How Asexuality Works

it's kind of fun. It is fun. It looks really uncomfortable for the dinosaurs, like I've seen too many of the toy story movies too. That's to leave these things b That's why I've secured the try sterotops by my side today. That's nice. He'll be with us through a sexuality, Yes he will. Um, We're gonna go on a little journey through a sexuality today. UM. This is this is uh, I guess new to me. Like I've heard the term before a sexual um, but I never really realized that

it's becoming. And there's a group of people who who claimed this as their sexual orientation. Yeah, you hear the word kind of thrown around like, you know, well, they never really had a girlfriend and boyfriend that scene. They're they're just sort of a sexual, right or it's often it's often um put alongside androgyny, you know, so like a sexual meaning genderless, but that's not at all what it means and improperly tied to uh abstinence, celibacy, celibacy.

Tim Tebow, Yeah, if you believe the lies, I don't know. I think he's for real, do you yeah, sure yeah um Or Morrissey, Yeah, he's legendarily celibate celibate, right, but not necessarily a sexual difference. So I looked into this a little more before even proposing this, and I was just fascinated with it. Not in like a prurient sense,

I was interested. And what kicked it all off was I was in Lyne at the bank and there was this woman reading a book while she was going through like the teller transaction, and she had um this uh this T shirt on and it said uh aven a V and and I looked a little closer and it said a Sexuality Visibility and Education Network. Right, It's not off the top of my head did have a logo or anything it did. I didn't recognize it until now, and I still can't conjure it up in my mind's eye.

But it was a triangle, and I took it to me like a like a the pink triangle for homosexuality. It is not. It's just a triangle. Had I looked a little closer, I, had I looked now, I would see that. I think it's a slice of cake, okay, sure, which is their their symbol, right supposedly from a quote from someone and a sexual who said, between the slices of cake and sex, I'd take the cake, right, So this think everyone feels that way once or another though, right, Okay,

So that's an excellent point. Yeah. The difference is if you're a sexual, you feel that way virtually all the time. That is quite literally your orientation. You're oriented towards no sexual attraction, no sexual preferences. Um, although you may still if you do feel any kind of romantic feelings, it would still possibly go along homosexual or heterosexual lines, right right, Yes, let's get into this okay. Um, I guess Alfred Kinsey is a pretty good place to start whenever you're talking

about people doing it or not doing it. Man, I don't know how he got into these people's how we got people to talk like this back then? Have you seen the movie? No, it's good. Yeah, the y fine, he beat everybody up. He did a bunch of poles and then whipped everyone's But yeah, um, he's like, I

have a very specific data set. Uh so in his Kinsey uh scale, the famous Kinsey scale rates very inclusively a scale from I think in here they say from fleeting attraction to longer term, longer term compulsions like tries to include everyone in the scale, but it's still generally not inclusive of a sexuals group X. It's like completely

non inclusive. It goes from zero to six and it's straight up hetero to straight up homo sexual that's right, right, and then there's stuff in between, and you can fall somewhere in on this spectrum. But it was pretty groundbreaking at the time because first of all, people weren't really talking about homosexuality much so to make a scale that was inclusive of them that was pretty revolutionary. Yeah, but he did identify group X, he just didn't include it

on the scale. Group X to him was the one point five percent of men and of women who said I don't have sexual relations, that I'm not interested in it. Right, but he just kind of disregarded that as an anomaly group or maybe he thought he would come back to it at some later day. Never did. Uh. And but out of this he said something that's kind of a famous quote. He said, the world is not to be divided into sheep and goats, which means, like you're not.

There's more than just straight, there's more than just gay, there's some stuff in between, there's a range. But he still left out group X. He still left out group what's weird? And Kristin Conger, who wrote this article, good job too. Yeah, she did a good job tying this all together. There was a study in two two of rams that produced another group X, and it's in its sample. Interestingly, also rams and cheap because apparently there's a guy named m Charles Roselli and he was looking to find if

there's a biological basis for homosexuality. So return to the animal kingdom, right, Apparently rams can be gay. They rams can party down with other rams for like, and when there's females around, they'll still just say, hey, that guy looks pretty good. To me. So he also found that there's some that don't go for either, and UM this

this group X among rams started to UM. This formed the basis of the idea of a sexuality is an orientation as far as like academy is concerned, right, And the flip side of this, which we haven't really mentioned, is as opposed to UM, a physiological problem, an issue, or a mental illness, which up until waste homosexuality is

considered a mental illness. So until seventy three, and then in nineteen eighty six they finally took out the secondary UM basically being stressed out from being gay was it was a diagnosis until six and finally there's like no homosexuality in the DSM any longer, but essentially until eighty six, and in seventy three that was when the straight up like if you're gay, you're mental ill was taken out.

