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.

I was first introduced to this book on the podcast "Sounds Fake But Okay".
I immediately knew I needed to read it. Although asexuality is still underrepresented in books and media, I've still managed to grow tired of reading and re-reading the same basic facts, perspectives, and experiences. THIS BOOK GAVE ME KNEW LIFE. I highlighted EVERYTHING. I sat with sentences for hours. There was so much to think about, accept, and explore. I'm grateful for Sherronda J. Brown's experience and perspective, and I can't wait to share this book with an Asexual Group (part of the online community: Queer Christian Fellowship) starting tomorrow! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

It’s one of those books on which you want to highlight every single sentence. Sherronda Brown does not talk down to her reader, and just jumps head-first into the illogic of compulsory sexuality. I almost gave myself a whiplash nodding along. I am unsure how to describe this book. I would exhort everyone who is interested in unlearning whatever nonsense social conditioning and pop culture have taught us about human sexuality to read this book.

(Review copy from NetGalley)

Sometimes being asexual (and in my case, aromantic) can feel very lonely, for reasons perhaps obvious but which I will elaborate on in a moment. In particular, it feels like we are usually an afterthought when it comes to research about queer people and sexuality. I know that’s not entirely the case, though, and am always looking to broaden my knowledge about those who study and write about asexuality. So of course I leaped at the chance to read Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown. Not only does it discuss the ways in which our society privileges allosexual people and pairings, but it also challenges some of my understandings as a white person, getting me to think about the intersections of racism and acephobia.

The book comprises twelve chapters (plus a foreword, introduction, and afterword). Each chapter explores a different dimension of compulsory sexuality, which is a term Brown uses to build on top of the more well-known compulsory heterosexuality, which is the idea that social pressures encourage and reward heterosexual expressions of love and desire and punishes those who deviate from that norm. In uplifting voices on the asexual spectrum and research into asexuality, Brown wants to emphasize that beyond compulsory heterosexuality, there is a wider idea that sex itself is a requirement for full admittance into the human experience. Hence, compulsory sexuality: moving the gatekeeping goalposts so that queer people are OK as long as they’re having sex with someone, but if you don’t actually care all that much about sex … well, that is just a bridge too far!

This privileging of sex as a determiner of identity has long bothered me, and I’m glad more people are calling it out. Your sexual orientation is whom you’re attracted to, not who you do, if you know what I mean. Yet even in queer spaces, the performance of sex and sexuality often become more important than the underlying attraction. Brown argues that this is inherently exclusionary of ace people:

In order for asexuality to be understood and recognized as the queer identity that it is, sex acts and sexualization would first have to be removed from the center of dominant conceptions of queer identity.

This can be a touchy subject among queer rights activists, and understandably so. A great deal of the queerphobia lobbed our way these days comes in the form of accusations that we are predatory, as the recent co-opting of groomer by far-right activists demonstrates. I get why allosexual queer people are very invested in celebrating non-normative sex and sexuality in a healthy, sex-positive way. Yet I appreciate that Brown is unyielding on this point:

> Hyperfocus on queer sex and sex roles is a direct result of the oversexualization of queerness as a means to construct it as nothing more than sexual deviance and also to reassert heteronormative gender roles within queer relations….

That is to say, the way our mainstream society oversexualizes/hypersexualizes queer people is an intentional form of controlling and minimizing our queerness as a political and personal identity. It is a radical act, therefore, to reposition our queerness along those axes—and in doing so, realigning allosexual queers and asexual queers.

Brown’s unrelenting grounding of asexuality in the history and politics of queer liberation is refreshing. She makes it clear that we have always been here, always been a part of queer movements. It’s gratifying to see it all spelled out this way in black and white, for so often, asexual exclusion takes the form of asexual erasure. This is a book that is determined to make us feel seen.

