From Paradiso Media comes a new podcast about one person discovering their asexuality in the city of love. For years, Aline thought “it will eventually come.” They'd even put themselves in uncomfortable situations to try and force it to happen. It never did. They felt isolated, excluded, and ashamed. What is life without experiencing sexual or romantic desire — from a one-night stand to a coupled relationship? At 20, they finally started to find answers.
This episode features excerpts from the movies: American Pie produced by Universal Pictures, Casablanca produced by Warner Brothers, and Moulin Rouge produced by Bazmark Productions and 20th Century Fox. From TV shows: Conan produced by Conanco and Warner Brothers Television, Dawson’s Creek produced by Columbia Tristar Television, Netflix’s Emily in Paris produced by Darren Star Productions, Jacks Media, and MTV entertainment studios, The Ellen Show produced by A Very Good Production, Telepictures Productions, and Warner Brothers Television. And from the Netflix is a Joke YouTube channel produced by Netflix, as well as from the French radio show, Loving Fun, produced by Fun Radio.
Aline: Hi everyone! I'm Aline Laurent-Mayard, and I'm the host of a new podcast from Paradiso Media, called Free From Desire, Asexual in the City of Love.
If you like Seventeen, we think you might like Free From Desire too. So we wanted to give you the opportunity to listen to the first episode right here. For more episodes, just look for Free From Desire on your favorite podcast app.
[Footsteps on the street, a metro line in the distance]
Aline: For the longest time, I’ve imagined that I’d bump into a man on the street or that I’d meet someone on a plane. And we’d live a great love story.
As you might have guessed from my accent, I’m French. I was born and raised in Paris, the city of love… so maybe it’s not that surprising that I was always such a helpless romantic.
Ever since I was a kid I wanted the life of a hippie, of a liberated woman, with sexual partners all around the world, I wanted to be in a “ménage à trois” like Jules et Jim. I dreamt big! I wasn’t meant for ordinary love.
I know that’s what you’d expect from me too, if you’ve ever watched any American films or TV shows set in Paris like Moulin Rouge…
[Clip from Moulin Rouge: “This story is about love. Overcoming all obstacles”]
…Casablanca…
[Clip from Casablanca: “What about us? We’ll always have Paris”]
…Or Emily in Paris.
[Clip from Emily in Paris: “You don’t come to Paris to be good”]
You’re probably hearing accordion right now in your head. It’s a cliche, but it also has roots in reality. It’s part of French culture, and as a little girl in Paris, I bought into many of these ideas.
And yet, here I am: I’m 35 and I’ve never been in love. Not once. Not even for a few days. My life has been entirely romanceless.
And I’m doing fine. Rather than a romantic partner, I have wonderful friends, an amazing family and now, I have this:
[A baby giggling]
That’s Jo, my baby.
Thanks to a sperm donor, I’m no longer a single person- I’m a single parent! My life is all about poop, burps, and adorable little baby feet!
I haven’t always been this happy being single. For 10 years or so, I’ve wondered why I wasn’t attracted to anyone. I thought I was weird, that something in me was broken. I was terrified that I was going to end up alone, and sad.
Then, I discovered what a-sexuality was.
Male voice: Asexuality: the sexual orientation of people who experience zero or little sexual attraction for others.
Aline: I started to look at life differently.
I wondered what sexual desire really was - and if it was a problem that I didn’t feel any, for anyone. I wondered if it was possible to be in a relationship if I didn’t desire my partner. And why did I want to be in a relationship in the first place?
So I asked my friends, I listened to other people with similar experiences and I read studies and went to see academics and authors.
[Montage of some of the interviews featured in the podcast]
In this podcast, I’m going to tell you how I came to accept myself and what I discovered along the way.
How I realized that I wasn’t able to feel sexual attraction, despite my best efforts. I hadn’t suppressed any trauma, I didn't have any hormonal issues. Sexual desire just doesn't always come with practice.
And most importantly, how I eventually learned that I shouldn't force myself. That I could shut off Tinder, OkCupid, and Bumble, and replace meaningless dates with movie nights.
I’m going to tell you how difficult it was, to realize and accept that I was asexual, in a society where sex is everywhere.
