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

by Sherronda J. Brown

For readers of Ace and Belly of the Beast: A Black queer feminist exploration of asexuality—and an incisive interrogation of the sex-obsessed culture that invisibilizes and ignores asexual and A-spec identity.

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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, Sexuality, Race, Feminism, History

374 pages, Paperback

First published September 13, 2022

Reviews

[Alexis Hall]

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: none
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.

Further disclaimer: Readers, please stop accusing me of trying to take down “my competition” because I wrote a review you didn’t like. This is complete nonsense. Firstly, writing isn’t a competitive sport. Secondly, I only publish reviews of books in the subgenre where I’m best known (queer romcom) if they’re glowing. And finally: taking time out of my life to read an entire book, then write a detailed review about it that a handful of people on GR will look at would be a profoundly inefficient and ineffective way to damage the careers of other authors. If you can’t credit me with simply being a person who loves books and likes talking about them, at least credit me with enough common sense to be a better villain.

***

Note: I found examples of Brown being referred to by the pronouns “she/her” and “they/them” online, but couldn’t find anything from Brown directly. I’ve chosen to use ‘they/them’ here not to misgender Brown, or attempt to impose a particular identity on them, but as the closest ‘neutral’ pronoun the language currently offers.

Well, this is complicated because there aren’t many reviews of this yet and, err, as a white British allosexual I’m kind of concerned about my own voice in discussions of the text. I mean, on GR. Not in general. I’m not that arrogant and there’s already been plenty of (well-deserved) high profile praise for this book.

In any case, take this an obligatory privilege check before I say—with full acknowledgement of my own lack of standing here—that this feels like a powerful and necessary book. It kind of reminded me of The Transgender Issue, not, I hasten to add, because I think a book by a white British transwoman and a Black American asexual are somehow the same but because they are texts about identity that refuse to be shaped by the current discourse about those identities.

For example, the generally accepted definition of asexuality is something like: “lack of sexual attraction.” Brown however, offers the following:

I believe it is more true to say that asexuality is defined by a relationship to sex that is atypical to what has been decided on by society at large to be normative, and that atypical nature is marked by varying degrees of sexual attraction and desire.

Which is not only more precise, more nuanced and more inclusive, taking as axiomatic that asexuality is flexible in its expression and moving the language away from the idea that something is lacking or missing in asexual identity, but I would argue more useful. Since the prevailing idea of asexuality as … a kind of negative sexual space is not only problematic and alienating for asexuals, but feels almost constructed to diminish empathy on the part of allosexuals. Let me make it very clear, I absolutely don’t think an understanding of asexuality needs to be accessible to allosexuals—we owe other humans empathy as a matter of course—but the more I read this book the more I found myself interrogating the ways in which asexual discourse not created by asexuals seems to centre around ideas of absence and otherness, and how deeply fucked up that is from the language we employ onwards (something the text itself addresses with reference to the philosophy of Miranda Fricker and the notion of epistemic injustice).

Anyway, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is an exploration of Black asexual identity: specifically the ways capitalism, cisheteropatriarchy, rape culture, and anti-Blackness (including the colonialist hyper-sexualisation of Black people) form—and forgive me lack of technical language here—a clusterfuck of oppression that is deeply harmful to ace people, Black ace people in particular and, because of the way oppression works, a bunch of other folk too. Much like The Transgender Issue made the case that trans rights are human rights and that trans liberty offers liberty to all, Brown emphasises that the way we currently normalise particular expressions of sexual desire not only serve to reinforce a denial of ace people, but to compromise sexual autonomy in general. In other words, our refusal to honour the experiences, and accept the humanity, of ace people is impeding our ability to properly interrogate rape culture or conceive of definitions of queerness that are not rooted in sexual behaviour.

I should probably mention at this stage that Brown’s cultural framework—especially when it comes to race—is explicitly American, something they are themselves careful to emphasise. While the book has certain things to say that are, I believe, both vital and universal, it is also specific to their own experiences as, to use their own words, “a displaced African born, raised and living in the so-called United States.”

Look, the long and the short of it, is that Refusing Compulsory Sexuality was an absolute revelation to me. Not necessarily because its ideas were completely beyond anything I’d ever thought about before, but because of the clarity with which those ideas are explored, articulated and contextualised. I know I’m probably making this sound like a lot of deep, heavy reading but—while Brown’s knowledge, and the breadth of research they’ve pulled together is legitimately impressive—it’s actually a really accessible book. Believe me, I read it as a lay person on most of these subjects, and I didn’t once feel overwhelmed or left behind.

I can’t tell you if this book will speak to you, but I personally feel it’s saying things that not only deserve but need to be listened to. If you’re Black, asexual, and living in America, it might well be the book you’ve been waiting for all your life. For the rest of us, especially the queer-identified, it’s still the kind of book that—and I do not say this lightly—we owe ourselves to read. Not in the sense of any book being an obligation but because it’s the sort of book that makes you want to be a better person, living in a better world. It’s directed my thinking in both significant and subtle ways, and I can’t be anything other than profoundly grateful for that.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great book to start 2023 with! Refusing Compulsory Sexuality does a fantastic job of addressing the intersectionality of acephobia and anti-Black racism. Sherronda Brown explores topics such as anti-asexual messaging from within the queer community, how the media often portrays asexual people as villains or as deficient in some way, and how society is set up to privilege allosexual people (e.g., prioritizing the nuclear family and romantic coupling). She integrates this information with commentary about how acephobia especially harms Black asexual people, given the prevalence of anti-Black stereotypes of Black people as hypersexual.

While I don’t think all of this book’s information will be new to people who’ve read Ace by Angela Chen, its emphasis on intersectionality is a plus. Sometimes it felt like Brown packed a lot of topics into each chapter, though I still found the book quite readable overall. Yay for books that help to dismantle acephobia and amatonormativity!

