As aromantic- and/or asexual-spectrum Christians and Jesus-adjacent people, it can be hard to believe that we are not alone. There are few examples of us in queer Christian spaces speaking about our experiences, not to mention the broader queer or Christian/faith worlds in general. I want to do my part to change that with this website and connect you with more a-spectrum Christian and Christian-ish people across the internet. This summer, I’m hosting a short Q&A series.
1. Hi! We’re so glad you’re here. Can you introduce yourself to the Invisible Cake Society with your name, pronouns, any identity labels you feel like sharing?
My name is Justin Ancheta—I’m a cis male, my pronouns are he/they, and I identify as invisibly disabled through my stutter. My ace identities range from grey-asexual to aceflux, but I most often use demisexual and biromantic, so I consider myself Bi+ too. For political convenience, I just use the term Bi+ and Ace.
I’m a Filipino-Canadian second-generation immigrant, which means that I’m a diasporic child of Filipino immigrants.
I’m also neurodivergent, having been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and adult ADHD.
From all of that, I wish “liminal” could be used as an identity label. For all of the identities and communities I’ve listed, I always feel like—regardless of the community in which I’m told I belong—I’m always in a state of quasi-belonging. I’m not really Filipino because I’m culturally so far from my family, nor am I really Canadian, because I’m not white. Because of the nature of how I experience stuttering, I can sometimes pass for being fluent, and sometimes I can’t. My own Christianity has evolved into a state where I’m firmly outside of a lot of the norms and structures I grew up with, yet I still feel myself drawn to a belief in Jesus. I’m not a pure Gold Star Asexual, but I’m not allo either. I’m too much outside allonormativity to be “conventionally” queer, but too much outside cisheteronormativity to be conventionally straight. Being Bi+ for me adds another layer to my sense of being stuck in an in-between zone, not being one or the other, not being A or B. At times it’s a source of pride, a sense of defiance and rebellion against restrictive binary relationship and sexual norms. At other times, it leads to the frustration of never truly feeling safe in knowing where I belong.
2. What do you like to spend your time doing, online or in person, creatively and/or professionally?
Because of my ADHD, I’ve ended up with a lot of obsessions, which I often rotate through. But in general, I’m really passionate about literature and writing in all of its forms. Recent books that I’ve finished are Birds, Art, Life by Kyo McLear and Son of Elsewhere by Elamin Abdelmahmoud. I currently write poetry as well as hybrid and lyric creative non-fiction (CNF); my CNF work on asexuality has been published in AZE Journal and QT Literary Magazine. I also have pieces published in carte-blanche, and the Tahoma Literary Review, and my prose poetry has just been published in PRISM International. I also have a piece on stuttering that’s forthcoming in The Fiddlehead’s Disability issue for Summer 2026. My current project is a memoir-in-essays about my journey with disability, racialization, and queerness.
I’m also really passionate about the tarot; for about five years now, I’ve been a professional tarot reader. I was first introduced to the tarot through a group of friends I can only describe as a witchy Christian coven. The subtlety, ambiguity, and elusiveness of the images in even a bog-standard Rider-Waite-Smith deck was a challenge I found intimidating, pushing my brain to think about and question my inner self in ways I hadn’t before. But at the time I had developed an intense interest in Jungian psychology and Christian mysticism, and the tarot spoke to all of that, plus the ambiguity and elusiveness of my own relationship to sex and gender. I’ve always been fascinated in looking at the tarot through an ace lens, which is why I wrote a whole blog series covering the entirety of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot (all 78 cards!) from a marginalized asexual perspective. I’m currently in the process of revising and adapting that series into another book.
I also have an interest in technology and all of the technical, political, and social discussions around it; before the AI-fueled memory crisis I loved to collect and upgrade old laptop computers.
I enjoy using metaphors from my interests in my writing—my first published piece in QT Literary Magazine was a playful expression of my demisexual identity through the imagery of the “pairing mode” commonly used in Bluetooth headphones and speakers.
3. When did you hear about aromanticism and asexuality, and when did you realize they described you?
It’s hard for me to answer that, as I can’t point to a central “A-HA!” moment to show when I suddenly realized I was ace. It came about over the course of roughly a year in late 2018 to early 2019, when I started talking to my childhood friend about their experience of asexuality. I did a lot of online “Are you Asexual?” quizzes, and read a lot of pop culture blog posts on asexuality. I kept on running into this brick wall where it felt like so much of the asexual experience resonated with me, and yet my own relationship with sex and sexual attraction left me feeling like I wasn’t “ace” enough to claim that identity. A big turning point for me was when I discovered that asexuality isn’t just one specific monolithic identity but an umbrella, including multiple different identities encompassing a gradient of sexually relating to no one or almost no one. When I discovered that there was a microlabel that fit so well my own experience of sexuality—Biromantic Demisexual—it felt relieving. It’s like I could understand myself so much more, and that I wasn’t alone in feeling what I was feeling.
