I had started this book a couple of years ago but was not in a headspace that would have allowed me to appreciate it to the fullest extent so I put it on the backburner and I am glad that I waited until I could fully appreciate it.

Much like Angela Chen's Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex, Sherronda J. Brown explores what it means to be asexual in modern society and talks about how A-spec people are often viewed as not straight enough in straight communities but also not queer enough in queer communities. Where this book goes even further than Ace on is in showing how acephobia is connected to anti-Blackness and white supremacy. The intersectionality is an important one to discuss because as Brown (and others) have rightfully called out, the white queer rarely thinks about how their whiteness still privileges them.

I want to see more scholarship on a variety of queer identities, and I am anxious to see how discussions of asexuality and compulsory sexuality play into the rise of homophobia and greater divisiveness surrounding representation in media.

This book is packed with a ton of information yet it never feels dense, and it's laid out in a way that allows for each chapter to be read independently or in bite size chunks. I purchased the audiobook because I tend to prefer consuming my nonfiction in audio format; however, I will absolutely be picking up a physical copy to tab and reference. I especially found the conversation around chrononormativity very fascinating, especially as I reach an age where I'm noticing more and more people not falling into the "standard" lifepath trajectory.

All that to say, I'm glad I finally finished this book and I highly recommend it to anyone even if they are not Black and/or Ace!

This was such an interesting read, I really loved how well the book not only talked about Asexuality but also linked it to so many other topics from gender to being a person of colour.
The only thing with this book was that it did take awhile to get through mostly because I hadn’t expected it to be quite so academic but this just shows how well researcher this book was.

I find this to be more academic than I would have liked, but it’s full of great information. Will definitely reference this text in the future and recommend it.

“Capitalism is always invested in convincing us that we are flawed in order to sell us remedies.” (p.70)

I bought this book when it first came out, but after reading the beginning I got overwhelmed and put it away. Luckily, my academic choices let me to be able to read this book and use it as an important source, so I had to really read it completely and thoroughly.

While this book gives a good and nuanced definition of the term, it is not an introduction to asexuality. Nor does it claim to be. This book instead offers insights into asexuality studies, intersections between different forms of oppression and specifically black sexuality. It is an academic text that relates more to asexuality studies (and queer studies more broadly). The specific emphasis it has on how acephobia intersects with racism and the positioning of black asexual (women) is, I think, extremely relevant and often missing in discourses about the topic.

“Here, I affirm asexuality beyond an orientation label or umbrella term. It also provides a lens through which we can view, take in, analyze, and understand the world and how we exist within it. In my understanding, asexuality exists as a refusal of compulsory sexuality, in defiance of cisheteropatriarchal mandates, and as an opportunity to deeply interrogate how sexual scripts connect with and inform conceptions of gender and race.” (p.10)

This book deals with many complicated and oftentimes difficult topics. While the content warnings above each section seem intimidating, they were also very helpful in preparing the reader and emphasizing the many forms of oppression that this book examines.

The book is divided into different sections that, while they are connected to some extent, each feel like their own chapter and distinct part. While all of them were interesting, the sections that were particularly relevant to my research or new to me were "Neverland" (specifically the concept of Chrononormativity), "Productivity" (about capitalist exploitation), and "Frigidity" (which offers a history of the medicalization of asexuality and historical/ evolution of studies of sexuality).

“Have I spent my life mistaking a desire for attention and validation from certain people as attraction to them?” (p.105)

a bold and incisive critique of societal norms surrounding sexuality. Brown eloquently challenges the notion of compulsory sexuality and offers a compelling argument for embracing diverse expressions of desire and identity. In this concise yet powerful essay, Brown confronts us with thought-provoking insights that demand reflection and inspire liberation from oppressive cultural constructs.

Adding to the growing selection of asexual theory books, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is a brilliant look into our culture of compulsory sexuality, and a deep dive into a lesser known portion of the queer community, asexuality. Personally, as an aroace reviewer, I loved this title. It was well-researched, caring and careful, and full of interesting information. Thank you to Sherronda J Brown for writing this - I ordered a copy and it now takes pride of place on my shelf, and I recommend it often in my bookstore. Thank you to the publishers and netgalley for the opportunity to early read.

This took me ages to read, because it's more academic than what I'm currently used to reading, and I wanted to take my time with it and read this with the attention it deserves. This book connects asexuality to so many intersections, but particularly Blackness as well as gender. Ultimately, the book states that we can never be truly free if compulsory sexuality exists, and it highlights a lot of reasons why and explains them in depth.

