PART ONE:
ASEXUALITY 101 THE BASICS
ASEXUALITY IS:
A sexual orientation currently estimated to describe 1 percent of the population. Asexuality is usually defined as the experience of not being sexually attracted to others. Less commonly, it is defined as not valuing sex or sexual attraction enough to pursue it.
WEâRE NOT:
Asexuality isnât a complex. Itâs not a sickness. Itâs not an automatic sign of trauma. Itâs not a behavior. Itâs not the result of a decision. Itâs not a chastity vow or an expression that weâre âsaving ourselves.â We arenât by definition religious. We arenât calling ourselves asexual as a statement of purity or moral superiority.
Weâre not amoebas or plants. We arenât automatically gender confused, anti-gay, anti-straight, anti-any-sexual-orientation, anti-woman, anti-man, anti-any-gender, or anti-sex. We arenât automatically going through a phase, following a trend, or trying to rebel. We arenât defined by prudishness. We arenât calling ourselves asexual because we failed to find a suitable partner. We arenât necessarily afraid of intimacy. And we arenât asking for anyone to âfixâ us.
WE DONâT:
Asexual people donât all look down on sex or people who have sex. We donât all avoid romantic or emotionally close relationships, and we arenât automatically socially inept. We arenât defined by atypical biology or nonfunctional genitals. We arenât defined by mental illness, autism, or disability. We donât try to recruit anyone.
We donât have a hole in our lives where sexual attraction âshouldâ be. We canât be converted by trying sex. We arenât, by definition, lonely or empty. We arenât, by definition, immature or incompetent. We arenât, as a group, uglier or prettier than anyone else. We donât tell people not to have sex in the name of our orientation, nor do we use the term asexual to imply perceiving ourselves to be âaboveâ sex.
WE SOMETIMES:
Some want romance. Some donât. Some are willing to have sex. Some arenât. Some are virgins. Some arenât. Some masturbate, or have a libido, or want children. Some donât. Some feel isolated, afraid, confused, othered, erased, and invisible. We wish we didnât.
SO PLEASE:
If youâre not asexual, listen to us. Trust us to describe our own feelings. Understand that happiness isnât defined by traditional sexual relationships. Donât assume we need therapy or treat us like we need to be cured or tell us weâre broken. Our rarity forces many of us to go through life without the understanding and support of others like ourselves. We want to be understood outside the deliberately constructed communities in which weâre talking to ourselves, and thatâs why we need you. We want to combat the negative messages that make us feel invisible. If weâre introducing you to asexuality, that means weâre inviting you to understand.
Meet us halfway.
Asexuality Is a Sexual Orientation
What does it mean to identify as asexual?
If someone says âIâm asexual,â usually theyâre expressing that they arenât sexually attracted to other people.[1]
ASEXUALITY: A sexual orientation characterized by sexual attraction to no one. Approximately 1 in 100 people is asexual.
In some cases, people who identify as asexual are expressing that, for them, sex isnât intrinsically worth pursuing for its own sake, or that they arenât interested in sex, or that they donât want or donât enjoy sex, or that they donât want to make sex part of their relationships. But regardless of what definition someone uses, asexuality as a sexual orientation should be respected. Some asexual people prefer to see asexuality as a lack of sexual orientation, which is also a valid interpretation, but many prefer to say that their sexual orientation is, simply, attraction to no one.
Most people use the term sexual orientation as shorthand for âwhat kinds of people are sexy to me.â But when asexual people answer that question with âno one, thank you,â some non-asexual people resist processing that answer. Our society is used to hearing breakdowns: heterosexuality means experiencing cross-sex or cross-gender attraction, and everyone else is gay, bi, or pansexual. But when someone answers the âWhoâs sexy?â question with a blank, the world often yells âHey, thatâs impossible!â[2]
This interpretation constitutes an unnecessarily black-and-white understanding of attraction. Even within the more popular orientations, itâs not always simple. For everyone, sexual orientation is more like a range, not a simple series of separate categories. (Especially since gender isnât as simple as âmale or female/man or woman,â which complicates how we describe what genders weâre attracted to; some people are between, outside, or a mixture of the binary genders.[3])
Describing attraction can get very complex, but for an asexual person, sexual attraction or inclination is toward âno one.â Thatâs not the same as not having developed a sexual orientation yet. Asexuality may look like a blank space waiting to be filled, but even if an asexual person never changes, their orientation is indistinguishable from ânot yetâ on the outside. Itâs impossible to prove a negative.
So if asexuality looks like a big nothing, how is that different from not having a sexual orientation at all? Some say the difference is analogous to a situation that can occur on a multiple-choice test. If answer choice D allows the test-taker to say ânone of the above,â thatâs very different from simply not answering the question. Itâs certainly going to be graded differently. Asexuality is an answer to the question, even if that answer is ânone.â Itâs not just a shrug. The word none can still fill in a blank.
