Asexuality: A Brief Introduction

There are no physical signs of asexuality. Just like you can’t tell if someone is straight or gay or pan or bi just by looking at them, you can’t tell someone is asexual just by looking at them. Being asexual doesn’t mean that something downstairs doesn’t work right. Being asexual doesn’t mean that someone has no genitals.

Asexuality is not a lack of libido.

Libido is also known as a “sex drive”, that is, the desire or impulse to experience sexual satisfaction. Some asexuals do have a libido, it’s just that it’s essentially aimless. Their bits downstairs will activate and call out for attention, but that doesn’t make a person feel sexually attracted toward anyone else.

Asexuality is not a gender identity.

Asexuality has nothing to do with someone’s gender. There are asexual men, asexual women, asexuals who are transgender, and asexuals of no gender. Asexuality does not mean someone is unhappy or uncomfortable with their gender or the parts they were born with. Asexuality does not mean that a person is genderless.

Asexuality is not a relationship status.

On places like Tumblr and Twitter, I’ve seen many people say things like “Boys suck, I’m turning asexual now”. Asexuality is a sexual orientation, it doesn’t mean that you’re avoiding sex because of a bad relationship experience. If someone is avoiding sex, that’s called celibacy or abstinence, not asexuality. You can’t be temporarily asexual because of a bad break up, that’s just not how it works.

Asexuality is not a relationship cure-all.

Similar to the “Boys suck, I’m asexual” line, I’ve seen people say things like “I wish I were asexual, then I wouldn’t have any problems.” Asexuality does not mean that someone does not participate in romantic or sexual relationships. Many asexuals will end up in relationships, and those relationships can have just as many problems as relationships between non-asexual people. In fact, if an asexual ends up in a relationship with a non-asexual person, that can lead to all sorts of problems due to mismatched sexual interest.

Asexuality is not a dry spell.

If someone hasn’t had sex for a week, that doesn’t make them asexual. If someone hasn’t had sex for a month, that doesn’t make them asexual. If someone hasn’t had sex for a year, that doesn’t make them asexual. If someone hasn’t had sex for a decade, that doesn’t make them asexual. There isn’t some span of time that someone has to go without sex before they’re granted the title of asexual, because that’s not what asexuality is. Asexuality is about not experiencing sexual attraction, not a lack of sex.

Symbols of Asexuality

The Asexuality Flag

The Asexuality Flag (also called the “Ace Flag”) is made up of four equally sized horizontal stripes. From top to bottom, the colors are black, grey, white, and purple.

The need for a flag was driven primarily by the desire to have a symbol that belongs to all of us, something that we could use to identify as ace and represent asexuality with that was not tied to a specific group. Prior to its adoption, people would use things like the AVEN triangle or a half-filled heart, but those had problems which prevented their wider adoption. The AVEN triangle is, well, the AVEN triangle. It’s the logo of a single website that not every asexual person is affiliated with. The half-filled heart implies romance, which meant that many aromantics were uncomfortable using it.

In the Summer of 2010, a number of asexuality sites, led by users on AVEN, came up with a number of designs for an asexuality flag, then held a multi-stage vote to determine the winner. The selected design was created by AVEN user standup, and first posted at 4:36 PM on June 30th, 2010.

Some of the other designs included hearts and spades and triangles and all manner of other symbols. Some of the designs looked like country flags. In the end, the simple, four-bar design was chosen. This design avoids the unwanted connotations that specific symbols like a triangle or heart might have, it avoids any hint of national affiliation, and perhaps most importantly, it fits in with the striped designs of most other GSM pride flags.

(Plus, it’s really easy to draw.)

The four colors all have meanings:

Black: Asexuality.

Grey: Grey-Asexuality and Demisexuality.

White: Non-asexual partners and allies.

Purple: Community.