The Abundance of a Mixed, Asexual Life

Mixed Asian Media - August 17, 2023

By Ryan Cotter

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*Content Warning: This piece includes mentions of sexual trauma.

As we’re often reminded during Pride Month, queer people have existed for as long as humankind. However, for the longest time, the queer identity of asexuality (aka “ace”) has been ignored in mainstream discourse, with it historically being referred to as an “invisible orientation” (to the point where many people wrongly believe the “A” in “LGBTQIA” stands for “ally”). In fact, asexuality refers to those who feel little to no sexual attraction. That is not to be confused with abstinence, as sexual attraction doesn’t equal sexual desire.

However, with an increase in various asexual fictional characters, international holidays commemorating asexual identities, and NYC Pride March having its first ever openly asexual and aromantic (i.e., the concept of asexuality but with romantic attraction instead) grand marshal, asexuality is starting to become more widely recognized in society.

I've had several conversations with fellow mixed and asexual/aromantic folks, and I can't help but notice the similarities and common themes of both experiences. Therefore, I decided to sit down with three wonderful mixed-Aceian folks (shoutout to Becca for that one!) to talk about their experiences with their identities, self-discovery, and finding joy in the “abundance” of their lived experiences.

At interviewees’ request, we’ve kept their surnames private. Instead of a photo, Jessica shared a drawing created by Heather Muriel Nguyen.

Ryan Cotter: How would you describe your ethnicity and sexual/romantic orientation?

Vivian (they/them): My mom is a first-generation Korean immigrant and my dad is a white dude from Indiana. I identify as trans nonbinary. I also identify as biromantic. And in terms of being on the ace spectrum [i.e., “ace spec”], I would say maybe graysexual, if you're gonna be super specific.

Becca Nix Tham (she/her): I am Chinese and Jewish, so I'm Chewish. That's my little joke. And I identify as a heteroromantic demisexual ace in that order.

Jessica (she/her): My mom is a third-generation Japanese American, and my dad is a white guy from North Dakota. I identify as heteroromantic asexual.

Ryan: How long have you identified as ace? What was the moment that you realized that identifying as the way that you do is a good fit for you and or your experience?

Vivian: I wanna be really careful about how I talk about this, ’cause there's a lot of misinformation out there about the ace spectrum. I started identifying on the ace spectrum when I was around 30. I am 32 now, so it's pretty recent. And what really started me thinking about asexuality and whether I was on the spectrum was when I started experiencing PTSD symptoms when having penetrative sex. Spoiler alert, yes, I have experienced sexual trauma. And at the same time, I'm also on the ace spectrum. My ace identity isn’t the result of sexual trauma, but my experience with sexual trauma did prompt me to reflect on my sexuality. I just wanna make that really, really clear. Because if I'm looking back at my life, I've always been ace.

I can remember being in high school and I'd get crushes constantly, like on everyone. And I would have these fantasies and it was always us having long conversations, staring into each other's eyes, and holding hands. There was no sexual stuff there. I used to say to people, “I'm just really, really picky about who I wanna have sex with.” It's like, “No! You just don't really wanna have sex with anybody!” But of course, the messaging that we get as we're growing up, especially if you're assigned female at birth, is, you know, the pinnacle of a romantic relationship is having sex. And I really wanted love and affection! And so without the language and any understanding of what was happening, I was like, “Oh well, that means that I need to have sex with somebody.”

So, when I started identifying [as asexual], I started reading a bunch of things. There's this amazing book, it's like Ace, I cannot remember the name of the author…

Becca: Angela Chen!

Vivian: Angela Chen, yes! It's so good! And she's Chinese American, so it was a great fit! When I started identifying as ace, it felt really, really liberating! It felt like I finally [could] describe all of these things that I have been making jokes to friends about. And I will say, me starting to identify as ace and realizing that about myself actually led me to open the doors for me to explore my trans nonbinary identity.

Ryan: How do you feel your mixedness informs your A-specness and vice versa?

Becca: I think having my white parent being my mom and then the Asian parent being my dad, I was like, "I think I can only come out to my mom.” ’Cause my dad, he's a Chinese Singaporean immigrant and I was not gonna have the explanation conversation with him. And he is not on the Internet at all. But I think generally speaking, I see my [monoracial] white counterparts who are in the ace community can more often come out to both parents, and for them it’s still a little bit of a gamble. You don't know if they're gonna accept you. And then when I did come out to my mom, she was just like, “OK.” There was some Netflix show that mentioned an ace character and she was like, “Hey, you should watch this episode of this Netflix show ’cause there's an ace character in there.” And I was like, “Great, this is the only followup you've ever had to me coming out to you.” And it was like, years later.

