Ep 254: Ace Notes feat. Michele Kirichanskaya

(00:00)

SARAH: Hey, what's up, hello, welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aro-ace girl, I'm Sarah, that's me.

KAYLA: And a bi-demisexual girl, that's me, Kayla.

MICHELE: And Michele Kirichanskaya, bi-demisexual journalist.

SARAH: Talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else we just don't understand.

KAYLA: On today's episode, Ace Notes.

SARAH AND KAYLA: Sounds Fake But Okay.

(theme music)

SARAH: Welcome back to the pod.

KAYLA: Hello.

SARAH: Hope everyone is doing good, hope everyone is hanging in there. We have a guest on this week

KAYLA: We do!

SARAH: so I think we're just gonna dive right in. Unless we have any housekeeping, Kayla, that we need to hit.

KAYLA: We're doing an event in DC, so come if you're there.

SARAH: Come to the event in DC.

KAYLA: Yes.

SARAH: Buy our book, and also buy Michele's book.

KAYLA: And speaking of books, yes, today we have on Michele to talk about Ace Notes, wait, what's the subtitle? Okay, yes. Ace notes, tips and tricks on existing in an allo world. I'm very bad at remembering subtitles, so I had to make sure I got it right.

SARAH: She doesn't remember our own subtitle, and neither do I.

MICHELE: No, no, it’s cool.

KAYLA: Michele, welcome on. Thank you for being on today.

MICHELE: Thank you for having me.

KAYLA: Awesome. So yeah, today, obviously, we're here to talk about Michele's book, ace notes. Michele is another book sibling of ours with Jessica Kingsley. So you just want to start by giving like a little introduction to who you are.

MICHELE: Sure. So as I mentioned earlier, I'm an asexual journalist and writer. I am also a Jewish American. I am a graduate of the New School MFA program and Hunter College. And I've been writing about ace and queer issues for nearly...

KAYLA: Wow. That's very impressive.

SARAH: For nearly how long? Sorry, it cut out. I didn't get the last part.

MICHELE: For nearly a decade, so about when I was 16.

SARAH: Wow. Look at you go.

KAYLA: That's so impressive not to burn out after that long.

MICHELE: Yeah, I actually started getting to journalism in college, but I started writing for a teen website when I was in high school. So I guess it's like… a slow evolution.

KAYLA: Yeah. I feel like that's the way to do it though.

SARAH: And you're here today because you have a book, ace notes.

MICHELE: Yes, I do

SARAH: So do you want to give our listeners just a quick intro to what the book is? And why they should buy it?

MICHELE: Sure. So ace notes is basically what I and probably my publishing team would describe as a non-fiction guide on asexuality, kind of like the 101s and going beyond the 101s because I was tired of every article saying, oh, asexuality is this and that, like it's the orientation defined by a lack of sexual attraction. And I wanted a book where there was more information beyond that.

KAYLA: Yeah. So I would say it meets that 100% as I was reading it, you kind of mentioned at the beginning of the book, over the years, you've had to kind of scour online to find all of the information of asexuality and you wanted to put it all in one place. And as I was reading it, I would just kept being struck again and again about how true that was. I wrote down in my notes, I was like, I could see myself coming back to this book like months later, years later, just coming back to it again and again as a resource, not just as a one-time read, because there was just so much helpful information in there. So you definitely, I think, met what you set out to do.

MICHELE: Thank you. I'm flattered.

KAYLA: Yeah. It was really amazing.

SARAH: I was just going to start by asking, how did you decide on the setup and the format of the book? Because you have chapters that I think are a traditional 101 and beyond a 101, but you also have interviews and short interludes and resources and that sort of thing. So how did you decide on that setup?

MICHELE: I think I was making it up as I went along, honestly. I originally provided the book proposal to my editor at Jessica Kingsley Publishers, basically the guide, as I mentioned. And so after that was signed up, I just kind of developed it as I went along. I wanted to pull the topics that were resting in my head and that I thought maybe other people would be curious about and putting those on the page, as well as pulling from old articles that were previously published. And for the list of interviews, I knew that people would want further resources upon finishing my book because aces are curious and they always want to learn more. And for the interviews, I thought, I don't want my perspective on aces to be the only one featured in this book.

(05:00)

MICHELE: So having the interviews with other aces was monumental to the process.

KAYLA: Yeah, I really enjoyed those pieces of the book.

SARAH: It's so interesting to me that all of the aspec books that have come out recently really have relied a lot upon not just the author's perspective, but other people in the community's perspective, whether you do that through interviews or through some sort of survey or something. And I just think that's so interesting because I think it says a lot about aspecs, about how we want people to have an expansive understanding of what can be. And we don't want to limit it to ourselves. And I think the way you do it in your book is just another prime example of that.

MICHELE: Thanks. I appreciate you saying that. And to just jump off on that point, I think our only representation of aceness for a long time was Todd Chavez from Bojack Horseman. And Todd is great, but he just looks like only one type of ace person. He's, despite the last name, a straight, white cis guy. Well, straight in the fact that he's heteroromantic, but not straight in the fact that he's allo-normative.

SARAH: Yeah

MICHELE: But you know what I mean.

