#Refusing Compulsory Sexuality

[bookcub]

Rainbow Book Rec

I have made my own challenge to recommend a queer book for each color of the progress pride flag, based on the covers, inspired by @elumish and their pride flag reading challenge. my rules are to assign one book to each color on the progress flag.

Black: The Scapegracers by H. A. Clarke

Brown: That Kind of Guy by Talia Hibbert

Pink: Loveless by Alice Oseman

Light Blue: I Shall Never Fall in Love by Hari Conner

White: Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

Red: Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Orange: Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie

Yellow: Burning Roses by S. L. Huang

Green: The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

Blue The Mirror Season by Anne-Marie McLemore

Purple: Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

aro tumblr, academics and otherwise, arise!! i need your help with reading recs!

i'm studying up on aromanticism and amatonormativity (yeah for fiction related purposes, per my M.O.), and i'm on the hunt for nonfiction reading materials. essays or articles (academic or pop), or collections, or whole-ass books--literally anything i can read. i am also accepting links to your favorite tumblr posts on the subject!

i myself am also aro, so i've got the 101 stuff down. what i'm looking for is deeper dive material. i am not opposed to dense theory texts, i just don't know where to start lol. also accepting personal essay style reflections, though--literally the whole range of nonfiction would help!

i am looking SPECIFICALLY for aro, not aro and ace conflated (if you have recs that hit both, please do drop them, just specify that it's both!)

my (tiny) list currently consists of:

- Minimizing Marriage by Elizabeth Brake

- Refusing Compulsive Sexuality by Sherronda Brown (which, yeah, i know is ace, but it's on thin ice because she does mention aro in text too)

feel free to boost even if you have no new contributions! thanks for reading!!

[styrofauxm]

You know a book is good when you need to annotate it. Those tabs aren't everything, I've got a note for almost every page.

This book ought to be cited as one of the most important texts on asexuality. I very much think that all asexual people ought to read it. It significantly reframed many, if not most, of my understandings of asexuality, changed my mind on others, and introduced concepts of which I was previously unaware. It also affirms asexuality masterfully.

Many concepts within it are also applicable to other aspec identities. Mostly aromanticism, but all of them at some point.

Go read it.

[marireeti]

Took a walk while listening to an audiobook book on asexuality, I am health

(The book is Refusing Compulsory Sexuality by Sherronda J. Brown)

[authorkarajorgensen]

10 Books to Add to Your TBR 2024 Edition Part 1

Most years I put out a list of books I greatly enjoyed from the first half of the year some time in June. This year, I decided to do it early because, besides needing a blog for this week, I have read a lot of good books lately, so I’m thinking of making this something I do more than twice a year (and often forget to do in December). The books listed below are not in any order of favoritism, but…

[sunrisenovaa]

“A divine place that is just as misunderstood as “balance” is. Where Blackness intersects on the realm of sexuality is simultaneously spiritual, political, social, and physical. We don’t have to perfectly understand Black asexuality to make way for it. Asexuality is already valid. We can know this about ourselves, and we can have trouble with understanding it, unpacking it, and feeling secure within it.”

Excerpt From Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown

[bookcub]

Best Books of 2023

I've already written quite a bit about these books and have a tag #best books of 2023 where I also include my honorable mentions, so here is a rapid fire of my best books of the year!

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual's Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J Brown

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Feast Makers by H. A. Clarke

The Mirror Season by Anne-Marie McLemore

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei

Painted Devils by Margaret Owen

Sisters of the Neversea by Cynthia Leitich Smith

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

[wttnblog]

5 Nonfiction Books By Black Authors to Read this Month

It’s Black History Month, and while we love to celebrate Black authors all year round, it’s always fun to have an opportunity to talk more about authors that I love. Today, I’m bringing you a list of five of my favorite nonfiction books by Black authors that I’ve read in the past year. These vary in genre—there’s a couple of memoirs and a couple of educational nonfiction books here—but all are…

[ktempestbradford]

This book is AMAZING and has changed my thinking on so much.

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture

By Sherronda J. Brown

Everything you know about sex and asexuality is (probably) wrong.

The notion that everyone wants sex–and that we all have to have it–is false. It’s intertwined with our ideas about capitalism, race, gender, and queerness. And it impacts the most marginalized among us. For asexual folks, it means that ace and A-spec identity is often defined by a queerness that’s not queer enough, seen through a lens of perceived lack: lack of pleasure, connection, joy, maturity, and even humanity.

