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More Asexual Females Than Males? Why?


WittyUsername

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WittyUsername

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this thread...so, mods, move it if you see fit.

There seems to be A LOT more females on Aven than there are males. Why do you think this is?

If asexuality could (in some cases, not all) possibly be developed, then would that be because women are more sexualized in our society? Or perhaps it's because it's more 'okay' for a woman to be asexual than it is for a man, so many men may not recognize their asexuality.

I don't know. I'd like to hear others' thoughts on this.

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Touchofinsight

I feel that sexuality is fluid and that outside factors can and will influence sexuality.

So yea I think it is more okay for socially for women to turn down or not desire sex as much.

I think its mostly the gender constructs that society builds upon that feed this.

Reinforcing stereotypes and gender roles through repetitive narratives and upbringings.

However I can see how hard it could be as a parent not to influence your child in this areas, on one hand you want them to be "normal" and not be picked on by other children or feel bad but on the other hand you do want them to develop their own identity. If I did ever have a child (99.9% sure I never will), I'd want them to make their own choices and build their own personality. Obviously I am not the only influence in their life but I live by the philosophy that the only behaviors in this world you can truly control are your own.

Your own conduct and how you respond to other's behaviors in the world.

Touch!

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ObsessedWithCats

It might have to do with the male : female ratios of people who join forums and then post frequently too. An interesting question, probably a bit of everything.

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I suspect it's got a lot to do with gender stereotypes. Men are supposed to desire sex, always, whenever it's offered (A bit of a sitcom-stereotype, that). Furthermore, men are generally thought to be less switched-on with their emotions. We communicate via punches and timed farting (!)

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Are women more likely to research their sexuality? Not sure, but if women feel they have a problem (or an illness) they are more likely to tell a doctor about it than men are. I'd imagine the same thing kind of applies to asking the Internet about sexuality?

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Such_a_lovely_girl

You are indeed right; asexuality is around 10x more common in females and males; 15% of ladies fall somewhere on the asexual scale

http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/asexuality.htm

I know 5 ladies who although aren't openly asexual, definitely are.

One is late 30's, never dated, good career, otherwise good catch, everyone wonders why she is single

One is a pastor who is more asexual than celibate, 31

One is a head of IT, Sikh, doesn't want arranged marriage or sex

One is a Muslim who probably does identify as asexual and has come out to her family; works for education inspection

One is a PhD student, 31, into relationships but not sex

I think only one of them knows of the label to describe themselves

That I know 5 asexuals when I probably only know 50 people anyway gives a 10% incidence

I know only 1 'pure' asexual man

I think the 1% figure is a load of crap. This is far more common than people realise

Even when I went to see a friend the other day who is a demi (not that she knows), she said she couldn't contemplate having sex until the emotional connection. When I asked her how many dates felt right, she said probably about the 20th. Then we spoke about how anxiety provoking the dating scene is for ladies:

how you can't invite a guy round without them thinking it means something more,

that you can't go to his when invited because you might not be able to leave without pressure to do the deed,

that every date after the 3rd is anxiety provoking for a lady because he expects sex is on its way

I went to see a psychosexual counsellor the other day and told her I suspected I was asexual and she didn't even bat an eyelid. You might be, she said. Lots of ladies are.

There is something about the difference in hormone and sexuality between the genders, but I think that men pressuring women (grey a's/demis) for sex before they are ready only compounds the problem. And this is something that lots of men do!

Just to add, this is a British sample

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You are indeed right; asexuality is around 10x more common in females and males; 15% of ladies fall somewhere on the asexual scale

http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/asexuality.htm

I know 5 ladies who although aren't openly asexual, definitely are.

