Asexual geographies: the allosexualisation of space in Ireland

Abstract

This paper contributes towards the beginnings of asexual geographies, an area that has been largely overlooked within sexualities and queer geographies. Indeed, despite gradually increasing awareness of asexuality as a concept and identity, asexuality remains an underdeveloped area of academic research and is still widely misunderstood and invisible across society. Scholarship in the burgeoning field of asexuality studies has sought to redress this invisibility by exploring asexual people’s lives, identities, and experiences. Through these explorations, asexuality scholars have developed the concept of ‘compulsory sexuality’ to describe the ways in which social norms and practices assume that all people are sexual. However, within this growing field, the spatialities of asexuality and compulsory sexuality have yet to be fully developed. In this paper, I therefore aim to bring together work in geography and asexuality studies to introduce the concept of the allosexualisation of space. Drawing from qualitative interview data collected from seven asexual people living across Ireland, I examine the ways in which participants described feeling excluded, invisible, and/or out of place in a variety of spatial contexts – illustrating how spaces can come to reflect and co-produce the logic and assumptions of compulsory sexuality. In doing so, I argue that space matters to our understandings of asexuality and asexual people’s lived experiences, as well to the ways in which compulsory sexuality is manifest throughout our everyday lives. This paper thus contributes to beginning geographical discussions of asexualities, and extends emerging research on asexuality by introducing a geographical lens.

Keywords:

• Asexuality
• allosexuality
• compulsory sexuality
• Ireland
• LGBT+
• queer

Introduction

This paper contributes to beginning the discussions of asexual geographies, focusing on asexual people’s everyday experiences of space in Ireland. While awareness of asexuality as a concept and identity is slowly increasing, it remains widely overlooked within geographic research on sexualities (Browne and Brown 2016). This disciplinary silence is itself part of a broader academic trend wherein the ‘failure to imagine asexuality commonly marks the work of nearly all sexuality studies scholarship’ (Przybylo 2016, 187). Likewise, asexuality continues to be misunderstood and often invisible across society due to taken-for-granted assumptions surrounding the ‘naturalness’ and universality of sexual attraction (Brown 2022). The burgeoning interdisciplinary field of asexuality studies has begun to redress this invisibility, although scholarship exploring the spatial dimensions of asexuality has yet to be fully developed. As such, a key objective of this paper is to bring asexuality studies into conversation with geography – shedding light on an underexplored area of research and giving voice to asexual people’s often unheard perspectives while doing so.

Asexuality, along with other conceptualisations of sexuality, is not binary or fixed. Asexuality is thus often read as a spectrum that encompasses a range of different identities and experiences (Przybylo 2016). The term and identity label asexual, frequently shortened to ace, refers broadly to people who experience little to no sexual attraction (Brown 2022). The ace spectrum includes identities such as graysexual and demisexual, referring to people who rarely experience sexual attraction, or those who sometimes do, but only if a close emotional connection has first been formed (Copulsky and Hammack 2023). This terminology has largely been created by ace people themselves in online community spaces, such as the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) forums, to represent the complexities and nuances of their life experiences (Teut 2019). In viewing the ace community as a heterogeneous spectrum of plural asexualities (Przybylo 2016), I use the terms ‘ace’ and ‘asexual’ with the understanding that they each represent this diversity.

Allosexuality can be thought through identity and in contrast to asexuality – referring to regularly experiencing sexual attraction in ways that are widely presumed to be ‘natural’ or universal (Brown 2022). Societal norms and practices that assume and expect that all people are allosexual have been theorised through the concept of compulsory sexuality (Gupta 2015). In this paper, I use these ideas to introduce the allosexualisation of space, drawing from qualitative interview data collected from seven ace people living across Ireland in 2022. By exploring how participants described encountering the assumptions and expectations of compulsory sexuality throughout their everyday lives, I illustrate how different spaces can become allosexualised – that is, constructed in ways that reflect and co-produce the logic and norms of compulsory sexuality. I use the term ‘allosexualised’ (rather than ‘allosexual’) to emphasise that compulsory sexuality is not inherent to the ‘nature’ of these spaces, but rather (re)produced through the ways these spaces are constructed. I also hold ‘allosexualisation’ and ‘sexualisation’ as distinct concepts, in order to highlight how the structures of compulsory sexuality can be manifest and experienced spatially. Asexual perspectives provide important insights into how these concepts may sometimes overlap and at other times be disentangled (i.e. a sexualised space might, but need not necessarily reproduce the idea that all people do/should experience sexual attraction) – however, as I will return to in the conclusion, there is more to be done to fully consider the relationship between them.

I therefore contribute to scholarship in queer and sexualities geographies by not only exploring ace people’s everyday experiences of space, but also by considering how an asexual lens can expand geographic thinking around the interactions between space, sexuality, and sexual normativities. In doing so, I bring together and extend work in geography and asexuality studies by highlighting how space matters to our understandings of asexual people’s identities and lived experiences, as well as to our understandings of how compulsory sexuality is spatially manifest throughout our everyday lives.