I thought this was such a valuable reading experience, as an aromantic asexual person myself. Brown explains so many thoughts and feeling I've had towards my own asexuality and asexuality in general, but with much more eloquence than I ever could, as well as provides so many new insights that helped me understand myself and society better.

I do have one critique, which has nothing to do with the contents of the book, but instead with its structure, or lack thereof. I felt like the chapters, and even the sections within each chapter, were just not clearly connected to each other, and I often didn't feel like there was a clear bridge from one topic to the next. This made the book feel incohesive, which feels like a shame since it provides so much insight in so much detail.

An absolutely necessary read - well written, well researched, and so insightful and enlightening. This is an extremely important book and i think it should be required reading for everyone. The A in LGBTQIA+ is often overlooked, and this shed some much needed light on to asexuality and the concept of compulsory sexuality. thank you to net galley for an e-arc of this book

I was so excited to read a book from the perspective of a Black asexual person because I am always on the lookout for more Black asexual books. Especially because the title put words to thoughts that I’ve been having for years. I had never heard the term “compulsory sexuality” before finding this book and when I saw that term something clicked in me and I finally had words for what I’d been warring with for a while. So, as you can guess, I was incredibly excited for this book! But, sadly I could not finish it. I had to give up halfway through.

The topics that this book touches on are necessary, interesting, and enlightening. However, the writing is not for me at all. It is INCREDIBLY pretentious. The author writes the same thing over and over again in different ways, not because they want to make sure you understand, but just to fill up space. Reading this book feels like reading a textbook without learning anything. The writing is so clunky and hard to digest. There was a lot of pontification to the point where the book felt like a chore to read.

I did enjoy some parts of this book despite my problems with the writing style, but I just can’t continue. I am grateful to this book for giving me the words I was looking for in the term “compulsory sexuality”. Now I will try to find other books and articles on the topic for further reading because as much as I tried to push through and love this book, I just couldn’t. We need more books about this topic. Better books.

If you’re a person who doesn’t mind pretentious writing, I’d still recommend giving this book a try because the topics discussed are so important and these conversations are necessary to have in our current society.

Thank you North Atlantic Books and NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own.

TW: rape

This is a must read book for everyone! It’s intersectionality demonstrates how different groups of people are sexualised and how they have been westernised

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality sheds light on the structures that harm asexual people and Black, asexual people in particular. Even having experienced some of the forms of acephobia discussed in the book, it was still illuminating to see it all laid out and analyzed -- why do these experiences persist? What motivates acephobia? And how does it intersect with racism? The author demonstrates how rape culture and white supremacy create an environment where acephobia flourishes, one where the hypersexualization of Black people would suggest that asexuality is an impossible intersection. This erasure is a deeply wounding assumption that can result in violence and makes it hard for people to find their identity and discover the multitude of ace-spec experiences that are possible outside cishet romantic and sexual norms.

Aces are marginalized by straight culture and queer culture both. It's apparent we don't fit in a heteronormative role, but when queer culture is largely defined around sex, there isn't a space for aces to feel included. More active gatekeeping belittles the ace experience or doubts its reality to exclude us from the queer community. I have certainly felt this pain and felt seen by the author's analysis. Just because a person is assumed to be straight because that's the socially expected baseline doesn't mean ace people are "passing" as hetero. The author makes a strong case for why we shouldn't aspire to rank queerness on a hierarchy of trauma and further argues that aces are subject to all kinds of emotional and sexual traumas that aren't assumed to exist by the community, anyway. So basically, aces are seen as not suffering enough to be queer, a sad way to define our shared experiences, but it's based on a vast misrepresentation of what aces regularly suffer. Brown further argues that we're missing out on potential commonalities between ace people and other queer identities. For example, there is an overlap in experience between aces (who are overwhelmingly women or people who have been socialized that way) and lesbians because both have to navigate feelings that compulsory heterosexuality doesn't work for them. And the very nature of the system is such that it can obscure alternatives or make suffering seem normal to the extent that afab people don't seek alternatives. It takes grappling with an arrangement that's taken as a foregone conclusion of life to find what really feels true and right.

