Asexual Advocacy in India: An Interview with Dr. Pragati Singh
Trigger warning: This interview by Daniel Yo-Ling with Dr. Pragati Singh, founder of India Aces, contains a section on marital rape and suicidal ideation that some readers might find distressing. This section will be marked off with a line of asterisks, such as follows.
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DYL: Dr. Pragati Singh, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk about aspec advocacy and activism in non-Western contexts outside of Europe and the United states. I was thinking that we could start this conversation by asking what the current state of asexual awareness is in India.
Dr. PS: Right. Okay. So unlike how most people perceive India, I personally think that we've come such a long way when it comes to ace awareness in this country. It is absolutely beautiful to watch, you know? As someone who has been following this trajectory for a while now, it has been beautiful to watch how it has unfolded. You know, I still get the same questions from people from the media who interview me and ask “Oh, asexuality is not so well known in India, how does that make you feel?” And I tell them it's much better known in India than in many other countries, including Europe, right? So I'm personally really proud of how far we've come. It's not enough, it's not perfect, it's not ideal, but it's way better than a lot of other countries have been able to get to. In a country where we still don’t have gay marriage, to have come even this far when it comes to talking about something like asexuality—which started much later, which became mainstream much later, which is a word that people started hearing much later—I am very happy with where we are at with the path that this is taking. And there's obviously a long way to go, but when you see an organization today in India talking about queer rights, they will typically say "LGBTQIA+." Unlike many other countries, in India, the acronym that is mainstream today is "LGBTQIA+" – and these things don’t just happen, right? Anybody who has worked in activism or who has done advocacy work will know that it has to be done by someone, and then by multiple someones and for a long time; it has to be reiterated over and over again for it to become mainstream. In fact, the other day I was listening to a podcast and somebody said "LGBTI," and somebody else corrected them saying “It’s LGBTQIA+.” This makes me feel really proud, right? Because I'm also collaborating and getting exposed to other countries and the ace work there, and I know that they're struggling, they're still on their paths to come to where we're at already now in India. So I'm personally very very satisfied with asexual awareness in India right now.
DYL: Yeah, from this past year’s PanACEa conference, I’m just remembering the conversation around Sriti Jha's poetry performance of "Confessions of an Asexual Romantic." I think for me personally that was a moment where I was like: Oh wow, this is so much farther ahead than, for instance, what we're dealing with here in Taiwan just in terms of having such a public figure produce such a sensitive and impactful piece around asexuality.
Dr. PS: Mmm, 100%. In terms of quantity, we're such a small minority that any work that is done around asexuality will almost always reach more non-ace people than ace people, especially something which is so public facing and something so glamorous in the sense that it's a poetry performance by a celebrity. You know, there were so many people who had never heard of asexuality and who had now for the first time. I've been doing ace advocacy in India since 2014, but my reach is not even a fraction of Sriti Jha's reach. And the people who somebody like me has a reach into is typically somebody who already knows about asexuality and has come looking for it on the internet. Somebody like Sriti Jha, however, reaches out to people who otherwise would have never heard about asexuality and would have gone probably their entire lives without having heard that word. So she's touched on a demographic which was and would have remained untouched by the concept of asexuality. I personally I find that so fascinating. I feel like Jha’s performance was received really well because it was in a format which is so relatable for people, for people to be able to receive it—for people to be able to accept asexuality as a thing, just as a thing, that this is a word, it has a meaning, people have this life. I think that Jha’s poetry performance left a huge impact in this particular way.
DYL: I see, yeah. It sounds like asexual advocacy in India has gotten very far since you founded Indian Aces nine years ago in 2014. During this time through your work, have there been specific issues besides general asexual awareness raising that the Indian ace community has been facing or working on these past nine years?
Dr. PS: Yeah 100%. You know, when I started Indian Aces in 2014, my initial understanding of asexuality, as a concept and as a word, had also come from Western sources because I found it on the Internet. When I first started Indian Aces as a Facebook page, a lot of it was centered around the same conceptualization of asexuality as a sexual identity and sexual identity being the center of asexuality. It wasn't until I started hearing more from the Indian ace community about what asexuality means to them and what they face in their lives as an asexual person that started to realize that asexuality is so much bigger and also heavier than what it is for many Western counterparts. I don' t know how else to put it because it almost sounds like I’m dismissing the idea of sexual identity as a not-so-important thing, but honestly in many contexts within India, it is less important.
