How did you come across the term 'asexuality'?

[futurus]

I don't recall where I first heard it, but my father has used it (correctly!) in reference to his best friend from childhood. My mother is certain that the friend is gay, and in love with my father, but my dad insists that she a) can't know that and b) he's never had a boy/girlfriend, so he's more likely to be ace.

[the Lady Ashuko]

I discovered it from a coincidence--I made an lj post about how bizarre I found it when people shipped VK artists (or even imagining them being in relationships at all), because I saw them all as being inherently asexual. I was using the term as being without gender but a friend responded that she was surprised to find that there were in fact asexual people. I then looked it up on wikipedia and that was that.

[philos-phobos]

Not sure...

I think I found it on TVtropes (or a fanfiction, come to think of it...), and then forgot about it until I told a friend that I wasn't sure what I was and landed up listing a whole pile of sexualities including asexuality. I knew enough to be able to name it, but it wasn't until later when I started seriously thinking about asexuality that I landed up googling it to figure out what it really meant.

[SteelBite]

Wikipedia <3

[Theaetetus]

On another forum, Dragcave. :D

That's also where I discovered genderless.

[SquirrelCat]

I’m not sure. All I remember is discussing it with some girls in my class during my first year in high-school.

[unicornduke]

I was blog hopping by following links when I ran across someone who was figuring out their labels. They mentioned asexuality and AVEN and I wandered over.

[Member33070]

There was a paragraph-long snippet of an article about it in a magazine somewhere between September and November 2005. It was either Seventeen, Teen Vogue or ElleGirl.

[CompassRose]

I heard it in a feedback letter to a podcast called "Smartmouths." Then I googled it and found AVEN. Read the faq & wiki and knew. Light breaks, dawn spreads it's rosy glow across the sky, and I finally understand myself a bit better. :)

[Snadows]

I believe the first time I looked up the term was after reading it in an interview with Morrissey, of The Smiths..

I didn't know the word so looked it up on trusty old Wikipedia.. at the time it was like "oh, thats what it means, carry on." and went back to reading the article.

[Tace]

There was a blog on Tumblr run by a guy who'd always post controversial thing designed to generate controversy and debate, and I think asexuality came up once. I looked up an asexuality blog and was just like 'oh, there's a name for how I feel? neat!'

[Rania]

A friend posted a link about asexuality on facebook, I followed it and ended up looking it up and finding AVEN.

[Ardebis]

I came across it when hitting "random page" on TVTropes and it took me to the Asexual page XD

[D.J.]

TV tropes

[Guest]

google! I was just looking to find a word for how I felt.

[sevenseas]

I was actually thinking of myself as "asexual" at around 14- it just seemed to fit, and I didn't know it was an actual term. My lack of being attracted to anyone was something I thought about a lot but never looked up. One day, bored, googling random stuff, and typed in "am I asexual". Found AVEN :)

[kelseygurl]

I found the term asexuality on Wikipedia when I was looking up sexualities. (at the time I kind of assumed I was bi or lesbian or something.) I thought it didn't apply to me because i masturbated. A few months later I was still really confused, but by that time I had accepted that I wasn't straight, gay or bi. I googled asexuality and found AVEN, which led me to realize that you CAN masturbate and still be ace.

[Harkins]

The first time I'd ever heard it was sometime back in 2006 (I had to google the air date of the episode). There was a 20/20 report about AVEN that aired back when I was in high school and I went from there with it.

I think the second time I heard it after that was sometime in 2007 because it was included on the banner for the student sexuality club at the freshman activities fair. I think the acronym they were using at the time was LGBTQAA, and so I went back to my dorm room and searched what it meant.

[bromance]

I was a little leftist in 8th grade (my dad used to joke that I was going to start a socialist revolution when I grow up) who was extremely concerned with LGBT rights. So I went onto Wikipedia to learn more about different minority sexual orientations.

I realized that I fit the description of "asexual" and was confused for a while... I didn't even know that sexual attraction existed back then.

Everything makes sense now.

[Guest]

My Grade 11 Earth and Space Science teacher mentioned it randomly one day and it sort of stuck with me as a random fact of trivia. Then I randomly wikipedia'd it and presto I was here XD

[Makishal]

I found it in Deviantart, within a firestorm over Gay rights. person A asked person B to define romantic relationship, when person B defined it with sex as one of the qualifiers, Person A introduced the phrase asexual romance. I connected instantly when I asked them to elaborate.

[Fluttershy]

I first saw it used in an Internet debate about the subject years ago. I was originally vehemently against the notion of humans asexuality even existing upon my first encounter with the term, as humans are sexual beings and do not breed asexually like plants. After some recent research though, I found to my surprise that I actually strongly identify with asexuality and that I was quite ignorant to think of it in such literal terms. :redface:

[VelvetBat]

I don't remember. I thought I came across the term via internet or something. But I am not sure.

[Comfort In Delirium]

Other: I was making a bio for a new OC and asexual was listed as an orientation

[nibs.space.cowboy]

TVTropes and Wikipedia

[datadude]

Read an article in the New York Times a few months ago and realized that was pretty much me. I had never heard of it before.

[TheAceOfHearts]

I think I heard my bio teacher talk about it and I was curious to know what it meant so I googled it and it came up with all these really good websites then I saw the definition and was like "ohh so Im not weird after all!!"

[allons-y-alonso]

The first time I came across the term, I was reading the Wikipedia article for Morissey. I was curious so I read the Wikipedia article. Then I googled it and found AVEN. That was about 4 years ago. I've been visiting the site ever since, but I've only just joined the forums.

[Metaparadox]

A combination of Wikipedia (looking at pages for sexual orientations when I was confused), SwankIvy's website (swankivy.com, which I'd been a fan of before I'd even heard the term "asexual"), and AVEN (where I found out about romantic orientations and gray asexuality)

[Guest]

My (now ex) boyfriend was the one who told me asexuality existed. It's thanks to him if I know there's a term for it.

It never crossed my mind that there could be a whole community of asexuals though, until I stumbled upon a link to AVEN on facebook.