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Abstract

With asexual (“ace”) people making up a minority even within queer communities, the internet has become a vital space for ace people to interact with the asexual community. In recent years, the Reddit forum r/asexuality has become the most active discursive space surrounding asexual identity, with over 230,000 members. Existing literature has theorized asexual identity formation through the lens of “discovery,” wherein individuals come to identify as ace after “discovering” the label (often via online spaces) and using it to understand their deviant experiences and desires—or, more precisely, their lack thereof. However, identity formation is a process that stretches beyond discovery of the asexual label as people negotiate complex experiences of doubt, reaffirmation, and validation. I argue that emergent online spaces such as r/asexuality play a key role in mediating these processes of identity negotiation. Through qualitative interviews with members of the r/asexuality community, I examine how ace people make sense of their role(s) in r/asexuality as they engage with the community over time and how these roles facilitate identity negotiation. I find that individuals who are new to r/asexuality see their primary role in the community as observing and learning from others, while members who have spent more time in the subreddit described their role as supporting others and building community. Acting within their respective roles facilitated the identity negotiation processes of both groups in divergent ways. This study broadens scholarly understanding of asexual online communities, which remain understudied in social scientific research.

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