"To be asexual in a world that privileges normative sexual partnership is to be atypical, Other, queer."

This is truly a brilliant book. It discuses a lot of interesting points, it doesn't hold back, and is very validating. I especially appreciated topics of purity culture, problems with "some asexuals do have sex!" reassurances, the link between mysoginy and acephobia, gender in relation to performing "correct womanhood", and how constant depreciation of consent is central to rejection of asexuality (among other things). I also enjoyed educating myself on topics regarding Black asexual experience.

If I had to give some critique (as I've taken away half a star) it's the following:

Firstly, a minor thing. This book is very well researched, and references a lot of sources. So, in contrast some sources felt less substantial, like tumblr and "this person I talked to said". It in no way diminishes the message or opinions, but to me disrupted a flow a little, and also sometimes felt "one-dimentional".

Second, I felt weird that considering the topic of compulsory sexuality, sex exploitation, human trafficking, p•rn obsession and normalization, and dehumanization of victims of those patriarchal structures weren't critisized. The book touches on sexualization of queers and POCs, and dehumanization of the latter in p•rn, but not the sex exploitation system as a whole. That may be because of the author's views on this topic, though they do discuss r•pe culture.

I wish more allo queer people read this book, but it may suffer a bit of an echo chamber issue, where it's mostly us aces discussing among ourselves.