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A review by foreverinastory
Ace Voices: What it Means to Be Asexual, Aromantic, Demi or Grey-Ace by Eris Young
informative
3.5
Thank you to Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest opinion. All opinions are my own.
Ace Voices is non-fiction about various terms and intersections present in the aspec community. This book very much highlights both asexual and aromantic voices, and the author is both, so seeing this only titled Ace is very misleading and feels a little like aro erasure. Yes people can be both things at once, but they can also only be asexual or only aromantic. In the beginning the author also mentions an argument they were going to make that will convince people that aromanticism and asexuality are the same, but I still very much disagree. Ultimately I didn't even really see an argument about them being the same thing in this text, but even if it was there I don't agree.
Besides that point, I highly enjoyed this book. It was interesting that it had discussion questions at the end of each chapter. I feel like these can be geared towards allo allies, aspec people beginning to question or even aspec people wanting to explore how new terms could represent how they experience attraction. I don't know if I really learned anything new, but as I'm someone who's very plugged into the aroace community, this doesn't surprise me.
I most enjoyed seeing how other aspec people related and hearing personal anecdotes. I do kind of wish we got longer snippets from the interviews or even got to have these people write whole essays like in Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. Overall, decent non-fiction aspec text.
Ace Voices is non-fiction about various terms and intersections present in the aspec community. This book very much highlights both asexual and aromantic voices, and the author is both, so seeing this only titled Ace is very misleading and feels a little like aro erasure. Yes people can be both things at once, but they can also only be asexual or only aromantic. In the beginning the author also mentions an argument they were going to make that will convince people that aromanticism and asexuality are the same, but I still very much disagree. Ultimately I didn't even really see an argument about them being the same thing in this text, but even if it was there I don't agree.
Besides that point, I highly enjoyed this book. It was interesting that it had discussion questions at the end of each chapter. I feel like these can be geared towards allo allies, aspec people beginning to question or even aspec people wanting to explore how new terms could represent how they experience attraction. I don't know if I really learned anything new, but as I'm someone who's very plugged into the aroace community, this doesn't surprise me.
I most enjoyed seeing how other aspec people related and hearing personal anecdotes. I do kind of wish we got longer snippets from the interviews or even got to have these people write whole essays like in Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. Overall, decent non-fiction aspec text.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Acephobia/Arophobia