Abstract
Asexuality may put the A in LGBTQIA+, yet its place in the broader queer community is often called into question. Extending sexualities research to consider queer gatekeeping allows us to understand queerness as a resource–and to reimagine just how much room there is under the rainbow.
When Gini’s friend Brandon invited her to accompany him to Pride, Gini was thrilled. She had come out as asexual to Brandon earlier that year and had never been to Pride. “This is gonna be really fun and really cool,” Gini remembered thinking.
But the feeling quickly soured. “We get to Pride, and [Brandon] tells me that he’s never had an ally come to Pride with him before.” Gini’s excitement curdled into aggravation and disappointment. She wasn’t an “ally.” She was queer.
This story is not unusual for asexual people. Asexuality, a sexual identity category comprising people who experience little to no sexual attraction, is often sidelined or even completely erased in queer spaces. To better understand this identity, I interviewed 77 asexual people across 30 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. My respondents ranged in age from 18 to 64, and the sample included an array of racial and gender identities. In my conversations with these individuals, many mentioned that they felt just as hesitant sharing their asexual identity with queer people as with non-queer people.
Despite this uneasy relationship with the broader queer community, there is something undeniably queer about asexuality. From its foundations in the early 1990s, queer theory and politics have been defined by opposition to normativity. Asexuality names and calls our attention to compulsory sexuality—that is, the assumption that all people are (and should be) sexual. In a society that assumes everyone does and should experience sexual attraction, it’s queer to say that you don’t. Asexuality scholars and activists thus argue that asexuality reveals an unstated cultural ideal normalizing sex—a norm that exists in both queer and non-queer spaces.
That’s no small point. By identifying compulsory sexuality as part of the architecture of human relationships, asexuality offers a queer challenge to queerness itself. As I discuss later in this essay, asexuality further challenges dominant sexuality norms by distinguishing between romantic and sexual attractions—and even by blurring the lines between queerness and heterosexuality.
This brings us back to Gini. Her story left wondering: How could her friend see her as an ally, rather than as a queer participant, at Pride? Does that place boundaries around queerness? Why are those boundaries policed? And what hidden sexual norms might a sociological approach to asexuality uncover? I argue that by centering the experiences of asexual people like Gini, we gain insight into what “queerness” is, and we are challenged to consider how it might need to be reshaped.
compulsory sexuality
Queer research and activism often involve pulling back the curtain on cultural norms that are hidden in plain sight. By centering the experiences of queer people, scholars and activists have revealed how ideals like the gender binary and heteronor-mativity are subtly (and not so subtly) woven into our social fabric. As a non-asexual queer person who studies asexuality, I’ve seen that asexuality reveals a number of norms that shape how we experience the world. By highlighting compulsory sexuality in particular, studying asexuality pushes us to examine sex as part of the normative architecture of our social world.
The New Zealand organization Pride Pledge is dedicated to what it calls “rainbow inclusion.” In 2022, it released this new resource module about “the ‘A’ in LGBTTQIA+.”
pridepledge.co.nz/what-is-asexuality/
Online dating company Tinder released this video, “5 Asexual People Explain What ‘Asexual’ Means to Them,” on its YouTube channel in 2019. Mark, pictured above, wrote, “I don’t have any sexual desire towards anyone,” while another participant named Katherine wrote, “Free of limitation.”
Screenshot youtube.com/watch?v=lMhix4nr_0g
Can you have a fulfilling relationship—and a fulfilling life— without sex? If you asked a person on the street, the answer would likely be no. In modern Western culture, sex is typically seen as a necessary component of healthy romantic relationships. This assumption, which is an example of compulsory sexuality, has even been codified into law. Under section 12 of the United Kingdom’s Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, a refusal or inability to “consummate” could be grounds for annulling a marriage in England and Wales. In her 2016 article “Divorcing Marriage from Sex,” legal scholar Sally Goldfarb notes that U.S. marriage law has also traditionally required that married couples perform (heterosexual) genital intercourse. As Goldfarb explains, a marriage without sex can be void in the eyes of the law.
As has been true for various queer identities, asexuality has often been framed as a medical condition rather than as a legitimate type of identity.
