Asexual lives deserve more than a footnote
A magazine that celebrates desire also needs room for people who experience little or no sexual attraction. I want that to be part of how A GAY Mafia understands its community.
A new discussion paper from Outright International, Asexual People’s Human Rights, examines discrimination and exclusion affecting asexual people. DIVA brought the paper to readers’ attention on 26 October; Outright’s publication page is dated 23 October 2026.
The organisation says the work draws on input from Yasmin Benoit and ten asexual advocates from countries including Italy, Hungary, Kenya, India and Vietnam. It addresses experiences such as bullying, workplace harassment, pathologisation and conversion practices, and calls for more explicit inclusion in research, policymaking and queer organising.
Those are the report’s findings and priorities. They deserve careful reading, without turning particular surveys or focus groups into claims about every asexual person worldwide.
For me, the immediate question is closer to home: who feels welcome in the spaces we describe? A club, Pride celebration or community publication can make belonging seem dependent on a particular way of desiring. We can be more thoughtful than that.
I would like our coverage to leave room for friendship, romance, solitude and connection in their many forms. The paper offers a useful starting point for that conversation, with the people concerned at its centre.