A Closer Look at Ace/Aro Identities

EPISODE 45–A Closer Look at Ace/Aro Identities

There are misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding those who find themselves on the asexual (ace) and/or aromantic (aro) spectrums. In this episode of In the Den, Jen talks with special guests Grayson Moore and Kris Glad about what it means to be asexual and aromantic. 

Special Guest: Grayson Moore

Grayson Moore (he/him) came out as transgender at age 16 (2011) and as asexual two years later. Grayson, alongside his mother Neca Allgood, worked with Equality Utah on extending Utah’s housing and employment nondiscrimination protections to cover sexual orientation and gender identity. He has also worked with Affirmation LGBTQ Mormons Family and Friends. Grayson currently lives in Michigan with his boyfriend and girlfriend. He enjoys cooking, singing, occasionally writing, and playing Factorio.

Special Guest: Kris Glad

Kris Glad (they/them) first came to their asexual identity at age 17 (2012). In the decade since, they've found their experience to be fluid with regards to where, precisely, they fall on the asexual and aromantic spectrums, and they've tried on many labels within the ace and aro community to understand their experience and communicate about it with the people in their life. These days, Kris gravitates towards the term 'demiromantic', but mostly just tells people they're somewhere on the ace and aro spectrums.

Kris has a degree in Gender Studies and Sociology from the University of Utah, and they enjoy nerding out on queer history, feminist theory, and any scholarship that helps them understand their own experience. In their free time, Kris can usually be found crafting - knitting, cross stitching, sewing, etc - probably while listening to a podcast.

Links from the show: 

• Aces and Aros: https://acesandaros.org/ 
• The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network: https://www.asexuality.org/ 
• The Ace and Aro Advocacy Project: https://taaap.org/ 
• Join MamaDragons today at www.mamadragons.org 

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org. 

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Transcript

JEN:   Hello and welcome. You are listening to In the Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created out of our desire to walk and talk with you through this journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. We are so happy that you’re here with us.

Today we are going to get educated about 2 different identities that have a lot of overlap but that are definitely not the same thing. Diving into this topic, my hope is that we will all be able to better understand orientation and attraction better across the whole spectrum. We are going to talk, today, about being asexual and being aromantic. We have two guests here with us to share their personal experiences and also to help break down the facts. Welcome to Kris Glad and Grayson Moore!!

KRIS: Hello. Thank you for having me.

GRAYSON: Hi.

JEN: So, excited to talk with you guys today. Let’s start with you, Kris.  Help us get to know you a little bit. 

KRIS: So, I identify as somewhere on both the asexual and aromantic spectrums. Where exactly on the spectrums I fall has changed a lot over the last ten years since I started identifying as asexual and aromantic. But, when I do experience attraction, I understand it very much within the framework of aromantism, asexuality. 

So, I grew up in Utah in a pretty conservative family and went to school and was pretty normalish, I guess. Except about around fifth grade, all of my peers started getting crushes on each other. And they were like, “This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to anyone on the history of the planet and I must know who you have a crush on!” And I was like, “Uh, no one.” And they were like, “We don’t believe you.” and I was like, “Cool. So that doesn’t make me have a crush on anyone.

JEN: Did you make up crushes?

KRIS: Eventually, I got to that point. I remember being in sixth or seventh grade and my friends would not stop harassing me about, “Who do you have a crush on? Who do you have a crush on? What boy do you have a crush on?” And I was like, “Uhhh… that one, I guess. He’s fine. Will this make you stop harassing me?” And I didn’t really think anything of it. I just thought my friends were annoying which I feel like is not an uncommon experience when you’re twelve. My experience with asexuality, though, started one night. I was on my family's computer. It was probably like 2010 maybe.

JEN: How old would that have made you?

KRIS: Fifteen, I think.

JEN: OK.

KRIS: And I stumbled across, in my internet travels, asexuality.org, AVEN, Asexuality Visibility and Education Network. And I compulsively read the entire website, like all of their FAQ, all of their information all over it. I got into digging through forum posts on their website. And I remember viscerally thinking, “Oh, my God. This is OK. I didn’t know this was an option.” And then it took me a year to start identifying as asexual myself because, well, that was big and scary and what if I just put it in a box and forget about it. And then I eventually stumbled back across it and was like, “Oh, no. This is me.”

JEN: Before that, had you gone through periods where you’re like, “This is probably how everyone feels. We’re just using different words to describe it.”

KRIS: I didn’t really think about it, honestly. I didn’t really think about it. I was just like, “Gosh, my friends are annoying. I wish they would stop asking me who I have a  crush on ‘cause it’s no one.”

JEN: But you didn’t feel like you were weird or broken?

KRIS: It was more an annoyance than anything else. Like, when my friends would be all boy crazy, I’d be like, “Wow, keep it together, guys. He’s a boy. It’s fine.” I was mostly annoyed, I think.

