Hi everyone,
Here is a BBC article about asexuality. A condition in which some people don't feel any sexual desire at all for others. There is a whole community of people with this condition.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160621-i-have-never-felt-sexual-desire************
..2004, when the Canadian academic Anthony Bogaert, published the paper ‘Asexuality: Prevalence and associated factors in a national probability sample’ that the idea that a proportion of the population may experience no sexual attraction..
..around 1% of the population are asexual. Of that number, about 70% are women. The study suggested that there might be almost as many asexual people as there are gay individuals.
Unlike celibacy, which is a choice, often sanctified with a vow, and unlike sexual dysfunction, which is often treatable, asexuality is in fact innate and immovable. Asexual people are not broken or defective. “It isn’t celibacy,” says Dore. “It isn’t sex negativity. It isn’t a choice not to have sex. All these do apply to some asexuals – and to some non-asexuals for that matter – but not to all.”
“More research needs to be done on the origins of asexuality,” he says. “There are studies suggesting that asexuality is affected by early biological factors such genetics, prenatal hormones affecting early brain development. Just like other sexual orientations asexuality likely has an early biological origin, or at least an early biological predisposition.”
“I think we need to leave open the possibility that some asexual people have atypical circulating hormones, but there is not much evidence that this is generally the case for most asexual people,” says Bogaert. “Besides, some asexual people may still have some form of libido – but it just isn’t connected to others.”
“There's a whole spectrum. Someone might identify as grey-asexual or grey-A if they have lower sexual attraction than most people, but they can experience it sometimes.” There are also different romantic orientations, he says. An asexual person can be heteroromantic (falling in love with someone of the opposite sex), homoromantic (feeling love for someone of the same sex), biromantic (experiencing love for both sexes) or aromantic (craving love and intimacy from no one), to name a few. Some may enjoy non-sexual forms of physical intimacy – like cuddling – while others may find it disturbing.
The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (Aven)..a support group founded in 2001 in San Francisco, found that 70% of asexual people said they were virgins; 11% of asexual people said they are not virgins but are currently sexually inactive;7% of asexual people said they are sexually active; 17% of asexual people said they were ‘completely repulsed’ by sex. Another 38% said they were ‘somewhat repulsed’ by sex, 27% said they were indifferent about sex, but 4%, perhaps rather confusingly, said they enjoy having sex.
Aven has grown steadily during the past decade from 391 members in 2003 to 82,979 this year. Activism, too, appears to be on the increase. Many campus pride groups now actively include asexuality. There remains a lack of good data when it comes to true numbers, however. Clarity may be imminent. The Office of National Statistics is currently considering including listing ‘asexual’ as an option for sexual orientation in its list of questions for the 2021 UK census.
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For information.
Cheers.
Sriram
