Relationships June 23, 2017
It's not as complicated as you think.
While sexuality is on a spectrum, each form of sexuality also has its own spectrum. The asexuality spectrum isn’t always black and white.
So we’re here with the asexuality breakdown to help you understand what makes someone asexual and what doesn’t.
The Asexual Visibility & Education Network defines an asexual person as “a person who does not experience sexual attraction.”
The asexual spectrum has three identities: sexual, asexual and a gray area in between that can be either gray-asexual or grey-sexuality.
Demisexuality also falls in this gray area. People who fall in the gray area identify with the area between sexuality and asexuality. This means they occasionally experience attraction but very rarely and only under specific conditions.
Well, the asexual spectrum is also split up into sexual orientation and romantic orientation.
This spectrum contains five parts. The first type of romantic orientation is heteroromantic. These are people who are romantically attracted to someone of the opposite gender or sex. Homoromantic people are romantically attracted to someone of the same sex or gender is homoromantic. Biromantic people are romantically attracted to two sexes or genders.
People who experience romantic attraction to other people despite gender or sex are panromantic. Lastly, people who experience little to no romantic attraction to other people are aromantic. Aromantic people are okay with friendships and non-romantic relationships.
People who are sexual can identify with any form of romantic orientation and vice versa.
Although asexual people don’t experience sexual attraction, they can experience other forms of attraction. This is split up into four types of attraction: romantic attraction, aesthetic attraction, sensual attraction and sexual attraction.
According to ASVEN, romantic attraction is the desire to have a romantic relationship with another person. Aesthetic attraction is the attraction to someone’s appearance without it being sexual or romantic. Sensual attraction refers to the desire to have physical non-sexual contact with someone such as affectionate touching. Lastly, sexual attraction is the desire to have sexual contact with someone.
The best way to understand asexuality is to hear the experiences of people who identify as asexual.
In this BuzzFeed video, people who are asexual answer questions about their asexuality.
These three people cover topics from celibacy, coming out, sexual arousal, masturbation, having sex and romantic orientation.
They explain that asexuality is not the same as being celibate. While celibacy is a choice, sexual orientation is not.
When asked about their sexual arousal, they explained that just because they don’t experience sexual attraction, does not mean they’re not capable of having sex or masturbating.
They covered the concept of why asexual people come out by explaining the importance of letting their friends and family truly understand their identities as individual people.
When asked about the difference between asexuality and romantic orientation, they described how asexual people can fall anywhere on the romantic orientation spectrum.
Lastly, they added the importance of having their sexuality acknowledged. When people don’t understand someone’s sexual orientation, they tend to make assumptions about that person.
Ultimately, the asexual spectrum identities can vary for each person, and only you can choose to identify as asexual or not.