One facet of acephobia is framing asexuality as a "lack," where the apparently normal amount of sexuality is absent, an assumed sad state of affairs. It goes so far as to be viewed as a health concern. Low sexual desire is often pathologized as a biological dysfunction. When there's a capitalistic reason to encourage reproduction, it's easy to see why an institution would frame it as unhealthy. The author also reminds us that pharmaceutical companies have reason to push for things to be labeled disorders so that they can follow up by offering treatment... for a price. To make things worse, women make up the group least understood and heard by the medical establishment, so ace women will be talked over and pushed into an assigned box without their input. Cis-hetero male desire is the societal and medical referent for what level of desire is "normal," so a cis-hetero woman is responsible for "fixing" herself to meet her partner's level in the case of a mismatch. Rather than, you know, fixing our society's outlandish expectations for women. Brown contends this meets the definition of conversion therapy, an application of the term that's rarely extended to the ace experience.

It doesn't stop there. "Frigidity" is an honest-to-god psychiatric condition to explain the many reasons women don't enjoy sex. It's something that can be overcome by a seductive man, breaking through to the "natural" level of desire that was locked behind the frigidity until the right man came along. This is still a popular romance trope, one that sets an unfair expectation on those of us who would be seen as frigid. We must apparently wait around for a sexy man to fix us with the right smolder, saving us from our pitiable state. It is argued that frigidity can also be a symptom of stubborn women trying to take control of the bedroom by refusing to perform pleasure-- this use of the word is the origin of the delightful epithet "frigid bitch." The history of this supposed condition is steeped in white supremacy. Frigidity was assumed by medical professionals to be a specifically white behavior, a threat to the shape of white supremacy because of the a) lack of required submissive, feminine behavior and b) potential limiting effect on white reproduction. Meanwhile, hypersexualized women of color didn't fit the mold of frigidity because they couldn't possibly want to say no to sex *rage quits.*

Beyond the ice queen trope in romance that can't escape the claws of our history with frigidity, ace characters are subject to all kinds of assumptions and oversimplifications in fiction that perpetuate acephobia. The Villainous Aromantic Asexual trope gives us cold, inhuman villains without any of the trappings of humanity, which apparently include sexual and romantic activity. Lacking in this key aspect of supposed human nature, other traits are tacked on to create a suite of characteristics reminiscent of a coldly operating machine. Aroace identities are packaged with selfishness and a lack of empathy or warm relationships of any kind. Even asexual-coded heroes like Sherlock Holmes are subject to dehumanization in a mechanistic way. You can admire them for their wit while infantilizing them for their lack of sexual (and therefore "human") experience.

This book makes necessary space for ace experiences, asking us to consider many forms of acephobia and making readers confront the role of white supremacy in erasing Black, ace existence in the social consciousness. For a relatively short book, it packs a mean punch with not only a fount of evidence but also carefully argued explanations. It's thoughtful and passionate, and I wish it were required reading. Thanks to North Atlantic for my copy to read and review!

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is truly an amazing nonfiction book that will teach you SO much - about asexuality and aromanticism but also about how racism and anti-blackness in the western world colour our understanding of sexuality and identity. I will return to this book time and time again (I desperately need a physical copy now) because it not only gave me so much knowledge but also brought me - an asexual person - a lot of solace.
I can't recommend this book enough! 10/10 stars!

I never know how to rate non fiction books, especially seeing as I hardly ever read them. So, take my rating with a grain of salt, and focus more on the review itself, if you can.

«I believe it is more true to say that asexuality is defined by a relationship to sex that is atypical to what has been decided on by society at large to be normative, and that atypical nature is marked by varying degrees of sexual attraction and desire».

I think this book is very thouroughly researched, you can tell that the author has collected a lot of data and read many texts on all the topics covered in here. What I didn’t know before starting this book is that it is not a “pop-science” book, but truly an academic dissertation. As I don’t usually read this kind of texts, it was bit too dense for me at times.

«A significant and integral part of acephobia is the stubborn refusal to recognize asexual people as authorities on our own lives, as knowers of our own sexuality».

The book does make some very interesting points, and I think many people — myself included — will feel seen while reading this. However, it seemed to me that the author reiterated the same concepts over and over again. I understand the necessity of supporting your claims with other texts and datas (I have written a thesis myself), however it was a bit too much for me personally as a reader. Had I had to study this for class, it would have been different. If you are, unlike me, a non fiction reader, you probably won’t have any problems.

«Asexuality is always a site of subversion and resistance to cisheteronormativity itself, and is that not what queerness is?»

What I liked the most about the book is that it was very inclusive and intersectional, and it was extremely interesting to learn more about the intersection between misogynoir and acephobia. I would have loved if the intersection between ableism and acephobia was more explored, but I understand why the author left things as they are. I am going to look up more texts, possibly by disabled asexual writers, to learn more about this specific topic.

«Asexuals and lesbians will always be unfit for a society that only understands “women” as fit when we are sexually submissive to me».