Then we have the way Brown discusses how compulsory sexuality overlaps and interlocks with anti-Black racism, especially misogynoir, along with fatphobia. She relates well-known stereotypes of Black people, such as the Jezebel, Mammy, Mandingo, etc., to compulsory sexuality, demonstrating how white supremacy has long set up a correlation between hypersexualization and race (at least in the eyes of white people). Hence, Black asexual people face additional challenges that white asexual people like myself don’t because they also carry the burden of numerous racist stereotypes. Something I really like about Brown’s presentation of these ideas is the way she works them into every chapter, truly ensuring that this important element receives thorough examination instead of, say, a token chapter like it might be given in another scholar’s work.

Indeed, while I would have read this book even if it was solely about asexuality, the intersectional component is what truly got me excited. As a white person, it’s important to me that I understand not just the privilege I have in terms of how society treats me but also the ways in which our society has shaped my very thinking. Brown does not mince her words:

> What is true of whiteness in every space, even in “progressive” and “inclusive” spaces, is that it will always work to create some form of exclusivity as a means to reassert white superiority. Therefore, white asexuals often claim asexual queerness as a property, just as whiteness itself is claimed as a property, as a space that others are barred from entering into.

I’m being called out—and I appreciate it. I think this is one of the most pressing challenges that white queer activists face right now, i.e., acknowledging how we inadvertently work against the overall cause for liberation by refusing to acknowledge the presence of race and role of racism in our spaces. This book is a direct challenge to any claims on asexuality as a bulwark of whiteness and white supremacy. While we white asexuals might not be intentionally perpetuating those ideas, we have grown up with them and internalized them. So this book, in addition to validating us, will challenge us in the best possible ways.

And Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is so validating! The older I get, the more that compulsory (hetero)sexuality bothers me. I used to think that I had escaped it, having grown out of the dating-heavy period of my twenties wherein all my peers seemed to be hooking up and then shacking up. I thought that once I reached the refuge of my thirties, I could start my inevitable evolution into the “cool spinster aunt,” the friend who would take your kids for a night when you wanted to fuck, the perpetual bachelorette sipping tea on her deck, ready when you called to vent about your partner. That was supposed to be my life!

But I am realizing that compulsory sexuality will continue to stalk me through my decades, evolving as I evolve yet ever present. Nowadays it’s the gentle but hollow caress of loneliness as I watch more of my peers pair off and embark on a new phase of their lives that I have opted out of. (Brown introduced me to chrononormativity, coined by Elizabeth Freeman, to identify this idea that our lives should unfold along a particular trajectory as determined by social and cultural norms.) I have no desire to have a partner of any kind, to have children of my own; I enjoy living by myself—yet I live within a society that is constantly telling me such a state is unnatural, pitiable at best and deviant at worst.

Please believe me, my allosexual readers, when I say that you don’t truly understand how much of our world is built upon this assumption that sex and sexual attraction are required and normative. You don’t. It isn’t just the idea that our society itself has become over-sexualized, the so-called “raunch culture” that other books I’ve read have tried to unpack. It goes so much deeper than that, intersecting, as Brown notes, with forces like white supremacy. For us asexuals, it’s a world that holds us at arm’s length, misunderstanding or mistrusting us.

But maybe if you read this book, you can get a glimpse into my world. Truly the most fulfilling part of this book for me is Brown’s unapologetic tone. Early on she calls out how we asexual writers often attach disclaimers and qualifiers to our statements: oh, some ace people masturbate; some of us choose to get married or even have sex; some of us might even enjoy sex! Partly we do this because the asexual spectrum is incredibly diverse, ranging from people who experience zero sexual attraction, like myself, to people whose attraction fluctuates based on factors ranging from time to connection to someone. But we also do this because of internalized acephobia and this idea that we need to make ourselves more palatable to allosexual readers, reassure you that we are actually Just Like You! Brown recoils from this, as do I (though I freely admit I am guilty of acceding to the pressure to do this in my blog posts), and it endeared me to her writing immediately.

