Madame Noire "Is Asexuality A Real Thing?"

[ithaca]

http://madamenoire.com/514367/asexuality-real-thing/

IS ASEXUALITY A REAL THING?

February 25, 2015 ‐ By Charing Ball

I’ve always been intrigued by asexuality. And by “intrigued” I mean I never thought it truly existed.

As I work to expand my own boundaries of comfort and explore other possibilities of life, there are some areas, in which, admittedly, I am not the least bit progressive. Asexuality is one of them. In short, I just always saw it as avoidance. And that people should be honest about that, instead of making up labels to hide behind what is likely a natural stage of life.

Contrary to popular belief, most single people aren’t out here humping each other like rabbits. Some of us, particularly those who have been through some things and need healing, fill our times with other joys in life, besides sex. Some of us are not even hurting but at this moment in our lives, really just wants to focus on our careers or our children or our church and social clubs. Back in the day, we used to call these periods, “dry patches.” And even lovingly-committed married couples tend to ebb and flow with sexual attraction, so why wouldn’t single people? And why do we need a label for that part of our lives?

However after reading this piece in Wired entitled, Young, Attractive, and Totally Not Into Having Sex, I am now open to the possibilities that having new ways to describe our sexual lives is not a bad thing – somewhat. In the article, writer Kat McGowan interviewed Sean, Rae and Genevieve, three students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville about their asexuality identities. And let’s just say that in spite of not wanting none, describing their celibacy is a bit complicated.

As the article explains, asexuality as an identity has gained traction in the last decade, particularly in the online community including gaming-sites, Tumblrs, blogs and reddit. Moreover, “ In 2001, a Wesleyan University student named David Jay created a website called the Asexual Visi­bility and Education Network. It started as a repository of information about all things asexual. When forums were added a year later, members started trickling in. By 2004 there were a thousand. Today there are some 80,000 registered users.”

And although the sexual identity is fairly new in mainstream culture, it has already branched out to form, “ its own nomenclature and subcategories of romance and desire, all revolving around the novel concept that having little to no interest in sex is itself a valid sexual orientation.” As McGowan writes those subcategories includes aromantic asexual (a person with little to no romantic attraction), heteroromantic demisexual (a person who can only have sexual attraction to those in the opposite gender they feel emotionally connected to), and panromantic gray-asexual (a person who is romantically attracted to people, regardless of gender, but has little to no sexual attraction). And that is the tip of the marked-iceberg.

In spite of the rise in identity online, the article notes that at least one survey puts the total asexual population under one percent. However, those who are labeled asexual don’t necessarily have a mental disorder. In fact, a survey published in 2013 in the journal of Psychology & Sexuality, has shown that while mental illness was common among asexuals, the reasoning had to do with the stigma and isolation faced because of their identities rather than the label itself.

Yet as the article notes:

“The conventional wisdom today is that lust and gratification are natural and healthy, a nonnegotiable aspect of being human. We presume that freedom of sexuality is a fundamental human right. But the idea of freedom from sexuality is still radical. It is an all-new front of the sexual revolution.”

Indeed. As weird as it sounds, there is a certain pressure we put on ourselves culturally to be seen as sexual beings in ways that we likely didn’t in the past. And lots of that has to do with commercialization, which often uses sex, in particular the idea that we are not doing it enough, as a means to get us to buy products and services. Therefore it is nice to see young folks charts paths and identities of their own, which are built around their own personal boundaries and comfort levels.

With that said, I do wonder what impact the embrace of this new sexless identity will have on our ability to connect with one another in general? A couple of years ago, the Guardian UK reported on the alleged “celibacy syndrome” in Japan, which already has one of the lowest birth rates in the entire developed worlds. Yet as the piece noted: “61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) Although there has long been a pragmatic separation of love and sex in Japan – a country mostly free of religious morals – sex fares no better. A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 “were not interested in or despised sexual contact”. More than a quarter of men felt the same way.”

And it is not just in Japan. In the United States, new data suggests that not only are people staying single longer – sometimes forever – and having less children, but that young people in general are not getting jiggy with it as they had in the past.

While this could just be a sign that our culture is resisting hookup culture and looking for more emotionally-fulfilling relationships, if they want a relationship at all, there is still that question again of avoidance. While identity is good in helping a person explain themselves to the world, too many labels might make people feel more isolated and awkward as well as make it harder for people to relate to one another.

But I’m curious of what folks think: are we just answering one extreme (in this case, over-sexualization) with an equally harmless and disingenuous extreme?

[the bumbling rotifer]

Split from WIRED: Young, Attractive, and Totally Not Into Having Sex and created its own Topic

the bumbling rotifer

World Watch & Older Asexuals Moderator