Bojack and Asexuality

In the most recent season of the an animated series Bojack Horseman (created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg and debuted on Netflix in 2014) Bojack’s sidekick and couchsurfer, Todd, reconnects with his high school ex-girlfriend, Emily. Given many opportunities to hook-up with Emily, Todd passes on them all. Concerned, Emily asks if he’s gay. His reply: “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.”

Todd’s response can be read as asexual. Asexuality.org defines an asexul person as “a person who does not experience sexual attraction.  What makes this particular scene unique is Emily’s response: “Oh, well, that’s okay.” Full acceptance.

Aaron Paul, who voices Todd, was quick to identify Todd to the New York Times as “the first asexual character in [American] television.” But Paul might be jumping the gun there, as Todd isn’t the first asexual character ever in television.

Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead on AMC has been confirmed as “somewhat asexual” by showrunner Robert Kirkman. Benedict Cumberbatch has explained why Sherlock Holmes is asexual. And if you’re looking on basic cable, Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory comes to mind. While he wasn’t originally written as asexual, he’s commonly read as such.

For years, Sheldon’s relationship with his partner, Amy, relied on an emotional bond rather than sex. That all changed with the episode “Opening Night Excitation,” which aired in December 2015. In it, Sheldon and Amy consummate their relationship. As the show enters its 10th and maybe last season, Trilby Beresford writes in The Week, in an article titled How Sex Ruined The Big Bang Theory, that, “The show will be remembered for re-writing said character as a guy’s guy whose future will probably include marriage, and all that boring “adult” stuff that screams normality.”

Aromantic asexual activist Lauren Jankowski runs a blog called Asexual Artists, where she interviews asexual creatives. In Bitch Magazine, she discusses the problem with asexual characters in popular culture and stresses how asexuality, when it’s even portrayed, is “portrayed as a problem that’s fixable” or as an obstacle for heterosexuals to ‘overcome.’ In Flux Weekly, discussing whether or not Sheldon losing his virginity is a betrayal, writer Emmi Kern explains the historical connection between drama and sex, which makes sexual characters inaccessible to the asexual community, which one study found could be as high as one percent of the population (to put that into perspective it’s estimated that 3% of the population is gay). Without sexuality, many stories lose their plot.

It’s also worth noting that although Sheldon and Amy had sex, his identity doesn’t necessarily suddenly change. Just like sexuality, asexuality is a spectrum.

Jankowski, who runs a workshop for Writing the Other, also stresses that asexual representation begins in the writer’s room. Representation is step one, but accuracy is the second. “You’re not seeing a lot of openly asexual creators writing these characters, and that concerns me,” she says. “I would like to see a normalization that platonic relationships are just important as romantic ones.” Bojack Horseman has already been greenlit for a fourth season, in which we will get to see how far Todd’s asexuality will be portrayed and how well (or not) the show’s characters will react.