AsexualityArchive - Asexuality: A Brief Introduction

I am asexual.

I dont feel sexually attracted to anyone.

Not men. Not women.

Thats all it is.

Im not gay.

Im not straight.

Im not bi.

Im none of the above.

Asexuality is real.

Its not fake.

Its not a hormone problem.

Its not a way of running from a bad relationship.

Its not a physical condition.

Its not an attention grab.

Its not an inability to have sex.

Its not an inability to love.

Its not some way to be special.

I dont care if you have sex.

I dont care if you dont.

I dont want to shame you.

I dont want to convert you.

I dont want to recruit you.

I just want you to understand me.

I was probably in high school when I first realized that I was different.

It was a sunny day in the springtime. We were just coming out of the last chills of winter, but we hadnt yet started into the oppressive heat of the Nevada summer. On a day like this, many of the girls in the school would decide to begin working on their tans on the lawn in front of the school.

On this particular day, I was with a friend who decided he wanted to check the weather on the way to our typical lunch gathering point outside our next class. Checking the weather meant taking a path across the front lawn, even though that route was probably three times as long as the most direct path.

As we passed a concrete sculpture in the middle of the lawn, one of the girls lying on it called out a hello to me. She was in one of my classes, but I barely knew her. I nodded politely and kept walking. When we entered the hall on the far side of the lawn, my friend stopped me.

Oh, wow, the weather was so hot today! You KNOW her?

Yeah, shes in my PE class.

Shes so hot! Why didnt you stop and talk more?

What about? Badminton?

Does it matter? Didnt you see what she was wearing?

At that moment, the whole situation seemed odd to me. I knew that the purpose of the walk was to ogle the sunbathing girls, but it wasnt until right then that I realized that I had no interest in actually ogling the sunbathing girls. Moments earlier, I had looked right at a hot, well-endowed blonde, in a tight white shirt and black shorts that ended at mid-thigh, and didnt really pay any attention to her. That is not the reaction of a typical 15 year old boy.

I didnt think much of it at the time. It didnt launch me into an identity crisis. It didnt leave me wondering if I was actually gay. However, it did make me aware that sex really was a thing and that other people were more interested in it than I was. I had always been on the outside of all of the locker room talk and rumors about who was doing what with whom. The other boys would talk about their dreams of making it with so and so, but I never felt the same. This event made me look those conversations in a different light.

The closest I came to having a girlfriend in high school was the geeky redheaded girl in my math class. She was smart, liked my writing, had a subversive sense of humor, and wanted to save the world when she grew up. I never bothered asking her out, because I could never think of anything wed do together if she said yes. I was satisfied just sitting next to her for an hour a day and occasionally talking about homework. I never secretly fantasized about her, I never pictured her naked, I never even thought about kissing her. When I did think about what shed be like in bed, I always imagined her in comfy flannel pajamas, sleeping soundly.

It wasnt until after college that I got a girlfriend. Everyone else thought she was a knockout stunner, but the strongest word I could use to describe her looks was cute. She hated that. Shed get upset that I didnt call her hot, but I couldnt call her hot, because I didnt feel that she was. Shed send me half-naked pictures or wear skimpy clothing in an effort to get me going, but nothing ever worked.

It took great effort on her part to convince me to do pretty much anything sexual with her. It wasnt resistance or fear, I just wasnt all that interested in taking part. And when I finally did get to rounding the bases, I had no idea what I was doing. For much of the physical side of our relationship, I felt entirely out of place, like Id shown up at a 5-star restaurant wearing a t-shirt and sandals. Curiosity drove me more than any particular urges. I wasnt particularly enthralled by seeing her naughty bits. Touching her breasts was about as exciting as touching her shoulder. I distinctly remember feeling bored in the middle of sex once. That is not the reaction of a typical 22 year old man.

Eventually, I started to describe myself as Straight, but not very good at it. But even that didnt feel quite right. Calling myself straight, even with a qualification, implied that I had some sort of heterosexual tendencies to speak of. I didnt. I saw sex all around me, but never had any desire to take part. I never looked at anyone and thought about getting it on with them. It had been years since Id had sex, and it didnt bother me at all. Whenever my coworkers started talking about sex, it was like they were talking about a sport I didnt know how to play. I even thought that porn was dull and repetitive.

One day, I watched a sex scene in a TV show that ended up changing my life. Not because it was hot, not because it was erotic, or arousing, or passionately charged, or any of that stuff. It was because it made no sense at all to me. And thats when it struck me: I never looked at sex in the same way that anyone else around me ever had. Other people liked it. Wanted it. Craved it. Chased it. Thrived on it. I couldnt care less. That is not the reaction of a typical 31 year old man.

That incident made it perfectly clear that I was different and always had been different. I wasnt straight, because women werent interesting to me. I wasnt gay, because men werent interesting, either. I wasnt repressed. I wasnt religious. Id never been abused. My equipment downstairs worked whenever I tested it. I wasnt showing any physical signs of a testosterone deficiency. So What was going on? I went searching for an answer. It didnt take long to find one:

I was asexual.

Asexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by a persistent lack of sexual attraction toward any gender.

Well now, that was a bit of a dull and technical definition, but its where I had to start. You see, thats really all asexuality is. Asexuality can be confusing, but if you just remember that definition, youll be fine.

Most people are familiar with the concept of sexual orientation. Sexual orientation describes who a person is sexually attracted to. For instance, heterosexual people are attracted to people of the opposite gender, homosexual people are attracted to people of the same gender, and bisexual people are attracted to people of either gender. Asexual people sort of fill in the gap in that list, and are not sexually attracted to anyone.

Its important to mention that sexual orientation does not describe behavior. Its possible for a heterosexual man to have had sex with other men because he was curious, and its possible for a bisexual woman to be a virgin. Similarly, its possible for an asexual to take part in sexual activity and still be asexual. Its about attraction, not action.

Like every other sexual orientation, asexuality is not a choice. We didnt just wake up one day and say You know what, Im tired of sex. Im not going to feel attracted to anyone anymore. Its not celibacy or abstinence. Most of us will tell you that we were born like this, and many of us went through periods in our lives where we wondered why we were so different than everyone else.