International Asexuality Day was recently celebrated April 6. The day aims to celebrate, advocate for and educate the public about asexuality. This got me thinking about where asexual representation in film and television is today. So, in celebrating the authentic and powerful asexual representation on our screens today, I also want to bring to light the glaring lack of this representation that persists.
Asexuality is when someone feels little to no sexual attraction. Asexuality is an umbrella term that acts more like a spectrum with lots of identities within like demisexual, graysexual, and queerplatonic. There are a lot of misconceptions about asexual people, like the thought that asexual people do not feel romantic attraction (this is a separate orientation called aromanticism) or even that asexuality is not a real orientation and that asexual people just haven’t found the right person yet.
The first depiction of asexuality on television was the character Sebastian: the Asexual Icon, who was the focus of a comedy skit on “The Late Late Show” in 2003. However, this skit was evidently acephobic and written by people who didn’t even know what asexuality is or believe it to be a real orientation. The skit essentially made a lack of sexual attraction the punchline, enforcing the idea that feeling this way is outlandish. So, this “representation” probably ended up doing more harm than good by propelling harmful stereotypes about asexuality.
The first good asexual representation in TV was Gerald Tippett from the New Zealand show “Shortland Street.” The show showed Gerald exploring his sexuality throughout several episodes before discovering his asexuality and continued to have storylines both about his asexuality, but also other storylines separate to his asexuality, fleshing him out as a whole person. This show also actually uses the term “asexual,” whereas many shows after it have had asexual characters who never actually use the term “asexual” or “asexuality.”
This positive on-screen asexual representation was then followed by several problematic and inaccurate depictions of asexuality including Varys in “Game of Thrones,” Randy and Kayla in “House” and Valentina in “Sirens.” These shows based its characters on harmful stereotypes and some of the shows even addressed asexuality as something made up that could be “fixed.” This is a trope that many asexual characters unfortunately fall into, where their sexuality is treated as a problem that needs to be cured.
However, in recent years, there have been some more authentic asexual representations with characters like Todd (the real asexual icon) in “BoJack Horseman,” Ca$h in “Heartbreak High” and Isaac in “Heartstopper.”
These characters have actually shown accurate depictions of what it’s like to be asexual and for the most part have not treated it like a problem or something made up. Characters like this help teach people about asexuality and normalize it so the public can have a more realistic understanding of this often-misunderstood identity.
Having these accurate portrayals is also very validating for the asexual community. From personal experience, having this representation has helped me embrace and better understand my asexuality as I was able to relate to these characters in a way I never had been able to with other characters in the past.
While these characters show improvement in asexual representation, there is clearly still a lack of this representation as I personally can only cite those three characters as notable and authentic asexual characters in television.
Additionally, there is even less asexual representation in film. While a few minor characters in film have been mentioned as being asexual or were later confirmed to be asexual by the creators of the movie, the only real example of asexual representation I’ve seen in film is in the Lithuanian movie “Slow.”
This film explores the relationship between an asexual and an allosexual (someone who experiences sexual attraction) person. While I appreciated that asexuality was at the forefront of this film and that it was a pretty accurate depiction, I still feel like the movie falls into the same trope of framing asexuality as a problem, especially since the movie is primarily from the perspective of the allosexual person within the relationship. So, while there has been progress in asexual representation and we can celebrate this, there is still evidently a long way to go.
Not only are there barely any asexual characters in film and television, but the asexual characters that do exist are primarily cisgender white men. This is an inaccurate reflection of the asexual community as, statistically, more asexual people identify as female than male, so it doesn’t make sense that practically every asexual character on screens is male. So why is this the only asexual representation we see? I think the answer has to do with intersectionality.
Intersectionality is essentially all our different identities that work together to make up who we are as a whole person, with the aim of recognizing the level of privilege each person has. I’ve come to find that film and television avoid using intersectionality. Instead, entertainment tends to split up identities and hand one to each minor side character, making that their entire personality and then use these characters to be considered “diverse.”
So, when it comes to depicting asexuality, a sexual orientation that only makes up an estimated 1% of the population, programs must counter this obscure identity by making every other part of the character’s identity “familiar” and “easy to digest.” Essentially, giving these characters high privilege in every other facet of their identity so audiences can still relate to and recognize the character on some level.
However, when you think about it, creating characters this way makes no sense. We are not a singular identity; everyone you meet is a mix of so many different diverse identities that make them a whole person. While we do need more asexual representation in general, we also need to start having asexual representation that actually reflects the rich and diverse identities of real asexual people in the world.
