Attempting to define the orientation that is often skirted around in the gender and sexuality discourse for its seemingly unconventional nature, 21 people at the weekend took part in workshops as part of the Gender, Sexuality and Asexuality Festival in Bhopal organised by Indian Aces, a collective for asexual persons.
What causes asexuality? “Whatever causes heterosexuality,” quipped Pragati Singh, who took the workshop. “Whether it’s genetic or a product of societal conditioning, there are those advocating both the theories.”
She disabused participants of the belief that sexual attraction, preference and behaviour were always congruous. “What makes asexuality a sexual orientation is that asexual persons are not sexually attracted to persons of any gender. They constitute about 1-3% of the world population,” she explained.
Sexual drive
However, she said, they may have a sexual drive and even indulge in sexual activities by choice. “Your attraction to a person of a particular gender defines your sexual orientation such as heterosexual, homosexual, pansexual, etc,” she said.
Components of sexual identity — attraction, orientation, drive, arousal, preference, behaviour, attitude and political belief — play out differently with varying orientations. “For asexual persons, except for the attraction aspect which thereby shapes their orientation, rest may apply in any combination,” she added.
Even asexual persons may have a libido-based drive, prefer sexual partners of a certain gender, hold a personal attitude towards sexual activities and political point of view about it in a society’s context, like persons of other orientations, she said.
