Jordan shares his experiences of coming out to his work colleagues as being asexual.

 The first time my sexuality was brought up in work was when I signed up to PCS. To my amazement, the diversity information form actually contained an option for members to identify as asexual. After years of ticking the “other” option or leaving the sexual orientation section blank, this was the first time I had seen my sexuality written down in black and white on an official document. I can’t overstate how encouraging this was for me, as a young asexual person entering the workplace for the first time.

…And then I saw two of my colleagues pointing at the same box and laughing.

“What the hell is that?” One of them asked.

“I think that’s when you don’t like men or women.”

“Well, that’s boring. How can you not like sex? It’s getting ridiculous, all these new letters they’re adding to LGBT.”

I quietly folded my form and passed it to my union rep. What I hadn’t told anyone is that I’d recently come off a course of antidepressants following an unwanted sexual encounter.

It had taken months for me to convince my GP that I needed medication. Not knowing anything about asexuality, he first wrote me a prescription for Viagra and then insisted I be sent for hormone tests (which, incidentally, came back normal). I had hoped that work would add some stability to my life, but in that moment I realised that, at some point, the onus would be on me to explain what asexuality was to my co-workers.

Historically, asexual people (as well as other sexual minority groups that have only recently given a name to themselves) haven’t faced the horrific discrimination that LGBT people have faced, but you’d be hard pressed to find many people who would agree that a disinterest in sex is ‘normal’. 

Quite often, the closest people in my life have told me that it’s “just a phase,” or that I just “haven’t met the right person yet.” In several cases the people I’ve trusted the most have used that line to justify putting me through things that not only felt unnatural to me, but also caused mental health issues further down the line. This led me to shut myself off from a lot of people.

As it turns out, coming out to my colleagues at work was the best decision I ever made. The friendship and support I received from my co-workers helped me through an extremely difficult time. At first no one had any idea what I meant when I said that I was asexual (when I walked into the break-out room, people would stop talking about their Saturday night antics thinking I was too prudish to want to hear about that sort of thing). But slowly people began to ask braver questions about it, and through talking about our different perspectives on friendship, romance, sex and love we’ve all come to look upon our experiences a little more positively.

Asexual issues may seem marginal in the grand scheme of things, but I can’t overstate how much of a difference it makes for anyone to have their sexuality recognised in the workplace, and by such an incredibly supportive union. It makes me feel hopeful that, sooner or later, asexuality will be as widely recognised outside of work as LGBT.