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is not just a succinct and edifying work of Black asexual scholarship: it’s an unyielding assertion of the belongingess of asexuality in our society and sociology. Not only does this book make me feel seen, but it makes me feel valued and recognizes my humanity. It centres me in a way that many queer conversations do not, even when they are inclusive of me. If you have any interest in a more scholarly read about sex and sexuality in our cultures, you need to read this. I received an eARC via NetGalley and North Atlantic Books, but I’ve already ordered a copy from my indie bookstore.

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is a book discussing what it means to be asexual, but also how it intercrosses with the questions of race, and what it means in that context. The book is focused on the US specifically, and it centers on the Black asexual experience. The book explores various topics, from the concept of a-spec people not being 'queer enough', to the sexualization of Black people, and subsequently how being both in the world that wants to deny you visibility on all of those matters looks like.

The book's strong point is in truth its intersectionality, in consideration of the overlap of the two often intentionally overlooked. It provides a very unique perspective and presents many things people outside of those identities would probably not consider. I am white, allosexual, and not from the US, so this was very fascinating to read, as there are truly many things I didn't know. I don't think this would have been an easy starting point if you know nothing about any of these identities (the one I knew most about is asexuality), but there are plenty of resources at the end of the book, and I think this book is definitely one you should read if you are educating yourself on these topics.

The writing style was clear and this book was truly well-researched, it is clear how much work was put into it. As I mentioned, it talks about plenty of topics that are often talked about separately but put together like this, it is obvious how connected they actually are. There is talk about history, and how racism, and its view of Black bodies, have shaped the 'norm', and how tied with racism societal expectations still are. All that combined with how a-spec people at large are considered 'other' and outside of the usual, shows how invisible Black asexuals are. The talk of compulsory sexuality, in general, is something I've considered many times but never knew how to contextualize, and I thought this book explored it extremely well.

I would highly recommend this book if these topics interest you - I think it's highly informative and incredibly researched and written. I did mention it is centered on the US, so the political and cultural aspect is that one (this is not a critique, the book claims exactly that) - but I think there are good points to consider even on the wider scale, even if you are living somewhere else.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review!

- REFUSING COMPULSORY SEXUALITY not only digs deeper into how asexuality is viewed and why it is often rejected by allosexual people, it also shows clearly how acephobia is closely intertwined with many other social constructs, from racism to capitalism.
- This book is quite academic and took me awhile to get through, but it's more than worth it to devote a chunk of time to it. Brown has written a seminal work here, and I think scholars, educators, and thinkers will be referring to it for a long time to come.

I'm fairly newly out as ace and learned SO MUCH from this. At times it's a kind of hefty read with a lot of academic resources and such in it, but it's helped me understand how our sex obsessed society and racism go hand in hand, and how that can be changed. Can't wait to pick up a copy of this.

I've noticed quite a few books coming out this year around asexuality and the asexual spectrum. This is a completely different take, and a much-needed one! Author Sherronda J. Brown goes beyond simply defining asexual identities, or even describing personal Black asexual experience, and instead approaches the topic from the lens of how compulsory sexuality is harmful along intersecting axes of anti-Blackness, misogyny, and acephobia. Brown presents asexuality not as an identity alone, but as a lens.

I found this approach refreshing, as Brown flips the common script of "why are you ace-spectrum people the way you are?" This is a challenge to the demand of the normative gaze: as the author states, "We don't have to perfectly understand Black asexuality to make way for it." But Brown also broadens the scope of inquiry, essentially saying: look at how society is fucking everything up—you wouldn't even ask that question if you didn't normalize investment in a particular understanding of race, gender, and sexuality.

Brown shows how compulsory sexuality as a system is bound up in compulsory cisheteronormativity, as well as white supremacy, and how asexuality is just one of the things viewed as a threat under its reign (alongside, for example, blackness, queerness, and feminism). Readers who have experienced marginalization and are not themselves on the ace spectrum are thus likely to find connections they hadn't considered in this text, and to broaden their understanding of how sexuality and desire operate and how they intersect with oppression.

