FIGHTING THE ‘CURE’
nothing. There was a deafening
silence about asexuality,” said
Sara Beth Brooks, an activist who
has been advocating for asexuality awareness since 2010. “I didn’t
even know about the asexual community until I was 23. I had visited psychiatrists, doctors, I had
even been on hormones. But you
know how I heard about it? I discovered it on Google.”
Confused about where she fit on
the sexual spectrum, Brooks, now
28, said she began identifying as
bisexual in her early teens. As she
grew older, however, she said she
knew instinctively that there was a
puzzle piece missing from her life.
She thought, at the time, there was
“something wrong” with her.
Still, as she discovered more
about herself, Brooks found a
safe and familiar home in the
LGBT community. Finding a passion for activism, she became
a vocal and active advocate for
marriage equality, organizing and
attending rallies and conferences
to fight for the cause.
But after discovering AVEN and
the asexual community in 2008
(a revelation Brooks describes as
“very powerful”), she said she
was stunned and unnerved by
the lack of asexual visibility from
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both inside and outside the LGBT
community, and by the skepticism and criticism she faced as a
newly identified ace.
“I was getting a lot of pushback from the LGBT community,”
she said, her voice rising. “I was
told that asexuals can’t exist, that
asexuals should stop trying to
pretend that we’re special. Some
people in the LGBT community
even told me that asexuals are
trying to ‘co-opt the movement.’”
Dissatisfied with what was and
Aces have in the past been
characterized by members of the
mainstream and religious media as
abnormal, unhappy and repressed.
wasn’t being said, Brooks, currently a student at California
State University, Fullerton, became an activist for the emerging
asexual movement.
Three years ago, with the help
of other ace activists, she started
Asexual Awareness Week, an annual online public education campaign that kicks off in September
or October. She also started organizing workshops with other asexuals and began doing outreach on
college campuses to encourage