“Ah, hobbies. Well, I just finished grad school…”
I nod at the young man sitting across from me in the small bar, sipping my hard cider and wishing I’d eaten more beforehand. My stomach is in knots. This is my first date in a long time. I tried dating while working the second shift but found it nearly impossible, and the loneliness that surrounded me and pulled me down had become comfortable after a while, even preferred. I didn’t know exactly what I expected from this tinder date on a profile where I had swiped right without reading anything because he had had one photo in his profile where he was with an owl, and I distinctly thought “Well, that’s interesting.” I wasn’t going in expecting anything; maybe just a new friend, maybe some company for a couple of hours if things went poorly. Out of all the tinder dates I’d been on in the past few years, sporadically trying out my luck on self-obsessed men who happened to be on the internet at the same as myself, he was the most interesting man I’d come into contact with. When he’d asked if I wanted to get drinks at a local bar, I hadn’t been expecting much, but I found myself excited and smitten for the first time in a long time. We went over the basics—what were our hobbies, tastes in alcohol, do you have any pets, what kind of movies do you like, how many siblings do you have, etc.
“So I’m straight.”
“I’m pansexual.” I looked up nervously, not sure what to expect. Confusion? Fetishization? The one thing I did not expect was acceptance, and for the conversation to move forwards as if that was the most normal thing to say in the world. A breath released from my chest, but under it, another knot formed. I took a large gulp of my hard cider and half-listened to what he said next, suddenly distracted by the strange decorations that were all over the bar.
It was a good first date. Simple, neither of us trying too hard to impress each other, him completely fine with my utter aversion to small talk once the basics were covered. We agreed to meet up again at the end of the night, and on the way home I went to McDonald’s, feeling hungry from drinking on an empty stomach and giddy that I might have found a romantic connection.
What was nicest to me of all was that he had not asked me for or pressured me into having sex—it hadn’t even been brought up. A weight lifted from my chest realizing he hadn’t been offended when we hadn’t kissed, either. I did not want to kiss him, not yet. But I did want to see him again. I opened my tinder profile and reread it, unable to remember exactly what I had written down about myself. The usual basics of hobbies, this is a little bit about me, and my name was there—as well as my sexuality. Pansexual. I swallowed and looked at it for a long time, thinking, before I closed the app and spent an hour scrolling through Tumblr. He didn’t need to know that that wasn’t quite accurate. No one needed to know. Not yet. Or maybe ever.
There were so many little moments like that for years, where I said “I’m pansexual” and felt a lump in my throat, like an itch at the back of my subconscious. I said yes to sexual partners who were there because—well, this is a tinder date, and you are probably pansexual; why not? I found myself leaving in the morning and feeling eager to be alone and not think about sex afterward, even as I was driven home, wondering why I’d agreed to it in the first place. I’d nod and say I’d text them and then find myself unable to hit ‘send’ or even articulate how awkward and alien everything had felt, opting often to just never start the conversation at all. I said yes to sex with partners because I’d enjoyed sex with them before, only to find myself feeling neutral; it was as if someone was masturbating next to me. Afterward, I’d leave and take a long shower, sitting in the hot water, staring at my hands and wondering, “What the fuck is wrong with me? You liked that before, what happened?”
Whatever it was—this fluctuating thought towards sexuality, this feeling of something not being right—it didn’t scrub off.
I kissed people of all different genders and felt something rising in me if sex were ever on the table—an inner dialogue that said you are not being completely honest with them about this, even as the two of us were entwined in the carnal act of sex. It itched at me, grating under my skin, begging me to just open my mouth and let out a truth I wasn’t ready to face.
Hours afterward at home, it still weighed on me, threatening to break out and tell everyone what a weirdo I was. I’d scroll through the internet instead of considering the implications of not being sexually attracted to a majority of my partners, unable to put in words what I was feeling. I’d eventually find myself reading about asexuality and demisexuality each time. I’d take quizzes in hopes they would tell me my sexual orientation, to differing results. ‘Are You Asexual?’ would be followed by a barrage of “have you ever had sex” and “do you masturbate”, which never actually answered what I was asking. I knew somewhere inside of myself that demisexual rang as being true to my experience, but it seemed resources on if you had been a sexually active demisexual were few and far between, leaving me feeling stranded with my thoughts. I asked other asexual people about their experiences and talked about my own and found that many aces I spoke with told me I was describing demisexuality when I described my sexual attraction.