JEN: That makes perfect sense. So you are fifteen and you’re like, “I think that’s me. I think I might be asexual.” Did you just kind of put that in your pocket?

KRIS: I did just put it in my pocket. Because the funny thing about this story is that a couple week later, one of my friends was having party for like the end of school or something and we went to different schools at that time. So she had some friends that I hadn’t met before. And there was this one boy who was funny and nice and I was like, “Perfect. I’ll have a crush on him because that makes me not this thing that I just found out about that I’m a little terrified of.” And I didn’t track that this was what I was doing at the time. But I gave myself a hysterical crush on this boy. By which I mean, I gave myself the symptoms of a crush. I had the butterflies, the heart palpitations, the thinking about him all the time and constantly. And I was like, “Yes, this is a crush. Look at me being normal.” But when I thought back about it happened and after I got over it,  I was like, “The farthest I ever went with this boy in my fantasies was we would go on dates which were basically we would hang out and be friends and hold hands and maybe we’d kiss. But let’s go back to the part where we’re friends.”

JEN: So did you talk to your parents? Did you come out to friends?

KRIS: I talked to my friends a little bit about that crush specifically because they were all the ones who were like, “Kris finally has a crush. They’re normal.” That’s not what they said, but that was like the implication. That was the vibe I got, anyways. I got over it in a couple of months and then I was like, “That was weird.” And then I came back across asexuality on the internet somewhere a couple months later and I was like, “Oh, yeah. That is me.”

JEN: Okay. This time it is real.

KRIS: Well, this time I’m comfortable with it. As I kind of pieced it together and was like, that was a weird blip. What was that thing with that boy? It was really funny. He came out as gay, like two or three years later. And I was like, “Did I somehow know and was like this is the least threatening boy I could possibly have a crush on because he will not reciprocate and I’ll be safe to have this projection crisis all over him?” And he went to a different school than I did and it just was not a big deal. I didn’t have to engage with him and it wasn’t awkward because we saw each other twice after that. But after I figured out that I was ace, I came out to a couple of friends and they were like, “I’ve never heard of that.” And I was like, “This is what it means from what I understand.” And they were like, “Yeah. that tracks. That is, in fact, in line with everything we know about you as a person.”

JEN: So that’s nice. Nobody was trying to talk you out of it.

KRIS: No. No. By the time I came out, the friends that had harassed me the most about my crushes were no longer very close friends. They were really bad at respecting when I said no when I didn’t want to do things like talk about crushes. And that was a pattern with those friends.

JEN: Was it kind of uncomfortable for you when other people were talking about those sorts of things.

KRIS: Yeah. It wasn’t uncomfortable for me when they talked about it in the context of their own feelings. But it was very uncomfortable when they turned the conversation to me and was like, “So what are your feelings? How are you feeling? What boys do you have crushes on?” And I’m like, “I really don’t know what to tell you. It’s just not happening for me.”

JEN: So the idea of it wasn’t repulsive to you. It just wasn’t happening.

KRIS: The idea wasn’t particularly repulsive. It was just not a thing that I was experiencing.

JEN: Let’s hear from Grayson. Tell us about you, Grayson. Who are you?

GRAYSON: Hi. Well, a lot of people involved with Mama Dragons probably have already heard of me because they probably know or at least have heard some from my mom Neca Algood. So a lot of you are probably at least somewhat familiar with my story. But the gist of it, so I also grew up LDS and as a result, did not have access to a lot of the terminology related to the queer community growing up. I was certainly not aware of asexuality as a thing that people could be. I wasn’t even aware that being trans was something that people could be until my mom did some research and asked me if that’s how I felt. And so it wasn’t until I was already out as trans and therefore getting involved with the queer community that I started becoming aware of more of the terminology. And it was actually my first girlfriend who was the one who introduced me to the term ‘asexual’ and I was able to figure out, “Oh, yeah. That sounds like me.” It was also rather difficult for me to figure out early that I was asexual. I was definitely more in the category of either assuming how I felt was how everyone felt, or just assuming that everybody else needed to get their act together, like, ‘What are you people doing?”

JEN: That makes a lot of sense to me in cultures that put a lot of emphasis and a lot of spiritual praise on the ideas of celibacy and purity and chastity. It seems like going through that and you hear people talking about, “Oh, I made a mistake. Or that was an accident. or I needed to repent” or whatever. It seems like it would be really easy to be like, “I don’t know what’s wrong with all of you because I’m just doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.”

GRAYSON: Yeah.

KRIS: I actually have a really funny story about that if I can interject.

JEN: Yeah, for sure.

KRIS: Um, so in that first night that I found asexuality.org, I found this forum post from someone who was raised in a really conservative religion and was talking about, “Yeah, they were always harping on about chastity when I was a teenager. And I would just sit there and be like, “Why are we still talking about this? Is this a problem for other people?”  And I remember thinking, “Oh, my God, for real.” And then it took me another year to start identifying as asexual.

