Book Review: I am Ace: Advice on Living Your Best Asexual Life by Cody Daigle-Orians

Hey all, Sam here.

Well, everyone, it is Pride Month, and I am feeling the need to talk about that a bit. I have four books with a focus on Asexuality that I’m going to talk about this month, one for each Saturday. The reason why I am focused on this section of the LGBTQIAP+ community is because it is the section to which I belong, and I feel like I don’t see nearly enough rep for folks on the Ace/Aro spectrum of identity.

So, I’m going to share up some book reviews that will also include some info about my life and my identity and my journey to discovering who I am and all that.

Oh, and I’m going to go ahead and say it here and now, even though I don’t think I should have an issue with my followers and such, if you make any rude or hateful commentary, I will delete your comments. I’m not going to tolerate hatred and bigotry on this blog. The world has enough hate. What it really needs is more love and acceptance.

Also, there will be another book review coming this afternoon, so please check that out as well. Thank you, and let’s go ahead and jump into this Pride Month review!

How do I know if I’m actually sexual?
How do I come out as asexual?
What kinds of relationship can I have as an ace person?
If you are looking for answers to these questions, Cody is here to help. Within these pages lie all the advice you need as a questioning ace teen.
Tackling everything from what asexuality is, the asexual spectrum and tips on coming out, to intimacy, relationships, acephobia and finding joy, this guide will help you better understand your asexual identity alongside deeply relatable anecdotes drawn from Cody’s personal experience.
Whether you are ace, demi, gray-ace or not sure yet, this book will give you the courage and confidence to embrace your authentic self and live your best ace life.

My Thoughts

Rating: 5 stars

I don’t normally do flagging or highlighting or annotating with my books, but with this one I had a lot of points when a particular section really spoke to me or moved me, and I needed to take note of it. Obviously I am not going to share and comment on each and every flag during this review, but I will probably end up sharing a couple of these quotations.

What I have to note about this book is the number of times I had to pause and reflect, to sit there and absorb a sentence or a paragraph or a passage. There were so many times when I was reading this and I found myself thinking “yes, exactly, this is me,” and it was such an emotional and powerful and enlightening experience.

From the first chapter, I knew this book was going to be one I treasured. At the end of Chapter One, Cody Daigle-Orians wrote:

It’s okay not to have it all figured out. We’ve all been there. A lot of us will end up there again.

It’s okay to be confused, to feel like you don’t fit in anywhere, to feel like you don’t know yourself at all.

It’s okay to take the dots in your life and connect them the wrong way for a while, to put the pieces together the wrong way, or to give your experience the wrong name.

It’s okay not to know what to do, to feel like you don’t have the right words.

It’s okay to feel broken.

We’re all there at some point.

We just have to remember that we never have to stay there. We can move. We can rearrange the pieces. We can reconnect the dots. We can find new words. We can grow out of one place and grow into another.

Page 25

Reflecting back on my life, so often I felt like I didn’t belong, like I didn’t have the right words to describe why I felt so different, to explain why the things that interested my peers just didn’t appeal to me, why I felt wrong and broken for so long but buried that idea so I didn’t seem more weird than I already was.

This became even more true when I reached Chapter 3 and Cody (sorry–I know normally when I write review type posts, I use author last name, but it just feels more right to use his first name for this book, so that’s what I’m choosing to do) talked about discovering asexuality through posts on Tumblr, and he mentioned that he saw himself in the posts and that he felt like he wasn’t broken and that he wasn’t alone.

And boy did that stick out as relatable to me. When I read Loveless by Alice Oseman, and when I picked up this book, I think some of my emotional reaction (as in, I was crying within a handful of pages for both of these books) was because I really saw myself in these books in a way that just hadn’t happened before. My feelings towards sex and intimacy suddenly made a whole lot more sense.

So trust yourself. Trust what you’re thinking. Trust what you’re feeling. Trust that how you are processing and understanding your own experience is right and fair and worth believing.