I think some allosexual people, if they deign to read this, will feel extremely attacked by some passages, but I also believe that this was the intent, and that if they do indeed feel like they are being attacked, the point made would be proven true. I also think a lot of allo people will find out that maybe they have had their understanding of asexuality all wrong. Moreover, a lot of questioning people will find their answers.

«Not wanting sex […] is not an experience of lack, but of abundance and autonomy».

Despite my issues with the text, I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for an indepth study of asexuality. While this cannot obviously cover every single facet of the asexual experience, and doesn’t focus on aromanticism as much, it is still a great book to read to find out more about cisallohet patriarchal society, asexuality, compulsory sexuality, misogynoir, racism, acephobia, healtism and how all these things intersect and what we can do to fight back.

this should be essential reading for everyone!! such a comprehensive, intersectional view of how our society values sex and imposes that value on certain identity groups

Insightful, critical, and thought provoking. Sherronda J. Brown offers insight into the queer community through the analysis of the black, asexual, and black asexual struggles both in modern society and in historical context.

Highlighting the hypersexual society asexuals find themselves in, and the struggles of understanding that there is nothing wrong with not craving the forced perceived normal relationships, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality demands a new lens be used to determine what actually makes healthy relationships, and what needs to change in society's skewed view on normal. Advocating an understanding of all asexuals with an emphasis on the experiences of black asexuals, Sherronda demands a new understanding of those discriminated for alternate relationships, whose lives are not defined by sexual relationships.

The research into historic portrayals and stigma surrounding people who fall under the now termed "ace umbrella" strengthens the argument that asexuality has always existed with the same prejudices, just under a different name. As someone who has heard the comments of - internet fad, new snowflake term, and not a real thing - regarding my own ace identity, the evidence of asexuality being recognized historically (albeit often with negative portrayal and views) was much appreciated.

I would like to thank #NetGalley and North Atlantic Books for the opportunity to read and review this book.

To be honest, I didn’t expect to love this book as much as I did. I almost NEVER give books 5 stars - and nonfiction books tend to bore me lately. But this book felt groundbreaking in the very best of ways.

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is not your typical “asexuality 101.” Sherronda Brown has an amazing way of blending accessibility with deep societal questions and examinations. In fact, I wish this book would be picked up by a much broader subsection of folks than I imagine the title will appeal to.

Brown had me hooked by the introduction, discussing the similarities between purity culture and diet culture - and the sensitive discussion of consensual yet unwanted sex. They kept me hooked with the very Queer critique of our focus on capitalism and the nuclear family in the Productivity chapter. I felt a deep kinship when they discussed the absurd pressure to perform sexuality in a very specific way as a sex educator. And I experienced an equally deep sickening when they provided examples of BLM fetishization.

There were so many aspects of this book that touched me; so many more than I can even begin to list. Brown did a wonderful job of discussing the complexities of race, gender, and (a)sexuality - all from the position of both a person’s identity and how they are treated within our society. “Refusing Compulsory Sexuality” was such a perfect title for this work.

I’ll end this review with a quote by Frances Chapman that Brown uses in the final chapter of this book, titled Possibilities. “Asexuality is an orientation that regards a partner as nonessential to sex, and sex as nonessential to a satisfying relationship.” What a beautiful and freeing idea.

This book really opened my eyes to how we view sexuality through an allosexual lense and how it mimics, even more so, the sexual aspect of a heteronormative outlook on relationships, family, and the world.

Very insightful read and well researched. Gave me a lot to think about as a member of the aspec community

Being queer makes us different. Asexuality makes people different within their own community. Different in society means it needs to be destroyed. As Brown points out, this has been done throughout history.

Brown labels each section with warnings as to what could trigger readers. There are many sections that are difficult to read because it is the truth. People usually try to create control over something by destroying it: corrective rape, abuse, and even death.

Brown’s writing style is professorial. I felt like I was back in class and learning critical theory all over again. I personally love this as I am a total geek. Plus I went to college later in life so my professors were mainly non-white which gave me a better education.

I don’t need to add a critical analysis of Brown’s book, because this is not new information. I wish it was. Intersectionality has been showcased in a number of books. How it applies to Black women has been written about in great detail. Violence against queers has been researched and talked about for years.

What I do need to say about Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is that if you haven’t read anything before about intersectionality in regards to asexuality, then you need to read this book.

A very insightful book. It left me with much to think about in terms of sexuality and attraction as well as how that intersects with white privilege.

It was somewhat theory heavy which made for a slower, more thoughtful read.