Discover Top Posts Tagged with #black aces

HAPPY SOULACE DAY to my Black asexuals and aromantics!

To celebrate and learn more, please download Black Ace Culture: A Digital Zine by blackaceculture and donate to the contributors if you can!

#asexuality #aspec positivity #gray asexual #gray ace #asexual #black aces #aces of color #asexual blog #black asexuals #ace pride #SoulAce Day #Soul Ace Day

I genuinely think the reason people leave out Black asexuals and aromantics is because we contradict too much. To fully acknowledge Black asexuality and aromanticism means questioning the idea sexual & romantic absence = whiteness. Why do you think asexual and aromantic = sexless and why sexless = white. It means unpacking what is so non-asexual about Blackness. What is so non-aromantic about Blackness. It means unpacking why Black lovelessness is uniquely heartless. It means unpacking why you're comfortable with the exclusion of Black love, but are scared by Black lovelessness. It means unpacking why you think Black asexuality can't exist outside of Black desexualisation. It means unpacking why you think Black aromanticism can't exist outside sexualisation. And vice versa. It means unpacking why don't think Black people have the actual autonomy to be ace and/or aro. It means unpacking why people more marginalised than you can make space for asexuality and aromanticism when you can't, despite it being an 'oppressor' identity. It means unpacking why the only mainstream representations of Black asexuality and aromanticism that could exist are the Mammy and the Jezebel and Mandingo. It means unpacking that sexless and loveless Black people don't benefit from these tropes. It means unpacking why sexlessness and lovelessness is seen as purity and why Black ace and/or aro people don't to be 'pure'. It means not only asking why asexuality and aromanticism is associated with being white, but actively asking why asexuality and aromanticism 'can't' be associated with being Black. It means unpacking why you can't name any Black ace and/or aro characters or public figures. It means addressing what happens when asexuality and aromanticism stop existing in vacuums and start overlapping with the identities you actually 'get'. These are the scary questions you get to ignore when you can just claim being ace and/or aro is 'white and cishet' identity instead.

The asexual experience for white people is not the same for racially and ethnically marginalized people. Black aces and other asexuals of color must fight against stereotypes like the Jezebel, the Mammy, the China doll or the Geisha Girl, or the desexualized Asian male trope that have historically stripped our personhood of any nuance. Therefore, the insecurities we harbor that prevent many from even identifying within the community are valid.

Yes, diversifying spaces online and IRL can be hard. As the ace community continues to grow, BIPOC aces speaking on our experiences should be listened to and affirmed by white aces and all allosexual people alike. White aces with platforms in the community and beyond should especially “take the initiative to actively address anti-Blackness, they need to credit the Black aces they learn from, and they need to acknowledge the fact of that their whiteness helps to propel their careers,” Sherronda explains in the same interview. As even within the ace community, Black and POC asexuals often endure the harm of white supremacy and/or racial antagonism with little to no defense or solidarity from white asexuals.

BIPOC aces should know that we have long deserved better than the colonization of our sexuality. Societal myths, racial stereotypes, and tropes shouldn’t dictate our perception of ourselves. Luckily, in our broad understanding of (a)sexuality, we have many of the tools, knowledge, and resources to begin shifting narratives of sexuality that can ultimately benefit all people of color, whether they’re self-identified as asexual or not.

Asexuals of Color Still Seek To Validate Their Sexuality by Ebony Purks for Rebellious Magazine (2021)

#black asexuals #black asexual #black asexuality #black acespecs #black aces #asexuality #asexual #2020s #acespec #ace week

posting for my toronto peeps!

#things that make me wish going to Toronto wasn’t a mission and a hassle that changes you every time #black aces #Julian McKenzie

Marshall Blount, Alyshia Rodgers and Kimberly Butler created Soul Ace Day to uplift Black ace voices and experiences.

Ace Dad Advice has interviewed Marshall, Lici, and myself for this upcoming Soul Ace Day 2026!

Check out what we said about Black representation in both real life, cartoons and comics for Black American Asexuals! Get a history lesson on the hypersexualization of Black Americans through chattel slavery, a look into Licis recommendations about new and flourishin Black Ace books and characters, and what Marshall thinks has changed since he started his work in Ace activism!

Get your SoulAce Day artwork ready, celebrate your fav Black Ace Characters, Comics, and celebrate your friends and YOURSELF! 🎉

Hope to see you all on SoulAce Day this FEBRUARY 16, 2026!

See you there!

(And if you have any suggestions of things you want to see or do let us know!)

