F
or LSA seniors Sarah Costello
and Kayla Kaszyca, it was best
friendship at first sight. Sarah
and Kayla were roommates freshman
year, randomly placed together in Alice
Lloyd Residence Hall. They’ve lived
together ever since, save for summers
and a semester Sarah spent in Germany.
“We
just
happened
to
get
each
other,”
Sarah
explained.
“Week
one,
we
were
like,
‘We’re
in
love!’”
Kayla
joked.
“By day two we were like, ‘Oh! We’re
already best friends!’” Sarah added.
Their three-and-a-half years of friend-
ship have created countless inside jokes
and an easy intimacy — as well as a week-
ly podcast, which now has more than
60 episodes. The subject of this podcast
is sexuality, specifically asexuality and
demisexuality. It’s grown to have an
impressive following: about 1,000 listens
per week and roughly 25,000 total listens.
D
uring their freshman year,
Sarah and Kayla didn’t really
talk much about sexuality.
Sarah was still figuring out her sexuality,
and it wasn’t until the summer after fresh-
man year that she came out as asexual.
Asexuality is the absence of sexual
attraction. People who are asexual, oth-
erwise known as “ace,” simply do not
feel sexual attraction toward any gender.
Sarah identifies as aromantic asexual, or
“aro-ace,” meaning that she isn’t inter-
ested in romantic or sexual relationships.
“The summer after freshman year, I
found out Sarah was asexual — she made
a post on Tumblr and I followed her Tum-
blr,” Kayla recounted with her friend.
The three of us were crowded around
a small table in the lobby of the UgLi.
Murmured homework questions and
shouted coffee orders from Bert’s provid-
ed a steady stream of background noise.
“It wasn’t even a post about coming out,”
Sarah clarified. “It was an ‘about me’ post.”
“So I saw and I messaged her and I was
like,
‘Hey,
I
saw
this,’
and
she
was
like,
‘Cool,’
and I was like, ‘Cool!’ And that was it.”
The podcast, which the pair named
“Sounds Fake But Okay,” grew out of
conversations between Sarah and Kayla
about sexuality during their junior
year. These discussions about the diver-
sity of sexual attraction led to Kayla’s
realization that she is demisexual.
People
who
are
demisexual,
or
“demi,”
only experi-
ence sexual
attraction
after
form-
ing an emo-
tional bond
with
their
potential
partner.
Kayla began
to
suspect
she
might
be demisex-
ual
dur-
ing her junior year, but she was in
a
committed
relationship
with
a
man at the time and so it didn’t feel
urgent for her to define her sexuality.
However, after Kayla’s relationship
with her boyfriend ended, her demisexu-
ality became much more evident to her.
Casual sex had never appealed to her, and
demisexuality just made sense. It feels like
less of a big deal for her to be demisexual
as a woman, she explained, because soci-
ety already expects women to need an
emotional connection for sex. Some peo-
ple confuse demisexuality with the choice
to wait for an emotional commitment
before sex, but just as asexuality isn’t the
same as celibacy, demisexual people are
different from those who make an active
decision to postpone sexual activity.
Kayla remembered the intensity of
recording the January 2018 episode about
her realization that she is demisexual.
“I made Sarah very uncomfortable
(by crying), because Sarah doesn’t do
emotions in general — which is a stereo-
type (about asexual people),” Kayla said.
“Not because I’m ace,” Sarah clari-
fied. “Because I’m my father’s daughter.”
“I was saying how much the pod-
cast has helped me realize things about
myself, and how Sarah has been there
for me throughout, helping me under-
stand and teaching me things,” Kayla
said. “I got very emotional.”
Most of the episodes of
“Sounds Fake But Okay”
are inspired by Sarah and
Kayla’s
own
experienc-
es. For example, the duo
recorded an episode about
ace exclusion from the
LGBTQ+ community after
a high school classmate
of Sarah’s — who identi-
fies as queer — tweeted on
the subject, expressing his
opinion that asexual peo-
ple should not be included
in the LGBTQ+ commu-
nity. Sarah explained that
acephobia(discrimination
against asexual people) often comes
from within the LGBTQ+ community.
“Sarah
was
livid,”
Kayla
said.
“I
was
also
very
angry.”
“I was just upset because I really liked
this (classmate) as a person,” Sarah added,
“And I was like, ‘You’re a part of the
queer community, how can you be doing
this?’ So that was an angry episode.”
The
classmate
messaged
Kayla
after listening to their episode on ace
exclusion to apologize for his tweet.
“I think he kind of got it a little bit more
after that,” Kayla said. “In that episode,
we did a lot of explaining about why the
ace community deserves to be in the queer
community. A lot of people’s basis (for ace
exclusion) is, ‘Well, you don’t receive as
much discrimination so you shouldn’t
belong’… There should be no barriers
to entry (into the queer community).”
“It’s a harmful way of thinking, to be
like, ‘You have to have experienced horri-
ble, horrible things or else you can’t be part
of this community,’” Sarah agreed. “I will
acknowledge that in general, the ace com-
munity has had, especially on a systemic
level, less discrimination than the gay
community and the trans community.”
For example, no one has ever tried to
stop asexual people from being able to
marry — but then again, many aces don’t
want to marry if they’re also aromantic.
Some asexual people are homoromantic,
Sarah explained, but they face discrimi-
nation because of their same-sex roman-
tic orientation, not their asexuality.
“Asexual people have existed for-
ever, but it was only recently that
it became a community,” she said.
“There’s still a lot of discrimina-
tion (against asexual people),” Kayla
said. “Maybe that stuff isn’t as bad
as
what’s
happening
to
gay
peo-
ple or trans people, but that doesn’t
take away the fact that it happens.”
Sarah described “corrective” rape
as one such issue aces often face. “Cor-
rective” rape is when sexual assault
is intended to “fix” a perceived sexual
deviance, such as same-sex attrac-
tion or, in the case of asexual people,
a lack of sexual desire toward anyone.
As an aro-ace college student, Sarah
sometimes worries that her friendli-
ness might be taken as flirtation. She
explained that she tries to be careful not
to insinuate romantic or sexual inter-
est, but that she hasn’t had too many
awkward situations arise since most
of her friends know that she’s asexual.
“If they follow me on Twitter, they
probably know I’m ace,” she said.
“And if they like you, they’re gonna
follow you on Twitter,” Kayla joked.
“Exactly!”
Sarah
laughed.
“My
Twitter’s
great!”
Though Sarah and Kayla’s friends
and family have been accepting of their
sexualities, society still has a ways to
go in accepting and respecting the dif-
ferent patterns of sexual attraction.
“A lot of people make judgment calls
on asexuality when they don’t really
understand it,” Sarah explained. “Part
of the reason why we started the pod-
cast is because we wanted to help
other people understand asexuality.”
Wednesday, December 5, 2018 // The Statement
6B
Courtesy of Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca
BY MIRIAM FRANCISCO, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
“Sounds Fake but Okay”: Asexuality on Campus
From left to right: Sarah Costello
and Kayla Kaszyca