This book is excellent! Well written, well researched and well structured. It’s accessible enough for someone who has never read a book on asexuality before as well as being interesting for those who already know more about it. Some of the chapters are hard hitting but it’s worth it! I particularly enjoyed the chapter about the speculation of people’s sexual identities, with a focus on Octavia E. Butler. 5/5 and will be recommending/buying copies for people!

Groundbreaking. Sherronda J, Brown has written a compelling asexual manifesto. Recommended for people of all sexualities who wish to deepen their knowledge on sexuality, LGBTQIA+ rights, sexual autonomy and sexual liberation.

I would have posted this review months ago, but I was ill and stayed offline. I am thankfully well now and shall get back to reviewing books here.

As a black ace person who didn't figure it out until my 30s I will forever thank the author for the time and me to energy it must have taken to write this book.

It was affirming, uplifting, helped with some of the feelings of loneliness and inadequacy.

I'll forever be grateful.

This was so informative and is worth more praise and attention. The author explores how colonialism, anti-Blackness, and cisheteropatriarchy work together. This is book was full of so much research and would be a fantastic non-fiction read for "fun" or a great selection for an academic class about race and sexuality.

I got an ARC of this book.

Let me just say that I have exactly two issues with this book. The first is that it focuses only on aces that don’t engage in sex. The second it focuses mostly on ace women (men are mentioned, but it is mostly how they are objectified for being Black and less to do with their asexuality). All of the ace media I engage with does this. It is always sex repulsed aces that get the stage. I am glad they get the attention when it is books like this, books that are amazing and actually respects ace people. I just wish there was more for ace men and aces that engage in sex (especially kinky aces). While I am grumpy there was no delving into aces that have sex and how that would fit into this lens, the focus on ace women made a ton of sense and made this piece stronger. So I will just pout and hope that Brown will write a book about ace men or kinky aces. I would love to read their thoughts.

I can’t even name one idea that made this book so wonderful that stood out above the others. They were all important. Every chapter was amazing, though the history chapter did drag a bit. I loved how thorough the ideas were. I loved how much they fit the world. I loved just how thought out everything was. This is honestly the best book I have read on ace anything. I am used to having to stop myself from rage quitting the books, because they just can’t even acknowledge there are different definitions of asexual. Instead other books make it solely about actions, which makes so many aces not ace. Brown was able to explain why the definitions are different and why their focus was what it was. Instead of denying that aces can have sex and enjoy it, they went on to say they were focusing on one type of ace person. They did not gatekeep being ace. Instead they opened the door. Even said that while they wanted to claim certain people as ace, it is not responsible or right to do so. Respect what people call themselves and just respect people.

This book really does cover everything it promised to. I am so thankful I got to read it and that it is out there for people. I am off to make sure the WGS program I graduated from knows this book exists and adds it to the curriculum and that every ace group I am in knows it is a safe book.

My coworker’s son was even contacted and asked to give a review on tiktok. So the whole team was on board with getting this book into the hands of people who needed it. Plus then you can hear directly from a Black ace about the book. He also recommends other books, I highly recommend checking out his videos.

Please look for reviews from Black ace women for a better look at it. Please elevate their voices. Brown was completely right when they said it is hard to find the Black ace activists. It is not because they don’t exist, but they are pushed out of the predominantly white space that is ace places online. I do not engage in most social media, so I don’t know any places to start your search.

An excellent resource for understanding asexuality, especially in the context of POC within the queer community.

I've read several books on asexuality. This is a very well-researched book that traces theories on asexuality farther back than other authors have while making important points about sex and racism.

This book was a lot! It was a lot of information and often blew my mind. So many of the ideas that are discussed and dissected in the book are things that I never thought about, so in that case, this book truly expanded my thinking.

The book is really all about intersectionality specifically between compulsory sexuality, Blackness, and white supremacy. What I found truly interesting was looking at the history of sexuality and how damaging stereotypes have been used in our society.

Although it took some time to get through it was a very worthy read.

This read much more academic, like essays than I expected, however none the less was an extremely valuable piece exploring the experiences of being black and asexual.

Much more academic than I expected from the blurb, though certainly worth the effort.. My favorite chapter by far was the one (chapter 10, I think?) that explored the sexuality of Langston Hughes and Octavia Butler. Loved the idea of allowing people — especially historical figures — to be ambiguous in their sexuality and resist the urge to label them, particularly if they themselves resisted labels during their lifetime.

An insightful and informative read on the black experience of being ace. This book gave me a lot of perspective, and despite the fact I am ace, I still had a lot to learn due to the fact I am white. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

This book was incredible. I think everyone should read this, and as an asexual person myself, this book felt like a breath of fresh air. The asexual perspective is often excluded from queer spaces, and the discussions of the over-sexualization of women, specifically Black women, is talked about a lot in this book!

This was amazing, clear, well articulated. We definitely need more books about asexuality, and even more books that talk about different intersections. I’ll be sure to buy my physical copy!

Such an important book, a Black queer feminist perspective on asexuality, the author explores their topic with depth and clarity that is impressive. This book will be hugely important for anyone open enough to understand more about asexuality, as well as being affirmative for those who are asexual and/or aromatic. The intersectional lens she uses was also particularly insightful, echoing others who have written about how Black people but especially those socialised as women are sexualised from an alarmingly early age. She makes repeated reference to the oppressive nature of cisheteropatriachy in various chapters, which would be relevant for everyone as we are all affected but I would say especially to anyone socialised as women. Where relevant trigger warnings are included at the beginning of chapters. Highly recommended.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really loved this book!! As someone who identities as ace, I am always looking for things that make me feel seen. I am also always interested in how identities intersect with each other. I had been looking for a book about asexuality from a Black perspective and this really hit the spot. Sherronda Brown really hit it out of the park.

