Asexuality and the Potential of Young Adult Literature for Disrupting Allonormativity

This article examines the representation of asexuality and norms around sex and sexual orientation in contemporary English-language UK and US YA literature. In its multiplicity and radical potential for transforming regimes of compulsory sexuality, asexuality challenges the pervasive allosexual regime of allonormativity (the assumption that all human beings ‘naturally’ experience sexual attraction to other people). In light of the pervasive histories of erasure of asexuality and the still relative scarcity of explicit representations of asexuals in entertainment media and literature, inclusive representation and the explicit naming and recognition of asexuality as a legitimate sexual orientation worthy of respect and recognition are crucial. While sexual attraction is pervasively assumed to be inherent to all humans, sex and sexual attraction have especially been regarded as inherent and necessary to adolescence. Allonormative traditions and conventions have predominantly underpinned Western YA literature, although this has been increasingly changing with the growing recognition and representation of ace (asexual) and acespec (people on the asexual spectrum) characters in recent YA fiction, especially in independent publishing and e-publishing. This article aims to contribute to the recognition and analysis of the representation and mediation of asexuality in contemporary YA literature, and to and explore the liberatory and inclusive potential of YA fiction to expose, problematise, and disrupt allonormative norms and hegemonies around sex and sexual orientations.


INTRODUCTION
In this article, I explore the representation of asexuality in recent YA novels to establish the potential of YA fiction to interrogate, problematise, and disrupt norms around sexuality, sexual orientation, and allonormativity (the assumption that all human beings experience sexual attraction to other people). Initially defined as "having no sexual attraction to a partner of either sex" (Bogaert 279), understandings of asexuality have evolved and an asexual is now broadly defined as "someone who experiences little or no sexual attraction" (Siggy n.p.). Ace (asexual) and acespec (asexual spectrum) people experience little, no, weak, or infrequent sexual attraction, or only under specific circumstances. It is estimated that roughly one percent of the world's population identifies as ace or acespec (Bogaert 284). In its fluidity and multiplicity, asexuality challenges the allonormative regime of "compulsory sexuality", which infuses both heteronormative and queer spaces and which assumes that "to participate fully in social life, a person must perform both sex and a desire for sex" (Przybylo 188). Though asexuality disrupts both heteronormativity and homonormativity, it is "almost entirely absent in queer, feminist, and critical sexuality studies" (Przybylo and Cooper 298). I aim to contribute to the recognition and analysis of the representation and mediation of asexuality in contemporary English-language YA fiction, and to explore the liberatory and inclusive potential of YA fiction to expose, problematise, and challenge allonormative norms and hegemonies around sex and sexual orientations.
Asexuality can be said to have come into public consciousness as an orientation around 2001, although as a concept, it can be traced back to at least the late nineteenth century. Yet, the existence, complexity, and diversity of the asexual spectrum and its treatment in the literary imagination are still insufficiently addressed and under-researched. Indeed, as asexuality is "one of the most under-researched, misunderstood, underrepresented sexualities of the 21st century" (Pinto 333), I want to begin this article with a brief overview.
Asexuality is as much a specific orientation within a spectrum of (a)sexuality as it is a spectrum itself. For example, demisexual people experience sexual attraction specifically for people with whom they have an emotional, romantic bond, while graysexuals (gray-A, gray ace, or grace people) "expect their relationships to not involve sexual attraction, don't see their relationships in terms of sexual attraction, or very rarely experience sexual attraction" (Decker 36). Simultaneously, asexuality is an orientation that cuts across gender identities and other sexual identities, and ace and acespec people may also identify as bisexual, lesbian, gay, pansexual, straight, monogamous, and/or polyamorous. In addition to the axis of sexual attraction, many ace communities deploy the framework of the "split attraction model" (Sexuality Wiki n.p.), which sees both sexual and romantic orientations as being separate entities that can, but do not have to, conform with one another: e.g. aromantics (aros) experience little or no romantic attraction to others, homoromantics are attracted to the same sex or gender, and a demiromantic is attracted to a person only after forming a deep emotional bond with that person. Any combination of sexual orientation and romantic orientations can exist: e.g. graysexual/aromantic, asexual/demiromantic. The long-held tradition in the Western imagination of conflating sexual orientation with romantic orientation is pervasive and it is unfortunately still relatively rare for literature and media to explicitly distinguish between these different orientations and to see them as separate from one another.