One is late 30's, never dated, good career, otherwise good catch, everyone wonders why she is single

One is a pastor who is more asexual than celibate, 31

One is a head of IT, Sikh, doesn't want arranged marriage or sex

One is a Muslim who probably does identify as asexual and has come out to her family; works for education inspection

One is a PhD student, 31, into relationships but not sex

I think only one of them knows of the label to describe themselves

That I know 5 asexuals when I probably only know 50 people anyway gives a 10% incidence

I know only 1 'pure' asexual man

I think the 1% figure is a load of crap. This is far more common than people realise

Even when I went to see a friend the other day who is a demi (not that she knows), she said she couldn't contemplate having sex until the emotional connection. When I asked her how many dates felt right, she said probably about the 20th. Then we spoke about how anxiety provoking the dating scene is for ladies:

how you can't invite a guy round without them thinking it means something more,

that you can't go to his when invited because you might not be able to leave without pressure to do the deed,

that every date after the 3rd is anxiety provoking for a lady because he expects sex is on its way

I went to see a psychosexual counsellor the other day and told her I suspected I was asexual and she didn't even bat an eyelid. You might be, she said. Lots of ladies are.

There is something about the difference in hormone and sexuality between the genders, but I think that men pressuring women (grey a's/demis) for sex before they are ready only compounds the problem. And this is something that lots of men do!

Just to add, this is a British sample

I highly doubt that 15% of women are asexual, and if they are, the numbers wouldn't be that different from men. That seems to be giving into the stereotype that all men want sex and that women don't, which erases the experience of asexual men, who DO exist. Also, when you refer to the hormone differences between the 'genders', are you referring to birth-assigned sex, or actual gender identity, because the latter begs the question of where genderqueer people fall into this theory of yours, be they male-bodied or female-bodied.

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It is fascinating and it's something I've been pondering. I think it's largely because women are expected to act 'gray' and men are expected to be immense horndogs all the time. I highly doubt that there's much more to it, aside from possibly demographics of forum-users at work.

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Honestly, there may be no reason at all. Sometimes things just occor in unequal numbers in nature, and we don't really know why.

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Such_a_lovely_girl

............I highly doubt that 15% of women are asexual, and if they are, the numbers wouldn't be that different from men. That seems to be giving into the stereotype that all men want sex and that women don't, which erases the experience of asexual men, who DO exist. Also, when you refer to the hormone differences between the 'genders', are you referring to birth-assigned sex, or actual gender identity, because the latter begs the question of where genderqueer people fall into this theory of yours, be they male-bodied or female-bodied.............

1) I'd love to know more about the experience of asexual men, hell, I'd love the opportunity to meet an asexual man! But I think that this is the truth, ok 15% is a bit high but I'd still say no less than 7% of women are just not that into sex and experience no sexual desire nor have ever done, whether they consider themselves asexual or not. Its just part of the deal to 'keep your man'. I think 1-3% of men is correct. I actually was reading this thread...

http://www.steadyhealth.com/I_don_t_enjoy_sex__t174169.html

made me sad, around half of the women on there probably are aces (its 5x more women posting) and actually, if they knew that this is something that probably is never going to change for them, that this (aven land) is where they belong, they would be devastated, much as I'm feeling right now.

2) As for debating genderqueer and the like, well I'm not going to do that because life is out there, not here with a netbook and fast broadband connection every night. If I won the lottery, the one thing I would do in a heartbeat is set up a solid, paid, maintained asexual dating service for people in the UK because for those of us ladies (and men) who do want romantic connections without sex, we should be gearing up to that. I think this is far more of an issue for women than for men; 'hypoactive sexual disorder' where people had lifelong lack of sexual desire (aka the medicalisation of asexuality) affected far more women than men. The second thing I'd do is ensure that every GP, sexual health and mental health service in the country knew about asexuality and was ready to tell you that it isn't as uncommon as you think.

