Understanding Asexuality

In 1980, Michael Storms recognized some of the limitations of a strictly behavioral approach to sexual orientation, including Kinsey’s traditional behavioral scale for measuring sexual orientation. Thus, Storms’s model of sexual orientation was based only on sexual attraction and not on actual behavior. He also argued that two seven-point scales/dimensions are better than one (Storms, 1980).

Storms’s two scales or dimensions decouple homoeroticism (sexual attraction to the same sex) from heteroeroticism (sexual attraction to the opposite sex). So, if someone were asked on a questionnaire to categorize his or her sexual orientation using Storms’s model, he or she would indicate the degree to which he or she has attractions to the same sex (homoeroticism) on a scale from low (one) to moderate (four) to high (seven), and then, on a separate scale, would indicate the degree to which he or she has attractions to the opposite sex (heteroeroticism), again ranging from low (one) to moderate (four) to high (seven). Having these two independent dimensions means that one can be high (or low) on one but also high (or low) on the other. Thus, one’s score on one dimension does not constrain the score on the other. This means that one can be high on both (bisexuality) or low on both (asexuality). Storms never investigated asexuals to see if this model captures their attractions accurately (i.e., low on both dimensions), but, as mentioned above, there is now some support for this model (Bogaert, 2004; Brotto et al., 2010).

Now let’s move on to the third letter of the alphabet, C. Recall that C is for cognition. Cognition is another word for “thoughts.” For example, the field of cognitive psychology deals with the processing of information and knowledge. Thus, cognitive psychologists try to understand our thoughts and their organization in the mind; how, for example, one bit of knowledge or information is linked to another and how readily accessible this bit of knowledge is to our conscious mind.

Our thoughts are often organized into “knowledge structures” or “schemas.” One form of knowledge structure is a script. A script is a cognitive generalization about the “appropriate sequence of events in a particular context” (Schank & Abelson, 1977, p. 41). In other words, just as a movie or a TV script tells an actor what to do and say (and when to do and say it), our cognitive scripts prompt us to do and say things in a specific order in a specific context. We may not realize that we carry around in our heads these cognitive “scripts” of what to do and say in various contexts, but we do. This type of cognitive processing is often automatic and unconsciously performed, and can provide very useful shortcuts for dealing with many contexts in the world around us. Indeed, it would be extremely time consuming and taxing if we had to deliberate about every move we make without relying on such mental shortcuts.

In sexual contexts, people also rely on scripts. Thus, humans engage in rather automated sequences of sexual behavior, dealing with behavioral contingencies in a rather orderly way (First I will kiss her, then, if she responds to this, I will touch her breast, then I will…). Of course, it takes time, it requires watching others perform these actions, and it takes practice (in keeping with the acting metaphor, let’s call it rehearsal!) to make the sexual scripts unfold in a relatively seamless way, and sexual behavior is not without its complications, to say the least!

Sexual fantasies can be construed as a form of sexual script (see also chapter 5). Sexual fantasies may be very brief—just flashes of a sexy image bouncing around in our heads—but they can also be more elaborate, with a dramatic storyline or plot. If one has repeated fantasies, this may allow “rehearsal” to occur, so that we ingrain in our minds (potentially adaptive) sexual sequences of behavior—that is, sexual scripts.

Sexual fantasies, along with other cognitive processes, are important in understanding asexuality. For example, do asexual people have sexual fantasies or, if they are asexual but romantic, just romantic ones? If some asexual people do have sexual fantasies, what does this mean about their sexual attractions, given that sexual fantasies often closely reflect sexual attractions? Would such people truly lack sexual attraction?[8] We will be further discussing this issue and how other cognitive elements help us to understand sexuality and asexuality in various chapters (see, for instance, chapter 5 on masturbation and chapter 12 on humor).