KAYLA: Yeah, I think it was so great because your interviews are with such different people

of different backgrounds and races and abilities. So it's really cool to get that kind of wide view. And it's really nice because if people are familiar with our book, they know that we just kind of pull quotes and have them throughout our book. But you have full interviews where you see it's kind of like a transcript. If you were to read the transcript of this podcast, you can see you and the person talking. And it just felt so much more in depth and like you were kind of listening to someone's conversation or reading it, I guess. But it was a really cool way to do it, I thought.

MICHELE: Thanks. So I do have some years of experience as a journalist interviewing people. Oftentimes, I've done it through email, but I found that doing it where I'm able to talk back and forth with the interviewee makes it a little more personal, like we're able to feed off each other's ideas. And I kind of wanted the interviews in the book to be more of a conversation rather than just like a one-sided discussion.

KAYLA: Yeah, 100%. Speaking of the interviews, with I think almost all the interviews you had kind of like an illustration or a cartoon of the person you were interviewing, and there's some pictures of you throughout the book and other people, how did you come to that decision to include kind of illustrations throughout the book?

MICHELE: Well I think I'm definitely a fan of visual media. I love cartoons and beautiful images. And just like, I thought, if I can get the opportunity to do illustrations in the book, which my publisher thankfully signed off of, I wanted to hire an ace illustrator, which I actually did through a connection I found at Anime NYC.

KAYLA: Oh, that's so cool.

SARAH: Amazing.

MICHELE: Yeah.

SARAH: Who did the illustrations?

KAYLA: Oh yeah, that's a good question.

MICHELE: I believe the author's name is pronounced Ashley Masog. So they are a freelance illustrator, and they are amazing. So anyone looking to hire an illustrator, please look at Ashley's work.

KAYLA: Yeah, the pictures are really beautiful. And it's so cool because you can see that representation too. It makes it, like you said, much more visual. You're not just reading about aspecs. You can see like, oh, this is what they look like. They're real people just like me, and it kind of makes it more relatable.

MICHELE: Exactly. That's kind of what I was going for. Like I didn't want the only image of an ace person and someone said to be someone who was white, someone who was like non-disabled. I wanted to have like someone to point out the picture and say, oh, I kind of recognize this person in myself. So like, it's not so foreign to me or alien to me.

KAYLA: Getting into, like we're talking about kind of the book structure and everything, but getting into the content of the book, I wanted to talk about the section that you did about sex because I really enjoyed the way you wrote about it. I think it was written really differently and like, it was just such a fresh perspective on sex opposed to what we usually see about sex in asexual spaces. So I just want to kind of talk about like how you decided what to write, like how you kind of like gathered resources for that section, what your thought process was.

MICHELE: Okay. So I think I just, my first thought was I wanted to be as careful as possible when doing this. I added the caveat I was not a sex educator in the book

KAYLA: Yeah

MICHELE: so anyone like me now could take that into consideration, but basically I kind of wanted to just like gather the useful information that I gleaned through ace friendly sex positive resources, the ones that don't shut us out and don't like deny our existence, so to speak. So I was thinking, what do I want, what did I want that was not mentioned in sex education in my days to be put into the book, and that's basically how I went about it.

KAYLA: Yeah. Because I think what I've seen so much about even aspecs talking about sex and educating about sex

(10:00)

KAYLA:  is I think it just honestly doesn't happen a lot because even within the community, there's kind of this assumption that everyone is sex averse or sex repulsed. We don't talk about sex, like not sex positive – What’s the word we use?

SARAH: sex favorable.

KAYLA: Yes. We don't talk about the sex favorable aspecs as much, and so I really liked that you had like a full robust section on sex and you had tips about like, here's what makes sex good and safe. You were like, lube is your friend, like look at these things. I was like, I was just so pleased that tips on how to have sex was in a resource for aspecs because I think often aspecs aren't given that because people assume we don't need it, which is just not true at all. So I really enjoyed that it was there for the people that do want it and do need it.

MICHELE: A few of my friends are more sex favorable, as you might say. So I thought that if I didn't include such a resource, it would be ignoring their existence, which I didn't think was fair. A lot of aces, as it should be, exist on the spectrum, so they have different attitudes towards sex and sexual experiences. So if they want to like experiment with such experiences, they need the safety and they need the knowledge of how to do so.

KAYLA: Yeah, yeah, which, you know, sex ed basically doesn't exist in this country, so it's hard to get that. So yeah, I really enjoyed that it was there.

SARAH: And I think it means more when it's coming from the aspec community, coming from someone who is aspec and, you know, because I feel like often when people do talk about sex favorable aspecs, they're just like, oh, yeah, and then there are also these people who do it for these reasons. And then if you're one of those people, like, there are other resources for you elsewhere, but it's like to bring the resources to them and be like, hey, this is a part of asexuality. And you know, here is what we can give you and kind of invite you into this conversation rather than saying, oh, to talk about this, you have to go somewhere else, I think is also just a kind of a meaningful way to discuss these things.

MICHELE: Yeah. And I think whether you're aspec or not, there's always some kind of curiosity around sex itself because of how much our society obsesses with it. And so in terms of that, I wanted there to be the sense that sex wasn't an evil thing. It wasn't a dirty thing. And if you do engage with it, it doesn't make you more or less wrong as a person and more or less legit as an ace person. And so if anyone reading the book was looking to have that or had already had that, I didn't want them to feel isolated by my words and saying like, oh, you don't, you're not valid because you've already had sex or you want to have sex.