-Kim🖤

Sharing an article from my creative passion project Spinster Speaks (a FREE, digital magazine accessible HERE). Next issue will drop during late April- sign up HERE to be added to my mailing list if you’re interested and haven’t already :) 💜 IG @diaryofablackspinster

ASEXUALITY: THE HIDDEN QUEER IDENTITY

Asexuality is a distinctive and meaningful queer identity that challenges dominant cultural assumptions about sex, desire, and queerness. In ‘Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture’ by Sherronda J. Brown (see page 21 for commentary), Brown argues that sexual desire, like heterosexuality, has been positioned as a default state of being, where sex is assumed to be a core component of any and all romantic or domestic relationships. Similarly, it challenges the ideas of what it means to be queer, as asexuality exists beyond the scope of heteronormative expectations and sexual norms often perpetuated within queer spaces as well.

BLACK, ACE, & CURIOUS

When I think about my own experiences with asexuality, a lot of words pop up. There’s a newness to it as it becomes something I grow more comfortable casually sharing with other people, but there is also a deep sense of familiarity because even before I knew what asexuality was, I knew that I felt differently about sex and relationships than my peers. I can see why some people “come out” to their peers, but I personally felt like it was/is not necessary because the only thing that has changed about me is the language I now have to describe this detail about myself that has always been present, even when I didn’t know the scope of it. So if you’re a close peer wondering why you didn’t get an “Im gay-adjacent speech”, it’s because I didn’t feel like its necessary since nothing about me has changed besides a self-described label.

The idea of asexuality has fleetingly crossed my mind for many years, but it wasn’t until this past summer that I did some soul searching and realized it was a key piece of who I am. See, a year prior I was attempting to read what has become one of my all-time favourite books, the aforementioned Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, but it wasn’t the right time for me to read it. The theory felt heavy and I was struggling to connect with it, because I think part of me didn’t want to ‘other’ myself if I related too much with it. I felt strange enough already and hadn’t yet realized that I process theory-heavy books better when I can listen to them in a way that feels more conversational (audiobooks).

Cut to the Summer of 2025 and I’m REALLY thinking about the facets of my personhood. Who am I really? What are the orientations or characteristics that define me truly, and what are imposed defaults that I have just not taken the time to question. I listened to the audiobook and flew through it in 2 days; the experience was like night and day when I was in a better headspace to potentially confront something I had been subconsciously avoiding. It felt like all the strange romantic experiences I that had chalked up to me simply being abnormal were validated.

Little moments like sitting in the car with a man and being dumbfounded when he huffed in irritation because I was more concerned with the raccoon by my front door than giving a goodbye kiss. Or being accused of not liking prospective partners because I never thought to initiate physical or sexual contact, and feeling like my company just wasn’t enough. It’s being confused when my girlfriends complain about crawling back to exes that mistreat them because 2 months without sex is worth the price of their disrespect, while I manage nearly 4 years of intentional celibacy with ease and no boy-drama to share. Little things that I assumed were the quirks of simply liking my own physical space, being anti-social, or preferring emotional intimacy to physical displays, were actually silent indicators that I have different orientation than those around me.

WHAT MAKES AN ASEXUAL QUEER?

Asexuality is more than just a physical lack of sex-drive, an affinity towards abstinence, or not having met the “right” person to make your coochie explode- this rhetoric is both surface level and dismissive. It’s easy to assume that asexuality is just being straight with prude-like views on sexuality and romance, but ace people are queer because their natural rejection of compulsive sexuality— the belief that sex is universal and required for fulfilment in life or relationships— puts them outside the typical heteronormative culture. Hence why the ‘A’ in 2SLGBTQIA is for ace, not ally.

Being ace is not a choice to be different in one’s approach to sex, romance, and relationships for the sake of having a quirky label, it’s being different by design. It’s queerness is being an automatic challenge to the dominate sexual standards that exist both beyond and within queer spaces; questioning why sexual or physical attraction is treated as a universally high value component to one’s personhood. And notably, it intersects with both racism and misogyny which further defines its unique position as a queer identity. It’s a defiant contrast to the hypersexualization of Black bodies and Black women especially.

Where Black women are routinely assumed to be excessively sexual, asexuality refuses the expectation that Black bodies are inherently desirous, available, or defined by eroticism; exposing how deeply racialized sexuality is in the first place. Black asexual people are often met with disbelief or suspicion—not because asexuality is unclear, but because it contradicts a social script that insists Black women cannot exist outside of sexual projection. In this way, asexuality is not read as neutral absence, but as deviant behaviour on the opposite end of promiscuity: too little where too much has always been presumed. This contradiction reveals that ace identity doesn’t merely opt out of sex—it challenges who society allows to refuse desire, whose boundaries are respected, and whose humanity is recognized beyond sexual consumption.