GRAYSON: Yeah.

KRIS: It’s definitely a thing in my experience at least, for people who grow up in conservative religions who are also asexual to be a little bit, I’ll say for myself, I was a little bit “Holier-than-thou” a little bit than my fellow teenagers because I was like, “Y'all are struggling with this and it’s not that hard to not be interested. I don’t get what’s happening to you.”

JEN: That makes sense. So, Grayson, you were out as trans and attending events you said. And then you started to figure it out because you’re dating. And it makes perfect sense to me that girlfriend would be like, “hmm, have you considered?”

GRAYSON: Well, and I learned because she’s also asexual. And one of the other things, and this also connects with the difficulties of figuring out what is asexual growing up in a conservative religion. Is that because the religious culture tends to focus on shielding young people from any exposure to what sex and sexuality is actually like, it was very much all abstract in my head of, “Ah, it’s a closeness thing that people do with people they love. And, oh, sure, that sounds nice.” And my experience with asexuality is very much, talking in the abstract about yes, people being close to each other and doing something that feels good. OK, that sounds fair enough. And then it wasn’t until, I remember it was the first time that I was reading fan fiction that had some sex scenes in it. You know, the kind of thing that you don’t get exposed to if you’re strictly following the rules of a conservative religion like that, that it was kind of a, “Wait, what? Is that what people have been talking about all along? This doesn’t seem appealing.” And at first, I was sort of dismissing that as maybe it makes me uncomfortable because it’s a sin or because I associate it with being a sin. But, no, it was just kind of, “No, the appeal just isn’t there.” And for me, my experience with asexuality, there is some of that sex repulsion there that it’s very distinctly, “No. That’s not what I want. That’s not for me.” And it sometimes kind of catches me off guard bumping into something. And I’ve talked about how my first girlfriend was also asexual, and she’s the one who I first heard about that terminology from. Asexuality is different for different people. And that, for me, I don’t even really like kissing on the mouth. That kind of is some of that same discomfort. But that was something that she wanted. And I pushed myself to try it thinking, you know, “Oh, I’m just nervous because I’ve never done it before” or something like that. And then trying it and, even trying to push myself past that initial nervousness, it continued being just something that felt all tangled up and wrong in my stomach. And I do remember coming out to my mom about it. And my mom is very much one of those, “Mom of the Century” types. But even she asked one of the classic, “Are you sure you’re not just a late bloomer?” kind of thing.

KRIS: It’s funny that you say that, because, before I had my first crush at the age of 21, I was very much resistant to that idea of like, “No. I’m not a late bloomer. I’m having my experience that I’m having. And if that changes in the future, that’s fine. But stop asking me to wait to identify as something that resonates now for something that might happen in the future.”

GRAYSON: Yeah.

KRIS: And then, when it did happen in the future for me, I was like, “Oh, were they all right?” And it turns out that they weren’t right. I’m still very much on the asexual and aromantic spectrums. It’s just I’m at a different point on the spectrums than I initially understood, because it is a spectrum, you know?

GRAYSON: Yeah. It is. Yeah. And, even if a person’s identity evolves and changes over the course of their life, that doesn’t mean that you have to hold yourself back from describing yourself as you experience things now. People will sometimes, “Well, why do you have to be putting yourself in a box?” Well, no. It’s “I’m using words to describe my own experience to myself and to other people who might feel similarly or for whom it might be relevant.” I was a linguistics major so I’m very much about the power of language.

KRIS: Yeah. Exactly, for real. I think that labels in general usually serve one of two purposes. Either they validate something for you internally. And, for me, when I first found the word asexual, I was not trying to communicate to anyone else. I was like, “Oh, there’s other people who feel like this.” And that word ‘asexual’ meant that there was a whole community of people that had the same experiences as me, enough that they coined a term for it.

GRAYSON: Yeah.

KRIS: So, having the word ‘asexual’ meant that I wasn’t alone by virtue of there being a word that someone else coined, right? So, labels either serve an internal validation function or they serve an external communication function. Often they serve both.

GRAYSON: Yeah. And as tools in building community solidarity in a way.

KRIS: Exactly. Exactly.  Like, if I say to someone I’m interested in having some sort of partnership with, you know, “I’m somewhere on the ace spectrum which, for me, means these things. That I don’t want to do kissing or sex right away because it feels weird to me. I might change in the future because my experience is rather fluid and I am demi.” So sometimes attraction comes along later, sometimes it doesn’t. but I want to have this person in my life. So, those words I use to communicate to a potential partner of some sort where I’m at. And labels, I find, are either useful for internally validating yourself and connecting yourself to community or communicating something to someone else about your own experience.

