Human Rights Campaign finds Aces face sharper declines in acceptance than other LGBTQ+ adults

Transcript

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here with my spouse Royce. Together we are The Ace Couple, and today we are talking about a recent Community Insight Report that was published by the Human Rights Campaign, which shows and is titled “Asexual Respondents Report Sharper Declines in Acceptance, Outness, and Visibility.”

Courtney: Now, our community’s own Yasmin Benoit did partner with the HRC on this analysis. So we always love seeing someone in the community being consulted when reports like this are put out. And I just want to take a little time today— it’s not an incredibly lengthy report, and we’ll talk a little bit about why that is also, the good along with the bad. So it probably won’t take us too long to get through. But there are some very interesting statistics here. Now, this report— is actually an analysis, a snapshot if you will, that is taken out of a much larger, more broadly queer survey.

Courtney: So the Human Rights Campaign Foundation puts out an annual LGBTQ+ community survey, and this analysis pertaining to asexual respondents is pulled from their 2025 report. I am extremely happy to see this awareness emphasized on a platform like the HRC, because to my knowledge, they have not exclusively published a paper with statistics pertaining to the asexual experience. I know, like a lot of these, uh, more broadly queer orgs, they may put out a little sort of ACE 101, a little bit of definitions, uh, but it’s always good to see facts and numbers now and then, especially because a lot of these larger queer orgs do seem to drop the ball a bit on asexual visibility, but also because a vast majority of the ace-centric surveys and statistics that we have tend to come from the UK.

Courtney: I know there are some from other countries, but we certainly need a lot more. Not only here in the US, but especially across the rest of the world. So it is great that they’re doing this, but I do want to mention the context of this being— this was not an ace-specific survey to begin with. I don’t think that makes the findings themselves irrelevant, but— as we look to the future, I personally would love to see more organizations like this one putting in the time and effort and funding and consulting members of our community in order to paint a clearer picture of our community’s experience and to give us more data points, especially— with the things going on in the US right now. Queer community as a whole is suffering. We are not having a good time over here. And that is reflected in this analysis.

Courtney: Of the nearly 10,000 LGBTQ+ adults who were surveyed for this original report, 4.7% of the respondents self-reported as asexual. Within that 4.7%, 16.9% identified only as asexual— that was the only queer identity that was selected— while 83.1% identified as asexual alongside one or more other identities. This is obviously very important context, but it also really highlights the need to have more asexual-specific surveys in order to really break down statistics with a larger sample size of aces who are trans, aces who are nonbinary, aces who are aromantic, depending on the focus of the survey, aces of color, disabled aces.

Courtney: These are things that of course our ace community survey attempts to capture, so by no means is nobody doing this work. But again, I think it would be wonderful if larger organizations could help us do some of this work and boost our visibility, which, as we’ll get into here in a moment, is going down.

Courtney: Now, if you want to refer back to this later, or if you want to just pull it up and follow along with us, we will put a link to this in our usual show notes on our website, or if you’re listening on YouTube, you can head down to the description box and find it there as well. So according to the HRC, asexual respondents stood out from LGBTQ+ adults overall. Respondents who identified as asexual reported sharper declines than LGBTQ adults overall across 3 measures within the analysis, those being acceptance, outness, and visibility. And I’ll go ahead and review the numbers here, but if you can, do pull up this survey just ’cause— if you are a visual person, seeing these graphs is pretty jarring, the difference in percentages on some of these metrics.

Royce: The report also isn’t terribly long, so it’s not an overwhelming amount of information to parse through.

Courtney: Oh, it’s a super breezy 3 pages. That’s why I said today’s episode is probably not gonna be very long. But in terms of acceptance, outness, and visibility, the report was asking for a comparison over the last 12 months. So your experience as a queer person, which included ace and allo participants, over the last 12 months, have you experienced more or less within these metrics.

Courtney: So if we start with acceptance, 29.7% of LGBTQ adults overall said that they are experiencing less acceptance this year than they were last. When we zoom in on the asexual respondents, 50.9%. The margins are a bit closer when it comes to outness. LGBTQ+ adults overall reported being less out at 47.5%, whereas asexual respondents reported in at 57.3% being less out within the previous 12 months. And our final metric being visibility. Being less visible is clocking in at the highest percentage for both demographics here. LGBTQ adults overall, 51.1% report feeling less visible. Aces, on the other hand, we once again have a higher percentage reporting at 63.7% being less visible.

