Understanding Asexuality

The famous psychologist George Kelly and his personal construct theory are relevant to the two points made above. According to Kelly (1955), the way we see the world, other people, and ourselves is based on our personal constructs. We are construct “constructors.” These constructs (or ideas about the way things work) almost always are perceived to have extreme points. Thus, we tend to think about people as occupying an extreme of say, a “happy-sad” dimension: Sally is happy; Frank is sad. Thus, the happy-sad construct is defined for us in large part by its extremes. It is not surprising, then, that sexual minorities use extremes, or contrasts, of sexuality (e.g., hetero-homo) to define themselves as people, or that heterosexual people would use these extremes/contrasts in defining sexual minorities. But it is also true that some constructs are just not as relevant for people as other constructs. So, if sexuality is completely removed from one’s life (and one barely gives it a second thought), it may not be a personally relevant construct in defining oneself, or in forging one’s identity. Some asexual people, then, may have little to no incentive to form an asexual identity and come out, or at least no incentive to make public displays of their nonsexuality.

Consider an example to illustrate this point further: Do non-golfers—agolfers?—go to golf courses and march on the eighteenth green to assert their non-golfing identity? It would be rather strange, of course, for non-golfers to do so, because golfing, as an activity and as a construct, is not personally relevant to most of them, nor is it part of their identity. Thus, as a golfer, as I am finishing up my round and heading to the clubhouse, I rarely see such displays and marches from non-golfers.[27]

From the above, it may seem like there are only modest reasons for asexual people to forge and fiercely defend a sexual identity. But we must not discount the importance of the other identity-relevant forces in asexual people’s lives, such as general identity needs, not wanting to be alone and isolated, and perceiving oneself on the extreme end of an often very salient construct in society—sexuality. Moreover, there is another reason why forging an identity, developing an asexual culture, and becoming part of a cohesive group is of importance to asexual people: to defend their lives against modern medicalization and the perception that they have a disorder or are unhappy.

But before we address the issue of medicalization, let’s consider a little background. Asexuality, broadly defined, has often not been viewed across cultures and historically as a disorder or an illness. In fact, from a religious perspective, asexuality (or at least abstinence) has often been viewed as a virtue. For example, most religions across the world proscribe liberal sexuality, and some (e.g., Buddhism, Roman Catholicism) still view abstinence as a virtue. Moreover, non-religiously based institutions, including the Western medical establishment, historically would not likely have labeled asexuality a disorder, particularly in women. In the 1950s and 1960s, this started to change. Sexuality became decoupled from reproduction, and sex was viewed on its own merits; that is, as a source of physical pleasure, recreation, and so forth (Sigusch, 1998).

Given this decoupling of sex from reproduction, it is perhaps understandable that the absence of sexuality started to be seen as a potential problem and eventually found its way into important medical texts and manuals, like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) (American Psychiatric Association, 1980). (Most North American clinicians diagnose mental health problems based on criteria found in the DSM.) For example, “inhibited sexual desire,” a name later changed to “hypoactive sexual desire disorder,” first appeared in this manual in 1980. About ten years later, “lack or loss of sexual desire” first appeared in another important medical manual, the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) (World Health Organization, 1992). Some social critics, particularly feminists, have also argued that the medicalization of many aspects of sexuality, including asexuality—again, broadly defined—has occurred because there are profits to be had from creating disorders where, arguably, none existed before (Drew, 2003; Fishman, 2004; Fishman, 2007; Tiefer, 2002).