How did you come across the term 'asexuality'?

[sunny000123]

I'm hoping to eventually make a book/go into my masters on Asexuality and Social Networking/Internet. I found out asexuality through random googling, and looking at forums, this may be semi-popular. Hopefully through sites like AVEN, the term 'asexuality' can become more well known!

Thank you for the help :) Please comment or PM if you would like to share your story on how you discovered asexuality. I am not recording responses or anything of that sort, just simply trying to get a feel for things before I dive into research.

[prettyeyes]

Wikipedia here. :)

[sunny000123]

Wikipedia here. :)

How did I forget Wikipedia!? Thank you!!!

[Condemned Valour]

I can't remember. I think it was in some... paper article of some sort. I remember seeing it, not hearing it. A school newspaper, perhaps?

[sunny000123]

I can't remember. I think it was in some... paper article of some sort. I remember seeing it, not hearing it. A school newspaper, perhaps?

Props to the school paper that talked about asexuality!!

Thanks for the response!

[Lego M]

The first time I heard the word was from an old online friend of mine about 5-6 years ago now (long before I'd started thinking about it for myself). She mentioned one day that she was asexual and I automatically understood what she meant without explanation; the concept wasn't shocking at all to me. Should've known then.

[Verp]

Wikipedia. Of course, I knew about asexuality as in asexual reproduction way earlier. I don't exactly remember, but I think I ended up knowing about asexual orientation either because I needed to know something about asexual reproduction and stumbled upon the other meaning or because I was wondering if such an orientation exists. Either way, I was positively surprised.

[rosalie]

In a Belgian woman's magazine, 7-8 years ago.

[Lola.l]

A problem page in a newspaper.

[sindi]

I had realized what I am but didn't know a word for it. I told about it to my good friend, and together we browsed the web for "someone who doesn't want sex at all". We found "asexual" in a list of different orientations, with very short descriptions. I don't remember if it was wikipedia or what... probably wikipedia.

[goaTmcFEE]

My mom asked me if i was a lesbian when I was 12 out of the blue. I was shocked and said no.

At the age of 17 after showing no interest in dating or marriage in general (in the state of utah no less), she asked if i was asexual. She didn't explain the term. Not wanting to accept myself as a deviant from normalcy, i instantly denied it without even knowing what it was.

Four months ago, a friend/fellow uni student and I were having a funny little heart to heart conversation in the car and she asked me which celebrity I'd like to sleep with. She found it impossible that my mind was blank and that i'd never thought of it, nor could i think of it as much as i honestly tried. She threw the word 'asexual' out in the conversation as it dove into a irreversible state of awkwardness.

A few days later, someone at a forum I visit openly said they were asexual, but went further than that and basically described what it meant. This caught my attention and I've been a whore for information on asexuality ever since.

[michaeld]

I'm hoping to eventually make a book/go into my masters on Asexuality and Social Networking/Internet. I found out asexuality through random googling, and looking at forums, this may be semi-popular. Hopefully through sites like AVEN, the term 'asexuality' can become more well known!

Thank you for the help :) Please comment or PM if you would like to share your story on how you discovered asexuality. I am not recording responses or anything of that sort, just simply trying to get a feel for things before I dive into research.

Other: I used the word to describe myself (albeit not openly) years before AVEN was founded. I even occasionally got teased at school for being 'asexual' in the 90s, though being bullied for being 'homosexual' was much more common. The first time I heard the word from the AVEN movement was in an interview of David Jay on Radio Five Live, in about 2002-3. He mentioned AVEN but I didn't google either AVEN or asexuality till 2008!

[asexual cake]

I first saw it in a copy of Psychology Today (which I hate, actually - I'm not sure why I was reading it), in an article on supposed taboos (or something of the kind). It described a woman who never realized there was anything "wrong" with her until her second marriage because she just assumed women weren't supposed to want or enjoy sex.

[Sciatrix]

I used to hang out on Gaia Online, and there used to be a post there about asexuality which was kept up and maintained by a bunch of people. I stumbled across it one day and thought it sounded a lot like me. Didn't make an account on AVEN until a few years after that, actually.

