The Italian edition of Scientific American features asexuality!

[ithaca]

Today the magazine "Mente & Cervello" ("Mind & Brain"), part of the Italian edition of Scientific American ("Le Scienze"), published a 6-pages feature on asexuality. The title is something we've already seen at times: "Sex? No, thanks".

I'm really happy of how this article came out. The journalist (whom I really want to thank) interviewed (besides the useless me) several "VIPs" ( :P ) of our community: Anthony Bogaert, Lori Brotto, Andrew Hinderliter, Michael Doré, plus a couple Italian psychologists. Needless to say, it's a very awesome article ^_^

It has a couple of pics from World Pride last year, one from AVEN Pride this year in SF, and this close up of Barbie and Ken from Toy Story:

I swear, I've seen pics of Barbie dolls used before in articles on asexuality (usually naked to show the lack of genitals, as if that's what asexuality is all about), and they generally piss me off, but this one actually made me chuckle (maybe because I love Toy Story :P )

I will try and see if I can share this online. I doubt it because the magazine doesn't even post the articles online on their site, but we'll see. Any Italian speaker should definitely buy this anyway :lol:

[Kelly]

This is so awesome! :)

You go, Italian Scientific American.

This is quite a significant thing; SA is a very respectable journal.

[Guest]

Guess who's getting a copy. :P

I am so happy about this! Finally, decent visibility levels in Italy on a magazine that appeals a rather big chunk of the population ^_^

[ithaca]

Woohoo, I had permission to translate the article and post the translation here! It took me a few hours XD but here we go! (Sorry for any bad translations XD )

Article by Paola Emilia Cicerone
Published on Mente & Cervello (Le Scienze) in the September 2013 issue (#105)


Sex? No, thanks

It's not an ethical choice nor a physical problem. For asexual people, having sex simply isn't anything special. In short, as one of their mottos says, “cake is better”.

It's not a sacrifice, it's an acknowledgement, nothing “clicks”. Welcome into the world of asexuality: the latest sexual orientation showing up is a non-orientation. The lack of interest in sex, indeed - or more precisely in that mix of urgency and madness that the rest of the world calls “desire” - without necessarily refusing everything that surrounds it: relationships, cuddles, marriage. All of this not because of a choice, or because of the inability to overcome some trauma, but because they are made this way. According to some surveys, this phenomenon concerns about 1% of the population: few, but enough to ask to be taken into consideration. And enough to become objects of studying, because among the sexologists who chose to observe this population emerging from the Web – young, spirited and ironic – there are many who think that understanding them would help us understand sex better.

“Asexuality is not discussed much, it gets confused with hyposexual desire disorder or aversion disorder, or with the choice of chastity”, explains Paola Bionda, psychologist responsible of the website psicologiagay.com. “It's also hard to define it as a sexual orientation, a term that seems to imply an object of desire. I would say that it's a state of being: uncommon, but which can create difficulties in social relationships, besides emotional relationships with those who are not asexual”.

• The community of relief

The fact that asexuals are not hermits who refuse any contact is proved by a small community, active mostly on the Internet: the biggest group is called AVEN, acronym that stands for Asexual Visibility and Education Network, but that also recalls the English term haven. “Our goal is to give information about asexuality and to establish it as a sexual orientation”, explains Michael Doré, responsible for the organization's communication. People register to find someone who lives their own experiences, “someone to talk about problems with family, or with a partner if there is one. And to talk about anything, even sex: you have no idea how much we talk about that here”, he adds.

You can imagine the desire to communicate, which is also a way to respond to those who say you are sick, or to the psychologist who would like to fix you. This is why a mostly virtual community has chosen to make its voice heard at Gay Prides bringing their purple and grey flags, and ironic slogans saying “Sex, what's so special about it? I'd rather have cake”. And even though the dialogue with the LGBT community is not without conflicts, there are those who would like to add the A for Asexual to the acronym.

“There are some points of contact”, explains Doré. “In both groups there are people who grow up confused, who feel relieved when they find a community they identify with”. And confirmation of not being alone: “Let's think of the situation of someone who believes they are the only one feeling or not feeling something”, explains Lea Vittoria Uva, one of the Italian representatives of AVEN. “Finding someone who understands is a relief: I remember this awesome 83 y-o lady I met at World Pride in London. She got married young, but then went to the doctor because she thought her husband was too into sex, to then hear that she was the one being sick. After a whole life feeling broken, she had finally found an explanation. And she told us how important it is that everyone knows that asexuality exists”.

