Skip to main content

Theoretical Issues in the Study of Asexuality

Archives of Sexual Behavior volume 40, pages 713–723 (2011)Cite this article

Abstract

Academic interest in asexual people is new and researchers are beginning to discuss how to proceed methodologically and conceptually with the study of asexuality. This article explores several of the theoretical issues related to the study of asexuality. Researchers have tended to treat asexuality either as a distinct sexual orientation or as a lack of sexual orientation. Difficulties arise when asexual participants are inconsistent in their self-identification as asexual. Distinguishing between sexual and romantic attraction resolves this confusion, while simultaneously calling into question conceptualizations of the asexual population as a single homogenous group. Arguments are considered in favor of exploring diversity within the asexual population, particularly with respect to gender and romantic orientation, proposing that the categorical constructs employed in (a)sexuality research be replaced with continuous ones. Furthermore, given the recently noted bias toward including only self-identified asexuals, as opposed to non-self-identified asexuals or “potential-asexuals,” in research about asexuality, the nature and meaning of asexual self-identification are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the theoretical importance of acknowledging asexual self-identification or lack thereof in future research into asexuality. This article discusses what these current theoretical issues mean for the study of asexuality and sexuality more generally, including a brief consideration of ethical implications for research with asexual participants. Finally, directions for future research are suggested.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Notes

  1. David Jay recounted the events leading up to his creation of AVEN in Episode 5 of his podcast, Love From the Asexual Underground, available here: http://asexualunderground.blogspot.com/2006/08/5-history-lesson.html. This includes a brief explanation of why an attraction-based definition was more inclusive than a desire-based definition at the time of AVEN’s inception, in the context of the budding asexual community.

  2. Bogaert (2006) addressed asexuality as theoretically distinct from hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), but did not explore more general theoretical issues relevant to asexuality research, many of which have only taken shape since his article’s publication.

  3. This model does not acknowledge the existence of people who are intersex.

  4. Bogaert (2006) addressed arguments speculating that so-called asexual people may in fact be subject to physiologically defined sexual attraction (i.e., respond physiologically to sexual stimuli) but may either lack subjective awareness of this or may wish to conceal their awareness.

  5. Scherrer (2010a, 2010b) has recently published both a book chapter and a journal article referring to the same data set as her 2008 article, discussing respectively what asexuality can contribute to thinking about polyamory (i.e., responsible non-monogamy) and the same-sex marriage debate.

  6. Brotto and Yule noted that this pattern of arousal matches the target non-specific physiological sexual responses consistently documented in the literature, as reviewed by Chivers, Seto, Lalumiere, Laan, and Grimbos (2010).

  7. This includes a lexicon accessible at http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Lexicon.

  8. Recent Canadian governmental data indicate that 1.3% and 0.6% of men are willing to reveal themselves on a public health survey to be homosexual and bisexual respectively (Statistics Canada, 2004). Given that more than 95 percent of men self-identified as heterosexual, interpreting the distribution as bimodal instead of unimodal is a choice based more on analyst sensibilities and/or politics than on the numbers themselves. Moreover, note that even a bimodal distribution of sexual orientation would be consistent with a continuous spectrum that happens to be unevenly populated: bimodal distributions do not require discrete categories of traits.

  9. Based on the available literature, Chivers et al. (2010) calculated these average correlations for non-clinical samples of men (r = 0.61) and women (r = 0.23). They computed these correlations in several ways, both including and excluding participants from clinical samples: they found consistently similar gender differences.

  10. These estimates were based on r 2 for men (38% from r = 0.61) and women (5% from r = 0.23), as a positively biased heuristic gauging the percentage of variability in one variable (i.e., psychological sexual arousal) that was accounted for by the variability of a second, correlated variable (i.e., physiological genital arousal).

  11. Heteronormativity is the cultural, social, and ideological bias that normalizes heterosexuality as a universal “default” way of being, and which positions heterosexuality as an often-invisible reference against which all other ways of being are compared. Heteronormativity represents the privileging of two distinct genders held in opposition to each other, and the prescribed relationship between men and women which is afforded special legal protection and social recognition. Examples of heteronormativity include the presumption that people are heterosexual unless otherwise specified, and the conceptual paradigm in which heterosexuality and heterosexual people (obviously) do not need to be explained or accounted for, but lesbian, gay and bisexual people, relationships and behaviors do.

  12. Analogous to heteronormativity which positions heterosexuality as the universal and privileged way of being, normalized and socially supported, sexualnormativity positions sexuality as the universal and privileged way of being, which is both normalized and socially supported. Sexualnormativity includes the assumption that people are sexual unless otherwise specified, in addition to the ideological paradigm in which asexuality needs to be explained and possibly treated clinically, while sexuality is merely and often invisibly presumed to be normal.

  13. The “Down Low” refers to “presumably ‘secretive’ homosexuality among married Black men” (Sandfort & Dodge, 2008, p. 675). Men on the Down Low typically do not consider themselves to be “homo” or “gay.”

References

  • American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text revision). Washington, DC: Author.

