This is not the first time I have written about this, nor do I expect it to be the last. This time the trigger was participating in a podcast about sexuality and realizing that though I had written about the kink/asexual spectrum connection a bunch, I haven’t really explained why the two are complimentary in a rigorous enough sense. I also wanted to do some sort of typed up summary of another phenomena, where after talking about asexuality or how it works I find a lot of folks, kinksters in particular, find the definition surprisingly resonates with them.
Needless to say, this got long.
Explaining asexuality always is posited on needing to explain how sex works in a broader, global sense. As I have written in other blog posts, most folks tend to define asexuality in a very rigid binary, imagining a person with no erotic desire or inclination. This can be part of being asexual, but it really isn’t the only part.
Attraction (that’s inspired erotic desire for another person) is not the same thing as arousal. The core of asexual identity presumes not so much whether or not you are capable of arousal, but how you experience attraction.
The problem with telling people this is that asexuality hides in plain sight. For example, homosexuality tends to stand out because the behavior associated: attempting to get into relationships or have sex with people in a way that breaks normative social barriers, not having sex is the baseline human state. Likewise, being immersed in stuff that could or could not be interpreted sexually (e.g. artistic nudes, music about really, really wanting someone else in a body responsive way) is the background radiation of human cultural existence. And, having sex with people you are in no way attracted to is so common as to not be considered remarkable. It’s generally regarded as unfortunate, but some of the most conservative societies can be very into compulsory sex done out of a sense of duty rather than inherent horniness.
So, if you go around not being into what your society (or subculture) generally identifies as ok to be sexy, as long as you are willing to perform the behaviors associated with your social role your internal thoughts on the matter are going to be treated as trivial or specific to you. The folks who absolutely won’t or can’t cooperate with the expected behaviours are treated like a pitiable minority, either eccentrics, shirkers or people with a medical issue, be it physical or psychological.
You, reader, who is probably a more sensitive soul, almost certainly adopts the position that nobody should be compelled to fuck anyone. You probably feel incredibly sympathetic – someone should help those poor people not do sex! And, you are generally able to accept these people fit the label of Asexual. Otherwise, if you think about this at all, you generally only do so in the context of biology, where some living things clone themselves.
Here’s the current assumptions around how the typical way people are sexually wired work:
Humans are expected to default to being attracted to a fair number of whatever the gender(s) they are into. They are expected to be this way sans anything other than that person existing and them being aware of that fact, or maybe getting a good look at certain bits of them or the whole body. That’s being allosexual, the opposite of asexual.
Then there’s anyone who fits the following: they experience attraction like this not at all, sporadically or require some additional factor. These people are all on the asexual spectrum.
| Allosexual | Attracted to people reliably without other modifiers other than being whatever gender(s) matter to you and some influence of taste. |
| Asexual | Attraction to others is absent, sporadic, rare or requires some other factor, such as an intimate connection. |