Sex is everywhere, especially when you’re not having it…. Sex is everywhere, especially when you’re not having it.

One group of people says that, for them, sex does not matter. It’s not that they choose to avoid sex – as that would be called celibacy – but rather that they do not feel sexual attraction toward anyone of any gender. They are asexual.

Asexual people feel love. They might desire platonic or romantic relationships. They just don’t want to have sex. Basically, think of your best friends. You might love them and want to spend the rest of your life with them, but you don’t want to have sex with them, and they don’t want to want to have sex with you.

Many asexual people are still capable of having sex — some engage in it, and some masturbate. They feel pleasure, but not attraction. Asexual people do not want sex, but some still have it an act which appears to be to acquiesce outside pressures.

Theoretically, asexuality has existed for as long as humanity. In the 1980s, The Smiths singer Morrissey famously claimed to be “non-sexual.”

Only recently, though, has an emerging network of support groups and awareness campaigns promoted asexuality as a normal biological occurance. Asexual people are finally organizing, while the rest of the world still struggles to understand their sexuality. It’s hard for outsiders to understand why someone wouldn’t want sex. It feels good, it’s a primal instinct and everyone else wants it, so what makes you so different? Sexual people might dismiss asexuality as genophobia (the fear of sex), coitophobia (the fear of intercourse), or just plain sex-hating. Often, asexuality is conflated with sexual aversion disorder and hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

Not many scientific studies have researched human asexuality in depth, and the term is still finding out how to fit in the popular lexicon.

The New Scientist published a collection of the bits of asexual study so far. In the 1990s, a conglomeration of scientists studied sexuality in rams. By placing rams with members of the same or opposite gender, they found that about 2-3 percent of the rams showed no interest in sex with either partner type, while 5-7 percent of the rams displayed homosexual tendencies. This suggested that asexuality in sexually active species – such as rams instead of amoebae – is not a choice. Some rams appeared to be instinctually, biologically asexual.

This observed behavior intimates that asexuality occurs naturally. Applying this logic to humans would mean that asexuality is a genetic trait, rather than some unnatural consequence of environmental factors.

The New Scientist also published the results of a retrospective study on people. In 2004, Dr. Anthony Bogaert researched the results of a 1994 survey of 18,000 Britons. He found that about 1 percent of respondents “never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all.” That ratio is comparable to the prevalence found in the rams.

In a 2007 study published by the Kinsey Institute, Nicole Prause and Cynthia Graham surveyed a variety of people with different sexualities. She found that self-described asexual people were equally male and female, though they were much older and more likely to have a college degree. Those respondents listed some benefits of asexuality as “avoiding the common problems of intimate relationships” and “less social pressure to find suitable partners.”

They also admitted problems with their sexuality. Drawbacks included difficulty establishing asexual relationships, “needing to find out what problem is causing the asexuality” and “negative public perception of asexuality.” These respondents seem happy in their lifestyles but feel that society doesn’t accept them.

With little exception, these benefits and consequences revolve around social norms and outside influences. It’s hard for asexual people to fit in. They’re apprehensive about messy interpersonal troubles, and some submit to sex just to make others happy.

Many asexual people in the study were still having sex, despite not wanting to. The study finds “no significant difference in the lifetime number of sexual partners reported by asexual people and non-asexuals.”

A lack of libido, impotence or disinterest in others could be signs of depression, trauma or other medical problems. Some respondents could have mistaken their separate issues for asexuality.

However, asexual networks say that asexuality exists in healthy, functioning people. Asexuality.org, the website for the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network, contends that nothing “went wrong” with asexual people to inhibit their sexual desires. Skepticism about asexuality put asexual people in the position of proving an absolute negative. It is difficult for 1 percent of the population to maintain that there is nothing wrong with them when 99 percent of society doesn’t think like them.

AVEN contributors say that asexuality is what feels right for them. They are a large group of 11,000+ asexual people openly talking about their experiences. We should believe the asexual people speaking for themselves, even if science has yet to come up with something more insightful – which remains unlikely considering scientists still can’t definitively explain heterosexuality or homosexuality.

The benefit of AVEN is that it gives young asexual people support if they discover that sex isn’t for them. For the few kids or teenagers who identify as asexual, some will undoubtedly be mocked or called “gay” – especially young men. This bigotry needs to be addressed separately, but the idea is derision toward its target. For young men, sex is a pressurized rite of passage. To not have it — let alone not want it — is to not be a man.

Like any other prejudice, this is because asexual people “aren’t ” something. It’s not that they are asexual, it’s that they aren’t heterosexual. It’s the idea of Us vs. Them, with us or against us.

The 1960s inculcated society with the idea that sex is natural. The Sexual Revolution pushed nudity and sexuality into the public square after decades of Cleaver values. Even the Puritans fighting the hippies still liked sex. They just wanted it behind closed doors.

Sex is natural. Nobody, asexual or otherwise, would be here without it. But asexuality is as normal and natural as any other sexuality, if not quite as common. While upcoming studies begin researching asexual people, the sexually active populace need only remain aware that 40-year-old virgins might not want to sing “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.” This is the dawning of the Age of Asexual.

E-mail Dave your asexual fantasies at [email protected].