The History of Asexuality

I listen to a lot of podcasts. Particularly Stuff You Should Know and Sawbones. One thing these two podcasts have in common is that when they start talking about the history of something, it normally starts in ancient China or Rome or Mesopotamia or something.

Asexuality is not like that.

It’s fairly new in the grand scheme of things. Karl-Maria Kertbeny, the man who coined the words “heterosexual” and “homosexual” also chose the word “monosexual” to refer to people who only masturbated and didn’t engage in sexual acts with other people. This was in 1869, and while it’s not exactly asexuality as we know it today, he was on the right track.

Jennie June, one of the earliest transgender women to publish her own autobiography in the US, was almost on the right track as well. In 1918, she published The Autobiography of an Androgyne, published The Female Impersonators in 1922. In these works she uses the word “anaphrodite” to describe those who “are not suffused with adoration for any type of human”.

Though it wasn’t until 1948 that the Kinsey scale included “group x”, those people who didn’t have sexual contact with others. Though the Kinsey scale does say this “group x” would be people who have no sexual contacts or reactions. That definition falls a little flat for me personally, since asexuality is about attraction, not action, though Kinsey described it in the opposite way.

I didn’t think that I’d be mentioning Satan in a blog post about the history of asexuality, but here I am! In 1969, Anton LaVey wrote about asexuality in his book, The Satanic Bible. It says specifically, “Satanism condones any type of sexual activity which properly satisfies your individual  desires – be it heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or even asexual”. So, Satan and I are cool? Awesome. (Note: Even though the Church of Satan and The Satanic Temple are two different institutions, they sound super similar. But it should be noted that The Satanic Temple doesn’t abide by LaVey’s teachings, though I couldn’t find anything about what they do believe in regards to gender and sexuality. That said, The Satanic Temple does believe that the body is inviolable as a key tenet, so I think it’s safe to assume The Satanic Temple is down with asexuality as well, even if it’s not specifically stated.)  

The seventies were a time of sexual liberation and revolution. Unless you were asexual, of course. Myra Jonson wrote about the challenges that asexual folks faced in 1979 by being left out of the sexual revolution, and The Sexually Oppressed was one of the first academic papers about asexulity.

The first time asexuality was actually accounted for in a Kinsey-like scale was in 1979 by Michael D. Storms. He argued that Kinsey’s model could miscategorize asexuals as bisexuals, since we don’t have a gender of sexual preference.

It wasn’t until 2001 that the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) was founded by David Jay. This was the first page that gave a definition of asexuality and asked for emails from other asexual folks.

There was a LiveJournal community called the Asexuals Community in 2001, but it was targeted at sexual people who were celibate by choice. Since we know celibacy and asexuality are not the same thing, this was an incorrect name, and not to be confused with the LiveJournal Asexuality Community, created in 2002. This community was the first sex-positive place where asexuality discussions were happening that were inclusive!

This is where things actually start picking up! In 2002, New York passed the only piece of legislation in the world that mentions asexuality, the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act. In 2009, Asexual folks joined the San Francisco Pride Parade. The ace flag was announced in 2010! Asexual Awareness Week was also founded by Sara Beth Brooks to occur in the later half of October. By 2013 the DSM V changed the diagnosis of hypoactive sexual desire disorder to include an exemption for those who identify as asexual. It’s a big thing to be mentioned in the DSM. It wasn’t until 1987 that homosexuality was taken out of the DSM and no longer classified as a mental disorder. In 2015, George Norman was the first openly ace person to run in the parliamentary election, providing a very visible platform from which to speak about asexuality!

Asexuality still has a long way to go in the eyes of the public. There are still schools of thought that say asexuality isn’t real, or that it’s celibacy, or that it’s the result of people who just can’t get laid, or a hormonal disorder, or any number of things. Until these thoughts are dispelled, disproven, or just fall out of favor, we still have a lot of work to do in raising awareness and continuing education.

You can find more information on my Asexuality page, or in the additional reading below, where I got most of the information for this post:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennie_June_(autobiographer)
• https://acinghistory.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/what-is-asexual-history-part-two-the-19th-and-20th-century-2/ (warning: this author repeatedly uses male pronouns for Jennie June as well as her deadname)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale
• http://wiki.asexuality.org/Asexual_history
• https://www.churchofsatan.com/faq-sexuality-and-gender.php
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Temple
• https://thesatanictemple.com/
• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201509/when-homosexuality-stopped-being-mental-disorder 

Thanks so much to SheVibe for sponsoring this post! They were a sponsor for my trip to Woodhull’s Sexual Freedom Summit in 2018. Interested in sponsoring a post of your own? Let’s chat.