Understanding Asexuality

You may be thinking, The complex relationship between romantic and sexual attraction is interesting, but what does it have to do with asexuality? Well, nearly everything, actually. One of the main definitions of asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction. In the first study examining asexuality in a large national sample, which I conducted in 2004, asexuality was defined as never having felt sexual attraction to men, women, or both (Bogaert, 2004; Bogaert, 2006b). AVEN (Asexuality Visibility and Education Network), the largest website devoted to asexual issues, also defines asexuality as a lack of sexual attraction. So, many asexual people have no sexual attraction to others, meaning that there is no “lust lure” for others.[4]

Does this mean that asexual people are not romantically attracted to others? The answer to this question—“not necessarily”—should be clear, given our discussion of the distinction between romantic and sexual attraction, and the fact that they can be decoupled. As mentioned in chapter 1, a lack of sexual attraction is not the same as a lack of romantic attraction, and asexual is not synonymous with aromantic. Some asexual people demonstrate that you can have one without the other. So, if one defines asexuality as a lack of sexual attraction to others, one should also be aware that it is not necessarily defined as a lack of romantic attraction to others. As also mentioned in the opening chapter, asexuality allows us to understand sexuality, and the distinction between romantic and sexual attraction is a good example of this. Sex and romance are often linked, but not inextricably so.

I often get media requests a few weeks before Valentine’s Day to discuss sexuality research. A discussion of human sexuality makes for an interesting news story, generally speaking, but it is pure gold on February 14. In early February 2010, I had a slew of reporters asking about the distinction between romantic and sexual attraction, and how it relates to asexuality. Can there be love without sex? And vice versa? For some reason, that year the media requests were all from Spanish-speaking countries—Spain, naturally, and a number from South America. I did one telephone interview for a national radio show in Colombia, using a translator. I was asked whether the decoupling of sex from love was a modern phenomenon. I suggested that, although it is not a new phenomenon, its manifestation (or how this decoupling plays itself out in human behavior) may take different forms, depending on the time period and the culture. As an example, I explained the relatively modern Western trend of people hooking up and maintaining “sex-only” relationships. To describe this trend, I used the rather indelicate but often-heard phrase fuck buddies. The interview ended very quickly after that, my assumption that this broadcast was not a live one (and thus could be edited, if deemed necessary) being, evidently, incorrect.

The distinction between romantic and sexual attraction is important, but its full implication is not recognized. For example, some definitions of sexual orientations not only include a sexual attraction component but also a romantic (or equivalent) one. Take the well-used textbook on sexuality, Understanding Human Sexuality (Hyde, DeLamater, & Byers, 2009). This text defines sexual orientation as a “person’s erotic and emotional orientation towards members of his or her own gender or members of the other gender” (p. 431). This definition goes beyond “erotic” or what would be termed “sexual” attraction and includes an emotional component, suggesting that romantic attachments are important to how we define a sexual orientation. In some sense, this type of definition is a broad description for one’s “gender” orientation for love, sex, or both. And it is true, as mentioned above, that romantic and erotic attachments are often closely linked. But including an emotional/romantic element in the definition is also problematic, because (as mentioned above) these types of attraction are separate phenomena, and some people don’t have sexual inclinations that match their romantic inclinations.