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 

