Join me for a conversation about sex, identity, and society with three individuals who identify on the asexual spectrum. We'll start by clarifying key identity labels and attraction types, then dive into their responses, addressing questions you didn’t even realize you had!

PART 1: IDENTITY

What is “Ace”?

Asexual (ace) is an umbrella term encompassing the identities of people who don’t experience sexual attraction at all or experience it very little. There are many sub-identities within asexuality and many identities that can overlap with it.

Allosexual (allo) means non-asexual, or what many would likely consider to be a “typical” experience of sexual attraction. I am sure you can imagine why it is better to have a term for this rather than calling everyone “normal” except for asexual people. 

Graysexual (gray ace) is often characterized by experiencing limited, infrequent, or fluctuating sexual attraction. Some describe it as the spectrum between asexual and allosexual.

Demisexual (demi) describes someone who does not experience sexual attraction unless paired with an emotional bond. Some consider this identity to fall under the graysexual umbrella.

Aromantic (aro) describes someone who does not experience romantic attraction or experiences it very little. This identity can co-occur with asexuality but does not always. Alloromantic means non-aromantic.

What are some different types of attraction?

Sexual: Attraction with the quality of arousing sexual desire. Sexual attraction is not the same thing as sexual desire, but the former is defined as an attraction which brings about the latter. 

Sensual: Attraction that involves wanting physical intimacy or closeness that is not sexual. Some examples are wanting to hug, cuddle, or generally be close to someone.

Romantic: Attraction that involves wanting to engage in romantic activities (author note: this one is hard to define and this definition feels inadequate)

Emotional: Attraction to someone based on their personality, emotions, values, or other inner characteristics, and may lead to a desire to learn more about them.

Aesthetic: Appreciation of the beauty or appearance of someone, which can be experienced without any further desire to engage in a sexual, sensual, or emotional relationship.

Not everyone can differentiate between these and that’s okay. If you always experience all of them towards whoever you’re attracted to, it can be difficult to tease them apart. 

Do ace people ____?

Asexuality is experienced differently by everyone. So asking “do ace people___?” is not the best way to gather information. Just like each allosexual person has their own unique relationship to sex, each asexual person you talk to will have a unique perspective as well. So here are three different perspectives from Laura, Morgan, and Charli, who responded to the following questions via email.

Q1: Can you describe how you identify and what it means to you? How do you feel your asexual identity intersects with your other identities?

Laura: I identify as lesbian and on the ace spectrum. I’m graysexual in the sense that I feel slightly indifferent towards sex and that my feelings towards it change. I enjoy it, but I am not devastated about the prospect of not having sex. I sometimes identify with demisexual, but I prefer just saying I’m on the ace spectrum, partly because no single label feels right to me, and partly because I’m still figuring it out. It’s frustrating that lesbian is described as a sexual orientation. This is alienating to the alloromantic asexual community. Sure, there are the terms “homoromantic/heteroromantic” etc. but people don’t use those terms by default. 

Morgan: I identify as an Ace Lesbian. Which might be oxymoronic, so perhaps a clearer way to describe myself is Ace and Homoromantic. But I feel like being a Lesbian transcends the [sexual] definition and has a community-centered [one], too. So Ace Lesbian is what I prefer.

Charli: [...] I’m a queer human and a very curious individual. My understanding of identity evolves with time, new knowledge, and as I learn more. [...] I was assigned female at birth, but the terms genderqueer or non-binary feel much more comfortable to me. The current societal definitions of "woman" don’t resonate with me. My attraction to partners also isn’t influenced by their gender. Cue David in Schitt’s Creek—“It’s the wine, not the label.” I also fall somewhere on the asexual spectrum, which for me is fluid depending on time and life context. There have been many years where I’ve felt no sexual attraction or had very little desire. At other times, to feel sexual attraction, I need to know someone well and develop an emotional connection to their personality, not their body. I think asexuality plays into my Queerness as a whole – questioning the expectation for why an experience is normalized, who it benefits and doesn’t, and finding language, action, and community for where I feel most celebrated. It is also possible that being ace protected me in some ways growing up. I was in an extremely compulsory heterosexual culture and went to a church that preached being gay as sin and saving sex for marriage. In hindsight, I wasn’t really attracted to anyone, and didn’t care much about sex. This offered me safety where being myself would have led to ostracization from home and community.

