They don’t fear sex, they just don’t want it – and never have. What they do want is social acceptance. Tiffany Hancock meets Britain’s self-declared celibates
David Jay, 24, looks like your classic all-American heart throb. Tall and muscular with thick dark hair and a warm smile, he speaks with the self-assurance of someone who knows they’re attractive. Popular with his peers, he lists rollerblading and pavement artistry as hobbies and is like most other 20-somethings in all but one respect.
David Jay has never had sex. More significantly, he probably never will. It is not that he is religious, afraid of it, disgusted by it or incapable in any physical respect. Neither, he insists, is he suppressing any homosexual tendencies. It’s just that he experiences “no sexual desire whatsoever”.
David, a computer technician from San Francisco, is one of a growing group of people who openly define themselves as “asexual”, claiming never to feel sexual attraction to men or women.
Most asexuals believe that they exist in far greater numbers than society acknowledges.
Surveys such as the 2005 global Durex Sex Survey suggest that adults have sex an average of 103 times a year. Yet a small proportion of the population may not be having any sex. Last month, the British Office for National Statistics revealed that one in eight women between the ages of 16 and 50 and one in six men under 70 had not had sex in the past year.
A 1994 survey of sexual practices in Britain questioned 18,000 people about their sexuality; one per cent of respondents chose the option, “I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all”. This indicator of the prevalence of asexuality slipped under the radar because the survey was geared towards understanding the spread of Aids. It is only now, as awareness of asexuality gathers pace, that the findings have become more pertinent.
While some asexuals may experience arousal, may masturbate and may be attracted to other people, many feel no attraction. For David, porn is just “intellectually interesting”, breasts are merely body parts and intimacy is talking to someone until the sun comes up.
He has tried masturbating and describes orgasms as “good but not something to build my life around”. He occasionally experiences arousal, though he describes it as a purely physical phenomenon, unrelated to any thought process or fantasy. It’s not that he has a low libido, more a case of no libido.
By Tiffany. Read everything at the UK Telegraph
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