Like many young men, Michael enjoys cricket, parties and
reading. But having sex, says the 22-year-old university student, is
about as much fun as "watching paint dry".
Social pressure to date girls during his teens meant that he ended
up having sexual relationships with half a dozen young women.
"But it wasn't very fulfilling," he recalls. And three years
ago he realised he did not want to have sex ever again.
Michael, from Launceston, well remembers the first time he put a
label to his sexual orientation. Rumours were circulating that he was
interested in men, because he had stopped dating girls. "Are you
straight or gay?" a female friend asked him at a party. "I
said, 'I'm neither. I'm asexual'," he recalls.
To him the term aptly expressed the fact he was not physically
attracted to people of either gender.
Now that he's thought longer about it, Michael also likes to
describe himself as "biromantic". He is keen to have a
romantic relationship with either a man or a woman.
How would it work? There would be no intercourse, but physical
closeness, he says. "I'm not particularly into kissing, but I'm
hooked on massages ... And the emotional intimacy is what I would see
as being ideal."
Michael may not be the rarity most would think. Some surveys of
sexual behaviour indicate there could be almost as many people who are
asexual as are gay. But in a society where sex is all pervasive,
asexual people tend to be invisible.
Kerry, a 21-year-old university student in Sydney who has never
kissed nor masturbated, realised she was different in primary school
when her girlfriends developed crushes on boys. Not wanting to be the
odd one out, she pretended she felt the same way. "Each year on
the first day of school I would pick a boy so I could say I liked him
and I wouldn't be teased," she recalls.
As her teen years passed with no increase in interest she assumed
she must be a "late bloomer". For a brief period, she also
thought she might be gay."But then I realised I didn't like girls
either. It was a matter of elimination."
Kerry accepted the term "asexual" for herself in the
final year of high school. A search of the internet led her to a
website called Asexual
Visibility and Education Network, or AVEN, which was set up
by David Jay, an American in his early 20s who has also never
experienced sexual attraction nor had sex.
"It was definitely a relief," says Kerry. "I
realised I wasn't alone."
In the first study of asexuality ever published, Anthony Bogaert of
Brock University in Canada last year analysed the responses of 18,000
people in Britain from a 1994 survey on sexual attraction. He found a
"surprisingly high" number - 1 per cent - agreed with the
statement "I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at
all". His results were published last year in The Journal of
Sex Research and reported in New Scientist magazine.
While homosexual behaviour has been observed in more than 450
species of animals, sheep have provided the best evidence so far for
asexuality in the animal kingdom. Three different American teams in
the 1990s found that about 10 per cent of rams showed no interest in
ewes. Up to 7 per cent tried to mount or sexually interact with other
rams. This left 3 per cent of rams that were sexually inactive.
Australian research on people comes up with a similar figure. Dr
Juliet Richters, of the University of NSW, says that 6 per cent of
people in an Australian survey of almost 20,000 people said they had
never had sexual intercourse. Of the declared virgins, about half were
under 20 years old, and so likely to have sex later in life.
Richters says the remaining 3 per cent that will never have sex was
probably an underestimation, because a further 2 per cent refused to
answer the question.
This sexually inactive group could include people from happily
celibate nuns to those who are too sick, poor or unattractive to form
a relationship, and who do not want to pay for sex or have a casual
fling. Others may fear intimacy or have been put off sex by repressive
parental attitudes.
But the group is likely to include asexual people who simply don't
want any sex, says Richters. "It seems clear to me there is a
huge range in how interested people are in sex, from those who hardly
have it to those who are biting the wall if they don't get it every
day. Most are in the middle."
Professor Marita McCabe, of Deakin University in Victoria, says
people have different levels of drive in many facets of life, such as
work or sport. "Sex is a drive and falls into the same category.
If you're not interested in sex, why should you be?" It isn't a
problem unless one partner's lack of interest is causing problems in a
relationship, or making people feel bad about themselves, she says.
While AVEN is promoting A-pride, asexuality seems unlikely to
become a big movement. "It's not like it's a wild and crazy
thing," admits Kerry, a conservatively dressed young woman with a
passion for reading who wears her auburn hair in a tight ponytail.
She has a busy life combining uni with weekend work and
volunteering at a community radio station and is not desperate for a
relationship. "If it happens, it happens." Her hope is
society will come to regard asexuality as normal and people will stop
telling her she just hasn't found the right man.
Michael, who is tall but a little overweight, says he gets asked
out on quite a few dates. If someone makes a pass at him in a bar he
"runs the other way", he says. "But if I'm at uni and
someone shows signs they want to have sex with me I have a coffee with
them and say, 'It's nothing personal, but I'm not interested in that
facet of life."'
He wants people to realise that "a lack of physical drive
doesn't mean a lack of emotional drive".
Asexuality has slipped under the scientific radar. The
pharmaceutical industry has focused on people who want sex, but can't
get satisfaction. And studies on the genetics of sexuality have
focused on homosexuality.
It was recently suggested, for example, that genes linked to male
gayness may have survived because they make the men's female relatives
more fertile, after it was found that gay men's sisters, mothers and
maternal aunts have more children than usual.
A complete lack of oestrogen in men has been linked, although only
in five cases worldwide, to a low libido.
Both Kerry and Michael are not particularly fussed whether it was
genes, hormones, societal factors or upbringing that led to their lack
of interest in sex. "I'm perfectly happy being who I am,"
says Kerry.
As for Michael, "It's not boring. I find it much more
interesting to do a lot of reading about philosophy and the emotional
side of life."
Several young Australians contacted by the Herald via AVEN,
however, said they had changed their minds since registering on the
website. "Asexuality in my life was a time of transition, albeit
an extended one," said one young man. Said another: "I
realised it isn't for me. I can't control my urges."
Dr Hera Cook, a historian, says that in a different age, when sex
wasn't used to sell everything from cars to washing machines, asexual
people would not have felt as out of place. She says there is a lot of
evidence the fertility decline in the late 1800s and early 1900s,
before effective contraception was available, was due to people not
having sex.
A lack of interest in intercourse was not portrayed as a problem
for women then. An asexual man could have lived an easy life, with
difficulties only arising if his wife wanted children.
"Today we think about more sex as better sex," says Cook,
who is affiliated with the University of Sydney. The emphasis during
the past 40 years has been on rejecting the sexual repression and
prudery that dominated the first half of last century.
But that public system reflected the private beliefs of many.
"There was a tremendous amount of support for it."
Cook has spoken to several people who have been in relationships
where they have not had sex for up to five or six years. "My
experience is people only start to talk about it at the time when
their relationship is about to end."
Kerry and Michael have told their friends and family that they are
asexual, but both were not ready yet to "come out" publicly
and have their surnames used in this article.
Kerry, who has two siblings with a normal interest in sex, informed
her parents by leaving an information sheet from the AVEN website in
the esky her parents were taking on weekend trip. She says they were
concerned she might have been trying to protect herself from
relationship disappointments.
Michael believes having a father who is gay was one of the reasons
he was open to thinking laterally about his own sexuality. "My
parents are OK about it as long as I'm happy."
Source by Deborah Smith, April 16, 2005 - The
Sydney Morning Herald © 2005
