Asexuality: A Brief Introduction

for close to 20 years since the start of puberty, there was something different.

I don’t find people “hot”.

My girlfriend had to be very persistent to convince me to have sex with her.

I find most porn to be boring or unappealing.

I zone out of most conversations about sex.

I never had “urges”.

I never saw the point of a bachelor party.

And on and on the list went. It became absolutely clear to me that my views on sex were completely different from anyone else I’d ever talked to. It wasn’t some isolated thing. There was something fundamentally different about me.

It was because of that realization that I went out to try to discover exactly what it was that was going on with me, which is how I discovered asexuality.

You think of sex in anthropological or scientific terms, rather than romantic or erotic terms.

You might be interested in sex, but interested in the same way one is interested in geology or zoology. You see it as an area of study, rather than an area of participation. You might want to know everything about it and read everything you can about sexual activities, practices, variants, and combinations, yet at the same time, you’re not really interested in actually doing any of them. You’d rather watch a Discovery Channel documentary on sex than a porn movie. You’d rather read the Kinsey Report than Penthouse.

Sometimes, because of this, you may forget that others typically don’t look at sex as an intellectual curiosity, and you may talk about things in a context where other people are shocked or embarrassed by your openness.

You don’t understand what the big deal is. You haven’t had sex for [insert significant amount of time here], so why are other people so worked up about going without for two weeks?

In general (although not universally speaking), asexual people don’t have a problem going without sex for long periods of time. If you told an asexual person that they couldn’t have sex for ten years, their response will often be something along the lines of “Okay, whatever.” If you told a non-asexual person that, their response will often be something along the lines of “That’s impossible! I’d explode!” (And again, not universally speaking.)

I’ve felt this way before. I’ve seen people moan about how terrible it is that they haven’t had sex in two months. There was a big story about a DJ who went without sex for a whole year as a publicity stunt, and everyone was shocked. I’ve seen men make it sound like their genitals will literally explode under pressure if not emptied in, on, or by someone else within a timely manner. But I haven’t had sex in years and I don’t miss it at all. The concept that someone could be so affected by a lack of sex is totally alien to me.

So…

Sex is totally alien to you.

There’s this thing that everyone else does. It’s on TV, it’s in movies, there are magazines devoted to it, songs about it, books about it. It’s everywhere, all the time. Some people are obsessed by it. They can spend their whole lives chasing it, and sometimes it ruins them.

And you just don’t get it at all.

It’s not that you’re naive, it’s not that you’re sheltered, it’s not that you’re uninformed. It’s just that it’s impossible to fathom why this thing is so important to pretty much everyone else in the world.

And whenever people talk about sex, they might as well be speaking in a foreign language or talking about the intricacies and nuances of macroeconomic theories or 17th Century French literature for all you care.

It’s a bit like everyone else is a fan of a sport you’re not interested in. You can watch a game, you can read the rules, you might even try playing once or twice, but in the end, it still doesn’t make any sense why people are so excited about getting to third base or scoring a touchdown.

You’ve thought, “I’m straight (/gay/bi/etc.), but not very good at it”.

I felt this way for years before I discovered asexuality. I’d had a girlfriend, and the occasional persons of vague interest had been women, so clearly that means I’m straight, right? But at the same time, I never really thought about sex. I never went looking for it, I never felt like I needed it. Whenever I thought about these women, I thought about things like going on vacation or scouring the local thrift stores for retro video games with them, but I never really thought about taking them to bed. One day, I decided that meant that I was straight, but I just wasn’t very good at it.

Later, when I discovered asexuality, I mentioned this on an asexuality forum. I was surprised by the number of other people who said that they had felt the same way. Some of them had even used the same phrase to describe themselves.

You’ve thought, “I must be straight by default”.

I’ve seen a couple of people say that they felt this way before they discovered asexuality. The assumption is that someone has to be straight, gay, or bi, no exceptions, no alternatives. Everyone has to get placed in one of those buckets, there are no other options. Clearly, since they didn’t experience attraction to the same sex, they couldn’t be gay or bi, therefore they had to be straight by default, since, through the process of elimination, that was the only bucket left.

I think this makes a good thought exercise for people who don’t believe in asexuality. If those three groups are the only options, where do you put someone who knows they’re not gay, because they’re clearly not attracted to the same sex, but at the same time, there’s not any evidence that they’re straight, either? The only reason you’d put someone in the “straight” bucket is because “that’s what most people are”, which is a ridiculous reason to assign an identity to someone.

It’s a bit like saying there are people who like chicken, people who like steak, and people who like both. You come across a vegetarian and you try to fit them into this limited worldview. “Do you like chicken?” “No.” “Well, therefore you like steak by default.” “No, I’m—” “You have to like steak, because most people like steak, and you said you don’t like chicken.” “But—” “YOU LIKE STEAK. END OF DISCUSSION.” There’s clearly a “none of the above” option here which needs to be recognized. Some people don’t like steak or chicken, and some people don’t like men or women.

Sex and Sexual Activities

In this second part, I’m going to talk about how you might view having sex and engaging in other sexual activities.

You’d much rather do X than do sex.

When you think about sex, you realize that there are dozens of things you’d much rather do. I’d rather read a book, I’d rather watch TV, I’d rather play a video game, I’d rather go to a movie, I’d rather stargaze, I’d rather walk the dog, I’d rather go shopping, I’d rather organize the books on the bookshelf by date of author’s birth, I’d rather go bird watching, I’d rather build a Lego tribute to the Prime Ministers of Canada, I’d rather work on the car, I’d rather mow the lawn, I’d rather learn Esperanto, I’d rather fly a kite, I’d rather eat cake…

Your sex dreams don’t really have sex.

I had a dream with a warning for “adult content and mature themes”. It was about mortgage payments.