Some people will associate my Jewishness with me being, like, outspoken or direct or just generally firm with who I am. And I think that's bullshit because it's all parts of me that make me a confident, strong, ace woman who knows how to articulate what I want now. Like, if I go on a first date, I have a list of things that I have to go through. I'm like, “All right, first off, yes, I'm a comedian. Do you like funny women? Great. I'm also Chinese and Jewish. Do you understand what both groups are going through at the moment under oppressive systems? OK, great. I'm also on the asexual spectrum. What do you think about that?” And then I have to explain that and then just keep going through the list of my identities. And I think it's a great filter of people, and even friendships, too.

Jessica: I actually have thought about this a lot because I did not identify specifically as mixed until after I came out as ace, so it's kind of similar to Vivian in like, exploring one identity in more depth gets you thinking about your other identities in more depth, right? I knew that I was very introspective and I felt like I kind of understood myself until I realized that I was ace and I was like, “This thing that has clearly been a big part of my life that I literally didn't realize for 30 years, maybe I should be a little bit more humble and understand that I don't understand everything.”

I identified as both white and Asian because my mom's family, my Japanese side of the family, all of her siblings married white [people]. So all of my cousins are mixed. We have a lot of them! And so in our family reunions and stuff, everybody looks like I do. And so it's not unusual, right? That's why I identified as white and Asian.

When I moved to places that had a fully Asian population, everybody was telling me that I'm white. And I was like, “What?” It's just like a thing that exists and now it's this huge deal. So then the next time I was very intentional about telling people to make sure that they knew so that they would not assume that I was just a white person because I did not like how that felt.

Fast forward to me realizing I was ace and being like, “Hmm, I need to think about this more.” And so this was maybe late 2020, early 2021. And this is early pandemic and all of the anti-Asian stuff going on in this country. I was very affected by it because I knew that even though that would never happen to me because I don't look that Asian, the victims of a lot of those incidents look like my family. We had these listening and learning sessions where we were trying to get our community together and whatever. We had like a choose-your-own-breakout-room experience where you could either go to general rooms or you could go to like an Asian-specific room. The only people in the Asian-specific room were mixed. And that was really interesting to me. It just got me thinking about it like, as a mixed person, I am not seeking broader connection at this moment, I am seeking connection to the Asian community at this moment, because that is where I'm getting affected. And so through a combination of me now thinking more deeply about my identities and these experiences around the violence toward Asian people and really thinking about how that affects me [or doesn’t], that is when I actually started identifying as mixed. And I started to realize that being mixed is a different thing than being Asian or like a monoracial person of color, right? It's a different identity that has different problems. 

And so thinking about [racial] identity more closely and deeply [helped me realize my sexual identity].

Ryan: What would you say is your favorite part about being mixed and A-spec?

Vivian: With most of the mixed people that I talk to, there is a lot of grief in being mixed. There's a lot of like, “Where do I belong?” For me, I need to hold space for the grief to get to the joy. The word that I just keep coming back to is abundance, right? So being queer/trans nonbinary, abundant. Being on the ace spectrum and mixed, abundant. I think ultimately when you realize that you exist outside of a binary, you have access to so much more.

As an ace person, I'm in platonic romances with every single friend I have, and that feels so life-giving and life-affirming to me. My partner knows that my friends are so important to me. I used to differentiate my friendships and my romantic partnerships like, “This is my partner because I have sex with them.” Once you take this sexual element out, initially it was really uncomfortable for me. I was like, “How do I define this for myself?” But now I'm like, “This is so much better!” I'm able to have this incredible community of support where I'm so close to these people and there doesn't have to be anything sexual. And with my partner, ever since I came out as ace and then again as trans, our relationship has become so much deeper because the focus is not on like, OK, we need to have a really good sex life, otherwise that means that there's something wrong with us. It's like, no, we need to be able to have deep, intimate conversations and support one another.

I hope that other mixed folx, ace/queer folx, and really anybody who exists outside of the binary knows that, yes, the grief is real. That's just part of it, right? You don't exist in the way that “conventional” people want you to exist. And that's really hard. But it’s also such a rich, meaningful experience. It’s like a superpower!

You can check out more of Tham's comedy on Instagram @beccahasokhair, as well as being a guest on podcasts such as The Silent A Podcast, where she discusses more on her demisexuality!

Ryan is a student currently based in Washington (the state, not D.C.). She grew up as a third-culture kid in Hong Kong, Australia, and Singapore, and most recently has studied abroad in Denmark! She is a woman of many hats both literally and figuratively, as you can see her stage managing theatre productions, writing with her sketch comedy group, creating podcasts, and performing with her Asian diaspora dance group X-ertion among other places! She has also been a guest contributor for the Wall Street Journal. She is a passionate advocate for radical joy. You can spot her 3 miles away in her brightly colored outfits FaceTiming her mom, hanging with friends, or attending the latest play or drag show.