  • Asexual Visibility and Education Network. (2008). About AVEN. Retrieved August 11, 2009, from AVEN: The Asexual Visibility and Education Network Web Site: http://www.asexuality.org/home/about.html

  • Bogaert, A. F. (2004). Asexuality: Prevalence and associated factors in a national probability sample. Journal of Sex Research, 41, 279–287.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bogaert, A. F. (2006). Toward a conceptual understanding of asexuality. Review of General Psychology, 10, 241–250.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bradac, J. J. (1983). The language of lovers, flovers, and friends: Communicating in social and personal relationships. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 2, 141–162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brotto, L. A., Knudson, G., Inskip, J., Rhodes, K., & Erskine, Y. (2010). Asexuality: A mixed methods approach. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39, 599–618.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brotto, L. A., & Yule, M. A. (2009). Reply to Hinderliter [Letter to the Editor]. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38, 622–623.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brotto, L. A., & Yule, M. A. (2010). Physiological and subjective sexual arousal in self-identified asexual women. Archives of Sexual Behavior. doi: 10.1007/s10508-010-9671-7.

  • Brown, L. S. (1989). New voices, new visions: Toward a lesbian/gay paradigm for psychology. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 13, 445–458.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carrigan, M. (in press). There’s more to life than sex: Difference and commonality within the asexual community. Sexualities.

  • Chivers, M. L., & Bailey, J. M. (2007). The sexual psychophysiology of sexual orientation. In E. Janssen (Ed.), The psychophysiology of sex (pp. 458–474). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chivers, M. L., Rieger, G., Latty, E., & Bailey, J. M. (2004). A sex difference in the specificity of sexual arousal. Psychological Science, 15, 736–744.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chivers, M. L., Seto, M. C., Lalumiere, M. L., Laan, E., & Grimbos, T. (2010). Agreement of self-reported and genital measures of sexual arousal in men and women: A meta-analysis. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39, 5–56.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diamond, L. M. (2003). What does sexual orientation orient? A biobehavioral model distinguishing romantic love and sexual desire. Psychological Review, 110, 173–192.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diamond, L. M. (2008). Sexual fluidity: Understanding women’s love and desire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edley, N. (2001). Analysing masculinity: Interpretive repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions. In M. Wetherell, S. Taylor, & S. J. Yates (Eds.), Discourse as data (pp. 189–228). Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gazzola, S. B., & Morrison, M. A. (2011). Asexuality: An emergent sexual orientation. In T. G. Morrison, M. A. Morrison, M. Carrigan, & D. T. McDermott (Eds.), Sexual minority research in the new millennium. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science.

  • Gergen, K. J. (1973). Social psychology as history. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26, 309–320.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gergen, K. J. (1997). The place of the psyche in a constructed world. Theory & Psychology, 7, 723–746.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hinderliter, A. C. (2009). Methodological issues for studying asexuality [Letter to the Editor]. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38, 619–621.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kinsey, A. C., Pomeroy, W. B., & Martin, C. E. (1948). Sexual behavior in the human male. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kitzinger, C. (1999). Lesbian and gay psychology: Is it critical? Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 1, 50–66.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuban, M., Barbaree, H. E., & Blanchard, R. (1999). A comparison of volume and circumference phallometry: Response magnitude and method agreement. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 28, 345–359.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Labov, W. (1973). The boundaries of words and their meanings. In C. J. N. Bailey & R. W. Shuy (Eds.), New ways of analyzing variations in English (pp. 340–373). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, L. J. (2000). The poverty of truth-seeking: Postmodernism, discourse analysis, and critical feminism. Theory & Psychology, 10, 313–352.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Potter, J. (2003). Discourse analysis and discursive psychology. In P. M. Camic, J. E. Rhodes, & L. Yardley (Eds.), Qualitative research in psychology: Expanding perspectives in methodology and design (pp. 73–94). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Prause, N., & Graham, C. (2007). Asexuality: Classification and characterization. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36, 341–356.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rieger, G., Chivers, M., & Bailey, J. M. (2005). Sexual arousal patterns in bisexual men. Psychological Science, 16, 579–584.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sandfort, T. G. M., & Dodge, B. (2008). “…And then there was the Down Low’’: Introduction to Black and Latino male bisexualities. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37, 675–682.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scherrer, K. (2008). Asexual identity: Negotiating identity, negotiating desire. Sexualities, 11, 621–641.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scherrer, K. S. (2010a). Asexual relationships: What does asexuality have to do with polyamory? In M. Barker & D. Langdridge (Eds.), Understanding non-monogamies (pp. 154–159). New York: Taylor & Francis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scherrer, K. S. (2010b). How asexuality contributes to the same-sex marriage discussion. Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services, 22, 56–73.

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shotter, J. (1997). Sociocentric accounts of the mind. Theory & Psychology, 7, 422–424.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Snape, D., & Spencer, L. (2003). The foundations of qualitative research. In J. Ritchie & J. Lewis (Eds.), Qualitative research practice: A guide for social science students and researchers (pp. 1–23). London: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Statistics Canada. (2004, June 15). Canadian community health survey. The Daily, Statistics Canada Catalogue no 82-221-XIE. Retrieved July 8, 2010 from Statistics Canada Web Site: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/040615/dq040615b-eng.htm

  • Storms, M. D. (1980). Theories of sexual orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 783–792.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank my doctoral supervisor Charlene Senn for her guidance, particularly as I tried to nagivate safely through my first substantive encounter with the peer-review process.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, N9B 3P4, Canada

    CJ DeLuzio Chasin

Authors
  1. CJ DeLuzio Chasin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to CJ DeLuzio Chasin.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

DeLuzio Chasin, C. Theoretical Issues in the Study of Asexuality. Arch Sex Behav 40, 713–723 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-011-9757-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-011-9757-x

Keywords

  • Asexuality
  • Sexual orientation
  • Sexual desire
  • Romantic attraction
  • Sexuality