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Coming to an Asexual Identity: Negotiating Identity, Negotiating Desire

Kristin S. ScherrerView all authors and affiliations
Volume 11, Issue 5
https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460708094269

Abstract

Sexuality is generally considered an important aspect of selfhood. Therefore, individuals who do not experience sexual attraction, and who embrace an asexual identity, are in a unique position to inform the social construction of sexuality. This study explores the experiences of asexual individuals utilizing open ended internet survey data from 102 self-identified asexual people. In this article I describe several distinct aspects of asexual identities: the meanings of sexual, and therefore, asexual behaviors, essentialist characterizations of asexuality, and lastly, interest in romance as a distinct dimension of sexuality. These findings have implications not only for asexual identities, but also for the connections of asexuality with other marginalized sexualities.

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1.
1. Notable exceptions include Bogaert, 2004 and 2006; Prause and Graham, 2007 and Rothblum and Brehony, 1993.
2.
2. While there has been little attention to asexual identities, historically there has been attention to a lack of desire for sex in medical and mental health literatures (APA, 2000; Ellis, 1908; Kraft-Ebbing, 1886).
3.
3. The AVEN website also instructs its viewers:
4.
There is no litmus test to determine if someone is asexual. Asexuality is like any other identity — at its core, it's just a word that people use to help figure themselves out. If at any point someone finds the word asexual useful to describe themselves, we encourage them to use it for as long as it makes sense to do so.
5.
While this quote may be interpreted as promoting more essentialist understandings of asexuality, it illustrates that this is not the only option offered to AVEN's visitors.
6.
4. In this analysis all responses of queer, gay, lesbian, bisexual, bi, bi-curious and pansexual identities were grouped together as queer. I chose queer as the umbrella term partly because many of my participants used the word queer as an umbrella term for non-heterosexual identities and communities, and partly because of my discomfort with using the term homosexual as an umbrella term given its historical association with the medicalization of same-sex desires and behaviors.
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5. The remaining 12 participants did not respond to this question.
8.
6. While I am speaking broadly about sexual minorities and marginalized sexualities, I by no means wish to minimize the differences between these sexualities. Yet in order to make generalizations, for the purposes of this article I am collapsing differences to draw attention to the broader similarities and differences associated with asexuality. Future research may wish to explore distinctions between asexuality and other marginalized sexualities.
9.
7. For symbols of asexuality I invite you to explore the AVEN website at www.asexuality.org.

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