Allonormative traditions and conventions have predominantly underpinned WesternYA literature, although this situation has been changing with the increasing recognition and representation of ace and acespec characters in recent YA fiction, especially in independent publishing and e-publishing. YA literature to date that involves asexual characters has tended to present aromantic asexual (aroace) characters or characters on the asexual spectrum whose romantic orientations are not explicitly identified or stated; although more acknowledgment and representation of a diversity of romantic orientations has been increasingly occurring in YA fiction, especially in the last five years. Affirmation of the legitimacy and diversity of the asexual spectrum is vital for ace, acespec, aro, arospec, and questioning young readers to feel seen and welcomed, as well as for accomplishing validation and acceptance of these still misunderstood and marginalised orientations by allosexuals (people who are not asexual). First, I will examine the challenges which allonormativity poses for YA literature's efforts to conceptualise asexuality and to represent ace and acespec characters in light of the deep-rooted paradigm of associating adolescence with compulsory sexuality. I will then explore the importance of explicit, authentic representation of ace and acespec characters in light of the relative gap in recognising and affirming asexuality and the asexual spectrum in society, media, and culture. I will then examine how recent YA fiction has been increasingly representing ace and acespec characters as well as the extent to which contemporary YA novels involving ace and acespec characters perpetuate, resist, or disrupt allonormative practices which have been traditionally involved in representing asexuality in literature. In my conclusion, I observe that, while some allonormative ideas and discourses do still persist, YA fiction offers a powerful and empowering potential for interrogating allosexual regimes and for affirming asexuality as a legitimate and respected orientation.
Patricia Kennon · Asexuality and the Potential of Young Adult Literature 3

ADOLESCENCE AND ALLONORMATIVITY
While sex and sexual attraction are widely assumed to be inherent to all humans, these have been particularly regarded in Western societies as 'natural' and 'necessary' parts of adolescence, and widely used to symbolise the border crossing between adolescence and adulthood. Although sexual content in literature for children has traditionally been resisted and not overtly recognised, sexual attraction and innate interest in sexual attraction are expected and assumed aspects of the ostensibly hormone-driven teenager and of YA after coming out and featured characters who 'just happened' to be gay and whose homosexuality was only one aspect of their character", and its celebration of queer YA fiction "commanding a place at the center stage of YA literature" (5-6). of "reproductive futurism" still tends to underpin the majority of YA literature -including "gay adolescent novels" -and that this doctrine strives to preserve the "absolute privilege of heteronormativity by rendering unthinkable, by casting outside the political domain, the possibility of a queer resistance to this organizing principle of communal relations" (2) holds true.
The allosexual assumptions informing much of YA scholarship indicate the extent to which allonormativity can be so deeply embedded and normalised that even research dedicated to exploring and affirming queerness in youth literature may unconsciously or consciously contribute to overlooking, neglecting, or even erasing asexuality in youth narratives. The gravitational pressures of allonormativity are indeed formidable. While YA literature has not fully recognised the diverse spectrum of asexuality and it has, to date, had mixed success in confronting and dismantling allosexual assumptions, YA literature nevertheless affords a powerful opportunity and radical potential for challenging and disrupting the "same old story" of allonormativity. The next section thus expands on the importance of visibility of asexual representation and examines issues involved in the recent mediation and presentation of ace and acespec characters in popular culture and YA literature.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ASEXUALITY REPRESENTATION
In light of the extensive tactics and histories of erasure of asexuality, visibility and the reinterpretation of this orientation -"not as pathological deviance, faulty perception, or a product of oppression but as a source of different lives, pleasures, knowledge, and embodiments" (Kim 484) -are crucial. The equitable recognition and acceptance of asexuality within queer identities has been a key issue in this process: for example, transforming the frequent marginalisation of asexuality as an existing, valid sexual orientation within the traditional umbrella terms such as LGBT. Asexuality and the existence and experiences of ace and acespec people disrupt both heteronormativity and homonormativity, and the recognition of asexuality "can have explosive, widely generative effects, necessitating the addition of an ' A' in the sexuality studies field, in courses on gender and sexuality, in activist movements, and in discussions of minority representation and visibility" (Milks and Cerankoswki 3). Even in the more recent and ostensibly more inclusive acronyms such as LGBTQIA and LGBTQIAP+, the A, when explicitly included, usually appears at the end and is one of the few letters that represents multiple sections of the multiple communities -asexual, aromantic, and agender -and people do not always agree on who is being represented (for example, the belief that A stands for "ally" can still be widespread). Moreover, in the recent past, notable gay-rights commentators have literally laughed at the asexual awareness movement, saying: "you have the asexuals marching for the right to not do anything. Which is hilarious! Like, you don't need to march for that right, you just need to stay home and not do anything" (Dan Savage qtd. in (A)sexual n.p.). Despite increasing representation and awareness of asexuality and this spectrum, visibility politics and the importance of respectful and authentic representation of asexuals in society, media, and culture are still key for the development of asexuality as a legitimate and affirmed orientation for both asexuals and allosexuals.