Courtney: And the way they define visibility, ’cause that may seem a little more vague than— are you feeling more or less accepted, are you feeling— well, are you more or less out in your queer identity. Less visibility, um, they aren’t necessarily here talking about like media representation because that’s the thing we talk a lot about, not only on this podcast but in the ace community, but it is talking about day-to-day life as an ace person, as a queer person. Are you wearing pride symbols? Are you displaying queer-affirming items? Which does make sense if you are, as an individual or as a community on the whole, feeling like you have less acceptance. It does follow that you are going to be less out, you are going to be less visible.

Courtney: Taken together, the report says, these findings suggest that respondents who identified as asexual were navigating a particularly difficult social climate. And we also get a very interesting story if we zoom in a little closer on just the ace respondents. Since we don’t have a particularly lush sample of intersectional ace identities, uh, to compare and contrast because this was not originally an ace-focused survey to begin with, uh, the way they break it down here is differences by asexual identity comparing those who reported ace being their only queer identity versus aces plus other identity.

Royce: And with the other identities there, are they just looking at sexual orientation? Is it gender identity? I assume we’re not getting into like ace umbrella micro labels.

Courtney: We’re not getting into ace micro labels, no, but both. It could be, um, homoromantic asexual, it could be asexual and trans, asexual and nonbinary. So it’s really just ace is the only label I reported versus all the other aces who reported two or more queer identities. This one I find very interesting because the largest difference in percentages here is in less acceptance. 46.1% of aces who identify with other queer labels reported less acceptance versus the ace-only camp, 71.7% reported less acceptance. That is a huge difference. And I do feel like that would likely come as a shock to— non-aces to the either broadly queer community or, you know, the straight cis allies of the world. I feel like most people would assume more identities equals less acceptance, but that’s clearly not always the case.

Courtney: However, this is the only one of our 3 metrics where aces only did have an overrepresentation as opposed to the aces plus other identities. In terms of outness, 48% of the aces only report feeling less out— feeling less out? No, being less out, versus aces with other identities reporting in at 60.9% being less out. Visibility for the aces only, 57.5% are less visible versus our aces with other identities, 66.7%.

Courtney: Now my personal experience within the last 12 months has been an interesting one. I’m not less out— visibility, uh, only on a technicality, only because we stopped doing social media. We still have our podcast, so we’re not not visible, but that is far more of a personal life satisfaction and a hatred of social media and online discourse than it is feeling compelled to be less visible. So I tried to really think about, with that context in mind, have I felt less acceptance in my own personal experience, which is not in any way representative of the community as a whole, I hope should go without saying. Although I’m gonna say it anyway. Actually, yes.

Courtney: While I was more present and active on social media, I did say from time to time that all of the acephobia, or nearly all of the acephobia I was receiving, at least for a window of a few years there, were almost exclusively from the online world. Social media comments, nasty emails, comments and the like. And during that window of time, I wasn’t in my day-to-day, real-world physical life experiencing acephobia. So one would think, perhaps, if you leave social media under those circumstances, all of a sudden you’re going to be leading a, a joyfully acephobia-free life. And that has not so much been the case, actually.

Courtney: Quite unfortunately, as of the last several months, I have found myself in rooms of other people, unfortunately predominantly queer people, where blatantly acephobic things have been said at like staggering rates. And it is always a very different experience because years ago, I mean, we’re talking 10, 15 years ago, when general public have maybe never even heard of asexual before, a lot of the acephobia was more ignorance than malicious. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it didn’t hurt to hear or see or encounter, but— there is something deeply upsetting about being in an otherwise queer-affirming space with people who claim to have at least a base-level understanding of asexuality and still say acephobic things. And say it with their whole chest. And sometimes double down on their original point if and when they’re called out on it by myself or another ace person.

Courtney: And because I am me, I’m not going to— stop going to those places. I have a relatively thick skin for these things. I have been around the block. But every time I do hear those, especially if it is in a much larger group setting with people who I don’t know all of them very well, I’m always wondering, these younger people in the room, are any of them ace? In, in this particular setting over the last several months, is there someone who has come on one occasion who is ace and has heard something like this and then left and we never hear or see from them again. Those are the kinds of people that I think of when I hear these comments.

Courtney: Because those are the kinds of people who are going to retreat back into the closet, back into the deck, and maybe aren’t going to wear their ace ring anymore, or an ace button, or put an ace sticker on their laptop. And I am gonna be curious to see how it unfolds. Because we have often spoken at a larger scale about how societally transphobia and acephobia often go hand in hand. And if you have not listened to those episodes, please do. I think they’re very eye-opening if you haven’t witnessed this for yourself yet.

Courtney: But it almost seems to me, in my personal sphere, where politically speaking, the trans community is most heavily under attack. It almost seems to me within these queer-affirming spaces, as transphobia gets worse, there’s kind of a higher level of other queer people throwing aces under the bus. And I don’t like to see that. I don’t like to hear that. I get why, at a societal level, the straight people, the transphobes, the acephobes. I get why those go hand in hand. But that to me could be one of these reasons why ace people for whom ace is their only identity have such a massively high percentage on less acceptance. 71.7% less accepted.

