# Talk:Asexuality


### Asexuality
Hi 👋 I recently added Fictosexual to the part of the playlist that went over forms of asexual. Fictosexual is considered a form of asexuality. DarknessGoth777 (talk) 01:42, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

There should be a section for asexual microlabels. Fictosexual, mentioned in the above section, could also be included. GoodExtraPath (talk) 13:25, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Hello GoodExtraPath, and thanks for your efforts to improve the article. I haven't been able to find any reliable sources for asexual microlabels: all I've been able to find is user generated content like wikis, blogs, etc. Could you propose something along the lines of peer-reviewed published research, a book from a reliable publisher, that sort of thing, to support the addition of microlabels? Thanks, Wikishovel (talk) 13:31, 6 November 2025 (UTC)
@GoodExtraPath: you've been repeatedly adding unreliable wiki sources, despite several editors reverting their addition and asking you to stop. So I'm asking you to make a basic effort at dialogue about it here, to avoid you getting blocked by an administrator for edit-warring. Wikishovel (talk) 15:08, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

The article makes this statement almost immediately:

It may be considered a sexual orientation or the lack thereof.

The citations used are old, and I don't believe that this is reflective of how the asexual community understands asexuality broadly. I am not strictly asexual, though I am on the asexual spectrum — specifically aceflux. My time in asexual spaces has led me to the conclusion that the vast majority of people on the asexual spectrum (whether strictly asexual or not) hold the view that asexuality is a sexual orientation in its own right, not a lack thereof. It is a view that I hold as well.
This is also, to my understanding, a major part of why terms like allosexuality and zedsexuality were coined to refer to its opposite. People would simply use "sexuality" to describe this otherwise, which can carry some problematic implications:

"Asexuality is not a sexuality."
"Allosexuality is the default sexuality, so it can just be called 'sexuality' with no further specification needed."
"Asexual people never engage in any sexual behaviors." (This is true for some asexual people, but not all.)
AVEN refers to asexuality and its sub-labels as sexual orientations (see their overview), and has made a point of emphasizing this for years. That was (and is) a major goal of AVEN; this is even stated under the "Purpose" section of its Wikipedia article. That's where I grabbed that second external link from.
Even the medical community, which the asexual community has long been at odds with, seems to explicitly acknowledge asexuality as a sexual orientation — examples here and here and here and here and... You get the point. However, with all of this said, I also want to acknowledge that I am very obviously biased, so I want to discuss this change rather than diving right in to edit the article. KyloFC (talk) 08:22, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