And the d s M is we've talked about it before, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders basically where they classify everything, and it's important, Chuck, we should say what goes in there, because it's basically the book that says, here's what society thinks is normal. And here's what society thinks is abnormal. And if you who considers yourself normal, is in there that society has a lot of leverage against you to tell you that there's something wrong with you.

But it's doctor's opinions, right, It's not like they took polls from society. Right. No, But I mean, like that's that's based on a lot, it's not not all of it's based on empirical evidence. It's basically saying, like, like, you act this way in society thinks there's something wrong with you. That's mental illness. Uh So we mentioned is not like celibacy, because that is a choice to remain uh, sexually inactive. Morrisey battles that every day. I'm sure he does.

I mean, look at him. He dresses sexy. Oh, Morrissey's a sexy guy. I look at him. So he's a pop star, right, don't have anyone he wants on either side, but he chooses not to. That's right. Is he still I think he is? Isn't he? Oh? I think he's like lifetime celibate. Yeah. Yeah, but you never know. That's I mean, I don't know Morrissey personally. You never told me. But I mean this is just from being a fan,

this is why. Yeah. Yeah, And he's come out very hard lineed, you know, for his celibacy, so it's not like he's been a secret or anything like that. I don't know. Well, in the same it's like Tim Tebow, all of them, and we'll mention this even more. But the uh, it's the same with a sexuals. They the what is it, one percent roughly of the population in these samples. In these samples, it was one point five in this big survey. So there's this is all very

very very new, like thinking about it. That Ram study was from two thousand two, right in two thousand four, that Ram study I think piqued somebody's interest enough to start looking into this. So it's real new, like this is the twenty one century sexual orientation and people are at least people who study it are just now starting to look into it. Well, I've already figured out how to discriminate again. Anthony Bogert bo Garrett, I don't know how you say it. We'll just say Bogert, Uh, he

is the one in two thousand four. He's a psychologist at Brock University in Canada. I don't think they have any kind of a football team and Brock University Brock. We're probably wrong though, but um he is the one who did uh publish a journal in Journal of Sex Research in August of two thousand four that you know, one of the first people to do a lot of

studying on this in recent times. He examined data from a survey in the UK UH from n and basically out of the nineteen thousand sample size, which isn't too bad, no, it's huge, Yeah, he found one point five said I have never never ever felt sexual attraction to anyone at all. And that wasn't like part of that was it was a huge survey with of a huge sample of a bunch of questions and that was just one of the one group with lumped into a little data set based

on that response. And this guy went back and found that and they really started to look at it well. And he's the first one in two thousand six to say, you know what, this is a sexual orientation and that's how it should be treated. And a sexuals were you know, they're they're proud to be who they are. I mean, the ones that come out in the support groups at least I'm sure, there's a lot more that, you know, wrestle with it, and they're quiet about it. But at

least with the what is it, the a v ETON. Yeah, that a Sexuality Visibility and Education Network. They're all all about being proud to call it a sexual orientation, like we don't need to be treated for any kind of dysfunction. Yeah, leave us alone. We're happy with the basically how we're born. The thing is is like, leave us alone. It's not

just that, it's also take us seriously. Yeah, because there's there's a lot of accusations that are leveled against them, like you know, you guys are all victims of trauma, so you know that's probably what it is, or you're being willful or you know, and to not be taken seriously as a human being, that's a big deal. Uh. David J. Would agree with that. Not to be confused with David J. From bau House. No, and there's another David J. Too. Yeah, I think it was some other