In the sections that follow, I begin by discussing literature in geography and asexuality studies to consider how these fields can be brought into conversation with one another to explore the spatial dimensions of asexualities. I then turn to an overview of the research itself, outlining its methodology and setting in an Irish context. After this, I introduce the concept of the allosexualisation of space by examining participants’ experiences in relation to three major spatialities – employing a queer/feminist understanding of space as dynamic, relational, and continuously produced across a multiplicity of sites and scales (Knopp 2007). I start first with the national spatial imaginary of ‘Ireland’ to explore compulsory sexuality as constituted through both the shadow of a supposedly historic ‘Catholic Ireland’ and a ‘New Ireland’ post-Marriage Equality. I then narrow to everyday heterosexualised spaces to illustrate how everyday spatial manifestations of heteronormativity are mutually (re)constituted through the logic of compulsory sexuality. I then narrow further to queer social and community spaces to demonstrate how even spaces that disrupt normative imaginings of sexualities can still reproduce allosexualised spatialities. I conclude by discussing how these findings open up considerations of asexual geographies, extending work in both asexuality studies and queer/sexualities geographies.

Bringing together geography and asexuality studies

Sexualities and queer geographers have explored people’s diverse and spatialised experiences of sexuality and identity for over four decades. Drawing upon queer thinking that has understood sexualities as socially-constructed, unstable, and multiplicitous (Butler 1990; Foucault 1978; Sedgwick 1990), queer geographers have employed a performative understanding of sexuality as continually co-created and made through our location and relations in space (Brown, Browne, and Lim 2007; Johnston and Longhurst 2010). They have likewise approached space itself ‘queerly’ – building from feminist spatial theorising to explore the social processes and power relations that shape space’s ongoing construction and transformation at levels ranging from the intimate to the global (Knopp 2007). In doing so, they have demonstrated how spaces can be produced as sexed in ways that align with hegemonic societal values and ‘common sense’ understandings of sexuality (Bell and Valentine 1995; Browne and Brown 2016). For example, many everyday spaces such as homes, schools, offices, restaurants, and streets are routinely heterosexualised, (re)producing heteronormative assumptions and worldviews (Browne 2007; Hubbard 2008; Pascual-Bordas & Rodó-Zárate 2022; Valentine 1993a). This scholarship has illustrated how our collective imaginings of what constitutes ‘normal’ sexuality are thus both reflected in and continuously co-produced by the spaces that we encounter throughout our daily lives (Brown, Browne, and Lim 2007). However, even within a diverse and growing field exploring the spatialities and multiplicities of sexual lives, asexuality and asexual people’s lives remain largely unexplored. Despite this gap now being noted eight years ago (Browne and Brown 2016), little has been done by geographers since – save newly emerging scholarship such as Joe Jukes’ work exploring queer nonsexual geographies and theoretical possibilities at the intersections of geography and asexuality studies (Jukes 2024).

In contrast to the persisting invisibility of asexuality within queer geographies and in queer/sexualities studies more broadly, the developing field of asexuality studies has steadily grown over the last decade and a half (Przybylo and Gupta 2020). This expanding body of literature encompasses an array of interdisciplinary scholarship, including both theoretical work and empirical research on asexuality and the lives of ace people. Like queer geographers, many asexuality scholars have also built upon queer theorising to consider how asexuality can extend our understandings of normative imaginings of sex, sexuality and sexual attraction. This work has argued that many societies are not only organised around the regulatory forces of compulsory heterosexuality (Rich 1980), but also around the power structures, norms, and assumptions of compulsory sexuality (Emens 2014; Gupta 2015; Przybylo 2019; Brown 2022). Compulsory sexuality, as theorised in asexuality studies, refers to the taken-for-granted assumption that ‘all people are sexual,’ as well as ‘the social norms and practices that both marginalise various forms of non-sexuality… and compel people to experience themselves as desiring subjects, take up sexual identities, and engage in sexual activity’ (Gupta 2015, 132). Compulsory sexuality is therefore closely related to allonormativity, or the ‘worldview that assumes that all people experience sexual and romantic attraction’ (Mollet and Lackman 2022, 26), and the ‘practices whereby social structures expect and privilege sexual and romantic attraction and relationships – to the exclusion and erasure of asexual and aromantic people’ (Brandley and Spencer 2022, 2). While not all asexual people are aromantic (experiencing little or no romantic attraction), and vice versa, there are important connections between these communities in terms of their collective experiences and challenges they pose to normative understandings of sexuality and romance (Tessler 2023). Together, compulsory sexuality and allonormativity have thus been deployed by asexuality scholars to consider not only how they impact the lives of ace people, but also how they offer insights into our broader understandings of sexualities and intimacy, as compulsory sexuality and allonormativity are regulatory systems that affect everyone (Gupta 2015).