Courtney: Because the unfortunate fact of the matter is, in— real life scenarios, real day-to-day personal community, it feels like finding a safe community of other ace people— very difficult to do. These communities are few and far between. Sometimes they are so few and far between that they are downright inaccessible to a lot of aces. So the next best thing is to try to find a broadly queer-affirming group, and if we aren’t accepted in those groups, what are we to do? Whereas if there is, say, someone who is both gay and ace, or both ace and trans, perhaps they’re still able to connect with some sort of supportive community for the other identities that they possess. And maybe they aren’t connecting on an ace level, but they can find— trans community and gay community often easier than they can find ace community.

Royce: Well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out in looking at this, because you are looking at the less acceptance here, which is 25 points higher, ace-only.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: But the other two things in this graph are less out and less visible, both of which are higher for the ace and other identity group. So is this a combination of people who are only ace are not feeling accepted, people who have other identities are feeling acceptance for their other identities, but at the same time are feeling like they can’t fully be out amongst queer people.

Courtney: That wouldn’t surprise me based on my experience.

Royce: They can be out with their more well-known, more accepted identities, but they’re not able to reveal their ace identities.

Courtney: That would not surprise me in the least.

Royce: And that would, that would track with those numbers, I believe.

Courtney: ’Cause yeah, in a lot of the rooms where I have found myself lately, trans camaraderie in abundance. If someone who is trans and ace walks into that room, I could see someone having a wonderful time with a large group of queer people, many of whom are trans, and then they start saying acephobic things. And if you call them out on the acephobic things, sometimes they’ll double down on it. So yeah, that, that, that is a very real possibility for potentially some of these survey respondents. It’s certainly what I have observed lately.

Courtney: And I don’t want this to dissuade people from trying to find community because all communities are different. I have found perfectly wonderful accepting communities, and I have found ones that are much worse than the ones I’m finding myself in right now. So, there’s always a scale, everyone’s gonna have a different level of tolerance for that. But if you have a true desire for community and a safe enough mental and emotional state to have the capacity to do this, I think we should be mindful of trying to buck the trend of less acceptance must mean be less out, be less visible. When we lose one of these metrics, they all start going down.

Courtney: And— if those of us who can, notice, take note of the fact when acceptance is going down. It’s important to be aware of these things, but can we start pushing back on that? Can we continue to be just as out? Can we continue to be just as visible? It might feel like a horrible time to be doing this right now, but it is important for the long-term visibility and health of our community.

Courtney: So that’s really just about all we had for the survey. I didn’t read it verbatim, so you can read for yourself if you’re more interested. There, there are a couple other little, uh, anecdotes here about how, for example, 58% of the asexual respondents are also trans or gender expansive. None of that is a surprise to me, and if you’re a regular listener of this podcast, I don’t think that will be a surprise to any of you. We’ve talked about trans and non-binary and agender identities within the ace spectrum and the high percentages that are represented there.

Courtney: So I do thank the HRC and Yasmin Benoit for partnering with them for giving us an additional little focus and a boost of visibility at a time where our visibility is going down drastically. Uh, but I do also encourage them and other organizations like them to help us move the needle forward even more and take this snapshot and— delve deeper with it.

Courtney: But that is all we have for you today, so as always, we are going to leave you off with today’s featured Marketplace vendor, Alex Puffles Studio. This Marketplace vendor says, “I make anthro art, some human, and have two books for sale.” The links to find Alex Puffle’s studio is gonna be, once again, show notes on our website or description box on YouTube. If you are looking to commission some artwork, you can find the artist’s various sites. Uh, just a quick click on it, one of the first pieces I see— this appears to be a very cute fursona holding a demisexual flag.

Courtney: But what I love from this shop is the poetry book entitled Of Voids and Skulls. I have it right here and I will read the back cover for you. “Life and death, suffering and peace, loneliness and a search for purpose, internal turmoil and outward experiences. Each one of us goes through all these things. The difference is the lenses we look through. I hope these poems help you just like they helped me when writing them. Memento Mori.”

Courtney: I think my personal favorite poem in this book is one entitled The Hospital. And there’s another poem in here that I think will really resonate with a lot of our listeners. It’s called Who I Am, and it explores gender and all of the perplexing fluidity, um, or nuances that might come along with that and the complicated feelings, uh, that can arise. So once again, that marketplace vendor is Alex Puffle Studio. The author of Avoidance Skulls is Amanda Phillips, and you can find those links in all the usual places. As always, thank you all so much for being here, and we will talk to you all next time.