[liv ❁]

y’all will never guess what I’ve discovered/accepted about myself after years of complaining about how cringey/unreadable smut is and saying, “the romance was fine, but adding physical stuff way too soon [100-200 pages into the 300-400 page romance book] really ruined it for me.”

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a lot. There’s no other way to describe my initial reaction to Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture. I don’t feel like stating or explaining my sexuality to justify my review in any way so let’s just say that I’m partially an own-voices reviewer.

My initial interest in the book stems from the fact that with this exploration of both Blackness and asexuality, the author offers a unique look at an intersection of two marginalised identities that the general public, as well as the humanities and sciences, have overlooked and continue to overlook for too long. It is certainly no easy feat to navigate two topics as fraught with prejudice, as othered as these two, but the author expertly manages to do so, drawing on the complicated and harmful history of science and medicine with female frigidity and lack of sexual desire, discussing the over- and undersexualisation of Black bodies and offering in-depth looks at the gatekeeping and acephobia aces/aros/… experience not only from outsiders but from other LGBTQI+ individuals.

Therefore, this book is PACKED. Chock-full of information, think-pieces backed by scientific sources, (science) journals and studies, and other writings on asexuality and queer studies, this book came across as a little overwhelming to me at times. And that’s even though I a) love reading non-fiction b) have what I’d call a solid base knowledge of the concepts of compulsory sexuality, heteronormativity, and systemic racism, and c) have read works in a similar style before (notably Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex and Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race). As a result, I was only able to read this book in batches, taking breaks in between the individual chapters so as not to read it without being overwhelmed.

The book is divided into 12 different chapters whose topics are now and then referred to again in later chapters but they are written in a way that you wouldn’t necessarily have to read them in chronological order to understand the points the author makes. The language the author uses is highbrow, direct, and non-fussy. In a way, this read like a scientific secondary source I’d use for one of my term papers. The style of the chapters often comes across as essay-like and they are all constructed similarly, with a ‘catchy’ introduction being followed by either a look at the current subject’s history or a presentation of stats and figures on which the author bases that chapter’s argument. Sometimes this can also take the look of the author reliving a two-page story of how redditors worked to bring down Wall Street stocks before getting to the point of the story.

At other times, their opening paragraphs looked like this:

“White supremacy is a slippery, dishonest adversary, setting the clock but never allowing the pendulum to swing freely. It bends time to its will to suit whatever ugly need it has. In this temporal distortion, Black children never exist. Guided by the hands of this two-faced clock, adultification takes root so that Black youth can be denied a childhood, instead being perceived and treated as if they are older than they really are—a perception based in anti-Black stereotypes and logics.”

Like, woah, this is only the chapter’s opening paragraph and already there is so much to unpack here. Not to mention that this seemingly jumps from topic to topic, not letting me have enough time to breathe before diving deeper into a complex subject that I found mentally challenging. It’s meant to be mentally challenging, I’m sure of that. Racism, compulsory (hetero)sexuality and the ways they intersect need to be challenged to achieve any kind of change. The author does challenge it, with every word they write but I’m wondering whether the writing style won’t put those readers off who have next to no basic knowledge of the subject matter. I persevered because I wanted to, because I found it necessary to do so, and frankly because it’s freaking important to expand one’s horizon. But will straight white people who are the one group most in need of a better understanding of LGBTQIA+/BIPOC experiences pick up this book? I doubt it but I hope I’ll be proven wrong.

Sherronda J. Brown’s Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture is – in many ways – a revelation. What might very well be the first cohesive work on Black asexuality, on the similarities Black and aroace people share, and on the way compulsory (hetero)sexuality works as a weapon to suppress queer and Black folks alike, this book is an eye-opener. Extremely well-researched and at once both informative, opinionated, and educating, this book will hopefully become a staple in asexuality/queer studies and serve as a fountain of both strength and wisdom for asexuals, aromantics, and anyone feeling bound by the oppressive shackles of compulsory (hetero)sexuality.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

[chichi]

This was the perfect book to kick off Pride Month.

Seriously, everyone should read this and I don't say that lightly. Sherronda J. Brown did an excellent job of not only outlining the history and nuances of asexuality but also intertwining that discussion with much needed context. In essence, they were connecting dots that I didn't even know were there! The ways conversion therapy affect the ace community, how the hypersexualization of Black folks renders those who are Black and ace invisible, the ways compulsory sexuality subtly and overtly shows up in our society, the history of terms like "frigid", how society's inability to reconcile with asexuality is reflective of our inability to really unpack rape culture, how sexual empowerment in marginalized communities often become exclusionary....I could go on and on.

This book made me sit back and reflect literally every chapter, often in a way that indicated that I have some work to do. As someone with some purity culture scars from a church upbringing, who is darkskinned and has a touchy relationship with desirability, and who has very surface level knowledge about the experiences of ace and aspec folks, I am grateful for this book in so many different ways. Also, I have to shoutout the writing. For something so well crafted and grounded in academic texts, the writing of this remained engaging and accessible. It was a great balance that made it easy to really dive into this book

Anyway, one of the best nonfiction books I've read since Sister Outsider. Will be recommending this one to people irl, definitely a must read

[Kara Babcock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes being asexual (and in my case, aromantic) can feel very lonely, for reasons perhaps obvious but which I will elaborate on in a moment. In particular, it feels like we are usually an afterthought when it comes to research about queer people and sexuality. I know that’s not entirely the case, though, and am always looking to broaden my knowledge about those who study and write about asexuality. So of course I leaped at the chance to read Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown. Not only does it discuss the ways in which our society privileges allosexual people and pairings, but it also challenges some of my understandings as a white person, getting me to think about the intersections of racism and acephobia.