JEN: Like with all things with orientation, there is a lot of overlap between romantic attraction and sexual attraction. Sometimes it’s a little hard to pull apart and piece together people who aren’t ace or aro, probably kind of just everything lined up and they never really thought that there was a difference at all. But, in order to help us to solidify the fact that these are two separate topics, which  I think will help when people are trying to understand, people who are homoromantic or heteroromantic, but maybe bisexual. We’re going to try to tackle them very separately. And I just have some questions, almost definition-y type questions to help people understand these words that we’re talking about. 

So let's start with aromantic, lots of time aro, the term used is aro. But let’s talk about aromantic or without romantic attraction is what the term actually means. So let’s start with that. Set the groundwork, Grayson, the linguist, I’m going to start with you. Give us a definition. What does it mean if someone says, “I’m aro.”

GRAYSON: Um, yeah. the overall meaning would be someone who doesn’t experience romantic attraction. And that can be – there’s also a range of identities within the aromantic spectrum for people who might only experience romantic attraction very seldom or only under particular circumstances. There’s more specific terminologies for some of those. But, yeah, in general, just a label for not experiencing romantic attraction. And, defining what exactly romantic attraction is, can be tricky because it’s just kind of one of those vague feeling things that there’s also a great deal of social and cultural stuff built onto. And so there can be some challenges teasing apart. So, society gives us this big package of what relationships and attraction are supposed to look like, and very much in an all-bundled-together way. You know, there’s supposed to be the romance and the sex and it’s supposed to involve these signifiers and these behaviors. And that’s also very much packaged in the way that heterosexuality is treated as the default within society. That the picture of the default relationship is very much of a woman does this, a man does this. Taking that big package that we’ve been given by culture and starting to take it apart and look at what’s inside of it and say, “Okay. How much do these individual things connect with me? How much do they actually have to go together?” It can be challenging figuring out how exactly one wants to relate to those individual pieces within that broader package.

JEN: You addressed the idea that it’s not binary. We talk about that a lot in this podcast. Almost nothing in humanity or nature at large is binary. So, adding onto what you just said, I need someone to explain to me what it is to have romantic attraction.

KRIS: So one of the things that i was thinking about while Grayson was talking about unpacking that big box is that in the period of time where I identified as asexual and aromantic, but before I got my first crush at the age of 21, there’s about four years there. And I was trying to understand what exactly is romance? What is a romantic relationship? I don’t think I’m opposed to having one. But I don’t know what everyone means when the say that word. I would talk to my friends, especially my other queer friends. I’m like, “Okay, so what exactly do you mean when you say, like, what's the difference between a really close friendship and a romantic relationship? because on paper, they look the same to me. If you take out kissing and sex, which are sexual to me, what is the difference between an asexual romantic relationship and a platonic friendship?” And they could never quite give me a good answer. And it was just kind of like, you know, there’s feelings that are different. And I’m like, “Okay. But tell me about the feelings. I don’t understand.” And they’d be like, “Well, it’s just different.” And I was always so frustrated as a teenager who was like, “I just want to understand and you’re not making it any more clear.” And then I got a crush. And I was like, “Oh, dip. They are different.”

JEN: So you’re saying your crush was romantic?

KRIS: Yes. Yeah. My crush was romantic. So, for me, romantic attraction is very much like that fluttery crush feeling whereas sexual attraction is more like pants-oriented feelings. Like I would like to have sex with that person. And there’s a lot of overlap. 

GRAYSON: And a lot of people seem to experience those as very connected.

KRIS: Yes. There’s a lot of overlap and they’re very connected for a lot of people. But for some people, occasionally myself included but not always. It’s very weird, very difficult to wrap language around sometimes. It’s a normal human experience but it’s difficult to communicate about. Let’s not call it weird, let’s call it hard to communicate about. For me, romantic attraction is what drives me to want to date someone, which I do occasionally after I get to know someone and I want to be in a partnership-type dating relationship with you. And I want to have that very close emotional intimacy. And for some people, romantic attraction involved “I want to be cuddly with you.” For other people, it doesn’t.

GRAYSON: One thing that is talked about sometimes within asexuality and aromanticism spectrum, is also talking about sensual versus sexual. That those two, a lot of times, can get conflated. But one can have sensual attraction or sensual desire that’s for more that “cuddly touchy, feely but not sex” really. Which is actually one of the reasons why it was hard for me to figure out that I was asexual, is that I do experience some of that sensual attraction. But, yeah. I want to hug and touch and run my fingers through your hair and that kind of thing. But the sex part is a turn off.  

