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A review by maralrose
Sounds Fake But Okay: An Asexual and Aromantic Perspective on Love, Relationships, Sex, and Pretty Much Anything Else by Kayla Kaszyca, Sarah Costello
1.0
So I got this book from my local library as part of my quest to read as much as I can of this slate of asexual and aromantic nonfiction that's been coming out recently (pun intended) and I Have Thoughts. I have eight pages of notes that I took while reading this but I'm gonna try to keep this brief.
1) It's very unclear who the target audience of this book actually is. At times it seems like it's meant for people who don't know much about asexuality and aromanticism and haven't considered that maybe societal expectations about romance and sex don't have to rule our lives. Then at other times it seems like it's meant for aspec people who already know they're aspec and have at least some experience with the wider aspec community. Maybe it's supposed to be both, which is fine in theory, but these are two wildly different audiences and writing a book for both is a difficult task that these authors did not accomplish.
2) Everything in this book is touched on in the shallowest ways possible. The authors say that this is not an Ace 101 book, and well, it wasn't, because it doesn't go deep enough to be 101 level. They wander close to some deeper ideas and then promptly drop them. Throughout the book there are quotes from people who responded to a survey the author's put out and those quotes are the closest the book gets to anything even sort of complex. But said quotes are just dropped into the middle of the page with little to no lead-in and no follow up or expansion on what was said.
3) There is this pattern I noticed in the book where every time the authors criticize some aspect of amatonormative society they immediately follow it with "now we're not saying XYZ" when "XYZ" is something you would have to be reading this in extremely bad faith to think that they're saying. For example, from page 61: "One last time, we'd like to emphasize that we are not anti-romantic-sexual relationships - Kayla is literally in one!" They spend just as much (if not more) time explaining what they aren't saying than actually saying what they are saying.
4) As other reviewers have mentioned: the Harry Potter thing at the end. First of all, the whole "it's okay to like problematic media" bit just came out of absolutely nowhere. Second and more importantly, the authors (both cis women) made a deliberate choice to bolster that point by invoking someone whose "views on gender" as they put it are a cornerstone of an increasingly violent transphobic movement. Two cis women randomly going on an aside about how "so many" trans people have "gotten hope and comfort" out of Harry Potter very much came across as defensiveness for something there was literally no need for them to even bring up in the first place.
5) The book is very ace-centric. Yes, aromanticism is discussed in every chapter, but asexuality gets much more attention with every topic and there isn't so much as an acknowledgement of the allosexual aromantic perspective on anything. Aromanticism is discussed as if it's an extension of asexuality and not its own identity.
6) There are a lot of areas where it's clear that the authors are incredibly under-informed or just plain uninformed. Example: "There is, in fact, very little dialogue on what [legal standing for platonic partnerships] might look like, much less the impact it would have." (p56). There is actually quite a bit of dialogue about that exact thing in the aspec community (particularly the aro community) and it was really bizarre to see a book written by two aspec people who have had a successful podcast for years now claim otherwise. They also do the whole "same sex marriage is assimilation" nonsense and claim that Obergefell v Hodges "may have actually harmed the broader queer cause" (p56) with zero acknowledgement of the actual reasons why it mattered.
All in all, the bad stuff in this book outweighed the good by a long shot. I would definitely not recommend it to anyone trying to learn more about asexuality or aromanticism or the aspec community.
1) It's very unclear who the target audience of this book actually is. At times it seems like it's meant for people who don't know much about asexuality and aromanticism and haven't considered that maybe societal expectations about romance and sex don't have to rule our lives. Then at other times it seems like it's meant for aspec people who already know they're aspec and have at least some experience with the wider aspec community. Maybe it's supposed to be both, which is fine in theory, but these are two wildly different audiences and writing a book for both is a difficult task that these authors did not accomplish.
2) Everything in this book is touched on in the shallowest ways possible. The authors say that this is not an Ace 101 book, and well, it wasn't, because it doesn't go deep enough to be 101 level. They wander close to some deeper ideas and then promptly drop them. Throughout the book there are quotes from people who responded to a survey the author's put out and those quotes are the closest the book gets to anything even sort of complex. But said quotes are just dropped into the middle of the page with little to no lead-in and no follow up or expansion on what was said.
3) There is this pattern I noticed in the book where every time the authors criticize some aspect of amatonormative society they immediately follow it with "now we're not saying XYZ" when "XYZ" is something you would have to be reading this in extremely bad faith to think that they're saying. For example, from page 61: "One last time, we'd like to emphasize that we are not anti-romantic-sexual relationships - Kayla is literally in one!" They spend just as much (if not more) time explaining what they aren't saying than actually saying what they are saying.
4) As other reviewers have mentioned: the Harry Potter thing at the end. First of all, the whole "it's okay to like problematic media" bit just came out of absolutely nowhere. Second and more importantly, the authors (both cis women) made a deliberate choice to bolster that point by invoking someone whose "views on gender" as they put it are a cornerstone of an increasingly violent transphobic movement. Two cis women randomly going on an aside about how "so many" trans people have "gotten hope and comfort" out of Harry Potter very much came across as defensiveness for something there was literally no need for them to even bring up in the first place.
5) The book is very ace-centric. Yes, aromanticism is discussed in every chapter, but asexuality gets much more attention with every topic and there isn't so much as an acknowledgement of the allosexual aromantic perspective on anything. Aromanticism is discussed as if it's an extension of asexuality and not its own identity.
6) There are a lot of areas where it's clear that the authors are incredibly under-informed or just plain uninformed. Example: "There is, in fact, very little dialogue on what [legal standing for platonic partnerships] might look like, much less the impact it would have." (p56). There is actually quite a bit of dialogue about that exact thing in the aspec community (particularly the aro community) and it was really bizarre to see a book written by two aspec people who have had a successful podcast for years now claim otherwise. They also do the whole "same sex marriage is assimilation" nonsense and claim that Obergefell v Hodges "may have actually harmed the broader queer cause" (p56) with zero acknowledgement of the actual reasons why it mattered.
All in all, the bad stuff in this book outweighed the good by a long shot. I would definitely not recommend it to anyone trying to learn more about asexuality or aromanticism or the aspec community.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Transphobia