Photo Courtesy of Kelsey Savage & John Woods, Real Talk

On paper, Alison Klein is a serious academic with a master’s in interdisciplinary studies focused on adult education and disability. Meet her at one of the Real Talk’s free public events (affectionately known as “pizza parties”), and she’ll be the first to greet you as a peer facilitator and make a joke—sometimes with anatomically correct models at the ready.

“I go, ‘Look, a present’, and then just walk away,” says Klein with a smile. “I have kind of a funny side.”

Founded and managed by sexual health educator John Woods, Real Talk is an initiative based in Metro Vancouver that supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Woods has worked in community living spaces, schools, and sexual health organizations since the early ’90s, both in Canada and in London, UK. He saw the urgent need for sex education tailored to the IDD community, and a slew of intersectional barriers rooted in eugenics. Now, in between pizza parties and Q&As, Real Talk works with the community living sector to support providers and those with cognitive disabilities.

“Step five is getting the public to acknowledge and affirm that folks with intellectual disabilities could be LGBTQ,” explains Kelsey Savage, Real Talk’s project developer. “Step zero is the general population believing that folks with intellectual disabilities have a sexuality at all.”

Since its founding in 2017, Real Talk has grown to include both certified sexual health educators and peer facilitators with lived experience, ensuring its initiatives are driven by community needs. While the disability rights rallying cry “nothing about us without us” has existed for decades, Real Talk remains one of the few accessible sex-positive resources that centre self-advocacy. It provides an extensive library of YouTube videos addressing common questions around sexuality and disability. Savage also oversees Connecting Queer Communities (CQC), a social group for 2SLGBTQIA+ folks with cognitive disabilities to connect across the Lower Mainland both in person and online. People often attend both Real Talk and CQC events, and several have joined Klein as peer facilitators themselves. As facilitators, honouring education and community could mean helping someone explain orgasms to their partner one day, and being with someone’s deepest traumas the next.

“It’s happened a number of times at our events, where people have discovered they’ve been taking birth control and it’s been called a vitamin, or they’ve had an IUD and they didn’t consent to it,” says Savage. “There’s already a lot in the room before you step into it.”

As Real Talk works across communities to expand its outreach, what’s needed to ensure the future of good sexual health education is clear: government-sponsored education and publicly funded accommodations and support so people with cognitive disabilities have an equitable pathway to become sexual health educators. “I want to ideally work myself out of a job,” teases Savage.

“Earlier, I was mostly around staff and disconnected from my community,” Klein says. “I hope Real Talk is a starting point, and that sex education can be taught in schools to kids from all different backgrounds, so they all have a frame of reference [for] each other.”

Photo by Lisa from Pexels via Pexels

It’s the late 2010s and I’m a teenager carefully watching my mom out of my peripheral. She’s paying attention to the TV and the animated man on the screen in a hilarious combination of suit, tie, and yellow beanie. He’s eating ice cream in a diner with a friend: a girl who’s made it very clear she likes him this whole season, only to be met with his awkward body language, stumbled excuses, and quick subject changes.

I’ve seen this one before, but my heart is in my throat when the companion asks Todd Chavez (Aaron Paul) if he’s gay.

Todd responds, “I’m not gay. I mean, I don’t think I am, but I don’t think I’m straight either. I don’t know what I am. I think I might be nothing.”

I click the next episode of BoJack without hesitation.

BoJack Horseman is a Netflix original animated tragicomedy set in a fictionalized version of Hollywood. Our cast includes a mix of humans, anthropomorphized animals, and celebrity cameos. As it aired from 2014 to 2020, BoJack went on to receive consistent critical acclaim and a dedicated audience who loved the balance between the wacky scenarios typical to adult animation and the honest portrayal of serious topics like substance abuse and depression.

When season four graces our screen, I finally hear the word that I’ve held close to my chest for years now spoken aloud: “asexual.” Todd Chavez, our wacky slacker sidekick, initially reacts with an aversion to the label.

But after some uncertainty and self-reflection, Todd embraces his identity in “Hooray! Todd Episode!” During a vulnerable moment, Todd comes out to BoJack: “I’m asexual. Not sexual.”

I share a look with my mother, the woman who’s known me all my life, who still knows me best, and hope that she understands.

*

Todd Chavez was one of only two asexual characters included in GLAAD’s 2017-2018 “Where We Are on TV” report, marking the first year the annual publication included asexuals in its data. While the publication notes that there was some asexual representation on television in previous years, “those characters were often relegated to one-off episodes, which did not allow for nuanced exploration.”

