Strength
(Content and Trigger Warning: Aphobia and Transphobia.)
As I write this, it is two weeks after Ace Week (Asexual Visibility Week) 2021. I admit it’s the first Ace Week in which I made a serious effort to participate (especially on Twitter), but the impression I got, if Pride Month in 2021 was any indication, is that a certain cycle of discourse tends to get triggered:
a) Acespec and arospec people signal boost messages of positivity on social media promoting asexuality and aromanticism.
b) It’s met with a great deal of people asking questions about asexuals and aromantics.
c) It’s met with a great deal of mistruths, and lies about what being ace or aro is, and what it means.
The toxicity that I saw during Pride Month in 2021 was largely of the same strain as the queer exclusionism usually directed at bisexuals, pansexuals, and trans people. It is that curious psychological phenomena that convinces certain people that they — and they alone — are entitled to be the sole authoritative arbiters of what is and what isn’t “queer”. But soon, I saw the toxicity during Ace Week 2021 quickly taking on a different, sharper flavour.
Ace Week 2021 arguably started off with a slight tinge of rawness, as black asexuals reacted to criticism leveled at one very out and visible aro ace activist: Yasmin Benoit, a black woman who works as a model, and has used her position and privilege to boost awareness and visibility of the asexual community and asexual issues. She was vaguely called out for doing visibility work with Budweiser, a brand that itself garnered controversy and criticism in 2019 — it being a company that on the one hand is known for profiting off of heteronormativity and toxic sexuality, while on the other hand running a very visible advertising campaign in the UK that focused on both boosting awareness and teaching about marginalized sexualities. Despite the controversy in the optics of working with Budweiser, the work arguably went a long way to boosting the visibility and representation of asexuality during London Pride 2019.
Benoit started off her own 2021 Ace Week celebrations by posting a series of pictures from her recent photoshoot with Playful Promises, a UK-based lingerie brand that has leaned heavily on an image of being socially conscious and inclusive (featuring a line of plus-sized lingerie and swimwear, as well as using plus-sized and queer/POC models for their designs). This made Benoit a lightning rod for criticism from feminists — the vast majority of them being white — for promoting a male gaze-centric, oversexualized and objectified image of women.
The wider topic of the ability to women to use sex and sexuality to take ownership of their own bodies is another rabbit hole down which I could travel (and again, it would be one where I would be way out of my depth) but in my mind, it really linked me back to Angela Chen’s book Ace, specifically Chapter 4: Just Let Me Liberate You. This specific chapter explains the caustic effect that Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin’s especially virulent anti-sex expression of 1970’s Feminism had on the wider Feminist movement; forty years later we’re still seeing those effects now, in the swift accusations that white feminists had on Benoit’s own loud-and-proud expression of her asexuality. For daring to pose in lingerie in front of a camera, she contributed to the objectification of women, and set back asexual visibility and awareness back by defying the idea of how asexuals should dress, and behave…or so the accusations and expressions of incredulity went. Her blatantly tongue-in-cheek promotion of asexual underwear, and her celebratory subversion of sexualized objects to promote asexuality, was met by shame and mocking outside of ace Twitter.
Such is a microcosm of the societal and social rejection that asexuals face if they choose to be out: When they don’t face misunderstanding and misinformation about what asexuality actually is, or what ace/aro erasure means to asexuals seeking or in relationships, they also face an upstream battle against a bevy of hostile stereotypes about what asexuals should look like, how they should act, and how they should dress. Otherwise, their asexuality is immediately invalid; failure to accept and conform to these restrictive stereotypes invites criticism, scorn, and shame. And we of course can’t ignore the intersectional elephant in the room: That most if not all of these self-appointed Feminist arbiters (women and men alike) are all older, white and privileged on multiple levels. Yasmin Benoit, while enjoying the benefits of being a public figure with a large platform, nevertheless is a younger, sexually visible black woman. And as we are continually reminded in North America, to simply exist as black is to place a giant target on one’s back. To be sexually visible is to invite one’s own sexual and moral identity to be questioned, interrogated, and dissected by the very same people who say they want to free women from such judgement and prejudice.
Towards the end of Ace Week, GirlGuiding UK posted a seemingly innocuous tweet in support and recognition of the wider asexual community and ace people who are involved with Girl Guides; this tweet was almost immediately met with a swift and powerful wave of criticism, disgust and negativity from many across Twitter. The criticisms ran the full gamut of hostility: First there was a “Won’t someone please think of the children!”, or a “Let kids be kids!”-styled response from some, who outlined nightmare scenarios of adult Girl Guiding volunteers corrupting and confusing kids with discussions of their personal sexuality and sex lives (never mind that there is practically no evidence that asexuals or any other queer people involved in Girl Guides are either doing that, or having such an effect). Then there were those spreading conspiracy theories about adults in Girl Guides teaching minors about specifically about asexuality as a gateway to grooming them into sexual predation. As if to underscore this, Benoit’s past ace and anti-racism work in schools was brought up, as if to draw (what was to them) the obvious conclusion that she posed a sexual threat to minors. And then there were those accusing asexuality as being a cover for minors being normalized into taking puberty blockers by covering up their potential side effects, soundly linking Aphobia to TERF-based rhetoric (e.g. The fear that teaching minors about Asexuals or Aromantics would convert younger people into becoming trans).
There is an almost poetic sense of irony here, in how “critics” quickly spun the existence of a sexual identity defined by almost zero to no sexual attraction for anyone, into the existence of a sexual identity that posted an imminent and immediate dire threat to the sexual safety of their beloved children.
