Neither celibacy nor aversion to sex: asexuality and the prejudices that surround it

“Now we want to give names to nonsense that doesn't exist.”

This is one of the reactions that Ana J. Cáceres (Mylestring on social networks) has encountered when commenting that she is demisexual, that is, that sexual attraction towards other people is only awakened when there is an emotional bond.

Demisexuality is included within the umbrella of asexuality, an orientation that includes all those people who do not feel sexual attraction towards anyone or who need certain conditions for it to appear.

It's not nonsense: it is estimated that more than 78 million people in the world, 474,000 in Spain, are asexual.

These data are extracted from the study

Asexuality: prevalence and associated factors in a national probability sample

published in 2004 by psychologist Anthony F. Bogaert, in which he concluded that approximately 1% of the population is asexual.

Despite these figures, ignorance and prejudices continue to mark this orientation.

Although it is not a word that is completely foreign in popular language, it is confused with other concepts.

Asexuality as such is not included in the RAE, but it is asexual, which is defined as the absence of sex in the reproductive process, for example, the budding of plants or starfish, which from a small piece generates an individual. complete.

“Staying only with this definition means that there are professionals, doctors, biologists and even some sexologists, who continue to deny the existence of asexual people,” says Sergio Julve, educator and sexual therapist.

More information

Avoiding masturbation increases testosterone: new myths about a healthy and recommended practice

It is also confused with celibacy, which is the absence of sexual relations due to a person's decision and which does not imply that it is due to a lack of attraction.

Furthermore, in asexuality there can be sexual activity both in company and alone.

“What is most surprising is when you say that you are sexually active and even more so if you say that you like unconventional sex,” says Ana J. Cáceres.

Although this is your case and that of other asexual people, not all of them have relationships, which is why there is talk of an umbrella that includes different possibilities.

The confusions don't end there.

Martina González Veiga, psychosexologist and director of the sexology center With great pleasure!, explains that there are those who deny that there are people with this orientation, justifying that it is "because they have not yet found the right partner or because they have not experienced good sex."

To top it off, Julve adds more prejudices: asexuals “remain single or without a partner for life, they are incapable of feeling sexual pleasure, they cannot love, they have an aversion to sex or they are moralistic, they are traumatized or it is a stage.”

Ana, according to her experience, confirms this general ignorance: “There are those who say that if you don't want to have sex the first night it is because you have prejudices in your head because society makes us prudes and of course, you have to deconstruct yourself.

Coincidentally, the way to deconstruct yourself is by agreeing to have relationships with the person who gives you the speech, what things.”

Lack of knowledge within the group itself

Ana, who is 28 years old, says that it took her a long time to recognize herself within the asexual spectrum.

“I assumed that everyone felt the way I did and that it was

normal

.

Until I was 26, I didn't really consider it, since I wasn't even clear on the concepts related to asexuality and its entire spectrum."

A detail that caught his attention was that she had never felt a crush or love at first sight.

She has also felt sexual and romantic attraction very rarely throughout her life compared to other people around her.

In asexuality there can be sexual activity both in company and alone. Maria Korneeva (Getty Images)

This lack of knowledge, according to Sergio Julve, can have consequences on the person's experience of sexuality, especially during youth.

“If an individual does not feel sexual attraction in a society with little sexual education and in which a large part of young people's leisure is focused on maintaining the greatest number of sexual relations with the greatest number of people, believing that sexual desire must always be spontaneous and aimed at intercourse, as little emotional as possible, this person will try to imitate a sexuality that does not fit him, that he does not enjoy and very possibly goes through negative experiences in immature stages."

Confusing asexuality with low desire seems like a reasonable doubt.

To answer it, we would have to start by distinguishing that desire is not the same as attraction and that asexual people do not feel attraction, but they can feel desire to a greater or lesser degree.

“Sexual desire has to do with what motivates us to maintain a sexual relationship with someone, it answers the question 'why?'.

An asexual person may have desire, but it will not be sexual attraction for a person that activates it, but rather other things,” clarifies Martina González Veiga.

These other things can be a relationship, a situation or a specific practice, for example.

For her part, Julve adds another clue to find the answer to the question: “A good indicator that usually, although it does not guarantee, distinction, is time.

For example, a person who has sexual desire and loses it, for whatever reason, may have hypoactive sexual desire.

On the contrary, a person who has never had sexual desire is more likely to be asexual.”

Prejudices from professionals

In episode nine of season eight of the series

Dr. House

addresses asexuality.

The doctor specializing in rare cases considers that it cannot be normal for someone not to feel sexual attraction and investigates the patient, finally finding a tumor in his pituitary gland.

This fiction may be an example of the vision of some professionals: denying the major, that is, rejecting the existence of asexuality.

The two sexologists consulted confirm this situation.

Veiga affirms that there are professionals who approach this issue “as if something were not right, as if they were missing something and they are subjected to conversion therapies, pharmacological treatments, psychological or sexual therapies in order for them to experience attraction.”

In the same sense, Julve speaks out, who, from the Stonewall association with which he collaborates, is fighting to include treatments to

cure

asexuality as conversion therapies at the same level of violence as those done to

cure

homosexuality.

There is a lack of research and conclusions regarding this orientation, but it is known that there are people who state that this is their reality.

Invisibilization or denial of that existence does not seem like a good option to understand them.

Rather, as Martina González Veiga comments, “it leads to not offering them the information and attention they need.”

Arola Poch

is a psychologist from the University of Barcelona, ​​a graduate in Audiovisual Communication from the UOC and a sexologist from the Camilo José Cela University.

She is an expert in sexual education and dissemination, with several published books.

She provides sexology consultation and couples therapy.