Asexuality: A Brief Introduction

how can you really know if you’re not interested if you don’t give it a shot? Well, the answer is that you really can know. After all, you don’t actually have to hug a saguaro cactus to know that would be unpleasant. So, if you’re certain that sex is not for you, then don’t feel pressured to prove that you don’t like it by going a few rounds.

On the other hand, if you feel this way and you’re open to the experience and the right situation comes along, then go for it.

Maybe you’ll like it, maybe you won’t, it doesn’t really matter either way. I felt this about myself, and I did try having sex. Of course, what it lead to was…

You had sex and thought “Is that it?”

That’s it? That’s all there is?

Weren’t there supposed to be fireworks and standing ovations? Wasn’t my life supposed to be changed forever? Wasn’t it supposed to be the single greatest experience of my entire life?

What was supposed to be so great about that? Why do some people devote their entire lives to pursuing that? How could that possibly be responsible for ruining the careers of so many politicians? How could so many people consider that to be the very meaning of life?

I don’t know, I guess it was kinda fun, a little bit, sorta. Bit boring, though, too.

I mean, seriously? Is that really it? What’d I miss?

Meh, whatever.

You don’t like masturbating.

Maybe you’ve tried it before, but it didn’t work out and you didn’t get anywhere. Maybe you never saw the point. Maybe you do it, but you look at it like any other bodily function, like a sneeze or a shiver. Maybe you think it’s gross or disgusting or repulsive. Maybe you do it and wish you could stop. In any case, you don’t look at it as something pleasurable and fun. And it’s not out of a sense of guilt or shame or anything like that. You just genuinely don’t enjoy it.

You masturbate, so what would you need anyone else for?

You might look at other people and how they talk about sex and about what person X did for them last night, and think, “Huh, I can do that by myself. I don’t need any help.” You’re perfectly fine taking care of yourself and really don’t mind making reservations for sexual pleasure as a party of one. When other people talk about masturbation as if it were some sort of consolation prize for a distant runner up, you’re a bit confused, because it certainly doesn’t seem like a terrible thing to you.

When you think about having sex with someone else, you may think that a second person would just get in the way and complicate things. Maybe you’ve even had sex and didn’t think that it was really any better than what you’re capable of by yourself.

You think arousal is annoying.

Instead of looking at arousal as a sign from down below that you need to get all sexed up as soon as possible, you just find it annoying. It’s distracting. It’s random. And, for some people, it literally gets in the way. If you could shut it down, you would. It’s never directed at anyone, you don’t really want to do anything with it, it’s just kinda there.

Interactions and Relationships

In this third section, I will talk about how you might view other people and their views on sex.

You’ve never wanted to “jump someone’s bones”. You’ve never thought “I’d hit that”.

This is one of the more common reasons people discover that they’re asexual. At some point in their lives, they’ll look around and realize that other people say things like that and mean them. That straight out of the blue, one person will look at another, often a complete stranger, and think, “I would like to have sex with that person”, and that, in some cases, this thought will drive people’s actions.

Some asexuals may even look at this and think that’s bizarre. Why would anyone do that sort of thing? The whole concept is so different from how they look at the same scenario that it may be impossible for them to process those kinds of thoughts into something that makes sense. For some asexual people, the thought “I would like to have sex with that person” could seem as random and unexpected as “I would like to paint that person blue, cover them with twigs, and dance around them in a circle all night”.

You don’t feel that anyone is “hot”. “Cute”, maybe, “pretty”, maybe, but not “hot”.

Some asexuals don’t connect with the word “hot” or “sexy” and other words describing someone’s sexual desirability. We’re able to judge and rank subjective beauty on a scale from “ugly” to “pretty”, we may feel that some people are “cute”, but “hot” can be a word that some asexuals avoid. It’s not that we don’t understand it. We can usually point at someone and identify whether other people might classify them as “hot”. It’s that we don’t feel it. When other people use words like “hot”, we can sense that there’s some innate internal buzzer going off inside their mind, and that the word is not just some synonym or sub-category of words like “cute” or “pretty”. The word means more to them than “visually appealing”. There’s something behind it, some sense, some physical or emotional response that’s driving them to choose “hot” over “pretty”, and we don’t experience what that sense is.

You thought that everyone else was just pretending to be interested in sex.

Many asexuals describe having a sort of “Emperor’s New Clothes” view of sex at some point in their lives: That everyone else is just pretending to like sex simply because everyone else seems to like it, and they don’t want to be the only one who speaks out and says “No, I’m not really into that.” In this view, a sexually charged culture enforces conformity.

This view often comes about during the teenage years. The asexual’s friends all start talking about boys or girls, but they don’t feel anything yet themselves. Puberty strikes different people at different times and in different ways, so at first, they’ll just think they’re not there yet, but as time goes on, they’ll realize that they never started getting all that interested in boys or girls. This may lead to thoughts like, “Well, I never got interested in sex, so maybe no one else really did, either. Maybe they’re all just faking to fit in.”

Which brings us to…

You just pretended to be interested in sex.

Sometimes, some asexuals will feel pressured to pretend to be interested in sex in order to fit in. All your friends get caught up in what they’d like to do and who they’d like to do it with, but you don’t feel that way about anyone. So, you just smile and nod, until…

“So, who do YOU like?”

…and you sputter out something about Johnny or Sally, not because you’re actually interested in them, but because they seemed like acceptable options to use to hide how you really feel, because if you told your friends how you really feel, they’d just laugh at you and think you’re a freak.

And so, you lie and go along with it. Eventually, you may even end up in a relationship and…

You pretended to like sex so your partner wouldn’t think you didn’t love them.

For many people, love and sex are inextricably linked. A sexual rejection is taken as a rejection of the