KRIS: Yeah. I think it might be useful to talk about the split attraction model. So, in a lot of ace and aro communities, people talk about attraction between humans is having, like, six different components. And for a lot of people they overlap. A lot of people they don’t. So there’s sexual which is what we’ve already talked about, relating to sex. Romantic, like the fuzzy, date-y, I want to date that person feelings. Sensual, I want to hug or cuddle or touch that person, but not necessarily sexually. Aesthetic attraction, which is, “Wow, you’re really pretty.” And for some people, aesthetic attraction translates into, “Oh, I want to touch you.” But for some people ,sometimes, especially for me, aesthetic attraction is just like, “Wow. You’re really pretty. I just want to look at you. Is that weird?” Platonic attraction, so wanting to be friends with someone. And sometimes somebody’s just really cool and you’re like, “I don’t necessarily want to date you, but you’re really cool and I want to be friends with you.”

GRAYSON: I will say for any listeners, if you feel overwhelmed about the number of distinctions and terms like that, there’s not going to be a quiz at the end. You don’t have to have all this memorized. The words and the labels are tools for understanding and communicating. No one’s going to burn you at the stake if you can’t remember it all off the top of your head.

KRIS: Exactly. It’s a framework that you can put your experience into and be like, “Oh, so since you’ve split these attractions out, I can see that I often have aesthetic and platonic attraction with people.” And maybe for some people they can be like, “Oh, with this model, I can see that I have aesthetic attraction. I think they’re really pretty. And I have platonic attraction, I really want to be friends with them.” And maybe I’ve thought that meant that I should date them and then I try to date them and then it’s just not working. The split attraction model is really helpful for understanding your own experience of attraction and what is and isn’t present for you. Or, for someone else, if I’m trying to explain to someone that, “Yeah. They’re really pretty. I think you’re really cool. I’m just not sexually attracted to you. I’m attracted to you in other ways, but not sexually.” That can be a useful framework and tool to communicate with.

JEN: If somebody is 100% aromantic, like there’s zero attraction to anyone, can they fall in love? Is romantic attraction and being in love intertwined?

GRAYSON: So, usually, again, putting my linguistics hat on, a lot of times we use the term “being in love,” we use that as a synonym for romantic attraction. I personally, I’m not sure how much I like that. I’m not a huge fan of the conflation of love and romance because I don’t think that those are . . .

KRIS: They’re not exclusive to each other.

GRAYSON: Yeah. They’re not exclusive to each other. That you can be romantically attracted to someone but not love them in the sense that you actually understand them and want what’s best for them. And I mean, there’s a similar thing with a common euphemism for sex is “Making love.” And, again, sex and love are not the same thing. You can be sexually attracted to someone and that doesn’t necessarily mean that you love them and vice versa.

KRIS: So, to this question specifically, if someone is telling you they’re 100% aromantic and are like, “I don’t see myself being interested in a relationship. I don’t see myself being able to fall in love with anyone like that in the way that all the movies and love songs talk about. I don’t see myself ever doing that.” One, believe them. And don’t say like, “But what about in this case? Are you sure that you wouldn’t like doing that in this case or that case?” When I came out to my mom as ace, and she was like, “Well, I don’t want you to be lonely forever. And to me, not being lonely, means having a long-term partner. And I want that for you.” And I’m like, “I don’t want that for me, though.” I can find ways to have lots of love in my life and partnerships that aren’t necessarily romantic or even sexual that don’t have those elements in them. There are lots of ways to have love in your life that don’t involve being “In love” is what I would say to that.

GRAYSON: Yeah.

JEN: So, can an aro person, I’m talking about the extremes, right? Like I know it’s not a binary. But if we go all the way to the binary, can aromantic people have a healthy sex life?

KRIS: Absolutely, yeah.

GRAYSON: Well, no reason why not. Again, culture tends to say that sex has to be coexisting with romantic love or desire. But it’s perfectly possible for someone to have a sexual relationship where romance isn’t a part of it but it’s still loving and respectful. And, as long as people are communicating well about how they actually feel and what they want out of it, there’s no reason why that can’t work.

KRIS: Yeah. Absolutely. I think a lot of ace spec people in general find a lot of partnerships that work for them with other ace spec people or with other people who even aren’t ace and aro spectrum people. I think that culturally, we tend to define relationships as checking all of these boxes. Checking all of the boxes down the list of being sexual in this way, and romantic in that way, and we celebrate Valentine's day together and our anniversary. And we do these culturally scripted things to reinforce our partnership. But there is a lot of  things for people all over every spectrum that on that list don’t make sense. There’s a lot of ALO people, ALO meaning not ace or aro, so alosexual meaning not asexual, aloromantic, meaning not aromantic. There’s a lot of alo people who are like, “I’m into sex and romance, but can I skip Valentine’s day? It doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t like it. I don’t find fulfillment in it.” And that’s not a wrong way to be. So I think that a lot of times culturally, we get hung up on defining relationships the way that we are told they should be but are not necessarily actually reflective of what we want as individuals in a partnership.