The book comprises twelve chapters (plus a foreword, introduction, and afterword). Each chapter explores a different dimension of compulsory sexuality, which is a term Brown uses to build on top of the more well-known compulsory heterosexuality, which is the idea that social pressures encourage and reward heterosexual expressions of love and desire and punishes those who deviate from that norm. In uplifting voices on the asexual spectrum and research into asexuality, Brown wants to emphasize that beyond compulsory heterosexuality, there is a wider idea that sex itself is a requirement for full admittance into the human experience. Hence, compulsory sexuality: moving the gatekeeping goalposts so that queer people are OK as long as they’re having sex with someone, but if you don’t actually care all that much about sex … well, that is just a bridge too far!

This privileging of sex as a determiner of identity has long bothered me, and I’m glad more people are calling it out. Your sexual orientation is whom you’re attracted to, not who you do, if you know what I mean. Yet even in queer spaces, the performance of sex and sexuality often become more important than the underlying attraction. Brown argues that this is inherently exclusionary of ace people:

In order for asexuality to be understood and recognized as the queer identity that it is, sex acts and sexualization would first have to be removed from the center of dominant conceptions of queer identity.

This can be a touchy subject among queer rights activists, and understandably so. A great deal of the queerphobia lobbed our way these days comes in the form of accusations that we are predatory, as the recent co-opting of groomer by far-right activists demonstrates. I get why allosexual queer people are very invested in celebrating non-normative sex and sexuality in a healthy, sex-positive way. Yet I appreciate that Brown is unyielding on this point:

Hyperfocus on queer sex and sex roles is a direct result of the oversexualization of queerness as a means to construct it as nothing more than sexual deviance and also to reassert heteronormative gender roles within queer relations….

That is to say, the way our mainstream society oversexualizes/hypersexualizes queer people is an intentional form of controlling and minimizing our queerness as a political and personal identity. It is a radical act, therefore, to reposition our queerness along those axes—and in doing so, realigning allosexual queers and asexual queers.

Brown’s unrelenting grounding of asexuality in the history and politics of queer liberation is refreshing. She makes it clear that we have always been here, always been a part of queer movements. It’s gratifying to see it all spelled out this way in black and white, for so often, asexual exclusion takes the form of asexual erasure. This is a book that is determined to make us feel seen.

Then we have the way Brown discusses how compulsory sexuality overlaps and interlocks with anti-Black racism, especially misogynoir, along with fatphobia. She relates well-known stereotypes of Black people, such as the Jezebel, Mammy, Mandingo, etc., to compulsory sexuality, demonstrating how white supremacy has long set up a correlation between hypersexualization and race (at least in the eyes of white people). Hence, Black asexual people face additional challenges that white asexual people like myself don’t because they also carry the burden of numerous racist stereotypes. Something I really like about Brown’s presentation of these ideas is the way she works them into every chapter, truly ensuring that this important element receives thorough examination instead of, say, a token chapter like it might be given in another scholar’s work.

Indeed, while I would have read this book even if it was solely about asexuality, the intersectional component is what truly got me excited. As a white person, it’s important to me that I understand not just the privilege I have in terms of how society treats me but also the ways in which our society has shaped my very thinking. Brown does not mince her words:

What is true of whiteness in every space, even in “progressive” and “inclusive” spaces, is that it will always work to create some form of exclusivity as a means to reassert white superiority. Therefore, white asexuals often claim asexual queerness as a property, just as whiteness itself is claimed as a property, as a space that others are barred from entering into.

I’m being called out—and I appreciate it. I think this is one of the most pressing challenges that white queer activists face right now, i.e., acknowledging how we inadvertently work against the overall cause for liberation by refusing to acknowledge the presence of race and role of racism in our spaces. This book is a direct challenge to any claims on asexuality as a bulwark of whiteness and white supremacy. While we white asexuals might not be intentionally perpetuating those ideas, we have grown up with them and internalized them. So this book, in addition to validating us, will challenge us in the best possible ways.

And Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is so validating! The older I get, the more that compulsory (hetero)sexuality bothers me. I used to think that I had escaped it, having grown out of the dating-heavy period of my twenties wherein all my peers seemed to be hooking up and then shacking up. I thought that once I reached the refuge of my thirties, I could start my inevitable evolution into the “cool spinster aunt,” the friend who would take your kids for a night when you wanted to fuck, the perpetual bachelorette sipping tea on her deck, ready when you called to vent about your partner. That was supposed to be my life!

But I am realizing that compulsory sexuality will continue to stalk me through my decades, evolving as I evolve yet ever present. Nowadays it’s the gentle but hollow caress of loneliness as I watch more of my peers pair off and embark on a new phase of their lives that I have opted out of. (Brown introduced me to chrononormativity, coined by Elizabeth Freeman, to identify this idea that our lives should unfold along a particular trajectory as determined by social and cultural norms.) I have no desire to have a partner of any kind, to have children of my own; I enjoy living by myself—yet I live within a society that is constantly telling me such a state is unnatural, pitiable at best and deviant at worst.

Please believe me, my allosexual readers, when I say that you don’t truly understand how much of our world is built upon this assumption that sex and sexual attraction are required and normative. You don’t. It isn’t just the idea that our society itself has become over-sexualized, the so-called “raunch culture” that other books I’ve read have tried to unpack. It goes so much deeper than that, intersecting, as Brown notes, with forces like white supremacy. For us asexuals, it’s a world that holds us at arm’s length, misunderstanding or mistrusting us.

But maybe if you read this book, you can get a glimpse into my world. Truly the most fulfilling part of this book for me is Brown’s unapologetic tone. Early on she calls out how we asexual writers often attach disclaimers and qualifiers to our statements: oh, some ace people masturbate; some of us choose to get married or even have sex; some of us might even enjoy sex! Partly we do this because the asexual spectrum is incredibly diverse, ranging from people who experience zero sexual attraction, like myself, to people whose attraction fluctuates based on factors ranging from time to connection to someone. But we also do this because of internalized acephobia and this idea that we need to make ourselves more palatable to allosexual readers, reassure you that we are actually Just Like You! Brown recoils from this, as do I (though I freely admit I am guilty of acceding to the pressure to do this in my blog posts), and it endeared me to her writing immediately.

