Understanding Asexuality

Some national surveys have also included information on low or absent sexual desire. Low or absent desire is not completely overlapping with a lack of sexual attraction—my preferred definition of asexuality—but it is clearly related, particularly in the case of absent desire, and may serve as a good proxy for lack of sexual attraction, especially when no specific information was collected on sexual attraction. Moreover, the absence of desire is an alternative way to define asexuality (see chapter 2 on definitions of asexuality) (Prause & Graham, 2007). Thus, figures on low/absent desire should also give us pause about the true number of “asexuals,” broadly defined. Using a national survey of Danish residents, Soren Ventegodt (1998) found that 11.2 percent of women and 3.2 percent of men had “low sexual desire.” In one of the best sex survey samples from the United States, the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS), Laumann and colleagues found that approximately one-third of women and one-seventh of men had “low desire” in the past year (Laumann, Paik, & Rosen, 1999). In a recent national sample of China, 7 percent of participants reported “no” desire for a year or more (Parish et al., 2003; Parish et al., 2006; Parish et al., 2007; Bogaert, 2008).

Although these studies are interesting, it should be noted that in two of the studies (those by Ventegodt and Laumann and his colleagues), low desire is not necessarily the same as absence of desire. Also, it is important to consider the time frame in these studies, as it is unclear whether these individuals would report low or even absent desire over many years. I think it is reasonable, after all, to define asexuality as a relatively long-term, or stable, characteristic (see chapter 2 on definitions).

There has never been a national survey assessing an asexual “identity.” However, there are intriguing sexual identification data from the U.S.-based National Survey of Family Growth, mentioned above (Mosher et al., 2005; Poston & Baumle, 2010). Like in many large-scale surveys, the respondents were asked to define their sexual orientation. In addition to the option of endorsing one of the three traditional categories of sexual orientation—heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual—the respondents could choose “something else.” Among female participants, 1.3 percent identified as homosexual and 2.8 percent identified as bisexual, while 2.3 percent of male participants identified as homosexual and 1.8 percent identified as bisexual. Interestingly, a mighty minority (3.9 percent) of participants (combined male and female) chose “something else” as their sexual orientation. A further 1.8 percent did not endorse any of the categories offered to them (i.e., heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or “something else”). These figures may represent an important piece of the prevalence puzzle of asexuality. However, it is also important to bear in mind that “something else” (or a nonresponse) is vague, and using “identification” is problematic if one wants a relatively conceptually clean definition of sexual orientation that would also encompass an asexual orientation (see also chapter 2).