I've reverted the last change and some of my arguments can be seen in the summary. Different perspectives do exist and identity and orientation are (obviously) also not the same (but both aspects play a role as stated in the intro). Additionally we would have to agree on a clear definition of sexual orientation first if we were to state that asexuality can only be seen as a sexual orientation. The term asexuality excludes "sexual" attraction/desire while still including "romantic" attraction/desire. That is not the case in e.g. heterosexuality and homosexuality. So if "sex" as in "heterosexuality" were defined in the same way as it is done in "asexuality" that would basically mean that heterosexuals do not experience romantic attraction/desire or rather that their romantic orientation needs to be explicitly specified. --MightyMaz (talk) 20:49, 17 November 2025
That however is not the way the term "sexual orientation" is used in reality as it refers to (at least) both aspects and only asexuality differs from that common use. The spectrum on the other hand does NOT consist of independent orientations but rather of preferences and identities which can be classified as either "asexual" or (in most cases to be honest) as "(allo)sexual" because those people DO experience sexual attraction/desire (and that fact simply contradicts an orientation based definition of asexuality) although they might be part of the community and/or have made similar experiences (that's the identity part of the definition). (UTC) --MightyMaz (talk) 22:37, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
It sounds like you're under the assumption that the split attraction model is strictly used in application towards people who are asexual, when this is not the case. Strictly allosexual people can also experience their sexual orientation separately from their romantic orientation. A strictly heterosexual person could be homoromantic, biromantic, or aromantic, for example. Your argument against asexuality as a sexual orientation relies on a false premise, because the use of the split attraction model is not exclusive to asexual people, nor does it disqualify something from counting as a sexual orientation, otherwise nothing would ever count as a sexual orientation.
The only arguments I've seen against asexuality's recognition as a sexual orientation have come from outside the asexual community, especially as a method of furthering stigma or an effort to classify it as a medical problem, as can be seen in the article as well.
Sexual orientation refers to the way in which a person experiences or does not experience attraction, and especially the way in which a person identifies as a result. The "does not experience" part must be implicitly accepted as a defining factor of sexual orientation, due to heterosexuality and homosexuality often being partially defined by lack of attraction to certain genders. Otherwise, the only sexual orientations would be ones which include all possible attractions, such as pansexuality and (circumstantially) bisexuality.
Regarding which types of attraction form a person's sexual orientation, this attraction may contextually be specified as strictly sexual, or can refer to attraction broadly, but both are valid and commonly used interpretations of "sexual orientation" as a term. This largely depends on whether a person uses the split attraction model, but not necessarily on whether one is asexual or allosexual.
All of that is to say, sexual orientation is related to attraction, but it is not a synonym for it. One can have a sexual orientation without experiencing sexual attraction. I'm not saying that the expansion upon the "sexual orientation or lack thereof" debate should be removed, but I think that the sentence in the beginning (the one that I quoted) should be changed or removed, because it inaccurately reflects the current consensus within the asexual community regarding this categorization, and uncritically puts a framework of sexuality often regarded as acephobic at the forefront of the page. KyloFC (talk) 07:33, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
The split attraction model is an attempt to differentiate between sexual attraction and romantic attraction (or desire). That differentiation also leads to the separation of a sexual orientation and a romantic orientation. Asexuals do lack the "sexual" part of the orientation while retaining the "romantic" part (unless they are also aromantic). It just makes no sense to separate the romantic orientation from the sexual orientation and then classifying romantic orientations as sexual orientations again. Also I highly doubt that people with only the sexual part of an orientation even exist (here we would have to agree on a definition of sexual first), so the separation might work in one direction but not in the other. Also constructs like "homoromantic heterosexual" are semantically possible but are rather artificial in my opinion because (at least from a common viewpoint) those people would fall in the bisexual spectrum. I'm not saying that those differentiations make no sense but I'm saying that they clearly contradict more common perspectives on the matter (and thus it is also true that asexuality can be seen as the lack of a sexual orientation).
My personal solution btw. would be to regard asexuality either as a "sub-orientation" (that would mean all orientations are only identified by the romantic/emotional attraction/desire and a/hetero/homo/bi - sexual become the subcategories) or as a "super-orientation" (asexuality and allosexuality are the primary categories and hetero/homo/bi become the specifications) but that viewpoint is basically nonexistent in the community or in scientific discourse. --MightyMaz (talk) 09:11, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
I'm confused as to what you mean by "It just makes no sense to separate the romantic orientation from the sexual orientation and then classifying romantic orientations as sexual orientations again."