I think far more needs to be done on normalising this rather than saying 'you are this rare, uncommon, 1% subsect of people, because I don't think asexual ladies are. It could be down to chance that I know 7 asexual ladies, however, I've lived in Stoke, Birmingham and Plymouth and know the ace ladies from each of these locations so I don't think it is statistically down to chance. All straight btw too (not that that matters)

While the awareness and movement is great, I've always considered myself a boring old straight person and in terms of alienation, throwing terminology like gender-queer makes a newbie here think, "crap, am I transgendered, part of the gay scene, what?! I really am that 1% rarity". Personally, gay and gender identity issues are always something I empathise with but your typical straight asexual person probably has little dealings with either (true for me anyway). I'm asexual and I don't feel proud, happy or like I want to 'come out'. I feel like crap. I don't want to have a purple flag or cake! And I know for a fact that this is something affecting more than 1% of women. I joined aven 2 years ago but shied away because it felt too much like a gay rights movement and I didn't want that. I'm just boring ol' hetero never had a sex drive-me but initially felt that aven was somewhere 'too different' for me.

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the faux-machoism of the societal pressures that some males feel of the expectations of what they should be like so this leads them to suppress their asexuality in the feeling of if they do not suppress their asexuality, other males will not like them.

now here is a story from my weekend, i went away with friends and friends of friends this weekend as one of my friends is getting married in july. on friday in a nightclub, i was hit on by a female (i won't go into details). one of the friends was also there observing from a very close distance. it just amazed the friend that i had absolutely no interest in the female. he repeated this story to many people on saturday. (3 of the group of 20 know that i'm ace) but all but the 3 were very surprised but would this be the same reaction for a female in the same position as me.

although what might also have lead to the surprise of other people was that the friend who had said this to other people called her "the most attractive woman in the place" (and a different term for "most attractive")

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Meh.

Judging from the recent bio-sex polls (especially the one on height in the Census forum) the AVEN population is, roughly, 30-35% biologically male and 65-70% biologically female. This data clashes with the articles linked. In my opinion, asexuality is pretty evenly distributed on XX and XY people, it's just that the XY folk find it harder to admit even to a journalist, because culture stereotypes depict men as more desiring of sex than women, and it's much more of a "shame" for a man to not want sex than it is for a woman.

So, whatever is missing from that 50/50 ratio is the number of biologically male people who are either not on AVEN or haven't admitted to not feeling sexual attraction in real-life surveys. Or both.

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WittyUsername

Keep in mind that not everyone here is Asexual.

Yes, but most people here are.

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Such_a_lovely_girl

Meh indeed. Well, cake or purple flag aside, life is outside of this broadband connection, so I'm signing off....

I haven't come out because there is nothing to come out about. I'm not the 4th orientation, I still belong in the normal world, I'm just not that into sex, never have been. Ultimately female asexuals who want to date have to navigate the sexual world whilst the male asexuals are elsewhere (God only wishes they'd wake up). But visit acebook (I did a search tonight) and at least 50 incredibly (sexy??!) attractive ace women popped up in the UK, God they could have been on FHM or something. And their male equivalents had pot bellies, recedding hairlines and were not in the same league.

A 1:1 theory should have given me 50 handsome guys, surely?

I don't want cake, I want to meet an attractive man who wants to date without copious sex. He won't be found on here (more likely I'll find other asexual women on here than a fella) so off I go.......in 2 years I want to have a man to cuddle, kiss and snuggle with minimal extras and not the solace of another night on the purple forum. If you're aromantic, fine, but if you really really want love, what the flippin banana boots heck do you do!? It angers me, so many people say....acebook is dead, ok cupid is dead, God if I had money this is the one thing I'd want to do................connect all the lonely aces out there..............then get an OBE for services to our clearly more than 1% population (7 out of 100 ladies WILL be asexual!)

Aven is great if you don't want a romantic relationship, are 'gender queer', like to disassociate and while away a few hours of living in the real world to engage in some debate. But what if you do want to date, love? What do you do when you have a hole that you don't want a penis to fill, and that is to hollow that cake won't fill? What then?

7% of ladies feel this way

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Haha, it's like the opposite of all the other dating sites. Most of them are full of clean-cut guys and a handful of girls who get flooded with messages if they're even remotely attractive.