While there has been a slow but increasing number of canonical and explicitly-named characters in contemporary Western Anglophone television and animated television series Osterwald likewise observes the allonormative paradigm of how asexual characters in contemporary film and television all too often have "something odd and extraordinary that sets them apart from the average person and makes them interesting. Without these Patricia Kennon · Asexuality and the Potential of Young Adult Literature extraordinary traits, screenwriters seem to say, the viewers cannot look at asexual characters as whole, interesting or compelling" (42).
In light of the relative gap of explicit representations of asexuality in society, media, and culture, representation and explicit naming of asexuality matter hugely to ace and acespec people. As Kristina Gupta states, the only difference between "an asexual character and a character that just doesn't pursue sex, is that one of them is named. Because naming is so vital to asexual representation […] saying that one word -asexual -offers a progressive intervention into legitimating this identity position" (44). Yet, because of asexuality's absence, which acts as "symbolic annihilation" (Gerbner and Gross 182) in popular culture, the perception of asexuality as an absence of sexuality, and the conflation of asexuality with celibacy, most characters in literature and media who do not exhibit sexual attraction and therefore could be interpreted by viewers and readers as being asexual are not explicitly described or identified as ace or acespec. Instead, "most characters that could exist on the asexual spectrum do so through coded hints, clues and insinuations, not outright statements" (Gupta 16). This pattern of relative invisibility and erasure is consistent with Sarah Sinwell's argument that "whereas narratives of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, and transsexuality often revolve around the idea of 'coming out'", asexual characters "do not often 'name' themselves as such. Indeed, one of the reasons asexuality may be unseen (and unheard) [in media] is precisely because it is not recognised as a cultural category or a sexual identity" (168).
One possibility for asexual readers seeking representation in YA texts is to adopt the practice of seeking out asexual moments and "asexual resonances": what Ela Przybylo and Danielle Cooper refer to as a "queerly asexual reading method" in which asexuality can be understood "outside of its current definitional parameters of unchangeability, inherentness, nonchoice, self-identification, heteronormativity, and maleness" (303). This practice of seeking asexual resonances includes ace coding. As Lynn O'Connacht observes, "heavily implying yet never outright stating that a character is asexual" creates a situation of most books on recent asexual reading lists falling "into three different levels of representation: explicitly labelled (or 'I'm asexual!'), ace coded ('I'm not interested in sex!') or Word of God ('I, the author, say this character is asexual even though it's not clear on the page')" ("Asexual and Aromantic Tropes in Fiction" n.p.). For example, Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games has been ace coded by readers and critics who have noted her profound discomfort with being forced to perform romantic and sexual interest for her survival, and how important family and friendship are to her rather than potential lovers. In a series of tweets over three weeks in 2019 hashtagged #TheAceSpecGames, YA author Rosiee Thor presented textual evidence from the first book to undermine the allosexual perception that Katniss is "unemotional and cold" (@RosieeThor n.p.). Arguing that Katniss is "just not into your allonormative shit. Learn the difference", Thor concluded that "Katniss is arospec for suremost likely demiro or grayro -and ace" (@RosieeThor n.p.  (1999)(2000)(2001)(2002). Pierce has retrospectively stated in response to readers' questions on her website that: "in short, Kel is both aromantic and asexual" (n.p.). While there is some conflation of asexuality, androgyny, and aromanticism, Pierce's series is one of the first (if not the first) known English-language YA works with confirmed aroace representation, the first to explore asexuality as a spectrum, and the first to consider the idea that sexual orientation may be fluid over time.
While it is encouraging progress to see more asexual representation and asexuality awareness from established YA authors, such "Word of God" recognition after the fact does little to increase visibility or radically challenge allosexual regimes of allonormativity.