Because that's not what I'm doing to begin with. Asexuality is about sexual attraction. It is a sexual orientation, not a romantic orientation; it says nothing about a person's romantic attraction or lack thereof. Aromantic is a romantic orientation, not asexual.
"Also I highly doubt that people with only the sexual part of an orientation even exist" - then you aren't looking very hard.
"Also constructs like 'homoromantic heterosexual' are semantically possible but are rather artificial in my opinion because (at least from a common viewpoint) those people would fall in the bisexual spectrum." - some people fitting that description would identify as bisexual, but some would not. There are absolutely people who would reject being categorized as bisexual, especially considering the way that "bisexual" often carries implications which would not align with how a homoromantic heterosexual person experiences attraction.
Additionally, even the article itself acknowledges the majority consensus among asexual people, which aligns with my own experience in asexual communities: "Those who identify as asexual usually prefer it to be recognized as a sexual orientation."
I would like to ask: are you asexual, or anywhere on the asexual spectrum? Is this a community which you have much experience engaging with or learning about? Because the majority of what you're saying, to me, suggests that this is not a topic you are familiar with. And that isn't to say that you have to be asexual to offer your input, but I also believe that the wording used at the top of the page has a major impact on how people perceive asexuality and asexual people. So, as such, I think that it is important that this wording does not uncritically present opinions on asexuality which the majority of us find to be ignorant or discriminatory.
Again, this does not mean that the elaboration further into the article needs to disappear; I think that it is actually important that the "Sexual orientation, mental health and cause" section stays. But I find it irresponsible to put the "It may be considered a... lack [of orientation]" statement at the beginning of the article. KyloFC (talk) 09:39, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
Ok I personally don't think that statement does any harm, so lets agree to disagree here.
I've been a member of AVEN for more than 21 years but, as I am not a native speaker of English, I'm not very active in the English board. Identity and orientation are just not the same. You can identify in one way but be orientated in another. If you don't know about the term asexuality you will most likely identify as e.g. heterosexual but that will not have any influence on your actual attractions. Homosexuals might even be forced to identify as heterosexual due to discrimination. Also you can choose not to identify at all e.g. because you don't agree with a certain definition. For example there is a desire based definition of asexuality (asexuals do not experience desire for sexual interaction / intercourse) which I (and many other members of e.g. AVEN) clearly prefer over the common AVENus definition as lack of sexual attraction. That's one of the reasons (but not the only one) why I personally also do not identify as asexual although I might be asexual in the sense of an orientation and I do score above 40 points in the AIS by Brotto et al. Identity however has never been a relevant category for me. --MightyMaz (talk) 10:14, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
Considering that the idea of asexuality as "a lack of sexual orientation" is used as a justification for classifying it as a disorder, as well as excluding it from activism, LGBTQ+ communities, and legal protections against discrimination, I do believe there is tangible harm. You may disagree. But I think this is more than just a semantics issue. The page on acephobia goes into depth on this, and as mentioned before, the rejection of asexuality as a sexual orientation is often considered acephobic in its own right. KyloFC (talk) 10:28, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
Well that's more about politics / setting narratives then. I would not hide certain viewpoints just because of the fear of discrimination. Sadly people who want to discriminate against others will always find a way or create their own narratives. Also asexuality is not actually classified as a disorder. Brotto et al. have done a lot of research in that area and even a lifelong form of "HSDD" can be clearly differentiated from asexuality. As a result DSM-5 explicitly excludes people who identify as asexual from the diagnosis of male hypoactive sexual desire disorder and female sexual interest/arousal disorder. Also the ace community surveys suggest that such a diagnosis is VERY rare (in the 2019 community census only 0,1% of the population were diagnosed with "HSDD"). --MightyMaz (talk) 11:02, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
Back to topic: Although I wouldn't remove the statement altogether it's true that asexuality is not commonly defined as a lack of sexual orientation. However that's also the case for "absent interest in or desire for sexual activity". Although I would consider the absence of desire for sexual intercourse (or rather sexual interaction / partnered sexual activity / ...) to be a common definition of asexuality the term sexual activity also refers to masturbation. As far as I know only nonlibdoists were of the opinion that people who masturbate should be excluded (the clash of opinions with early AVEN was the reason they dropped the term asexuality altogether. Also this probably was an important factor in the construction of an identity based definition on AVEN because the community was able to grow much faster that way). So maybe the intro should be rewritten in a way that separates the more common perspectives on asexuality from the less common ones. I don't think I can do that myself however as I don't have access to proper sources to support those claims. If you or someone else is interested in modifying the intro in such a way I do support this. --MightyMaz (talk) 12:37, 19 November 2025 (UTC)