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely. And you have a kind of a whole chapter on that mentality too, about kind of the “gold star asexual”, which I am really glad you included too, because it's kind of that mentality too of like, yeah, you can have sex, you can be disabled, you can be super young, and you are still asexual. You don't have to have never have had sex or anything like that. Kind of just talking about how stupid really the idea of a gold star asexual is.

MICHELE: Yeah, it's just a really gatekeeping concept. I've been hurt by it before and I've known others who've been hurt by it before. And I just like… let's cut the bullshit. If you're a person with the ability to think and process these things about yourself, then you already have the autonomy to say, this is who I am, please don't fight me about that.

KAYLA: Yeah, especially from within the community.

SARAH: Right. And for a community that so often gate-kept out of other queer spaces, it's so silly to me that we would then gate-keep other people out of our spaces. Like what, what is the purpose of that? There is none.

MICHELE: Yeah, it's like, why did the gold star lesbian thing even happen about like, if you're talking, if you're a sapphic woman existing in a patriarchal world where you're literally pressured to be with men, then of course a lot of lesbians are going to have had relationships with men. That doesn't make them less of who they are. It just means that they were pressured to not be who they are.

KAYLA: Yeah, it's the same thing as, you know, like that compulsory heterosexuality. It's the same thing with amatanormativity and allonormativity. It's like, yeah, it's hard to get on in the world and realize you're aspec early enough. I know it's becoming easier and easier for people to get resources when they're younger. But like, if you have to wait until you're 50 to figure out, then like, that's not your fault.

MICHELE: Exactly.

KAYLA: Kind of going back to the section on sex, I think it was towards the end of that section, you had a chapter about fan fiction 

SARAH: Yes

KAYLA: and kind of talking about like the eroticism and just kind of like the potential that fan fiction has. And Sarah and I are both huge fans of fan fiction. We've talked about it on the show several times.

(15:00)

KAYLA: So I just wanted to talk about that chapter because I loved it.

SARAH: We both made notes that we're just like, we love fan fiction.

KAYLA: Yes.

MICHELE: Oh my God, people are, I feel like people are going to really latch onto that one.

KAYLA: It's so good.

MICHELE: Out of all the sections of the book.

KAYLA: Well, it's just so relatable.

MICHELE: Thanks. Well, I figure I'm a nerd and fan fiction has given me comfort, not necessarily sexual comfort, mind you. It just like, it's given my brain like a mental break from just like engaging in whether it's academic world or like a professional world and like, here's a safe space that a lot of queer writers engage in to reconstruct and deconstruct heteronormative, cisnormative media and give us the representation that we want and crave. So why not talk about it?

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely. Because as we all know, and you talk about throughout the book, there's such a lack of aspec representation in media and especially a lack of diverse aspec representation. But the point you kind of make in the book is like, well, there's like this homemade media that people aren't making for a profit. They're making it because they actually want to, and this is what they want to see. So yeah, it's a really great place to see queer representation.

MICHELE: Yeah, 100%.

KAYLA: We've talked about on the show before how there's like a disproportionate amount of aspec writers of fan fiction that write smut and how often aspec people are like the best smut writers. So I think it's just like such a funny, I don't know, A-specs are just good at everything. What are you going to do?

MICHELE: I mean, we are very creative people, so.

SARAH: Yeah, it's an interesting way, I think an interesting venue for a lot of aspec people to, as you mentioned in the chapter, kind of explore certain aspects of sexuality that they might not be comfortable doing in person, in real life. And I think I just, I would read entire books about like aspecs and fan fiction. Like I just, it's so interesting to me.

MICHELE: Yeah, it's kind of like a virtual reality game, so to speak. Like your physical body is not in danger. And if you're uncomfortable with a situation, you can just

SARAH: close the tab and read something else

MICHELE: Get out.

KAYLA: And we've talked about that with that kind of possibility with Dungeons and Dragons in the past of how it kind of gives you this very safe way of exploring your identity and your sexuality through this kind of like role playing scenario. And I think fan fiction is a very similar, you know, you can read about aspec characters and kind of like try how that feels for you and kind of, you know, explore it from the safety of like your little computer without having to go out into the scary world.

MICHELE: When you're reading fan fiction, you're reading about characters you already love. So when a writer had canonized them as asexual, like, oh, this is a character that I love and they represent something about me, so maybe I'm able to love that part of myself a little bit more.

KAYLA: Yeah, that's a really good point.

SARAH: Yeah. And you hear stories too about people, I mean, people joke about like discovering kinks through reading fan fiction and being like, oh, wait, but I think the same thing absolutely happens with learning about asexuality and aspec identities. When you have that representation in fic and someone reads it and they're like, oh, wait, shit, that's me. Like that's that's another way to introduce people to this world. And I think it's often so well done because it's often done by people who are in the community who are reflecting, you know, their own genuine experiences in the fictionalized worlds they're creating.

Exactly.

MICHELE: And I can't remember the name of this fan fiction writer, but they have a type called Nonsexual Intimacy Makes Me Go Feral and basically they describe these like slice of life moments between these two characters from a series and I and I'm just like, I eat it up.

SARAH: (laughing) Yeah.