Much later I also realized that I was aromantic, which is a topic that can fill a whole other podcast. We’ll talk about that a bit too. It was a crucial discovery in my journey to this:
[A baby giggling]
This podcast is not just for asexual and aromantic people, or as we say in the community, ace and aro. It’s for everyone. Because, yes, my story is very specific, but it’s also, in many aspects, universal.
It’s about being pressured to follow society’s norms—to have a romantic partner, to have sex.
It’s about having sex just to please someone else, and compromising just to keep a relationship going. It’s about sexual relationships without romance, and about romance without sex.
I haven’t found answers to all my questions. But that’s ok: asking them has already helped me. I’ve allowed myself to imagine a new world. A world with less social pressure and more freedom.
This story starts in 1998. It was the golden era of Eurodance. We were obsessed with songs like “What Is Love,” “Barbie Girl” and “Boom, Boom, Boom!! I want you in my room,” but above all… “Freed from Desire.” You in the U.S. might have never heard of this song but it was a mega hit all across Europe at the time.
Like most teenagers, I would sing along every time it came on the radio. But I didn’t think much about the lyrics. Everyone around me was in fact very much obsessed with desire at the time... everyone except for me.
I’m Aline Laurent-Mayard, and you’re listening to Free From Desire: Asexual in the City of Love
OPENING THEME—FREED FROM DESIRE
[A school bell rings, playground noises]
Aline: In September 1998, I was 11. I just started middle school in Paris. I was excited and a little bit scared.
It was nothing like elementary school. The playground was gigantic and the building looked like a bathroom—the walls were covered in tiles. The teachers were overwhelmed—they had so many students that they couldn’t remember our names. I barely knew anyone, and the older kids looked like actual teenagers.
Luckily, even though we weren’t in the same class, I could see my friends from elementary school. We used to make up dance routines to Spice Girls songs. We would play marbles, and exchange stamps.
But all that changed over the summer.
At recess, my friends would now talk about Dawson’s Creek, a new show about teenagers who spend their time declaring their love for each other.
[Clip from Dawson’s Creek: “And you’re different. You’ve challenged me every step of the way and you’ve been there every step of the way”]
My friends became obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio and they went on and on about the boys they liked in our class.
They’d write their names in their notebooks with hearts around them. They’d spend hours coming up with strategies to get closer to them. And they would over analyze their actions, trying to find proof that these boys were interested in them.
It’s as if, suddenly, the rules had changed and no one warned me about it.
Megan Carroll: Kids of any gender learn that expressing some kind of sexual attraction is expected of them. Having a crush, having some sexual interest in a partner of a different gender is a huge part of our culture, and it's really pushed on to children and young adults.
Aline: That’s Megan Carol, she’s a sociology professor at California State University, San Bernardino. She also has a personal connection to this topic.
Megan Carroll: So I'm someone who realized they were asexual at about the age of 30. And not only was I a bit older, but I was finishing my Ph.D. specializing in gender and sexualities. And I was a bit angry and frustrated that asexuality had never come up in my studies, that I had the maximum access to knowledge on sexualities and sociology–it was just not really talking about his asexuality at the time.
Aline: She’s now trying to change the field by studying asexuality and interviewing people on the asexual spectrum.
Megan Carroll: Kids learn early on that having sexual attractions is very normalized. This is something expected of them, and especially by high school. Kids are talking about sex all the time. Even those who aren't having it are talking about it.
The expectations are different depending on the person's gender. In fact, sociologists have talked about how the process of sex talk in school is one way in which people signify their masculinity or their femininity at a young age.
Aline: Since I couldn’t do it—talking about my crushes, or any kind of sex talk—I was quickly relegated to the losers league.
My friends became popular—boys were into them. I guess it was because they did girly stuff, like wearing bras, shaving their legs, and doing their nails.
They also acted differently. They tried to get the boys’ attention by laughing at their jokes and watching them play soccer. I did not understand why watching boys was so interesting to them.
[Someone turns the pages of a book]
I preferred spending my time reading Harry Potter. Probably because it was about a boy who’s a bit different from the others and doesn’t really belong anywhere.
People would make remarks about the fact that I didn’t wear a bra—but I didn’t even have boobs! To stop the comments, I started wearing on. As for the rest, shaving and all that, I wasn’t ready.
But I guess I was a bit like my friends. I also wanted people to find me cute.