Readers familiar with a womanist lens, for example, will be familiar with the discussions around anti-Blackness and misogynoir in particular, but the asexual lens adds an additional layer. Brown digs into, as one example, the complexities of how compulsory sexuality, inextricably blended with white supremacy, both encourages white men to tie their masculinity to fetishization of Black women and leads white sympathizers to fetishize Blackness when we attempt to participate in racial justice struggles, rather than practicing a true ethic of care.

Brown historically roots Jezebel and Mammy stereotypes and then considers the double bind of Black asexual women and femmes, whose experience is erased by hypersexualization but who also risk playing into into the misogynoir of the Mammy stereotype when claiming an asexual identity. While Black girls are typically "adultified" and sexualized, risking sexual violence from a young age, those who fall on the ace spectrum are also infantilized, seen as incapable of full maturity without meeting cisheterormative milestones. This "rock and a hard place" characterization, which ultimately erases Black asexual women’s experience, is also part of a broader practice of using sexuality to both humanize and bestialize: punishment and ostracizing come whether one is having the "wrong" kind of sex or not having it at all.

Just as Black women and femmes in general experience racism from white feminists and misogyny within male-dominated Black communities, Brown highlights asexual exclusion from queerness, Blackness, and normative ideas of gender. Brown shows how this exclusion is often based on erroneous assumptions: that asexuality isn't a vector of discrimination and violence, for example, or that asexual people are somehow straight by default or don’t understand our own experience. But Brown’s arguments also illustrate potentials for solidarity, and the importance of intersectional awareness in all of these overlapping communities.

This book offers a particularly nuanced consideration of sexual self-determination and agency, through considering how these rights are denied to a range of different people under the norms of white supremacy. Brown compares "Female Viagra," for example, to anti-queer conversion therapy, and digs into how the medical establishment's framing of "low libido," particular among women, is decidedly not neutral, both centering masculinity and pathologizing varying experiences of desire. While ace-spectrum folks experience particular harm here, women's desire in general is seen as "outside the norm" of spontaneous desire (more commonly found in men), let alone the additional layer of a racist medical establishment for Black women and non-binary folks.

A comprehensive history of "impotence" further reveals how “medical science” gets tangled up with harmful norms and beliefs including gender normativity, the myth of queer women "just not being satisfied by the right person" yet, and a general pathologizing of sexual variance. The narratives of impotence and low libido allow for the erasure of asexual women and non-binary folks from history, as our actual desires and interests are ignored in favor of treating authentic experience as a medical problem. Through this historical treatment Brown shows how normative sexuality, defined as white and "civilized," excludes all Black folks, all queer folks, and of course everyone on the asexual spectrum.

Threads of solidarity with trans folks are especially obvious in the medical discussion, given the shared challenges of framing experience as an identity vs. a disorder, and the way both gender non-conformity and asexuality are seen as threats to fragile masculinity. There’s a connection with the saviorism of particularly toxic strains of feminism like those espoused by TERFs or Anita Bryant, where gender essentialism is used as a bludgeon to protect "real women" from the threat of lesbianism or asexuality. And from a cultural lens Brown points to how ace-spectrum characters, like lesbians and trans women, are often portrayed as villains to reinforce this narrative.

An anti-capitalist thread also runs throughout the book. I particularly appreciated, as a relationship anarchist on the ace spectrum, the discussions of chrononormativity and how ace folks' rejection of a normative timeline bound up in sexual and romantic relationships defies capitalist expectations of how we're supposed to contribute to the economy. Brown connects the rigidity of how capitalism expects us to organize our family structures to the rigidity of the workplace, and posits that lacking desire under capitalism is not so surprising, while also exploring how masculinity in particular gets tied to worker productivity through toxic narratives around sex.