I still remember sitting in a packed café one Friday evening, discovering the Biromantic Demisexual flag and ordering one of what would be many pins and buttons to adorn my bags. It felt like an act of completion. I felt whole in a way that I hadn’t for a very long time.
This is why the discourse around ace exclusionism and the Gold Star Asexual personally affects me. According to exclusionists, I don’t belong in this community, and everything that I’ve described above was fiction. And on top of that was my experience of the discourse around Ashabi’s 2026 intersectional ace flag, which sent me a clear message that multiply marginalized and racialized ace people like me don’t deserve representation in ace community spaces and are wrong to want that.
It makes the idea of feeling ace pride at times feel hollow and insincere. Yet, I still feel a strong sense of pride in my own asexual journey and in my asexual self.
4. What’s your faith background and how would you describe your relationship with religion/spirituality/faith today?
My faith background was Roman Catholic, though later in life I’d grow to experiment with an Evangelical Fundamentalist Baptist Church, the Anglican Church, and the United Church of Canada. From a very early age, I knew I diverged wildly from the Catholic Church’s stances on critical issues like queer inclusion and abortion (despite a brief transition through right-leaning Centrism in high school). Yet the majesty and deep history of Catholic worship, the candles and the “smells and bells”, as some say, is something I spiritually feel drawn to, again and again. There’s a meditative, mystical, and introspective quality to it that I find healing and nourishing. Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV have done a lot to convince me that positive social change within the Catholic Church is possible, but in the face of the climate change, the rise of technofascism, and white supremacy, more concrete change can’t come quickly enough.
Right now, my relationship to my Christianity is…fraught. It’s difficult to go online, not just on social media, and see Christians at large reacting with almost bloodthirsty glee to the murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, or seeing them cheer on the actions of ICE, the murders of Black people by the police, or the genocide in Gaza…and that’s on top of the typical queerphobia and acephobia that one has sadly come to expect from Christians and Christianity in general.
It all makes me wonder about what I’m doing. Why I’d tie myself to a religious community that has seemingly embraced violent white supremacy in all of its naked hatred, and zeal for inflicting as much death and suffering on others. Why I’d be part of a community who would rush to the defence of the current US president and his circle over the Epstein Files, while coming down with equal speed and ruthlessness on trans people, or people arrested by ICE for dubious reasons.
The discussion and popularization of the concept of “toxic empathy” articulated in books popular among conservative Christians leaves me feeling like I’m living in the Upside Down, a bizarro world where empathy, compassion, tolerance, grace, and forgiveness are now cardinal sins, while bigotry, hatred, and lying are now cardinal virtues, and the mere act of trans people existing is a mortal sin of the highest possible order. I’ve caught myself wondering if this is what Christianity has always been all along, and that I’m just the odd-ball outlier. I want to believe this isn’t true. I want to believe we can be something more, that we can be a powerful force for both justice and healing.
And yet amidst all of my despair, I see Christ as an example of choosing love, a philosophy that bell hooks and Kai Cheng Thom have written about, to which I was introduced by one close friend: To choose love. To choose the path of humility, empathy, grace, and a desire for dialogue and understanding over anger and othering. To accept that we can make mistakes and learn from them. Of showing up as best we can for ourselves, the people we love, and others around us.
For me, two things can be true: The utter monstrousness of what much of Christianity has done and has become now, and the beauty and inspiration I feel from a Christian faith pushing us to stand up for the marginalized and the downtrodden. That tension can compel one to be more introspective and self-critical, qualities which I think are so important in our increasingly self-centred world.
5. How has your a-spec identity influenced your personal faith?
On a deep level, I’ve always viewed my ace identity in much the same way as my Christianity—something that subverts power and rebels against the restrictive, oppressive norms that prevent us from living our authentic lives in healthy and sustainable ways. So I think in a lot of ways, they’ve informed and supported each other in a virtuous circle. In both asexuality and Christianity, I see a striving for liberation and a better future. I see a desire to decentre that which strips human beings of their dignity, reducing them to items to be consumed. I see a desire to be part of something greater than oneself, and a desire to keep choosing empathy, grace, and compassion for others.
6. How has your a-spec identity affected your relationship with religious or spiritual communities?
It both has and it hasn’t; I haven’t fully outed myself at the church were I work at, mainly because it hasn’t really come up in a relevant way, and because I know that as an affirming church in an affirming denomination, I don’t feel that pressure which comes with being at a place where the entirety of my authentic self is not accepted.
At the same time, it has been a wonderful experience to be connected to Matt Nightingale’s contemplative spirituality group, to be in community with like-minded people and those whose life journeys have matched my own. Being in spaces like that, and being exposed to the writing and work of people like Cheri DiNovo have helped heal my relationship to Christian community.