MICHELE: It's so soft and tender and it's just like it's healing, I guess.

SARAH: Yeah

KAYLA: Yeah, it's very sweet. I love fan fiction. I hope – I took a whole class about fan fiction and fandom in college so I could talk about this forever.

SARAH: But alas, that is not the only chapter in your book.

KAYLA: Alas, this is not a fan fiction podcast. So what are you going to do?

MICHELE: Maybe another conversation.

KAYLA: True. We can – we'll bring it back. Another episode.

SARAH: Yeah. I – something I noticed as I was reading was the I appreciate how much the book references and interacts with and puts itself in the context of other literature, especially queer literature. So was that an intentional choice? How did you decide what you wanted to include and engage with in the text of the book?

MICHELE: Well, basically, I just reference other writers who made similar points to what I was making, using their words to, I guess, strengthen my point. And honestly, I think that I identify aceness as part of queerness, though they don't seem like separate topics to me, even though they might be for others.

(20:00)

MICHELE: So it just felt like a natural way to just include the fact that include that point of aceness isn't isn't separate from queerness. It's a part of it. It's like just a natural point of it.

SARAH: Yeah, I think it really reinforces that, that fact that aspecness is queer. And by putting it into conversation with these other queer writers and these, you know, queer literature, like, you're kind of also casually like reinforcing that for other people, which is nice. It's a little secret, a little secret, not brainwashing, because it's not brainwashing, it’s just the truth. But, you know, MICHELE: Yeah, I think I think someone once made this point, like, they're like, to clear a text or to use queer as a verb, you're not making something explicitly gay or explicitly bi, you're querying a text as in you're diverging from the norm. As in you're disrupting this normative idea that we had about something and breaking it apart in order for it to be more open and fluid. And so that's, I think, where my definition of queerness comes in, and that it diverges from a quote unquote straight path or a cis path. And it just means that we're just more fluid about the way we engage with the world.

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely

SARAH: slaps.

KAYLA: Queer that book. It also just makes for a great reading list, like looking at all of the literature that you referenced, I was like, Oh, I want to go read that person's book. Like, it sounds like it slaps. Speaking of we jumped right past the beginning of the book, but the foreword of the book is written by David Jay with Sarah and I both wrote in our notes, we were like, Oh, what a slay forward, we were like, wow, what a catch getting David Jay to foreword your book.

MICHELE: Just a shout out, David was so generous with providing the foreword and I'm really glad that he did, because I think it really strengthened the book and it was nice having an ace mentor or an ace elder to like, I know it's strange to call him an elder because he's not.

KAYLA: Yeah, but he is. He's the OG. But yeah, it was such a great start to the book of setting the tone. And he obviously is just like, he has a great writing, so I was like, so good.

SARAH: Did you just like ask him? Did you just say, Hey, David

MICHELE: Yeah

SARAH: hey, David, amazing

MICHELE: exactly.

KAYLA: What a pull.

MICHELE: Really all the aces involved in this book were so generous with their time and energy. So like, props to them.

KAYLA: Yeah, all of the interviews were so great. And they're also again, such great people to like look up and look at their work yourself because they're all like you had like an actual sex educator who is aspec who was like, oh, really? I loved that interview. Yeah, the interviews are great.

MICHELE: Yeah, that's actually thanks to Angela Chen, who after I they referred me to Evian and said like, this is a person that you want to talk to. And so just like having Evian as like an interviewee was a great experience.

KAYLA: Yeah, yeah, it was really great. So that's the beginning of the book. But going to the back part of the book, kind of

SARAH: Let’s just jump around, nothing, nothing matters.

KAYLA: Who cares? Listen, this is like book club, I'm just talking about the parts I liked most. This is Kayla's book club. Welcome everyone. But the last section of the book is kind of all about religion and specifically how your asexuality intersects with your religion as a Jewish person. And I really wanted to touch on that section, because I know we get requests to talk about religion on the show all the time. And we've not really been able to because we don't have like a lot of personal experience with that intersection. So I really want to talk about that and why you ended up including it. You mentioned in the book that you originally weren't going to talk about it. So I just kind of want to hear your thought process and just talk all about that section because I loved it.

MICHELE: Yeah, okay. So on the religious thing, I knew I wanted to make a note of it. I just didn't expect it to be a whole section. But it just kind of naturally evolved that way with like the amount of materials that I've written. So to start off, I guess I was inspired by an article I wrote a few years back for a website called Hey Alma called Notes as a Jewish Ace. So talking about my experiences and intersectionality being both an ace person and a Jewish person. And I thought, okay, other aces probably come from religious backgrounds too. And so maybe they want to talk about that intersection and maybe I can provide some foods for thought, like talking about my own experiences. So that's basically what I did.

KAYLA: Yeah. Sometimes you start writing and you're like, I can't stop, there's too much, this has to become a whole section.

SARAH: It takes control of you. You're not writing it. It's writing you.

KAYLA: It's writing you.

MICHELE: Yeah. It's also interesting because I'm still defining, I guess, my relationship to religion. My family didn't grow up practicing Judaism.