Stating on social media after the book's publication that a character is ace or acespec allows for the "claim to have representation while not actually making the audience confront the fact that a character they like and identify with is not straight -but it would be much better queer or questioning characters […] has gradually been occurring" (149). While, ten years later, this inclusive momentum has not yet fully or equivalently extended to ace and acespec characters in YA literature, contemporary YA fiction has been "making notable ground" (Henderson 3) in explicitly recognising and affirming asexual characters, and in resisting allonormative tactics of asexual erasure and dismissal. Although the deep-seated presumption of compulsory sexuality does still tend to underpin much of youth literature and wider media, YA fiction possesses a radical capacity for confronting and dismantling allonormative regimes, and for representing asexuality as a legitimate and respected orientation. In the next section, I will explore the representation of asexuality in recent Anglophone YA fiction, and the potential of YA novels for disrupting allosexual traditions and equitably affirming asexuality and the diversity of the ace spectrum.

ASEXUALITY AND/IN YOUNG ADULT FICTION
Over the last decade, an increasing momentum of Anglophone YA novels (many of which are by queer and #ownvoices authors) involving explicitly-stated representation, the use of the terms asexual and acespec within these texts, and affirmation of ace and acespec protagonists, narrators, and secondary characters has been taking place. Examples include: RJ Anderson's Quicksilver (2013) Although YA fiction is still grappling with the tensions between allosexual regimes and the field's radical potential for disrupting allonormativity, there has been an increasing recognition and explicit confrontation of the realities and impacts of aphobia/acephobia: that is, "a particular strand of queerphobia" whereby asexual and aromantic people are "at risk for the same violences suffered by other queer people, including discrimination, erasure, abuse, pathologization, and corrective rape. On top of this, ace and aro people are assumed, by other queer people, to not experience oppression" (Holleb 30). Common aphobic microaggressions and responses of pity, disbelief, suspicion, and exclusion in both heteronormative and queer spaces include: "you'll change your mind when you meet the right person"; "you don't know what you're missing!"; "were you abused in the past? Maybe it's just fear"; "so you're a prude? Or just celibate?." Gabriel Vidrine's 2018 novel, On A Summer Night, addresses aphobia by both queer and heterosexual characters. The 14-yearold narrator, Casey, is bisexual and transgender while his best friend, Ella, is explicitly represented as asexual. Ella experiences vindictive harassment by the homophobic bully, Ryan, who calls her a "'freak'" (140) due to her apparently inexplicable disinterest in him, while Casey has spent much of his friendship with Ella ostensibly supporting her asexuality yet privately "wishing she should just go out and get a boyfriend already" (28).
As part of the "common narrative in our society -that sex is part of the package deal" (Decker 61), asexuals may be subjected to threats of "unwanted or coercive sex, particularly in relationships with nonasexual individuals" as well as the everyday "strain of maintaining their relationships through sex, of meeting their partners' sexual needs, and of doing performative work to convince their partners that they are enjoying sex" (Przybylo 188). Billy Merrell's 2017 verse novel, Vanilla, explores these intersections of rape culture, compulsory sexuality, and aphobic assumptions that ace and acespec people are 'broken' in some way.
Homoromantic and asexual Vanilla is sex repulsed and the novel explores the aftermath of his break-up with Hunter who is allosexual and gay. Hunter uses shaming and emotional blackmail as coercive tactics to try to pressure Vanilla into sex and throughout the novel he complicitly supports the allonormative suspicions and resentments of their queer peer group: "'your boyfriend's a homophobe,' they say. Or, 'Who does he think he is?!' Because no one wants to feel defensive at a gay party, where they thought they'd be free from that kind of judgment, finally" (29). While sensitivity is crucial when including distressing and potentially triggering content for ace and acespec readers, it is also key that aphobia and aphobic discourses and behaviour are acknowledged, unmasked, and condemned.
Science fiction offers an intriguing opportunity for problematising and dismantling allonormative regimes and for affirming the full and diverse spectra of asexual, as well as allosexual, orientations and identities. As Katelyn Browne observes, queer YA "has, for its entire existence, wrestled with the tension between depicting the queerphobic world as we know it and offering more optimistic roadmaps to both queer and nonqueer readers" (20).
