I get why allosexual queer people are very invested in celebrating non-normative sex and sexuality in a healthy, sex-positive way.

A great deal of the queerphobia lobbed our way these days comes in the form of accusations that we are predatory, as the recent co-opting of groomer by far-right activists demonstrates. This can be a touchy subject among queer rights activists, and understandably so. In order for asexuality to be understood and recognized as the queer identity that it is, sex acts and sexualization would first have to be removed from the center of dominant conceptions of queer identity. Brown argues that this is inherently exclusionary of ace people: Yet even in queer spaces, the performance of sex and sexuality often become more important than the underlying attraction. Your sexual orientation is whom you’re attracted to, not who you do, if you know what I mean. This privileging of sex as a determiner of identity has long bothered me, and I’m glad more people are calling it out. Hence, compulsory sexuality: moving the gatekeeping goalposts so that queer people are OK as long as they’re having sex with someone, but if you don’t actually care all that much about sex … well, that is just a bridge too far! In uplifting voices on the asexual spectrum and research into asexuality, Brown wants to emphasize that beyond compulsory heterosexuality, there is a wider idea that sex itself is a requirement for full admittance into the human experience. Each chapter explores a different dimension of compulsory sexuality, which is a term Brown uses to build on top of the more well-known compulsory heterosexuality, which is the idea that social pressures encourage and reward heterosexual expressions of love and desire and punishes those who deviate from that norm.

The book comprises twelve chapters (plus a foreword, introduction, and afterword).

Not only does it discuss the ways in which our society privileges allosexual people and pairings, but it also challenges some of my understandings as a white person, getting me to think about the intersections of racism and acephobia. So of course I leaped at the chance to read Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. I know that’s not entirely the case, though, and am always looking to broaden my knowledge about those who study and write about asexuality. In particular, it feels like we are usually an afterthought when it comes to research about queer people and sexuality. Sometimes being asexual (and in my case, aromantic) can feel very lonely, for reasons perhaps obvious but which I will elaborate on in a moment.

Sherronda j brown book