The science behind asexuality:
When researching asexuality, I found very little conclusive scientific research on the topic. I found more articles describing how little research has been done, rather than actual studies. This emphasizes how little awareness there is about asexuality. Andrew, a 28-year-old asexual man says "Most of the 'mainstream' responses you get are, basically, attempts to explain away asexuality and to not have to take it seriously. It'll be a long time before we have any idea as to what causes asexuality, and I think that causation has little relevance to validity." Our society focuses so much on scientific evidence, and even though there have not been many conclusive studies about the biology behind asexuality, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Here are some studies I did find:
- The Kinsey Scale = a rating system from 0 to 6 of an individual's sexual orientation. Alfred Kinsey included a category called "X" for individuals with "no socio-sexual contacts or reactions" and he placed 1.5% of the adult male population in this category in the mid-twentieth century.
- In 2004 Dr. Anthony Bogaert explored the asexual demographic in a series of studies. Bogaert believed that the asexual community was a lot larger than other studies have found it to be because people less experienced in sex are less likely to take sexual surveys. Bogaert's sexuality research has been scrutinized in the past, since he was involved in studies that linked race to sexual behaviors as if they had an evolutionary basis. This study was highly debated by the scientific community as potentially constituting a case of scientific racism.
- Myra T. Johnson wrote Asexual and Autoerotic Women: Two Invisible Groups, possibly the first paper explicitly devoted to human asexuality. Johnson defines asexuals as individuals "who, regardless of physical or emotional condition, actual sexual history, and marital status or ideological orientation, seem to prefer not to engage in sexual activity." She portrays asexual as "oppressed by a consensus that they are nonexistent," and "left behind by both the sexual revolution and the feminist movement". The existence of asexuals is either ignored or denied in society, and while we are learning to gain some awareness, the population seems to still be somewhat invisible.
- Michael D. Storms published a study in 1980 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in which he redifined the Kinsey scale by focusing only on fantasizing and eroticism, and excluded actual sexual behavior. Storms put hetero-eroticism and homo-eroticism on separate axes rather than at two ends of a single scale so that there was a clear distinction between bisexuality and asexuality. He concluded that many researchers following the Kinsey scale could be mis-categorizing asexual individuals as bisexual, because both were simply defined by a lack of preference for gender in sexual partners.
- Paula Nurius conducted the first study that gave empirical data about asexuals in 1983. She studied the correlation between sexual orientation and mental health. Several psychology and sociology university students were given multiple surveys, including four clinical well-being scales and a survey asking how frequently they engaged in various sexual activities and how often they would like to engage in those activities. Based on the results, respondents were given a score ranging from 0 to 100 for hetero-eroticism and from 0 to 100 for homo-eroticism. Students who scored lower than 10 on both were labeled "asexual."
- An experiment was conducted on sheep in 2001 that concluded that 2-3% of the animals studied had no apparent interest in mating with either sex and were asexual. They found that there were no abnormalities in their health or hormone levels.
- The Kinsey Scale = a rating system from 0 to 6 of an individual's sexual orientation. Alfred Kinsey included a category called "X" for individuals with "no socio-sexual contacts or reactions" and he placed 1.5% of the adult male population in this category in the mid-twentieth century.
- In 2004 Dr. Anthony Bogaert explored the asexual demographic in a series of studies. Bogaert believed that the asexual community was a lot larger than other studies have found it to be because people less experienced in sex are less likely to take sexual surveys. Bogaert's sexuality research has been scrutinized in the past, since he was involved in studies that linked race to sexual behaviors as if they had an evolutionary basis. This study was highly debated by the scientific community as potentially constituting a case of scientific racism.
- Myra T. Johnson wrote Asexual and Autoerotic Women: Two Invisible Groups, possibly the first paper explicitly devoted to human asexuality. Johnson defines asexuals as individuals "who, regardless of physical or emotional condition, actual sexual history, and marital status or ideological orientation, seem to prefer not to engage in sexual activity." She portrays asexual as "oppressed by a consensus that they are nonexistent," and "left behind by both the sexual revolution and the feminist movement". The existence of asexuals is either ignored or denied in society, and while we are learning to gain some awareness, the population seems to still be somewhat invisible.
- Michael D. Storms published a study in 1980 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in which he redifined the Kinsey scale by focusing only on fantasizing and eroticism, and excluded actual sexual behavior. Storms put hetero-eroticism and homo-eroticism on separate axes rather than at two ends of a single scale so that there was a clear distinction between bisexuality and asexuality. He concluded that many researchers following the Kinsey scale could be mis-categorizing asexual individuals as bisexual, because both were simply defined by a lack of preference for gender in sexual partners.
- Paula Nurius conducted the first study that gave empirical data about asexuals in 1983. She studied the correlation between sexual orientation and mental health. Several psychology and sociology university students were given multiple surveys, including four clinical well-being scales and a survey asking how frequently they engaged in various sexual activities and how often they would like to engage in those activities. Based on the results, respondents were given a score ranging from 0 to 100 for hetero-eroticism and from 0 to 100 for homo-eroticism. Students who scored lower than 10 on both were labeled "asexual."
- An experiment was conducted on sheep in 2001 that concluded that 2-3% of the animals studied had no apparent interest in mating with either sex and were asexual. They found that there were no abnormalities in their health or hormone levels.
"As humans, we are in general a social species, programmed to support each other in family units and communities and it seems often mob rule dictates what is normal, expected or acceptable behaviour. Especially in a modern society where the media projects these ideas into every facet of our lives, we are now educated very early on as to how life apparently is. No matter what our true feelings inside, we may now attempt to adhere to the ‘rules’ that we have collectively set ourselves." - Acer