The point to be gained here is that aphobia is real and that hostility to asexual and aromantic spectrum identities is also real. And this hostility is rooted not just in pop culture amatonormativity, or cis-heteronormativity; it is also rooted in anti-black racism, vicious transphobia, and a very real desire to suppress teaching young people about queer identities and the queer experience, to ensure that people’s bodies and sexualities remain firmly under lock and key.
But there is another lesson to be learned here — which takes us to the Strength card.
In the common Smith-Waite deck, Strength is symbolized by a virginal, pure young woman (white being the traditional colour of purity and innocence) deftly handling the open jaws of a male lion, flowers adorning her waist and brow, and the eternal lemniscate hovering over her downturned head. Both the lion and woman seem to be relatively calm and sedate. The ambiguity of the Pamela Coleman Smith’s design give us plenty of degrees of freedom to engage with the card, and the context in which we see this card pulled. Did the lion freely open his mouth to the woman, or was the lion cowed by the supernatural power of the woman, who effortlessly pried open its mouth as a show of unlimited force?
Look at the positioning of the woman compared to the lion; regardless of whether you see the lion’s jaws opening by choice or by force, the woman has not taken an adversarial or combative stance with the lion. Instead of facing the lion head on, the woman is standing beside him. The woman’s triumph is not one gained through violence struggle or direct conflict. This takes me to the subject of “Calling Out” vs. “Calling In”, when confronted with harmful and discriminatory behaviours like queerphobia, racism, and ableism. We are all too familiar with Call Outs in our post-#MeToo online existence, and there is arguably still an important place for them when we hold privileged people or organizations with power accountable for their actions or words. But there is also a powerful need for Call Ins, when people in our own personal orbits and daily lives use words or actions that are problematic; in our case, acephobia or arophobia. It is dealing with the lion’s maw by placing your hands on their jaws, firmly — but gently — guiding them to where they need to go. Strength means having the courage and bravery to engage such people with compassion and empathy, with a humane desire to educate them on why their words or actions were harmful. To express Strength is to have the fortitude and patience to show them grace as you try to undertake the necessary work with them — and it also means having the maturity to let them go if they’re not willing to listen.
But we can’t ignore the fact that aces, aros and other marginalized identities see the lions screaming in our faces about how aberrant and evil we are for simply existing and wanting recognition. When aces and aros out themselves and their experiences to the world, in both online and offline spaces alike, it doesn’t take long before we are faced with the gaping mouths of those who want to swallow us whole, consuming our humanity to feed their own rapacious vanity. When faced with a tidal wave of negativity and scorn like that, perhaps it’s clear that the lion couldn’t be doing anything else other than trying to rip us to pieces. It’s almost inconceivable that anyone could stand up to that and not suffer grievous wounds.
But seeing this image of the Smith-Waite Strength card, I see this as asexuals and aromantics together, doing just that: Standing up to all of that toxicity. Not just the toxicity from the almost routine aphobia on Social Media (especially during Pride Month), but the additional layers of white supremacist, transphobic hate, in all of its resplendent ugliness. The lion screams at us that asexuality isn’t real, or that you’re just another special snowflake, that you’re a threat to someone else’s kids, or that you don’t belong in the queer community. The journey we’ve taken in our asexuality has brought us to our first serious challenge: After making those important decisions to really embrace our asexuality, and to move on from how we thought of our sexuality in the past, we now find ourselves smashing against that wall of people telling us No. No, you can’t find a better identity to describe yourself. No, you can’t express your sexuality in anyway you wish. No, you can’t refuse sex in a world that has glorified and elevated it to a human need as basic as food or water. No one would blame anyone for facing that wall of open mouths and wanting to simply turn back and give up. Or even sticking your head in, waiting for the jaws to snap shut. After all, no one will attack you if all you do is keep quiet and stay silent.
I find myself surrounded by all of this hostility and malice, and that’s when I feel something start to take hold. Maybe it’s my soul, crying how wrong this all feels. Maybe it’s my conscience, disgusted at the sight of so many people taunted, bullied and shamed for the mere crime of simply being different. Maybe it’s the universe or God or Christ, telling me that I cannot be silent. Even though it will leave my hands gored and bloodied, I feel compelled to grab those lions’ jaws and force them open, force them to move aside. I feel compelled to never stay silent, and never give up my humanity. Wherever you have discovered yourself in the asexual or aromantic community, no one can or will take that from you. In the end, it simply doesn’t matter how sharp those lions’ jaws are.
Like with The Lovers, I find myself drawn to this card in other decks too. The Ferec Pinter Tarot has an arresting image of a naked woman on one knee, face locked in a mix of serenity and raw brute strength, single-handedly wrestling with the lion. The lion is losing, despite all of its teeth and ferocity. If this isn’t a powerful pictoral reminder of the strength involved in activism and advocacy work, I don’t know what is.
Going back to Cristy C. Road’s Next World Tarot, We see a non-white, fuller-figured gender-ambiguous person delicately watering a potted fern, plants rising around their amidst ruins and wreckage. Maybe the lion has already come and wreaked its carnage and havoc. No matter. True strength is the persistence and perseverance to keep on going, despite all of the destruction and desolation around you. Strength is the nurturing of life, growth, and beauty amidst the ruins. To keep on living and growing in spite of the bullies, the bigots and the haters is perhaps the greatest and most beautiful sign of strength that anyone can ever show.
Previous: The Chariot
Next: The Hermit
