percentage of population

[frustr8ed]

I'm wondering if anybody has an idea what percentage of the population is asexual?

[............]

I think about 1% identifies as asexual.

There's a lot of this factual-type information in the wiki. You might want to browse through it to see it you can find something.

[M51]

According to the most widely quoted and recognized study, 1% of people said they had "never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all."

I do not think this number is accurate for several reasons:

1) The study was not designed to find asexuals; that answer was thrown in there as a "just in case" and Bogaert was surprised at the high number of people who chose it and followed up with further study.

2) The terminology is vague to the average person. MANY people confuse sexual attraction with physical attraction, and many new people on AVEN think they cannot be asexual because they experience physical attraction. I think many people who do not experience sexual attraction might have seen that and not felt it described them because they did feel physical attraction. In other words, I think the actual percentage is higher.

I think there are a lot of asexuals who do not realize they are asexual because they can tolerate sex, because they enjoy the social aspects of sex (such as pleasing a partner, feeling values and desired by a partner, using sex as a relationship milestone, using sex as a indicator of a relationship's health, status for males who have many sexual conquests or who can boast skill in bed, etc), or because they feel physical attraction and they don't understand why the desire to be physically close ends once the genetalia get involved. Generally people only realize they are asexual when their lack of desire for sex becomes a problem in a relationship, or if their asexuality is pronounced enough that they do not experience any of the above misleading factors ever.