Asexuality in a Nutshell

First of all, I’ve tried to be as informative as possible in this article, rather than opinionated. If I’ve missed anything out, or written anything you disagree with, feel free to contact me and I’ll do my best to rectify it. Before I give you the article I should like to point out a fantastic site on asexuality, called AVEN. It is extremely informational, and the community is friendly. Both asexuals and others are free to join the site, and it gives a wonderful insight to the experience of asexuals over the world.

Secondly, there are other articles out there on asexuality, and not all of them stick to the same ideals and ideas. Due to the fact that nobody is entirely sure how asexuality comes about, the causes of it, or anything much science based, this article won’t be dealing with that side of things (I will provide links to other sources of information that may contain these however.) I aim to explain what asexuality is, not to make it a cause of something else, or give the impression asexuals are broken – they aren’t.

The usual understanding

Many sources spanning the Internet will tell you that asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction. They also set out to make it clear that asexuality is different from anti-sexual peeps and celibacy. While there are asexuals out there who might be anti-sexual, this is not the majority of asexuals. As to the difference between celibacy, and asexuality, it isn’t difficult to understand – celibates chose not to have sex despite (possibly) experiencing sexual attraction, while asexuals might (or might not) have sex to have a baby, or please their partner – but have no sexual attraction.

The larger picture

Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction, but there’s a lot more to it than that. There are different categories of asexuality, which cover romantic attraction; these attractions cover the more traditional attractions of bi, straight and gay. Some asexuals do not classify as “bi-romantic” etc, but instead as “aromantic.” This means that as well as a lack of sexual attraction there is a lack of romantic attraction too.

Amongst these different definitions is the concept of Grey-A. There are a couple of different factors for Grey-A’s, but they are usually termed as people that don’t usually feel sexual attraction, but at rare times have or do. A second idea of the Grey-A is that these are people who do feel sexual attraction but not very strongly, or only strongly at specific times in specific situations. For a more detailed understanding on this, visit the grey-A page on Aven’s wiki.