[~Salem~]

During the time my friend was coming out to me I mentioned I had no sexual desires and she mentioned the word Asexual. I then looked it up on the internet where I found a link to AVEN

[AGLET]

I found out about it while looking on TVTropes. :lol:

[Pandoren]

A depression forum had a thread and a link, I followed it :)

[+Lee]

I chose other. My Mom was the first one to tell me about it from watching the 20/20 segment a year or so ago. But since I was being stupid for some reason, I never searched for the online community and was just like: "Yay, I'm non-sexual! Asexual doesn't sound like the proper term... they use that to describe slugs and snails re-production" (Yea.... I know better now) But after a couple/few months I fell right back into "I'm usual/weird... I know mom mentioned something about it but what if it's only 10 people?". When talking with an online friend and I told her I was non-sexual she asked if I was asexual and I said the same thing about biology (snails/slugs. I thought I was sure since I love snails and slugs and I read they where asexual) then she linked me to another term that is the proper term for this kind of re-production and from that I searched asexual on Wikipedia to make sure and boom, went to AVEN.

My full story since you said you where interested in reading them is here: http://www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?showtopic=49629 at the welcome lounge.

So, It was my Mom that told me, you should have parents as an option.

[ghosts]

An article in a print zine.

[anowink]

I found it on some discussion of sexualities on a dolling website. It linked to AVEN and it clicked. I hadn't even been questioning if I was different. I sort of assumed everyone was like me!

[RandomDent]

The first time I heard of it in a not-science fashion was on an old British sitcom called Game On. It was used to describe someone else as being 'completely unsexy like an amoeba' which I thought was hilarious and appealing. Then a few years later I read about it in a newspaper in relation to some MP, can't remember who.

[Eli Dupree]

I constructed it as a parallel to "heterosexual", "homosexual", etc., and used it to describe myself long before I discovered that it was already being used by anyone. I think the first time I saw it used by someone else was in the Asexuality thread on the XKCD forums.

[Filmfan]

The first time I used the term, I didn't know it was a real orientation. This was maybe 11 or 12 years ago, and I had these really horny co-workers who were always harrassing me about not prowling for guys like they were. Once, out of complete frustration, I said, "From now on, just think of me as asexual!" They still harrassed me, but it was considerable less.

Fast forward a couple of years, and I was watching an episode of Six Feet Under when David and Keith were trying to figure out if the latest intern at the funeral home was "a." After that, I probably used a search engine to find the term and went from there. One of the best things I've ever done! :D

[Frontier_Rhesus]

Five years ago, I was in Israel with a youth group and one of my peers was openly asexual. People asked him continually if he was gay and he said "Nope, I don't like men or women!" I instantly made the connection to my own situation, but still I felt like it was cheating to opt out completely; he would find someone eventually. "Look at me," I thought, "I feel the exact same way as him, but I'm heterosexual! He must be mistaken!"

Oh god I was in denial >.>

When I finally looked it up a few weeks ago, and realized that the word explains me perfectly, I started wishing that I had gotten to know that guy better. We had more in common than I thought.

[LittleMermaid]

I first discovered the term 'Asexuality' last year in a magazine article, which then lead me to AVEN :D

[narwhal]

A friend told me but gave me the wrong meaning to asexuality when i was 16-17. My boyfriend re-directed me to asexuality last summer.

[knout]

Wikipedia here. :)

Same :)

[Yanagi]

Other : a book about GLBT Youth from the local library. The term asexual was listed in the glossary.

I just about jumped two feet when I read it.

[marusian]

I sort of "made it up" (the sexuality, not the reproduction I knew of from school) years ago and joked to my mom and myself for a while that I was that (did stop, though), but I finally realized last year (last semester, really) just how well it fit, so I Googled it to see if it was an actual term and came across AVEN. I read the FAQs and Asexual Perspectives and took a tiny peek at the forums. I was hanging out at Gaia, like Sciatrix, at the time, too, so I looked at the Lifestyle Discussion forum for a thread on it and found one. Very lucky. I stayed on that for a while before Tanzaria convinced me to come here and actually join the forums.

[Marked "Google", "AVEN website", and "other".]

[Dancinglollipop]

I just kinda... blurted it out trying to explain to a friend.