For example, I started this page in 2014, and at that time I would post mostly very light-hearted stuff around asexuality, nothing very dark. I was doing all of this anonymously at the beginning, I didn’t even attach my name to Indian Aces, nobody knew who was behind this page. And yet, there would be people sending me messages on Facebook to the page’s inbox, to a complete random stranger, just pouring their heart out about the dark and heavy things that were facing. In fact, that is what triggered me into doing what I do now, otherwise Indian Aces was just meant to be a small page, it was never meant to become a big thing, right? But i would get messages, for example, from young girls who were like, "I'm planning to run away from my home because my parents are trying to get me married off." And of course, when I am saying "asexual," the technical definition of it is one thing, but people who are not technically within that box still use the word "asexual" for themselves because it feels most relatable. Let's say there is somebody who does not want to have sex, right? Even if it's a medical condition. They will often use the word "asexual" for themselves. Why? Because there is no other word for them to use in common parlance to communicate what they want to communicate, so they will often use the word "I am asexual." Even if, let's say, somebody is taking antidepressants and that has temporarily killed their sex drive; they might use the word "asexual" for themselves because it's easy to communicate.
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So anyway, the point is, I was getting messages from girls who were saying "I think I'm asexual, I don't want to have sex, but my parents are forcing me to get married, so I'm going to run away from home, can I come to you?" They were asking me, somebody who did not even have their name or a face or an identity, because they had nowhere else to go and they had no one else who would get what they're trying to say. I would get people writing their entire journal entries, even beautiful poetry somebody wrote about them abandoning themselves to have sex with somebody who wanted to have sex with them and just lying there. Let me know if this get’s too traumatic, okay? Because some of it is. To date, I still cannot forget certain things from that poem. Even though I haven’t read it again because it’s really sad, I still remember it. They spoke about how they're just lying there while their partner is having sex with them, and they're looking outside the window and there's a dog playing outside, and they're in that moment realizing that they have abandoned themself. And there were so many such things being shared by people that I realized in my country, for my people, asexuality is not just about a flag, right? Or microidentities, or a label, it's not about that. It's about people literally making life and death decisions. People going through severe depression because they're being raped, or because they're being forced into a marriage. And you know in my country, unfortunately, marital rape is not even recognized as rape. It's legally not recognized as rape. So eventually, that became one of the biggest focus areas for me: forced marriage and the fear of forced marriage because of marital rape, and then the lack of a path forward after you are maritally raped by your husband. And so that has been the kind of place where I stay focused on, and also the kind of place where the people, the community, is struggling with the most. Of course, there are still articles being written about, you know, the flag, and the purple means this, and the white means that, and that's all fine, that's all good. But that's not the pain point of the community.
I've tried launching something called Platonicity.co. It's kind of like a matchmaking thing, and a lot of people will come up to me and be like "Oh but as queer people and as feminists, we don’t support marriage as an institution, we need to move away from these ideas.” But the point is I'm not doing it because I want that service, I'm doing it because there are these people who if they don't have that service are ready to kill themselves. The people who tell me “Oh you shouldn’t be doing this work” or “marriage is not an important concept," they are not the ones receiving all these long emails. Literally just two weeks ago, I received a long email from somebody who was telling me that he's severely depressed and he's an asexual man. He cannot even talk about this with anybody because as a man in India, to be asexual or anything close to that word is a question on your manhood, and your manhood is very precious to you as a man in this country. The people who want me to politically take a stance against marriage are not the ones receiving these messages. I know what’s happening with the people sending these messages and I know that this service needs to be provided as an option for them.
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DYL: It sounds like the context of marriage and there not being legal protections against marital rape, as well as the custom of arranged marriages, all create a very dire situation for asexual people in India. And it might not be the case that these people never have and never will experience sexual attraction and so they identify as asexual, but rather that this distance from sex, this distance from sexuality, is actually giving them some space to survive in the context that they're in and is providing them with resources and a community that will be able to hear their experiences.