kind of writer, unless about House guys a writer. Now, David J. From the House just goes by David capital J period saying that this is David J. A y J a y founder of the A d e n And there's a site a sexuality dot org that he founded in two thousand one where you can find out all kinds of information and get support if you uh find yourself in this one point five percent. And and he made a lot of news because you know, he's a young, handsome dude, and everybody's like, why don't you

want to do it with anybody exactly? And he's just like, because my orientation is a sexual and start wrapping your heads around that. People. I think Matt Lauer actually like poked him in the stomach like, ma'am, what's going on during an interview Videoally now, okay, But there is a range of you know, not a sexuals are the same. Um Kristen points out that some are virgins, some are not um and it's not even just necessarily from a past experience before they kind of figured out where they were.

Some still have sex to satisfy their partner, only to satisfy their partner. And if you like want to get a first person, firsthand view of, you know, what it's like to be a sexual in a very hyper sexual world. They have a lot of essays and UM tips and guides for interacting with a sexual people, I'm sure. Um. And one of them that I read was like having sex with an a sexual person, and like, how you get to that point? Yeah, I mean it's not, it's

like that's a a gift, as I understand it. Yeah, like that means they that person really cares about you because they are not into this since really at all, or if if they are into it, it's not it's sexual, it's romantic, right. Well, And that's the other point Conger goes on to make, like some are virgins, some are not, Some masturbate, some do not, Some pursue romantic, long term, committed relationships, and some don't pursue that like anything beyond

platonic relationships. So it kind of runs the gamut on how they choose to integrate and live their life or not integrate and just still live their life, which I

guess is still integration. Uh you're thinking of that rough song pretty well, okay, Um, And I think we should also say chuck, like there's even while we're trying not to pidge whole anyone, we're still managing to still I'm sure like leave some people out, like there's this is a it's a very broad swath of people, and that was a good point to say, like a lot of different ways to live as an a sexual person, we haven't figured them all out, just as there are a

lot of ways to live as a sexual person exactly exactly. The tie that binds a sexual a sexually oriented people is that they literally don't feel sexual arousal or sexual attraction.

That's just not part of it. And this Indiana University study, you didn't talk about that, right, So these researchers set down to Indiana University with four self identified um A sexuals and basically said, tell us about it, you know, and most of them, I think, basically the the consensus was was that, um yeah, it's kind of tough, especially when you're attracted romantically to people like you want to have a relationship, but most people aren't a sexual. This

is one point five percent of that sample. So you're gonna have to have there's gonna be some sort of conflict or problems or no matter how understanding your partner is, this is gonna be tough. Sure, not just for you, but for them. Um So they said that that's tough, But on the flip side, you have a lot more free time and your chances of getting an STD or

an unwanted pregnancy or like virtually nil. Well I kind of laughed at the free time thing, like you know, how many hours a day or people spending having sex. But if you totally are devoid of sex, that means, as a single person, you're not spending any time going looking for it or you're not doing people. So a lot of time theoretically goes into people you know, out there trying to hook up. You know what I'm saying exactly, Like there's if you step back and think about it,

especially especially if you're like single person. Yeah, like there's a lot of time and energy that goes into all that goes into getting to the sexual act. Right, It's not just the time that you spend remember those days. It was a long time ago. I don't remember what that's like, But the point is, like, that's a lot of time and energy, and like, what else could you have done with that? Often spent my time doing other things. Actually I was never that guy, yeah, cruising the bars,

you know. I was always just hanging out with my friends, which probably explains a lot. Uh So interestingly in these polls as well, um women make up generally across two different polls. They both made up seventy five I'm sorry of the population of a sexual individuals. Yeah, that British survey of the households. And then later um, the an Avan pole that just last year. No, that was two eight that was and then it went down. The ratio of men to women changed in the last year's pole

it went to like women. And then but the other thirty three percent wasn't all men? A lot of them identify themselves as a gender neutral? Yeah, that's a lot. So this suddenly now you have a subset of a subset of as far as sexual orientation goes. Um. And I was reading on Avan today about how to use Remember when we did our Executive order UM podcast, the Flawless one on Executive Orders, UM. They we were trying to figure out what you would call a gender neutral president.