(25:00)

MICHELE: Like we always identified as Jewish, but my family comes from the former Soviet Union. So religion was a very complicated subject there. You weren't exactly allowed to practice religion openly, otherwise you get persecuted, especially if you were a religious minority, like my family was. And so in that sense, like I did not practice a lot of what someone, I guess, traditionally Jewish would do. And maybe that would make someone question if I'm religious enough, but in the sense like it's always been a very cultural thing to me. It's always been a very scholarly thing to me. Even if I have a complicated relationship with what God is, I can always say I believe in being Jewish. That is something I can potentially hold onto. And so I thought, how does that affect my relationship with the world? Especially that's been a bigger question with all the politics that have been happening over the past few years. And so I've been more vocal about fighting against anti-Semitism in my work. And I guess I just wanted a space for that to be in the book. 

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely, which I really appreciated because I've seen conversations here and there online from Catholic Aces, Christian Aces about, and you have an interview with a Christian Ace kind of about their journey with religion, but I'd honestly never seen kind of conversations or notes from a Jewish Ace person. So I was really excited to finally get that perspective so I could kind of understand more of that intersection. So I hope that other non-Jewish aces have that same realization. If you are Jewish, then you can relate with it. But then for the rest of us, it's just really educational and helpful.

MICHELE: Yeah. No, I think a few other Jewish Aces also touched, the ones who reached out to me and the ones who talked about my article also mentioned how kind of sucks that there's not more conversation on this. And actually, I had a person all the way from Uruguay reach out to me

KAYLA: Wow

MICHELE: because my article would say how cool it was to see someone who was an Ace and Jewish talk about this stuff. So I guess that just shows the need for conversations like this in the first place.

KAYLA: Yeah, you need that representation. And then hopefully future writers can reference your writing too as they expand upon the subject.

SARAH: Yeah, I would in general just love to see more perspectives from religious people who are non-Christian. I would love to have more Jewish experiences. I would love to see Muslim experiences. I want to know all the different experiences that really touch on all the intersectionality. So it's wonderful to see some of that in your book as well.

MICHELE: Thanks.

KAYLA: Yeah, because I think it's such a nuanced and complicated, even for myself, I grew up Catholic. I’m not super… I don't practice now. It's been a long time since I've practiced. But it is really interesting for me to think about how growing up religious and going to church kind of affected my ideas of purity culture and what sex meant and what marriage meant. And I think with queerness in general, people so often see queerness as at odds with religious. You can't be queer and still be practicing because so many institutions are just so queerphobic. 

MICHELE: Yeah

KAYLA: So I just love that there are conversations about like, no, you can do both. Like, yeah, there's some really shitty parts of it. But there is a way to keep both of those parts of your life as, you know, keep those kind of identities that may seem at odds. You can have them both within yourself.

MICHELE: Yeah, it's like people imagine religion as one circle and queerness as another circle. And there are people like me and Ellen who exist in the Venn diagram. And so don't shut us out of the conversation, include us. What peeves me so much about certain characters who've been adapted on screen, like Batwoman, is just like she is a Jewish lesbian, but hardly anyone ever talks about the fact that she's Jewish. That part of her seems almost erased. So don't emphasize one thing and then completely say the other’s, negligible. Don’t erase us, you know?

KAYLA: Yeah, I think it's so much people find it easier to kind of make those separate circles or those boxes where people see religion as very conservative and bad. And then, you know, as a queer person, we're like, oh, yes, queerness, it's perfect. And so it's kind of like what you talk about in the book about the disabled community and the aspec community being at odds with one another and people who are in the middle kind of having, you know, to pick a side or like not feeling okay with having both those identities. And we need to realize like, yeah, religion can be bad in a lot of ways, like everything can, but you can still be both and be like a great person and make it work. We can't just like take all of our religious aspecs and shun them.

SARAH: (laughing) As it turns out, nuance is a thing.

KAYLA: Can you imagine?

SARAH: (laughing) Absolutely wild how that happens.

KAYLA: That's wild.

MICHELE: Yeah. Also I think like the subject of nuance is just like a very Jewish idea in itself because we debate everything. Like we turn over every point

(30:00)

MICHELE: in a conversation and just like, let's expand on this, let's expand on this. I feel like that's one of the things I love about being Jewish or Judaism is that it's a constant argument, which means like, there's always going to be more information that can be found out and that can be learned.

KAYLA: That feels so… like it goes so well with asexuality too. I feel like the asexual community is a little bit similar where we're constantly questioning and coming up with new words and new definitions and kind of deciding, you know, is this like the best definition for the community? So I feel like those go really well together. You know, we're constantly trying to learn and expand and like figure out what's, you know, what are we going to do next?

MICHELE: Yeah. I think that's one of the main points I don't like about like certain sects of organized religion or “conservative” religion is that there's only this one point that exists

KAYLA: Yeah

MICHELE: and it's the only point and that no other point can exist otherwise you're a monster. Otherwise you're a terrible person and that we should get rid of you all together. Why do you shut yourself off from all these beautiful diverse points of the world and say that only you are allowed to exist?

KAYLA: Yeah. It just removes any of that nuance and any ability to learn more or to expand or to admit that you're wrong and, you know, willing to change your mind or anything. It kind of takes all of that away. Would you have any like advice or just kind of words of wisdom for an aspec that's trying to kind of like get back in touch with their spirituality or religion or kind of trying to like, you know, work out the intersection between those identities?