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is not just a succinct and edifying work of Black asexual scholarship: it’s an unyielding assertion of the belongingess of asexuality in our society and sociology. Not only does this book make me feel seen, but it makes me feel valued and recognizes my humanity. It centres me in a way that many queer conversations do not, even when they are inclusive of me. If you have any interest in a more scholarly read about sex and sexuality in our cultures, you need to read this. I received an eARC via NetGalley and North Atlantic Books, but I’ve already ordered a copy from my indie bookstore.

Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.

[Ebony Purks · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To lack is to be without, deficient, or not have enough. Not wanting sex—either not as frequently or not at all, or not arriving at sexual engagement via clear-cut attraction the way we are told we are supposed to—is not an experience of lack, but of abundance and autonomy.”

This is essential reading!! This exploration of the social (mis)conception and history of asexuality rightfully does so through a lens of intersectionality. Because acephobia can’t really be divorced from misogyny, white supremacy, capitalism, and ableism (which I think a lot of people don’t realize because they think acephobia exists in a vacuum, if they think it exists at all). So, like Ace by Angela Chen, I think everyone should read this whether asexual or not.

[dobbs the dog · Rating 5 out of 5]

Received from NetGalley, thanks!

Wow, this book was excellent. It kind of blew my mind, actually, and I have so many highlights.

Basically, it does what it says on the box. It is ALL about intersectionality, and specifically the intersectionality between compulsory sexuality, Blackness, white supremacy, and the cisheteropatriarchy. So many of the things Brown draws attention to are things I had never even thought of, the ways that racism, capitalism, and the cisheteropatriarchy work together to force sexuality on folks, especially folks socialized as women.

It was really interesting to see how asexuality has been treated throughout history, from frigidity, to feminists, etc. And it's interesting to see how many of these damaging stereotypes still persist today, especially in terms of romance novels. How often do we see the frigid spinster, the "older" single woman, who magically meets "the right one" and she is magically cured and is hot and horny. These are things that I hadn't seen as ace-phobic before, but that really are, but are such common tropes that we are all just used to them.

I honestly have so much that I want to say about this book. It was SO good. Quite dense, with a lot of jargon, but so, SO good. And also really important. Not only to see how being asexual goes against to much of our society and how we have all been socialized, but also how Blackness just makes all of this more so. How historical racism means that Black asexuals are invalidated and made invisible because of racist ideas of Black sexuality. I'm certainly not one to speak on that, not being Black, but it was incredibly interesting and eye opening to read about the ace experience through that lens.

This really isn't an introduction to asexuality, it is a critique of our current society and how it is all about compulsory sexuality, and that if you don't fall into that normative role, there's something wrong with you. If that sounds like something you would be interested in, I highly recommend this book.

[Stella ☆Paper Wings☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW, I loved this. I really went through this whole book, pencil in hand, annotating everything. I feel like my worldview has been expanded, and my understanding of my own identity is so much stronger.

We really have been missing out on some good theoretical and academic work on asexuality, and this is just brilliant. I feel like aspectrum identity has been relegated to online niches for so long, from tumblr to AVEN chat rooms, that there's something really validating about reading about it in this tone and setting. It's the perfect phrasings of things I've always felt or heard, and it's also new revelations that blew my mind because I'd never looked at things that way before.

"When we prioritize our desires that are present, we are choosing to hold on to the truest part of ourselves that we have always been told should be cast off."

Brown provides so much fascinating empirical evidence, way more than I even knew existed. There really have been a lot of surveys and studies in recent years, and I remember a time (literally less than four years ago) when we were still using the statistic that asexual people make up 1% of the population based on that random 90s study. I now have even more additions to my aspec-related nonfiction reading list, just from all the studies and other theoretical books they cite.

It is so interesting to read such a newly published book that's really the first in its field to do anything like this. It means that when it comes to theory, Brown really has very little asexuality-specific sources, so instead they use this wonderfully intersectional collection of sources, from queer and race theory to history and philosophy, bringing these entirely new perspectives to ideas of asexuality. I know it's not the point of the book, but if you could get somebody aphobic to actually sit down and read this, it would probably change their mind a lot.

"Acephobes — having been socialized in a world where sex is upheld as an unavoidable inevitability — do not understand full sexual autonomy as a reality for us because they have never seen it as a possibility for themselves."

I still haven't read Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire by Angela Chen, but that's next on my list. I do think they both have their respective places in the limited canon of asexual scholarship. Though I of course haven't read Ace yet, it seems much more all-encompassing and research based, definitely directed at a wider audience. Brown, on the other hand, really seems to be focused on an aspec audience, or at least an LGBTQ+ (if not QTPOC) one. Not that this wouldn't appeal to all manner of readers, but it really feels like an in-community book focused much more on theory and lived experience, which is also so so valuable.

One of the coolest parts of the book to me is the chapter titled Histories. Here Brown chronicles scholarship and events relating to asexual history. There's always this perception that aspec identity is a newfangled online thing, but turns out people have been writing about it since the 1800s... and asexual identity has been included in Gay Rights Movement writings since the 70s! If nothing else, I highly recommend this chapter alone as a resource for anyone interested in asexual history. Very very cool to read.

As a side note, I also LOVED the poetic and passionate afterword by Grace B Freedom. If you're somebody who skips forewords and afterwords, definitely don't skip these. Brown has a fantastic emphasis on uplifting other Black asexual voices throughout the book, and the afterword is no exception.