Despite all the challenges, the picture Brown presents of Black asexuality also suggests tremendous possibility! Black ace-spectrum experience, especially that of Black women and nonbinary folks, clearly offers a site of resistance against the twisted logics of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. By framing the narrative with this level of complexity, engaging extensive academic evidence but also personal experience and the stories of other Black asexual folks, Brown shows what is possible and how consideration of those multiply marginalized along these axes demands revolutionary shifts in how we think about sexuality but also in how we imagine our collective futures more broadly.

From this space of possibility, Brown includes the direct voices of other Black ace-spectrum folks, as well as a beautiful love letter tot their peers. But I especially loved the chapter on the beloved hero of Black liberatory imagination, Octavia Butler. In considering how Butler presented herself during her life, Brown challenges the narrative that non-disclosure of sexual practices automatically suggests internalized homophobia and a closeted gay person. Instead, Brown opens up possibility for reading non-normative takes on love and relationship at face value.

This particularly struck me as a writer on the ace spectrum who experiences many facets of intimacy through worldbuilding and love of words, as I've always found Butler's description of her own preference for solitude and her relationship with her words deeply familiar. In my late 30s, I'm coming to accept that I meet many of the needs most people meet through relationship through reading and writing—and that there is, in fact, nothing missing in that. But it took a lot of development of my imaginative capacity to get there, given the weight of what's considered normal!

Reading about Butler again got me thinking about what I've termed "legible identity privilege" in the context of non-binary identity, and how that plays into the right "to be unknown and unknowable," as Brown terms it, in the context of asexuality. I also love that Brown digs into the idea of "single at heart" in the discussion of Butler, because this was a concept I understood even before I had the language of the ace spectrum to apply to myself, and I’ve noticed many ace-spectrum folks resonating with similar discussions. I see this concept showing up as well in my approach to solo polyamory, another potential connection for solidarity.

While I was initially a little challenged by Brown's heavy focus on those who do not have any interest in sexual intimacy, and I think some ace-spectrum readers who are familiar with the split attraction model may be similarly challenged, it’s clear that this choice to focus on those most harmed by cultural norms is rhetorically effective.. Since the goal of this book isn't to educate allosexuals, this distinction may not be as important, and as Brown points out, focusing too heavily on the range of possibility within the spectrum often has the unintended consequence of reassuring allosexuals that we can be palatable by their standards, leaving sex-averse folks in the lurch.

One thing I found myself reflecting on in this context is how "desire" itself isn't always a clear term. Desire for intimacy is much broader than the experience of sexual desire, let alone attraction, and we don’t often make room for this. I remember as a younger person having this sense from media representations that someone would eventually come along and "awaken" my desire in a more normative way, which is obviously super fucking toxic, playing into some of the violent viewpoints Brown describes in both queer and heteronormative contexts. And also, I think part of the challenge was that I didn't have language for how my own desire was valid exactly as it was, that it got to "count" as desire, and didn’t require the additional component of sexual attraction to be valid.

As is likely obvious, I would recommend the hell out of this book to pretty much anyone, but especially folks who are interested in justice and liberation and haven't deeply considered how asexuality threads into that picture. As Brown writes, "A world that allows for Black asexuals to be seen as possible, to live more freely in our asexuality, would also be a revolution for all others racialized, gendered, and queered. Such a world requires us to combat white supremacist ideologies and the very idea of 'human.'"

This book is the perfect resource for those looking for a more academic book on asexual studies in the US.
In 12 succinct chapters, Brown lays out their thesis, definitions, and arguments that show how much sexuality has shaped society, how sex interacts with gender, race, disability, and queerness, and how US history has influenced the modern understanding of relationships and more. As they state themselves: asexuality is not prescriptive of a behaviour, it's a tool.