Dr. PS: Yeah so we’ve been doing these Platonicity meet-ups since 2017. Offline, initially; 2017 to 2020, they were all being done offline. I've done them in more than ten cities across India, and all I want to do through these meetups is to create a space where people are leaving all of their expectations of sexual intimacy outside of the room. That's it. That's the crux of it. Whether you're asexual, technically speaking, or whether you use the word asexual for yourself or not, that doesn’t matter. Typically, people who attend are looking for somebody from the opposite gender, a man and a woman, because that's the pain point, right? You have to have a socially acceptable mariage to be able to continue life in this country, and a socially acceptable marriage is between a man and a woman, it's not between a man and a man. So sometimes there will be a gay guy and a lesbian woman that turn up to these meet-ups to get married to each other. Yeah. So anyways, the point is that these meet-ups have been one of the things that people asked for.
I was telling you about this girl who wrote to me in 2017. She said "I'm going to run away from my home. Can I come to you?" I was thinking to myself, she doesn’t even know me! And yet I feel like the safest person she can come to. That's so sad. That's so sad, right? Within a month, I decided to start doing these meet-ups. The first time I did it in 2017 was because of that woman sending me that message. So ever since then, we have done it probably two dozen times already now across India.
DYL: I see. I see. The next set of questions that I have are about how, if you look on the surface at what Indian Aces has been doing, you can see a lot of similarities with the work that other ace groups in Europe or the United States are doing; for instance, ace flags and symbolism, doing meet-ups, etc. But what I'm hearing you share in this conversation is that, while on the surface these activities may look very similar, the function of for instance the Platonicity meet-ups that you were just mentioning is actually providing a unique social space where one can leave the expectation of sexual intimacy at the door and find opportunities to meet potential partners for an asexual marriage, which allow them to better function and survive in a society where there is this massively looming system of compulsory marriage that is organizing the vast majority of people's lives. So the question that I want to ask you is, what other areas of resemblance, whether that be at a deeper level or just at the surface, are there between the work you do with Indian Aces and the work that Western ace orgs do? And what are some of the divergences that you have seen, where for instance you know if you were to describe some of the work that you do to a Western ace activist that they might have to think a little bit more about how that makes sense in the context that you're working in, or doesn't make sense in the context that they're working in. So yeah what similarities and differences have you observed?
Dr. PS: Oh yeah. Mmm... I'd say that there's definitely a few parallels. So for example, the fact that a lot of our advocacy and awareness work both happens digitally on social media. Right? A lot of it is because you can’t have the same reach offline, and it's so much effort to do something offline versus online. So that's definitely a parallel. And of course we have to use the same symbolism to stay aligned with the universal understanding of what asexuality is. So for example, using the same terms, using the same flag, the symbols, the memes, the jokes about cake being better than sex, you know? Because that’s what the majority of people in this minority group can relate to. That's how you make things understandable, relatable, easy for people to consume.
And a lot of this darker stuff that I'm at the receiving end of, I cannot even share it pubicly, right? So a lot of people don't get to know about these things, they don’t get to know that that is also a face of asexuality, that's also a face of Indian Aces, that's also a face of what I've been doing for the last 9 years. They don't get to see it, because that's not the kind of thing that you can casually put up in a meme post on Instagram. It's really not. At the same time, you know, say for instance that maybe that's also true for Western countries, but it's really not, because I've spoken to so many of them, not just the activists and leaders, but also the community members. I don't think that they have that darker side of the moon in the same way that we do; they have their own stuff, but it's not the same face, it's a very different face.
But yeah, we do a lot of things on social media and we participate in the same campaigns. That's when the media interest peaks. I'll typically start getting emails about somebody wanting to do an interview around October because that's when Ace Awareness Week is. I feel like it would be futile to try to escape it, instead what we do is, we know how to ride that wave and keep contextualizing it, right? Keep contextualizing, keep bringing it back, keep bringing it in, but ride that wave instead of trying to fight against it. So that's what my approach has mostly been.
In terms of distinctions, the issue areas are so distinct, which we've already discussed, but there is also the difference in terms of how ace advocacy functionally works out. When I started Indian Aces in 2014, there was not even a single article on asexuality available online in India. There was just nothing, it was blank. I have had to literally start from zero, from scratch. So I’ve built everything block by block by myself without the kind of resources that people in the West have. It blows my mind, especially now that I'm here right now in US, the amount of resources people have here, whether it be material resources or just time and energy, is truly something. The infrastructure, the support systems, the opportunities, the access to government, the access to UN organizations—I don't have that in India. And I definitely did not have any of that when I first started Indian Aces.