If you are at all interested in asexual theory or history, this is absolutely a book to add to your reading list!


Content Warnings: discussion of sexual violence, converstion therapy, aphobia, homophobia, and racism

[Tala🦈 (mrs.skywalker.reads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nie jest to raczej pozycja na początek, ale świetnie rozwija teorie intersekcjonalności. Skupia się nie tyle na samej aseksualności, co seksualności w ogóle, seksualności w kontekście rasowym, kapitalistycznym, patriarchalnym; odkryłam tu nawet kilka aspektów, które wcześniej były mi obce.

[Mae Crowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're looking to obtain a better understanding of asexuality, how it affects how you relate to the world, and what "human truths" it reveals as simple societal scripts, there are two books I can't recommend enough: Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen and this one. Both put to words a lot of feelings that I've never quite been able to voice properly to my allosexual peers. And both encouraging thinking about the implications of the asexual experience beyond the scope of asexuality.

Brown sets themself up to address four revelations exposed by asexuality's existence:
1) Not everyone experiences sexual attraction in a way that is universal, uniform, or sustained
2) Sex can and does occur for reasons beyond mutual sexual attraction
3) Sex can be simultaneously consensual and unwanted
4) What we "know" about sex is not inherent, but impacted by various societal factors

Throughout the course of Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, Brown pulls at the strings beneath "sexual truths" to reveal their historical origins and intentions. Spoiler alert: a lot of it has to do with white supremacy and the male-centrism of sexual conversations.

It would take forever to talk about everything in this book in a review, but a couple things that these chapters cover:

1) Timelines for productivity and success, and how life outlines composed of milestones are used to dictate someone's ability to function as an adult regardless of personal preference. Brown furthers this discussion by diving into "the baby deficit" and reproductive control as a method of class control.

2) Spontaneous vs. responsive sexual desire, where spontaneous desire precedes arousal and responsive desire occur in response to arousal. Brown points out that most people experience a mixture of the two, but since the majority of men experience primarily spontaneous desire, it's used as the benchmark on defining what desire is, despite being largely incomplete for most people. (Especially women, who are more prone to experiencing predominantly responsive desire or a more even balance of the two.)

3) The connection between acephobia and healthism, with the automatic assumption being that asexual people require medical attention, and if they do not seek it, it is a moral failing on their part.

4) How asexuality impacts one's relationship with gender, especially for people who are socialized/perceived as women. Brown examines how womanhood tends to be inherently defined within the context of manhood, and how, as a result, queer women are often perceived as a different kind of woman by non-queer individuals. They go on to illustrate how asexual individuals who are perceived as women commonly question their gender and tend to relate heavily to nonbinary individuals regardless of their own identity.

5) How asexuality is experienced by Black people, including how the term often feels inaccessible due to white contexts and how Black asexuals are simultaneously desexualized and hypersexualized by society. Brown indicates that the existence of Black asexuality cannot be permitted under white supremacy as a whole, because it dismantles the lies of (1) the hypersexual Black person and (2) the inherently sexual human, which threatens societal control.

6) Performative queerness, meaning the queerness we demand of queer figures, other queer people, and ourselves. Brown examines our tendency to assume that someone who does not express interest in the "opposite" sex must automatically be attracted to their own sex, regardless of whether that attraction has been expressed. They examine the implications of this assumption, as well as our refusal to simply accept that someone's experience is queer without needing to define the "type" of queerness.

There's really so much more, and Brown delves into these topics with considerable depth and insight. They're also a remarkable writer, explaining their thinking with an ease and flow that is easy for readers to follow without getting repetitive or off-topic. (Which is, I find, the failing of most nonfiction books I've read.)

In the end, I cannot recommend this book enough, regardless of how you identify.

[alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways, this feels like THE most convincing political treatise on understanding asexuality as a queer identity. By refusing compulsory (hetero)sexuality, ace people can’t be used as tools to reproduce the working class, and are therefore living outside of the best interests of white cishet capitalism in much the same way that other queer people are. Sherronda J. Brown draws explicit connections between race and asexuality that feel at times very profound, and paints a very clear and undeniable history of both medical and social discrimination.

In a lot of ways though, this book is weirdly paced and confusingly organized. The structural issues clearly stem from the pressure to act as both a history book AND a political manifesto, since there are still so relatively few accessible non-fiction texts about asexuality. Concepts are often rattled off with no elaboration or follow-up, though, and the entire book feels simultaneously extremely well-researched while also under-sourced and over-generalized. I had to do a double take when I realized I was reading about the 2018 tumblr lesbian master doc, which is basically just a simplified summary of 80’s marxist/feminists’ work. At one point Brown uses a fake 2020 pornhub screenshot to discuss how porn upholds and reinforces racist beliefs, and doesn’t cite the image outside of saying that a friend e-mailed it to them, and there were rumours that it actually might have been real.

The connective tissue between chapters start to break down about halfway through - the chapter that covers police brutality opens with three pages of James Bond pop culture analysis and then a breakdown of a YouTube video essay about a 2020 teen drama movie. I started to feel like I must be reading pages in the wrong order. I understand the spirit of the chapter arguing that Octavia Butler and Langston Hughes might have been asexual, not gay, and that ace people should be able to imagine and claim a queer history just like anyone else, but it didn’t feel strong enough to close out the book on.

While I very much admire how much ground Brown manages to cover, I wish the scope of this book had been slightly more focused. I think it probably reflects more on the editor than Brown as a writer, though, and this still ended up being the most politically relevant book on asexuality I’ve read yet.

[Leigh Kramer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Academic and dense but very powerful and insightful read. If we as a society understood the detriments of compulsory sexuality and embraced another way, the ripple effect would be unreal. Highly recommended.


*The author provides content notes before sections/chapters.