Not only does this work provide detailed insight into the history and trauma of asexuality, but Brown does so in a way that's thoughtful, prolific, and respectful. As someone who identifies as asexual, this is a work that made me feel seen and recognized. The amount of research that went into this text is staggering and impressive; for example, even though there are very few academic articles focused on asexuality, Brown manages to cite so many and succinctly analyze information from them. The few asexual texts that exist are focused solely on the white ace experience, and that's something that Brown discusses in this book. By doing so, Brown makes some great observations by explaining the intersections of gender, identity, and sexuality. This book is a must-read for all future gender and sexuality classes curriculum!

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is a perfect mixture of educational tools and an easy-to-understand book.

As someone who is going to be doing a master's in gender and sexuality, with the hope of doing my dissertation in Asexuality, the book held a lot of important information and resources to further research the topics they discussed.

This is a book that I'll definitely be buying a physical copy of to have as my own and will be reading and rereading multiple times.

Definitely worth the read for those interested in the topic and others who may want to expand their academic knowledge on asexuality and sexuality in general.

Thank you to the publishers for providing me with an eArc in exchange for my honest review.

I gained a lot of understanding from this read, especially contextualizing overlaps with being part of Black communities yet even as someone who reads a lot of academic texts there were sections that seemed overly verbose or in need of edits to better grab the audience’s attention.

This book is incrediblely written and informative. Because asexuality is a spectrum and there are so many different ways to experience it encompassing it all can be difficult. This book gives provides an enormous amount of complex information in a comprehendible manner.

I want to start with my overall thoughts before diving into the meat of my points. Personally, I enjoyed this book and found it both validating and instructive. Many aspects of how society treats asexuals that are discussed in this book are relevant to me and line up with my own experiences. Having these written in print and talked about as things that are common to others who share my identity, whilst on one hand is hard to hear because it means we are all treated poorly, on the other is welcome to see that I am not alone in this. There is then a layer of learning I felt whilst reading this book as Brown discuss is things that are more commonly experienced by black people regardless of their sexualities and then the compounding of the two, I have not experienced those inarguably cannot experience those ,and it showed me how much further we have to go in society in a way that I don't think I would have been able to find out about otherwise. For that alone, I thank her for writing this book so I can work on correcting these things within myself. I imagine that if another allosexual person of colour was to read this they would find the same thing reverse being very familiar with things that are felt and experienced by all black people but then learning about things that and also the compounding of things that is more common within the asexual community that they might not understand the full effect of on black asexual individuals.
I do think that this book would be harder to read the less of your identity you have in common with being a black asexual person, as there would be less to relate to and more things that you are potentially learning about for the first time. I think that potential readers should be aware of that before deciding when and if they want to read this book I highly recommend that everyone does read it but for more people orates goat highlight more work than they need to do for others and I think making sure that you are in a position where you're able to properly understand what this book is trying to say is an important thing to do before picking it up as opposed to reading it to say that you have read it to get some kind of personal growth brownie points.
I did also appreciate pulse reading this book that people who are referenced who are still living all we can accurately verify the status of have their pronounce including next to their names so that they can be refer to correctly by people who wish to talk about them later. I think it was a really nice small gesture of inclusion and tolerance that is not often seen in books, although is most commonly in books discussing identity. I also quite like the fact that there are content warnings throughout this book and relevant chapters and subtitles within the book so that if you need to skip passages you can but it's done in such a way that you only have to skip the smallest amount of the book possible to avoid content you don't wish to see instead of having something just at the start of a chapter for a sentence right at the end of it it's these under 4-5 paragraphs in this section maybe move on to the next section but you could still read the rest of the chapter.
This book covers a variety of different topics in depth and isn't unafraid to hold a critical lens to not only to wider society but also things within the queer and black communities and how they treat black asexual people and how the intersection of these identity's just make it harder for people to find safe spaces. I did find interesting enough that the chapter titles were often a little bit colder and blunter than the way phrases things were phrased in the main text and could sometimes find it a little bit off putting; for example, the ‘unfit’ and ‘unhuman’ chapter titles. While there is more nuanced in the chapters themselves and everything is explained and fleshed out just felt a little bit how to understand and made me slightly tense and brace before reading them because I could feel that an attack was coming which did slightly lesson my enjoyment of reading the book I understand that that is ridiculously nit-picky thing to say but I personally feel that more positive titles could have been given more like affirmations as opposed to the putdowns because this book is a tough read as it is and having that that printed at the top of every page was not particularly pleasant. I understand that this book is not talking about pleasant things and is about the struggles that people face I and that is going to lead to some discomfort but sometimes I feel like putting comfort for the sake comfort is not necessary especially as by reading this book you're showing some willingness to understand society better and make changes the main text itself is often filled with lots of affirmations that I've highlighted because some of these descriptions and quotes are highlights or key points but I think all worth keeping around once I finished reading the book.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this book and I'm going to pick up a physical copy in the future I would recommend that everybody reads it, as my biggest problem is what the chapters are called as opposed to anything of actual consequence. but please make sure that you are ready to hear what it has to say before you start Otherwise there is no point I will definitely be giving this book multiple re readings overtime so that I can fully appreciate what is going what is being said and charge make appropriate changes in my own life to make the world a better place and do my part in changing the way we think as a society to make it a kind of place for everybody.