I remember that there were so many times when I was doing workshops on asexuality in India back in 2014 to 2017, 2018, that I was doing everything just by myself. Just one person doing everything by myself, including finding a venue, paying for venue rent, coffee, whatever it is, right? And when I would organize a workshop, I'd say "Why don't you pay like, let's say, 300 rupees,” which would be like $5 USD. I would get criticism, typically from Western ace communities saying "But why are you charging people for this work?" And I was like, I only have two options: either I do this work and I do it in a way so that I don't burnout and stop doing it, or i just don't do it. There are only two options, there is no other option because I don't have grants, I don't have corporate support, I don't have the kind of resources that people in the West have. Like it blows my mind, honestly, how much Indian Aces could do if we had those same resources. So for example, AVEN has been able to survive primarily based on people volunteering their time. In India with the amount of people grabbing opportunities and competing for opportunities, nobody has the time to volunteer. People are trying to make ends meet. People are trying to survive and feed their freaking families, right? Like somebody is just going to volunteer becaues for them $5 is spare change? $5 goes a really long way in India! I'm just trying to say that the way in which advocacy and activism can just like glide like butter in the United States is very different from the situation and challenges, most of which are more logistical and operational, that we face in India and in many other countries. And it is only now that asexuality has garnered some respect in terms of being able to get other organizations to collaborate. When I started off, if i was to go and ask somebody to collaborate with me, they would be like "What is asexuality?" Like why are you doing this? Right? They didn't even recognize it. So this aspect has been very different between the work I do in India and our Western counterparts, and it still remains different to this day in many ways.
DYL: I see. So obviously, one of the ways to gain resources and visibility is to, like you mentioned before, strategically use the same language that the broader mainstream Western movement is using, or even to do collaborations as you've done in the past. Have there been moments where these distinctions betwen the context that you are working in and the context that they are working in have led to tensions or discrepancies in understanding? Do you have any stories or examples of that that you'd like to share?
Dr. PS: Yeah sure. There are many small examples that I could give. One of the first that pops up in my mind is the focus on microidentities with all the words and labels and new labels. It's a joke amongst ace and aro activists and many groups that our community is too good at coming up with new terms and new micro-micro-micro-identities within identities. It's so hard for us to keep track of, isn't it? Sometimes, I’ll be doing a talk or speaking at a session and there will be someone who suddenly is like “I just heard of this term. What does it mean?” And I'm like "Sister, I don't know!"
DYL: [Laughs] Yeah that happens to me too.
Dr. PS: Honestly, where did this term come from? Who coined this? Suddenly, somebody on social media finds themselves feeling like they're having a unique experience, so they coin a term, and then some of these terms find their way into the mainstream conversation, right? It's very fascinating, the trajectory of these words and microidentities and microlabels find their place in the larger umbrella. It's fascinating to me. But anyways, so that has been something that you know I don't spend energy on at all. I don't look up new identities, it has never been the center of my work, and I don't think it ever will be, even though I know that, especially young people whose exposure to asexuality has been on let’s say Instagram, a lot of the content they're consuming is from our Western counterparts. So they're coming across these new terms, and there are these new concepts all the time. And to a lot of them, I think it seems like that is the center of asexual advocacy work, but it's so not, it's so not. For me at least, it's not. So that definitely always been a point of like "I don't have the energy for learning new microlabels.” I just don't have the time, energy, resources, and mental bandwidth to learn that. And it's fine if other people want to do that, but that's definitely not aligned with our work.
DYL:. So I guess the flipside of this question is, have there been moments where you've really felt like your interactions collaborating with the mainstream Western ace movement have been really fruitful? Have there been moments of real understanding where you really felt like, despite working in different contexts and on different issue areas, that you were working together to push forward a truly global asexual movement?
Dr. PS: Oh yeah. 100%. 100%. I've been on and off collaborating and have been involved with AVEN through some extent since 2017. 2017 is the first time that I organized an offline workshop. When I posted about it, David Jay heard about it and said he wanted to send a message to everybody in India, so he sent a short video clip. Ever since, we’ve been collaborating in ways big and small. For instance, for the last PanACEa conference in 2022, AVEN was one of our sponsors and supported us with some funds. I’m also on AVEN’s board of directors now as well. Since last year.