Legal matters aside, so-called “sexless marriages” are often seen as a problem. Earlier this year, after I gave an academic talk about asexuality, a woman I’ll call Christie came up to chat with me. Christie shared that she went through menopause in her 50s and lost all interest in sex. Although this change did not cause Christie personal distress, it bothered her husband and became a point of tension in their marriage. At her husband’s urging, Christie eventually saw a doctor to “fix” the problem. Christie was fortunate: her doctor (accurately) informed her that it is common for people’s sex drives to diminish following menopause. There were treatments available if Christie missed her interest in sex, but her lack of interest was not inherently problematic from a medical perspective. Christie’s doctor emphasized that there was nothing wrong with Christie and that she did not need any sort of treatment—especially if her lack of sexual interest was not causing her any distress. In another stroke of luck, Christie was familiar with the concept of asexuality, so she was able to consider whether this identity resonated with her experience. Christie began identifying as asexual and found that plugging into asexual communities helped her realize there was nothing shameful about experiencing an absence of sexual desire.
Christie was more fortunate than many other asexual people. As has been true for various queer identities, asexuality has often been framed as a medical condition rather than as a legitimate type of identity. In other words, in a cultural context structured by compulsory sexuality, asexual people (and others who experience low to no desire) are seen as in need of “fixing.” According to a 2017 study from the U.K. Government Equalities Office, asexual people were likelier than any other LGBTQIA+ group to have undergone or been offered conversion therapy, a dangerous practice that targets queer people and seeks to change their sexual or gender identities.
Although conversion therapy is often associated with religious communities, it is also offered in medical settings. Again, like other queer identities, asexuality has often been framed as an illness. Specifically, mental health professionals have labeled asexuality “hypoactive sexual desire disorder” (HSDD), a diagnosis that has been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) since 1987. HSDD has since been split into “male hypoactive sexual desire disorder” and “female sexual interest/arousal disorder,” and mental health professionals continue to mistreat and pathologize asexual people under these frameworks. Many asexual people have experienced medical professionals attempting to “cure” their asexuality through talk therapy, hormone treatment, medication, and other means.
A contingent from CUNY’s LGBTQIA+ Consortium joins the 2024 Queens LGBTIQ+ Pride parade in New York City, flying, from left to right, the now-familiar rainbow pride flag as well as the transgender, asexual, and bisexual pride flags.
iStockPhoto // AbraCG
Moreover, because sex is seen as a necessary component of healthy relationships, asexual people can feel pressured by their partners and medical professionals to “providing” sex in their romantic relationships. Some asexual people I’ve interviewed have said that they felt they needed to have sex to “prove” their love for their partners. Others reported facing threats of “corrective rape” rooted in the belief that unwanted sex would “cure” their asexuality.
Asexuality offers us an opportunity to rethink the role of sex in relationships. In 21st-century Western culture, it is common to assume that an individual’s most important relationship should be with their romantic partner—and that this person should also be a sexual partner. Yet some asexual people have happy, fulfilling romantic partnerships without sex. Other asexual people push our assumptions about relationships even further, eschewing the idea of organizing our lives around a single romantic or sexual partner and instead building lives centered around queer platonic relationships and other types of friendships. To be sure, sex is an important part of how many people relate to others. However, the experiences of asexual people remind us that there are other ways to build intimate relationships and live a fulfilling life.
the split attraction model
“I’m asexual bisexual,” Scott told me in 2018 as we sat outside in the Southern California sun. This was before I had started studying asexuality, and I’ll admit that I was baffled. How could someone be both asexual and bisexual? My conversation with Scott sat on my mind for years, but it wasn’t until 2020, when my research focus turned fully toward asexuality, that I began to understand what he meant. Scott was drawing on the “split attraction model,” a framework for understanding sexuality that is mostly unknown outside of asexual circles.
The split attraction model refers to the idea that there are various types of attraction, including romantic attraction, sexual attraction, platonic attraction, and others. These attractions may align or they might be “split,” as was the case for Scott. Scott identified as “asexual bisexual” because asexuality described his sexual orientation and bisexuality described his romantic orientation. He experienced sexual attraction to no one but romantic attraction to people of multiple genders. As my collaborators and I reported in our 2024 article, “‘I Didn’t Know Ace Was a Thing,’” identification as bisexual is remarkably common among asexual (often abbreviated as “ace”) people—analysis of survey data showed that 47% of asexual respondents identified as bisexual or pansexual at some point in their lives.