It's not out there. No one has any idea. Like even people who are gender neutral don't really know. There's not a standard way to address somebody like that with a gender neutral pronoun So we gotta figure that one out. Well, somebody smarter than us and more sensitive than us should do that. So the A V E. N Has grown since two thousand one, from nineteen thousand to thirty thousand members, which is pretty great. These people are getting some pretty

good community support. Um they Conger points out that disinterest in sex is usually regarded as a symptom, a problematic symptom, rather than like a sexual identity. So that's the battle they're kind of facing now is again, don't treat us. We don't need We're not dysfunctional, like we were born this way. The guy uh that founded the network uh said that, you know, I remember being a kid and once people started talking about like hot movie stars, I was just like, what, Like, I don't get it, what

does that mean? And you know, from a very young age, are you making humping motions in the air? Little kids are dirty? Kids are so healthy, dirty. I don't even know they're innocent. You know what's going on, what's going on with my hips? Yeah, it's all very sweet. They're just trying to figure it all out, you know, poor kids.

And then comes the hair spray. So um. The we we mentioned the the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders, there are two disorders that look like they could cover this as far as sexuality goes, and one of them is s a D sexual aversion disorder, and the other is hypoactive sexual desire disorder. You can throw out s a D because that's an actual phobia of sex. Yeah, it's like you you get real anxiety from that, even the idea of having sex. Right, that's not what a sexuality is. No,

it's not, So go ahead and toss that out. H s d D is a little closer because it's described as persistently or currently deficient or absence of sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity. The difference there, though, is UM, as Congress calls it critical footnote, Uh, it must be UM inciting marked distress or interpersonal difficulty, which I'm sure can happen. Happen. But a sexual is also a lot

of more saying you know what, I'm fine. Well, that's part of what avan is all about, is kind of like accepting and celebrating and saying like, dude, you're okay. You don't have to I don't have to feel bad about this is it's just who you are. Um. So yeah, that last little that last one, what is it HSD D. That's I feel so bad because it's like, okay, guys are starting to make their way through the civil rights discrimination road, and they're you know, starting to come out

on the other end. And okay, who who else is there discriminated against? We're almost out of people. Who can we go to next? Oh good, here's a group called a sexuals and here they come. So let's run them through the pike because that's what's about to happen. It looks like, well, I could see them being more accepted about, you know, the people that don't accept homosexuality. I could see them being more lenient with asexuality, yes, because it

doesn't threaten anything in their life. You know. I agree, it's tough to discriminate against somebody based on the lack of sexuality. It's more like, you know, taking it seriously and treating it not as a mental illness. Does are does? Are? You know? That's got to be big because think about it, like like the whole Chick fil A thing that's going on, right, So let's say that. Um still, to this day, uh,

the field of psychology considered homosexuality a mental illness. Now consider you know, those donations, what they're going to Are they going like to discriminate? Are they going to treat mental illness. That's that's a big deal to be in there. It's a lot of power that little book wields totally, and if for no other reason than just respect and self respect, like you're talking about. I mean, what's our motto, chuck live and let live. That's one of them to

each his own. That's right, that's kind of the same thing. Uh So they have petition the board though to have that removed, much like they did in nineteen seventy three with homosexuality. So we'll see what happens there. Do you think the DSM five maybe how often does it published, you know, like seventy three to eighty six, because we're in between. Yeah, so when you're in there, it's it's

a big deal. I wonder if it's a set republished or if it's every time they need to like have some changes stacked that they really different editions of different versions like um, that makes sense, revised ones. But like it's a it's I mean, they've been working on this for years and so much controversy around it because it's saying here's what's here's what's normal hot off the press. On one hand, it's like it's great to be able

to diagnose people with problems. But the other hand, there's something about just taking a book and seeing, like, let's see what you are. Let me look it up. It's kind of like I'm a person. Well it's it's there's a checklist. It's like, if this person, here's the set of symptoms we say are associated with this disease based on probably a lot of study, and if they have eight of twenty, then there that they're that thing. They had, that mental illness down the list. So there are some

supposed notable a sexuals throughout history. Yeah. I found a few lists that were pretty hanky Nicola Tesla, and one of them had like fictional characters. They're like Dexter Texture not a sexual. Yeah, no, he's not he at all. He's weird. He's a serial killer. But he had like affairs like girlfriends, live ins, well those were mostly damask

his homicides. No, I mean he goes at it pretty good season and the first couple of seasons like he's I could see him being considered a sexual, especially the first season. Plus Michael see how was just coming up six ft under. Yeah, he's like I went from homosexual to a sexual when I really just want to be a serial killer. But he was straight in her life because he was married to his co star. Yeah, I think they're reconciling. Oh, they reconciled. Isn't that nice? Alright,