MICHELE: Well, I provided some books in the – 

KAYLA: Yeah

MICHELE: some books to like, if someone wants to explore that intersection, like I listed other openly queer and Jewish authors who talk about their own individual experiences, a number of which come from different points of Judaism. So some identified as reforms, some identified as conservative. And so I guess look for the spaces that are open, look for the people who are scholars and teachers who already come from it, from a background that is able to explore and not shut out and then try to find similar circles where you can discuss it. Like maybe there are queer religious meet-up groups that you can talk to, or maybe there's a person in your ace group who can introduce you to someone who comes from a similar background. Try to come from it as like, here's this thing that like someone tried to tell me was negative about myself, or maybe here's this thing coming from my own background that someone tried to rip away from me, and then come from an extra perspective, I can explore it on my own terms, let me see what's good for me, and I can start from there.

KAYLA: Yeah, I think that's great advice. That's great for like discovering your identity and stuff too, right? Like it's kind of the same thing of like, some people think that this is a really bad part of me, but you know, you can find people and kind of do your research on your own without the impact of kind of people's weird perceptions of that part of you. 

MICHELE: I think just like growing up as an ace person or growing up as a queer person, so many times it's just like people, when they don't talk about a certain subject, they make it taboo talk about and it hurts you. And it just makes you feel scared of ever saying anything out loud. And so I think that's where part of me turned to writing is that even if I can't talk about it vocally, I can at least express it on the page or on the screen. And then it's like, you're freeing yourself in a way so that not everything has to be shut in all the time.

KAYLA: Yeah absolutely

SARAH: and the more we do that, and the more we see other people doing that, you know, the less taboo it becomes and the more we discuss it, you know, it's just going to open doors for other people. And I think that's all an important aspect of being a part of this community.

MICHELE: Exactly. Yeah.

KAYLA: True.

SARAH: True. Why did I just true myself? It's just like, yeah, it's true

KAYLA: what I said was so true. I love what I just said.

MICHELE: Hey, you're allowed to like your own words.

KAYLA: That's true. You know what?

SARAH: That's true.

KAYLA: That's true. Have confidence. I'm curious, like how long the process of writing took for you, just because I know like what Sarah and I went through to write. So I'm just kind of curious, like as a fellow, as a fellow writer, fellow published author, kind of what your process was like, yeah, I just want to commiserate. I just want to know.

MICHELE: Sure. So I'm trying to go back to the beginning. So once my, so once the person who is, who looked over the proposal said, okay, I like this, let's go ahead with this, which was on my birthday, by the way

KAYLA: Oh my god what a perfect birthday present

MICHELE: right?  And then I signed up in the contract towards the end of December. And so from January to like April, I was just like sitting at home and working on the book

(35:00)

MICHELE: as much as I could until I could say like, here's the first full finished draft and let's work on the editing from there.

KAYLA: That’s fat

SARAH: Because I, I remember, yeah, I remember

KAYLA: That sounds so fast

SARAH: I remember talking to you at New York Comic Con about like books and, and stuff. And then when I saw the years was like, ready to go into the world at like around the same time as ours, I was like, are we slow? Is Michele fast?

KAYLA: Yeah you wrote so much faster than us

MICHELE: I mean, I'm a writer, I'm you come from it from a podcast perspective, I come from, from a writer's perspective. So I had like

KAYLA: Yeah you were like I'm ready for this.

MICHELE: Yeah, I think I was just like hungry to like take on any projects. And it's also like, okay, so at the time, like, I did not have a full time job. So basically, the book was my job. So that's probably why I finished it and then I did.

KAYLA: That is still so impressive. And you were able to pull from your previous work to I really enjoyed there's a few chapters where it has a footnote and it's like, oh, this was previously published as an article of yours. And I just thought it was so cool that you were able to bring in all of the hard work you've done on asexual writing, and put it in your books, you didn't have to like, rewrite everything and we got to see like, oh, yeah, she is an expert. She's been writing about this for a long time. Like she knows what she's talking about.

MICHELE: It's so strange, like calling myself an expert, having someone else call me an expert, it's just like, here's this idea I had, or here's this piece that I wrote and just like, I'm just basing it off my own experiences and that resonates with someone else. Hallelujah. You know?

KAYLA: That's the same way we felt too. We were like, we were like, we have to put every, SARAH: every disclaimer

KAYLA: we did the same thing. We were like, we are not sex educators. We did not go to school for this. We were like, we're just a couple of podcasters, like, I think we feel very much the same way  of like, we're just speaking for ourselves, like, we're not experts. Yeah, it's a very weird position to be in.

SARAH: Yeah.

MICHELE: Yeah. But I thought, okay, I have written about this and I am proud of my work, so I want to include it in the book.

SARAH: As you should.

KAYLA: Yeah. As you should. And it's really good. I love it.

SARAH: Amazing. Yeah, I mean, is there anything else that you would like to say about your book before we go? Anything that you'd like to talk about that we haven't hit on?

KAYLA: What is your favorite part of it?

SARAH: Yeah. What's your favorite part of the book?

MICHELE: Oh my God. I can't, I don't think I can isolate a single part.

SARAH: That’s fair

MICHELE: I mean, I'm still amazed that I can hold a physical book in my hands in the first place.

KAYLA: Isn't it wild? It's such a wild experience.