They are very upfront about the (limited) scope of her work which is helpful for any further research one might be interested in while making any analysis she does make stand on a strong foundation. I would add that there is a third axis that plays a strong role, it's focused on those socialzed as women and the patriarchy. It
Some of the topics explored show the (de)sexualization of Black bodies during chattel slavery and hows those ideas still persist, in modern porn titles, for example; sexual trauma and its use to control and gatekeep identities; chrononormativity and the infantilization of marginalized people (not limited to asexuals); capitalists incentives and more.
It's packed with sources, historical texts and quotes and there is a lot to dive into in each chapter. I do sometimes wished Brown had included some potential limits or criticism of their own analysis (e.g. how much whiteness is in the definition of man/woman when many other cultures and races have defined those roles on similar lines? Or what it might mean if HSDD/FSAD were no longer diagnosed - and some people still wanted help from it?) it's a wealth of concise information and the undertones clearly show that there are ways to combat this current issue - to the benefit of everyone.

I found some chapters easier to read than others - the writing is dense and it does not have the more casual writing style of other ace nonfiction but if you take your time, it's absolutely worth your while.

this was a complete and complexe piece, and yet it was really enlightning. i recommend reading it after you have a few knowledge of the asexuality spectrum. as a queer person it is a pleasure to read and as a heteronormative person it is interesting to understand the nuances of asexuality. reading this book as for a queer woc it is amazing, it shows you the power of representation and how it matters

This was book was SO GOOD. I normally don't get all riled up over nonfiction books, but this book was absolutely phenomenal and I want everyone to read it. Sherronda J. Brown does an incredible job with this and their ability to weave and make sense of all of these interconnecting concepts is just fantastic. This book touches on so many things but I never felt overwhelmed by any of it, I honestly couldn't stop reading it. The main connections that are focused on are those between compulsory sexuality, white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, and Blackness. I found myself completely blown away by the relationship between all of these topics (and more); things that had never even crossed my mind but made so much sense when explained by Sherronda.

I view this as a bit of a "deep dive" into asexuality, compulsory sexuality, and all the topics mentioned above, and how these things infiltrate pretty much every aspect of our lives, probably in a lot of ways we don't even realize until we examine them more deeply. This book is an incredibly well-researched look into our society as a whole and how individuals who go against the "norm" have been demonized and ostracized for centuries. As well as drawing the focus onto Black asexuals and how the history of racism, sexualization, and misogynoir strongly impact them and have rendered them almost invisible to general society and to the LGBTQIAP+ community. Racism has historically and currently been a problem in LGBTQIAP+ spaces and I thought this book did a wonderful job addressing and exploring this.

This is truly one of the best nonfiction books I have ever read, and probably just one of the best books I've ever read period, and I would recommend this to literally everyone.

4.5 stars

*eARC received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

this was an excellent read! took me a while but that's mostly just the headspace i was in when reading it. at times it can be a little bit Ace 101, but i imagine that would serve as really good context for those less familiar with asexuality. the author unpacks really well how absolutely pervasive compulsory sexuality is in every area of society, namely capitalism and white supremacy, but also contemporary conceptions of queerness, and why that damages everyone. i also really liked the use of contemporary examples, such as the impact of COVID on birth rates and also race relations, to illustrate how compulsory sexuality affects many, many areas of our lives. additionally, there was a variety of really interesting (a)sexuality history, and it was really wonderful to learn about the history of asexual identity in one chapter, and also a discussion of potentially asexual historical figures.
i greatly appreciated the use of content warnings per section, as not every section features the same potentially triggering content.
i'd recommend this to everyone tbh - whether you're an aspec person who wants to understand more about asexuality as an identity and how it is affected by racism, or a non-asexual person who wishes to understand how asexuals can be better included in queer liberation.

Wow, this book was excellent. It kind of blew my mind, actually, and I have so many highlights.

Basically, it does what it says on the box. It is ALL about intersectionality, and specifically the intersectionality between compulsory sexuality, Blackness, white supremacy, and the cisheteropatriarchy. So many of the things Brown draws attention to are things I had never even thought of, the ways that racism, capitalism, and the cisheteropatriarchy work together to force sexuality on folks, especially folks socialized as women.

