Personally, I Prefer Strawberry

In response to Tuesday's video, Ash was chatting about flavours of asexuality. Saying you're "asexual" can be a vague statement. There are plenty of other videos on YouTube - I've watched several, but they aren't hard to find - as well as various posts on Fetlife, on the AVEN forums, on blogs, and all sorts of other places talking about peoples specific forms of asexuality. I feel occasionally like a broken record with the "well, it depends..." line, but there really is a range of asexual flavours. Merriam-Webster (who would have thunk I'd use a dictionary in my blog?) defines asexual - for the relevant choice at least - as simply "devoid of sexuality". It can actually be referring directly to the person, or indirectly to them through their relationship preference; both would fit here.

Please note that, for purposes of this article, I'm lumping asexuals, demisexuals, "grey-A"s, and others on the asexuality spectrum together under the blanket term "asexual"; the discussion applies equally to all. After all, I self-identify as demi-sexual - I enjoy blow jobs and sucking nipples occasionally too much to be asexual - but it's simpler to use the one term than repeatedly trying to call them all out. I only ask you to temporarily forgive my laziness.

All the technical aspects aside... From my point of view asexuals really break down into four categories:

• Those who have low or no sex drive.
• Those who feel little or no attraction, thus having no sexual objects regardless of sex drive.
• Those who have a sex drive, but channel it into some other act than intercourse or target of affection other than humans.
• Those who have a sex drive, but avoid sex due to aversion of one sort or another.

This isn't an exact science; for my own sake, I know I happen to fit into two of these - I have an unusually low sex drive, and a significant amount of the sex drive I have is tightly tied or channeled into my sadistic tendencies. Let's just hit on these each quickly, however.

Unsurprisingly the majority of asexuals seem to be those with little or no sex drive. Detractors and disbelievers frequently point out that diminished sex drive can be a medical problem; it's a side effect of some anti-depressants, for example, and can also be a symptom of hormone imbalances. There's nothing that says, however, that anyone who's perfectly healthy must therefore have a sex drive. Noone blinks at two people with sex drives at different levels, one above average and one below average... There's no particular reason why, when it reaches a certain level, it has to magically become a different animal; their sex drive is simply low enough to cause disinterest.

In a lot of ways this is both the hardest flavour to handle and also the biggest cause of many of asexuality's problems. Other flavours have a reason that's easy to latch onto; this flavour, that reason is simply "...Meh." The idea of romantic attraction without sexual attraction is too alien to most of the population; the lack of any graspable reason behind it just overwhelms peoples' little minds.

The second flavour I called out is actually the most rare from my experience and research - those who don't feel any attraction at all, making sexuality sortof superfluous or a purely logical/practical matter. This is the category where aromantic asexuals commonly fall (not to make too many generalizations - aromantics can be asexual as well). Sex simply loses context if you don't have relationships at all in a form where it's relevant - either recreationally or procreationally.

The third flavour are those where their sex drive exists, but is not aimed in the same direction as everyone else's. In my own case - and this has caused me no end of trouble over the years - my sex drive is actually far more closely linked to my sadism than it is to... Well... Sex. This category can include a lot of asexual fetishists and kinksters, which I suppose is true of me as well; if your arousal is too closely linked to that fetish or kink, either there can be real physical issues with staying aroused during vanilla sex, or the sex itself is simply... Not interesting. This can be upsetting for people to try and deal with, both the asexual in question and their prospective partner, and frequently requires some work and negotiation for both (or all, to be fair) of the people involved to get what they want and need. It's all too easy to end up being seen (or seeing yourself) as broken, rather than just... Different. Having someone to support you through that type of attitude is critical.

The last flavour I tend to consider is those who have specific aversions to sex, regardless of their sex drive or anything else. This can be almost anything from all over the board. Some people find genitals or sex icky and disgusting; some people find it embarassing for any number of reasons. Aversion to sex can be the result of trauma, physical or psychological - the result of injury, surgery, sexual assault, or something else. Severe vulvodynia or other medical conditions can make sex simply impossible because of the level of discomfort or pain caused.

The biggest problem with this category is that most asexuals falling into it have the aversion thrust on them by something outside their control, and it's very easy to see them as victims. Other people may very well see them that way, but the asexual may see themselves that way as well. It's critical to have a clear understanding of how it affects them and reacting accordingly. Most importantly understand that whether or not it's self-inflicted or just bad luck and fate, whether it's something they're in treatment for or something where treatment is impossible or simply doesn't apply, whether they're comfortable with it themselves or whether they see themselves as a victim, take them seriously. If the aversion is strong enough for them to overcome all their social conditioning in favour of sex... It's real, even if you think it's only real to them.

Whatever the flavour and whatever the cause, the most important aspect is that the people in question self-identify that way. It's not necessarily the product of anything being wrong; it's not necessarily a problem; it's not necessarily something that needs to be fixed... Sometimes it's just the way they are.

As an interesting footnote to close out, New York refers to asexuality directly in law: the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA) specifically calls out "heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, or asexuality, whether actual or perceived" as protected sexual orientations. It was the first (not the only; Vermont apparently added it later) US legislation I was able to find referring to asexuality, though Wikipedia calls out Brazil as protecting asexuality through law since 1999. I'm not 100% sure I agree with their classification - based on personal experience I don't think asexuality is the same type of descriptor as hetero-, homo-, bi-, or pansexual; you can be asexual but heteroromantic, or asexual and panromantic, or whatever. Either way, it's nice to know it gets some official recognition and - more importantly - protection.