GRAYSON: And it’s worth pointing out that even if a person is interested in sex and is interested in romance, that doesn’t necessarily have to be with the same people. For the big check list of “Things that are supposed to exist within relationships,” that it doesn’t have to be, “I have it with the one true person or not have it at all.” That sometimes, it makes more sense to fill different needs through different relationships.

KRIS: Absolutely, like I’m non-monogamous. I identify as a relationship anarchist which means I do relationships with different people in different ways that make sense for the people involved in the relationships and not necessarily the way that is, “We’re supposed to do” relationships. And I’ve found, with my relationships and my little non-monogamy journey, that when I find fulfillment with different people, there is also less pressure on one partner to be everything for me.

GRAYSON: Exactly. And that’s very much something how I feel as well, also as a polyamorous person, that trying to have one person be your everything and only, I think that’s a lot of pressure and it’s not necessarily . . .

KRIS: It’s so much pressure. Oh, my God.

GRAYSON: And for me, there’s things where it wouldn't even really make sense to have those things be within the same relationship that there’s a different vibe or a different dynamic. Well, polyamory isn’t necessarily the intended focus of this episode.  

JEN: We will do an episode about that at some point, though. So, it seems to me that it would be kind of challenging, like all mixed orientation relationships, to have one person be aloromantic and another be aromantic, or one be aromantic or asexual and the other one be alosexual. So, my question is, in the spaces you inhabit, is it easier or more common for ace and aro people to search out other ace and aro people to be in relationship with instead of tackling that mixed orientation world?  

GRAYSON: I think it can certainly make things a lot easier. And the mixed orientation relationships, they can work just fine depending on the individual needs and feelings of the people involved. But there definitely are some advantages that for an asexual person having another relationship with another asexual person that can make things a lot simpler. But it isn’t a requirement that you can find other ways of making things work. And people vary in how much, even if they experience sexual attraction, how strong of a need that is for them. And asexual people also vary in, again, whether they are like sex-repulsed or more neutral about it or might even enjoy it. And so there’s lots of different ways that a mixed-orientation can be made to work.

JEN: All right. So, before we move on, because I think this fits in that same category. Talk to me about queer platonic relationships. This is a term which is obviously new. But I don’t think it’s a concept that’s new in the world. Talk to me about these. What is it?

KRIS: Absolutely. So, queer platonic relationship, a QPR, is a term that’s come out of the ace and aro.

JEN: I didn’t even know it had an acronym.

KRIS: Yeah. QPR, Queer Platonic Relationships is a framework that has come out of the ace and aro communities to talk about relationships that are really intense, maybe like a partnership, but that don’t read as romantic or sexual for whatever reason. So, I was actually in a QPR for a long time. I called my person, my platonic life partner. We were not in love. We were not having sex. But I absolutely planned my life with regards to this partnership that I was in. Like, queer platonic relationships are, in my experience, a way to talk about this deep connection that you have with someone but without having to shove it into the framework of checking all the boxes of a “Real” relationship, with heavy air quotes around the word, “Real.” But queer platonic relationships to me are queering the way that we define how important or how valuable or how much commitment a platonic relationship can have. Because when I was in this with my platonic life partner at the time, we would often explain what we were to each other. And people would be like, “So you’re friends.” We’d be like, “OK, so you didn’t hear me. She’s my partner. I’m just not in love with her or having sex with her. I am her partner in a lot of different ways, but that sex or romance piece just isn’t there for us. But we’re not just friends. She’s the most important person in my life. What are you talking about?” And that can be very different for different people in their different queer platonic relationships. But that was my experience in that.

JEN: All right. I’m going to step us away from aro for a minute. And into the land of ace. So, let’s start again with an official -- I’m going to come back to you Grayson because you’re our linguist – let’s start with the official definition: what it means to be ACE.

GRAYSON: So, asexual would be not experiencing sexual attraction. And there’s also the broader asexual spectrum for, again, people who experience it only very rarely, or only under particular circumstances or things like that.

JEN: OK. So, again, we want to remind everybody over and over and over that nothing exists in a binary. Any time we talk about an umbrella term, there’s going to be lots of different shades underneath there. But I’m going to kind of talk about the extremes most of the time, just to get most of us to understand the other side, so to give us that comparison. 

So, we’ve touched on this a little bit, but talk to me about the difference between someone who’s just sexually repressed or someone who’s sexually repulsed or someone who’s asexual.

GRAYSON: Yeah. so one might talk about sort of the different internal experiences of someone who is just like, sexually repressed or celibate or whatever. In that case someone might still feel that desire or that attraction, but they just refuse to act on it or they might also have other feelings related to sex that might obstruct them from acting on it. But that’s different from just not having that attraction in the first place. The point is that it’s not so much about what a person externally does, but about the internal experience of it, the feelings and the attractions.

JEN: Any thoughts about that, Kris?

KRIS: Nope. That’s spot on.

JEN: He’s pretty much covered it?