Asexuality scholars have illustrated how the logic of compulsory sexuality marginalises and invisibilises ace people through the taken-for-granted belief that all people are allosexual (Foster 2017; MacNeela and Murphy 2015). Their work has shown how this can happen in multiple different ways. For example, sex is frequently viewed as ‘mandatory’ within heteronormative culture (Brown 2022), because heteronormativity’s foundational logic that ‘normal’ people ‘must have sex in specific ways,’ also implies that to ‘participate fully in social life, a person must perform both sex and a desire for sex’ (Przybylo 2016, 188). This can happen in ‘queer’ ways as well, as sexual practices are often considered intrinsic elements of queer relating and intimacy (Brandley and Spencer 2022; Milks and June Cerankowski 2014). Many ace people have therefore reported feeling ‘unwelcome, inauthentic, or under investigation in queer communities’ (Przybylo 2016, 188) because they are not perceived as ‘queer enough’ (Brown 2022; de Lappe 2018; Mollet 2023). Ace people’s experiences of feeling out of place in ‘sexusociety’ have thus been highlighted throughout the developing asexuality studies literature (Przybylo 2011). Yet despite clear resonances with geographic thinking, work specifically conceptualising the situated spatialities of this ‘placeless-ness’ has yet to appear either within geography or asexuality studies.

This silence points to how geographic work on sexualities is itself sexualised in allosexual ways, and speaks to how presumptions of allosexuality are reproduced within the discipline through the continued invisibilisation of asexuality and lack of engagement with asexual theorising. Likewise, the underdevelopment of spatial considerations within asexuality research shows how matters of space continue to be largely neglected within sexualities and queer studies (Hubbard 2018). By looking across these fields, I therefore aim to illustrate both how space matters to our understandings of asexuality and compulsory sexuality, as well as how asexual perspectives can expand geographic thinking about space, sexuality, and sexual normativities.

Researching asexuality in Ireland: context and methodology

Understandings of sex and sexuality have changed dramatically in Ireland over the last few decades (Leane and Kiely 2014). As the ‘moral monopoly’ of the Catholic Church has eroded, new and sometimes contradictory discourses have emerged that shape how sex and sexuality are understood within Irish society (Inglis 1998b). Rapidly shifting social attitudes around LGBT + rights and reproductive freedoms have given way to major political reforms such as the successful Marriage Equality referendum in 2015 and the overturning of Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion three years later (Elkink et al. 2020; Murphy 2016). Alongside these legislative victories, new imaginaries of the Irish nation/state have emerged. What was once viewed as a ‘Catholic nation for Catholic people’ (McAuliffe and Kennedy 2017), has transformed into an international ‘beacon of sexual progress’ that has been ‘liberated’ from its repressive, religious past (McCartan 2022; Neary and Rasmussen 2020). However, straightforward narratives of social ‘progress’ obscure more complicated realities of enduring tensions between so-called ‘traditional’ Irish Catholic morality and ‘modern’ Irish secular liberalism – as well as the ways they interact and intersect (Browne, Nash, and Gorman-Murray 2018; McAuliffe and Kennedy 2017; Neary and Rasmussen 2020).

This project was designed as a qualitative case study of ace people living in Ireland, utilizing semi-structured life-world interviews to explore their everyday spatial experiences (Brinkmann and Kvale 2018). Due to the relatively small size of the Irish ace community (Ace Community Survey Team 2023), as well as ace people’s relatively small proportion of the general population (Aicken, Mercer, and Cassell 2013; Poston and Baumle 2010), interview participants were recruited first through purposeful sampling in online ace community groups, with additional participants then recruited using snowball sampling (Browne 2005; Patton 2015). Participants self-reported their sexual and gender identities, and the identity labels listed alongside the quotations reflect how they described themselves at the time of the interviews. Participants also chose whether they would like to be named or referred to using a pseudonym, and those who chose pseudonyms have been denoted with an asterisks* throughout the paper. I received ethical approval from the University College Dublin School of Geography Research Ethics Committee, and participation in this study was entirely voluntary with no incentives provided.

Interviews were approximately one hour long, structured around themes of space and place in Ireland. After transcribing each interview, I coded and analysed the data using an iterative process of reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006). The aim of the study was to begin to develop an understanding of asexual geographies and what ‘ace spaces’ are or might be. To do so, participants were asked about their experiences of finding, creating, and using spaces that felt ‘ace’ to them. In answering these questions, they discussed their experiences in various different types of spaces/places, including Ireland itself, LGBT+/queer community spaces, as well as other everyday spaces like bars, schools, cafés, etc. Throughout these conversations and across the interviews, participants described feeling ‘out of place’ in a variety of spatial contexts. While these feelings were described in different ways by different people, and not every participant shared all of the same experiences as the others, key themes and ideas that were brought up across multiple interviews are discussed here.

