"I don't think I'll be alive to see gender diversity being accepted" – an Inverness nurse tells their story of being asexual and agender in the Highlands
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To mark the end of Ace Week, leading LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall released a report into asexuality.
It is one of the lesser discussed identities within the LGBTQ+ community, despite estimates that they make up between one and two per cent of the general population, and describes people who feel no, or very little, sexual attraction to others.
Approaches to asexual (ace) identities are similarly behind the curve. The World Health Organisation still classifies it as a mental health disorder, it is not covered by the 2010 Equality Act passed at Westminster, levels of openness to friends and colleagues are significantly lower among asexual people and rates of conversion therapy offers are significantly higher.
A government survey released in 2018 found that asexual people had the lowest levels of life satisfaction of all the various sexual orientations, with some reporting the lack of general understanding around their asexuality as a contributing factor.
That was a perspective shared by Inverness nurse RJ, who often finds themselves having to explain their identity to others.
"People are mainly quite accepting but they just don't know what it is," they explained.
"They want to learn, and I'm always happy to explain what things are. I get a lot of questions and I'm quite happy to talk about it. I can understand why a lot of people feel like it's very labourous to have to explain it over and over, but I don't mind so much.
"There are grey-ace and demi, who do experience some sexual attraction but generally don't – and none of those mean you don't have sex. I have had children, so obviously I've had sex, I just don't really have a need for it and I usually wouldn't want to.
"The general population knows what it means to be straight, gay or bi, but they don't really understand any other sexualities.
"Pansexual people often get 'so you're attracted to pans?' It's along the same lines in that people just haven't heard of it, so if it was talked about more, that would help."
RJ, who also identifies as agender, has had a generally positive reaction from family and friends.
In fact, it was their former husband who first suggested they may be asexual, and a good friend who helped them come to the conclusion that they are agender.
Not being particularly familiar with either term beforehand, it has taken a lot of learning and talking to people from the LGBTQ+ community to gain a decent enough understanding to know which terms fit RJ best.
"It was really strange for me to find out in my 30s that this is how I felt," RJ admitted.
"Everyone is always learning, even about ourselves.
"I have a friend who is a trans man, and I asked him how he knew. He just said he asked himself if he was a woman, and the answer was no. Then he asked himself if he was a man, and the answer was yes.
"I thought quite a few times 'am I a man'? No, but I had never asked myself if I was a woman and the answer to that was no as well.
"I had to look into it quite a lot, and I'm still getting my head around gender being a thing. So many things like colours and toys are gendered, and there's no reason they should be. That was quite a process, a few years of exploring myself and working stuff out.
"Now, I feel like it's a big part of my identity. I understand myself a lot more.
"A lot of people say they don't like labels, and that's absolutely fine, but I find it really helps me to know what my label is because I can learn more about not just myself, but other people like me.
"I can join Facebook groups knowing everyone understands because they've been through the same thing.
"I do feel like I understand much better who I am. I'm not a square peg trying to fit into round holes anymore, I've finally found where the square pegs go."
While RJ's sense of self is much improved, the lack of understanding from most of the rest of the world can cause issues.
It is fairly common for them to be misgendered, while physical threats can happen too. With the ever-prevalent hostility towards trans identities showing no sign of abating either, RJ is pessimistic that true understanding and acceptance for ace and agender people will be seen any time soon.
"There's a lot of harassment or discrimination that people don't think exists," RJ reasoned.
"If you tell someone you're asexual, they will respond by saying you just haven't slept with the right person yet – or 'sleep with me and you'll find out'. A lot of people are pushed, or forced, to take part in sexual activity to 'correct' them.
"I know so many people who have had threats and harassment, comments like 'I'll make you enjoy it', and it's not okay.
"Having no gender just doesn't really make sense to people – I get that, because I wouldn't have understood it before I learned about it. They find it hard to wrap their heads around being binary transgender, so it's even harder to get their heads around non-binary identities.
"The way that public opinion has changed on trans people as a result of media coverage is very upsetting, so until more is done to accept binary trans people, we're not going to see that go any further into things like being agender.
"People already think that being non-binary is ridiculous – just look at the comments section on any of those stories on Facebook. The newspapers are often painting trans people in this awful light, but they're just ordinary people.
"Only after those things become more tolerated can things like being agender or demi-gender, any of the gender identities that aren't male, female or non-binary, become more tolerated.
"We have decades and decades to go, but the laws and the culture now – even though they still aren't great – are so much better than they would have been 40 or 50 years ago. Several decades ago, things like HIV were in the news a lot and highly stigmatised, as was being gay, but now that's more widely accepted.
"It is moving in the right direction, I just don't think I'll be alive to see gender diversity being as accepted as living together out of wedlock.
"Nobody bats an eyelid at that. I'm 37, and even if I live another 60 years I don't think that's a long time to get to that point. I would like to see nobody getting harassed or discriminated against for their gender, but realistically I don't think I'm going to see that happen."
Even within the LGBTQ+ community itself, RJ feels there is a hierarchy of different identities – and being asexual can fall towards the bottom of that list.
"I don't see it that often where ace people are gate-kept from the queer community, but sometimes we are," they added.
"There's a lot of discourse about whether the 'A' in 'LGBTQIA+' stands for allies, and whether you can be asexual and in the queer community because you're not attracted to people in that way, and it's very invalidating a lot of the time. You have to have tough skin if you're going to stand up and educate people on it.
"People sometimes think that they need their safe space, a queer community safe space – which of course people do – but they think asexual people are kind of infringing on that.
"I don't understand why people can't just say we are all welcome here, but there is also a specific place for bi people or whatever. A lot of people don't like bi people either, they think you have to choose.
"More inclusion from within the community would be good too even before we go out to the general population, because there is a lot of infighting that people don't see.
"We do experience this discrimination and harassment, but people don't believe that a lot of the time.
"People will do it to other sexualities. A lot of lesbians have been told they just need to sleep with the right man, and it happens to us as well.
"It's sad, but it does happen to us too, so there is a lot of acceptance within the LGBTQ+ community but more would be good because it needs to be acknowledged that there are difficulties that come with it."
