AD| Review of Being Demi by MG Mason

Disclosure: I was sent a free ARC of this book by the author

When Matt asked me if I would like to read an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of his latest book, Being Demi, I was immediately excited. Matt is a friend of mine, and I have had the absolute pleasure of withnessing his journey from first learning about demisexuality to proudly writing about his experiences as a demisexual man.

Being Demi is a book of acrostic poetry and essays about life before and after coming out as demi. It’s a short read, but a powerful one. It’s at once both deeply personal and yet completely relatable. And I have a page full of notes I made whilst reading it that I want to share with you today.

Being Demi is a journey

Matt has put together this collection of poems and essays in a way that takes you through his experience of figuring out who he is as an adult. It’s something that a lot of us who grew up in the UK under Section 28 will recognise. But it’s also relatable for those who didn’t get to explore their identity until later life for other reasons too.

The book starts with a section called I failed at being heterosexual. The poems in this section will be deeply relatable to those who are on the asexual spectrum somewhere. They talk about confusion over attraction, the pressure to be a certain way, and how isolating it feels.

They say fake it
Till you make it, but that shit’s exhausting.

These poems are then followed by an essay on the impact Section 28 had on so many of us. And then we move into the next section, and the next, and the next, travelling with Matt as he first heard the word demisexual and then discovered his own identity within that.

The book ends with a letter to Matt’s younger self, which acts as a great summary of the journey we’ve just been through. I particularly love the sense of peace which comes with the very end of the letter:

Make no mistake: the road ahead of you is a long one […] But the end of the road is one where you eventually find a way to take pride in who you are.

The Importance of Consent

One of the things that comes through really strongly throughout Being Demi is the importance of consent. This is something I have seen Matt talk about on social media a lot. We often talk about consent in absolutes, and forget about the nuances that exist within it too. For instance, how consent works within relationships. The poem Asexuality really captures this:

It’s okay to say “never”
To the person
You love, without guilt or shame

It’s also really important to remember that consent is just as important for men as it is for women, as Matt reflects in the poem entitled Consent:

End gendered expectations.
“No means no” is your right
Too

Finally, we see this theme come up again in the essay So what if Demisexuals are picky? We have as much right as anyone:

Dating isn’t a democracy where everyone must have an equal chance with everyone else.

Whilst this essay is about the way that demisexuals are often seen as “just picky” and that their sexuality isn’t real, it still comes under the overarching theme of consent for me. When those who do not want to understand an experience that is different from their own say such things, they are negating the individual’s consent to choose for themselves what is and isn’t true for them.

It’s a super important point and I did not want to forget about it when writing about this book. Because, as I said before, Being Demi might be a short read, but it is a powerful one.

Being Demi welcomes readers into an inclusive space

Being Demi is a deeply personal book. This is most obvious within the essays, which rely heavily on the author’s own individual experiences. There is a real strength in this, such as in the essay A post for all the older men seeing themselves reflected in my writing, which explores how writing about his own experiences has connected him to other men who have gone on a similar journey to him.

I’m proud of you for challenging the narrow expectations placed on men by limiting and harmful forms of masculinity.

Yet, even as a woman whose experiences are, in many ways, different to Matt’s, I still found so many things that we did have in common within these pages. For instance, I could relate so well to pretty much everything he wrote in the Explaining Attraction section. After all, I’ve written my own post about how I experience attraction as an asexual person, and so much of what I wrote then is reflected right back at me from within these pages. The poems Attraction and Aesthetic were particular favourites.

And if I could share just one essay from the book with the world, it would be I used to punish myself for having crushes, not anymore. I experience what I call “friend crushes” regularly. I yearn to have a deeper, closer relationship with certain friends, one where we could snuggle up together to watch a film and be so comfortable within each other’s space that it would become fairly domestic. And yet, for me, it is almost never romantic or sexual – it is what I guess you would call a queer platonic relationship. Which is why the following bits really struck me hard:

Societal norms typically ringfence friendships as strictly platonic; any such stepping out from behind that fence, especially when the platonic bond is especially close, is seen as some kind of betrayal.

And then there’s heteronormativity – everyone is judged by the standards of how straight cisgendered people experience attraction.

Despite coming at this from a slightly different angle than Matt, his words really spoke to me and for me.

Read this book and feel empowered

Being Demi is a journey, yes. And it is one that takes the reader from feelings of confusion and loneliness through to acceptance and pride. There is a bit of the poem Subvert that I hope every reader takes away with them:

I reject their expectations and
Toss away the chains they forged for us

There is true power in rejecting society’s expectations of us and claiming who we are. Some of us may be able to do so publicly, others may have to do so privately. But no matter what, you deserve to know and understand yourself. And I hope that this book helps many people see themselves reflected by another, so that they can feel less alone. As Matt says:

You’re valid, whoever you are

Buy a copy of Being Demi

If you’d like to buy a copy of Being Demi, you can do so here.

And if you’d like to follow Matt you can find him at either his personal blog, or The Grey Rainbow. Matt is also active on Bluesky and Instagram.

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