The final sample of participants consisted of seven ace-identifying adults living across Ireland. This sample is not meant to be representative of all ace people in Ireland, and is limited by the fact that all the participants were White and under the age of 30. Furthermore, as I recruited participants who already identified as ace, I missed all the ‘potential-asexuals,’ or people who might one day come to identify as ace (Chasin 2011). This also excludes those who may be aware of ace identity terminology but do not identify as such because they do not feel represented by that label, even if their experiences align with other ace-identified people (Copulsky and Hammack 2023; Przybylo 2016). This is especially relevant in thinking about issues related to intersectionality, and how the current demographic make-up of the ace community (and research participants) reproduces itself by representing only certain (usually White, ‘Western,’ middle-class, and able-bodied) people and experiences (Kim 2014; Owen 2014). With these limitations in mind, I believe this sample still offers meaningful insights to beginning asexual geographies by including a variety of different voices and allowing for depth and nuance in the analysis of participants’ experiences.

Informed by queer and feminist methodologies (Moss 2002; Browne and Nash 2016), reflexive considerations of positionality and my own perspectives as an ace person have been central throughout the research process (a full discussion of which is beyond the scope of the paper, but I mention key aspects here). My ‘membership’ in the ace community affected the decisions I made in relation to recruitment and sampling, as I had both access to and knowledge of public and private asexuality forums where I could recruit participants. There were also many experiences discussed during the interviews that I could personally relate to, which helped me to guide the interviews and create an atmosphere where participants felt comfortable enough to share their stories. However, because of the ace community’s substantial diversity, even my small sample of participants had many experiences and identities that differed from one another and from my own (Hille, Simmons, and Sanders 2020). I am therefore aware that my ‘ace-ness’ does not make my analysis and findings somehow more ‘real’ than those of allosexual researchers, nor that I was able to fully understand the experiences of the participants simply because of this aspect of shared identity (Nash 2010). I am also mindful of the positioning of this study in Ireland in relation to the geographies of academic research – specifically, how scholarship conducted outside of the US/UK hegemony is often viewed as a case study that is merely ‘applying’ theory rather than ‘producing’ it (Giffney 2013; Kulpa and Silva 2016). While the Irish context of this research is important, the findings have broader theoretical implications beyond Ireland as well.

‘A weird mix’: compulsory sexuality in Ireland

I begin a discussion of the research findings by examining the spatialities of compulsory sexuality in the context of the Irish nation – exploring ‘Ireland’ itself as a space in which allonormative assumptions and practices are manifest and (re)produced. As participants situated their stories and experiences as ace people living in Ireland, many described how expectations surrounding the universality of sexual attraction were created in ways that felt uniquely ‘Irish’ to them. This was especially true for those who had lived in Ireland for all or most of their lives, as they drew attention to how their cultural upbringing and location shaped what they and those around them considered to be ‘normal’ sexuality.

For multiple participants, normative Irish societal beliefs about sexuality were repeatedly linked to the enduring influence of the Catholic Church (Bacik 2013; McAuliffe and Kennedy 2017; Neary and Rasmussen 2020). Specifically, they noted how still-widespread feelings of ‘Catholic guilt’ and sexual shame often resulted in a societal silence around the topic of sex – a conspicuous absence that seemed to also underscore the (unspoken) understanding that sexual desire must be an element of all people’s lives (Inglis 1998a). One participant, Oliver, described the lasting impact of Catholicism on Irish attitudes towards sex:

Ireland has been entrenched in Catholic guilt, and it’s been such a part of who we are for years. […] So I think it’s a weird mix of like, you’re not supposed to talk about sex, but also you’re supposed to want to have sex. Because if you don’t want to have sex, [it’s] like, “What is wrong with you? There’s something wrong with you.”

(Oliver, asexual & possibly aromantic, transmasc)

Oliver’s observation of this ‘weird mix’ points to how, on the one hand, sex is often marked as taboo in a cultural context in which sexuality has historically been heavily denied and repressed (Inglis 1998a; Nash 1997). At the same time, the power relations that seek its regulation are predicated upon beliefs that view a sexual urge as a sinful, yet essential, aspect of human nature (Martin 1997). The societal silence around sex/sexuality therefore both creates and reinforces the understanding that desiring sex is a universal human experience – albeit one that needs to be restricted and controlled (Foucault 1978; Inglis 1998b). The unspoken assumptions produced by this silence were discussed by another participant, Autumn, who explained how this had contributed to their lifelong feeling of ‘difference’:

I was very aware of just how different I was in a way. I've always felt like there was a big difference [between] me and the rest of Irish society in general. Sexuality is not talked about so much, but there’s an assumption that everyone has it.

(Autumn*, asexual, questioning gender identity/female)

Autumn’s experience therefore further suggests that not only can the expectations of compulsory sexuality be created despite, or indeed because of, a lack of societal conversation about sex – but also that this can result in marked feelings of (spatialised) difference for ace people on a societal scale. In this way, Autumn and Oliver’s experiences speak to how the logic of compulsory sexuality can be (re)produced across Ireland through ‘traditional’ (conservative, Catholic) attitudes towards sexuality, and their lasting impact and presence in Irish society.