It was really interesting to see how asexuality has been treated throughout history, from frigidity, to feminists, etc. And it's interesting to see how many of these damaging stereotypes still persist today, especially in terms of romance novels. How often do we see the frigid spinster, the "older" single woman, who magically meets "the right one" and she is magically cured and is hot and horny. These are things that I hadn't seen as ace-phobic before, but that really are, but are such common tropes that we are all just used to them.

I honestly have so much that I want to say about this book. It was SO good. Quite dense, with a lot of jargon, but so, SO good. And also really important. Not only to see how being asexual goes against to much of our society and how we have all been socialized, but also how Blackness just makes all of this more so. How historical racism means that Black asexuals are invalidated and made invisible because of racist ideas of Black sexuality. I'm certainly not one to speak on that, not being Black, but it was incredibly interesting and eye opening to read about the ace experience through that lens.

This really isn't an introduction to asexuality, it is a critique of our current society and how it is all about compulsory sexuality, and that if you don't fall into that normative role, there's something wrong with you. If that sounds like something you would be interested in, I highly recommend this book.

This book was a lot. There’s no other way to describe my initial reaction to Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture. I don’t feel like stating or explaining my sexuality to justify my review in any way so let’s just say that I’m partially an own-voices reviewer.

My initial interest in the book stems from the fact that with this exploration of both Blackness and asexuality, the author offers a unique look at an intersection of two marginalised identities that the general public, as well as the humanities and sciences, have overlooked and continue to overlook for too long. It is certainly no easy feat to navigate two topics as fraught with prejudice, as othered as these two, but the author expertly manages to do so, drawing on the complicated and harmful history of science and medicine with female frigidity and lack of sexual desire, discussing the over- and undersexualisation of Black bodies and offering in-depth looks at the gatekeeping and acephobia aces/aros/… experience not only from outsiders but from other LGBTQI+ individuals.

Therefore, this book is PACKED. Chock-full of information, think-pieces backed by scientific sources, (science) journals and studies, and other writings on asexuality and queer studies, this book came across as a little overwhelming to me at times. And that’s even though I a) love reading non-fiction b) have what I’d call a solid base knowledge of the concepts of compulsory sexuality, heteronormativity, and systemic racism, and c) have read works in a similar style before (notably Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex and Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race). As a result, I was only able to read this book in batches, taking breaks in between the individual chapters so as not to read it without being overwhelmed.

The book is divided into 12 different chapters whose topics are now and then referred to again in later chapters but they are written in a way that you wouldn’t necessarily have to read them in chronological order to understand the points the author makes. The language the author uses is highbrow, direct, and non-fussy. In a way, this read like a scientific secondary source I’d use for one of my term papers. The style of the chapters often comes across as essay-like and they are all constructed similarly, with a ‘catchy’ introduction being followed by either a look at the current subject’s history or a presentation of stats and figures on which the author bases that chapter’s argument. Sometimes this can also take the look of the author reliving a two-page story of how redditors worked to bring down Wall Street stocks before getting to the point of the story.

At other times, their opening paragraphs looked like this:
“White supremacy is a slippery, dishonest adversary, setting the clock but never allowing the pendulum to swing freely. It bends time to its will to suit whatever ugly need it has. In this temporal distortion, Black children never exist. Guided by the hands of this two-faced clock, adultification takes root so that Black youth can be denied a childhood, instead being perceived and treated as if they are older than they really are—a perception based in anti-Black stereotypes and logics.”
Like, woah, this is only the chapter’s opening paragraph and already there is so much to unpack here. Not to mention that this seemingly jumps from topic to topic, not letting me have enough time to breathe before diving deeper into a complex subject that I found mentally challenging. It’s meant to be mentally challenging, I’m sure of that. Racism, compulsory (hetero)sexuality and the ways they intersect need to be challenged to achieve any kind of change. The author does challenge it, with every word they write but I’m wondering whether the writing style won’t put those readers off who have next to no basic knowledge of the subject matter. I persevered because I wanted to because I found it necessary to do so and frankly because it’s freaking important to expand one’s horizon. But will straight white people who are the one group most in need of a better understanding of LGBTQIA+/BIPOC experiences pick up this book? I doubt it but I hope I’ll be proven wrong.

