Support for Asexual Survivors

Asexuality is a sexual orientation that describes people who experience little to no sexual attraction to others. Some people in the asexual community experience low levels of sexual attraction or only experience sexual attraction alongside emotional attraction- they may describe themselves as gray-asexual or demisexual, respectively. Asexual people may still experience attraction to others romantically and platonically. 

Statistics on Bisexual Survivors

  • One study found that 72% of asexual people identify as genderqueer/non-binary. 
  • The same study found that asexual people were about just as likely to report that they were in a romantic intimate relationship as non-asexual LGB people. (59% compared with 61%, respectively). 
  • In a study conducted by the Trevor Project on LGBTQ+ youth, they found that 10% of youth surveyed identified as asexual. Additionally, 41% of asexual youth surveyed identified as transgender or nonbinary. 
  • Asexuality is not a new identity. There is documentation of sexuality as early as the 1800s as mentioned in the book Asexual Erotics by Ela Przybylo, PhD. 
  • Asexual people are 2.5x more likely than their non-asexual (or allosexual) peers to experience sexual trauma. 
  • 82% of asexual people reported experiencing at least one type of sexual violence in their lives. 
  • More than 50% of asexual college students have reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact. 
  • 18.5% of asexual people reported having sex due to social pressure from a partner. 
  • Demisexual and gray-asexual people report higher rates of experiencing rape and sexual violence than asexual people who experience no sexual attraction or desire. 


Barriers Faced by Asexual Survivors

Asexuality is often misunderstood as a form of celibacy, a choice to not engage in sexual behavior. However, someone who chooses to be celibate is still experiencing sexual attraction and desire that they are making the decision to not act on, while asexual people do not experience that attraction and desire. Just as people of other sexual orientations do not “choose” their sexuality, asexual people are not choosing to be asexual, they simply are. 

  • This conflation leads asexual people being pressured into having sex with an allosexual partner who believes that they can convince them that they want to have sex. 
  • Taking this mentality further, asexual people often share being told they can be “fixed” through sex with the right partner. Sex in this context is not sex, it is corrective sexual assault. 

Asexuality is often pathologized and medicalized. 

  • For asexual survivors of sexual trauma, especially childhood sexual trauma, their asexuality may be inaccurately attributed to their trauma. While sexual trauma does not, and cannot, change a person’s sexual orientation, it can make it confusing and anxiety-inducing to separate the trauma from one’s identity. 
  • Asexuality is not the same as medical conditions that affect a person’s libido (such as Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder) or muscular conditions that make sex difficult or painful (such as vaginismus).  

Asexual survivors are under-studied.  

  • Formal studies on the unique needs of asexual survivors are few and far between. This makes it difficult for service providers to “prove” the necessity of specific resources and services for asexual survivors to potential funders, and even to know what those specific resources and services should be.  
  • The lack of education about asexuality for service providers leads many asexual survivors to not disclose this part of their identity out of fear of stigma, pathologization, and not being believed. 


Reminders and Affirmations Asexual Survivors

  • You do not need to compromise your boundaries around sex to make others feel more comfortable with your sexuality. 
  • Asexuality is not a disorder, a result of trauma, or something that needs to be “fixed”. Asexuality is a valid, whole identity as it is. 
  • You deserve to have a happy relationship that you feel safe and fulfilled in, should you want to be in a relationship.  
  • You can be a full and complete person without ever having a relationship.  
  • Whatever boundaries you create in a relationship romantically or sexually are valid and deserve to be respected. 
  • Whether you are open to sex, indifferent towards sex, or repulsed by sex; you are ace enough and deserve to be in the ace community. 
  • Sex does not define you or the quality and depth of your relationships. 

Resources

The Asexual Visibility & Education Network (AVEN) hosts the world’s largest online asexual community as well as a large archive of resources on asexuality.  

The Anti-Violence Project has a 24-hour hotline for LGBTQ+ survivors to call for confidential support: 212-714-1141    

In Our Own Voices, a project partner of the Institute, is a leading national organization giving voice to the needs and challenges of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming communities, as well as LGBT Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities. IOOV seeks to: develop the leadership of LGBTQ POC, strengthen the voices of LGBTQ POC, and increase our capacity for combating oppression and marginalization.