Let's Talk About Young Aces

There's nothing I hate more than some good old fashioned ace discourse, but of course it came out in full force for Ace Week. I couldn't possibly cover everything that happened in one post, but there's one topic in particular that I've been wanting to talk about for a while.

CW: aphobia, grooming

If you're a frequent reader of this website, you might've heard me talk about "baby aces" at some point. Occasionally when I say this I'm referring to anyone who has recently begun identifying as asexual regardless of their age. However, more often than not when I talk about "baby aces," I'm talking about minors who identify as ace. More specifically those on the younger side, maybe 12-14, but all minors qualify.

For a long time, children identifying as asexual was our biggest piece of discourse. I wasn't on Tumblr in its prime (nor am I on it currently), but I've heard plenty of horror stories about what it was like. Apparently, it was very common for older people on the website to tell young people that they were for sure asexual, when in many cases they were simply prepubescent (biologically not experiencing sexual attraction) or uninterested in sex (because they were young). Because of this, a lot of people became very opposed to the idea of children identifying as asexual -- they're not asexual, they're just a child.

Now, I (and most other ace people) will be the first to admit that there is some truth to this. Before we go through puberty, people don't experience sexual attraction. Therefore, if someone has not gone through puberty, calling yourself "asexual" wouldn't technically be correct as you might develop sexual attraction later. In fact, I've never heard an asexual person try to argue against this. And a big part of ace activism is assuring people that it's okay if you think you're asexual now and later discover that you're not.

However, people are still bothered by the idea of children identifying as asexual. I've seen this discourse on multiple other platforms, where people will be asking (non-asexual) people how early someone can identify as ace. First of all, I think it's time we leave allosexual people out of this conversation entirely. No offense, but I think it's best that this conversation is being led by people who actually have an understanding of what asexuality is. Besides that, people need to stop asking this question because it is not a black and white issue. There is not one single age where every person goes through puberty. Some people experience it a lot sooner than others. Therefore, you can't put an accurate age restriction on asexuality. It's different for everyone. In most cases, a person can just tell that they're ace because they can tell their experience is different to that of their peers. We can't just say that everyone will be able to know for sure by the time they're 14, for example. You know when you know.

The other major problem with trying to determine when someone can "correctly" identify as asexual is that people start to throw out suggestions. And let me tell you, they're almost always nonsense. Most people say 12-14, which I'd say is the most universally accurate assumption (remember, 12-year-olds are in middle school). But after that, people just get stupid. I've seen people say 14-16, which is high school. Older high school, even. Most people will have gone through puberty by this point, and most people will experience sexual attraction before that. I've also seen someone say you shouldn't be allowed to identify as asexual until you're 17. Yes, friends, you need to be nearly an adult before labeling your sexual identity. The worst one that I've ever heard was that nobody should identify as asexual before 21 because their brain isn't developed yet. In light of that news, I guess I will have to stop publicly identifying as asexual for five more months, and I'll see you all in late March when my brain develops the right amount. I mean, come on. I'm normally not the best source for this kind of thing, but I know that other people my age are experiencing sexual attraction. Some people have BABIES before that age. If you're able to have a baby, you're able to know you're ace. The point here is that allo people will start putting all these restrictions on asexuality, which is not their place to do as they clearly don't get it.

In general, I don't understand the problem with letting young people identify as ace. Now, let me be very clear: I don't think we should be pushing anyone to identify as anything. It's never your place to define someone else's sexuality for them. I am simply saying that if a young person learns about asexuality and connects with it, they should be allowed to identify as such. Worse case scenario, they grow up a little and realize they're not actually ace, so they let that label go. Is that really so bad? I believe it would be far more harmful to insist that the person in question is just wrong, because what if they are ace? One of the biggest issues that comes with being asexual is questioning if it's real or not, because allo society tells us that our asexuality is a result of some external factors. Perhaps we just haven't met the right person yet, or we need to get our hormones checked. I didn't tell anyone that I was asexual when I was a teenager (literally, I waited until just before my 20th birthday to come out at all), and I still told myself these things when I was growing up. It does much more harm to deny someone the right to label themselves than it would for an allo child to just get it wrong for a little bit.

Now that we're all caught up on the general discourse, I'm sure you're asking yourself what happened during ace week? Well, dear reader, it gets so much worse from here.

Near the end of ace week, Girlguiding (which I think is like the UK's version of girl scouts?) made a post celebrating ace week:

Seems like a really nice, harmless post, right? Wrong. The parents involved with girlguiding did not appreciate this post, and they took to the replies to talk about how awful it was that girlguiding would promote this nonsense. Think about the children! Do they really need to know about the sex lives of the volunteers? Why can't they enjoy being a child without having ideology forced upon them? Promoting this should be such a red flag to parents. (All of these are paraphrased from real tweets.)

