My Story: Using the Media To Explore My Asexuality

MB recalls how she learned about the asexuality spectrum. She mentions how the media is useful and how it allows people to spread information about topics like sexuality in diverse ways.

Transcript:

OBOS Today: Um, I was wondering, like, if you could talk a little bit about how you learned about the asexuality spectrum?

MB: Yeah. I think— I think the first time I learned about the asexuality spectrum was, like, this documentary on, maybe it’s on Netflix, about asexuality. I think I saw it in high school. I’m currently 21 so it was probably like four or five years ago.

And I think, like, it was a couple— and what I liked about that documentary was that it showed— it wasn’t like, it showed really different examples of people who all identified as asexual: some people who had romantic partners, who were married and living together; some people who were like aromantic, kind of just didn’t want a partner; some people in between; people who had been very sexual in their lives or like experimented with their sexuality a lot in their lives, and came to the conclusion much later on. But it showed like a real diversity of experiences.

Which, yeah, which is really cool. I think I started to learn more about it then. Honestly, I didn’t hear very much about it. I think it’s become way more popular in media and social media in the recent, like, year or two. And then I think, like, a lot of what I’ve learned about different kind of levels of asexuality like demisexuality or gray asexual— I think I’ve learned that type of thing honestly just through like Google searches. I think Healthline might be the website? There’s a website that kind of has all those, but it’s something that you don’t really learn about unless you kind of, like, do some active searching, if you’re trying to figure things out rather than, like, knowing all these terms on your own.

Although I do think that, like, folks who follow social media accounts and social media graphics and stuff have made this, like, way more present, and I know there are even books now that cover these topics. I can’t remember the name of the book that we had this winter.

OBOS Today: No, that— I also like completely hear you on like social media and like infographics have been a huge thing recently that are teaching us all new things.