However, participants also noted how assumptions related to the ‘normalcy’ of sex and sexual attraction could be reflected in the values of so-called ‘modern Ireland’ as well. This was related to both increasingly liberal Irish attitudes about sexuality, as well as the newly won sexual freedoms that have occurred alongside this ‘liberalisation’ (Elkink et al. 2020; Murphy 2016; Stokes 2014). Notably, in a nation/state that has been built upon the foundational importance of the heterosexual procreative family (Martin 1997; Nash 1997; Ryan 2012), Marriage Equality has been heralded as a major cultural shift towards a ‘new Ireland’ that is more open and accepting of diverse sexual identities (McCartan 2022). Yet even in this shifting, more ‘inclusive’ social landscape, Oliver described how being asexual still felt firmly out of place:

Especially in Ireland, and especially in the more rural towns… it’s one thing to even be gay, it’s one thing to even be a lesbian, [but] God forbid, you’re strange enough to not want to have sex.

(Oliver, asexual & possibly aromantic, transmasc)

Oliver’s feeling that asexuality was perhaps now, in some ways, a greater deviation from the norm than other LGBTQ+ sexualities speaks to how widening pathways for social inclusion have maintained and created exclusions for others (Quilty 2020). For some, Marriage Equality has symbolised LGBTQ+ people’s move from once outside the boundaries of ‘Irishness’ (Conrad 2001) to now an increasingly accepted element of the ‘Irish national family’ (Kerrigan 2021, 167). However, changing understandings of the ‘Irish family’ have still maintained the (allonormative) family, and implicitly also compulsory sexuality, at their centre. Indeed, the centrality of the family remains constitutionally enshrined as ‘the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society,’ even as it has now been expanded to include possibilities beyond heterosexuality (Government of Ireland, Bunreacht na hÉireann 2020, Article 41.1). While not all ace people are uninterested in family making, either through reproductive sexual activity or otherwise, the ace community challenges (and in some cases, also rejects) allonormative kinship/relationship structures that uphold and perpetuate the ‘natural’ link between sex, romance, marriage, procreation, and family (Tessler, 2023). In this context, asexuality and ace people would seemingly pose a (symbolic) threat to both the reproduction of the Irish nation and Ireland’s enduring familist ideal – marking it as squarely outside of ‘acceptable’ sexuality even within ‘new Ireland.’

Other participants pointed to how new liberal cultural values surrounding ‘sex positivity’ also produced expectations about the centrality and importance of sex (Stokes 2014). This meant that for some it had been challenging to understand their own identities within the context of a sexually ‘liberated’ Ireland. Lucy described how she had struggled to reconcile being ace with her own ‘sex positive’ beliefs:

I used to just feel like the Catholic guilt had gotten me really bad in particular, (laughs) because I'm a very sex positive person for everybody else. I'm like, “Yes, you do you - go for it!” […] And then, for me it was like, (laughs) “That is disgusting!” […] Yeah, that really confused me for a while.

(Lucy*, asexual & pan/grayromantic, woman)

Lucy’s comments speak to how new values surrounding the importance of embracing sex and being ‘sex positive’ have occluded the experiences of ace people. The possibility of being asexual was difficult for Lucy to conceptualise, as she first attributed her disgust at the idea of sex to be a symptom of ‘Catholic guilt’ and lingering cultural sexual repression. For another participant, Autumn, the seeming impossibility of being asexual within ‘modern Ireland’ meant that their experiences were often dismissed by those around them. As an example, they recounted how their school’s efforts to be more sexually progressive ended up foregrounding the expectation that (allo)sexuality is both ‘natural’ and universal:

I went to a Catholic school, so they’re trying to almost push back against their past by being like, “Oh, it’s absolutely okay that you feel all these sexual feelings!” and stuff like this. (laughs) Which is good, except that I was like, “But can you not feel them?” And they were like, “Don’t be ashamed of your feelings!!”

(Autumn*, asexual, questioning gender identity/female)

As sex education curriculums in Ireland have increasingly ‘pushed back’ against the repressive legacy of the Catholic Church (Kiely, 2014; Nolan, 2018), the normalcy of experiencing sexual attraction (and subsequent erasure of asexuality) can be emphasised and taken for granted. For Autumn, this meant that their feelings as an ace person went unheard and dismissed even within this newly ‘inclusive’ society. Autumn and Lucy’s observations thus further point to how compulsory sexuality can be (re)constituted across Ireland not only through ‘traditional’ Catholic belief systems and values, but also through more recent imaginings of a sexually liberated ‘modern Ireland’ as well.

Participants’ descriptions of living and growing up in Ireland draw attention to the different ways in which ‘Ireland’ itself can become allosexualised, in part through its move towards sexual equality. Their experiences suggest that both conservative and progressive Irish attitudes towards sexuality can in fact overlap to reinforce the assumption that sexual attraction is ‘natural’ and universal. Spaces like ‘the nation’ can therefore come to reflect and (re)produce the expectations of compulsory sexuality in ways that are specific to space, place, and cultural context. The allosexualisation of space, within the nation and in everyday spaces can also be seen through interlinked expectations of heteronormativity and compulsory sexuality, to which I now turn.