[A school bell rings, we hear the noises of a highschool corridor and pop-rock music]
American movies made us believe that if you take your glasses off, put on some make-up and wear a nice skirt, you’ll become sexy and popular overnight. And the boy of your dreams will suddenly notice you.
But that’s not how it really goes.
[The music stops]
When I got my braces off and got the backpack all the kids wanted, I didn’t become the star of my middle school. I was still the same skinny, flat girl.
To fit in, I ended up changing my attitude a bit, and paying more attention to boys. I started going on and on about how handsome Prince Harry was, so sexy with his red hair, I commented on my friends’ crushes, and I complained that none of the boys liked me.
Looking back, I think I was doing that to be like everyone else, to have things to talk about with the popular girls in my class. It’s not that I really liked them, but it felt good not being isolated anymore, being part of conversations.
At that age, we would write to each other in our notebooks and our planners. It was like a proof of friendship. After I started engaging in those conversations about boys, I got some notes too, they’d read:
[We hear someone scribbling on a notebook, pages being turned]
Aline (reading notes): It will happen to you soon. You’re awesome. Don’t worry, some day, you’ll find a boy too.
Aline: But I wasn’t sure I really wanted that. I could not even see myself kissing someone. It felt like I was the only one not thinking about it. Everybody else was talking about making out and fooling around.
[Someone turns a TV on]
In France, every first Saturday of the month, an adult movie was broadcast on a cable channel late at night.
[Cheesy music that sounds like it’s from a 90s erotic TV show]
On Monday, there were always some boys claiming they’d seen it. They would go on to describe the scenes in great detail.
But the movie that the boys really loved—and the girls too—was American Pie. In case you've been living under a rock in the late 90s—it’s about four guys willing to do anything to lose their virginity before going to college. I saw it with some people from class. It was the group hang of the year!
[Rock music]
Just like everyone else, I knew the lines by heart. I didn’t understand why the characters were so obsessed with sex, but I found the movie very funny.
Megan Carroll: It's interesting because the sexuality portrayed in those movies in particular was extremely heteronormative, misogynistic. There was the sense that, like, sexual conquest is what gives men status and power. But American Pie also relied on the joke that women are also really interested in sex. There's the band camp joke with Allison Hannigan. She's also this very horny woman who's looking for sex as well.
[Clip from American Pie: “So are we going to screw soon, cause I’m getting kinda antsy”]
Megan Carroll: The humor and the plot, it's all about hookup culture and seeking sex.
[Clip from American Pie: “We will succeed. About time. We will get laid!”]
Aline: It was so weird to think that, at some point, I would also want to lose my virginity. I had a hard time picturing it, but I knew it would happen. It happens to everyone. It's a rite of passage.
Sex is such an important part of grownups’ lives. Everything seemed to revolve around it. When you’d turn on the TV, after a certain time at night, all you get is people talking about sex.
[Someone is channel-hopping on the TV, with every TV show talking about sex]
Years later, I found myself wanting to understand why sex was so present in teen movies
Megan Carroll: If we put a movie like American Pie into historical context, we can think about what sex was like during the eighties. Sex was a very dangerous arena because of the AIDS crisis. And so it makes sense that teen movies in the nineties that celebrated sex were very popular, that sex was now seen as something more liberatory because it wasn't quite as dangerous as it was in the previous era.
Aline: That’s what happened with American Pie. It’s all about teenagers finding joy in discovering sex. It’s light and fun.
Megan Carroll: Everyone in those movies, regardless of gender, is trying to hook up, trying to satisfy their sexual needs. But they aren't actually showing the sex.
Aline: That’s true. Even though those movies and TV shows went on and on about sex, we never saw any real action. The characters were flirting, kissing, fooling around, taking their pants off, and that’s it. End of scene. Moving on.
Why won’t they show us how it’s done? I had a million questions in my head—
What do I do with my tongue if someone kisses me? Can I even do it with my braces? Will I know what to do in bed?
At night, I’d sometimes listen to a call-in show for teenagers on the radio. All they talked about was sex. I learned a lot.
[Clip from the radio show Lovin’Fun]
I wanted to know what to do in case something happens. But I didn’t think it was going to happen soon. I didn’t even have a crush!
But then, the summer I turned 14, I went to a snowboard camp and finally met a boy I liked. His name was Edouard, he was cute and we had tons in common. He liked snowboarding, going to museums, and movies.
