As you might expect, behavior’s imperfect reflection of one’s desires and attractions is also important in understanding asexuality. Sexual behavior—or more to the point, the absence of it—is usually not the defining feature of asexuality.[7] A more common definition, as mentioned, is a lack of sexual attraction—or at least the definition in recent research often includes this element (Bogaert, 2004; Bogaert, 2006b; Brotto et al., 2010). Thus, although asexual people often have less sexual experience with a partner, as one might expect, sexual experience per se would not necessarily mean that a person is not asexual (Bogaert, 2004). For example, some asexual people may engage in partnered sex (e.g., sexual intercourse), perhaps out of curiosity or perhaps to please a romantic partner. The latter type of sexual activity is most likely to occur in those asexuals with romantic inclinations; it also reinforces the distinction made earlier between romantic and sexual attraction.
It is also important to note that some people actively abstain from sex for very long periods of time (e.g., prior to marriage, chastity), and some people—celibates—actively eschew sex altogether, yet they do not necessarily lack sexual attraction. Indeed, they may be strongly sexually attracted to others but, for religious or other reasons, choose not to have sex. For example, in Roman Catholic law and theology, “Clerics are obliged to observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and, therefore, are obliged to observe celibacy” (Code of Canon Law, n.d.). Such obligations, of course, are not always upheld in the long run. That celibacy in some forms of religious life is often so difficult to uphold attests to the fact that many celibates are not necessarily asexual. They may eventually stray and engage in some form of sexual behavior, because their sexual attractions and inclinations are so strong and overwhelm their values. That having been said, it is also not surprising that asexual people are, on average, more frequently found among the strongly religious (Bogaert, 2004). Celibacy is obviously much easier for those who are indeed asexual. A few years ago, a member of the clergy suggested to me that in his experience, asexuality was not unknown among those undertaking religious professions.
In 1980, Michael Storms recognized some of the limitations of a strictly behavioral approach to sexual orientation, including Kinsey’s traditional behavioral scale for measuring sexual orientation. Thus, Storms’s model of sexual orientation was based only on sexual attraction and not on actual behavior. He also argued that two seven-point scales/dimensions are better than one (Storms, 1980).
Storms’s two scales or dimensions decouple homoeroticism (sexual attraction to the same sex) from heteroeroticism (sexual attraction to the opposite sex). So, if someone were asked on a questionnaire to categorize his or her sexual orientation using Storms’s model, he or she would indicate the degree to which he or she has attractions to the same sex (homoeroticism) on a scale from low (one) to moderate (four) to high (seven), and then, on a separate scale, would indicate the degree to which he or she has attractions to the opposite sex (heteroeroticism), again ranging from low (one) to moderate (four) to high (seven). Having these two independent dimensions means that one can be high (or low) on one but also high (or low) on the other. Thus, one’s score on one dimension does not constrain the score on the other. This means that one can be high on both (bisexuality) or low on both (asexuality). Storms never investigated asexuals to see if this model captures their attractions accurately (i.e., low on both dimensions), but, as mentioned above, there is now some support for this model (Bogaert, 2004; Brotto et al., 2010).
Now let’s move on to the third letter of the alphabet, C. Recall that C is for cognition. Cognition is another word for “thoughts.” For example, the field of cognitive psychology deals with the processing of information and knowledge. Thus, cognitive psychologists try to understand our thoughts and their organization in the mind; how, for example, one bit of knowledge or information is linked to another and how readily accessible this bit of knowledge is to our conscious mind.
Our thoughts are often organized into “knowledge structures” or “schemas.” One form of knowledge structure is a script. A script is a cognitive generalization about the “appropriate sequence of events in a particular context” (Schank & Abelson, 1977, p. 41). In other words, just as a movie or a TV script tells an actor what to do and say (and when to do and say it), our cognitive scripts prompt us to do and say things in a specific order in a specific context. We may not realize that we carry around in our heads these cognitive “scripts” of what to do and say in various contexts, but we do. This type of cognitive processing is often automatic and unconsciously performed, and can provide very useful shortcuts for dealing with many contexts in the world around us. Indeed, it would be extremely time consuming and taxing if we had to deliberate about every move we make without relying on such mental shortcuts.