So back to the supposed list. These are the ones that I kind of weeded out to potentially be correct off of the bunk list. What about Nikola Tesla made you think it was hinky? I don't know. It didn't come from like his cousin the report. I think it was just from the website where I got it, and I didn't see him on any other websites. Um, Paula Poundstone, the comedian perfect, she supposed he's a sexual. Tim Gunn, he's okay, fashion guy right. Um Edward Gorey the illustrator,

I did not know that. And J. M. Barry, the creator of Peter pan Um. Although it's hard to substantiate that one because I've seen some works where he was called a pedophile without a whole lot of backup aside from rumors has it that he and his wife like never consummated the marriage and he sure did like hanging around kids. But that's kind of unfair too. But see that's the other thing too. It's like, that's really unfair. Actually, I think about it. If he is a sexual, then

then how would you rectify that. I mean, if this were twenty years from now, years from now, and a sexuality were normal, you could look back at that set of behaviors and be like, oh, he was obviously a sexual.

But we have to drag these poor people's lives out into the spotlight for the rest of us to observe and you examine, so then we can say, okay, all right, we will agree that this is normal, and they can come out of the DSM agreed like he might have been straight up a sexual and they just didn't know what that was. So we love not having sex with his wife, so that means he's a pedophile because he writes children exactly, because we don't understand man. So that

was the list of a sexuals. Huh. Yeah, there were others, but that didn't feel great about. There were two in this article that I thought were pretty good. So apparently among a sexuals, like the a sexual TV character is Doctor Who. I'm not a Doctor Who guy, but I know that a lot of our army is. So doctor Who's supposedly a sexual. He Um, he exhibits a lot of the behavior, but he's also not very judgmental, and he has satisfying, um, substantial relationships with others. Those are

great points. And who else was in there? Sheldon from Um Big Bang. Yeah. I don't watch that oht either, but I know who they're talking about, and I could see him being a sexual because that's more rumor. Apparently doctor who is like, that's that's an a sexual hero. I saw Doctor House listed to no way. He was like all about that, um, his sex wife and and uh he was all about, um, oh what's that. There's another doctor who's like an administrator. Yeah, this is not

a sexual that. I think that was the same list that had Tesla and Dexter on it. That's why I was like, well, that's a poo poo list. You watch House, I mean from time to time if it's on and I'm like jogging or whatever and there's no law in order on, I'll watch House gotch TV when you jug yeah nice, Yeah, it's it's nice. That's great. So yeah, if I ever go outside and run, I'll be like, what's on? Uh. If you want to learn more about a sexuality, we strongly encourage you to go check it out.

There was another, Um, there's another uh podcast stuff Mom never told you did this? Oh did like years back? Maybe go give that one to listen to get their take on it. Yeah, and then um, you can also go check out the Asexuality Visibility and UM Education Network and it's AVIN and I what's it's a sexuality or that's right. You can check them out or you can type in a sexuality in the search bar at how stuff works dot comm and it will bring this up, I said, search bar. So it's time for all right,

this is uh, maybe our last installment. This is what we do when folks have sent in uh little tokens and chatchkeys and gifts and cards and letters. We like to give them their du on the air because a lot of times there are small businesses and their Etsy sites and talented people. So did you, um, did you grab the one from yesterday that I didn't finish? I did finish it, didn't they? Okay? Good, alright, So we're all all right. So we got a postcard from Claire

Hinders in New Zealand. It's very nice. Yeah, you want to go ahead? How is that it? I thought you're gonna say thanks Claire or something. Oh, thanks Claire from Etsy dot com, slash shop, slash b F four e Emily, and you me got some charms. Yeah, thank you very much for those. That was very sweet. Yes it was uh coffee, we got coffee. I'm jin you got that from Corey who was living in Haiti at the time. Huh do you remember that? Yes? I do. It was good. Oh, yes,

it was nice. I drank the heck out of that good and um I had many sleepless nights because of it. Uh. We got some real men Way two Bills T shirts. That's right. We said that off handedly in the podcast a long time ago, and apparently it was on a T shirt. So we got that from custom inc dot com. Thanks for that. We have received several books that I'm going to list here. Seven Deadly Women by Jamie Hale. Uh, the official Doomsday survival handbook. This one was really good.

