Etymology

 

Many names have been given to asexuality throughout the currents of history.

In the 1880s, an American sexologist described it as “the original absence of all desire” that had no known origin. The nineteenth century also saw in various sexuality pamphlets the labels monosexual and anesthesia sexual. Yet perhaps the most well-known reference to asexuality can be found on the Kinsey Scale, which sought to categorize hetero-to-homo sexuality on a scale from 0-6. Group X, those with no sexual “contacts or reactions”, were off the chart entirely. Indeed, no one seemed to know where to put asexuality or what to call it.

Medically, it’s been speculated to be an extreme variation of sexual disorders in the DSM-V or even a mental illness. Today, straight people call asexuals emotionless and queer people call them too straight. Strangers, friends and family have said it’s a phase, and some asexual people have said they’re broken.

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Emma Trosse called it courage.

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Born in Prussia, Trosse was a German teacher, poet, diabetes clinician and an activist for sexual minorities. In her 1890 publications, she wrote of asexuality and same-sex attraction being natural and advocated for the legal protection of gay men and women. The German Empire subsequently banned her works for being “obscene”.

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Despite the attempts to drown out her voice, Trosse’s words on asexuality still stand:

Author has the courage to admit to this category.

 

Pragmatics

 

In this early winter darkness, I’m sure I look like a gargoyle hunched over my laptop. My back is stiff from hours of work, but I can’t stop my fingers from clacking away on the keyboard as I gather my research on asexuality. Originally, this had just been a writing exercise for class, but it had eddied into something more; something I needed to articulate.

I plunge into Wikipedia’s “Timeline of asexual history” once more and scroll down. The dates flow upwards, and I try to take it all in. My eyes are heavy, and the white noise of the fan is beginning to sound like babbling behind me.

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When I reach the 1920s, I stop scrolling.

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There is a singular entry from Jennie June, a gender nonconforming author, who apparently wrote of asexuality in his 1922 book “The Female Impersonators”.

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I blink.

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I’ve never heard of his term, “anaphrodite”, applied to asexual people before. Yet, I suppose, somewhere in the book’s exploration of androgyny and masculinity, between forgotten words and submerged sentences, was another stream to follow.

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I open an ebook on Project Gutenberg and Ctrl F “anaphrodites”. 

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“The cold anaphrodites…” June writes under a highlighted section, “cling immovably to the banks of the masculine river. They neither progress nor regress.”

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I read the line again, and then again. The words “masculine” and “cold” rush past me, and my research slips away from my mind. At “river”, I don’t think of asexuality or even consider how June's words apply to me.

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Instead, I only think of swimming.

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It’s as if I’m 14 and practicing for the next race in the pool again. My heart is pounding with the pull of each stroke, and my lungs are on fire from holding my breath too long. I break the surface for air and soar above the water. For a moment, the ceiling lights shine like smeared stars through my wet googles before the water rises to meet me. Submerged again, my muscles ache as they stretch for the next stroke of butterfly or freestyle.

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I think of nothing but the water over my skin.

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I’m back in the chair, staring at the screen, and I realize how many tabs I have open. How much research I’ve done, and how I’ve only treaded a fraction of the endless words and definitions.

I close my laptop and think of races again.

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The short ones were always my favourite, but I was never much of a long-distance swimmer.

 

Phonetics

 

“1, 2, 3, 4!” The conductor brings her hand down, and the school band breaks like a wave on the beach. Notes cascade throughout the music room as the flutes whistle and the drums rat-tat to keep time. Between them, the brass section raises our horns, waiting for our cue.

I smile behind my trumpet’s mouthpiece, counting beats like how I used to count laps, and exhale when it’s time. Alongside the tubas and trombones, a low warble sails from my trumpet to join the band’s chorus. Yes, where sound was muted in the pool, here sound thrums together. As I get swept up in the harmonies, it’s easy to forget that I’m only one high school student.

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Still, there’s a rising discord I hear walking down in the halls, floating over to me from the lips of other students. I swear their giggles of getting laid is all I hear, and that dating is the only thing they’re interested in. I watch grade nine couples leaning close and feel panic beginning to bubble.

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The sex-ed unit of gym class is no better. The projected instructional video assumes everybody— bi, lesbian, gay, straight—wants to have sex, but…what if you don’t? Laughter rings around me as I lean away from the screen.

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On the bus, the panic swirls into a riptide, clamoring with chords I don’t want to play. As soon I get home, I race downstairs to the dusty basement computer. I don’t remember what I type or what I ask the internet, I just need an answer—

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The search engine spits out a result, and I breathe. There it is.

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When my heart lifts, I know that the answer is right. It’s a buoy in my chest, and a compass pointing to a north I’d never known. The answer is a word in the sound.

 

Asexuality.

 

Typology

 

One of my favourite biblical stories is the Tower of Babel.

It was built when humanity spoke one language and dreamed of touching the skies of heaven together, without God. For their pride, the Lord separated the tongues of men, so Babel could never be finished. As a result, humans spread across the earth with language forevermore confused between them.

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Some say the story is to explain why we need translations to understand one another, but even with them I’m still lost. I’m terrible at speaking French, and I still rely on the dictionary even with years of schooling. When I studied under a physics program, I thought I could understand the language of math. Turns out, I sucked at that too. Now with my research, I became lost in language again.

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However, more recently, I came across another reason why the Tower was built. Genesis says it was originally for recognition, but an interpretation I found said it was to seek shelter from another Great Flood. Perhaps in Babel, humanity huddled together with their prayers and words of comfort to each other like whispers over the howling waves.

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At that image, I thought of language and how it has the power to pull you under. Cold. River. Obscene.

 

But I also looked at the tabs again, and all the history I’ve discovered, and all those who have come before me, no matter how different. I thought of how language, across space and time, has the power to let you soar and point you home. Knowledge. Solidarity. Courage. 

 

Now, I think language is a sea that I’m still swimming through. Yet, in the distant blue I’m beginning to dream of a tower, standing tall, rising above the water.