Asexuality in Young Adult Fiction

The first scholarly analysis of asexual representation, the Asexual Exile trope, and necropolitics in traditionally published YA fiction.

The Asexual Exile trope positions asexual characters outside of society by portraying them as loners, inhuman, or adjacent to death. This research identifies trends in these portrayals by considering a corpus of 42 traditionally published novels of Young Adult fiction featuring asexual protagonists.The Asexual Exile trope positions asexual characters outside of society by portraying them as loners, inhuman, or adjacent to death. This research identifies trends in these portrayals by considering a corpus of 42 traditionally published novels of Young Adult fiction featuring asexual protagonists. A distant reading of this corpus finds that the Asexual Exile trope is employed in approximately two-thirds of cases. The author analyses how this trope permutates across genres, and the frequency of its endorsement and subversion by these narratives. Presenting the first extensive investigation into the Asexual Exile trope in YA fiction, this research investigates how asexual characters are Othered as not truly alive, and how these messages then rebound into necropolitical cultural understandings of asexual people as expendable. The results prompt the questions: how does the Asexual Exile trope influence Young Adult readers in the formation of their ideologies? How can publishers do better?