What Became of Class?

"If you've got letters after your name, or someone else to take the blame, you've got privilege".
--Television Personalities

Okay, you should definitely read the title of this post in the manner of the song from Chicago. In the comments to a previous post, Slightly Metaphysical mentioned that "there have been some comments on AVEN that asexuality is a white identity". It's a statement I've heard implied before. Okay, once. But still, it's something that's being asked, somewhere. I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of asexuals, and I've seen racial diversity in those I've met. As much as exists in my particular area as a whole? That, I don't know. As far as the question goes, I find it impossible to even guess at it directly. To do that, I feel like I'd need some sort of data both about asexuals and about the racial makeup of other queer identities. I think it's a multi-pronged question, but there is one small (?) prong I feel confident tackling. And that's class.

I don't think it's that surprising to state that at least in America, race tends to map onto class. In different regions of America, you'll find people of various backgrounds who predominate as "the poor". The constant is that the higher you go in terms of socio-economic class, the more white people there are. Of course, there are non-white people who are affluent and there are plenty of poor whites. However, when I look at the very rich people in my area, and then look at the people in poverty, I am generally looking first at white people, then at people of color.

So while class and race aren't permanently married, they can be connected statistically, and this is an idea you'll have to consider buying into in order for the rest of this post to relate to asexuals and race. My thesis here is that while I may not be able to prove (or disprove) a racial divide in people who identify as asexual, I may be able to prove that there is a class divide.

First, a fact: Most of the information available on asexuality is on the internet. And a lot of people still don't have access to the internet. "The digital divide" is a reality even in America. When poor people do have internet access, they might be using public or shared computers, and would have to accomplish the essentials rather than doing exploratory research on sexuality. If you're a low-income person, you might not have a job that requires you to use a computer, and you might have not learned to use one. This especially applies to older people, if the advent of computers happened when they were already out of school.

There's also the fact that when you're in poverty, you might not have all that much free time. Time-saving conveniences cost money, so being poor usually takes up a lot of someone's time. Since asexuality is the lack of a feeling, I think it can be a lot harder to realize you're asexual than to realize you're gay or bi. For me, I don't think it was a coincidence that I discovered I was asexual when I was able to spend some time in relative solitude, away from my everyday life. A lot of people in poverty don't have that opportunity. College is a prime time for people to question their identities, including sexuality, but you have to be able to afford to go there, at least in the US. Your income doesn't affect how thoughtful you are or how much you question. But, there are certain environments that are more conducive to those things than others. Being in poverty can include a lot of urgent worries like unsafe living conditions or medical problems you can't afford to fix.

I think one reason for the class disparity isn't that AVEN (the place from which most info on asexuality springs forth) is inherently classist or anything but that it just doesn't have the resources to target particular groups of people beyond the media that comes to us. Hopefully, this will change in time. I think that in the future, people of all classes will know about asexuality, however, right now, I think that knowledge of asexuality is largely skewed towards people who are relatively more affluent, or at least come from families fitting that description. I know some readers will be thinking, "Well, I'm asexual, and I'm poor". But it's not individuals I'm talking about here, it's general trends. And of course, people who weren't able to find out about asexuality due to class-based reasons (or any reason, I guess) won't be reading this and commenting here. So that's my theory...or at least, one potential circuitous route.