[Snowboarding sounds]
I wanted to get closer to him, to spend time with him: it was the first time I felt like this. But a friend from camp had a crush on him and I had to respect the girl code. I couldn’t make a move.
[Romantic music]
On the last night at camp, during the party, a counselor asked me why I wasn’t dancing. I told him about Edouard and the girl code. A few minutes later, I saw him talk to Edouard. He must have put a good word for me...
I was dying for Edouard to ask me to dance. But he didn’t.
I went back to my dorm, and for the first time in my life, I cried in my bed because of a boy.
[The music fades]
My heart was shattered… but I was happy—I finally had a crush! I felt like it was the start of a new era—I’m going to have so many crushes!
[School bell rings]
When I started high school, I was hopeful. If what everyone said was true, I was going to live the best years of my life: my first love story, first nights out, first concerts, and of course…my first time.
[The sound of a high school schoolyard]
And things were looking up. I had a group of friends that I loved, the popular girls asked about my clothes, and I made people in my class laugh. I was finally cool. The irony was, my killer jokes were often about sex.
But when people would talk seriously about sex or discuss the specifics—positions and all that—I'd zone out. I couldn’t seem to remember what cunnilingus was or what doggy style meant, even though I’ve watched Sex And The City and read tons of teen magazines.
People in my class thought it was funny that I knew almost nothing about sex given how much I’d talk about it. It pissed me off. It was like my mind couldn't process that information.
And it was the same thing with boys. I tried. In Europe we go to nightclubs when we’re teenagers. I’d go with my friends. I’d talk to boys, I even danced with them! But as soon as they were about to kiss me, I’d freeze.
There was one exception: David
[Keyboard noises + MSN notification noise]
I was a junior and he was a senior—a senior ! For months, I stayed up late at night to chat with him on MSN messenger. I was hoping he’d make a move.
[Noises of a quiet city, at night]
One evening, after we went to a movie and ate some burgers with friends, he walked me home and he kissed me. Just like in the movies!
I don’t remember what I thought of that kiss. What I do remember is that I was very proud that a boy wanted to kiss me, especially considering that my shirt was stained with ketchup!
The next day, he invited me over for a candle-lit lunch in his kitchen. The meal? Cordon bleu. Don’t be fooled by the fancy name, it's basically a schnitzel with ham that you buy in the supermarket. It wasn’t romantic at all, but it felt like it.
Even though he was very considerate, I felt awkward. I didn’t know what to do with my body. I knew I had to do a couple of things like hold his hand, kiss him, but it didn’t come naturally. I was stiff, blocked.
I saw him the next day, and the day after that. And I still found the whole situation very weird. I didn’t hear from him after that. I knew he was ok, he was just ghosting me. A few weeks later, a friend told me that David dumped me because I acted awkward.
I was afraid I had entered a vicious cycle, that each year that went by, my inexperience became more and more repulsive to guys. I knew I was being dramatic. Most of my friends hadn’t had sex either. But they had boyfriends, or at least crushes. Whereas me… Since Édouard, it had been dead calm.
It wasn’t like I was in love with David or anything. I guess what bothered me was also that I felt behind—I’ve never been behind before. I was always ahead as a kid, so this was a new feeling for me.
And now, not only was I the last to know something, but I was teased because of it. It’s only recently that I understood why it was stressing me out so much. It happened during a conversation with Angela Chen, she’s the author of a book titled Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex.
Angela Chen: Sexuality is a rite of passage in so many movies and books and so on, you're considered a child until you are able to understand sexuality, and that's how you become an adult. I also think that's why so many people who are ace, in addition to feeling alienated, can feel infantilized, you know, feeling like I'm not a real adult, I'm not a real person. Because people think that I don't understand something that quote unquote real adults do.
Aline: After leaving high school, I felt worse about my inexperience. I was supposed to be an adult by now!
The way people looked at me didn’t help. Every time a new person would discover I was a virgin, they’d be shocked. It’s like they couldn’t believe it, like it was unimaginable. Especially when I started business school. In France, you often enter business school at 20 years old after spending two years intensely studying, and preparing for it. That's what I did.
We had been studying so much in the years prior, that all we wanted was to blow off steam, to finally have some fun. And fun, in business school, meant wild parties and sex. Being in business school was like being in a real-life sex quiz.