I feel like there is definitely some sensitivity around the things that I've been talking about here such as the stark difference in access to resources, which basically translates into us having to strugle so much harder. And when I say us, I mean people like you and me from Asian contexts or from other contexts which are just under represented. I feel like there's definitely some sensitivity. I wouldn't say that it was perfect to begin with, but i think it has been building slowly and slowly. I feel like they're beginning to hear us, they're beginning to listen to us, they're beginning to see us, and they're also begininng to recognize that there is a stark difference, that there is a gap. So i think that there is some sensitivity there, and I personally feel like, as I was saying earlier, to know how to strategically ride that wave I think is very important. Because I mean I could be antagonizing those people who mean well, but don't always end up doing the best thing. For me personally, as long as I am able to recognize that their intent is in the right place, they might be making mistakes, maybe their privilege blinds them completely, maybe they are lagging so far behind in their understanding of my context, but that's because they don't have that context. So personally for me, I have found that i am able to make a lot of those accommodations. I don't care about my ego in terms of me trying to make my own stand; that is less important than actually getting what needs to be done done. And i know that the best way to get that done is by strategically riding the wave, not by me creating an antagonistic relationship and then starting from scratch all over again. Instead, the task is to constantly and repeatedly contextualize, and also knowing how to ride the wave, working with the Western mainstream. That's been my approach. And I would say that 90% of my interactions with Western counterparts have been met with some sensitivity.
DYL: I see. So as you know, this interview will be published in English and the audience will be a primarily Western, English-speaking audience. The last question that I have for you is: How can the mainstream Western ace movement best support the work that you and other ace activists are doing in India and other Asian or non-Western contexts?
Dr. PS: That's such a great question, I wish I had a beautiful answer to it [chuckles]. I'm serious, because it's a great question.
I would say being curious. It starts with being curious. I genuinely think that. For me personally, every time that I've felt like "What the heck?" with somebody, let's say a Western counterpart, who is just not getting it, I feel like it mostly comes down to the fact that they haven't been curious. They haven't been curious about what asexuality is in a different context. Like, okay, so this is what asexuality means to us, but am I curious enough to know what it means for somebody in Taiwan? And if I'm not, and if I come across something that does not make sense to me, to not judge it, to not dismiss it, to not invalidate it, but again, to stay curious, to stay curious because there must be something to it, there must be something beyond what I'm able to understand. Am I willing to put in the energy and effort to understand it? Or if I cannot put in the energy or time to understand it, can I continue to suspend judgement? I feel like that's just missing.
I can also say a lot of those cliché answers about passing the mic and platform people from other communities and stuff, but I feel like people have already heard that so often. And I know that that will already be included in the conversation anyway, right? It's probably become kind of obvious at this point. I don't know how much longer we need to keep harping on the same things. But beyond that, I do think that there's a need for our Western counterparts to be very curious and suspend their judgements about ace activism in other contexts.
DYL: I see, okay. Those were all of the question I had for you. Was there anything that you wanted to circle back to or add?
Dr. PS: Mmm.... not really, but maybe I could quickly mention that, as you know, I’m finally beginning to write my book, which I’ve been working on for the past year.
DYL: The Asexual Lives book?
Dr. PS: Yeah. So we've finished the research, we're pretty much in the last year now and are beginning to give it some structure. So a lot of the conversations in that book will reflect on a lot of the things that I have been saying today during this interview about identity and the issue areas being different in different places. I thought that maybe mentioning this book would be an interesting parting note to add to this interview. This is the kind of book where we give readers the chance to be curious about other contexts. So we have people from Taiwan, Japan, Africa, Egypt, other places in the Middle East as well, and somebody who is almost through the asylum process right now because they are from Saudi Arabia, which is not the kind of country where you can talk about sex or anything to do with sex. So we have these people with their lived realities from contexts that I think are never even considered. I mean, it's a blindspot for many Western counterparts. They don't even know what they don't know. Right? So I feel like that is the kind of work, that is the kind of representation that I think at least lets people know what they don't know. And then of course it is up to them to then figure out what it is that they don't know and then to get to know it. But at least they will get to know what they didn't even know they didn't know. So yeah.
DYL: Just curious to follow-up on that, so what is the timeline for the book coming out?
Dr. PS: The book will mostly likely be out some time in 2024.
DYL: Okay, well I am personally very much looking forward to that and I am sure that the Asexual Lives book project will be a great piece to engage with to follow-up on the themes we have been talking about in this interview.
Dr. PS: Mhm. Absolutely. Thank you.
DYL: Thank you so much again for your time.
