The Weight of Feeling “Otherized”: Asexuality, Allonormativity, and Affective Injustice

Abstract Examining how morally questionable norms, ideologies, attitudes, etc. shape how members of certain groups experience themselves and their environment in ways that impair their ability to make sense of, express, regulate, and share their feelings, several authors have recently argued that there is a distinctive kind of affective injustice individuals experience in their capacity as affective beings. The present paper expands the burgeoning debate on affective injustice by drawing attention to an hitherto overlooked manifestation of such injustice. We argue that the ways “Aces,” i.e., asexual-identified individuals who experience a sustained or near-total lack of sexual attraction, are “othered” as “affect aliens” by our culture of allonormativity—the taken-for-granted assumption that all healthy, able-bodied adults experience sexual attraction, and that sex is a prerequisite for healthy, “normal,” and “natural” human flourishing and partnerships—is one manifestation of affective injustice. Section 1 sets the scene. Section 2 highlights a hitherto underdiscussed problem with the notion of affective injustice and outlines a possible solution. Section 3 illustrates how individuals can be wronged by how others treat them at various stages of their affective engagement with the world. Section 4 argues that the affective harm Aces experience as a result of allonormative otherizing is a notable case in point. Section 5 concludes and situates the implications of the discussion within a broader context to invite further scholarship.