SARAH: Like you look at it and you're like, that's my name on a book.

MICHELE: Right? And it's like when you tell people, oh, I'm a writer, and they ask, what have you written? And like, okay, here's this thing.

KAYLA: Here it is.

MICHELE: Yeah. But like, I think I just like the different parts of like getting to like hire Ashley

for the illustrations is like a really cool part because it's like my first time commissioning professional illustrations for a project that I worked on.

KAYLA: So fancy

MICHELE: And that I would love to have that experience again, talking with the various aces that I did, talking with Courtney, with Ellen, with all the others is just, they are really amazing people that have opened up their time to me to just like talk about all these intimate parts of their lives and put their trust in me to honor that. And then having them say, oh my God, I'm so touched by this was like a really, it was a really cool experience. And then just like providing, just filling in the sections, I guess, on information that I lacked as a teenager growing up, like what would Michele of the past, of my past self, like would have wanted, what did I not get? And then just like trying to say, oh, I am gonna write for my younger self so that younger readers and older readers today can not have to do all the work that I did. And so hopefully my book will, I don't know how people cross it, but I hope it comes as a relief.

KAYLA: Yeah, definitely. I think it definitely will. Like I said at the beginning, it really is that resource of like, I don't want to have to Google all this stuff myself. I don't want to have to have like this list of links to like go back to and have to sift through like it's all right there and you can hold it. And it's just like, has Michele's name on it?

SARAH: What more could you ask for?

KAYLA: What more would you want? Michele's name is on it.

MICHELE: Well, I would ask for another book deal, but that's another story. 

KAYLA: Everyone, everyone call up JKP and say, excuse me. Another please.

Sarah: Hey, you know, Michele, we want more

KAYLA: we want more, all the ace books, starting a petition.

SARAH: Amazing. Alright. Well, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for…

(40:00)

SARAH: for telling us all about your book. So anything aside from your book actually, no, well, first of all, where can the people get your book? This is the most important question.

KAYLA: That's a good question.

MICHELE: Well, people can find a book on Jessica Kingsley publisher's website, as well as other site where you usually buy books such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon. So they can definitely look up that book there. I think you can just type in the title and there'll be a few links where to buy it.

SARAH: Yeah.

KAYLA: I'll try to put some of the links in like the show notes of this episode so people can go right there.

SARAH: I love it when people like ask us like, Hey, is this book available here? And I'm like, you could look it up.

KAYLA: People often ask me like, where should I buy it? So it gets like you the most money. And I'm like, no, no, it doesn't matter.

SARAH: It’s all the same

KAYLA: Like, thank you. Thank you. But like just buy it wherever it's, it all is the same $1 to me.

MICHELE: There’s also buying links on my website. So you can just...

KAYLA: Oh nice.

MICHELE: So you can just go to Michelekirichanskaya.com and like look up what we buy next.

KAYLA: I will put that in the show notes. Everyone can go.

SARAH: Sounds good. Is there anything else you would like to promote? It can be yourself. It can be your favorite movie, I don't know, you know.

MICHELE: Oh sure. So to promote myself, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram under MicheleKiricha1.  And I, in addition to being an ace author, as I still can't believe that I am

KAYLA: Published!

MICHELE: I'm also a sensitivity reader. So if you're working on a comic, a novel, any creative project that involves ace or aro issues or Jewish issues or possibly Ukrainian, Russian, Slavic cultural issues, like hire me as a resource. Like I'm a paid sensitivity reader. So if you want to just like get into the nuances of that topic, I can definitely help you along with that.

KAYLA: Hell yeah. Everyone hire Michele.

MICHELE: And like as a closing note, I hope that any reader who goes out and reads Ace Notes can hopefully find a little bit of themselves in the book. Or if not, they don't find themselves in it, they can give it to someone else who they will.

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely.

SARAH: I think they will. I think they will. Alright. Wonderful. Well, Kayla, what's our poll for this week? Have you bought Michele's book?

KAYLA: Have you bought it?

SARAH: If not

KAYLA: ace notes?

SARAH: Why not?

KAYLA: Why? Yeah. That's the, and also if you have read it, tell us your thoughts, tell us your favorite part. What's your favorite word in Michele's book?

SARAH: Favorite word specifically. Mine is fanfiction.

KAYLA: Yeah.

SARAH: Amazing. Alright. Kayla, what is your beef and your juice this week?

KAYLA: That's such an excellent question. My juice is that my friend Cassis just moved to the city and it was also her birthday last week.

SARAH: The city.

KAYLA: So we threw, you know, the city.

SARAH: I love it. Boston.

KAYLA: Boston. I don't live in Boston. I live in Cambridge. Like I'm a liar also is something about me anyway, but she lives in Boston. She moved to the city anyway. It was also her birthday. So we threw her a disco cowgirl princess sparkle birthday party and everyone dressed up and had the most amazing costumes and it was just a very silly time. So that's my juice. My beef is I have to go to work tomorrow. I don't want to do it.

SARAH: Incredible. I had got out of a juice and then I didn't write it down and I forgot it. So my juice is-

KAYLA: You went dancing.

SARAH: Yeah, I did a dancing and I also ate some good cupcakes. That's my juice.

KAYLA: Good

SARAH: My beef is, I've said it before on this pod and I'll say it again, capitalism.