“I’m demisexual,” I muttered to myself one night. I looked around myself nervously as if someone might have heard, but of course, no one did; I lived alone. I swallowed, took a deep breath, and let it out again, like taking a deep breath after not knowing how long I’d been swimming; “I’m demisexual.” 

Demisexual. The word was like air in my lungs.

And then a month later I went on a tinder date with a young man who had just finished his Master’s degree and had at least one photo of himself with an owl on his dating profile and I thought—maybe this is the time I can say something.
It would be another year before I would say anything to him about my sexuality. Soon after I nervously typed a coming out post on Instagram, where I thought the least amount of people who knew me offline would see it. In it, I said that I thought I’d figured out I was on the asexual spectrum, and demisexual seemed to fit best. (This was before I also started using graysexual.) Another year and a half later, after following the asexual community for some time and feeling like I had to keep it as a secret to everyone including myself, I commented on a post that Nickelodeon had made about LGBT+ characters in their programming saying that Spongebob could be both asexual and gay. I didn’t think anyone would see it, and then I came back and it was trending. I was suddenly an asexuality advocate.
The change from being at the fringes of the community and quietly reading activist’s blogs to being shared by those same blogs was a huge change. Suddenly I was writing about my sexuality, my experience of feeling my whole life like everyone had been invited to some secret party, my lifetime of pretending and feeling like my body was the only thing I could offer others, of discovering asexuality in my early twenties and still feeling like it wasn’t my words to use—and people were reading it. Not only that, but people were recommending it to each other. In a month I went from no one in the asexual community having any idea who I was to people recommending my works on demisexuality, graysexuality, and asexuality to each other and even going on podcasts to talk about it.
It was… surreal.
Most of my life has been surreal after the age of nineteen, but this was a different kind of surreal than religious trauma-induced dissociation. This was suddenly wondering if I was a known name in a community I’d looked up to in secret for so long and wondering if I was at all worth that position, and if I was in it—how long before the other aces told me I wasn’t one of them? What the fuck was I even doing?
Soon after I started posting about it, I got in a public argument with a friend. He said that he was upset by my “gradual sexual obsession”, and it was disturbing to see me talk about it so much because I admitted I was mentally ill. After pointing out to him I had been out for over a year, I blocked him, but the comment stuck in my head. Asexuality is not a mental illness, but if you’re a depressed and anxious demisexual just trying your best, blaming your sexuality that you’ve suddenly started talking about on mental illness can worsen queer imposter syndrome. The self-doubt was already inside me; he had just watered the seeds.
Over time, I stopped talking about my trauma publicly and talked more and more about my sexuality and gender. I remembered older posts where I had talked about a past abusive relationship and wondered to myself, “Is this it? Is this the post that discredits any work I’ve done, the one that proves my sexuality is simply a product of illness and not a part of my personhood?” My trauma got shoved to the side more often than not, and when I did talk about it, it felt largely ignored. In a way that was a relief—after all, how do you sort out not having sexual attraction from trauma? When had it become my responsibility to do that work publicly?—but in a way, it felt a bit like being penalized for being an activist for demisexuality with a trauma history, particularly one that left me feeling less tied to my own body. People wanted definitions and posts that told them their community was all-accepting, good people. They didn’t want to focus on the trauma or the part of it where discovering asexuality played a role in healing from sexual abuse; that wasn’t nice and digestible. Even knowing that discovering asexuality and demisexuality had helped me immensely in regards to healing from trauma, there was always a question in the back of my mind of where trauma started and my sexuality began. After all, part of the criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is an aversion to the thing that left you with the trauma—surely asexuality was doing that?
But I didn’t avoid sex. Quite the opposite.
At my first queer event, the International Asexuality and Visibility Education Network Online Conference, I was lucky enough to be on a panel about demisexuality with a few activists I looked up to and a few I hadn’t heard of before. As we did our practice panel and the other members of the panel mentioned never having been interested in sex, or finding out that asexuality was a thing because of this disinterest, I grew increasingly uncomfortable. While most of my counterparts had either never had sex or only had one or two sexual partners at most, I did not have an exact count on my sexual partners. It dug at me like a vice on my ribs, a little voice that said You’re not ace; you’ve had too much sex. Many reported no interest in sex when recounting how they had discovered their sexuality. The little voice in my head rang again, whispering you wanted to see what the fuss was about; that’s not very ace, is it?