Q2: When did you know you were asexual?

Laura: When I was 18, a group of about 15 friends were going around answering the question “would you rather give up food or sex” and EVERYONE else said food and I said sex. Not that answering that way necessarily means you’re ace, maybe you just really like food, but it was the beginning of my internal confusion about my sexuality. I was also never able to understand how people had celebrity crushes. 

Morgan: I think it was only once I found myself in a relationship where my partner made me feel so safe and free to be myself that I found the identity to be less ‘scary’ in my mind. For a very long time, I was afraid of being rejected and isolated for having these feelings, so they were pushed down quite far in my mind. There are a lot of memories [...] that I look back on and think huh, I should have known. So, I don’t know if there was one specific time I ‘realized’ - more like one specific time I accepted myself. 

Charli: I knew there was something different about how I experienced attraction to people, even before I had the language to describe it. In junior high, when my friends were talking about their crushes and asking me who I had a crush on, I would lie and choose whoever seemed like a kind person. My friends would then tease me, saying that person was either really ugly or probably gay.

PART 2: RELATIONSHIP WITH SEX AND INTIMACY

Q3: What kinds of attraction do you experience and how do they feel to you?

Laura: I know that I feel romantic attraction, and I am very able to feel it, but it’s hard to describe. Most allo people say it’s when you combine sexual and emotional attraction, but it’s not, allosexuals just tend to see sexual attraction as an inherent part of romance. I’m starting to think having romantic attraction is basically feeling attraction through your personal idea of “romance” with another person. Also, I have often felt just sensual attraction. This got me into situations where people would say I was leading them on when I didn’t want to have sex with them, but I just didn’t have the language to be clear that I wanted physical intimacy but no kissing or sex. One of the things that helped me on my journey towards understanding my sexual identity was realizing I could tell the difference between the different types of attraction, while my allosexual peers generally could not. 

Charli: I do experience aesthetic attraction—now and then, I see someone and think, wow, that human is beautiful. As I spend more time in queer spaces, this happens more often, which, for me, feels like part of the fluidity I experience on the asexual spectrum. When I was younger, I would date my male friends. As we grew more emotionally intimate, I would develop sexual desire associated with them as they showed attraction and desire to me, but I don’t think I was ever physically attracted to them. These days, the way I experience attraction and desire are quite different. I know that even within the same relationship, my attraction and sexual desire can fluctuate. Sometimes my desire is responsive, and sometimes it’s just not there at all. And attraction, for me, is more about who I want to spend my time and energy with, or who/what I find pleasurable to be around and experience.

Q4: What is your relationship to partnered sex and masturbation?

Laura: I do both. For me, masturbation is just about having the physical sensation of an orgasm, and sex is about connecting. For me, other ways of connecting can be just as meaningful, and partnered sex is not so crucial for my pleasure and satisfaction. I find it is easier to get turned on during partnered sex though.

Charli: For me, masturbation has never been attached to sexual attraction. It’s a thing that feels good and brings me pleasure. When I have a close relationship with someone, sexual desire can grow. A while back, after the end of a long-term relationship, I just wanted to fuck someone. I wanted to have the feeling of arousal associated with a human that desired me. I am still having fun with this, which challenges some people's conceptions of asexuality.

Q5: What are some reasons that ace people might have sex that make sense to you?

Laura: I think one of the reasons ace people have sex that tends to confuse allo people is just simply that it feels good. Being ace doesn’t mean you lack genital sensation, so the good feelings are still there. Some might not feel that partnered sex does so much more for them than masturbation though.

Morgan: To be honest, any reason makes sense to me. As long as it’s consensual, and not out of feelings of obligation/fear/etc. A common reason may be that people want to feel close to their partner in a physical way, and that’s cool! 