Recent YA science-fiction novels have had mixed success in being able to successfully imagine "roadmaps" (Browne 20) of a queer-friendly society where ace and acespec people can just exist as themselves rather than always having to explain or defend the legitimacy of their orientations. YA science-fiction novels that feature explicitly-identified asexual characters and which aim to present queer-inclusive societies do not always manage to fulfil their inclusive promise, and allosexual norms do still continue to inform some of these imagined worlds. Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy's #ownvoices Once & Future (2019) involves a wide range of gay, queer, and genderfluid characters and the sexual orientations and attractions of these allosexual characters are normalised throughout the novel. The mysterious Jordan is the only asexual character (her romantic orientation is not stated) and, significantly, the point-of-view protagonist, Ari, spends most of the novel distrusting and resenting Jordan due to Jordan's apparent closeness to Gwen, the protagonist's love interest.
While the novel aims to enact and give voice to a queer-inclusive future, Jordan is only given one page late in the novel in which she herself briefly talks about her asexuality (276) and the revelation of her asexuality is treated as a plot twist in order for Ari (and presumably allosexual young-adult readers) to feel reassurance that Jordan is no longer a sexual ( The mixed success of these YA novels' sincere attempts to fully imagine queernormative futures for asexual as well as allosexual characters speaks to the persistence of allonormativity and that there is still work to do for YA literature to enact and sustain its potential for equitably representing asexuality and for problematising and disrupting hegemonies of sexual difference. As noted earlier, even when there is explicit naming and recognition of asexuality, the practice of conflating sexual orientation with romantic orientation is still relatively widespread. Although an increasing number of YA novels do indeed acknowledge and explicitly identify the various romantic orientations of their ace and acespec characters, various recent YA novels conflate these orientations. For example, the asexuality of the narrator of Emma Griffiths' 2015 After I Wake is explicitly stated and emphasised throughout the novel -Carter consciously attends her school's LGBTQA club parties because she "wants to represent the A in LGBTQA because I've always been absurdly full of asexual pride" (37) -yet her romantic orientation is never identified or stated.
Moreover, sexual attraction and romantic attraction are entangled and conflated throughout the novel: for example, in Carter's statement to her best friend that she loves him "only in the most brotherly of fashions. You're gay, and I'm asexual, it could never happen. Beside, love seems a little far-fetched for me. I wouldn't be any good at it. I never have been" (131).
Similarly, although the sexualities of the asexual protagonist and her pansexual best friend are explicitly named and explored in Marieke Nijkamp's 2018 Before I Let Go, the protagonist's (or any other character's) romantic orientation is never identified or addressed.
Again, this asexual character could be coded as aromantic due to her comments such as "unlike most of my classmates, I never had crushes. I didn't understand what all the fuss was about" (57), yet the conflation of asexuality and aromanticism undermines the integrity of the novel's otherwise sensitive depiction of the questioning asexual protoganist's exploration of where she is on the asexual spectrum. There are more queer characters than straight characters in the main cast of Destiny Soria's 2018 Beneath the Citadel alongside an admirable diversity of sexualities, racial identities, ethnicities, and body types, yet the asexual Alys's romantic orientation is never named or specified although this character could be coded as aromantic or gray-romantic. While it is refreshing that Alys is secure in her asexuality and that her asexuality has nothing to do with the plot, it is nevertheless disappointing that Soria does not acknowledge or state Alys's romantic identity, especially as Soria identifies as gray-romantic asexual and that she consciously decided to use the actual term asexual in the book after being urged to do so by a sensitivity reader "because it's not super common to see those terms on the page in high fantasy novels and they can be really encouraging for young readers especially" (Soria n.p.).
Although there is an increasing acknowledgment of the difference between sexual orientation and romantic orientation, the practice of the conflation of asexuality and aromanticism does still persist in YA fiction and wider media. In the next section, I will examine three problematic practices which also have been traditionally involved in representing asexuality in fiction: the trope of the "allosexual saviour" (Siggy n.p.) who informs and teaches ace, acespec, and questioning characters about their asexuality; the association of asexuality and asexual people with death; and the association of asexuality with Whiteness and White privilege. In tracing how recent YA novels have engaged with these conventions, the following section explores the extent to which YA fiction involving ace and acespec characters perpetuates, resists, or succeeds in disrupting these allonormative traditions.