[Anniek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This took me ages to read, because it's more academic than what I'm currently used to reading, and I wanted to take my time with it and read this with the attention it deserves. This book connects asexuality to so many intersections, but particularly Blackness as well as gender. Ultimately, the book states that we can never be truly free if compulsory sexuality exists, and it highlights a lot of reasons why and explains them in depth.

I thought this was such a valuable reading experience, as an aromantic asexual person myself. Brown explains so many thoughts and feeling I've had towards my own asexuality and asexuality in general, but with much more eloquence than I ever could, as well as provides so many new insights that helped me understand myself and society better.

I do have one critique, which has nothing to do with the contents of the book, but instead with its structure, or lack thereof. I felt like the chapters, and even the sections within each chapter, were just not clearly connected to each other, and I often didn't feel like there was a clear bridge from one topic to the next. This made the book feel incohesive, which feels like a shame since it provides so much insight in so much detail.

[Killian · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first thought for reviewing this book was “straight banger” and then I thought about it for more than a second and realized the irony lol. But seriously, no pun intended, this book is an absolute straight banger all the way through & gives a really thorough & compelling examination about how capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, & cisheteronormativity are all served by compulsory sexuality & the implications of that & ways to move beyond that. Really well-written, well-organized, & well-researched. If nothing else, read it for the line “Wall Street is a hellscape. So is Reddit.”
🖤🩶🤍💜

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don't think i can properly do this book justice. let me just start by saying this is a vital piece of literature about asexuality and i sincerely hope it changes lives because i know it has changed mine.

while i admit i did pick this up primarily due to my own experiences as an ace person, i value it for it's exploration of the black ace experience. other ace books are important in their own way, and i don't think we can ever have enough commentary on this invisible orientation, but sherronda does such a fantastic job delving into how race affects our sexual society and how blackness specifically is oriented in the ace experience. there's too much in here to convey in a review, and i wouldn't do it justice anyway, so all i can say is to pick this up immediately, regardless of your sexuality, regardless of your race, because it does such a phenomenal job of deconstructing the compulsory sexuality that all of us have to deal with. as always, i'm in awe (derogatory) of how much of our world is built upon white supremacy and capitalism, but sherronda explains it all so well and it made me reconsider a lot. i think as a white ace, i have spent a long time trying to find myself and what asexuality means to me, and now i need to enter into a season of seeing what asexuality looks like for other people. my asexuality couldn't exist without the history of the orientation, but i think as we all step into a more inclusive and less oppressive future, we need to work hard to dismantle the forces that oppress our black siblings. it's always eye opening to read black non-fiction, and i am so grateful that sherronda and other essayists like her do this work because regardless of whether this book was written for or in spite of me, i got so much from it. i especially loved the section with the asexuality history timeline, if only because it did show me just how long our people have existed.

nobody needs my review on this because it's not necessarily for or about me, but i will be thrusting this into the hands of everybody i know. it's a MUST READ.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a rich text from Sherronda J. Brown! It took me a while to get through this one, largely because I kept stopping to highlight, annotate, put quotes in the "Meaningful Bits" doc in my Notes app, and research a number of scholars and thinkers who were included.

Brown's ability to find commonalities between so many different cultural, historical, sociological, and political threads was truly astounding. One chapter I found particularly sensational was the exploration around why people are so obsessed with labeling the sexualities of luminaries like Langston Hughes and Octavia Butler, even if there's not necessarily a reason to do so or clear evidence of the sort.

I think this book might have been a biiiit too ambitious for only being 200 pages (and may have functioned better as a series of academically minded essays rather than a sprawling nonfiction work). But that only makes me hope we hear more from Sherronda J. Brown in the future; the foundation of so many excellent ideas and ruminations are clearly here, and Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is now another important part of the community's canon.

Content warning (note that Brown provides more specific CWs in individual sections of the book): Acephobia, anti-Blackness, transphobia, rape, murder, coercion, abuse

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

[Eleri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was very good - 4.5 stars. It was a bit rough around the edges but covered so much ground and had so many interesting things to say that I feel like I'll need to reread it. I had loads of tabs on the pages and scribbled notes (in pencil!) all over it. Having come across comphet already, compulsory sexuality seemed like a really obvious next step that I hadn't really thought about. An interesting lens through which to view the world. I particularly liked the bit about chrononormativity, partly because I just enjoy the word chrononormativity but also because it's just an important point. Fascinating discussion about construction of blackness in contrast to whiteness and the simultaneous desexualisation and hypersexualisation of black women especially. For me though I think actually some of the most interesting parts were about gender and how strongly it is influenced by compulsory sexuality.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's really good and absolutely worth reading (I especially liked the timeline at the end, that was super exciting to follow!), but sometimes I had the feeling that sentences were repeated too often in terms of subject matter.

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had so many ah ha moments reading this book. It is both scholarly and engaging.

[Miriam T · Rating 5 out of 5]

I genuinely believe that reading and learning about asexuality and compulsory sexuality has changed my life. It has added so much gray area, nuance, depth, complexity to my own self-identification, as well as to my understanding of others. I think continuing to dive into Ace perspectives and stories, getting more and more specific, as this book does (coming from a Black Ace POV) is stretching my brain in transformative ways. I found the whole section of this book around presumed queerness of Langston Hughes and Octavia Butler to be UTTERLY FASCINATING: how the public (including queer people) have created narratives of gayness around them because they did not seem to have any partners or interest in romantic relationships. The idea that they could be Ace is something that most people wouldn’t entertain, even as they themselves (often) are queer and also on the margins.

Anyway, just so interesting and I’m really so grateful that books like this exist. I think learning about Asexuality should be required reading in Sex Ed or health classes tbh bc it’s about so much more than sex. Learning about comphet and compsexuality has impact on self-esteem and self worth, feminism, consent, sexual expression, how you show up in your relationships, romantic or otherwise etc.

