I’m an Ace Too… Just Not the Kind You Play in Bed (Justiciera de Marte, 2026)

Surviving on a spectrum society still doesn’t know how to read

I don’t know when the first asexual person appeared on the face of the Earth, and I’m not about to get archaeological about it. What I do know is when the first asexual person appeared inside me: the day I discovered that what I felt — or rather, what I didn’t feel — had a name. And that day, something fell into place. Like finally finding the exact word you’d had on the tip of your tongue for years.
 
Because let’s be honest: society has a very clear goal for any interaction with romantic potential, and that goal is called “the bedroom.” You’re sold the idea that sex is the ultimate validation, the deepest connection two people can achieve, the final exam of attraction. You like someone? Great, now sleep with them to find out. And honestly, that logic never made sense to me. Not because I never tried — I have, I’ve had sex — but because, once the experiment was over, the revelation never came. I never felt the cosmic explosion I’d been promised. And for a long time, I thought the problem was me.
 
Eventually, I realized that if there was a problem, it was with the script. There is an entire industry built around sex, a whole apparatus of consumerism and capitalism that needs to convince you that sexual desire is the measure of your worth as a person. Questioning that isn’t some armchair philosophical indulgence: it’s practically an act of economic resistance. If you don’t buy the narrative, you don’t buy the product.
 

A Spectrum, Not a Single Label

 
This is where it’s worth stopping for a moment, because this is precisely where things are most often misunderstood. Asexuality isn’t a closed box or a club with a single membership card. It’s a spectrum: a broad range extending from a complete absence of sexual attraction to experiences that are more intermittent, conditional, or low in intensity, with points in between such as demisexuality and graysexuality. There isn’t one single way to be ace, and that is precisely the part public discourse keeps skipping over.
 

AVEN describes the asexual spectrum as one in which sexual attraction toward other people is absent, or experienced with low intensity, infrequently, under very specific conditions, or even fluctuating over time. It also makes clear that this is not the same as celibacy, not experiencing desire, not falling in love, or being unable to become aroused. (AVENes, Network for Asexual Education and Visibility, es.asexuality.org)

In other words: having had a partner, feeling aesthetic attraction toward a celebrity, falling in love — none of that takes you out of the spectrum. And yet those are precisely the first things people throw at me when I mention that I’m asexual: “But you’ve had partners,” “But you think some celebrities are attractive,” “But you’ve liked people.” As if aesthetic, romantic, or emotional attraction were interchangeable with sexual attraction. They aren’t. And the confusion isn’t usually malicious: it’s simply that information about asexuality is still scarce, even within spaces that consider themselves well-informed.
 

Stopping the Cycle of Disappointing Myself

 
I didn’t always say it without guilt. There was a time when naming it felt heavy, because I felt that I was disappointing my partners, my relationships, and myself by not functioning “like everyone else.” That script of disappointment is exactly what begins to unravel when you start surrounding yourself with other asexual people. That was when I understood the most important thing: everyone experiences their asexuality in a completely individual way, no two experiences are exactly alike, and yet — or precisely because of that — we have very few public figures or stories we can identify with. That’s why I believe asexual people need to become more visible, not to fit into a new mold, but so that there can be more molds.
 
Until society is willing to question its own sexuality, examine it, and stop assuming that it is some fixed and self-evident fact about ourselves, asexuality will continue to be treated as a curiosity rather than what it actually is: an orientation just as legitimate as any other, only still largely invisible. And invisible is not the same thing as nonexistent. It is simply what nobody has bothered to look at closely enough yet.

Signature:
Justiciera de Marte
Psychologist and Activist at:

@justicierademarte