Understanding Asexuality

However, one does not have to resort to arguing from the scientific value of decoding the mystery of human nature to make the point that sex is an important academic pursuit. Sex clearly has a profound effect on humans on practical levels. Consider two sisters who are close in age but who differ in their sexual orientation, one being straight and the other lesbian. Will their life trajectories be the same? The answer is, of course, in some ways, yes, but in many others, no. The sisters ultimately will have very different lives, in large part because of their differing sexual orientations. Sexual orientation—like many components of sexuality—plays a profound role in our social circumstances and life choices, including whether we marry, where we live, or whether we have children. For example, the majority of heterosexual women give birth to children and the majority of lesbians do not. Data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) in 2002 confirm this, with 65 percent of heterosexual and bisexual women having given birth to a child, compared to 35 percent of lesbians. Thus, the study of sexuality is clearly relevant to a variety of scientific disciplines, including demography (Baumle, in press), which attempts to understand trends related to marriage and fertility, among other issues.

Beyond basic scientific interests, sexuality also relates to health and social issues, often profoundly so. The list of relevant health and social ills is long: overpopulation, environmental degradation, gender inequality, sexually transmitted infections/diseases, divorce/family disruption, and marital and child abuse. Take, for example, the issues of overpopulation and the environment. Does anyone think that these are not affected by people’s sexuality (e.g., their contraception practices)? This is not to say that sex is the only contributing factor to these and other health and social issues, but rather that all of them are affected by human sexuality, and for some of these issues, the case could be made that sexuality is the underlying factor in their development. Thus, if one truly wants to improve the world, sex is a subject that cannot to be ignored.

So, the fuss about sex is well deserved. Sex affects much of our lives, and its meaning and ramifications do not just have to do with the “act” itself. At a most basic level, sex is about human life. Interestingly, major health organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) are recognizing the central role of sexuality in human life, along with the myriad of ways it impacts health. Consider WHO’s (n.d.) working definition: “Sexuality is a central aspect of being human and encompasses sex, gender identities and roles, orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy and reproduction.”

At this point you may be wondering whether I am perhaps inadvertently undermining the task ahead: to convince the reader that asexuality is an important scientific inquiry. Note that when I refer here to asexuality, I mean the real deal—that is, a complete lack of sexual attraction and/or sexual interest (see chapter 2 on definitions)—and not just a middle-age, on-again, off-again malaise about sex, as mentioned above. And so, given sexuality’s central importance in human life, is it then true that hard-core asexuality (if I am permitted this description), if it is the opposite of sexuality, must be unimportant, a nonissue, a mere footnote in the great (sexual) story of life? Why does the study of asexuality matter?

There are many reasons why it matters. In fact, I think the study of asexuality matters so much that I was compelled to write this book on it. Here are some of my reasons why asexuality matters and why I am writing this book.

First, there is value in the opportunity for members of an overlooked and under-studied population to be able to read about and understand issues relevant to them. Thus asexual people might be interested in finding out more about themselves, and this is reason enough to write a book on asexuality. This is not a new concept: books are written about (and to) specialized audiences all the time.