International Asexuality Day
By: Rachel Hands, Amplify Board Member
Quick content warning: While some of what I’m discussing is specific to the workplace, not all of the resources I’m sharing are going to be safe for work, and some contain discussion of sexual violence. I’ll mark the ones that you may want to skip opening at work with an asterisk, like this*.
This post is being published on International Asexuality Day, a coordinated event dedicated to advocacy, celebration, education, and solidarity for asexual (ace) people worldwide.
That’s me. And, likely, some of you.
For my fellow data nerds in the room, let’s start from somewhere comfortable: the numbers.
I’m among the estimated 1% of people worldwide who don’t experience sexual attraction. That’s a lot of people with a point of view we hear very little about, and the number is likely even higher because of a lack of visibility and common vocabulary to describe it. In fact, in 2017 GLAAD reported that 4% of people 18-34 identified as asexual, with that number dropping dramatically to 1% for people aged 35+ (like me). Similarly, in 2012 the Trevor Project reported* that as many as 60% of people who identified as asexual were 21 or younger.
That same GLAAD report found that just 7% of people knew someone who was openly asexual. That number feels low, but it makes a LOT of sense to me. (A year ago, I’d have reported myself in the other 93%.)
The data that’s currently being collected about asexuality is relatively sparse, and some of the most robust analysis comes from the Ace Community Survey*, for which respondents skew younger and white. As Michael Paramo writes, current discussions of asexuality are rooted in mostly-white, mostly-online spaces, making it even harder for those who don’t feel at home in those spaces to identify with or even become aware of asexuality as a valid identity.
So how can you help?
It’d hardly be an Amplify blog post without some calls to allyship action, right? And as with any allyship action, it’s important to start by listening to those who hold the minoritized identity.
No matter what your relationship is to the ace people in your life, there’s solid allyship advice in this blog series* by Swankivy (aka Julie Sondra Decker, author of The Invisible Orientation). I also recommend reading Angela Chen’s book Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex, which contains a wide variety of asexual experiences, an intersectional approach, and helpful frameworks that led me to understand myself as ace.
Looking more specifically at allyship at work… well, that’s complicated (but possible!). This is obviously a topic that’s hard to raise in the workplace. It’s also incredibly easy not to raise in the workplace. What could be less relevant to any discussion you’re having at work?
But there are ways in which asexuality impacts us at work. We as a society have built a lot of structures implicitly around sexuality, and more specifically around a heteronormative idea of “family” that has roots in sexual attraction. Those structures have a substantial impact on ace people at work, in ways that are largely invisible. If you’re a decision maker in your organization, here are a few ways to create structures that support the ace people who work for you whether they’re out or not (and open possibilities for all your employees in the process). This is by no means a comprehensive list, and I’d love to hear from you about other ideas in the comments.
Set salary ranges based on the value of the role to your company, not on what you think an individual needs.
My ace identity and personal goals mean that I’m likely to be a single-income household for the rest of my life, and that means I have to care more about my salary than I would prefer. I don’t happen to have or want kids, but some ace people do; if I needed to support a child or an adult family member through a difficult time, I wouldn’t be able to rely on a spouse to keep working while I take time off.
Tying salary ranges to the value of the role makes it so that your employees don’t have to explain their lives and identities to you in order to earn what they need.
Reframe parental leave as caretaking leave.
You’ve already moved past “maternity leave” and are encouraging parents of all genders to take leave when they’ve got a new baby around, right? Maybe you’ve even expanded it to family leave, in consideration of those who need time to care for an aging parent.
We can make this even more inclusive. Ace people and aromantic people – and LGBTQ2IA+ people of all kinds of identities – are more likely to rely on “found family” and other kinds of close community structures that don’t fit neatly into a company policy’s conception of what “family leave” looks like. If I knew that I could safely take time off to care for someone primary to my life without having to claim them as a partner, or that a close friend could take time off to care for me if I got sick, that would open up more space for me to hold the kind of community that makes me better able to show up to my job clear-headed and ready to give my best at work.
Reframe your bereavement leave policies.
Many companies grant different amounts of bereavement leave depending on the employee’s relationship with the deceased. If you’ve got a particular amount of leave that’s specific to a partner, consider adjusting the language to something like “a member of your immediate household” or “part of your primary support network.”
Take claims of sexual harassment seriously.
This obviously does not just impact your ace employees, but disclosing asexuality at work does increase vulnerability to sexual harassment, which can include claims that the ace employee is “broken” or “just needs to find the right person.”
And that brings me to the most important point of this post:
Asexual people are not broken.
We are not robots, and we are not naive. We are whole people with a perspective that deserves to be respected and understood. Thank you for taking the time to read this and move us a little further toward that future.