Okay, I realize this hilariously late for Asexuality Awareness Week (which was last week), but due to unforeseen stressors, it didn’t really get done in time.
Anyway! I’ve wanted to do something like this for a while, and I’m proud of myself of actually getting a six page comic done within a week. (Not that it’s really anything super fancy, but it’s better than nothing lol) I do apologize for the massive ugly text wall that is page four but I had a hard time figuring out how to convey it visually while being kind of pressed for time. oh and the occasional copy/paste, I’m sorry for that too
Enjoy! Click on the separate pictures if the text is hard to read.
Today marks the first day of this year’s Asexuality Awareness Week, and the first anniversary of posting this comic! One year, nearly 100,000 notes, and who-knows-how-many views later, this comic is still going strong. Between the support from Tumblr and being featured to sites such as Upworthy and Everyday Feminism, I never would have imagined that my info-comic would have become so widespread. I seriously cannot thank you all enough for sharing this.
A lot has changed in a year, and I am still learning and growing as a person—and that includes as an asexual-identifying person. I’ve made many new discoveries about myself and my orientation, and I wanted to take a moment to clear up a few inconsistencies in this comic, in the hopes that those who’ve read it before or are just now reading it for the first time can be better informed. I’m not an authority nor a spokesperson on asexuality or the asexual community; I do not speak for the majority, only as one who wishes to spread better awareness.
- The correct term for a non-asexual person is allosexual, not “sexual”. The term “sexual” carries with it many problematic connotations and contributes to erasure of queer people of differing orientations. (Source)
- Using “trans*” (with an asterisk) when referring to trans people rather than simply “trans” is divisive and exclusionary, particularly of trans women and non binary people. (Source)
- In the unedited version of this comic, I used autism as an example of a mental illness, when it is actually a neurotype. I had removed it from the comic when someone brought it to my attention, but, unfortunately, the unedited version is still in circulation. I want to apologize again for my misstep. While there is an unfortunate overlapping stigma between ace people and people on the autism spectrum, they’re not correlated, and anyone of any neurotype can identify as asexual.
- The claim that “many asexuals still have and enjoy sex” is a generalization and not fully accurate. While it is still true that there are people on the asexuality spectrum that can and are able to engage in sexual activity, that doesn’t mean it is true for everyone. No two asexual identifying people are exactly alike. Some are sex-repulsed/averse, some aren’t. Some have a high libido, some don’t. It’s unfair and sex-normative to compartmentalize people on the asexuality spectrum by those who choose to engage in sexual activity and those who do not, and I apologize for that. It was never my intention to exclude anybody; only to dismantle the popular notion that asexuality is just a “buzzword” for being sex-repulsed/averse.
I hope that about covers everything. Again, I want to thank you all so much for all of your support. It makes me so glad to know that this comic has helped people learn more about themselves and others, and I sincerely hope that it continues to do so. <3