“We're just now starting to face a reality like this one, maybe harder to understand than homosexuality, and that should be evaluated on the basis of the story of each individual”, explains Camilla Marzocchi, psychologist. “Even though white marriages are more common than people think. What's behind that? Many factors, including social and cultural elements that influence our mental health.”

• Group X

In reality a good part of “Aces” -as asexual people sometimes call themselves playing with the pronunciation of asex – doesn't suffer of particular discriminations, even though things get complicated for those who feel romantic attraction toward the same sex or refuse the standard gender definitions by identifying with terms like queer, non-binary or transgender.

“We're often mistaken for gay”, says Doré. “People tend to assume that those who aren't attracted by one gender will inevitably be by the other”. The hyper-sexualization of society makes asexuality hard to understand, and at the same time forces those who don't experience sexual attraction to explain a choice that in the past would have remained private. “Today sex is everywhere in media, advertizing, in how we use the body”, explains Biondi. “We see sexuality as a value, and we can feel bothered by someone who refuses it or proposes different values, undermining our certainties”.

It's only been in the past ten years that asexuality began to draw the researchers' attention. “Before, there were only isolated case studies, and only one sociological analysis published in 1977 by Myra T. Johnson”, says Andrew Hinderliter, responsible for research on AVEN. With one important exception, though not that known. When Alfred Kinsey defined the scale that now has his name, giving to the possible sexual orientations points from 0 to 6 depending on the hetero or homosexuality level, he also included a group X to define “individuals who did not have sexual contacts or reactions”. A group that was ignored up until 2004, when the Canadian psychologist Tony Bogaert published a study that described this phenomenon for the first time. “I discovered this theme by accident, during a sabbatical”, says Bogaert, who recently published an essay on the topic. “I was reading a British survey on sexual orientation, and I realized that among the possible orientations there was the word “none”. I believe the authors didn't realize that they highlighted a new phenomenon, and I thought it'd be an interesting topic to study further”.

It was Bogaert's research that drew the press attention, starting from the “New Scientist”, which dedicated a big article to the topic. “By then, several people directly involved started contacting me, asking me questions I often had no answers to and pushing me to do more research”, Bogaert remembers. “At the time I didn't know that there was an asexual community: I realized that there was a group trying to build their own identity”.

“The phenomenon of asexuality is an emerging one, of a very varied minority group claiming its identity and recognition, living a discomfort tied to society's expectations”, explains Michelangelo Pascali, sociology professor at Parthenone University in Naples. “Defining asexuals as a category can be beneficial from a social point of view, because it helps people forming an identity, but it also risks to offer a shortcut to those people who need a therapeutic intervention and use this label to push aside problems that should be dealt with. In this case, the refusal of sex could be tied to a refusal of the most physical aspects of our being, of our animal component, which is a tendency that comes across from other behaviours as well, in our society.”

• A composite universe

The definition of asexual paints a composite universe, “which activists from AVEN and other organizations probably don't represent in toto”, Bogaert says.

“Our members have different attitudes”, Doré confirms. “There are people who have nothing against sex and watch Sex & the City, those who are bothered by movies or pictures with sexual references, those who believe in sex liberation including the option of “saying no”, those who don't exclude masturbation but live it simply as a physiological urge and those who are simply not interested”. There are also aromantics, those who entertain relationships with their peers only as friendships, those who identify as Grey or Gray A because they don't consider themselves fully asexual, and the romantic ones interested in relationships that do not include sex, that can be hetero or homosexual with all the possible variations.

“Some have relationships only with people of the same sex, some only with people of the opposite sex, or with both, or with people who do not identify in the traditional binary division of gender” says Uva. The hard thing is explaining that a romantic sexless relationship is different from a friendship. “It's something completely different” highlights the representative of AVEN. “Society tends to assume that a partnered relationship includes sex, we show that things aren't exactly like that, and we break the mold.”

