My Mom’s Been Reading The Invisible Orientation (Part 1)

For those who don’t know, The Invisible Orientation is the book about asexuality by Julia Sondra Decker which was published last year.

I’ve only skimmed through the book, and just as I’ve expected, I’m not in the target audience. It is mostly stuff which I already knew.

My mom, however, IS in the target audience. And she’s been spending a lot more time with the book than I have.

After I returned to San Francisco, she’s become a lot more interested in asexuality than she ever has been before. The background is, when I first came out to my mom, she said I was just a late bloomer, and a few months later I moved to a different continent and had only limited contact with my mom for a few years, and never discussed asexuality with her during this time. I do recall that, at the time of my departure, she had seemed to have already accepted to some degree that I was asexual.

She has tried to learn about asexuality on the internet but … well, let’s just that the internet is not a suitable venue for my mother to learn about asexuality. I have given her some Asexuality 101, but there is a limit to that because a) I don’t like giving people Asexuality 101 in general and b) it is particularly difficult with my mother because there is a lot of personal history, expectations, feelings, etc. – and we both have to get through that in a way which is not harmful to our relationships – which makes it more complicated than giving Asexuality 101 to a stranger. She actually asked me if there was a book about asexuality, which was the perfect opening for me to tell her about The Invisible Orientation.

One of her first reactions was “This book is like reading a dictionary”. At the time, she held a book which I’m guessing (but am not sure) is a romance novel, and I said “Uh, I think that’s the wrong book.” And then she said “I mean the asexuality book – I started reading this because I’ve had enough of reading about word definitions today.”

That is definitely one of the reasons why The Invisible Orientation is more helpful than the internet for educating my mom – even in organized book format, it was tough enough for her to get the hang of the terminology. On the internet, with its plethora of disorganized sources, it was overwhelming for her.

She eventually got through that section of the book, and then confided in me “When I heard you were asexual, I had two thoughts. The first was that, as you get older, and have more experiences, you may find that you are sexual. I’ve given up on that.” [I think coming out to her shortly before leaving North America was brilliant timing on my part] “But I still have my other concern, and that asexuals are so rare, 1% of the population, it’ll be hard for you to find a partner.”

To be continued.

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