W h mumphrey. I've been prousing that in my brakes here at work. You have brakes I do the Savvy Converts guy to Choosing Religion. Really good book. Uh. Knock Knock dot biz is where you can find that. And uh, then this one is really cool. Wind of Water a bartender's quest to bring clean water to the world followed up with This guy's name was Doc Henley and he was a bartender that founded an organization called uh Wine to Water dot org and they're doing awesome, awesome work.

That's a great name for it. Yeah, very very cool. That's that was a long good Um. So Glenn and Sonja, who we thank for the champagne of course. Um, we also want to thank there are Kiva captains by the way, Um, we want to thank them for these t shirts from the Princeton Library. I think of Einstein and it says Einstein Simplified, and it's three drawings and they just get simpler and simpler. It's awesome my way all the time

while I'm jogging and watching television. Right, Russian candy, remember the Russian candy? Yeah, you're all over that. We got some Russian candy from Audrey. It was like it had pop rocks in the middle and I couldn't stop eating as crazy. It was pretty funny. Yah. Um. We got a postcard from Margaret in Chile, Joanne and Stephen in Colombia from the Amazon Institute. Oh yeah, that's right. Those our friends. That's who uh nominated us with the Grammy.

That's right, thank you very much that we were Grammy nominated nominated podcast. It's right. Uh Dan Burtwell from Cambridge, Massachusetts. And some graphic novels just as a like, here, dudes, I heard your comic book thing, and just here's some graphic novels that I've enjoyed in my life. Right next time. No, no, no, he's very cool. Um Watchman, which I've already read. I want to see that one. Yeah, I think I have

it over there. Um Coward which I have not read yet, The Punisher Max, which I have not gotten to yet and I definitely yeah, And Why the Last Man, which I did read. And um, I want to thank Dan because Why the Last Man was awesome. And I also want to punch Dan because now I have to buy the other nine volumes to see where the story goes. But I'm gonna get him. Actually with to Amazon the other day. Oh you gotta go to Oxford Comics and get them. Man, what you gotta like stand around in

the comic book shop and buy them. Then you can't just order them. You can. It's pretty easy actually, So um, let's see remember our Roller Derby episode. Well, the Deutsche land Rollers sent us a sticker. Thank you for that. That's right, kick. But uh and my last one is Maureene from the Therapy Sisters at therapy Sisters dot com. They sent us their music CD and it's like funny stuff. Yes it is. Yeah, thank you for um. I've got more. Do you want to split these? No? Go ahead? Alright?

So Emily from Idaho sent us a cool photo pulled out postcard from Maui. That's right, remember, thank you, um. Jennifer from Nature's Classroom in New Englandton is a handwritten letter. Again, very rare. It's nice to see those. Um. Leah from Halifax sent you a birthday card. Ah, yeah, that was very nice. That was nice. Um. And then can Crowder sent us a one dollar bill which I still have yet to get any of. It's over there on my desk. I have a brain like a little like our first

dollar earned, like businesses do. Do you really? Yeah, that's our first dollar earned. It's actually not braining, but it's still over there. Okay, I leave it out, just daring somebody to be brave enough. The steels well if you if it's replaced by fifty cents soon. That's me okay. Uh, and then Aaron Spivey sent us in Atlantic Core Vets, Drum and Bugle core patch. That's right. Thank you very much to all of you for awesome free stuff. Yeah, that's really cool when you guys think of us and

send us things like that, it's very sweet. So that was it. Huh. Administrative details is over. Yeah, I'm gonna start my new list we uh, we need some emails then, right for a listener mail, which will start up next. Uh. If you want to get in touch with this, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can also send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. Yeah. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how

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