“It seems very complicated, but there are also other situations where attraction and affections aren't aligned toward the same gender”, Biondi explains. “Let's think of hetero men who have homosexual relationships: identity issues are more complex than what we usually believe”. Indeed, as a poster of the movement says, “If there is loveless sex, why can't there be sexless love?”. And no one can bat an eyelid, but even on the “sexless” we need to make clarity. That's because in asexual people's lives and relationships, sex has a marginal role, but it is sometimes present. “Asexuality isn't lack of physical desire or inability to respond to sexual stimuli”, Uva confirms. “What's lacking is the desire to put into practice. Many asexuals have sex to please their partner, others because they want children, or out of curiosity, because they feel social pressure and they think they have to try it.
Explaining the lack of desire is hard, you have people asking if there is any problems. Males are labeled as impotent or gay, if you're female there's always someone saying you haven't met the right guy or calling you frigid or prude”. While choosing celibacy, asexuals clarify, is a different situation: abstinence means giving up something, there's nothing to give up here. And there's nothing that is malfunctioning, as the sexologist Lori Brotto, one of the biggest experts on female desire, confirms: “Asexuals often say they can experience arousal, and there are studies on women confirming it; they just don't connect this purely physical phenomenon to the desire for sexual relationships”.

“It's hard to explain that who has no desire and attraction can have a sexual life”, Doré explains. And when only one in a couple is asexual, conflicts aren't lacking: “The relationships that work better are the ones where the choices of the partner are accepted, and this doesn't exclude that sometimes there may be sex”.

• The evolution of sex

Behind the definition of asexual there is a complex range of identities, with one common denominator: it's not a choice, it's what you are. And it's curious to see how this pacific minority is object of discriminations. If many problems, especially for women, come from unhappy partners, “there are studies that show how asexuals generate more negative reactions than other sexual minorities”, Bogaert reminds. “Disproportionate attitudes toward people who only ask to live their lives. It's true that we fear what's different, but here there may be some grudge against people whose lives look simpler”.

People involved deny that asexuality may be a shortcut to avoid other complications: “Let's admit it, though, sex is pleasing, but it's also crazy and complicated – the Canadian researchers goes on – and some people can feel confusion and resentment toward those who do without it”.

But can you “give up” something you're not even interested in? Maybe it's just to make clarity and to be clear that AVEN aims at a privileged relationship with science: “One of my tasks is to coordinate contacts between researchers and the potential objects of research”, explains Hinderliter, researcher himself but in a different field, linguistics, where he also studies the relationships between language and gender. There are many problems to be solved, and not only because some researchers still consider asexuality as a disorder: “Sexology researches tend to label participants as males or females, while many asexuals do not identify with this dichotomy, which requires clarifications every time a new study is started”, the researcher continues.

“When I began to study this phenomenon I didn't know whether it was a disorder or a sexual orientation”, Bogaert admits. “In 2006 I looked further into the questions brought up by my first researches, in an article where I said that I didn't think it could be considered a pathology, and I think this influenced the scientific community”. Which today is quite unanimous on the topic, also thanks to Lori Brotto's studies which looked into the differences between asexuality and hyposexual desire disorder: “Most people identifying as asexual claims they always were like this, while generally HSDD is present in a certain stage of life”, Brotto says. Also, people with HSDD have higher levels of depression, and show discomfort because of their condition, while asexuals don't. “I believe we can say” the sexologist goes on, “that we're talking of two different groups of people, even though maybe there are some overlaps: desire level isn't the same for everyone, and those who have always been on the lower end of the scale can see desire fade in an easier way for several reasons”.

“Generally speaking, asexual people do not differ from the norm in regards to balance and health”, Biondi explains. “We need to distinguish, though, those whose desire level dropped because of external reasons such as medications, or pathologies like sexual aversion disorder. But it's different situations”. It's true that many asexuals say they've experienced discomfort and isolation, “but we need to understand if the problem arises from the lack of desire, or from social pressures”, Bogaert says. “I'm not saying that we shouldn't help those who want to change, but we need to proceed with caution: we live in a hyper-sexualized world, where we create many expectations that can lead to discomfort for those who don't identify with this model. Today sexual desire is also medicalized for marketing reasons”.

Needless to remind that just a few decades ago, at least for women, showing disinterest in sex was normal, even requested. “We mustn't give for granted that society has always showed the same interest toward sex, and that it has always depicted it positively” Bogaert goes on. Even the theory of the evolutionary basis of desire isn't fully convincing: “We are a sexual species, and most people reproduce sexually, but this isn't the reproductive way of all species” the researcher says.

On the other hand, some studies show how this phenomenon has some biological predisposition, linked to markers similar to those found in homosexuals – linked to factors like left-handedness, fingers' length or the birth order in one's family – or more in general to prenatal hormonal exposition. But we need to keep in mind that there are many variables, and that circumstances play an important role in enforcing or weakening these predispositions: “There are many things we don't know about sexual orientations, and our way to analyze sexual behaviours is still conditioned by a male-oriented view of sexuality”, Bogaert says.