Page 67

I didn’t have a lot of romances in middle school or high school or college. And the ones I did have weren’t really all that intimate. So I chalked it up to inexperience or a lack of seriousness or that I was waiting for the right person and then I would have the physical relationships that everyone else seemed to have.

I was 19 before I had my first kiss. I did not have sex until I was almost 29. I have only felt sexual attraction and desire for one person in my entire life…and that is my husband. It took a very very long time to reach that point, and I didn’t even really hear about asexuality until college, and even then, I didn’t really look up information about it until I was in my mid-20s.

Asexuality is not a pathology. It is not a medical condition. It is not a hormone imbalance. It is not a mental disorder. It is not the result of anxiety, stress, or depression. Asexuality is as natural a sexual orientation as any of the allosexual identities. Asexuality does not mean there is something wrong with you.

Page 97

For so long I heard people talk about how I must just be really picky because I didn’t really have physical relationships. I wasn’t big on physical displays of affection. Even hand-holding just felt silly to me. And I definitely wasn’t big on cuddling. And even when I started kissing, I was always in the middle of the act just thinking about how weird it was, and wondering how long it was supposed to last, and if this was supposed to be attractive or endearing or anything.

But if I said anything about how long it took until my first kiss, or that still had my virginity, it was always framed as me being too picky, too selective, too judgmental.

And honestly, I think a lot of that is because people don’t know about the existence of asexuality, or if they do, they certainly don’t understand it. I think books like this one do a fantastic job at describing the terms and the feelings and the reality of it all, as well as what it means for all kinds of interpersonal relationships.

Knowing that I am asexual, and honestly I am trying to figure out if I fit better as just Asexual or if the term Gray Asexual fits me better. I don’t feel like Demisexual fits, because even if I have an emotional connection with someone, it is still so incredibly rare to have that lead to any sort of sexual desire. Like I said before, I’ve literally only felt a sexual desire for one person in my entire life, in almost 35 years.

But it sucks when there’s people who hear that I’m Ace and immediately disregard it or who don’t understand it…and in their ignorance they say and do things that hurt, things that show that they don’t grasp what I’ve said (or that they don’t believe or respect it). I’ve replayed conversations with friends and realized that they are ripe with amatonormativity (the belief that all people are better off in an exclusive, monogamous, romantic-sexual relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship) and honestly it makes me feel hurt and sad and also a bit angry that people who are supposed to be friends don’t even try to get it.

For a lot of reasons this year, I’ve really struggled. Because of events at the beginning of the year I have been depressed, and so much of what is going on around the US (and even the world in general) just makes me feel angry but also helpless. And that sucks so much. But I also know that I’ve felt so much better since I’ve been able to learn more about Asexuality, and to realize that this is who I am, this is who I was even before I knew the terminology for it. And there is NOTHING wrong with me, or any of us who are Aspec.

When the days are hard, those days don’t define you. When you struggle with insecurity or shame, those feelings don’t define you. When you’re anxious or depressed, those experiences don’t define you. They can feel like the whole world. They can feel like forever. But they’re only right now. They’re only right here. They will pass.

Page 175

This book was wonderful and informative. I honestly recommend this, not just for people who are trying to figure themselves out and think they might fall somewhere under the Asexuality umbrella, but also literally for everyone. Asexuality has been such a hidden identity…and I think back and wonder how much different my life and the lives of so many other people, would have been different if we had more understanding and compassion for identities that are not simply cisgender and heteroromantic/heterosexual.

I know I would have not felt so lost and broken for so long if this knowledge had been more available when I was younger. And that’s why I’m going to share the information now, in the hopes that the next generations won’t have to wonder if there is something wrong with them for decades before realizing that there is nothing wrong with who they are.

Thank you for writing this book, Cody. It seriously is one of my top reads of the year, and I am so glad to have found it and read it.

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Yes, I know this review is filled with personal thoughts and opinions. They are my own thoughts and opinions. The quoted sections from the book have been notated with their page numbers as it appears in the paperback edition.

Well, that is all from me for now. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.