me and what it does not mean. My little Ted Talk goes something like this - I am asexual, which means I don't experience sexual attraction to any gender. Asexuality is a spectrum and includes lots of different experiences and levels of sexual attraction to others. For me, I am still romantically attracted to men, so I have dated people in the past! Being asexual is not the same as being celibate because being celibate is the choice to not have sex, and asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction. Many ace people still engage in sex. If you have questions, I'm happy to give you some resources!
My other Side B friends are well-acquainted with the concept of preemptively answering questions, I'm sure. These days, all the labels come with assumptions, many of which are quite broad. I don't believe it is my duty to correct everyone's assumptions, but I recognize the reality that they are being made. When I use a label but don't want all the assumptions, I try to get ahead of the unasked questions by offering the answers up front. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, people are not going to believe me no matter what I say! And because asexuality is much less well-known than other sexual orientations, there is quite a bit of misinformation out there. Trying to figure out what people are assuming and then offering education that may or may not be accepted can get exhausting very quickly.
My Side B friends are also well-acquainted with the difficulties of being single, I know. Again, asexuality is a spectrum, so what I'm gonna say about this is from my perspective and not the perspective of every asexual person out there! For me, the celibacy part of being single is easy. It's relieving, even, to not have that pressure to navigate. But the loneliness of singleness is still hard. The struggle to find appropriate spaces for intimacy with others is hard. The struggle to find people who are willing to engage in that struggle with me is hard. And in this culture that is so inundated by sex and sexuality, sometimes it is hard to even believe that I am worth being in a relationship with. Even our friendships are so bound up in our understanding of romance and sex that it's easy to think, "What do I have to offer, if not my body?" This is probably exacerbated by the fact that I am female. I do know that line of thinking is a lie! I have much to offer, including my body as a living and holy sacrifice. But there is very little advertising or imaging around me in the world to help remind me of that. Even well-intentioned Christian friends will console me by trying to promise that surely God has a husband out there for me and that I will be happy. This is also a lie and a misrepresentation of what marriage is as well as who God is.
Being a Jesus-follower in this world means I always have to sift through the lies I am being given, looking for the real truth, just like every other Jesus-follower. But being asexual means that very few of my fellow Jesus-followers are equipped or prepared to help me sort through those lies and find the truth, even my leaders. Being queer means many of my fellow Jesus followers suspect that I am the one telling the lies, even my leaders.
While asexual people might not be mentioned directly in the Bible at all, God does have quite a few things to say about eunuchs. Which, I'm not saying that eunuchs and ace people are the same! Not at all! But eunuchs were sexual minorities in their time, and they were people who were separated from the majority experience of sexual desire. I find comfort in the ways God chose to engage with that community. In Isaiah 56, God says, "The eunuchs should not say 'Look, I am a dried-up tree.' For the LORD says this: 'For the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, and choose what pleases me, and hold firmly to my covenant, I will give them, in my house and within my walls, a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give each of them an everlasting name that will never be cut off.'" Even before the Church existed, God was promising family, belonging, and protection among his people. Also, this is the chapter that Jesus quoted from when he cleared the temple courtyard, passionately making space for the people the religious leaders had excluded.
On top of all the things about eunuchs, Paul has a pretty famous passage in 1 Corinthians 7 where he advises single people to stay single for a variety of reasons. My favorite reason is, as he says, "the unmarried woman is concerned about the things of the LORD…but the married woman is concerned about the things of the world". In context, Paul is not saying that single people are holier than married people, but it's pretty fun to quote whenever people try to tell me that God definitely has a spouse for everyone, and all I need to do is wait for the right person!
My teenage self might have thought that she was just better than everyone else at purity, while my current self knows that was never true - but the difference between the temptations I experience and the temptations others experience do offer me (and the Church) a unique perspective on following Jesus. I engage in love and intimacy in different ways than many of the people I know, and that diversity helps me (and the Church) understand something more of God than we would if we were all the same. I don't have space here to unpack that thought, but I encourage you to be curious. Engage with curiosity, not just with the topic of asexuality, but with the other people in your life who experience things differently than you do, whether that be through culture or language or sexual orientation or gender expression or ethnicity or anything!
I believe that God loves to tell stories and all of his stories are ultimately about himself. My life is a story that has barely begun and will continue for eternity, and God will indeed finish the work he has begun in me. God will surely use my experiences, struggles, tears, and joys to reveal something about his character and to communicate to me and the world that he is love and that He is good. Most days, that's enough for me. And on the days when it's not, I am still loved.
Let me end like this - I HAVE met the right person! His name is Jesus, and he loves me more than any romantic or sexual partner ever could. And so even in a world where sex invades every little thing, where assumptions and expectations consistently exclude me, where I am too outrageous to be believed, I can be satisfied, and I can be okay. In fact, I can even have joy!
