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tobibimbap 's review for:
Sounds Fake But Okay: An Asexual and Aromantic Perspective on Love, Relationships, Sex, and Pretty Much Anything Else
by Kayla Kaszyca, Sarah Costello
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
I enjoyed the aspects where they had listeners submit their own fables and lived experiences of asexuality, however, the rest of the book falls short.
They use a metaphor called an ‘aspec lens’ which doesn’t really mean anything besides thinking outside of the comphet norm that is imposed on people since birth.
It isn’t a book on ‘what asexuality is,’ (read Ace by Angela Chen for that) and they stated as much in the beginning, however, I feel like most of the book was setting up exactly what asexuality is in order to explain other aspects of itself.
Naturally, this book is by aspec people, for aspec people. Non-aspec people aren’t going to have any interest in a book that markets itself as ‘for queer people.’ If it were advertised as a more general ‘here’s what we’ve been told about relationships and how lived experiences of asexuality challenges that,’ then maybe there would be a more diverse audience (perhaps from non queer people, or non aspecs who want to do research in relationship psychology etc).
But just because this isn’t who the book is for, I must wonder who exactly IS it for? Maybe baby aspecs? I just think anyone who is asexual and online already knows this stuff. I appreciate the vision of this book, but I don’t think it presents a whole lot of new information, nor does it do so in an engaging way. I didn’t scan the QR codes because I am not a podcast listener, but maybe I will give the podcast a shot.
I also want to note that I do not think the participants included in this book were very diverse in terms of their identity on the aspectrums, which happens - there are definitely more people that are alloromantic and asexual than aromantic and asexual - but hearing from some aromantic allosexuals would have been nice, too. There is no indication of what demographic of people we heard from, which was something I would have been interested in.
They use a metaphor called an ‘aspec lens’ which doesn’t really mean anything besides thinking outside of the comphet norm that is imposed on people since birth.
It isn’t a book on ‘what asexuality is,’ (read Ace by Angela Chen for that) and they stated as much in the beginning, however, I feel like most of the book was setting up exactly what asexuality is in order to explain other aspects of itself.
Naturally, this book is by aspec people, for aspec people. Non-aspec people aren’t going to have any interest in a book that markets itself as ‘for queer people.’ If it were advertised as a more general ‘here’s what we’ve been told about relationships and how lived experiences of asexuality challenges that,’ then maybe there would be a more diverse audience (perhaps from non queer people, or non aspecs who want to do research in relationship psychology etc).
But just because this isn’t who the book is for, I must wonder who exactly IS it for? Maybe baby aspecs? I just think anyone who is asexual and online already knows this stuff. I appreciate the vision of this book, but I don’t think it presents a whole lot of new information, nor does it do so in an engaging way. I didn’t scan the QR codes because I am not a podcast listener, but maybe I will give the podcast a shot.
I also want to note that I do not think the participants included in this book were very diverse in terms of their identity on the aspectrums, which happens - there are definitely more people that are alloromantic and asexual than aromantic and asexual - but hearing from some aromantic allosexuals would have been nice, too. There is no indication of what demographic of people we heard from, which was something I would have been interested in.