[Caitlin Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

**I received an e-arc from NetGalley**

This was book was SO GOOD. I normally don't get all riled up over nonfiction books, but this book was absolutely phenomenal and I want everyone to read it. Sherronda J. Brown does an incredible job with this and their ability to weave and make sense of all of these interconnecting concepts is just fantastic. This book touches on so many things but I never felt overwhelmed by any of it, I honestly couldn't stop reading it. The main connections that are focused on are those between compulsory sexuality, white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, and Blackness. I found myself completely blown away by the relationship between all of these topics (and more); things that had never even crossed my mind but made so much sense when explained by Sherronda.

I view this as a bit of a "deep dive" into asexuality, compulsory sexuality, and all the topics mentioned above, and how these things infiltrate pretty much every aspect of our lives, probably in a lot of ways we don't even realize until we examine them more deeply. This book is an incredibly well-researched look into our society as a whole and how individuals who go against the "norm" have been demonized and ostracized for centuries. As well as drawing the focus onto Black asexuals and how the history of racism, sexualization, and misogynoir strongly impact them and have rendered them almost invisible to general society and to the LGBTQIAP+ community. Racism has historically and currently been a problem in LGBTQIAP+ spaces and I thought this book did a wonderful job addressing and exploring this.

This is truly one of the best nonfiction books I have ever read, and probably just one of the best books I've ever read period, and I would recommend this to literally everyone.

[maya ☆ (is furiously studying!) · Rating 5 out of 5]

refusing compulsory sexuality was STELLAR, from start to finish. every page, every word was on fucking point. absolutely amazing and i would remissed to not recommend it to literally every living thing on this earth. not recommending this would be a huge disservice to everybody.

rcs resonated deeply within me, especially as i used to identify as ace (10 - 16yo; and lowkey still do) and this literally made me question myself. regardless if you are ace, used to be ace or are not ace, i think everyone should read this nonfiction. i would even argue it's even more important as a non-ace person to read this.

so compulsory sexuality is the myth that everyone wants sex, that you should have sex and that sex as an integral part of human nature. and ofc this is expertly analysed within the white cisheteropatriarchal structure we live in and eventually dismantle by sherronda j brown. brown (they them, in my understanding) argues how sex is embedded and is not a good thing to uphold as a society (while maintaining that there is no harm is wanting sex in your personal life as a need). they make a case for ace being queer, which was so important to highlight, oh my god! rcs literally held a mirror to the internatized acephobia of my younger years and how i ultimately bullied myself out of the ace-spectrum identity... literally ouch and now i have to question myself again lol and maybe find a proper label for my bisexuality and my very probable asexuality. it's very complex within, don't ask anymore.

this is incredible work on intersectionality. it highlights the (il)logical sense in all of the current systems and the proof that they are oppressive and ridiculous: the existence of black ace. black aces, as an identity, embody the misportrayal of societal tags on blackness and asexuality; and how black aces are an "impossibility" according to our current systems; how these identities clash within white cisheteropatriarchy and therefore (since black aces exists ofc) show intrinsically how cisheteropatriarchy is an unfounded structure of power and exclusion and is harmful to aces AND to you too. sorta like blackness and asexuality are betraying one another under our current model of society. brown argues, from there, the fallacies of compuslory sexuality and cisheteropatriarchy meticulously and they fairly decomplexify intersectional and multidimentional issues. extra points bcs brown hits adjacent points with my exact opinions just fucking right, except sherronda j brown has the words to properly express that for example: why is it taught to women that sex will hurt the first time when it's an absolute myth and doesn't need to be hurting????? or having to come out as queer in society, i have always thought it was ridiculous bcs i truly believe that this is rlly no one else's business LMAOO like seriously, why do i have to do this? well i know why bcs heteronormativity and society's absolute obsession with labels (brought to you by structural need of white cisheteropatriarchal power). but you know? anyways

i can understand people being very overwhelmed by the vocabulary and the amount of information. so while i do recommend you take your time, i do think that this is pretty digestible. i looked up words only three times but i do spend alot of time watching hour-long video essays and podcasts and such on societal issues and human issues. so if you're seasoned in any other way in such topics, it will be a breeze. if this is your first time, do learn the concepts first as you go into the book or prior to it. personally, it was easy, all you need is your focus. trigger warnings are presented before a text is introduced, which was a great touch to add. a simple note and its rlly consderate for those who want to read it but don't wish to be potentially triggered.

refusing compulsory sexuality was so interesting and absolutely earth-shattering. brown introduced me to so many more concepts including (bio-)chrononormativity - insane, wow, will research more. this is important and essential work. this is why we have human sciences. im so sure that rcs will be taught or be a required read in universities in the upcoming years. so intelligent, so so sooo insightful, so meticulous and researched. incredible, this is THE nonfiction of my year tbh. i cannot praise it more, recommend it more. i beg, you NEED to read this.

literally 100 out of 10. if you must read a nonfic this year or in 2024, make it this one.

[Kara Jorgensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Asexuals and allosexuals alike, add this to your queer nonfiction TBR.
Brown does a fantastic job of showing the links between anti-Blackness, acephobia, white supremacy, etc. I plan to go through the bibliography to find further reading on specific aspects mentioned in the book. Highly recommend it.

[theythemsam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I FEEL SO SEEN, LOVED, AND HEARD!!! Finally, a book that talks about the experiences of Black asexuality and how the intersection of my Blackness and queerness informs how I am perceived and move through life.

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow this book…. 5/5, thank you Sherronda Brown and many others who have dedicated energy toward asexual liberation, Black liberation, Black asexual liberation, and liberation collectively. It’s all interconnected.

