Ace Theory: An Essay in Fragments about Asexuality by Ryan Fitzpatrick

Current opinion always holds asexuality to be invisible. Hence the notion of a happy, gentle, jubilant asexuality is never to be found in any text. Where are we to read it, then?

In this revelatory essay-in-fragments, critically acclaimed poet Ryan Fitzpatrick works through the ways in which they have interfaced with a sexual world as an asexual person. Often defined as the orientation of those who don’t experience sexual attraction, asexuality is tied to a shared logic wherein our lives are shaped by sex, by romance, by economic and social pressures that determine what a good life looks like.

Leaping from the eureka-moment of finding the right words to name an unnameable experience, Ace Theory upends rigid definitions by turning over the pieces of a supposedly broken life. Through intellectual analysis, cultural criticism, and personal reflection, Fitzpatrick tangles with the trenchant knot of compulsory sexuality, putting a squeeze on the many pressures that make asexual people feel like they simply don’t fit.

Praise for Ace Theory

“Ace Theory offers a series of critiques, propositions, and embodied movements that challenge the pervasiveness of how heavily contemporary Western society is organized around the promises and hopes of sex and romance, and the great disservice this does to those who cannot align themselves with this ticking clock of allonormativity. Part theory, part poetics, Ryan Fitzpatrick’s book will have you wondering if there are not perhaps other ways to make the most of our togetherness.” —Ela Przybylo, author of Asexual Erotics and Ungendering Menstruation

“I must confess Ace Theory tacked me to a new articulation of our shared existence. IT IS Ryan Fitzpatrick somewhat assembled, ‘themself’ in a teacup sans gold repair so to endeavor the risk of sipping revelations of normative standards too boring to desire + spilling perverse reorderings of non-sexual intimacy all over the food court floor. I insist we don’t clean IT up. Accept this invitation to slip past the past’s sexual essentialism + get closer to a messily modeled experience that just might be asexuality.” —Danielle LaFrance, author of Verbal Violence

“Ace Theory is neither introductory primer nor inspirational memoir about asexuality. Ryan Fitzpatrick highlights, instead, the pleasures and frustrations that arise from the struggle to articulate an ‘identity’ or ‘experience’ or ‘disposition’ (what even do we call it?) that is never entirely legible. In a formally experimental combination of personal reflections, cultural criticism, and poetry, the book refuses to settle on any one approach to its topic. Yet it nevertheless orients us around one resounding idea: asexuality is only a ‘problem’ if you are using sexual performance, tied to coupledom and reproduction, as the measure of a healthy life. If you are ‘broken’—out of step with this normative narrative of adulthood—and need a comrade in your stubborn refusal to be ‘fixed,’ read this book.” —Sarah Brouillette, author of Literature and the Creative Economy