Hours later I still couldn’t shake the little voice. My story wasn’t like the other stories I’d read or heard. Where my counterparts had found themselves avoiding sexual activity, wondering if something was wrong with them, I’d actively sought it out while wondering what was wrong with me. I’d gone after the thing I was told would make me a complete person and been disappointed in myself when it never worked, always thinking there was something wrong with how sexually appealing I was or wasn’t at the time, or how much I was wanted. I never considered if it was something I wanted at all—of course, it was! It had to be! I had thought for so long I was the problem before finding myself in a community of demisexuals and asexuals. Now I found my past to be the problem, as it did not line up with the community I knew. I wished more than anything I had a more conventional story about discovering I was demisexual that night. Repeating to yourself “it’s about attraction, not action” and consistently internalizing that are two different things, even if you’re trying to reassure other people, too. What if I was lying? What if it was all just a big scam I hadn’t even known I’d concocted?
I wasn’t always told I was lying, though, when I was doubted. Once, a gynecologist I had previously trusted told me I shouldn’t let other people tell me who I was when I told her I thought I might be asexual. I drove home feeling disappointed and unsure of myself—she was an expert in this field of sexual functioning, what if she was right? Another time, after telling some elderly women outside of Planned Parenthood it wasn’t their business why I was there (for my IUD insertion), a nurse told me the risks and benefits of the Mirena IUD in regards to having sex. When I told her I was asexual (I didn’t feel like explaining demisexuality and was getting the Mirena for my endometriosis), and had not had sex in a few years, she looked at me as if I’d just said I was going to give birth to a rabbit. I told myself as I was leaving that she legally had to read those things—but the look that had crossed her face when I’d said I didn’t know if I would have sex ever again had still been a disappointment. While laying in my bed in horrible pain later, heating pad clutched to my abdomen, I wondered why the professionals I had seen for my gynecology never had any idea what asexuality was. It was their field of care- what if they were right and something was truly wrong with me?
The more I considered the self-doubt, the more it ate away at me. I read story after story of demisexuals, graysexuals, and asexuals and found the theme of finding out they were acespec came from their notable lack of interesting sexuality and sex at all. I poured through journals and blog posts and found the thread of not being interested at all, of not having sex, of only having sex under select circumstances, was the norm. I was once again pouring over resources like I had when I hadn’t been sure I was ace, but this time to prove to myself that I was. It had, for the most part, the opposite effect. I was still me, though. I still wanted to share my story, even if it didn’t fit in with those I’d read.
One night posted about having had multiple sexual partners and being demisexual all the same. Publicly, I received support. Privately, I received several messages telling me something was seriously wrong with me and I didn’t need to label my sexuality at all if I enjoyed sex—especially with something under the umbrella of asexuality. I later felt prompted to write a post about why coming out as demisexual had mattered so much to me, why it mattered to so many people, why it makes a difference in our lives just as it would anyone else in the LGBTQIA+ community. Once again, I received praise for the piece, and once again I thanked people for reading it publicly—but behind the screen, I felt unsure of myself. “This is it,” I whispered each time as I finished a blog post about my experiences. “This is the post where they find out I’m a fraud, even to myself.”
I could not deny, however, that discovering demisexuality had made a massive positive difference in my own life. It explained much of what I’d failed to understand, shifted blame from me regarding how I felt about the act of sex in most circumstances, and led me to approach relationships with the self-respect I hadn’t granted myself before.
When I was dating the young man I’d met from tinder (mentioned above), I approached the relationship with a different mentality than I had before. I purposely thought to myself that I would not use him as a buffer between myself and my mental health, and I would consciously decide to propose sex only when I was truly ready for it, not when I thought I was supposed to be or when I thought he wanted me to be. I would not do more than hold hands until I was ready, and if he asked, I wouldn’t lie and say I was because I thought it was the expectation. Three months in, we laid on his bed, and I told him I was thinking about kissing him finally. My heart hammered in my chest, and he said I was welcome to kiss him. I tried to bring myself to kiss him, but found myself held back by something inside myself—I wasn’t ready yet. A month later, I said I would kiss him at the end of the night, and I did. It would be a while yet before thoughts of sex would enter my head in regards to him, and when they finally did, it felt freeing and alienating all at once. These feelings were distinctly different from what I had felt before. I had previously wanted to be a romantic partner only, getting to know him, spending time together, figuring each other out, and feeling excited and thankful for his company. Then suddenly, I wanted more—my body wanted more. Where there had been nothing, sexual attraction was suddenly blooming inside of me, and only towards him. It confirmed in me for the first time since I’d been actively paying attention to if I had sexual attraction rather than assuming I did because surely everyone does that yes, I was demisexual.
