Biological explanation for asexuality?

[StormySky]

Or are we too invisible for scientists to study?

[Guest Deus Ex Infinity]

Maybe. Maybe not. But anyway...I'm not sure if there's a biological explanation waiting to be found. Sexual attraction like bi, homo. or pan ... still remains as scietific mystery either.

[lazypanda]

Maybe some difference in brain wiring. Maybe like people with sensory processing disorder...nothing is wrong with them physically yet they are not able to integrate their senses. 

Or maybe some missing neurotransmitter thats needed to complete the circuit to progress to sexual attraction is missing or deficient.

Maybe we could even have brain inflammation...they have just discovered that people with ocd tend to have low grade brain inflammation.

Its hard to say...the brain is very complex and we know so little about it.

[knittinghistorian]

I've read a theory that sexual orientations that don't produce offspring (e.g. homosexual, asexual, etc.) may be a biological response to high population levels.  So that instead of wanting to produce more children, we improve the outcomes of existing children by being awesome aunts/uncles/godparents/etc.  I'm not sure if it has any validity, but I liked the explanation.  Seems to make some sense to me.

[patronusmagic]

Does it realy matter why? 

 

[StormySky]

3 minutes ago, patronusmagic said:

Does it realy matter why? 

 

Just wondering. I'm in a psych class and we're looking at the biological approach to psychology and the teacher's lectures assume sexual attraction to be a given. 

[Lichley]

Show them AVEN and say "I've proved you wrong, now find out why" and send them on a quest of discovery across AVEN to become better educated. Or just quietly mention it to them that it's not everybody. That works too.

[Philip027]

I don't think any real explanation is needed beyond "different strokes for different folks"

[Homer]

3 hours ago, knittinghistorian said:

I've read a theory that sexual orientations that don't produce offspring (e.g. homosexual, asexual, etc.) may be a biological response to high population levels.

Not just high population. The way people develop or feel is connected to the personal surroundings as well. Difficult times (talking about recession, war and such) have been proven to lead to more boys being born (because of their higher chance of survival). Tests have found that men tend to find women with "a little extra" more attractive when they're hungry.

 

I'm sure that there is a scientific explanation for being, well, practically everything non-straight. It still doesn't really change anything (and just to be clear, that still wouldn't make not being straight a "disease" or whatever)

[daveb]

I'm sure there is a scientific explanation for being straight, too.  

[Lucas Monteiro]

Honestly, asexuality is an important topic, but there are other more pressing topics to be investigated and researched by scientists. And do not worry, by quickly researching Google you realize that there has been a significant increase in research related to asexuality, the point is that since the concept is still relatively new, there is still some time to wait for further research to appear. You just do not research in one day, scientific methods and scientific proofs, take matters of months or even years to take truly results. Anyway, as others pointed, and I think it may be the best explanation, asexuality could be linked to the control of over-population, and if this is the case, a lot of more asexual people will exist.

[Lucas Monteiro]

13 hours ago, daveb said:

I'm sure there is a scientific explanation for being straight, too.  

Question of genetics and social factor (50% each), and applies not only to heterosexuals, but also to homosexuals and bisexuals. About pansexuals and trans people, there is still not much explanation right now, but if you take a look at some researches, they point out that the brain from trans people is different from other people (hetero, gay, bi, etc).

 

Links for some comprovation about above : 

 

[Genetic and environmental influences on sexual orientation and its correlates in an Australian twin sample.]

http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-07236-009

 

[The differentiation of the male and female brain]

https://translate.google.com.br/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=pt-BR&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scielo.br%2Fscielo.php%3Fscript%3Dsci_arttext%26pid%3DS0100-72032013000200001%26lng%3Dpt%26nrm%3Diso%26tlng%3Den&edit-text=

 

[Male to Female Transsexuals Have Female Neutron]

https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/85/5/2034/2660626/Male-to-Female-Transsexuals-Have-Female-Neuron

 

[Sexual differentiation of the brain and behavior]

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1521690X07000334

 

 

[NotAUnicorn]

I'll be frank in this topic.

little studies are out for only Ace ( unlike homo, bi or even pan) even the information we have now could be highly inaccurate and there is no much of a request for information on this.

( although I'd love to see if other species display asexual behavor.)

[plasticapollos]

Yes there is a biological answer. It's called middle finger to fraud :3 lol

[plasticapollos]

3 hours ago, Sexend said:

 

Are there people from Arab countries or I am the only one in this community?

Check out the alternate language page, OR OR OR there's a page dedicated for finding people in your community. 

[borkfork]

As much as I love science, the conclusions people draw can be absurd at times. 

 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw (it's 20 minutes long but really funny)

 

[everywhere and nowhere]

I don't care about explanations. I don't mind social phenomena which have no biological "justification" at all. For me the sociocultural is more interesting and more free than the biological.

