Mashable is celebrating Pride Month by exploring the modern LGBTQ world, from the people who make up the community to the spaces where they congregate, both online and off.
Pride is a time for embracing one’s identity, for shouting it loudly from the rooftops because we should, all of us, be proud of who we are.
But for a small part of the LGBTQIA+ community — the A specifically — it continues to present a quandary. The asexual community, named for its lack of interest in sex, struggles to navigate a movement defined by sexual attraction.
“On the one hand we have this sex-positive culture which is wonderful and liberating, but there is a story that’s missing, and what’s missing is not everyone is sexual,” said Phillip L. Hammack, professor of psychology and director of the Sexual and Gender Diversity Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“Variations in the levels of sexual attraction or the conditions under which people experience sexual desire is a normal form of human diversity, and it’s not one that’s been represented historically,” he said.
Roughly 1 percent of the population identifies as asexual, but there’s a spectrum to lack of sexual interest just as there is for sexual interest. Some people identify as demisexual (interested in sex but only when there's a strong emotional connection) or as graysexual (moving fluidly between asexual and sexual depending on the circumstances). Sexual and romantic identities are also distinct; a person may identify as asexual, but not aromantic (uninterested in emotional relationships), and therefore pursue romantic relationships with little or no physical component.
It’s useful to think of human sexuality as a bell curve, with the middle covering average human sex drive and the ends accounting for both high and low sexual tendencies, said Oberlin College assistant professor K.J. Cerankowski, editor of Asexuality, Feminist, and Queer Perspective and author of the paper “Spectacular Asexuals: Media Visibility and Cultural Fetish."
“Some people want to have sex completely divested from any emotional attachment,” Cerankowski said, citing one-night stands and hookup culture. “And then you have people maybe on the other end of that spectrum who only have sex within committed relationships or committed monogamous relationships, and then you have anything in between.”
Because of the neutral nature of asexuality, though, it can be challenging for some to place it within the same movement of sex positivity that includes classifications like homosexual or bisexual -- identities literally named for sexual attraction.
“Historically, we thought about sexual diversity in terms of the gender to which you’re attracted to,” said Hammack. “It really kind of framed how both the culture and the science evolved, and the problem with that is that it didn’t capture the full range of people’s experience of intimacy.”
One demi, Dustin Fowler, told Mashable that people have assumed that being on the asexual spectrum means he never wants physical contact, even with friends, or that he doesn’t want a relationship. “We're people just like members of any other community with individual wants and needs,” he said.
Regardless of where they stand on the asexual spectrum, individuals who see themselves in this community aren’t represented in a media and culture that’s striving to embrace and destigmatize sex. Sex positivity is a long overdue movement meant to celebrate sex: Everyone should be able to have it, whenever and with whomever they want. But for some people that means maybe never with maybe no one.
“There's a lot of normalization in current popular media that celebrates sex and promiscuity while shaming people who aren't having sex or are virgins,” said Fowler.
A side effect of showing and talking about sex whenever we can is that we alienate those who view sex differently.
"To me, sex positivity means celebrating with someone when they want to have sex and celebrating when they know themselves well enough that they’re comfortable not.”
“As a society, we hear sex positivity and immediately think sex is wonderful and everyone should be having it,” Jenae Williams, who identifies as demisexual, told Mashable. Williams described notions that anyone who doesn’t want to have sex is prude or detrimental to sex positivity. “You become anti-sex positive when that’s not the case. To me, sex positivity means celebrating with someone when they want to have sex and celebrating when they know themselves well enough that they’re comfortable not.”
“To truly have a sex positive moment is to be able to address that whole range of human sexuality and sexual desire and experience,” Cerankowski added. “When you have a sex positivity that says yes, sex is great, no slut-shaming, but also if you don’t want to have sex that’s OK, too. We should be able to say that, and we should also talk about consent, and we should talk about how some people don’t want sex and some people do want sex.”
For Cerankowski, this kind of sex positivity is more inclusive of asexuality. "There are a lot of asexual people who would identify as sex positive with that way of thinking of sex positivity.”
People who are asexual encounter derision early on. In a 2015 Modern Love column for the New York Times(opens in a new tab), Kim Kaletsky described the confusion of high school sex education, which assumes its entire audience is clamoring to have sex and should therefore be responsible.
“Along the way, we heard plenty of assurances that it’s perfectly OK to not have sex,” Kaletsky wrote. “But nowhere in that lesson did I hear the words, ‘It’s OK to not want sex.’”
Media and culture tell us that sex is “normal.” It’s normal for hormonal teenagers to feel the impulse, for adults to act on it, and for all of us to pursue and explore. But in destigmatizing sex and reinforcing that it’s OK, the message can often be interpreted as sex being the only answer to a question some people aren’t even asking.