Charli:If the feeling of physical arousal is pleasurable and it’s consensual and safer, that’s a great reason to have sex – with yourself or others. I’ve also heard about a doctor suggesting sex for endorphins – that’s awesome. Some folks in relationships with sexual people also have sex for a feeling of bonding in that relationship. For me, though, if I am not feeling sexual desire, I dislike sex.

Q6: What are your favourite forms of intimacy and connection? Whether physical or non-physical. 

Laura: Talking, laughing, cuddling, dancing, kissing.

Morgan: I love snuggling, and snuggling with minimal clothing on. Being skin-on-skin feels very comforting and secure.

Charli: I really, really love a good hug. Another form of intimacy that’s commonly discussed in the neurodivergent community—but less so in other spaces, despite the overlap—is sharing special interests and engaging in parallel play. If you can show genuine interest and curiosity in the things I’m learning about or passionate about, and I can do the same for you, it makes me feel special. Parallel play is when people are in the same space but doing their own activities. Maybe one person is knitting while the other is coloring. It's a great way to share time together.

PART 3: SOCIETY

Q7: How do you navigate societal expectations about sex?

Laura: I am not very open about being on the ace spectrum. I still have a hard time understanding myself, and it builds frustration when I have to try to explain to others. And as someone who has been in many very sexual relationships, I am still working through self-doubt and figuring out my identity.

Morgan: The older I get and the more secure I feel in my identity, the more willing I am to share my experiences with others. However, after having too many encounters with people who are rude and closed-minded about the idea of asexuality - it also becomes harder to share. I find that people have assumptions about others’ sex lives, and when their narrative doesn’t fit my reality, their first instinct is to shame me. But I also have to remember that people also like to shame others for havingtoo much sex [...].

Charli:These days, it goes in my dating bio. I’m learning that it's important for me to communicate my needs and desires around physical intimacy and sex earlier rather than later.

Q8: What’s a misconception you would like to clear up?

Laura: A lot of people define demisexual as “not feeling sexual attraction until a strong emotional bond has formed.” And to me that gives the wrong impression. The first time I described it this way to someone I was sleeping with, he replied with “oh yeah I agree, sex is much better when you actually feel something for the person.” And it just felt like he was describing something most allosexuals feel – that [sex] is more meaningful when you have feelings for the person. This kind of made me question whether I was even demisexual, or if it is even a real thing at all! But then I heard someone define it along the lines of “only feeling sexual attraction that is attached to a connection you have with a specific person”, which felt more accurate for me. As in, the sexual attraction only comes as package deal with the emotional attraction to a person.

Morgan: When allo people learn about my ace identity, they [...] like to think that I’ll hate hearing anything about sex, which isn’t true. Just because someone doesn’t feel sexual attraction doesn’t mean they automatically don’t want to hear/talk about/experience sex. Throw your assumptions out the door and just ask people what they’re comfortable with!

Charli: Some of my friends were pretty confused when I announced to them, "I just really want to get fucking laid!" For me, though, it's more about desire within my own body and wanting the mental stimulation and something different, rather than sexual attraction to other people. I've seen some policing over sexual identity—who is and isn't considered "ace"—but as I've described, my experience of asexuality is part of my queer identity. The label isn’t something that fits neatly into a box. And honestly, who made the box in the first place?

Q9: Do you have anything you want to leave the readers with?

Laura: Asexuality is not simple or easy to understand. For me, and I assume many others who are ace, it isn’t even easy to understand our own identities. If you’re frustrated by how complicated the labels are, how hard they are to define, and how they can often contradict each other… You’re not alone. I’m also confused.

Morgan:Not all ace people have the same preferences just as not all allo people have the same preferences. 

Charli: Hmmm... if I don’t dive into a big lecture on Queer Theory, I’d just say this: Being ace is not a deficit or a problem to be fixed. People of all sexual desires deserve to be loved and respected in the way that feels best for them.