KRIS: Yeah. I think that a lot of times we talk about being repressed or whatever or being celibate as being the same as asexual. But celibacy is about actions. It’s about the way that you are or aren’t acting on that sexual attraction. Celibacy is a choice that one makes to not have sex. Asexuality is your human experience of not being attracted to people sexually. Those are very different concepts.

JEN: So, I remember, probably seven, eight years ago, hearing from a sex therapist. I was listening to a podcast, hearing a sex therapist say, “There’s really no such thing as being asexual. Humans are, by nature, a sexual species. So if you don’t feel any sexual attraction, something’s wrong. Something has happened and you need to seek counseling for this.” And I’m wondering if, in the past eight years, there's some evolution on this topic because, at the same time, I was listening to ace people go, “Nope. That’s not it.” And so I’m wondering if, maybe, the psychological, therapeutic world has evolved to come closer to what the ace and aro communities have been articulating.

GRAYSON: I mean, you will find some good supportive therapists and people who acknowledge that asexuality is a thing. But it can also be an issue where if you say that you are asexual to a therapist where they will act like it’s a problem like you’re broken, that not all health care providers are necessarily aware or supportive. So that can be an issue for asexual. Thankfully I haven't bumped into that myself. But it is something that can be a problem.

KRIS: Yeah. I have had minimal experiences with it. However, I have run into people who say, “Okay, so you say you’re ace. That means you have sexual trauma that you’re avoiding, right?” And it’s like, “No. And even if I did, you saying that my experience is because I’m traumatized would not make me trust you as a provider. I need to be validated in what I’m saying my experience is, not what you're thinking that means for me as a person who may or may not be dealing with trauma.”

JEN: I want to talk about terms a little bit. If someone is sexually attracted to someone after they fall in love with them, but not sexually attracted to somebody – I’m going personal y'all, you ready?

KRIS: I’m ready.

JEN: All growing up, people would say, “I would totally do her. I would totally do him,” like walking through the world and I thought it was a euphemism. I had no idea that people actually wanted to be sexually intimate with people that they had never spoken to before. So I’m wondering, in the world of ace, what’s it called if sexual attraction’s there, but you have to be in love first?

KRIS: That would be demi-sexual. And the flip side of that, demiromantic, is when, to fall in love you need to have that close emotional intimacy before falling in love.

JEN: Do some people fall in love before they know someone?

KRIS: With some people, it happens as they get to know them.

GRAYSON: People talk about the whole “love at first sight” concept or having a crush on someone.

KRIS: Or a lot of people fall in love as they are getting to know someone which is not an experience that I understand personally. Like, “No, I need to know you. I already want a relationship of some sort with you in my life,” before I’ll be like, “Oh, I do want to hold hands with you.”

JEN: So, ace is an orientation, right? We’re pretty clear on that. It talks about who you’re sexually attracted to which is most often, on the extreme end, no one. The answer is no one, right? But in the those shades of gray under the umbrella, can somebody be gay and ace or lesbian and ace or bi and ace. Because if they’re ace, that means they don’t have sexual attraction, and if they’re one of those other identities, they’re naming the attraction. So how does that work?

GRAYSON: Yeah. I mean, I sometimes describe myself as bi.  I would never say bisexual because I am asexual. Bi isn’t the perfect term for it, but it’s something that a lot of people are at least aware of. And so, when I’m communicating to people who don’t necessarily know a lot of terminology, I’ll describe myself as bi because I’m romantically attracted to people of various genders. But, yeah, so it’s perfectly possible. You can use multiple words to describe your orientation to say that someone might be – it would be perfectly valid to describe oneself as gay for being romantically attracted to the same gender, even if not sexually or vice versa. Those concepts can be combined perfectly well.

KRIS: So you might hear someone say, I’m biromantic and asexual. Or I’m homoromantic and asexual. Or homosexual and aromantic, the latter meaning that I’m attracted to people of my own gender sexually, but I am aromantic as well, so not experiencing that romantic attraction.

JEN: When I worked with teens, it was fascinating as they were trying to discover themselves. How my generation picks a word, the one word. But these kids were picking six or seven different words to describe how they exist in the world. It was really fun. 

Okay. So, back to the idea of sex and a sex life. You can  be asexual and have a sex life. But, let’s talk about libido. Can you have a sex drive if you’re asexual? How do all these things overlap?

KRIS: Yeah. Absolutely. So, asexuality is about attraction to other people. Libido or sex drive is about your own body's experience of wanting sex of some sort whether that’s sex with yourself –  i.e. masturbation – or sex with a partner. But your sex drive is about how much you want sexual satisfaction, not necessarily about who you want it with. Whereas, asexuality as an orientation is about not being attracted to anyone in particular.

