“It’s not you, it’s me.”
At age fourteen, I had my first boyfriend. I wasn’t attracted to him, but I kissed him a few times anyway because I was expected to. It certainly wasn’t the thrilling experience movies and romance books had led me to expect. In fact, I could barely think of an experience I’d enjoyed less. But whenever I told people I thought so, they’d say, “You’re fourteen. One day you’ll like it.”
At age sixteen, I left my second boyfriend perplexed and frustrated. I liked him as a person, but I wasn’t interested in him the way he wanted me to be: definitely not sexually, and not even romantically. My disinterest in having sex with him wasn’t rooted in the usual reasons—that “a lady” was expected to save herself, that I was afraid of sex, that I didn’t want to get diseases or get pregnant—I simply had a complete lack of interest in sex and anything related. I didn’t think sex was a gross concept. I didn’t think it was immoral. I’d just never been sexually attracted to another person. Not my boyfriend, not the hottest people in school, not the heartthrob movie stars. I wasn’t interested. Period.
My boyfriend dubbed me “Miss Non-Hormone.” I called myself “nonsexual.” I was reasonably sure that I would recognize sexual attraction if I felt it, but the mantra of “you can’t know until you try it” did inspire me to experiment a bit. And all my experiences were exactly what I’d expected: at best tolerable, at worst uncomfortable. Never enjoyable, never exciting, never intriguing enough to make me want more. I broke up with the boy because he considered sex an essential element in a relationship, and I vowed to trust myself from then on as the authority on what I was feeling and what experiences I wanted. If this “sexual attraction” thing ever happened to me, I’d go with it, and if not, I had no reason to force it. At eighteen, I fully expected to develop a “normal” sexual appetite when I got older.
That was in 1996.
Nothing changed for me, and I made my peace with that, even though it was disorienting and sometimes alienating when nearly all my friends were either partnering up (and gleefully discussing the details) or acting depressed about their inability to do so.
The “concerned comments” began rolling in during my late teens and early twenties.
That’s not normal. You need to get checked out.
You’re never going to be happy.
I can fix you. I can help you.
You’re a loser. You’re a failure.
You have a disorder.
You’re going to die alone with a houseful of cats.
Shut up and admit you’re gay.
Why is it such a big deal to try sex?
You’re selfish. You’re a tease.
Women aren’t supposed to like sex anyway.
You’re trying to be different. You just want attention.
You’re too ugly to get laid.
You’re too pretty to go to waste.
Some of the people making these comments were well-meaning. Some of them found it offensive that sex didn’t matter to me. Some felt my lack of interest in a central aspect of their lives somehow disrespected sex itself or the people who love it. And all of them wanted me to believe there was something wrong with me—and make me choose between fixing it and being properly ashamed of it.
But I was one of the lucky ones. I had a supportive family, unshakable confidence, no serious problems or issues in my life, and a thick skin. After encountering these attitudes again and again, I blew off some steam through writing an online essay about my experience as a nonsexual person in a sexual world, outlining both the negative reactions I regularly received and the reasons why I thought they were misguided. Sharing my story prompted a steady trickle of email from people who felt the same way—people who had fared far worse than I had.
It’s isolating and lonely to be the only person around who lacks sexual attraction or interest in sex. I know this from experience, but I was used to defining and defending my feelings and choices through a privileged lens of high self-esteem. Without that core of confidence, the criticism I dealt with would have been nearly unbearable. Those dismissive messages are ubiquitous and incessant, and they can confuse and hurt people who don’t have the kind of shield I had, leaving some unable to demand respect in their relationships and unable to connect with others who know what they’re going through. And then those misleading and damaging messages take over their lives and become true, depriving them of the ability to have happy relationships of any kind. If everyone treats you like you’re broken, you may eventually crack.
In the early 2000s, when I’d recently graduated from college, David Jay created the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN). David had been through many of the same experiences I had, and he had decided people like us needed resources and access to community. Many of the people I’d previously talked to found AVEN and developed a supportive network, shared their pride in their identity, and spearheaded the beginnings of outreach to educate the world about their orientation. When media outlets picked up on the concept, I started describing myself as “asexual” instead of “nonsexual” to connect myself with the awareness efforts, and I participated in some of the interview requests and took what opportunities I could to educate other people on the existence and experience of asexuality.
Having a network through which asexual people could find each other—along with a widespread acknowledgment that the orientation exists—was a great step forward. But it remains a terribly under-discussed topic, which leaves the door open for the next generation of asexual teenagers to go through life hearing the same messages I did, very likely to lose confidence in their ability to form interpersonal connections during their formative years. Asexual people’s friends and family frequently confront their loved ones with these messages because they have no idea that asexuality is a sexual orientation. The despair I read about in some of those early emails still haunts me.