This book was hard to read and also important to read. It makes sense that there is so much violence described in this book ~ because compulsory sexuality is a violent tool steeped throughout society as a form of indoctrination that serves to shame and control, to maintain the power of white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy and those who benefit from it. The way Brown weaves and describes the interconnections between racism, anti-Blackness, and acephobia, amongst many other forms of oppression, is a gift of learning and understanding.

What a profound work of research and describing the interconnectedness of so much. I definitely had to pace myself. I recommend this to anyone interested in learning more about / unpacking societal conditioning and indoctrination when it comes to sex and our relationships with sex and how power dynamics, systems of oppression, and race are inextricably connected to it. Grateful for content like this book that exist and can help folks work with and release some of the shame we’ve accumulated and hold because we are different than we’re taught we should be.


“Asexuals have shared with me the ways they choose to honor their nonsexual desires, and the joy they find in that intention. They speak with warmth and reverence of the space they create to allow other parts of their lives to flourish, particularly in ways that fall outside of social scripts for intimacy, kinship, and family-making.”

“Asexuals are actively prioritizing nonexual forms of connection, honoring our capacity to create long-lasting bonds and express love, appreciation, and commitment in various ways.”

“Asexuality is also an opportunity to divest from the white supremacist ideologies that inform and sustain the cisheteropatriarchical system and its compulsory sexuality ethos. Colonial ideas of sex(uality) and gender performance are not innate or universal aspects of humannness and morality. They have merely been put forward as such to prop up whiteness and white values as what is ‘normal’ and ‘civilized,’ and construct all other forms of express as deviant and ‘savage,’ as unhuman and dysfunctional.”

“It is imperative that we divest from compulsory sexuality, from the idea that sex is universally desired, that it is the mandatory route to joy and satisfaction, intimacy and connection, emotional intelligence, maturity, sanity, morality, humanity.”

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was great imo. The author managed to pack a lott of information into less than 200 pages and sheds light on a lot of different issues related to Black asexuality. It was very well researched and clearly written.

[lapetitepritt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never know how to rate non fiction books, especially seeing as I hardly ever read them. So, take my rating with a grain of salt, and focus more on the review itself, if you can.

«I believe it is more true to say that asexuality is defined by a relationship to sex that is atypical to what has been decided on by society at large to be normative, and that atypical nature is marked by varying degrees of sexual attraction and desire».

I think this book is very thouroughly researched, you can tell that the author has collected a lot of data and read many texts on all the topics covered in here. What I didn’t know before starting this book is that it is not a “pop-science” book, but truly an academic dissertation. As I don’t usually read this kind of texts, it was bit too dense for me at times.

«A significant and integral part of acephobia is the stubborn refusal to recognize asexual people as authorities on our own lives, as knowers of our own sexuality».

The book does make some very interesting points, and I think many people — myself included — will feel seen while reading this. However, it seemed to me that the author reiterated the same concepts over and over again. I understand the necessity of supporting your claims with other texts and datas (I have written a thesis myself), however it was a bit too much for me personally as a reader. Had I had to study this for class, it would have been different. If you are, unlike me, a non fiction reader, you probably won’t have any problems.

«Asexuality is always a site of subversion and resistance to cisheteronormativity itself, and is that not what queerness is?»

What I liked the most about the book is that it was very inclusive and intersectional, and it was extremely interesting to learn more about the intersection between misogynoir and acephobia. I would have loved if the intersection between ableism and acephobia was more explored, but I understand why the author left things as they are. I am going to look up more texts, possibly by disabled asexual writers, to learn more about this specific topic.

«Asexuals and lesbians will always be unfit for a society that only understands “women” as fit when we are sexually submissive to me».

I think some allosexual people, if they deign to read this, will feel extremely attacked by some passages, but I also believe that this was the intent, and that if they do indeed feel like they are being attacked, the point made would be proven true. I also think a lot of allo people will find out that maybe they have had their understanding of asexuality all wrong. Moreover, a lot of questioning people will find their answers.

«Not wanting sex […] is not an experience of lack, but of abundance and autonomy».

Despite my issues with the text, I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for an indepth study of asexuality. While this cannot obviously cover every single facet of the asexual experience, and doesn’t focus on aromanticism as much, it is still a great book to read to find out more about cisallohet patriarchal society, asexuality, compulsory sexuality, misogynoir, racism, acephobia, healtism and how all these things intersect and what we can do to fight back.

[Queralt✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading this book on and off for the past few weeks, so my recollection of the early chapters is a bit fuzzy - I do remember loving them, however.

I have a solid understanding of asexuality and for some reason, I keep coming back to books and published work about it to see what else has been said about the matter. Brown's exposure to compulsory sexuality is something that Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen talks about in relation to the over-sexualization of the LGBTQIA+ community (and feminism). Getting to read a book that explores this thread sort of exclusively was very interesting. Perhaps more interesting was getting to read about the black asexuality experience and the historic sexualization of black people. This has sparked great conversations between me and a couple of friends and educated me quite a bit about stuff that I had never even heard about; I'd be interested to know what black communities outside of the US have been objectified by similar projections of how they should act or be.

Something that I also found super fun to read was their takeaways from surveys and their data collection. I guess all the info is 'out there', but having it so well collected and exposed was great. And all the fun tidbits (i.e., asexuals are more prone to be left-handed) were great to read.

My only and tiny 'complaint' was that I struggled with Brown's voice. Their way of writing or explaining flirted between the lines of assertiveness or aggressiveness, and I feel certain ideas have to be chewed up for bigger audiences so people can form their own opinions. Whereas all of it (no exceptions) is just human rights and basic respect, history has proven (and she exposes so) that rejecting compulsory sexuality and/or being asexual is something persistingly disrespected. Bigger audiences may need more coddling rather than being fed the information so aggressively at times (but then again, not a big complaint. Saying people's sexual preferences should be respected shouldn't be something we're advocating at all. It should be a given).

ARC received for free via NetGalley.