It's a funny thing, this thing that evolution has done to us.

Although I know some girls who identified as A and then got married and had kids, so maybe it was a case of marrying the right guy, or they just http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LieBackAndThinkOfEngland'>laid back and thought of England while doing the deed.

Also saying there are fewer A-guys than girls is not "erasing" them, it's just saying they're less common. Heck, I'm just one person in 6 billion; I freely admit it - that doesn't "erase" me. I'm made of sterner stuff than that.

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SorryNotSorry

I believe it's partly the "shaming" factor, but remember there is a corollary here: many more men than women can't help having very active libidos. Unless your brain is wired for asexuality, testosterone will make you horny.

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Janus the Fox

Though this particular question comes up often, there many factors that there are more females rather than males.

One might be the fact that women are more open to talk about things and identify with minorities. There's probably more bisexual women than bisexual men. Societies image, personal image and whatnot.

AVEN also appears to appeal to female users more, the style, colour schemes and often frequent feminine topics could in theory but many males off.

It might have to do with the male : female ratios of people who join forums and then post frequently too. An interesting question, probably a bit of everything.

Generally speaking, no... According to many studies on internet usage, generally find males are much more inclined to use internet media, many concluding that males are more tech swavy than females.

Though a 2003 study, this general internet usage data has much higher and differing ratio of usage of gender and internet usage across the world

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Qutenkuddly

Why does everyone seem to think that 1% is mindbogglingly rare? I've brought this up before, but think about it: if you were to look at your average public highschool, with, say, 600 pupils, that means, with a 1% ratio, that there's probably 6 aces in that one school alone. That's about as many students as there is in the AV club. Are you saying that students who are/were in the AV club are exceedingly rare?

Aven is great if you don't want a romantic relationship, are 'gender queer', like to disassociate and while away a few hours of living in the real world to engage in some debate. But what if you do want to date, love? What do you do when you have a hole that you don't want a penis to fill, and that is to hollow that cake won't fill? What then?

You work on building awareness. Knock AVEN for not being the answer to all your romantic dreams as much as you like, but at least it's working hard towards making it possible for you to finally find your asexy dream guy. Meanwhile, I'll take my apparently unattractive belly and receding hairline and go cuddle with my girlfriend.
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A Taste of Harmony

Aven is great if you don't want a romantic relationship, are 'gender queer', like to disassociate and while away a few hours of living in the real world to engage in some debate. But what if you do want to date, love? What do you do when you have a hole that you don't want a penis to fill, and that is to hollow that cake won't fill? What then?

You work on building awareness. Knock AVEN for not being the answer to all your romantic dreams as much as you like, but at least it's working hard towards making it possible for you to finally find your asexy dream guy. Meanwhile, I'll take my apparently unattractive belly and receding hairline and go cuddle with my girlfriend.

Had to quote for echoing awesomeness from Q :)

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SorryNotSorry

Why does everyone seem to think that 1% is mindbogglingly rare?

Good question.

1% of a couple of billion bucks is not a bad day's pay. ;)

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HardToComeBy

For me, (a male) I had always understood sexual desire and attraction as being the same thing while growing up.

In an especially religious household, with an equally tightly-knit conservative community to have grown up in (not necessarily a bad thing, but that's beside the point), sex was something pretty taboo - rarely talked about, much hinted at - and as a male, I (along with other males) was especially discouraged from looking/thinking, etc.

Looking at other attractive humans and appreciating them aesthetically for me was understood to be a big no-no because it fell under the umbrella of lust. If I looked and liked in "that way" it was a tell-tale sign of a bad thing.

After recently realizing my true orientation, spending some time immersed in the forums here and in academic literature on the subject - thinking critically about human sexuality - I haven't ever (or at least don't recall) having ever truly lusted. I really haven't the foggiest idea what it is like to actually want in that way.

