Asexuality: a complex concept

Our first chapter is devoted to asexuality. This may appear a weird choice, as the relationship between asexuality and children is not obvious. However, in our opinion, children and marriage are not choices determined by sexual orientation. As we will shortly see, asexual people are as capable of experiencing love and becoming parents as anyone else.

What is asexuality? Is it a dysfunction, an orientation or a choice? How many people define themselves as ‘asexual’? Can asexual people have a relationship and a family? Can asexual people be (‘good’) parents? What has asexuality to do with families?

It is not easy to define asexuality. Numerous definitions have been suggested, but no single definition of asexuality is accepted by everyone or even by a majority of people, social scientists and researchers. First of all, asexuality has been portrayed in a negative light, as a minus involving ‘a lack of sexual attraction’, ‘deficient sexual desire’ or ‘deviation’ from the ‘normal’. Researchers have often used the term to refer to individuals with low or absent sexual desire or attractions, low or absent sexual behaviours, exclusively romantic non-sexual partnerships, or a combination of both absent sexual desires and behaviours. Asexuality has also been defined as an enduring lack of sexual attraction or the denial of one's ‘natural’ sexuality, a disorder caused by shame of sexuality or anxiety. According to Storms (1980), asexuality is a lack of sexual orientation. As Haefner (2011) notes, asexuality has been defined in many ways, including: a stage of sexual behaviour characterised by ‘unexpressed sexuality’ (Johnson and Johnson, 1963, p 52); a preferred state of ‘non-sexual activity’ (Johnson, 1977; Nurius, 1983; Rothblum and Brehony, 1993); a state of ‘low sexual fantasy’ (Storms, 1980); a ‘sexual orientation based on lack’, the ‘lack of arousal from erotic materials’, the ‘lack of love of either sex’, the ‘lack of sexual attraction to either sex’ and the ‘lack of sexual activity with either sex’ (Berkey et al, 1990); a sexual orientation based on sexual attraction to neither sex (Sell, 1996); and lack of sexual interest due to diet and repression of desire (Carlat et al, 1997).