On paper, it sounds simple. People who are asexual don't experience sexual attraction.

But as today's guest, Angela Chen talks about, asexuality is complex and encompasses a rather

broad range of experiences. Asexuals, also known as ace or ACEs, can feel repulsed by sex, they can feel indifferent to it, and they can also enjoy sex.

Now, I'll be completely honest.

These are all things I did not know until getting introduced to Angela and her work.

She is the author of Ace, What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, The Meaning of Sex.

We originally spoke last year when her book came out,

and it really expanded how I think not only about sex,

but what it means to be queer.

So I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

And from The Advocate magazine in Partnership with Glad, I'm Jeffrey Masters, and this is

LGBTQ and A with Angela Chen.

I think for me, my biggest takeaway, and it sounds obvious in hindsight, but my biggest takeaway

is how many different ways there are to be asexual. And I hate to say it, but I did not know

that it was this umbrella term that encompasses such a broad range of experiences. Do you find

that that is a common misconception? It is so common.

And you know, there's part of me that's like, come on everyone. Like, you know, it's been a while.

Like, we should be caught up. But there's this other part of me that is so, so sympathetic.

And I think some of it has to do with language, right? Because asexual, it's not a word someone made up. You know, people already have associations

with it. So it's just not intuitive that you would call someone who maybe has positive

sexual experiences asexual, right? Just on a semantic level, people are like, what does that mean?

So I totally understand why people would not understand as an umbrella term, would not intuitively know that there's such

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