âIâve known for years that Iâm not like other people when it comes to sex, but I always just thought I was simply not very good at being straight.â
âTOM, ASEXUALITY ARCHIVE
Asexual people can say they havenât experienced sexual attraction, but yes, itâs true they canât be sure it couldnât happen, logically speaking. However, they can be about as sure as anyone else about who they are attracted to, even if it happens to be no one. After all, people who are only attracted to one sex or gender arenât generally interpreted as ânot yetâ bisexual, but asexual people are held to a different standard.
The past and the present are usually good predictors of the future. Most people identify their orientation based on past and present attractions, so it naturally follows that asexual people could do the same and still have their orientation respected.
When a person has no sexual attraction to others or doesnât seek out sex, some may view that person as an undeveloped heterosexual person, as though being straight is the default. But sexual orientation is not determined by whether someone has sex or who they have it with. Orientation is not a behaviorânot for asexual people and not for anyone. People who are sexually attracted to cross-gender partners are still heterosexual even if they have not had sex with a cross-gender partner. No one suggests heterosexual teenagers should identify as asexual until such time as they become heterosexual through sex with a cross-gender partner. Abstaining from sex is not the same thing as asexuality; it is the experience of attraction, not the behavior, which defines a personâs orientation.
With 1 in 100 people not experiencing sexual attraction and/or not feeling motivated by or interested in sex, thatâs a lot of people wandering around largely unacknowledged. The 1-percent figure came from a large survey of eighteen thousand people administered in Britain, with 1 in every 100 people surveyed agreeing with the statement âI have never felt sexually attracted to anyone.â
Some say this figure could be an overestimation because some technicalities could allow people who are not asexual to agree with that statement. And some say it is an underestimation, since some of the 99 percent may not know how to define sexual attraction and assume they have felt it even if they havenât. Some people misinterpret aesthetic appreciation, romantic attraction, or sexual arousal as being sexual attraction, only to realize later that they are asexual. Since this initial sample, researcher Anthony Bogaert has continued to study asexual people, and says the other samples heâs reviewed up until the present suggest this figure is still somewhat accurate.[4]
That said, asexual communities are growing as awareness spreads, with more and more people recognizing themselves in the definitions every day. Respecting their orientation is important regardless of the numbers.
Asexuality Is a Mature State
Just like some people canât see the difference between âan asexual orientationâ and âno orientation,â many also canât see why ânot interestedâ isnât the same as ânot interested yet.â Asexuality describes a mature state, not a passing phase or a blank spot before ârealâ maturation. Asexual isnât something you call a child before they reach sexual maturity. Asexuality applies to maturing or mature people.
Asexual people are often told they will one day find âthe oneâ and develop sexual feelings and the values society attaches to them. Many asexual folks have to hear this over and over and over again, which thrusts a perpetual image of immaturity upon them. Asexuality is not a signal that a person is necessarily stunted emotionally or physically, and feeling sexual attraction or inclination is not the line everyone must cross to be treated like an adult. Maturity should not be measured by willingness or inclination to seek out or accept sexual experiences.
âI always laugh when I see these claims. Iâm thirty-nine years old. It stopped being plausible a very long time ago that I could just be a âlate bloomer.â Yes, there are asexuals in their thirties. We exist. Our asexuality exists.â
âLAURA, NOTES OF AN ASEXUAL MUSLIM
Maturity doesnât have a specific definition with check boxes to tick off. Itâs common for peopleâespecially people who are in few or no marginalized groupsâto define maturity, functionality, happiness, and normality against their own standards, which they present as universal. Because of this, itâs common for people who consider sex and sexual attraction part of their adult lives to say, âIf you donât have sexual interest, you donât have an adult life.â
Asexuality challenges this . . . and it should. Plenty of people who desire or engage in sex are immature. It doesnât make sense to insist that someone must be immature if they donât have or desire sex. Maturity is subjective, and how/when it manifests is highly individual. Asexual people usually develop mature adult lives and relationships just fine. The huge amount of diversity in how adults find success and happiness should be acknowledged, even if some adults donât seek out certain types of partnerships or certain kinds of intimate experiences.
Asexuality Is a Description
A sexual orientation is not a decision. A personâs sexual orientation describes how that person experiences attraction.
It does not describe any decision that person makes about expressing sexuality, and it does not represent a vow or an intention regarding sex. Much like a heterosexual person does not âdecideâ when to start being attracted to partners, an asexual person doesnât âdecideâ no one is sexually attractive or worth pursuing sexually. It just happens.
Asexual people are often asked why, how, or when they âdecidedâ to be asexualâusually by a well-meaning person who believes orientation can be chosen. People who ask this question generally feel asexual people are shutting themselves off from something wonderfulâsomething they themselves find satisfying and fulfillingâand they canât understand why an asexual person would âchooseâ to forgo such experiences.
Sometimes it helps if these people can understand that it wasnât a choice, and that for the asexual person, engaging in sex might not be the fulfilling experience that it is for them. Asexual people canâand often doâdecide to have sex. After all, people of any orientation can have sex with partners to whom they are not attracted. But asexuality is about attraction, not about willingness to engage in sexual behavior.
If someone who has never been sexually a...