Sherri das J. Brown’s Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture is – in many ways – a revelation. What might very well be the first cohesive work on Black asexuality, on the similarities Black and aroace people share, and on the way compulsory (hetero)sexuality works as a weapon to suppress queer and Black folks alike, this book is an eye-opener. Extremely well-researched and at once both informative, opinionated, and educating, this book will hopefully become a staple in asexuality/queer studies and serve as a fountain of both strength and wisdom for asexuals, aromantics, and anyone feeling bound by the oppressive shackles of compulsory (hetero)sexuality.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This was a very well researched book, and for the most part I think the author did a great job at presenting it. This does not necessarily focus on all of the different shades of asexuality though - in fact, the focus is mostly on those that choose to have no sex. It does expect the reader to have a basic grasp of the nuances and discourses around asexuality though, which was awesome for me (as an ace that has read a lot on the topic), but which might be more challenging for those new to the topic.

The book covers a great variety of theory and themes, but focuses in particular on how being asexual intersects with being black - something I know little about due to being white. This perspective is so so valuable to share due to the practically non-existant representation!
The variety of topics covered did leave me with a wish for more depth at times though -especially with how they connect to asexuality. You can resonate to this yourself of course, but I think the author should have been a bit clearer.

What I really liked was how the author used theory in a way that made it easy and interesting to follow the arguments. There were also a great focus on history and how asexuality has been considered throughout the years, and I felt like I learned a lot of new information! Some was also very funny (in like, a sad way); for example, there was this one guy that talked about how asexual women were going to literally end the human race eventually. Like yes, that's exactly what I'm planning on doing lmao.

All in all, a very good and important read, and one that I think everyone should read! I think it would also go particularly well with Angela Chen's Ace, which I think is more of an introductory book on the subject, while this one digs deeper!

This is one of the best and in depth researches into Asexuality that I've ever read. I'm not even really sure how to review this one. It's written and structured like a research paper, but is straightforward and easy to understand. She is inclusive in her gender language but talks especially about sexual oppression and violence, even with allosexual women; societal norms; acephobia (how being asexual is seen as unhuman or that something must be wrong with you); and especially what this means for Black people, whose sex is already often criminalized and fetishized. This is a great resource both for asexual people and for anthropology in general, and I think Sherronda brings up a lot of great points. Definitely recommend, especially for people in the queer/ace community.

Thanks to netgalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

Though Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is written through the perspective of a Black asexual, don't make the mistake of assuming that this book is only for aces. Compulsory (hetero)sexuality harms us all, and Sherronda J. Brown peels it apart layer by layer, encouraging readers to push back. Being that both the Black and asexual communities exist on the outskirts of the larger LGBTQ sphere, Brown is in the unique position of being able to see and call out all the bull in a world built on the foundation of compulsory sexuality.

This title is remarkably well written and researched, and even though I received a digital ARC, I have preordered a physical copy. I can't wait to go back through and highlight some of the particularly hard-hitting passages.

Amazing to have this information finally! I resonated with so much of this, and this is. a much-needed contribution to the field of asexuality studies-- the perspective from a person of color, and all the intersectional layers, is a voice that needs to be heard. a work like this brings up important questions on how American society views sexuality and intimacy. I'm glad this exists and that I had an opportunity to read it!

This was an insightful perspective on something so important. Asexuality is something that is so rarely explored, especially with intersectionality in mind.

This book does make the reader realise the difficulties of living without prejudice as an asexual person. It makes you realise how much of society is centred around sexuality.

Overall I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in educating themselves on asexuality!