I'm finding it incredibly important how much Angela Chen highlights the difference between sexuality in men and sexuality in women and what it means to be sexual for these two groups of people. As she states in ch 3, Men are taught that they are not men , and therefore not deserving of respect or status, unless they can sleep with as many women as possible. Sex isn't just something predominant in men, it's something that is expected from them, a source of conversation, a way to show passion and a good life, with a lot of ace people having to play into that to not feel left out and be seen as weird. It's not even about sex most times, it's about fitting in and being seen with respect, It's about the status.

With women, however, it becomes so much more political. Women who don't engage in a sexual life are seen as repressed, shameful, going back to a time before they had sexual freedom and are seen as a political failure and even as "political conservative" for not exercising this right that they have, that the women who pursue sex are more fun and feminist than the women who don't.

Heterosexuality is a political institution that is taught and conditioned and reinforced.

Compulsory heterosexuality is not the belief that most people are heterosexual. It is a set of assumptions and behaviors—that only heterosexual love is innate, that women need men as social economic protectors—that support the idea of heterosexuality as the default and only option.

Compulsory sexuality is a set of assumptions and behaviors that support the idea that every normal person is sexual, that not wanting (socially approved) sex is unnatural and wrong, and that people who don't care about sexuality are missing out on a utterly necessary experience.

That first quote already had such an impact, but after reading the other two I just couldn't not share them. The fact that heterosexuality and being sexual is not only viewed as the normal by society, but it is forced and imposed onto everyone. People will always assume someone is heterosexual before considering that they might be queer, with that person then having to come out which is a whole other situation in itself, and the same happens with sexuality, with being asexual being seen as "the other option", instead of it being in the same level as someone who is sexual.