Navigating allonormativity in heterosexualised space

I narrow now from the Irish nation to a discussion of everyday heterosexualised spaces to explore how the spatialities of heteronormativity can mutually reinforce and reproduce the logic of compulsory sexuality. In thinking about their experiences in everyday social spaces like bars, for example, participants described how expectations of heterosexuality felt directly linked to expectations of allosexuality. Autumn spoke about how they viewed (straight) bars as being inherently (allo)sexual spaces:

The idea of a bar or somewhere where you’re open to being sexual or ‘out there’ – it’s kind of an engrained thing. […] It’s just guys checking girls out or the other way around. […] The heterosexual bar experience is just people going, “Oh, what do you think? Have a look at that person.”

(Autumn*, asexual, questioning gender identity/female)

Here, Autumn captures how everyday social spaces are routinely premised upon an assumption that all people are sexual and experience sexual attraction – and also, that their attraction is oriented in a specific (heterosexual) way. The heteronormative expectation that men and women go to bars to ‘check each other out’ is thus mutually reinforced by the ‘engrained’ allonormative understanding that people are interested in sexualised socializing in the first place. For several participants, navigating these types of heterosexualised social spaces thus served as pivotal moments of their own ‘recognition of difference’ (Valentine 1993b). Julie explained how she began to think about whether she might be ace when she realised that she was experiencing these spaces in ways that seemed to be different from those around her:

I guess probably a lot of it has to do with like, going out to bars and just like, feeling like, “Oh, I'm not having fun the way that other people are having fun,” and socialising in that sort of intimate way with people.

(Julie*, still exploring ace identity & bi-umbrella/pan, non-binary/woman-ish)

Julie’s experience points to how expectations of allosexuality can be manifest in (hetero)sexualised social spaces, and further captures a feeling of being out of place where others appeared to view sexualised socialising as fun and normal. This suggests that social spaces like bars are not only often ‘organised to reflect and express heterosexual sociosexual relations’ (Valentine 1993a, 406, emphasis added), but also to reflect and express an allonormative expectation of sociosexual relations in general. Normative understandings of how we ‘should’ interact in these spaces therefore (re)produce them as both hetero- and allosexualised – reinforcing the link between ‘common sense’ beliefs about the normalcy of heterosexuality and allosexuality in spatialised ways (Brown, Browne, and Lim 2007).

Participants further described how other types of everyday spaces could become allosexualised through the heteronormative social interactions that were occurring within them. Several participants spoke about how casual social conversations would sometimes abruptly turn to the topic of sex and (hetero)sexual relationships, causing spaces that otherwise felt ‘neutral’ to suddenly shift into an allosexualised atmosphere. Lucy described the anxiety of experiencing this spatial shift while spending time with friends:

Most of the time [the space] feels neutral, and then some conversation [about sex] will happen and I’ll be like, “Oh my god, oh no.” (laughs) […] I have these friends who are both in relationships, and so obviously they want to, I don’t know – I think they just think everybody wants that. I mean, I think I would have thought that until a while ago also, so I get it. But yeah, sometimes the conversation will happen and then I'm just sitting there like, “Oh my god ahhh!”

(Lucy*, asexual & pan/grayromantic, woman)

In a similar way to how everyday spaces can be produced as heterosexualised through the presumed ‘naturalness’ of conversations in which straight people talk about their partners (Ahmed 2004; Valentine 1993a), Lucy’s experience speaks to how spaces can become allosexualised through these types of interactions as well. This builds upon work that has argued that ‘the assumption that a sexual urge is universal is foundational to everyday conversation’ (Przybylo 2016, 188), by showing how these assumptions are experienced and manifest in space. In everyday heterosexualised social spaces, allonormative assumptions can thus be (re)produced through casual conversations about sex, dating and romance that take for granted the idea that all people desire a (certain type of) sexual relationship.

Participants’ experiences of navigating heterosexualised spaces therefore speak not only to how heteronormativity and allonormativity are interlinked (Brown 2022; Przybylo 2016) – but also to how this link occurs in and through our relations in space. The social expectations produced by heteronormativity in heterosexualised spaces operate in conjunction with allonormative assumptions to underscore the idea that heterosexuality and allosexuality are both ‘normal’ and ‘natural.’ Participants described this in relation to social spaces like bars, as well as in more casual, transient everyday spaces in which they were simply spending time with friends. In each case, these spaces became ones in which the logic of compulsory sexuality was reflected and (re)produced through the types of normalised social interactions that were occurring within them, and the corresponding hetero- and allonormative assumptions that accompanied these interactions. In the next section, I build from these ideas to narrow further to discuss participants’ experiences in spaces by and for the queer community – examining how even spaces that contest normative understandings of sexuality in certain respects can still maintain the assumptions of compulsory sexuality in others.

