Not everyone experiences attraction the same way

Arin Moriarty’s moment of realization came all at once.

“I was 17 and ... I was hanging out at the pool with the daughters of some of my mom’s friends who I didn’t know very well. And there were a bunch of random guys who lived in Orlando and had come to the pool to hang out,” said Moriarty, who studies physiology at the University of Colorado.

“They were arguing about whether biceps or abs are sexier, and I was just sitting there like, ‘I don’t understand what you guys are talking about.’ And it was at that point that I sort of started to realize that other people experience that attraction differently than the way I did.”

That poolside epiphany began Moriarity’s realization that they — the CU student uses genderneutral pronouns — are asexual, meaning they don’t experience sexual attraction.

In biology, the word “asexual” refers to an organism that doesn’t use sex to reproduce, such as an amoeba. That term — and the shortened form, “ace” — has been adopted by the asexual community.

While gay, lesbian and bisexual rights have advanced in the United States over the last half century, another smaller population struggles with society’s idea that people can’t be functioning adults if they don’t desire sex.

In his research in 1948 and 1953, Dr. Alfred Kinsey described people’s sexuality on a scale of zero to six, and categorized some people as asexual, noting them with an X.

Research published in 2004 by Anthony Bogaert of Brock University in Canada suggests that roughly 1 percent of people are asexual, and it’s more prevalent in women than men — although scientific research on asexuality is sparse. Asexual people often face misconceptions about their lack of sexual attraction and attempts to fix what other people perceive as a problem, said Scarlet Bowen, director of the CU’s Gender and Sexuality Center.

“There has been a history of pathologization of asexuality throughout history,” said Bowen, who also is an associate faculty member teaching women and gender studies. It’s that thought of “there must be something wrong with you and you must need drugs or therapy to fix what is really a healthy variation.”

“Some people don’t experience sexual desire or sexual attraction as the primary binding agent in their relationship,” Bowen said.

Moriarty said that while they have never experienced overt discrimination because of their asexuality — as has been the case historically for gay, lesbian and bisexual people — they have faced awkward questions.

“There are also times of people, like, disbelieving my ace identity and they say, ‘Oh, you’re actually just gay and in denial,’ or something like that,” Moriarty said.

Just because someone is asexual does not necessarily mean they are aromantic — meaning they don’t feel romantic attraction — or even that they are abstaining from sex.

Some asexual people have had sex in the past because of societal pressure or to figure out if they are asexual, while others may choose to have sex to please a partner, according to the Asexual Visibility and Education Network.

Moriarty, for example, is in a romantic relationship with another asexual person. Moriarty is biromantic, meaning they are romantically attracted to people of all genders.

“I can tell you what our relationship kind of looks like. We talk a lot, we cuddle a lot,” they said. “We’ll sleep together in the same bed, tangled up but not having sex — actually sleeping together. ... For me, romantic attraction is having that quality time spent together and I’m just perfectly content having that without having any sexual contact.”

Other asexual people are also aromantic.

Lior Gross, a CU student who also uses gender-neutral pronouns, said that their lack of sexual and romantic attraction to others always seemed to them to be linked.

“All throughout growing up and everything, I thought the world was just playing this giant joke and everyone was over-exaggerating,” said Gross, who is studying ecology, evolutionary biology and geology. “When my friends in high school would be talking about having a crush on somebody and not being able to focus in class, I was just like, ‘How does that even work? That just sounds silly.’ ”

When Gross found the ace community on the internet and told their mom that they were asexual and aromantic, she didn’t believe them at first.

“I felt broken in a lot of ways. When I told my mom that word, she was like, ‘No, you’ll find somebody.’ That was her immediate response,” Gross said.

After Gross started participating in activism in the LGBTQ community, they approached their parents about the subject again.

“They said to just, like, walk them through it and explain it because I think they felt that there was this obligation to them or whatever,” Gross said. “They wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to be alone and sad.”

Gross isn’t bothered by their asexuality, though. They live a busy life with different kinds of fulfilling relationships, ranging from friendships to their fellow residents at Boulder’s Rad-ish Collective co-op to experimenting with what are known as queer platonic relationships, or QPRs.

“The most important relationships for me have always been and probably always will be deep, intentional friendships. I get a lot of joy from that,” Gross said. “I was in a QPR ... they’re very common for asexual and aromantic people, but also other folks can be in QPRs, too. It’s kind of like you’re partners with someone in a way, but it’s without a lot of the language and attraction of dating somebody or whatever.”

Gross said that their friendships benefit from communication and kindness, just like any kind of relationship.

“Instead of treating a relationship as a commodity, it should be seen as something that isn’t going to be perfect and isn’t a static state that you can achieve and then it serves you for as long as that feels comfortable,” Gross said. “It’s more like a garden, where you put work into it, and if you continue to invest in it, it will yield fruit. And sometimes it might be bitter and sometimes there might be weeds in your garden or you might have an infestation of pests, but at the end of the day ... you know that half the fun of having a garden is putting the work into it.”

Gross said that the only official discrimination they have experienced is related to their living situation at the Rad-ish Collective co-op.

Boulder law prohibits more than three or four unrelated people living together, depending on the area of the city, unless they apply for a co-op license. The licensing procedure is less cumbersome now than under an old ordinance, but still requires extensive paperwork.

Gross said that while they and their fellow Rad-ish residents aren’t related, they are a found family to each other and laws like Boulder’s discriminate against people who choose not to live in the traditional nuclear family structure.

“There are so many different forms of communal living, whether that’s aging in place or there might be a generational intentional community. Or you can have a co-op where folks are polyamorous and in a lot of different relationships with different people,” Gross said.

“They’re unrelated, they’re not married but they’re still relationships. Like at the Rad-ish, we’re all essentially a family, but we’re not related so it was illegal. Devaluing those relationships in favor of some sort of transactional marriage was codified in terms of occupancy and still is unless you’re a legal co-op.”

Moriarty and Gross both encouraged others who they think may be asexual to use the label as a tool — try it if it fits, don’t use it if it doesn’t.