After our breakup and while still recovering from it, I read more about demisexuality and found that my counterparts typically didn’t even date anyone if they weren’t extremely comfortable with them first. I felt doubt rising in me again. Why was I willing to get on Tinder and find people to date and instantly be in a relationship? Why did I have so many more sexual partners than my ace peers? Why couldn’t I just be like all the activists and advocates I read about, all the blog posts, all the YouTube videos, and TikToks and tweets?
“I don’t know if I’m good enough to do this,” I would say to him when we talked. “Like, I don’t know if I’m fit to write this piece about demisexuality for that group.”
“You don’t know if you’re good to write about what you are?” He would ask bluntly.
“Well—no—that’s not—yeah.” I’d mutter, thumbing my pajama shorts and downing another swig from a bottle of pink Moscato. “I just don’t think I’m cut out for it. I don’t know enough.”
“Well, people are reading it, right? And didn’t AVEN recommend you? And weren’t you on that podcast? And aren’t you ace?” He would point out for the thousandth time.
I would sigh at this point, wondering how many times we would have this conversation before I would believe him. “Yeah… I guess.”
“Well, there you go.”
Later I’d rehearse again what he had said. I would reread conversations I’d had with friends who told me that of all the people they knew, surely I was “ace enough”. After all, I was the advocate! I was the demisexual friend who could explain in detail all the ways she had been confused by sexual attraction growing up, all the ways that she had pretended, and all the years she had seen herself as little more than a body, leading to multiple sexual encounters she had regretted agreeing to and leading to more confusion regarding the partners she had not agreed to. I was the friend who knew all about depersonalization, derealization, post-traumatic stress disorder, ADHD, bipolar and borderline personality disorder, and eating disorders—if anyone could sort their sexuality from their trauma—if anyone could tell where one ended and one began and confidently declare themselves ace it would logically be me.
But it isn’t.
I would be lying if I said that there wasn’t a constant whispering doubt inside my head that said I am not ace enough because I have had a lot of sex. I would be lying if I said that I hadn’t considered that perhaps I am a lesbian, but then remembering the sexual encounters I’ve had with women and remembering that while they were arousing, I did not think about them later. I would be lying if I said that I don’t take long drives after every post I make and think to myself, “This is it. This is the one where they find out I’m a fraud.” I would be lying if I said I hadn’t listened to interviews with demisexual and asexual activists and wished so badly I was like the authors, that I had known early instead of jamming myself into the mold of the expectation to have sexual attraction. I hear “you can’t know if you’re ace if you’ve never had sex”—but I have had sex. I have had multiple sex partners and even a couple of threesomes. I enjoyed some of it, the cardinal sin of the open demisexual advocate. I even miss sex, although I am not sexually attracted to anyone right now and haven’t been in a few years.
With each ounce of vulnerability comes a wave of people letting me know (mostly privately, thankfully) that I am either not demisexual, that demisexuality isn’t real, or that my demisexuality is a product of my trauma—more often than not, it comes from other members of the queer community. They say to me that I’m not really what I say I am, that what I say I am doesn’t exist; they push me to the margins of acceptance until I say I’m also panromantic, in which case they either accept me or start a whole new debate about how ‘bi is better’. If I disengage, which I most often do, I am told I’m not brave enough or knowledgeable enough to make my argument with the person determined to misunderstand me. If I say that I’m demisexual and they accept it, and then I say heteroromantic demisexuals are still demisexual, I’m told that oppression isn’t faced for not wanting to have sex (which is not what demisexuality is). If I’m polite to those who send me these messages, they become more venomous, ready for me to hit block so they can brag to their friends “see! All you have to do is disagree with her and she’ll block you!” as if this is the full story in any way and protecting yourself from online abuse isn’t allowed. If I’m rude and angry, I find myself regretting the toxicity I’ve just poured into my community and even more so I find myself regretting that I’ve encouraged those who do follow me to be cruel to those who do this publicly as well, making a negative space.
And worst of all, if I admit I have doubts, even now, even as I advocate, that I live with ace imposter syndrome, there are people in the queer community who will use this as fuel that I should not be listened to or believed. People don’t want to hear about self-doubt from an advocate, especially if the cause is the community they advocate for. I don’t even know if this will be read, and if it is, I doubt that it will be read or shared outside of the asexual community online.