[Party sounds]
At that point, people wouldn’t ask what base you’ve gone to—we were all supposed to have sex by now. Instead, they would ask: How often? Where? How? With how many people at once?
I didn’t feel behind anymore. I was behind.
When I would reply that I’ve never had sex, people would look at me like I was some kind of a circus freak.
Sometimes after that, people would stop talking to me. They would ignore me or they would tell me their study group was full or that I couldn’t join their club because I didn’t make the list.
Scholars believe there’s something called compulsory sexuality.
Angela Chen: Compulsory sexuality is the idea that all normal healthy people experience sexual attraction. It's how we're supposed to be. It's all other things being equal, all of us would be like this. There’s always that idea that there is something that needs to be fixed when you talk about not experiencing sexual attraction, whereas if you went in and you said, “Oh, I don't like movies” or “I don't you know, I don't like books, I don't like reading,” there's so many other things you can say that you're not interested in and people would just say that your preference, that's who you are, that's morally neutral. That's totally fine.
Aline: Back then, when people at my student jobs or internships learned I was a virgin, they would give me unsolicited advice.
Female voice: It’s like cigarettes. You have to force yourself at first.
Second female voice: Maybe you should try to masturbate more.
Male voice: Just try, I promise, you’ll love it.
Third female voice: Who cares if you don’t like the guy, just do it with someone nice enough.
Aline: Why do people want me to have sex so bad?
Angela Chen: It speaks to how much precarity, insecurity people of every orientation have around their sexuality, right. Because if you feel very secure in your sexuality, then what someone else decides to do, it doesn't really matter.
Aline: I’m sure those people who gave me advice had good intentions. Especially women. Angela Chen believes that a lot of them offer tips as a gesture of solidarity.
Angela Chen: There's a lot of shaming around sexuality. And it's true that especially for women, we are shamed and our sexualities are policed. And so it actually takes time and effort to unlearn that. And so it can take work to be in touch with our sexualities. And so when that's your experience, I think it can be easy to dismiss other people. You know, when they say “I'm not sexually attracted to others,” it can be easy to say, “Oh, that was my experience too. But I did X, Y and Z, and now I'm not that way.” And so sometimes I think it can come from a good place. But just because that was your experience doesn't mean it's everyone else's experience.
Aline: At that time, I thought these people must be right, that I couldn’t live without sex. That I had to lower my expectations and just do it.
If it worked for them, it would work for me, and like everyone else, I was going to like it.
[Sound of packing]
And so, in June of 2010, I decided to get it done.
[Door opens and closes]
I knew that in a year, I would graduate and I would have to find a job. I needed to hurry up if I wanted to experience all the wild things you’re supposed to do while you’re a student.
I had a plan—three months of just traveling. I’ll explore North America by myself, starting in Montreal. By the end of this trip I will have so many stories to tell about all the passionate love and great sex that I had.
That’s on our next episode.
OUTRO MUSIC
Producer: Free From Desire is an original podcast by Paradiso Media. Written and narrated by Aline Laurent Mayard. Produced by Suzanne Colin and by me, Yael Even Or with additional production support from Morgan Jaffe and Molly O’Keefe.
Executive producers are Emi Norris, Lorenzo Benedetti, Louis Daboussy, Benoit Dunaigre. Sound design, editing, and mix by Théo Albaric. Additional editing by Yael Even Or and Morgan Jaffe.
Studio recordings by Marin Grizeaud and Théo Albaric. Production assistants are Lucine Dorso, Brendan Galbreath, and Sofia Martins. Editing Intern is Bryson Brooks
Original music by: D.L.I.D. Our Theme song is Freed from Desire by GALA. Cover Art by Super Feat.
This episode features excerpts from the movies American Pie, produced by Universal Pictures, Casablanca, produced by Warner Brothers, and Moulin Rouge, produced by Bazmark Productions and 20th Century Fox.
And from TV shows Conan, produced by Conanco and Warner Brothers Television, Dawson’s Creek produced by Columbia tristar television, Netflix’s Emily in Paris produced by Darren Star productions, Jacks Media and MTV entertainment studios, The Ellen Show produced by A Very Good Production, Telepictures Productions, and Warner Bros. Television, from the Netflix Is A Joke YouTube channel, produced by Netflix, and from the French radio show, Lovin’ Fun, produced by Fun Radio. Thanks for listening!