The allosexualisation of queer space

Asexuality is often read as a queer identity and in addition to being ace, multiple participants held other queer sexual/gender identities as well. Because of their asexuality and/or other queer identities, some shared how they felt that queer social and community spaces offered a greater level of safety and understanding. Autumn explained how they felt more comfortable with the idea of socialising in queer/LGBT + spaces than in (heteronormative) everyday life:

I guess it’s nice to go to LGBT spaces sometimes [to socialise] as well. Because it is connected sort of [to asexuality] – just all the things that are outside the regular assumptions of what a person can be. It’s nice to have spaces that are kind of… I guess I can’t say, “Where everyone’s like me,” because that’s absolutely not the case. […] But where people sort of get it – and that’s rare in day-to-day life.

(Autumn*, asexual, questioning gender identity/female)

Autumn’s description of queer/LGBT + spaces as ones where people are more likely to ‘get it’ captures the import of these spaces, and the meaningful feelings of community that they can provide for queer people in a heteronormative world (McCartan and Nash 2023). However, that sense of inclusion can also be limited as queer spaces can themselves reproduce power dynamics that privilege certain (racialised, classed, gendered, sexed) bodies and identities to the exclusion and marginalisation of others (Boussalem 2022; Lane 2015; Oswin 2008). Feeling excluded in these spaces can be disappointing for ace people who, because of their asexuality and/or other aspects of their queer identity, see these spaces as ‘theirs’ (Mollet 2023).

Indeed, across the interviews, participants’ described instances in which they felt uncomfortable, unrepresented, or not fully accepted in queer spaces – with almost all sharing experiences of personally feeling this way and/or of knowing other ace people who did so. For some, this was related to the overtly sexualised environment of queer social spaces like bars or clubs. Marie discussed how the sexualised atmosphere in these spaces could make her feel uncomfortable – describing how she felt that there was an unspoken requirement to display and perform (allo)sexuality:

In queer-affirming spaces, it turns into a very sexual thing – and then I don’t feel comfortable. […] Even though it is a safer space than a heteronormative club, […] I still feel uncomfortable when certain music is playing and everybody starts dancing their routines and hooking up with people. […] When I'm with my partner in a queer club, or queer bar, everybody is expecting for me to – or that’s what I perceive – that they see us and they think, “Oh, they need to join us in those songs and start hooking up and start being very physical on stage or on the dance floor.”

(Marie*, ace spectrum/asexual & queer/gay, woman)

Marie’s comments point to how queer social spaces, while pushing back against assumptions and expectations of heterosexuality, can still be created through normative assumptions and expectations of allosexuality. Despite these spaces being ones in which Marie ostensibly belongs to, she wasn’t always comfortable because the asexual aspect of her queer identity didn’t seem to ‘fit’. This appeared to contrast with the ‘queer affirming’ nature of the space, which is implicitly inclusive of diverse sexualities, and speaks to how the marginalising assumptions of compulsory sexuality can be reproduced even within these ‘safer’ spaces (Hartal 2017; McCartan and Nash 2023).

Participants further explained how this could happen in queer community/support spaces as well. They described how these spaces, although less overtly sexualised, could still (re)produce expectations of allosexuality in other ways. Marie described this in relation to the topics of conversation that people tended to gravitate towards:

Since it is a safe space, people tend to talk about sex a lot. […] They share personal stories, which is great. It is amazing to destigmatise sex, […] but I feel excluded there sometimes. […] Everybody talks about their [sexual] experiences, and I'm sitting there like “Can you just skip me?” (laughs) It’s embarrassing. I don’t want to talk about it – because it’s so openly discussed in those spaces, you know, the narrative is so strong.

(Marie*, ace spectrum/asexual & queer/gay, woman)

Multiple participants, like Marie, emphasised that talking about sex was a positive thing, and that they were glad that this was becoming less taboo, especially in Ireland. However, they still struggled with how these conversations, and the assumption that everyone (and perhaps especially queer people) has sex and experiences sexual attraction, produced spaces in which they felt excluded. These types of experiences thus not only capture ace people’s often ambivalent feelings about their place in the broader queer community (de Lappe 2018; Mollet 2023), but also point to how allosexual expectations can be (re)produced even within queer spaces that are meant to be ‘open’ and inclusive.

In other instances, participants described how asexuality felt actively erased from queer spaces – resulting, for some, in a feeling of apprehension about being in them. Lucy shared her anxiety about the idea of joining queer/LGBT + groups where she lives, and described her realisation that ace people were not represented in the LGBT + society at her university:

It would make me nervous. For example, the LGBT + society in my college on Instagram was like ‘LGBTA-’ and I was like, (gasps) “Oh my god, we’re ahead of the Q!” […] And then I realised [the A] stood for ‘ally’, and I was like, “Oh.”

