Sex is undoubtedly an important aspect of our
culture. From the media to your closest friends, everyone is constantly engaged
in an ongoing discussion about sexual activity, with questions such as ‘what’s
your magic number?’ ‘when did you last get laid?’ and, of course, ‘what are you
into: men, women, or both?’.
But does anyone ever ask whether you might be into
neither?
How would you respond
if someone told you that they are, by choice, not engaged in sexual relations
with either gender? What if someone told you that they don’t experience
feelings of sexual attraction at all?
[Mis]Understanding Asexuality
Although most of us
would simply define asexuality as “someone who does not experience sexual
attraction”, there’s actually a lot more to it than that. Nowadays, most of our
generation understand that sexuality exists as part of a spectrum, a diverse
range of preferences. We now know that there is a lot more variation than just categorizing
everyone as gay or straight. As is evident from the AVEN[2] triangle, this
fluid spectrum exists for aces aswell, as they can identify anywhere in the
grey area between the black and white binaries.
This was news to me. I
thought that asexuals existed solely in the black space of asexual
aromanticism, but in fact they too can fall in love, and experience
romantic attraction and intimacy without sexual desire. Of course, they might
be aromantic too, preferring to form and maintain platonic friendships, but many
aces do have committed, loving relationships with people from either or both
genders.
Another false
assumption is that asexuality equals celibacy. Although the two can and do
sometimes overlap, celibacy is deliberate abstinence from sexual intercourse
(for example, as part of a religious belief system), whereas asexuality is a
lack of sexual attraction. Asexuality is not a choice, just like homosexuality
isn’t, as you can’t help how you feel - or don’t feel - towards others around
you.
This can be extremely isolating. Just as gay men feel awkward in social situations where expectations of masculinity and ‘lad’ culture manifest in the sexual pursuit of women, aces can feel awkward in any social situation where sex is being explicitly discussed or pursued. Though many members of the ace community may engage in non-genital sexual activity, such as hand holding, kissing or cuddling their partners, they are told by others and the media that this is wrong, as it is ‘unnatural’ or ‘abnormal’ to enjoy intimacy without desiring further sexual activity.
To give some common
examples, here’s some challenges that asexuals regularly face from family,
friends, and even medical professionals:
Partner: How do you
know if you haven’t tried it? If we’re not having sex, then we’re clearly just
friends.
Medical professional:
Were you abused as a child? Do you have a history of mental illness in the family,
such as depression, which could lower your sex drive? Are you on any medication
at the moment? Have you considered that you might have a hormone imbalance?
Confused friend: You
just haven’t met the right person yet, that’s all.
Concerned family
member: How can you be happy if sexuality isn’t a part of your life? What about
grandkids?
The media: Sex is
integral to any healthy relationship! It’s necessary, and amazing, and everyone
should be doing it!
For more information on
the damaging assumptions that asexuals are tired of hearing, check out this insightful YouTube video,
directed by swankyivy, an avid YouTuber aiming to abolish misconceptions about
asexuality through her hugely popular channel.
From being totally
sex-averse to grey-A (someone who experiences sexual attraction once or twice
in their lifetime), asexuality ranges widely, and cannot be tied down to just
one all-encompassing definition. For an understanding of this from the point of
view of someone who identifies as grey-A themself, check out Dealing Aces: Life as a Twenty-Something Asexual, a fantastic blog
post written by Emma Simpson, who ran Leeds University Union Asexuality
Awareness Week.
Asexuality and Mental Illness
How would you feel if
you were told that your sexuality, an integral part of your identity, is
non-existent? What would you do if everyone was constantly trying to ‘fix’ you,
assuming that something must have gone wrong to make you this way? Would you start to believe them?
Yet denying
that asexuality exists as a legitimate identity in its own right, and rendering that person invisible in the eyes of
society, can be incredibly detrimental to an asexual person’s mental wellbeing.
Asexuals may start to internalise societal discrimination against them,
believing they are ‘broken’ or ‘abnormal’, and need to be ‘cured’ or ‘fixed’. From flippant, ignorant comments such as ‘but
everyone loves sex!’ to extreme circumstances of ‘corrective rape’, an asexual
individual is at risk of having issues with mental illness as a result of harsh
societal prejudices.
So during this session,
we did some roleplaying activities in order to address how an ace person might
‘come out’ to a family member, or simply convince an oblivious individual that
it is a valid sexual orientation. For example, to friends and family, the best
way of describing it is to ask them how they know what their sexual orientation
is. During this roleplay activity, I was asked by my partner ‘do you like
women?’ to which I instantly responded ‘no’. ‘But how do you know if you
haven’t tried it?’. The same goes for not liking the idea of sex. You just know.
[The Lack of]
Asexuality in the Media
It is undeniable that
asexuality is barely represented in the media. Apparently it’s just not as
exciting as a male and female friend getting drunk and having a spontaneous one
night stand, then struggling to reconcile their obvious feelings for each other,
only to end up falling in love and living happily ever after, as is the plot
for almost every romantic comedy ever made.
Therefore, due to a gap
in the media industry of any kind of education or representation surrounding
asexuality, those who identify as ace often suffer
coercion from family, friends, and the media to have sex, as we are
collectively taught that this is what we, as humans, are meant to do. Constant
peer pressure to have sex when you do experience feelings of sexual attraction
is bad enough, but imagine being asexual, with people constantly asking you
why, and trying to change you to fit a role of how they – based on media
stereotypes - think you should be.
Whilst there have been some
rare instances of asexuality in the media in the
depiction of characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Dr Who, and Sheldon from the
Big Bang Theory, none of them openly identify as asexual, negatively implying
that it is something that should remain hidden.
This talk was led by a
man called Tab Kimpton, who one day decided to read Fifty Shades of Grey for a
laugh, and, in his words, “got so angry I cried”. This led to the creation of
his fantastic comic Shades of A, based loosely on E.L. James’
disturbing kinkfest, about an asexual protagonist who is content with being
just the way he is.
What next?
It is vital for us to understand
that asexuality is not a choice, any more than our own sexual identities are. In
the same way, it is also not a dysfunction: it is not something that can be
‘cured’, ‘fixed’, or altered, just as a gay man cannot control his romantic and
sexual feelings towards other men. We as a society have thankfully shed the
prejudices of our past by acknowledging homosexuals as legitimate and equal
beings, and now recognize that being gay is neither a crime nor an illness, and
we must step up and do the same for the asexual community.
The first step towards this is recognizing that it exists. 1 in 100 people identify as asexual, so, though we might not be able to fully understand it, we should be talking about it and acknowledging for ourselves and others that it is a thing. Asexuality Awareness Week has left me feeling both hugely inspired and a little bit guilty about my former lack of knowledge, and I am so glad that I now have a much deeper understanding of what it’s like to identify as ace, and now hopefully you do too. But let’s not limit this increased understanding to just one week: let’s banish societal prejudices for good, and recognize that asexuality is a valid sexual orientation every single day.
