The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality

by Julie Sondra Decker

“Coming to identify as asexual requires that individuals reject a widely-held cultural ideology of sexuality as biologically based and ubiquitous. [ . . . ] [T]hey draw attention to an oft overlooked social assumption—that all humans possess sexual desire.” (Scherrer K., 2008)

Asexuality is a sexual orientation because it describes a person’s pattern of attraction (to no one). Asexuality is a mature state because it isn’t a term for what a person is before they develop their sexual orientation. Asexuality is a description because it is a word for explaining an experience, not a decision or a choice. Asexuality is a healthy status because it is not considered a mental or physical illness to not desire, pursue, or feel attraction that leads to sex. And it is a reasonable possibility because feeling sexual attraction or inclination toward others is not the default.

“To concede that there are two forms of desire—cross-sex and same-sex desire—is to recognize the analytic possibility of at least four kinds of persons. These include: (1) those who harbor cross-sex but not same-sex desire; (2) those who harbor same-sex but not cross-sex desire; (3) those who harbor both forms of desire; and (4) those who harbor neither form of desire. Yet even those who acknowledge that orientation arrays itself on a continuum spanning the first three categories often ignore the fact that the continuum fails to represent the fourth.” (Yoshino, 2000)

I recently walked away from a friendship with a person I cared very much about (and continue to care a lot about) because my emotional needs were not being met, largely because she didn’t seem to think my company was worth seeking out. I do need to feel like a relationship has a similar level of affection on both ends to feel comfortable.” —SCIATRIX, WRITING FROM FACTOR X

An anonymous gray-asexual panromantic person’s perspective on the gray areas: “Imagine full sexuality as a glass of soda and asexuality as a glass of water. To the person with the water, it tastes like plain water, and they’re happy with that as long as soda-drinkers don’t insist they should like soda. Likewise, the people with various flavors of soda will be happy with them and be able to identify them as soda, even though some of them might be ‘mixed flavors’ of varying percentages that are hard to pick out. Some may even have some ice melted in them, but as long as it’s not much, well, it’s still a soda. But my case is like having a glass of water with a little bit of soda poured into it. When I taste it, I can’t really tell what’s off about it. It doesn’t seem like just water, but it’s definitely not a cup of soda. I might not even be able to identify the off taste as soda. Maybe it’s not! Some-times I think I taste it more than others. But I’m not sure I like the taste of it. It’s confusing, and it might be easier if I just had a glass of plain water, but I don’t really have any control over that. But overall, I still feel like what I have is much more like water than soda, especially since I can’t always even identify the added ingredient as soda. So I’ll call it water. Just not plain water.”

Any mixture of sexual orientation and romantic orientation can exist, though asexual communities are probably the places you’ll see it the most because they tend to be one of the major groups that almost always needs to separate their sexual orientation from their romantic orientation to make sense of it.

Communication is key, and non-asexual people should attempt to understand that asexual people are frequently led to believe they are undesirable and unworthy of love. They may need some extra reassurance if their asexuality or level of sexual willingness is not a dealbreaker; they may secretly fear their non-asexual partners will eventually leave them over this. Considering it’s common in relationships to have different sexual appetites, quirks, desires, kinks, and preferences, all relationships contain this element of compromise to some degree.

Sometimes asexual people get married and tolerate sex they may not desire because they’ve been taught they’re supposed to want it, believing it’s just part of being a good spouse. There have been incidents in asexual communities of married asexual people finding out about asexuality and realizing “Hey, lots of people have felt the way I feel,” and it may lead them to negotiate their relationship differently. Unfortunately this does sometimes lead to marital strife and subsequent breakups, but this is generally only in the case of people who insist their (newly discovered) asexual partner must continue to have sex against their will or as part of a perceived “duty” in the marriage.

If a critic argues that the relationship was “happy” when the asexual person felt required to hide and be ashamed of their lack of desire, that critic is suggesting that only one person—the non-asexual person—actually has desires that matter in the relationship.

partnered people should be aware that not all sex therapists or relationship therapists recognize asexuality as an orientation, and it’s possible they may approach less willing partners as the only “problem children.” If someone’s relationship therapy focuses entirely on how to help an asexual person tolerate or initiate sex more often to satisfy someone with a larger sexual appetite, it is not balanced therapy. Pushing someone into unwanted sex and telling them they should like it is abuse. Unless the asexual person has expressed a wish to cultivate an interest in or a tolerance for sexual activity, this is not appropriate and they should find another therapist.

Asexual people are not the same as heterosexual people who aren’t having sex, which is what some misunderstand them as. There is a difference between an abstinent heterosexual person and an asexual person: abstinence is a practice (a choice), while asexuality is an orientation (not a choice—a familiar distinction for LGBTQ folks).

Some will say that enduring invisibility isn’t the same as “oppression”—however, what happens as a result of systematic erasure, verbal abuse, and misunderstanding can be oppressive.

Non-LGBT asexual people aren’t saying they have an identical or worse experience when compared to LGBTQ people. They are saying they often feel omitted, erased, and excluded and that they move through life facing consistent challenges to their sexual orientation.