The recent history of the asexual spectrum
Asexuality as a sexual orientation didn’t really enter mainstream discourse until the early 2000s, in conjunction with two main things, said Hammack. First came the establishment of AVEN (the Asexual Visibility and Education Network) by David Jay in 2001. Inextricably linked to its rise was the internet. Asexual people around the country found each other via forums, message boards, and online connections that turned into real-life ones. But despite this rise, the asexual community was -- and still is -- often regarded with confusion.
In the 2012 documentary A(Sexual)(opens in a new tab), Jay and a group from AVEN march for the first time in San Francisco Pride in 2009, where the camera catches visible skepticism from onlookers. One person says “that’s scary,” and another asks the AVEN group to stand 20 feet away from them.
This bolsters Hammack’s assertion that it’s difficult for asexual people to find space in the queer community, which tends to be sex positive and sometimes hypersexual (again, that's OK).
“There’s been a rejection of asexual people on the grounds of like ‘Hey, you’re talking about something different. Don’t try to latch onto us,’” he said. Yet as a sexual minority by definition, asexual people fit into the larger queer community.
Jay’s flyers at San Francisco Pride that year offered information about asexuality – not propaganda for conversion. They were meant to promote acceptance. Just as heterosexual people can be allies for Pride and the queer community, people on the asexual spectrum can, and regularly do, support others’ enthusiasm for sex. That should go both ways.
Asexuality in media
Every single person interviewed for this piece cited Bojack Horseman as a positive representation of asexuality. For years, the show built up to this realization for Todd Chavez (Aaron Paul), whose lack of sexual interest stood in stark juxtaposition to Bojack’s existentially charged libido. In Season 4, he describes himself as asexual.
As a surreal adult cartoon, Bojack has a niche audience. But Todd’s asexuality was a critical step in diverse sexual representation, one which Vox’s Sara Ghaleb(opens in a new tab) (who identifies as asexual and aromantic), described as “huge.”
“[When] you never see anyone like yourself reflected in media, it can feel like you don’t exist,” Ghaleb wrote in 2018. Not only did Todd find peace in his own identity, but he found a community, and Bojack readily accepted him for who he is.
When trying to think of other popular and sensitive examples of on-screen asexuality, however, everyone I spoke to came up short. AVEN has a master list(opens in a new tab) tracking asexuality in fiction, which you could read through in under five minutes (it's also dominated by literary examples).
Early mentions of asexuality on television often occurred in talk shows. In the early 2000s, Jay appeared on major network talk shows, doing interviews that entailed smiling through serious aspersions about whether asexuality was real or valid. A House episode from 2012 depicted an asexual couple, but in the end revealed that one of them had a brain tumor dulling their sex drive and the other was in fact pretending to be asexual to stay in the relationship. Problematic doesn’t even begin to cover it.
“I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a demisexual character on TV or in movies,” Williams said. “Every single character I’ve seen is either gay, straight, or bi, and ready to hop into bed at a moment’s notice. Which can explain why it took me so long to learn about demisexuality.”
To that end, Williams said she often tells people she’s bisexual (she actually identifies as biromantic), because “it’s a lot easier for them to understand.” Adam Winney, who wrote an informational song(opens in a new tab) about asexuality in 2016, agreed, explaining that he’s far more vocal about being interested in other men than saying he’s demisexual.
“Growing up, I truly believed the importance of the stakes involved in each American Pie movie I absorbed,” said Winney. “With a majority of the population being sexual, it makes sense to market towards them. However, there’s a responsibility we have on what stories we tell to each age group. I’m not saying we need a show about an asexual pilot with a gambling addiction called Ace of Hearts [Writer’s Note: Or maybe we do???], we just need more stories that aren’t telling kids they need to hook up now or be forever lame!”
How to move forward
Hammack explained that simply having words like asexual, graysexual, and demisexual is crucial for people to navigate the complex climate of modern relationships. We didn’t need the language when dating was courting and marriage was the only form of commitment. We didn’t need it when sex was taboo in media and culture and mostly discussed behind closed doors. But we do need it today.
Hammack’s research shows(opens in a new tab) that Generation Z doesn't think of gender and sex like their predecessors, and that young people are the most receptive to new ideas about sexuality. That's a good thing for the entire LGBTQIA+ movement, because as young people grow up and influence society and culture, both will be implicitly more accepting of different identities – including shades of asexuality.
Twenty years ago, it was about visibility; now it’s about understanding.
As with all minority stories, the road to acceptable representation for the asexual spectrum is a journey. Education and conversation go a long way in decreasing stigma. Twenty years ago, it was about visibility; now it’s about understanding.
“Just letting people know that it's an option is huge,” Fowler said. “Before I knew demisexuality was a thing, I felt like I was broken for a really long time. If media can make one person know that their way has a name and people in that community, I think that is life-changing.”
