You Find Yasmin Benoit Sexy? Sorry, But Doesn’t Invalidate Her Asexuality
Why would it?
I first heard about the lingerie model Yasmin Benoit about a year before I had my own demisexuality realisation. My first and only thought was the same as hearing about anyone else coming out with an identity other than what anyone previously thought “fair play to have the confidence and self-awareness” and left it at that.
I found the discourse surrounding her coming out a bit bizarre, as though her personal life experiences were a matter of public discussion and subject to others’ approval.
The number of men and women who couldn’t perceive that someone as beautiful as Yasmin Benoit, who modelled lingerie for a living, could be devoid of sexual attraction towards anyone, filled me with confusion.
I was aware of asexuality several years before this having made several ace, aro, and aroace friends in the Twitter writing community. The speed and understanding with which I grasped the meaning of asexuality would eventually become one of the main hinges for my own realisation that I too am part of that identity… but I digress.
Once again, I must point out what asexuality means… it’s an umbrella term to describe people who experience little to no sexual attraction. People who identify as fully asexual experience no sexual attraction.
As for the “little”, this exists as several microlabels:
- Grey asexuals for whom sexual attraction is rare
- Demisexuals for whom sexual attraction is contingent on a strong emotional bond such as pre-existing romantic, intellectual attraction, or friendship
- Reciprosexuals who can only feel sexual attraction once somebody has already expressed a sexual attraction in them
There may be others, but these are the main ones that spring to mind.
Yasmin Benoit identifies as aroace. That means she experiences neither sexual nor romantic attraction. From this I can presume that she has never looked at any man, woman, enby or anyone else and had either lustful thoughts or experienced romantic attachment. Yasmin has repeatedly said she will likely live her whole life single despite that in her early years she believed she would fall in love at some point.
That has seemingly never happened to her.
Recently, Yasmin posted a picture of herself celebrating being NYCPride’s first ever asexual Grand Marshal. Many replies and quote retweets commented that the outfit was overtly sexual. And this was the problem many struggled with — to reconcile the asexual identity of a beautiful woman wearing sexy clothes. She is no stranger to revealing clothing considering that is literally her career.
This confusion rests on several stereotypes of what asexual people are, and what we look like. This is nothing new.
The first issue is a simple one: presuming that someone’s outward beauty is an indication of their sexuality. I realise some people still struggle to believe that a feminine and attractive woman could possibly be a lesbian, or that a masculine or androgynous woman could possibly be straight. This isn’t that much different. It’s nonsense to say it about feminine lesbians and masculine straight women, and it’s nonsense to say it about asexuals too.
The second issue is the belief that asexuals who don’t experience sexual attraction must not be able to grasp it as a concept. Why? Well, for several reasons. We’re bombarded with it in media — many books describe love at first sight as something physical. We talk to our allo friends, or our allo friends explain the physical reactions they get when seeing someone they perceive as hot.
The third issue… making presumptions about someone’s desires and sexuality based purely on their clothing is a bit rapey, isn’t it?
Of course we know what sexual attraction is! We read up on it because we struggle to grasp a thing that other people seem to experience several times a week, if not every day. We explore the concept of sexual attraction typically because we don’t know what it feels like and because we’re trying to understand how it all works for those who do.
Very often, this investigation leads us to understand that we are asexual.
None of which has anything to do with how Yasmin Benoit makes her living.
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