In sexual contexts, people also rely on scripts. Thus, humans engage in rather automated sequences of sexual behavior, dealing with behavioral contingencies in a rather orderly way (First I will kiss her, then, if she responds to this, I will touch her breast, then I will…). Of course, it takes time, it requires watching others perform these actions, and it takes practice (in keeping with the acting metaphor, let’s call it rehearsal!) to make the sexual scripts unfold in a relatively seamless way, and sexual behavior is not without its complications, to say the least!
Sexual fantasies can be construed as a form of sexual script (see also chapter 5). Sexual fantasies may be very brief—just flashes of a sexy image bouncing around in our heads—but they can also be more elaborate, with a dramatic storyline or plot. If one has repeated fantasies, this may allow “rehearsal” to occur, so that we ingrain in our minds (potentially adaptive) sexual sequences of behavior—that is, sexual scripts.
Sexual fantasies, along with other cognitive processes, are important in understanding asexuality. For example, do asexual people have sexual fantasies or, if they are asexual but romantic, just romantic ones? If some asexual people do have sexual fantasies, what does this mean about their sexual attractions, given that sexual fantasies often closely reflect sexual attractions? Would such people truly lack sexual attraction?[8] We will be further discussing this issue and how other cognitive elements help us to understand sexuality and asexuality in various chapters (see, for instance, chapter 5 on masturbation and chapter 12 on humor).
D is for desire. Sexual desire can be defined as “a feeling that includes wanting to have a sexual experience, feeling receptive to a partner’s sexual initiation, and thinking and fantasizing about sex” (Rosen et al., 2000, p. 191). Desire is another word for “lust,” or, in more colloquial terms, “horniness”—that tingly feeling that makes people engage in sexual activity and, perhaps, have a release of sexual tension: orgasm.
Desire is related to all four of the above: attraction, arousal, behavior, and cognition. It is also, for example, very closely related to people’s sexual attractions, as it usually is in reference to others. But desire and attraction also can be decoupled. One of the reasons for this decoupling is that there are separate bodily mechanisms underlying them. Circulating testosterone, for example, can have a large impact on desire, but it does not alter the direction of one’s sexual attractions.[9] In the checkered early days of reparative therapy, gay men were administered high levels of testosterone, with the idea being that a lack of sexual interest in women occurred in men because of an insufficient amount of this male-associated hormone (Meyer-Bahlburg, 1977). The bottom line, however, was this: Testosterone did not make gay men heterosexual; it just made them horny! There were a couple of problems with this reparative approach using testosterone, aside from, of course, the ethical issues. First, testosterone, although found in higher concentrations in men than women, exists in both sexes. So, it is misleading to suggest that it is a male-only hormone (see also chapter 6). Second, prior to birth, different levels of exposure to testosterone may have permanent, organizing effects on the brain (as they do on the body), and may ultimately affect sexual attractions and one’s orientation development (see also chapter 13). But in adolescence and adulthood, testosterone has “activating” effects, working like a kind of fuel on whatever disposition (i.e., brain organization) is already there in the first place. So it is not surprising that gay men, when given a boost of testosterone, became more interested in sexual activities generally but did not change their underlying attraction to men. So, in short, desire and attraction have different underlying bodily mechanisms, and hence are “decoupleable.”
7
A recent exception to this is a study by Poston and Baumle (2010), which defined asexuality in a number of ways, including a lack of sexual behavior.
8
Indeed, sexual fantasies are so closely linked to one’s sexual attractions that Storms’s model of sexual orientation is sometimes referred to as the 2D
9
I am using testosterone here as an example, but I don’t want to imply that this hormone is the only factor at work. There are a number of factors other than testosterone—including psychosocial ones, for example—that influence sex drive.