In the meantime, DSM V, in the chapter regarding desire and arousal disorder, added a note stating that the issue isn't to be considered pathological if it can be identified with asexuality: “We've been in contact with the group working on sexual dysfunctions for the DSM V, to give our contribution”, Hinderliter says. “I believe the solution we arrived at is a step forward, especially considering the difficulty of defining diagnostic criteria in such a complex area”.

---

SIDE COLUMNS:

Sexless lives – famous asexuals
Is it hard to imagine that you can live without being interested in sex? Yet in literature there are loved characters in whose lives sex doesn't play any role. Like Sherlock Holmes, almost considered a “hero” of the category to the point that there are entire websites dedicated to asexual fanfictions that see him as main character.
But there are also other heroes – from television in this case – who show signs of asexuality, like Doctor Who and Sheldon Cooper, one of the main characters from The Big Bang Theory. Let's not forget famous people who identified more or less openly as asexual, like the American stylist and actor Tim Gunn, the English singer Morrisey or the actress Janeane Garofalo, appeared in famous TV shows like 24 or Criminal Minds, who all made open declarations regarding their inclinations.
While we can only speculate about people of the past, like Isaac Newton, Peter Pan's author James Matthew Barrie, the critic John Ruskin, the writer Emily Bronte: it's hard to say what may have been really behind a choice of chastity or a white marriage. But these lists show that imagining a life without sex is possible.

MORE
-Bogaert, A.F., “Understanding Asexuality”, Rowman & Littlefield Pub, 2012. The most recent essay of the Canadian sexologist who “discovered” the world of asexuality discusses what Bogaert himself defines as a new sexual orientation.

-Pascali, M., “Asexuality. Social genesis and juridic profiles”, Giappichelli editor, 2010. The author, sociologist and jurist, wonders if asexuality can be a reason to null marriages, or to charge guilty in cases of separations. Or if it can be an obstacle for adoption or IVF. Without counting the possible interpretation by canon law.

De Tonnac, J.P., “The Asexual Revolution. How to live a life 'without'”, Castelvecchi, 2007. A French journalist explores the world of those who give up sex because of inclination, but also because of choice pr because bothered by a hyper-sexualized society.

[michaeld]

Thanks ith for the translation and thanks to Paola for writing this article!

[Guest]

I got my own copy today :D

Awesome work, everyone!

[thylacine]

good article

[gypsy_princess]

i need to buy it then!

i never spend my money on magazines (unless there's a super important article about a celebrity i love) but i will but this one :)

[ithaca]

i need to buy it then!

i never spend my money on magazines (unless there's a super important article about a celebrity i love) but i will but this one :)

This is actually a very cool magazine! It costs a little more than the ones about celebrities, but it's far more interesting :p Scientific experiments and all :o

[gypsy_princess]

i need to buy it then!

i never spend my money on magazines (unless there's a super important article about a celebrity i love) but i will but this one :)

This is actually a very cool magazine! It costs a little more than the ones about celebrities, but it's far more interesting :P Scientific experiments and all :o

i've actually never heard of it, but i'm interested in science and i think i'll buy it more often :)

[ithaca]

i need to buy it then!

i never spend my money on magazines (unless there's a super important article about a celebrity i love) but i will but this one :)

This is actually a very cool magazine! It costs a little more than the ones about celebrities, but it's far more interesting :P Scientific experiments and all :o

i've actually never heard of it, but i'm interested in science and i think i'll buy it more often :)

Ok just remember that Mente & Cervello is a separate magazine even though it's part of the big Le Scienze. If you buy "Le Scienze" you won't find the article, you need to buy M&C, September issue :)

[marki]

Super awesome! Thanks for taking the time to put in English!

[Glitter Spock]

I'm really happy about the exposure asexuality is getting in Italian media. Thank you, ith, for sharing and translating!

[Satin]

Nice article, even going as far as stating how diverse the group of asexuals is (even grey A is mentioned) and explaining how it's different from disorders and why asexuals may well suffer in our society due to pressure to have sex and engage in relationships - hence this article gives a very clear idea on why visibility is important. I'm also quite surprised the DSM added a note regarding asexuality, that's very impressive and a step into the right direction.

Thank you for translating the article. It might be a good idea to show this to people doubting asexuality.