I would think that males with that kind of cultured life experience - at least a little similar to mine - would be far less likely to identify as anything other than what men are understood to be: strongly sexual beings. I naturally assumed that I was too, being able to...appreciate bodies.

Many years later, after being able to view sexuality critically and picking away at definitions, I now see that aesthetic attraction and sexual desire are two very distinct, separate things. I wouldn't have self-identified as ace prior to being able to make that distinction. It would have been impossible for me! The unfortunate problem with census stats taken about asexuality is that they are plagued by being filled with those who self-identify, and are therefore - by the very nature of statistics - especially prone to finding inaccurate population ratios.

Having said all that, I want to know: do you think equating aesthetic attraction and sexual desire could lead a larger number of males being "left out" of the data? Possibly holding them back from self-identifying as asexual? (Of course, I'm taking into consideration the fact that asexuality isn't really all that visible yet, anyway.)

I wonder, would women be somewhat more likely (statistically speaking) to better grok the aforementioned distinction given cultural bias, etc.?

Just a thought. I'm deeply curious...

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TuesMorning

For me, (a male) I had always understood sexual desire and attraction as being the same thing while growing up.

In an especially religious household, with an equally tightly-knit conservative community to have grown up in (not necessarily a bad thing, but that's beside the point), sex was something pretty taboo - rarely talked about, much hinted at - and as a male, I (along with other males) was especially discouraged from looking/thinking, etc.

Looking at other attractive humans and appreciating them aesthetically for me was understood to be a big no-no because it fell under the umbrella of lust. If I looked and liked in "that way" it was a tell-tale sign of a bad thing.

After recently realizing my true orientation, spending some time immersed in the forums here and in academic literature on the subject - thinking critically about human sexuality - I haven't ever (or at least don't recall) having ever truly lusted. I really haven't the foggiest idea what it is like to actually want in that way.

I would think that males with that kind of cultured life experience - at least a little similar to mine - would be far less likely to identify as anything other than what men are understood to be: strongly sexual beings. I naturally assumed that I was too, being able to...appreciate bodies.

Many years later, after being able to view sexuality critically and picking away at definitions, I now see that aesthetic attraction and sexual desire are two very distinct, separate things. I wouldn't have self-identified as ace prior to being able to make that distinction. It would have been impossible for me! The unfortunate problem with census stats taken about asexuality is that they are plagued by being filled with those who self-identify, and are therefore - by the very nature of statistics - especially prone to finding inaccurate population ratios.

Having said all that, I want to know: do you think equating aesthetic attraction and sexual desire could lead a larger number of males being "left out" of the data? Possibly holding them back from self-identifying as asexual? (Of course, I'm taking into consideration the fact that asexuality isn't really all that visible yet, anyway.)

I wonder, would women be somewhat more likely (statistically speaking) to better grok the aforementioned distinction given cultural bias, etc.?

Just a thought. I'm deeply curious...

I actually explained this very thing to a buddy of mine a few hours ago when asked "how could you not know". The logic was that I find certain women pretty so therefore I'm going to want to have sex with them. But it was never a good experience. If it makes a difference I was pretty stubborn in my thinking. I was sure that I'd get the attraction sooner or later and tried pretty hard to find it. Perhaps a lot of men are still banging their head against the wall? Not sure, curious as well.

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I think asexuality really is more common in women than in men. I don´t believe this disproportion is only because of social constructs like "men are always horny, women are more prudish". Even the most stupid social construct has some truth in itself.

I strongly believe asexuality is hereditary (there are several asexual people in my family and some other AVENites have asexual relatives too) and it is possible that certain things are more common in one sex because of how genetics work. For example, hemophilia is a genetic disease which is only in men, but women can carry the wrong genes to the next generation. (Quite bad example with disease, I didn´t want to say asexuality is a disease. What I´m trying to say is that I think it is all matter of genes.)

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That would require the presence of an 'asexual gene' which I am quite skeptical about, but, I guess it's possible.

