Yasmin Benoit Claps Back at J.K. Rowling’s Acephobic Attack

Pink News interviewed Qwear’s Yasmin Benoit following J.K. Rowling’s recent attack on International Asexuality Day, held annually on April 6. Benoit, who launched the award-winning #ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike campaign on Qwear in 2019, went on to co-found International Asexuality Day in 2021. In 2023, she partnered with Stonewall to release a groundbreaking report that exposed the widespread discrimination asexual people face in the UK—spanning healthcare, the workplace, and society at large—while calling for urgently needed legal and policy reforms.

Rowling’s tweets displayed a stunning level of ignorance, outright denying the existence of asexuality—despite an estimated 70 million people around the world reporting little to no sexual attraction. She also confused asexuality with both sexual dysfunction and aromanticism. For someone known for her imagination, Rowling seems to have a remarkable inability to envision experiences beyond her own.

We're still doing this? If anyone has a sickness, it's JK Rowling. Asexuality doesn't need a "cure" and being unable to experience arousal is not asexuality. https://t.co/OL3aLyVw4f

— Yasmin Benoit, MSc (@theyasminbenoit) April 8, 2025

After years of educating the public on asexuality, Yasmin responded with sharp clarity: “We're still doing this? If anyone has a sickness, it’s J.K. Rowling. Asexuality doesn't need a 'cure,' and being unable to experience arousal is not asexuality.”

Speaking to Pink News, Yasmin added, “A lot of people’s first introduction to International Asexuality Day has now come through J.K. Rowling hating on it. It’s becoming a conversation in so many spaces I haven’t seen before, but for a negative reason. She kind of hijacked the occasion.”

The backlash that followed was swift and vicious. “I’ve had people commenting that asexual people don’t exist, that the asexual community doesn’t exist—but there’s literally a community of asexual people talking right now. I don’t know what more I can tell you,” Yasmin said. “A lot of them are saying it’s a mental disorder. Some have even said it’s a side effect of SSRIs, or that it’s part of the ‘trans agenda.’”

Yasmin has long advocated for asexual inclusion in legal protections, pointing out that asexuality is still not recognized as a protected characteristic under the UK’s Equality Act. Through interviews, public speaking, social media, and academic research, she continues to educate the public on the spectrum of asexual identities and the systemic issues the community faces.

Yasmin’s research at King’s College has further uncovered the barriers to appropriate and affirming healthcare, where asexuality is often pathologized—dismissed as the result of hormonal imbalance, trauma, or dysfunction. This stigma has led many asexual individuals to be subjected to unnecessary psychosexual therapy or encouraged to take libido-enhancing medications they neither want nor need.

At Qwear, we are deeply grateful to Yasmin for continuing to speak out, despite the hatred and misinformation thrown her way. It is an honor to be a home for her activism—and a platform for truth in the face of ignorance.