In this exploration of what it means to be Black and asexual in America today, Sherronda J. Brown offers new perspectives on asexuality. She takes an incisive look at how anti-Blackness, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism enact harm against asexual people, contextualizing acephobia within a racial framework in the first book of its kind. Brown advocates for the “A” in LGBTQIA+, affirming that to be asexual is to be queer–despite the gatekeeping and denial that often says otherwise.

With chapters on desire, f*ckability, utility, refusal, and possibilities, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality discusses topics of deep relevance to ace and a-spec communities. It centers the Black asexual experience–and demands visibility in a world that pathologizes and denies asexuality, denigrates queerness, and specifically sexualizes Black people.

A necessary and unapologetic reclamation, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is smart, timely, and an essential read for asexuals, aromantics, queer readers, and anyone looking to better understand sexual politics in America.

[aroaceenjolras]

When I first heard the word asexual over a decade ago, as a teenager dealing with the twin manifestations of compulsory sexuality that are purity culture and hookup culture, it was a weight off of my back. It was a light in the darkness that said you do not ever have to compromise on this boundary. Not now, not later, not ever. You can live a life where your body only belongs to you and no one else can tell you what to do with it.

This is the most important thing we can fight for, in my opinion. A world where everyone can do whatever they want with their own bodies forever— including never have sex.

There is no sexual freedom without indefinite refusal. Those who choose indefinite refusal are not your enemy. You only stand to gain from recognizing and fighting for us.

[corainne]

Due to recent developments I wanted to recommend two books for people who might want to educate themselves and/or read up on Asexuality.

The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality by Julie Sonder Decker is a really good primer if you don’t really know anything about the topic, it explains the basics and goes into romantic attraction and sexual activity, talks about common assumption about asexuality and is really catered towards people with no previous knowledge. It’s a decade old now, so it is somewhat dated, but still an excellent start.

Meanwhile Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen talks a lot about the lived experience of asexuals, both as individuals and in relationships, I found it to be very insightful and validating, amd if you want to understand asexuals better I think this might be really helpful

If anyone has other recommendations please feel free to add them, especially fiction books, my bookshelves are severely lacking in that regard

[leikeliscomet]

Apart from ace and aro theory I can tell u lot don't engage with any wider theory at all because u lot sit in my reblogs and anons going 'Well EYE am asexual and I think the system that defines humanity based on sex and sexual attraction to other people that don't with rape culture rhetoric is fine actually and I think my own community members are worthless stereotypes and othering asexuals as uniquely puritan is justified even tho actual puritans are anti asexual' with a straight face and think I'm gonna stop in my tracks because you think you did something of substance.

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

I don't supposed anyone has recommendations on like. good or classic types of non-fiction books on queerness and such? especially asexuality and aromanticism, but anything queer and adjacent is good too

I am very out of touch with what sorts of books people read and consider good resources or cornerstones of discussion, but want to get more into actually reading that kind of thing

[specialagentartemis]

"I wish more aro or ace books were good" REAL. I'm not a huge reader these days (a victim of the "read several books a day as a kid to easily distractable ADHD adult" pipeline :/, I'm working on it though) but I stick to mostly nonfiction when I do read, because most fiction is too amatonormative for my tastes and most aspec fiction is. Well. I already struggle with reading books, I need to be able to actually get into them to have a hope of finishing them.

The biggest mood there. Kinda all of it :') Reading books takes so much longer and more Effort than it used to when I inhaled books when I was 12... and SO many books that market themselves on the Aro or Ace Rep are just. They just aren't good books. Most aren't Morally Objectionable or anything, they're just not good books.

I feel like it's normal growing pains for a Queer Identity... god knows how many books I read of high schoolers going "It's okay... to be gay, actually!" when I was in middle/high school--but I kind of wish we could hurry up to the point where there are plenty of good ace and aro ones to choose from. (There are some good ones! The Murderbot Diaries, Ancillary Justice, Michelle Kan's novelettes, Polenth Blake's work, Darcie Little Badger's entire ouvre... I love those. And I haven't read The Bone People but it won a bunch of Real Literary Awards, and Firebreak I've been told is really up my alley... but I have. also read a bunch of aro and ace books that were just mediocre-to-bad.)

[transgenderpussycat]

if you dont 100% respect a persons choice not to have sex( it doesn't matter if it's with you or anyone else), you dont truly respect consent.

Listen man, you guys can't be like "you guys need to be normal about asexuality" and then turn around and get weirdly judgemental when you find out someone doesn't have sex by choice. Like that's weird that some of you do that.

[infinitenovastar]

Excerpt from Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown.