It's Friday of Ace Week, and I feel like I need to articulate something.
A month or so ago, I was signing at a convention, and I kept getting a specific ask from adults: "Are your books clean?"
And I didn't know what to say. I write for teens. There's body horror, violence, swearing, underage drinking, child abuse/neglect, forced marriage, discussion of past sexual assault, the magic system is essentially "take drugs made out of gods," dirty jokes by the bushel. Sex itself is discussed and depicted with, I hope, all the awkwardness, silliness, and earnestness that rings true for teen characters, as well as respect for the intended teen audience.
But to the people asking for "clean books," it's usually just that last one they're interested in. (Followed by swearing.)
I think, when your book is flagged as an Ace Book, some readers just expect a prominent ace character... and some readers expect a Clean Book. Something pure and wholesome, where sex doesn't exist and no one thinks dirty thoughts, it's just chaste hand-holding and cuddles and maybe a closed-mouth kiss.
That is deeply, deeply unfair to ace readers and writers. A lot of us have spent and/or will spend a lot of our lives, from adolescence onward, trying to figure out exactly what our relationship is with sex. What we want, what we don't want, when we want it, if we want it, if we even tolerate it. Asexuality is a spectrum for a reason; to expect ace work to be "clean" denies it the room to assert its full identity.
I write for the teens who are told they're "just late bloomers" because they aren't interested in dating, while their saved AO3 searches would obliterate the Vatican. My books are not Ace as in No Dirty Thoughts, they are Ace as in Deconstructing the Scam of Compulsory Allosexuality. And that doesn't have to be for you. But it doesn't make it any less ace. It is not abandoning asexuality. It doesn't make them "impure."
(I decided, by the way, that my standard answer to "are your books clean" is a simple "Yes.")
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