KAYLA: And she'll say it again.

SARAH: Just capitalism. Sometimes it really pisses me off. Michele, what is your beef and your juice this week?

MICHELE: Other than general bigotry and anti-semitism?

KAYLA: I mean that could be it.

SARAH: That'll do it.

KAYLA: That's bad. That's it.

MICHELE: I guess my beef would be not having enough time in a day to sleep.

KAYLA: Yeah

SARAH: I yesterday slept for 16 hours.

KAYLA: Don't brag. She just said she doesn't get enough sleep and now you're like I slept 16 hours that’s fucking rude

SARAH: no, no, no, no. The reason I slept for 16 hours is because I hadn't slept enough the previous week and so I literally just fell asleep at 6:30 and just did not wake up. So I feel that

KAYLA: for bragging.

MICHELE: My mind's like a computer that takes forever to shut down and when it does, it's just like I barely had enough time before I had to get up and get ready and go through my day and then the same process happens again and so I just go through the week sleep deprived.

(45:00)

SARAH: I'm sorry for accidentally bragging. I didn't mean to.

MICHELE: No, no, no. It's great to celebrate your sleep and I just want more of it.

KAYLA: Let her sleep

SARAH: Do you have juice, something that's good that she would like to talk about?

MICHELE: Okay. I'm not sure how many listeners, my friends all know that I'm fixated on this topic, but I am a very big fan of a few Chinese fantasy series right now, including one called Heaven's Initial Blessing, which I think more than a few Ace fans have head-canoned the main characters as on the Ace Factory. So if you're looking for a very demisexual coded character, maybe you should go ahead and read that one.

SARAH: Amazing. Who is it by?

KAYLA: Yeah, that sounds excellent.

MICHELE: I can't pronounce the name because it's Chinese, but the initials are MXTX, I don't want to butcher the Chinese name, so just look up Heaven's Initial Blessing by MXTX.

SARAH: That is good. Alright.

KAYLA: Yes.

SARAH: Amazing. Everyone check that out and check out Michele's book and buy every book. You can buy ours too, but this week it's about Michele. It's about Michele.

KAYLA: It's Michele's book. It’s Michele

SARAH: Alright. Fantastic. We also have a Patreon where you can support us if you want to for some reason. Sarah from the Future will tell you about that. Hey, Sarah from the Future, what's up? Hi, this is Sarah from the Future. I'm recording this on my phone. Why? Don't worry about it. We have two new $5 patrons. They are Clare Olsen and Philip Rueker? Rueker. Rueker. Rooker. You, Philip. Thank you. Thank you, Philip and Clare. You're both absolutely delightful. Are $5 potrons in addition potrons? Hello? Our other $5 patrons who are promoting this week are Tall Darryl, The Forest Pigeon, The Stubby Tech, and Vishakh. Thank you to all of our lovely $5 patrons. You know what? And our $2 patrons. And all of our patrons. You all rock. Anyway, our $10 patrons who are promoting something this week are Elle Bitter, my Aunt Jeannie, Maggie Capalbo, Martin Chiesl- Wait. I got to tell you what they're promoting. Wow. You know, we're doing our best. Elle Bitter would like to promote the use of tone indicators, my Aunt Jeannie would like to promote Christopher's Haven, Maggie Capalbo would like to promote their puppy Ezra Bean, and Martin Chiesl would like to promote his podcast, If Everyone's Special Then No One Is. And also Mattie, who would like to promote gender euphoria. We also have a new $10 patron. It is Ruby. Thank you, Ruby. Please let us know what you would like to promote. Our other $10 patrons are Potater, Purple Hayes, Barefoot Backpacker, SongofStorm, The Steve, Zirlteo, Arcnes, Alyson, Benjamin Ybarra, David Harris, and Derick and Carissa. Our $15 patrons are Andrew Hillum, who would like to promote the Invisible Spectrum podcast, Changeling and Alex the Ace Cat, who would like to- Wait, Changeling, did you ever tell me? I thought- Did you have a chang- For now? You're promoting StarshipChangeling.net. Let me know if you want to change that. Click4Caroline who would like to promote Ace of Hearts, Dia Chappell, who would like to promote Twitch.tv/melodydia, Hector Murillo, who would like to promote friends are supportive, constructive, and help you grow as a better person, John Young, Keziah Root, who would like to promote the people who will come into your life just for a small time at right when you need them, Maff, who would like to promote Catching Up on the Podcast after two years, Nathaniel White, who would like to promote NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com, Kayla’s Aunt Nina, who would like to promote KateMaggartArt.com, and Sara Jones, who is @eternalloli Everywhere. Our $20 patrons are Sabrina Hauck, Merry Christmas, and Dragonfly, who would like to promote Doing Your Best? Okay, anyway, back to Sarah from the past. Thanks Sarah from the future. That was so helpful. What happens next?

KAYLA: Love her. This is my favorite version of Sarah.

SARAH: Anyway, thanks for listening. Thank you again so much, Michele, for joining us and for writing this book and for putting it out into the world. Everyone buy it, all the places, and follow Michele, all the places on socials. 

KAYLA: Link in the bio.

SARAH: Yeah link in the doobly doo Link will be there. Thank you for listening, and tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears.

KAYLA: Until then, take good care of your cows.

(49:00)