Asexuals join Delhi’s Pride march

When the LGBTQIA hits the streets of Delhi in all their colourful finery for the ninth time in a row, there’s is a first — walking alongside them is arguably India’s only asexual community. “This is the first time that the community has come forward formally to be a part of pride,” says Rituparna Borah of the Delhi Queer Pride Committee, adding that asexual individuals have been a part of the Pride over the years informally. 

The lack of a cohesive organisation was the stimulus. Grace, a 28-year-old professional from Delhi, needed to form one. “I would search on the Internet and not find any community representation or organisation,” she says. In 2014, she formed a Facebook group called Indian Aces. After a brief inactive phase, she revived the page in 2015 and now has 500 members. There’s also a secret group accessible to 150 people asexuals living in the Capital.

“Invisibility is one of the community’s biggest problems. Even within the LGBTQIA community, we are invisible,” says Grace. 

If invisibility is one problem, dismissal is another. Globally, studies have shown that 1 per cent  of the world population are asexuals. It is not a surprise that there are no official estimate in India.“We are facing what the homosexual community was facing back in the day,” says Grace. 

A large societal pressure for Aces, one that Grace is facing from her family right now, is to get married.“If it a travesty for a homosexual to get married to a heterosexual individual, it is one for us to get married to sexually 
active person. We cannot live up to their sexual expectations,” she says. This need to find like-minded people to get married to led to the establishment of a dating platform called Plantonicity. “We received almost 300 responses and then halted for the season,” Grace says adding, “A website is in the pipeline.”