Asexuality, Attraction, and Desire

Introduction & Rationale

As someone who identifies as asexual and studied Philosophy in university, I want to try my hand at providing conceptual clarity to asexuality by engaging with the Philosophy of Asexuality. There isn’t a formal academic sub-field of the Philosophy of Asexuality, but anyone who was written about what it means to be asexual has engaged in it. I don’t particularly care to engage in the Philosophy of Asexuality just for the sake of it, but rather to make it easier for people questioning their own asexuality to engage in self-reflection.

Asexuality can be defined as the lack of sexual attraction. This is pretty commonly accepted at this point without controversy. The hard part is not in defining asexuality, but rather self-reflection about sexual attraction. It is an extremely difficult task for asexual people to say that they have never experienced sexual attraction with 100% confidence. How would you know what to look for if you’ve never experienced it? I believe that the best thing we can do is try to provide a strong definition with necessary and sufficient conditions for us to reflect and be able to say that sexual attraction has occurred.

Disclaimers

It is important to note that in this article I will not tell you concretely if you are asexual or otherwise on the asexual spectrum. I instead want to give you the tools to reflect on it yourself and choose to identify how you want afterward. Asexuality is a sexual orientation, but more than that it is a label. A label is a way to understand yourself and to communicate things about yourself to other people. A label does not cause you do to do anything. For example, it’s not that you don’t want to have sex because you are asexual, but rather you don’t have to have sex and also you are asexual. This things may be connected but they are not a casual or necessary connection.

I also want to make it clear that while I will always try to provide logical reasoning and scientific evidence to back up my points, at the end of the day it is my personal opinion. I have my own intuitions and motivations for believing this framework, and if you at any point feel yourself disagreeing with any of my points I urge you to reflect on it. My account of asexuality is not the only out there, so do not feel beholden to having to use mine.

What is Sexual Attraction?

Sexual attraction is sexual desire targeted toward a specific person

As I mentioned previously, asexuality can be defined as the lack of sexual attraction. But what is sexual attraction? In Angela Chen’s book, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex, she defines sexual attraction as, “the desire to have sex with a specific person for physical reasons” (pg. 20). I think that this is a great definition to start with, no doubt informed by her research for the book as well as her own personal experiences as an asexual woman who is not sex-averse and engages in sex for emotional reasons with her partners. I want to replace “the desire to have sex” and “for physical reasons” with a term of art from the study of sexual behavior, “sexual desire”. So now the definition in new terms reads like, “sexual desire for a specific person”. I think that this phrasing is a bit awkward so my final definition will be: “sexual desire targeted toward a specific person”. I will explicate “targeted” and “specific person” a bit later, but first I want to fully explain what I mean by “sexual desire”.

What is sexual desire?

I believe in a view of sexual desire which is a variety of a family of views called “non-interpersonal pleasure” views. This is roughly the belief that sexual desire is “the desire for certain bodily pleasures”, a belief that importantly “avoids the conceptual involvement of another person, understanding sexual desire instead as desire for sexual pleasures” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). I am a proponent of this view because I believe that sexual desire can be targeted or non-targeted and need not be always targeted at another person, i.e. sexual desire for self-pleasure.

It is important to note that this is not the only theory of sexual desire, see here for a comparison by Luke Brunning and Natasha McKeever. I think that any theory of sexual desire could replace my view and my argument would work as long as they maintain the distinction between sexual desire and sexual motivation. I think that there are a number of reasons why someone would engage in sexual behavior, but I don’t think that they are all sexual reasons, which means I do not think that they should be considered within sexual desire. In “Why humans have sex” by Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss, they identify as many as 237 different reasons why someone might choose to engage in sexual activity. There are physical reasons, goal-based reasons, emotional reasons, and insecurity-based reasons. I think that the “sexual motivation” helps bridge the gap between sexual desire and sexual behavior, and should be kept distinct from sexual desire.

I don’t want to just use argumentation to provide justification for my point, but also want to demonstrate what I mean by examples. Consider the following example: a couple that is trying to have a baby. It doesn’t seem correct to say that they desire having sex, but rather they desire having a child. Obviously there is engagement in sexual behavior and there may even be sexual pleasure present, but it certainly isn’t the primary goal, which would make this desire not sexual. Another example would be a person who wants to have sex because their partner wants to and they agree because they know it would make their partner happy. I think that the reasoning pretty much follows the same shape as the previous example, with the results being the same as well.

What does targeted toward a specific person mean?

Now that we have defined what sexual desire is, we must now understand what it means for it to be targeted toward a specific person. Put simply, it is the desire to engage in sexual behavior with a specific person because they are that specific person. Usually this means that something about the other person appeals to you and generates sexual desire as a result (sometimes referred to as “inviting”).

Let’s contrast this with untargeted sexual desire, i.e. libido. Libido, also known as the sex drive, is someone’s general sexual desire, but isn’t really targeted at anyone/anything. Usually a person will engage in self-pleasure in order to relieve this sexual desire, but someone could also engage in sexual behavior with another person to relieve their sexual desire. As long as that desire is not due to reasoning specific to that person, then it fails to be sexual attraction. There could have been reasons of choosing that person over other people, but that doesn’t mean that the sexual desire was generated because of the configuration of this specific person that appealed to them.

Putting It All Together

If you are wondering if you are asexual, you should first ask yourself if you’ve ever felt sexual desire, desire for sexual pleasure. If you have little to no sexual desire then you already lack a necessary condition for sexual attraction. You cannot have targeted sexual desire without sexual desire.

If you do have sexual desire, you have to then figure out if it is because of some feature of the specific person of that particular instance of sexual desire. If the answer to this is yes, then it is sexual attraction, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you are allosexual. If you do not have any kind of restrictions/conditions in which sexual attraction arises, then you are allosexual. However, otherwise you may be on the asexual spectrum, where there are microlabels that can describe how your sexual attraction occurs. For example:

• Demisexual: Sexual attraction only occurs after some kind of emotional bond is formed
• Lithosexual: Sexual attraction only occurs toward people for those who don’t reciprocate those feelings
• Aceflux: Sexual attraction fluctuates over a person’s life potentially between no attraction, some attraction, and a lot of attraction

The above are only a sampling of the various microlabels on the asexual spectrum that the asexual community has come up with and gathered around. Even if a particular microlabel doesn’t resonate with you, you can generally identify as asexual or a-spec as an umbrella term.

Who can call themselves asexual?

If you think that you don’t experience sexual attraction for whatever reason, I think that you can identify as asexual. Even if you don’t experience sexual attraction I don’t think that you have to identify as asexual if you don’t want to, but I think that it usually helps more than it hurts.

If you don’t have a lot of sexual pleasure this may lead you to not have sexual desire. Are you asexual? In my mind, yes, but you can choose to identify in any way that feels right to you. If someone is traumatized and does not feel sexual desire then I think they can identify as asexual too. I think that Angela Chen’s book, Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex has a far better in-depth look into this question and how gatekeeping the identity hurts more than it helps the community.