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Having said all that, I want to know: do you think equating aesthetic attraction and sexual desire could lead a larger number of males being "left out" of the data? Possibly holding them back from self-identifying as asexual? (Of course, I'm taking into consideration the fact that asexuality isn't really all that visible yet, anyway.)

I wonder, would women be somewhat more likely (statistically speaking) to better grok the aforementioned distinction given cultural bias, etc.?

Just a thought. I'm deeply curious...

Nah, I don't think it's that. Women are fully capable of feeling aesthetic attraction and sexual attraction - as much as men do, in fact.

If anything, I'd think masturbation might affect a man's self-perception as far as (a)sexuality is concerned. I think - yet I can't be sure, just judging from the data I gathered so far - that biological males are more likely to masturbate because, well, they don't get periods and they still have to get their unused gametes out at some point, unless they do it through nocturnal pollution. Telling the difference between libido and sexual attraction may be harder for a male libidoist and AVEN-gnostic, I suppose. But that's all just a hypothesis. All in all I think the matter at stake is the fact that males are, in some way, less likely to think of themselves, or come out, as asexual even on the web. For whatever reason :P

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ObsessedWithCats

I think asexuality really is more common in women than in men. I don´t believe this disproportion is only because of social constructs like "men are always horny, women are more prudish". Even the most stupid social construct has some truth in itself.

I strongly believe asexuality is hereditary (there are several asexual people in my family and some other AVENites have asexual relatives too) and it is possible that certain things are more common in one sex because of how genetics work. For example, hemophilia is a genetic disease which is only in men, but women can carry the wrong genes to the next generation. (Quite bad example with disease, I didn´t want to say asexuality is a disease. What I´m trying to say is that I think it is all matter of genes.)

I have no opinion on whether or not asexuality is hereditary but it’s not sex linked if it is hereditary. The sex linked version of haemophilia is vastly more common in males because the mutated gene for it is on the X chromosome, which females have two of, so they’re much more likely to have a functional backup copy (since the mutation is recessive you only need one normal gene, and the mutated gene is quite rare in the first place) than males who have a Y (doesn’t contain the clotting factor gene at all) instead of the second X. There isn’t a genetic equivalent that would make something more prevalent in women than men. There are ways evolution might get round asexuality being hereditary (if for instance it benefited one’s siblings’ chances of having children somehow or were locationally linked to a highly beneficial gene) but if it were connected with one’s genetic sex it wouldn’t be more prevalent in women, it would be more prevalent in men.

The only ways I can think it could be more common in women is if it were dominant (very unusual for traits which are essentially a lack of something) and on the X chromosome, in which case I wouldn't expect it to get very far but if it did you would get twice as many asexual women as men.

I love genetics so much, but I'll shut up now :redface: My font also went loopy, apologies if it turns out huge or something.

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I think it's just less men are willing to come out of the closet for asexuality. Men are pressured to like ANY kind of sex, so I think it might be harder for them to come to terms with it. By this point more people are willing to accept a dude as gay than asexual, given the amount of people who have been accused of just being "in the closet" when they say they don't like sex.

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Qutenkuddly

I'm actually of the opinion that biological men and women very likely experience sexual attraction in different ways. Certainly, enculturation does play a role, but I think, generally, men are biologically predisposed to experience sexual attraction in a more intense or elevated fashion. (I could go on about primate behaviour and our monkey ancestors, but I'll spare y'all this time.)

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I think it's just less men are willing to come out of the closet for asexuality. Men are pressured to like ANY kind of sex, so I think it might be harder for them to come to terms with it. By this point more people are willing to accept a dude as gay than asexual, given the amount of people who have been accused of just being "in the closet" when they say they don't like sex.

Men are pressured to like any kind of sex... which makes me wonder if it should not be in fact easier for them to realize they are asexual. Women should be more likely confused because "women are not supposed to be sex-obsessed like men", so if a woman is asexual, she might easily believe it is normal for sexual woman to be that way.

I really think there are more asexual females than males.

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