This idea of simultaneously identifying with multiple sexualities is different from how we tend to think about sexual identities. Typically, when we ask someone what their sexuality is, we expect them to give a one-word answer that describes who they are romantically and sexually attracted to. Studying asexuality thus uncovers yet another cultural norm that is hidden in plain sight: the assumptions that our romantic and sexual orientations should “match” and that various sexual identities are mutually exclusive. In contrast, scholars increasingly recognize that, for many people, sexuality can be fluid and change over time. Studying asexuality nudges us to consider the simultaneity of sexual identities.
Asexuality also introduces points of convergence between queerness and heterosexuality. Asexuality can coexist with various romantic orientations, including heteroromanticism (that is, “opposite” sex attraction). This means that some asexual people identify as hetero-oriented—and some even identify as simultaneously straight and queer. Joyce, who I interviewed in 2020, is one such person; she identifies as asexual, heteroromantic, and queer. “I find it so frustrating when people say being ace isn’t queer, especially if you’re hetero-oriented in your romantic relationships,” Joyce shared. As Joyce explained, even though she experiences hetero-oriented attraction, she identifies as queer due to her asexuality. “Hello, it’s super queer to say you don’t experience sexual desire in a society that’s so saturated with sex, that tells you you’re sick if you aren’t interested,” Joyce insisted.
Defining queerness as solely an experience of oppression is misleading. Queerness also brings people joy, community, meaning, hope, self-understanding, agency, choice, and a sense of sparkle.
iStockPhoto // FG Trade
People like Joyce throw a wrench in common assumptions about sexuality. After all, it’s easy to define “queerness” as anything that isn’t both cisgender and heterosexual. Asexuality provides a helpful reminder that queerness is less about being the “opposite” of heterosexuality and more about resistance to cultural norms governing sexuality and gender. In fact, the very messiness of blurring the lines between heterosexuality and queerness aligns with foundational texts in queer theory that are deeply skeptical of binaries and strictly defined labels. Sociologists, however, have been slower to recognize the fuzziness of such boundaries. Studying asexuality opens the space to think deeply about the queer/hetero binary, with frameworks like the split attraction model pushing us to consider that a person can be hetero yet queer.
a queer challenge to queerness
I’ve briefly explored some of the ways asexuality is queer. Yet, recall Gini’s story of attending Pride and being perceived as an ally. Her experience not only illuminates asexuality’s relationship with heteronormativity but also with queerness. Although sociologists have paid a lot of attention to how the boundaries of heterosexuality are enforced, they have given little thought to how—and why—the boundaries of queerness are also enforced.
I spend a lot of time speaking and writing about asexuality for non-academic audiences. One common response I receive, especially from other queer people, is that “asexuals aren’t queer because they aren’t oppressed.” The following messages capture this sentiment: “come on, there’s nothing oppressed about not having sex,” “asexual people don’t face oppression like LGBT people do,” “asexuality is legitimate but it isn’t queer because it isn’t oppressed.” Similar perspectives have been voiced in the news media, such as a 2023 article in the U.K.-based Spiked magazine, not-so-subtly titled “No, Asexuals Are Not Oppressed.”
There are two major problems with these arguments. The first is that asexual oppression does exist and is enforced by medical, legal, relational, and other cultural and structural norms. The second is that these perspectives reduce queerness to victimization.
There is something strange about defining queerness solely in terms of oppression. Arguably, it betrays the foundational principles of academic and activist theorizing of queerness. Since their development in the early 1990s, queer theory and politics have emphasized what social theorist Michael Warner famously called a “resistance to regimes of the normal.” That is, from its foundations, queerness has centered on identifying norms and resisting them—not on oppression. Moreover, as a queer person and a sociologist, I know firsthand that defining queerness as an experience of oppression is misleading. Queerness brings people joy, community, meaning, hope, self-understanding, agency, choice, and a sense of sparkle. Of course, being queer within a society that is often hostile to those who breach sexual and gender norms can sometimes make oppression feel like an inevitable part of the queer experience. But part of the goal of the queer movement is to build a world in which no one is oppressed.
When I think about experiences like Gini’s, I find myself wondering why people are so invested in gatekeeping queer identity. The very phenomenon of queer boundary work suggests that there are positive things to be gained through queerness. If queerness were all about oppression, there would be no need for this boundary work. Few people would want to be let in.
I argue that we should embrace rather than avoid the challenges asexuality poses to dominant understandings of queerness. As a reminder of what I’ve discussed in this essay, recognizing asexuality can improve our understanding of sexuality in multiple ways.
First, by highlighting the existence of compulsory sexuality, asexuality reminds us that heteronormativity is merely one element of sexual normativity (albeit an important one). Spotlighting compulsory sexuality also helps us to examine how normative assumptions can operate within queer communities.
Second, asexuality reminds us that queerness and hetero-sexuality are not mutually exclusive—an argument that dates back to the roots of queer theory but is often forgotten in contemporary discussions. This means we must consider how heterosexual people can find liberation and agency through queer frameworks.
Third, asexuality offers frameworks, like the split attraction model, that disentangle romantic and sexual attractions, helping us to imagine new ways of forging sexual identities that both combine existing labels (for example, being “bisexual asexual”) and create new terms (such as homoromantic, heteroromantic, and biromantic).
These three challenges expand the scope of queer politics and communities in the service of imagining and building a better, more inclusive world.
queerness as a resource
Studying asexuality has led me to think of queerness as a resource. I suspect this view is shared by some who insist that asexuality is not queer. However, unlike those who exclude asexuality from queerness, I believe that queerness should not be understood as a finite resource. Including asexual people in queer politics doesn’t shrink other queer people’s slice of the pie. Rather, asexuality adds richness and nuance to queerness that can make queer politics and communities more robust. For example, the openness of asexuality to adopting multiple sexual identity labels at once is an exciting complement to the growing recognition of sexual fluidity. Ideas like the split attraction model could be useful beyond asexual communities, providing a helpful framework for thinking through the complexities of sexuality, romance, and identity. Similarly, although compulsory sexuality is particularly harmful for asexual people, we can also consider how these pressures can negatively affect those who do not identify as asexual. Queer movements have often focused on combatting shame for the desires we do experience, but perhaps there is additional value in addressing shame for the desires we do not experience. These are merely glimpses into the possibilities asexuality opens up for queerness. As awareness of asexuality rises, its potential contributions to queerness will likely multiply.
Asexuality is part of a broader queer shift that has unfolded rapidly in the past two decades. We are witnessing the emergence of new terms that help people express and make sense of themselves, connect with others, and mobilize for social change. Some of these terms may feel strange at first—queer, if you will—even to queer people. Yet acknowledging the variety and complexity inherent to the ever-growing queer umbrella broadens the scope of queer politics by revealing hidden (and not so hidden) social norms, like compulsory sexuality, that structure how we live our lives. Liberation is not a limited resource. We expand its power by acknowledging that sexual normativity comes in various packaging. Next time Gini goes to Pride, I hope she finds fellow queers ready to embrace the queerness of asexuality.
recommended resources
Megan Carroll. 2024. “What Does Asexuality Offer Sociology? Insights from the Asexual Community Survey,” in D’Lane R. Compton and Amy L. Stone (eds.), Outskirts: Queer Experiences on the Fringe. NYU Press. Explains the importance of studying asexuality in revealing new frontiers of identity, relationships, love, and gender.
Kristina Gupta. 2015. “Compulsory Sexuality: Evaluating an Emerging Concept,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 41(1). Discusses the concept of compulsory sexuality and explains its utility for understanding the social world.
Andy Holmes and Amin Ghaziani. 2025. “Situational Fluidity and the Use of Identity Labels in Interactions,” Socius 11. Demonstrates how and why individuals use multiple LGBTQ+ identity labels.
Canton Winer. 2024. “Understanding Asexuality: A Sociological Review,” Sociology Compass 18(6). Provides an overview of existing research on asexuality from a sociological perspective.
Canton Winer. 2024. “Splitting Attraction: Differentiating Romantic and Sexual Orientations Among Asexual Individuals,” Social Currents 12(3). Examines and explains the split attraction model and its prevalence among asexual individuals.