And now, I want to help other asexual people embrace their orientation without an instilled core of self-doubt. This will only become possible if everyone—asexual people and non-asexual people alike—can be given access to information about asexuality: what it is, what it isn’t, who it affects, and why it doesn’t need to be “cured.”
This book should function as a starting point for people interested in asexuality. It covers the basics of what asexuality is and isn’t, explores the most common issues asexual people may be dealing with, presents some pointers for newly asexual-identified people and the people who love them, and includes some resources to find out more.
It is not meant to be taken as gospel. It is not meant to be a comprehensive look at the subject even though it covers a lot of ground. It is not a scientific or medical or psychological text—it’s for the layperson, written in everyday language. It is not the final word on all-things-asexual, and though it is not just my personal story, it is not meant to be an attempt to speak for everyone.
It is, however, written to be a beginning.
This book is for people who are on the asexual spectrum, people who think they might be asexual, friends and family and partners of people who have come out as asexual, curious parties, and those looking for information on the subject for their school papers, sexuality studies, and alternative sexuality resources.
And it’s for people who think asexuality doesn’t exist.
There should be a fairly concise language-accessible book on asexuality that anyone can find in their bookstores and libraries. Asexuality is more common than most people believe—currently estimated to describe 1 percent of the population[1] (and if that doesn’t sound like much, consider that 1 percent of the population in the United States amounts to more than three million people). At the time of this writing, asexuality is mentioned in a handful of articles, on forums online, on the occasional somewhat sensationalistic television piece, and once in a while in documentaries and fictional works. There’s not much information about it in mainstream publications. This conspicuous absence helps contribute to the overall perception that asexuality doesn’t exist. After all, if something exists, shouldn’t there be a book on it?
The average asexual person spends too many of their formative years hearing explicit and implicit negative messages about lack of sexual attraction or interest. It doesn’t take much to severely warp an impressionable, still-forming young mind.
Asexual people are realizing they’re asexual at the same time most other people start experiencing sexual attraction for the first time. It’s scary to be left out, and it’s even scarier to be told that failure to experience this attraction indicates something terribly wrong.[2]
So asexual people sometimes feel they have to try to fit in, bury their true feelings, lie about their orientation, and go to great lengths to cover it up, privately terrified they’re deeply flawed. They are led to believe through the media, through messages from their friends, and through pressure from interested partners that not feeling sexual attraction or not desiring others sexually is pathological. Asexuality needs to be in the common consciousness so asexual people across the board know their feelings have a name—and can stop thinking they’re broken if they don’t conform.
Some concerned sex experts say late bloomers might latch onto the “asexual” bandwagon if they know it’s there and resist “blooming” when it happens to them.[3] However, it’s important for the general population to realize asexuality is a possibility. Asexuality awareness doesn’t become dangerous just because some people might mislabel themselves while they’re still figuring out their feelings. Lack of awareness is certainly dangerous to asexual people, though.
Many asexual people who discover the orientation via the Internet have a massive relief response, pouring out their stories to faceless audiences, grateful to find they aren’t alone. It’s wonderful to find one’s community, but the desperation that leads up to these reactions is the product of years of anxiety and fear. It’s alienating to be marginalized so thoroughly, so completely—to think you can’t connect with others in a way that most portray as necessary and natural for everyone—and many people deal with this rejection by rejecting and hating themselves.
Non-asexual people should know about asexuality so they can avoid perpetuating these messages and instead become supportive—as well as have good relationships with the asexual people in their lives—and asexual people should be able to explore their identities without facing prepackaged sexuality boxes that exclude them and deny their existence.
This book was written because everyone will benefit from knowing that asexuality exists, that it isn’t a disorder, and that asexual people can be trusted to describe their own feelings—even if their answer for who they are sexually interested in is “none of the above.”
1One percent in a sample of eighteen thousand British adults agreed with the statement “I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all.” (Bogaert, 2004)
2“Coming to identify as asexual requires that individuals reject a widely-held cultural ideology of sexuality as biologically based and ubiquitous. [ . . . ] [T]hey draw attention to an oft overlooked social assumption—that all humans possess sexual desire” (Scherrer K., 2008).
3“Just because someone is in her late teens or early twenties doesn’t mean she is necessarily in full bloom. What you feel now may not be who you are so much as where you are in your own unique cycle of development. By labeling yourself too soon, you run a serious risk of mislabeling yourself, then feeling duty-bound to live up to it” Dr. Joy Davidson (ABC 20/20, 2006).