Asexuals Need Love Too (Or Do They?)

You have gay, straight, bi and transexual, as well as endless other sexual breeds of creatures.  Although our tastes very so deeply, and by deep I mean deep *oh yeah*, what we do have in common is lust.  Lust for something, right?  Well, for some people, wrong.   There is a group of people out there who identify as completely asexual.  Do they want to freak in the sheets?  Nope.

Seriously though, if a person is asexual, I respect it.  Perplexing to me but totally acceptable.  Asexuality creates certain questions to sexual folk:

“It does raise questions about the nature of love,” said Anthony Bogaert, a sexologist at Brock University in Ontario who estimated the prevalence of asexuality in 2004. He analyzed an earlier survey of Britons and found that 1 percent reported that they had never felt sexually attracted to anyone.

David Jay, a 27-year-old San Francisco resident, put the movement in more personal terms, saying, “We need to know we’re not broken. I’ve been told my whole life that people need sex to be happy.”

The Pride Parade was a milestone for Jay, who is studying for his graduate business degree at Presidio School of Management. Nine years ago, he essentially started the movement by founding the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, or AVEN, as a teenager who couldn’t fathom why everyone but him was hell-bent on shedding their virginity.

Damn I wish I knew about that when I was 15.  I walked around suburban Washington DC telling anyone that would listen I was asexual.  I was totally closeted and was trying to explain to the world and myself why I wasn’t trying to “get some”.  Believe me I got some attention from the ladies!  It was self defense girl!   That said, I am absolutely not saying that is what these people are doing.  Just saying, wish I knew about them back then so I could of tried to get myself “converted”.  Anymeow:

Jay and his online community, which he said has 30,000 registered worldwide members, aren’t seeking to create new civil rights. What they want is respect in a sex-obsessed culture.

Asexuality has only occasionally been studied, but the few researchers who have given it a close look in recent years say it may be a sexual identity similar to being straight, gay or bisexual.

Dr. Lori Brotto, an expert on sexuality at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said she was once “extremely skeptical” that asexuality existed as an orientation. But in 2007, in surveys of AVEN members, she found not only low sexual desire but low distress about it.

“They’re not bothered by the low levels of arousal,” Brotto said. “That’s what makes them different from someone with sexual dysfunction, who wants to seek treatment.”

Recently, Brotto showed erotic films to seven asexuals along with 35 other women who identified themselves as straight, lesbian or bisexual, while measuring vaginal blood flow. She found no physiological differences in their responses.

“That’s kind of what we predicted,” she said. “This is not a sexual dysfunction. It’s a sexual orientation issue.”

Some asexuals are romantically straight, gay or bisexual, and some aren’t romantic. They date each other, or they go out with “sexuals,” attempting to compromise in bed.

Roberts, a software engineer, said she’s worried she won’t find somebody with whom to grow old. “For me, they have to be asexual and lesbian,” she said, adding with a laugh, “Then there’s that whole compatibility thing.”

Awwww.  Well best of luck to you people, whomever and wherever you might be.