(Lucy*, asexual & pan/grayromantic, woman)

Lucy’s experience points to how ace people can be rendered invisible within queer spaces by not being named or recognised alongside other LGBTQ+ identities. Her short-lived excitement of being included in this space, only to realise that presumably straight ‘allies’ were represented instead of or before ace people (in this group’s use of the LGBT(QIA+) acronym) captures a feeling of being let down by a space that she had expected, or at least hoped, would be more inclusive. Autumn explained how this lack of representation used to make them worry about being ‘an intruder’ in queer spaces, especially before they identified as queer in other ways in addition to being ace. Even now, they felt unsure about whether they would be fully accepted:

I definitely think I would be [accepted] on a logical level, but then on a kind of anxious worry level, I go, “Oh God, I'm gonna be such a strange out-of-place person here.” I guess I worry about it being like, people are trying to accommodate me and they’re trying to be accepting, but they don’t get it.

(Autumn*, asexual, questioning gender identity/female)

Autumn’s feelings resonate with the idea that ace people can struggle to feel fully ‘in place’ in queer community spaces, even though these are spaces that should technically include them and/or may feel safer or more accepting than ‘straight’ ones (Mollet 2023). However, because a lack of ace representation and visibility, as well as a general lack of understanding of asexuality, these spaces can become ones where ace people still feel required to justify their presence (Mollet 2023; Przybylo 2016).

The allosexualisation of space can therefore permeate even spaces that in other ways disrupt normative understandings of sexuality. As participants described, the (re)constitution of queer space as allosexualised can occur in a variety of ways. In social spaces like queer bars and clubs, the sexualised atmosphere and expectation to perform (allo)sexuality could make participants feel uncomfortable and out of place as ace people. In other queer community spaces, the assumption that all people experience sexual attraction could be reproduced through the ways people talked about sex and presumed allosexuality to be a universal queer experience. Finally, some queer spaces invisibilised asexuality through their lack of ace representation – making participants feel unseen and/or not fully accepted. Queer spaces can thus become allosexualised through the ways that they too produce normative spatialisations based on expectations of allosexuality, making even these ‘safer’ and more affirming spaces ones in which participants sometimes struggled to feel ‘in place.’

Conclusion

This paper has contributed to the beginnings of asexual geographies by developing the concept of the allosexualisation of space, referring to the ways in which spaces come to reflect and co-produce the logic, assumptions, and expectations of compulsory sexuality. As I have shown, the allosexualisation of space comes in multiple forms as it is (re)constituted across different sites and scales – including within the Irish nation, throughout everyday heterosexualised spaces, as well as in spaces by and for the queer community. This concept extends scholarship on the sexing of space and the spatialised co-creation of sexualities (Bell and Valentine 1995; Brown and Browne 2016; Johnston and Longhurst 2010) by demonstrating how spaces can become allosexualised by (re)producing normative understandings of the ‘naturalness’ and universality of sexual attraction. It also extends research and theorising in asexuality studies (Brown 2022; Gupta 2015; MacNeela and Murphy 2015; Przybylo 2019) by expanding understandings of how space/place matter to asexual people’s lives and identities, as well as how the norms and practices of compulsory sexuality can be spatially (re)produced in culturally/geographically specific ways. A geographically-grounded asexual lens thus allows us to see how different spaces can become allosexualised in ways that exclude, marginalise, and erase ace people – and also how the allosexualisation of space can occur in spaces that we all encounter throughout our everyday lives.

These findings point towards new and underexplored areas of research surrounding not only asexuality, ace identities, and the global diversity of the ace community, but also sexuality itself and how it is recreated. There is more work to be done internationally surrounding the spatialities of asexuality and compulsory sexuality, and there are many nuances of ace people’s experiences in Ireland that could not be fully addressed here. This includes a need for further research across intersecting spatialities to explore how ace people’s spatial experiences are shaped by other facets of identity, including explorations of normative racialisation in Ireland (Joseph 2017; Lentin 2007). There is also more to be done theoretically and empirically to explore the relationship between sexualised and allosexualised spaces, and to develop conceptualisations of what/where ‘asexualised’ spaces are or might be. Other analytical possibilities may arise from this data as well, building on the allosexualisation of space and offering opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations. Future scholarship could also extend interrogations of asexuality’s (invisibilised) place within queer studies (Przybylo and Gupta 2020) by examining how allosexual normativities are reproduced within queer geographies. These and other research avenues opened up by asexual geographies thus offer expansive possibilities to continue to explore the co-creation of (a)sexualities in and through space – contributing towards deeper understandings of ace people’s lived experiences and everyday worlds, as well as the diverse and situated spatialities of sex, sexualities and sexual normativities.

Acknowledgements

My deepest gratitude to the participants for sharing their time and stories with me, without whom this research would not be possible. Special thanks to Kath Browne for all her guidance and support throughout this project and while writing this paper. Further thanks to the three anonymous reviewers, whose insightful comments have greatly helped to refine and improve the article. Thank you as well to everyone who offered feedback on earlier versions of the paper at the 2023 Outside/rs and RGS Conferences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel Bayer

Rachel Bayer is a PhD Researcher in the UCD School of Geography, where her research focuses on asexual geographies – exploring asexual people’s everyday spatial experiences, and the spatialities of asexuality and compulsory sexuality in Ireland.