Seeking out asexual representation on TV was an often-disheartening exercise for a young asexual (commonly shortened to “ace”) like me. As a greater number of queer characters stepped into the spotlight, I searched desperately for the aces. When it came down to it, most of our “ace representatives” pre-2017 were only “ace-coded” characters, portraying some common signs of asexuality without ever encountering, exploring, or articulating the term. Asexuals would often recognize these signs or find the experiences of the characters relatable to their own asexual experiences, but we rarely heard our label spoken aloud.

Sometimes, it was enough to be the character left uncoupled by the end of the narrative—like Frozen’s Elsa—to be hailed as an “asexual icon” on internet forums. The ambiguity of the unlabelled asexual meant little repercussion for portraying common ace stereotypes like the logical and emotionless “robot” over and over again. Think The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper who says he “find[s] the concept of coitus to be ridiculous and off-putting.” Sheldon is touch-averse and sex-repulsed, but never uses the term “asexual” to describe himself. The lack of articulated labels leaves it up to fans to draw their own conclusions and, in more cases than not, leaves the writers space to retcon any common ace markers to suit their narrative needs. When the word “asexual” was actually uttered, it was met with a “fix it” attitude like House M.D.’s episode “Better Half.” (House spends his 44-minute run-time trying to disprove the claims of a self-identifying asexual couple, unfortunately succeeding when it’s discovered the man has a pituitary tumor that lowered his libido and caused erectile dysfunction, and the woman admits she was faking for her husband.)

Todd Chavez’s ground-breaking journey on BoJack was an important milestone for those of us looking to see our sexuality portrayed with positivity and a complex, comprehensive multi-season storyline on screen. When I showed my mom BoJack, already knowing where Todd’s journey would lead, I was secretly building a foundation for my own coming out moment.

As Todd comes into his own understanding of his identity—an asexual who is interested in romance, but sex-averse—the show demonstrates the variance in ace experiences. A couple from his Asexual Alliance group explain the difference between aromantic asexuals—those not interested in sex or relationships—and aces who enjoy dating. Todd’s childhood friend Emily (Abbi Jacobson) informs us that some asexuals do have and enjoy sex. As Todd’s dating life progresses, we see the struggles that arise from dating while asexual, such as Todd dating Yolanda (Natalie Morales) because they’re both asexual, even though they have nothing else in common.

The thing I dreaded most about my own coming out moment was having to explain to my family what asexuality means. I didn’t want to field questions, discuss the nuances, and be delegitimized because I was just an inexperienced teenager. One of the benefits of representing marginalized identities on screen is that representation bridges gaps in understanding. Pink Triangle Press’s 2024 PTP Pink Paper, a research report on Canadian 2SLGBTQIA+ media representation, explains, “9 in 10 media professionals agree that on-screen representation increases understanding and drives acceptance of 2SLGBTQIA+ people in society at large.”

In its delicate handling of my identity, BoJack provided the crash course on asexuality that I dreamed of. My mom was an apt student who was enticed by the series’ rapid-fire shifts between tense dramatic moments and silly schemes. By the end of the series, she left with something meaningful: some basic knowledge about a type of sexuality she wasn’t previously familiar with. All that was left for me to do was to point at Todd and say, “Mom, that’s me.”

Yes, I came out to my mom using BoJack Horseman. Turns out TV is a useful tool.

*

Since BoJack, I’ve encountered more asexual characters in the media I love, though many of them aren’t as widely visible as the ones found on television. Most of my favourites come from books or indie content on the internet with a limited audience. On TV and popular streaming services, especially in Canada, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

In GLAAD’s most recent “Where We Are on TV” (2023-2024), they reported four asexual characters across streaming and cable: Sex Education’s O, Heartstopper’s Isaac, Heartbreak High’s Cash, and Big Mouth’s Elijah. At four characters, we see double the total from Todd’s ace-debut year—all of them found on Netflix, two carried over from the previous year—and still pitifully in the single-digits. The 2024 PTP Pink Paper report omitted data on asexuals as there was not sufficient ace representation in mainstream Canadian media.

A greater number of characters only have their asexuality confirmed by their creators rather than shown on screen. According to SpongeBob SquarePants creator, Stephen Hillenburg, in a 2005 People Magazine interview, he “never intended [SpongeBob] to be gay. I consider [him] to be almost asexual.” SpongeBob is asexual! Who knew? Many other creator-confirmed aces can be easily-missed by audiences, buried in interviews and old social media posts. The aces are out there—more of us than you’d think—but where are our storylines?

It’s tough work seeking out asexuals on screen. Alongside intersex and Two-Spirit, we’re still one of the most underrepresented queer identities on mainstream TV. Nearly a decade after he said “asexual,” Todd Chavez is still important to me, still my favourite character in western animation. He gave me the courage and the resources to express my pride and come out to my family by bravely embarking on his asexual journey. As the next generation tunes in to their favourite shows, I hope they find their Todd.