What is asexuality?
As for other kinds of sexuality, being asexual, ace for short, can mean different things to people. But do you know what asexuality is ? Asexuality is a sexual orientation, displease the opinions of certain psychologists. Being ace means that you are generally not particularly interested in the idea of sex. Of course, there is a spectrum as always. So, if you think that you haven’t experienced sex attraction at all, you can define yourself as asexual. If you think that you’ve already experiences sexual attraction but only in few situations, you can define yourself as greysexual. You can also not experience sexual attraction without a strong emotional bond. You can then define your sexual orientation as demisexual. With the ace spectrum, there is the aromantic spectrum, which is not about the sex attraction; it is about the romantic one. There are three orientations : aromantic, greyromantic, demiromantic. What truly is the meaning of asexuality? Let’s answer.
What about the recognition of ace people?
Being asexual was sadly categorised as a disease. Indeed, feeling no or weak sexual attraction can sometimes generate incomprehension. People think of it like it is a mistake, a disease, a form of madness instead of a sexual orientation. Some psychologists and doctors believe that this weak or non existence of attraction for sex came from an education where sex is taboo, where there were few emotional bonds between parents and children. This explanation is just an attempt to define the origin, but sexual orientation has no origin. The meaning of asexuality is different for each concerned person. Each one of them has their own feelings, and all of them have the right to be respected.
The first known study that demonstrated the existence of asexuality for humans was in 1977. It has defined asexual people as people that prefer not to have sexual relationships, regardless of their physical or emotional condition, actual sexual history, marital status and ideological orientation.
In 2017, Asexuality was recognized in the declaration of the Madrid Summit on the rights of LGBTQ + people. A big step to get this little-known sexual orientation out of the shadows. Even if somes people don’t understand or know it nowadays, asexuality exists. You can be proud to be part of the LGBTQ + community.
What about living with this orientation?
It can be confusing at the begining to know if you’re Ace. Without understanding what you are, you can think that you’re not normal or weird but this isn’t true. At a young age, it can be difficult to know if you find yourself in this spectrum: because of experiences, because people may say that “you’re too young to know ”, but only you can know who you are and how you want to define yourself. You can have a relationship, being asexual doesn’t mean you can’t love. It doesn’t mean that you never love or enjoy it when you do it, it just means that you’re not attracted by the idea. And even if you don’t like it, you have the right to not like it.
Everybody is different, everybody thinks differently and does not like the same things. What’s important is how you are, to be yourself and to be happy.
Remember that the word you use today to describe yourself can change, if you don’t find yourself in this anymore, you do not have to use it. The meaning of asexuality is all yours.
