Understanding Asexuality

Here is a follow-up, not-so-dumb, question: What if some (i.e., a small percentage) asexual people have fantasy-based masturbation? What would this mean? In addition to understanding sexual fantasies as important for the development and rehearsal of sexual scripts, human sexuality researchers are interested in sexual fantasies because we know that their content says something about what people are truly attracted to. Sexual fantasies are more important than actual behavior—what we actually do with a partner—in this regard, because partnered behavior represents a compromise of the individuals engaged in that behavior. Fantasies often do not represent any compromise: they usually only spring from the individual’s own desires and attractions; thus, they are a (relatively) pure reflection of one’s true attractions.

Pornography contains commercially produced sexual fantasies, or at least fantasy-enhancement material. This is especially true for men. If so, the type of pornography men view and/or masturbate to should be an indicator of their attractions. Gay men are attracted to men, so, not surprisingly, they will view images of naked men or men engaged in sex. Similarly, heterosexual men are attracted to women, so they will view images of naked women, men having sex with women, or two or more women having sex together. This attraction/porn relationship can be used as a diagnostic tool of a person’s sexual orientation. If, for example, an adolescent male professes to be heterosexual and yet is found with a large stash of gay porn, the content of his stash trumps (or at least calls into question) his professed heterosexual attractions, at least as far as many sexual orientation researchers are concerned. Interestingly, this diagnostic tool can also be used to diagnose deviant sexual attractions. If a man professes to be attracted to adults but has a stash of child pornography (and little or no adult-oriented pornography), then the content of this stash can be used to help determine that the man is likely a pedophile (Seto, Cantor, & Blanchard, 2006).[24]

The pornography/attraction relationship is more complicated for women, especially given that they are often less visually oriented in their sexual response than men (see more on sex/gender differences in chapter 6). But the overall point about sexual fantasies as a window into the sexual attraction “soul” still holds up reasonably well. If so, persistent sexual fantasies in asexual people, and particularly in asexual men, may be a partial way of determining whether they have some level of attraction for men or women, or some unusual thing, such as an object or an event (see chapter 12).

Interestingly, the fact that the asexual person I referred to above actually did not comprehend my question about “what do you masturbate to” indicates to me that he does indeed lack sexual fantasy (and sexual scripts). Thus, he is asexual as I define it (i.e., a lack of sexual attraction), and even though he may masturbate, he does not direct his masturbation to something or someone. Also, that other asexual people like him do not seem to fantasize in any systematic or directed way, or don’t masturbate altogether, indicates that many asexual people do not have sexual attractions, typical or atypical in nature.

However, my discussions with people who identify as asexual (along with some of the discussion on AVEN) suggest that some do have consistent fantasies or choose specific stimuli (e.g., pornography) to which they masturbate repeatedly. Also, as mentioned above, some level of fantasy does occur in asexual people (Brotto et al., 2010). This fact raises questions about their sexual attractions and whether some of these individuals might have unusual sexual attractions, called paraphilias (see also chapter 10).