YA FICTION'S INTERACTION WITH ALLONORMATIVE TRADITIONS
The trope of the allosexual saviour, which focuses on the epiphany of explicitly naming the possibility of asexuality as a valid sexual orientation, exists in counterpoint with the traditional trope of coming out for queer allosexual characters. As Sinwell argues, "whereas narratives of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, and transsexuality often revolve around the idea of 'coming out', the relationship between speech and silence, and sexual selfidentification, asexual characters do not often 'name' themselves as such" (168). This trope of an allosexual character who frequently identifies as queer and even occasionally as asexual themselves, and who instructs the asexual or questioning character that asexuality legitimately exists, is similar to the idea of the "White Saviour narrative where the privileged and more knowledgeable allosexual is set up as 'saving'" the asexual character from their While I agree with O'Connacht that this death-adjacent convention is pervasive and that it extends allosexual claims that asexual people are abnormal and invalid members of society who will never rightly belong, thus "allowing writers to make this separation from society literal" ("Asexual and Aromantic Tropes in Fiction" n.p.), a recent YA novel has demonstrated a profound rewriting and radical transformation of this practice. Oshiro's 2018 Anger Is a Gift addresses racist media framing, the criminalisation of young people of colour, and police brutality against both US students of colour and high-school staff who try to resist or challenge them.
The cover of Claire Kann's 2018 Let's Talk About Love is designed in the asexual flag's colours of purple, black, and white, and the novel presents a Black biromantic asexual protagonist navigating daily aphobic violences, racism, misogyny, microaggressions, and rape culture. The novel importantly acknowledges that asexuality is a spectrum and addresses racist stereotyping of Black sexuality, the privileging of Whiteness, and the complexity of social and sexual embodiments in light of histories of marginalised people being desexualised (the denial of their sexual desires as well as enforced abstinence) and hypersexualised (the exaggeration of their sexual desires as well as forced sexual activity), and often both simultaneously (Owen 2014). Hailing this novel as a foundational text for "Conscious Black Asexuality" (165), Brittney Miles concludes that the protagonist's "queerness and positivity […] reference the resurgence of youth as liberation, as found in the #BlackGirlMagic and #BlackBoyJoy movements", and that the novel offers a crucial counternarrative for "what is possible for Black people's emotional health, their successes, and their happiness despite pervasive anti-Blackness in the world" (169). Ebony Elizabeth Thomas has powerfully called out the diversity crisis in children's and YA media as an "imagination gap" (5) which can only be resolved by "decolonizing our fantasises and our dreams […and] emancipating the imagination itself" (169). Although there is still work to do in exposing allosexuality, disrupting allonormativity's complicity in racist regimes, and fully emancipating the radical potential of the YA imagination, the "unmarked whiteness" in much of the thinking and presumptions around asexuality and the tradition of asexual spaces as "white-dominated spaces" (Przybylo and Gupta, x) have increasingly been recognised and interrogated in these and other recent YA novels which explore intersectionalities of asexuality and race, and promote anti-racist affirmations of ace and acespec people of colour.

CONCLUSION
In "Reconsidering Asexuality and Its Radical Potential", CJ DeLuzio Chasin posed a provocative premise for a re-imagined and asexual-inclusive world: "where being sexual is no longer mandated as a prerequisite of normalcy or intimacy and where nonsexual relationships are recognized and valued, […] where no level of sexual desire is pathological and where the social emphasis is on sexuality being self-affirming in whatever unique form it takes" (416). While contemporary YA literature has made welcome strides in recognising the existence and validity of asexuality and the asexual spectrum, it still does have a significant way to go in enacting its full potential and in confronting and disrupting 18 International Journal of Young Adult Literature · Vol. 2, No. 1 · 2021 allonormativity, compulsory sexuality, and the association of adolescence with sexual attraction and sex. As YA authors, readers, publishers, audiences, and scholars continue to engage with issues of ace and acespec representation, it is vital that this representation and the complexity and diversity of the spectrum is rendered authentically and inclusively. The validation and affirmation of asexuality as an orientation and the equitable recognition of the full spectrum of asexuality are particularly significant for questioning, ace, and acespec young readers seeking representation and who might not have encountered inclusive and respectful stories about their experiences and identities. While "LGBTQ youth are isolated by metaphorical understandings that define adolescence as a transitional stage that is neither adulthood nor childhood, and then isolated again by heteronormative assumptions and homophobic discourse" (Lewis and Durand 44), ace and acespec youth are particularly vulnerable due to pervasive allonormative and allosexual beliefs, histories, and power systems.