Case Study 38.2: Asexuality and the Reconfiguration of Courtship — What Asexual Experience Reveals

Case Study 38.2: Asexuality and the Reconfiguration of Courtship — What Asexual Experience Reveals

Background

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), founded by David Jay in 2001, established the first large public community for people who identify as asexual. AVEN's community survey data, combined with academic research by Anthony Bogaert (whose 2004 paper in Journal of Sex Research first estimated asexuality prevalence at approximately 1% of the population from British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes data) and subsequent researchers, has produced the most substantial empirical base available on asexual experience.

A brief clarification of terminology before proceeding, because this area is often discussed with inadequate precision:

Asexual (ace): Experiencing little or no sexual attraction to others. This is a description of attraction, not of behavior. Asexual people may have sex (for reasons including pleasing a partner, curiosity, or reproductive intent); asexual people may experience romantic attraction; asexual people may masturbate. What they typically do not experience is the spontaneous, context-independent sexual attraction toward other people that allosexual (non-asexual) people describe.

Aromantic (aro): Experiencing little or no romantic attraction to others. This is orthogonal to asexuality. An aromantic asexual person (aro-ace) experiences neither sexual nor romantic attraction. An aromantic sexual person experiences sexual attraction without romantic attraction. A romantic asexual person experiences romantic attraction without sexual attraction.

Gray-asexual and demisexual: People who experience sexual attraction rarely, only under specific circumstances, or only after forming strong emotional bonds. These identities occupy the space between fully asexual and fully allosexual.

What AVEN and Academic Research Shows

Survey data from AVEN's community, complemented by Bogaert's nationally representative data and research by Cara MacInnis and Gordon Hodson on asexual experience and stigma, document several consistent findings:

Asexuality is not dysfunction: The research distinguishes asexuality from hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD, a clinical diagnosis requiring distress about low sexual desire) by criterion: asexual people who are not distressed by their asexuality and who do not wish to experience sexual attraction do not meet diagnostic criteria for HSDD. The APA's DSM-5 explicitly notes that HSDD should not be diagnosed when the person's low desire is explained by their identification as asexual. This distinction — between a variation in experience and a disorder — has been hard-won and remains contested in some clinical contexts.

Diversity within asexuality: The asexual community encompasses enormous internal diversity. Aromantic asexuals, romantic asexuals, gray-asexuals, demisexuals; people who form queerplatonic partnerships (close intimate but non-romantic/non-sexual committed relationships); people who are asexual but also members of LGBTQ+ communities on the basis of their romantic orientation (a biromantic asexual person, for instance, experiences romantic attraction to multiple genders but not sexual attraction to any). Treating asexuality as a single undifferentiated experience misses this richness.

Significant stigma: Research by MacInnis and Hodson finds that asexual people face significant social stigma — more, in some measures, than gay or lesbian people — including being perceived as cold, machinelike, deficient, and less fully human. This dehumanization effect, documented in experimental studies where participants rated asexual, heterosexual, gay, and lesbian target persons, is a striking finding with practical implications for asexual people navigating social and dating contexts.

Relationship formation and satisfaction: Asexual people form relationships — romantic, queerplatonic, and other — at rates that are lower than allosexual populations but not negligible. Research on romantic asexual people in relationships with allosexual partners (so-called "mixed" couples) documents specific challenges: negotiating sexual frequency, managing a partner's desire that is not reciprocated in the same form, and navigating social scripts that assume all couples are sexually active. Research by Przybylo and Cooper documents that these relationships can be successful but require deliberate negotiation of norms that allosexual couples can leave unspoken.

What Asexuality Challenges in This Textbook's Framework

Section 38.6 of the main chapter argues that asexuality "challenges the foundational assumptions of the field." Here we specify what those assumptions are and why the challenge matters:

Assumption 1: Everyone experiences sexual attraction. The entire literature on attraction cues (Chapter 8), the evolutionary psychology of mate selection (Chapter 7), and the psychology of initial attraction (Chapters 9–11) assumes that the reader and subjects under study experience sexual attraction. Research findings about what faces, bodies, or behavioral displays are "attractive" describe the experience of allosexual people specifically. The default has been to treat this as universal human experience; asexuality reveals it as the experience of the majority but not all.

Assumption 2: The goal of "seduction" research is understanding how to attract sexual/romantic partners. The seduction industry, the PUA literature, and even the critical academic literature on attraction assume that people want to be desired and to desire others sexually and romantically. For aromantic asexual people, this entire edifice is structured around an experience they do not have. It is not that they have failed at seduction; it is that the category of seduction as the pathway to fulfillment simply does not map onto their experience.

Assumption 3: Long-term relationship success is measured partly by sustained sexual desire. Chapter 37's discussion of sexual desire over time (Nagoski's framework, the orgasm gap in Chapter 36, the role of sexual satisfaction in relationship maintenance research) assumes that sexual desire is a component of successful long-term partnership. For asexual people in asexual partnerships — or in queerplatonic partnerships — this criterion is inapplicable. Relationship success, for them, is measured by different variables.

Assumption 4: "Natural" desire is heterosexual until queerness is specified. Despite this book's consistent effort to include LGBTQ+ experiences throughout, the default writing of "you" in many relationship scenarios has tended to assume a person experiencing some form of sexual attraction. Asexuality reveals that even the LGBTQ+-inclusive version of the field has a "desire-as-default" assumption built in.

The Normativity Critique

AVEN-affiliated writers and asexuality researchers have developed a critique of what they call "compulsory sexuality" — the assumption, embedded in culture and in academic frameworks, that sexual attraction is normal and its absence is deficiency. This parallels feminist critiques of "compulsory heterosexuality" developed in the 1970s and 1980s.

The normativity critique does not argue that sexual desire is harmful or that allosexual people should feel guilty for experiencing it. It argues that framing asexuality as absence rather than difference, as lack rather than variation, reflects an unexamined assumption that deserves examination. This is exactly the kind of examination that critical science enables.

For a textbook on seduction, the normativity critique is particularly pointed: the very premise of studying seduction — understanding and possibly improving one's desirability and ability to attract others — makes sense only if you experience sexual and/or romantic attraction as a goal. The book's subtitle ("The Psychology and Sociology Behind the Game") implicitly assumes the game is one the reader wants to play. Asexuality reveals that this is not a universal given.

Implications for Research and Practice

The asexuality literature has practical implications beyond conceptual critique:

Clinicians working with clients who present with "low desire" need to distinguish HSDD from asexual identity. Treating asexuality as pathology and attempting to increase sexual desire in a person who is simply asexual is both ineffective and harmful.

Relationship researchers whose outcome measures include "sexual satisfaction" need to consider whether those measures are applicable across all relationship types and orientations.

Educators developing relationship and sexual health curricula should include asexuality as an orientation, not just as an absence, to ensure that asexual students see their experiences reflected.

Discussion Questions

AVEN data is community survey data — collected from people who have found and joined an asexual identity community. How might this sampling method bias the picture of asexual experience it produces? What populations of asexual people might it underrepresent?
The distinction between asexuality and HSDD is: asexuality is an orientation (not distressing to the person), while HSDD involves distress about low desire. What challenges does this distinction create clinically? What if a person is asexual but is distressed by their asexuality because of social pressure — does that make them diagnosable?
The chapter argues that asexuality reveals "normativity of desire" in academic and cultural frameworks. Do you agree that this normativity is a problem requiring correction, or do you think designing research and culture around the majority experience is reasonable? What are the strongest versions of both positions?