Demisexuals, asexuals, and graysexuals are repeatedly pushed to the outer edges of a community that we are a part of, but more than that we are pushed to the edges by other people who claim to understand what it’s like to live in a world that does not accept who they are. Those who push us to the edge and hope that we give up and fall out into the abyss will turn around and say that they always felt different, that they grew up pretending and lying just to survive, that if they faced sexual violence it did not determine their orientation—or if it did, that it’s okay because no one chooses their orientation. Then they turn around and tell aces that there is something wrong with us, that we are not queer, that the hardships we face directly related to our sexuality are not “enough”, that they understand our sexuality and understand that if it were “enough” they would accept us, or that it’s just a confused trauma response. It isn’t just online, but it is often louder here. People like to hide behind their screens and scream at one another, and those of us trying to survive and talk about what we’ve been afraid to put earplugs in and wonder what post will validate the self-doubt that we never should have been here at all, but we don’t leave because the online community is often all we have. Better to put up with abuses and rape threats with friends than wonder about your experience alone.
That said, this is so much bigger than the internet or the queer community online. I do not want another generation of people who don’t find out until their 20’s, 30’s, even 40’s or 50’s that there is a word for their sexuality. I do not want to be a part of a community that tells those whose experiences mirror their own but that do not have sexual attraction, or have rare sexual attraction, that they do not belong anywhere, or that they should make a community by themselves. Asexuals, demisexuals, and graysexuals—these are queer orientations. These are not neutral, or negated by heteroromantic orientations, or negated by being cisgender. Those who want to push us to the corners and let us fall away have turned the LGBTQIA+ community into a test for trauma rather than a community meant to uplift and support those who are not heterosexual, heteroromantic, cisgender, allosexual, alloromantic, and perisex—a test they grade and use to shut gates on those simply looking to learn about themselves and the world around them as if they have the final say on who gets to say they are in the community or not.
I don’t know where the bar is, and worse it seems that the bar is constantly moving; no matter what I say about my experiences, they will never be ace “enough” for everyone who validates asexuality and its spectrum, let alone those who don’t. I will always wonder what will be the post that undoes any positive work I’ve done, what will be the post where the asexual community will say they’ve figured out I’m not truly ace. I’m tired of being gaslit by the LGBTQIA+ community about my own life and the words I use to define it, and of seeing this happen to my friends. I’m just tired.
I just want to live in a world that believes I am, in fact, real. When you’re told every day that you’re not, even if other people tell you you are, it does eat at you; that’s inevitable. I think a lot more of us struggle with it than say it out loud on our platforms or podcasts. It isn’t the side of things we want to focus on or think about, understandably, but it’s there, chewing on our preexisting self-doubt in a world that barely acknowledges us all the same.
Even as I write this I find myself thinking I’m not supposed to have doubts like this. I’m not supposed to wonder how many people are using my past to tear apart my views on my sexuality or consider the research of people who try to figure out the line between PTSD and asexuality, ignoring the healing the discovery of asexuality can bring. I’m not supposed to be the one out here analyzing every relationship, every crush, every thought I’ve ever had, dissecting myself to see if I can find a flaw in my logic that is more significant than simply having anxiety. I’m not supposed to have queer imposter syndrome; I’m the advocate.
I’m demisexual, and I’m real, and it is a real sexuality.
It’s difficult to live in a world that thrives on so much self-doubt, but we are here; whether we are seen or not, we are here.
I am tired of both advocating for and doubting my demisexuality.
But I am still here.
And I am still demisexual.
And no matter how much self-doubt comes up… that voice that says this word is right counters it. Over time, it’s gotten louder and more sure of itself, and so have I.
Just as I said earlier, I would be lying if I said I never doubted myself—I would also be lying if I said I was never sure of myself and my sexuality. I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel nice to be listened to by those who do read my words or watch my videos, as terrifying as it is to be known in any capacity. I would be lying if I said that my first asexual pride flag hadn’t filled me with so much joy I found myself crying and hugging it, or that telling my friends that I am demisexual and having them accept me didn’t feel wonderful, or if I said it didn’t feel wonderful to be able to educate others on this experience that does not match so much of what I have read. I would be lying if I said stating out loud “I’m ace” hasn’t helped me start the path of healing from trauma; if anything, it’s been one of the most helpful steps I’ve taken.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t fighting for these moments—for self-assurance in my demisexuality and graysexuality.
I am tired of doubting my demisexuality, but the exhaustion of it has pushed me to write this. To keep writing. To start a podcast and go onto others and to try again every day to make the world a little more aware than before, to make a world that doubts us less and less, and I think maybe that’s worth something.
Maybe that’s something that will help someone else find themselves sooner than they would have. And that—that is worth fighting through.
I believe that.
I have to.