Now, admittedly, I don't really know what girlguides is, but as far as I'm aware it's not a daycare system for toddlers. It sounds like a thing for tween and teens (I believe one tweet said 10-14). Therefore, yes, there might very well be asexual members. But that's not why we're here. We're talking about this because of the way people dragged Yasmin Benoit and the rest of the asexual community into this.

Yasmin is an asexual and aromantic advocate who is also a model. She's absolutely brilliant and gorgeous, and people have a lot of problems with her because of this. She models lingerie, and a lot of her advocacy is about redefining what asexuality looks like. Yasmin is also black, and is a huge voice for black aces, which is really important work. Unfortunately, she has to deal with a lot more nonsense because she's a very prominent name in the community. The absolutely vile racist, sexist, and aphobic garbage that was thrown at her during ace week was horrible, including what went on with the girlguiding tweet. People started connecting her advocacy with the girlguiding post (even though I don't believe they were ever actually associated with one another). They came to the conclusion that since a lot of Yasmin's advocacy is for adults, asexuality as a whole is inappropriate for children. Here are some of the things people said:

There is now a fairly large group of people on Twitter who are advocating against asexuality because they believe asexual people, led by Yasmin, are trying to groom children. I guess the thought process here is that we're trying to get children to identify as asexual so that we -- the adults in the community -- have the opportunity to discuss sexual things with children. Introducing asexuality is a gateway, I guess.

I shouldn't have to tell you how wrong this is. Asexuality is not predatory. Asexual people are not predatory for wanting people to understand that asexuality exists.

Personally, I took my first sex ed class in fifth grade, which would've been when I was around 10. I got my first period not long after that, which a lot of people consider to be the time a young girl "becomes a woman" (which is a lot more predatory of an idea than asexuality, if I'm being honest). If I was old enough to "become a woman" and learn about sex at that age, I should've been old enough to learn about asexuality. I knew I was asexual from a very early age, and most of the people in my life knew it too -- we just didn't know the word for it. I had numerous people (adults) tell me I wasn't growing up as fast as my peers because I wasn't interested in boys. If I was old enough to be interested in boys, I was also old enough to know I wasn't interested.

It's not predatory to define asexuality to children, it's smart. In some cases, it's probably life saving. Asexuals have some of the highest suicide rates, and very low life satisfaction. Ace people will push themselves into sexual experiences that they don't actually want in an attempt to be "normal" and figure out what's wrong with them. Letting young people learn about asexuality can potentially help prevent these things. And it's not grooming for adults to define a label. There's a difference between talking about detailed sexual encounters and just describing what asexuality is.

Grooming is a real and serious issue, and it's really disappointing that it's being trivialized in multiple communities on Twitter right now. But the fact of the matter is that calling people groomers for wanting to educate people on asexuality is dangerous ideology. And this doesn't even mention the clear homophobia and transphobia hidden in these arguments. One of the biggest issues conservatives have with gay couples being in kids shows is that it's "too sexual" for the kids, as if there aren't plenty of straight couples. And the venn diagram of aphobes and TERFs is a circle, which is a conversation for another day. This time, though, the argument is that by promoting asexuality, you're promoting a lack of libido, which is caused by puberty blockers, which means the asexual community is secretly trying to force puberty blockers onto your children. I guess I understand the logic, but not only are there plenty of cis aces (hi), asexuality isn't related to libido.

As baseless as most of these arguments are -- especially when you think about them for more than half a second -- it's still very disheartening to see. Our week to celebrate asexuality was stolen by aphobes calling us groomers. Yasmin actually had to leave Twitter for a while because of the amount of hate she was receiving. Again, grooming allegations aren't just something to throw around because you dislike someone, they're a serious thing. Yasmin being called a groomer for advocating for herself and her community isn't just conservative trolls being annoying, it's dangerous. But now that this ideology is broader, it's still very disappointing that being active in the asexual community means you're also not allowed to enjoy your asexuality without people trying to ruin it for you.

Despite this, I think it's important to not dwell on the bad things. Yes, some people are behaving really horribly, but that doesn't mean we're actually doing anything wrong. Asexuality is not a dirty thing, and it's important we show that to children. It'll probably help a lot of people in the long run. Teenagers are smarter than a lot of people give them credit for. Who are we to tell baby aces that they have it wrong? This is actually one of the biggest reasons I decided to come out as publicly as I did. I never shut up about my ace-ness because, on the off chance that anyone I know figures out they're asexual, they'll know it's real and completely valid. I know I would've benefited from that a lot when I was 13.

From yours truly,

Kendall