JEN: We kind of touched on this quite a bit already. But I’m hoping you guys will name some websites or some sources because in my head I moved through life in this very heteronormative way and was sort of oblivious to things. And, as I’m learning more about them, and I’m looking backwards, my constant reoccurring thought is, “How on earth does anyone sort all this out?” Because we use language that doesn’t make any sense like, “I’m so in love with Taylor Swift.” Like, are you really in love with Taylor Swift? What does that mean to you? Does that mean you want to hold hands with Taylor Swift? Does that mean you want to marry? We don’t dive into what people mean with the words that we use, especially as teenagers. So how does anyone sort any of this out for themselves?

GRAYSON: There’s a lot of terminology available that you can find. I don’t necessarily know what the best websites to find good lists of terminology are, particularly nowadays because I’m very offline.

KRIS: Yeah. Me either. I did this ten years ago.

GRAYSON: Yes. I got a lot of my access to terminology from stuff on Tumblr back in the day.

KRIS: Yep.

JEN: Well, we’ll try to include some links to some credible sources in the show notes.

KRIS: But, as far as like trying to figure out what words work for you or what you want and what that means for you, as far as exploring your sexuality and trying to figure out what words work for you or what words don’t work for you – granted, it have been a minute since I have found new labels for my sexuality – however, when I am in that space, I’ve found it really useful to think of labels as not subscribing to this identity forever but as a tool that you can use to either help understand yourself or help communicate your experience to other people. Like, when you’re exploring your sexuality in terms of asexuality or aromanticism, know you don’t have to, if you pick a label that works for you now, you don’t have to pick it forever. It can be useful for as long as it is useful. and if you find something more useful later, use that. It doesn’t have to be a lifelong commitment to one word.

GRAYSON: You might not end up finding words that feel exactly right for you. That’s one of the reasons why the term ‘Queer’ is very useful because the breadth of it that, “Well, my experience doesn’t fit within the what our culture has said is normal.” But you don’t have to pin down exactly the right word to describe it. And so the term ‘Queer” can be very useful and very liberating in that way.

KRIS: Agreed.

JEN: So, we live in, I think we would all agree, a hyper sexualized and a hyperromantic society. There’s entire TV channels dedicated, well, actually to both topics. We have the Hallmark channel and then other channels. So, as you’re kind of discovering these things about yourself, does it make you feel weird? Do you feel abnormal or out of place until you kind of settle? Is it emotionally difficult to work through?

KRIS: I found it disorienting more than anything else. I didn’t feel like I was broken for not wanting the things that everyone was telling me I was supposed to want. However, I did feel really confused. I just knew that something wasn’t lining up in the way that I was ‘supposed’ to feel and what I was ‘supposed’ to want. And I knew something was a little different. But, for me, finding community, finding words of people who have this identity too and have this experience too, didn't make me feel weird. It made me feel more normal. It made me feel like I was not alone.

JEN: How about you, Grayson?

GRAYSON: For me, because I never really went through the phase that I recognized that there was something different about my experiences but didn’t know what it was. So, I personally, never went through the feeling like I was weird or might be broken or things like that. But one of the reasons why I am actually extremely glad that I am transgender is that after realizing that I’m asexual, and not only asexual but sex-repulsed, I realized that if I had not been pushed out of my comfort zone off of the path that the church had laid out for me, I would have gone on assuming that, “Yes, when I get married this will all make sense and it will all work out just fine.” And I could have found a girl that I fell in love with and we could’ve promised ourselves for, supposed to be forever, and figured out on my wedding night, “Oh this won’t work.” And I am extremely glad that that did not happen to me. And so one of the things, the unintended dangers, I think of having a culture where we don’t talk about sex in general and about the variations in people’s experiences that one of the dangers of growing up in a conservative church environment can be that that possibility of it isn’t until you’ve promised yourself to something forever that you realize that that was not a promise you probably should’ve made. And I’m very glad that I didn’t end up in that. But I recognize that I very easily could have because I wouldn’t not have recognized that there was anything different until I slammed into it like a bird hitting a window.

KRIS: Yeah. I feel that.

JEN: This conversation has been really enlightening for me. I want to echo Grayson’s thoughts from earlier for our listeners that none of us listening to this need to understand any of this instantly. Nor do we need to understand it perfectly. There’s not a test, like Grayson said, at the end. Our goal is to strive to listen to the experiences of other people and learn more about how the diversity of life works and understand terms and stuff so that we can better support and love the people around us. 

I want to thank both of you so much for being vulnerable, for coming and sharing your stories, and helping all of us just to see the beauty of life a little bit more.

GRAYSON: Thank you for having us.

KRIS: Yeah. Thank you for having us.

JEN: Thanks so much for joining us here in the den. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. We’d also love it if you could take a minute to leave us a positive rating and review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. But, review or not, we’re glad you’re here. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can visit our website at mamdragons.org or follow us on Instagram or Facebook. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes.