Along with spending a lot of time questioning my gender, I’ve also been spending a lot of time questioning my sexual orientation. I do know that I am at the very least romantically attracted to people with various genders but there’s definitely a part of me questioning whether or not I’m asexual as well. And because asexuality still seems relatively new to mainstream society (or at least in my experience), I thought I’d write about asexuality today!

[Cartoon reading: Hello! my name is Adri and I am asexual. What does that mean? Asexual: once who does not experience or rarely experiences sexual attraction to any gender or who otherwise has very little interest in sexual activity, if at all]

Kirstin Kelley wrote about her own experiences with asexuality and how asexuality is a minority in desperate need of understanding. Kelley also wrote about 8 things you shouldn’t say to an asexual person, particularly mentioning that:

People have a right to say no to sex for any reason, and pathologizing people who simply have no sexual desire sends the message that it isn’t okay to not want sex.

Femspire also ha a great article about asexuality, talking about how:

An asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. This does not necessarily mean that they do not experience sexual arousal, or romantic or aesthetic attraction, or that they do not want intimacy from their relationships. You can even be an asexual and masturbate or have sexual encounters. Sexuality is a spectrum, on which asexuality falls at one end, but everyone who identifies as an asexual is an individual. You can be asexual and heteroromantic, or asexual and homoromantic, or asexual and aromantic, or anything in between.

There’s definitely a part of me that is asexual and I’m really glad to be seeing more resources about asexuality. But I do have so many concerns about fully identifying as asexual for so many reasons. I’m worried about dating while asexual and being constantly bombarded with questions from others.