[RobinWren]

John oliver on science, just to go off topic a second and respond to Borkfork’s link,  is a marvellously serious and hysterically funny show that too many who ought to see it won’t and if they did would not get the point, alas. But thanks for pointing to it. I loved it, 

 

on the topic at hand, i am torn between wanting, as a former medical student, a scientific/medical explanation for my state of being, though god knows not any sort of diagnostic one, and being satisfied with a “merely” socio-cultural one. I have a feeling, however, that the two will be in the end intertwined, the way nature and nurture seem to be with most human traits. Sure there are certain aspects or phenomena that seem to be strictly genetically encoded, for instance, eye color and native hair color. But others like height and weight are most certainly affected by the environment we are nurtured in (just to take obvious examples). A few diseases seem to be strictly the luck of the genetic draw, based on whether or not one “has the gene”— Huntington’s Disease for instance. But others like cancer, are far more variable and dependent on environmental factors both within and without a person, meaning the things around them and for instance the immune system, or the “immune environment” internally, which may or may not serve to suppress any cancer that appears.

 

Anyhow a lot of this is thinking aloud, and forgive me, but I’m just wondering whether any of us know precisely ( and we may not care, too) what made us the way we are, either in terms of , say, relatives who may seem to have passed on “asexuality genes” or some environmental influence that might have  — i dunno — made things so that we are as we are. Me? I am very happy to be ace. So whatever those factors are, genetic or environmental, they made me ace, so it’s all part of who i am. No judgment involved here. Just trying to say that there is nothing wrong with, in my opinion, wanting to figure these things out. I do believe that for a minority, as a minority in a sexual world, the question is worth asking, for its own sake, not to change a thing.

Edited October 21, 2017 by RobinWren
Clarification

[Lucas Monteiro]

On 16/10/2017 at 7:34 PM, patronusmagic said:

Does it realy matter why? 

 

It does matter, because people can just simply say that asexuality is not a thing, because there is no comprovation in Science. What helped a lot in LGBT community was when the scientifical researches started to look more for an explanation of what happened different with them, why they were that way. For example, when they found out that homosexuality happens because of differences in the genes, people started to see with more open mind and trying to understand more.

 

If people started to look to something and say "does it really matter?" and not try to look and understand, we would still not landed on the Moon or even would not had the Internet, so for me, it does really matter. Well, that's my opinion anyway, you can disagree if you want.

[lux aeterna]

I have to admit that I didn't real through all the comments, so I am sorry if I say something somebody already mentioned. I just recently read an arctile about how a loss of thyriod gland hormones can cause the loss of your libido, but if you take hormones for your thyroid gland, the hormones will balance each other out. I looked for it in my browser history, but I cannot find it again. Another thing I read a few years ago was that women sometimes have a lack of estrogen (primary female sex hormone) and that it's actually possible to take medicine used for the menopause, but that fucks up everything if you are still young and not even close to menopause. 

 

I am not trying to confirm the thesis of "asexuality is caused by a lack of hormones", but imagine you're a person that always had a vivid sex life and at some point you got pregnant and had a baby and years after you are still not interested in sexual actions like before, I bet you would be happy to know that hormones caused your lack of sexual interest. 

From my point of view as an asexual I am not conflicted by the thought that a biological imbalance could have an impact on my sexual orientation. Maybe yes, maybe no, I don't care. My thyroid gland is not working like it should, so I take hormones since over 10 years. I once stopped during my teenage years "because I can" and then I started taking them again while having relationships and I felt no difference regarding my (non-existing) libido. Maybe there is something wrong with my estrogen, still do not care. 

 

Hope that helped a bit and did not confuse the shit out of everyone.

[patronusmagic]

1 hour ago, Lucas Monteiro said:

It does matter, because people can just simply say that asexuality is not a thing, because there is no comprovation in Science. What helped a lot in LGBT community was when the scientifical researches started to look more for an explanation of what happened different with them, why they were that way. For example, when they found out that homosexuality happens because of differences in the genes, people started to see with more open mind and trying to understand more.

 

If people started to look to something and say "does it really matter?" and not try to look and understand, we would still not landed on the Moon or even would not had the Internet, so for me, it does really matter. Well, that's my opinion anyway, you can disagree if you want.

I just don´t think that everything needs to be explained. It´s not like it´s an illness that they need to know how it works in order to cure it. I think that for people to realy be open minded they need to be able to respect even the things they do not understand.

 

It would sertanly be a good thing to have more reaserch about asexuality, and Im sure that it could help reach a wider audiens but I don´t understand why the main foucus should be on a scientific explenation for asexuality.

 

I dont mean to say that anyone should look at asexuality and say "does it realy matter", only that they should think about why they are so desperet to find an explanation for it, Why are the fact that people themselfs feel that they are asexual not enough? So I guess that what I ment to say was "does the scientific reason realy matter?"

[foolishgrey]

The scientific reason might not matter to some, but personally I find it fascinating. There is evidence of sexual orientation in other animals, humans are a complex species.

 

People feel the need to validate theirselves, some find answers in their religion, whilst like myself as an atheist feel scientific theory is a good validation for being asexual etc. 

[Zacharie]

Unlike many, I do think a biological explanation would be interesting to know. Maybe overpopulation has something to do with it but who knows. I don't think there's much study on whether there are more asexuals in populated and urbanized areas rather than the opposite. More studies are needed.

[RoseGoesToYale]

If it were genetic, I'd be inclined to think it's just natural variation, like two people having brown eyes, but vastly different shades. No two people have the exact same sexual orientations with the exact same attractions, combination of attractions, ideal types for partners, or varying degrees of desire for a partner, and what kind. But I'm not a geneticist, and a large part of me hopes it isn't genes, since the prospect of someone being able to edit their own or someone else's sexuality is terrifying.