7. How has your faith affected your relationship with the a-spec or larger LGBTQIA+ community?
I’ve had people in my ace community alongside queer people in my personal life see fit to lecture me repeatedly on Christian privilege and Christian supremacy, as if it’s something that I’ve never heard of and haven’t been thinking of on a daily basis. I’ve experienced conversations with those same ace and queer people—people who I once trusted to take my words, intentions, and actions in good faith—talk to me as if all they’ve ever seen in me is yet another overprivileged older cis male Christian oppressor.
I understand where that comes from. There’s no denying the history of trauma that Christianity and toxic masculinity has inflicted and continues to inflict on queer and marginalized people. That trauma in turn can pose significant barriers to healthy communication with others when disagreements or misunderstandings arise. (Something Sarah Schulman explains very well in her book Conflict is not Abuse.) I try to extend as much grace as I can to such people, and try to be personally accountable when I recognize instances of my own complicity in the harm Christianity causes. But it doesn’t change the fact that it personally hurts me. Slowly, I’ve been learning to make peace with how others have chosen to see me. If anything, it’s been a wonderful lesson from the universe in learning to walk away from people, relationships, and spaces where I’m not wanted.
8. Does your a-spec identity impact your gender identity? Or vice versa?
Being a-spec certainly opened the doors for me to think of my gender identity in ways I wouldn’t if I’d been conscious of my self only as an allo heterosexual. Learning to think of my sexuality in more expansive ways led me to think of my gender identity in more expansive ways too. Choosing to use they/them pronouns was a subtle but big step for me in that regard.
9. What should all a-spec Christians know?
Take care of the ones you love, but take care of your selves, first and foremost; you can’t show up for your community if you’re not showing up for yourself. Protect your boundaries, be quick to show grace, and be patient with your own anger. And always, always choose love.
10. What do you want the larger affirming LGBTQIA+ and ally Christian community to know about a-spec Christians?
We’re not your enemies. Our queer communities can only gain through more inclusion, of intersectional people, people across the aromantic and asexual spectrum, and of people across the spectrum of faith, religion, and spirituality. At an unprecedented time when our communities are facing more and more attacks and erasure from white supremacy and capitalism, we need to focus on building solidarity and unity against a global upsurge in right-wing fascism and bigotry. We’re far past the stage of Niemöller-inspired appeals to speak up for distant marginalized groups under siege now, fearing for a future targeting us: Book bannings, and the regression of women’s rights means they’re already coming for all of us, right now.
The queer community and progressives can’t waste time indulging our collective addiction to lateral aggression (see Frances Lee’s 2017 essay “Excommunicate me from the Church of Social Justice”, which hits just as hard now as it did almost a decade ago). We deserve better.
11. At Invisible Cake Society, we highlight experiences that have been erased or seem invisible to those outside of them. What’s your favorite way to be visible?
By far my favourite way to be visible is through my lyric essay writing. The medium of the lyric essay gives me so much latitude to play with writing in how I can express my asexual and intersectional experiences. I wrote a hermit crab essay about the obligatory “Am I broken?” inner dialogue on my asexuality (which almost every ace or aro person seems to go through) in the form of a software bug report. I have a piece in AZE Journal expressing the timeline of my asexual journey as a set of progressive software release notes. It’s just plain fun.
12. Do you have a favorite example of a-spec representation (whether explicitly stated or not) in media, books, public figures, theater, etc.? What about them resonated with you?
I would say it would be my own representation in my published lyric essay writing, but I don’t want to be narcissistic! In popular media, I found myself most resonating with Florence Simmons from Sex Education Season 2. Her conversation with Jean Milburn was the inspiration for a workshop I facilitated on asexuality, which was one of the most magical and transformative queer experiences I’d ever had.
It’s unfortunate that the show never followed up on either her character or that conversation (not to mention Steve saying “I think I’m demisexual” on a placard in the Season 2 finale), and instead gave us the tragedy of O in Season 4. But the less I say about that, the better.
13. Anything else you want readers to know?
Intersectionality and solidarity will save us. Simply more queer or ace or aro representation will not save us if we can’t back that up with a community and a social movement that challenges how society still upholds white supremacy, cisheteronormativity, amatonormativity, monosexism, and compulsory sexuality. Simply wanting more representation isn’t enough. We need to strive for an end to ableism, racism, classism, saneism, and neuroableism. We need intersectionality and solidarity.
14. Where can they follow your work online?
A quick list of all of my published work including my Asexuality and the Tarot series can be found either on Linktree or on Carrd; plus there’s my work-in-progress website at justinanchetawriter.com.
My latest prose poem, “A Letter to the Elevator Technician who Rescued Us, June 6, 2024” was just released in Issue 64.2 of PRISM International, and my lyric essay “Because I wanted to fly higher than where my voice could take me” is coming out in the Summer 2026 disability issue of The Fiddlehead.
In addition to all of that, people can follow me on what used to be my tarot-centric Instagram account (@rampancy) and they can subject themselves to my rantings on BlueSky (jancheta25.bsky.social).
Invisible Cake Society 