People just can’t accept I’m asexual

CHRISTINE, I am so glad you gave as your email subject, ‘Different’ because I believe that the more people attach specific labels to this or that aspect of human sexuality and/ or behaviour, the less understanding and tolerant we become. To the identity-label-obsessives, to call yourself ‘different’ wouldn’t be enough.

Yet before horribly noisy voices on the internet dominated all discourse, a man or woman who’d never had a partner might be thought to be a closet homosexual, or somebody who had never met The One or ‘a bit of a loner’.

I looked up Asexuality in Wikipedia. Reading almost made me lose the will to live. When I read, ‘Other unique words and phrases used in the asexual community to elaborate identities and relationships also exist. One term coined by individuals in the asexual community is friend-focused, which refers to highly valued, non-romantic relationships …’

I realise what an absurdist world we live in, when people have to ‘coin’ a phrase to describe something as undramatic as loving your friends and not wanting/needing a sexual partner.

It’s not that the entry isn’t interesting, but the detail under ‘research’ told me that only about 1 per cent of people are asexual and ‘in comparison to other sexualities, asexuality has received little attention from the scientific community.’ Well, thank goodness. Why should you be put under the scientific microscope when there is absolutely nothing wrong with being as you are? You are right to raise the issue of confused young people. They might be happier in general if the world didn’t force sexual identities on them, but allowed them time and space to ‘be’.

Anyone interested could look at the website of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network.

Here’s one sensible sentence: ‘Asexuality is like any other identity — at its core, it’s just a word that people use to help figure themselves out.’ Indeed. Most of us feel confused at different stages in life and just trying to work things out is a worthwhile quest. So is accepting the great unknowns.

Resisting labels and accepting individuality in all its glittering, complex, multifarious glory…this is the state I think you’ve reached, Christine, and I applaud it.

You say you’ve ‘never loved at all’, then offer the exceptions. You make a distinction between ‘loving’ and ‘caring for’, when the essential mutuality of ‘caring for’ is at the root of civilisation.

There are many people who dislike kissing and hugging, and were quite relieved when social distancing made it impossible. Many others hate parties…Let us celebrate the unique ‘difference’ all of us possess, without narrow labels.