Understanding Asexuality

Another difference is that women’s sexuality is more fluid or flexible, being more responsive to a variety of cultural and psychological factors, than men’s (Baumeister, 2000). One example is that women may have a period of several months of intense sexual activity (masturbation, intercourse) and then several months of no sexual activity. This pattern is less common in men, who maintain a more constant level of sexual activity (e.g., through masturbation, one-night stands) despite, say, the ending of a romantic/sexual relationship. As psychologist Roy Baumeister notes, Kinsey himself made this observation: “Discontinuities in total [sexual] outlet are practically unknown in the histories of males” (Baumeister, 2000, pp. 681–82; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953).

Gender differences in asexuality often seem to mirror gender differences in sexuality. In other words, the gender differences mentioned above also occur in some way between asexual men and asexual women. First, if a main gender difference is that women are less sexualized (i.e., they have lower sex drive and less sexual attraction) than men, one would expect women to be overrepresented on the extremely low end of the sexuality distribution—that is, one would expect to find more asexuality among women.

Is there evidence that women are more likely to be asexual than men? Yes, there is (Bogaert, 2004; Bogaert, in press-a; Brotto, Knudson, Inskip, Rhodes, & Erskine, 2010). For example, in my first study of asexuality, about 70 percent of the asexual people in NATSAL-I, a British national sample, were women (Bogaert, 2004). Interestingly, some indirect evidence that women are more likely than men to be asexual is that “asexual” partnerships (i.e., “Boston marriages”) have been identified as a relatively common pattern among women forming relationships with women (Rothblum & Brehony, 1993), but, to my knowledge, such partnerships have never been identified as a relatively common pattern among men forming relationships with men.

What is it from a psychological or developmental perspective that makes women less likely than men to form strong sexual attractions to others? One possibility relates to masturbation differences between men and women. As suggested in chapter 5, masturbation, particularly linked with fantasy, may afford “learning/conditioning” experiences leading to more permanent sexual attractions. For example, if partners of a specific gender routinely show up in the fantasies (or pornography) to which one masturbates, then those partners may become part of one’s permanent sexual attractions. If so, women who do not masturbate, or do so rarely, may not develop strong sexual attractions to others.

A biological explanation compatible with the masturbation explanation is hormones. Lower testosterone in women relative to men may create in women a less intense urge to masturbate, leading to fewer conditioning experiences and, ultimately, to fewer permanent sexual attractions to others.[25]

Another explanation relates to the flexibility in women’s sexuality (Baumeister, 2000). Women’s relatively flexible sexuality may make them, compared to men, more affected by social and cultural influences. Thus, if social or cultural influences are extreme, or at least atypical, women’s sexuality may vary from the norm, including in the development of asexuality. Underscoring this point is the fact that women can adopt celibate lifestyles, sometimes construed as a behavioral “asexuality,” for political purposes—for instance, as a protest against male-dominated society (Fahs, 2010).

Our conception of sexual orientation, or at least how it is traditionally measured, also may be relevant to gender differences in asexuality (Bogaert, 2004; Bogaert, 2006b; Bogaert, in press-a). Most sexual orientation measures imply that one’s orientation is always “targeted” toward others, either males or females (or both, if bisexual). For example, a sexual orientation question may be posed as follows: “Who are you sexually attracted to?” The phrase “attracted to” implies an object or a “target” for our sexual interests. Thus, in this target-oriented view, usually members of one group (e.g., females) are the objects of desire, drawing our attention and fancies, and impelling us to approach members of this group for sexual activity. Yet this view of sexual orientation is, arguably, based on a male model of sexuality and thus may not capture many women’s subjective experience of sexuality. This view may also affect how some women report being sexually attracted (or not being sexually attracted) to others.