aces-and-aros:

Asexual Awareness Week, Day Six

Most of these are taken from the Wikipedia entry for “Timeline of Asexual History” With a few extra facts taken from AVEN’s wikia page, and other news sources.

Asexual History

1869: Karl-Maria Kertbeny uses the word “Monosexuals” to refer to people who only masturbate. While not really a distinction in modern asexual discourse, it is similar to other categories coined such as “autoerotic” and “asexual” people described by Myra Jonson in the 1970s, among others.

1896: A German sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld, wrote the pamphlet “Sappo und Sokrates,” which mentions people without any sexual desire.

1948:The Kinsey scale included a “group x” for those who did not feel sexual attraction, which was roughly 1% of those surveyed.

1974: Singer and composer David Bowie discusses asexuality in the Rolling Stone in the article “David Bowie in conversation on sexuality with William S. Burroughs by Craig Copetas in the Rolling Stone February 28, 1974”

1977:Myra Jonson wrote one of the first academic papers about asexuality as part of The Sexually Oppressed. Johnson mainly focused on the problems still facing asexual women as they were ignored, or seemingly left behind by the sexual revolution going on.

1979:In a study published in Advances in the Study of Affect, vol. 5, Michael D. Storms of the University of Kansas outlined his own reimagining of the Kinsey scale, using only fantasizing and eroticism, and placing hetero-eroticism and homo-eroticism on separate axes rather than at two ends of a single scale; this allows for a distinction between bisexuality (exhibiting both hetero- and homo-eroticism in degrees comparable to hetero- or homosexuals, respectively) and asexuality (exhibiting a level of homo-eroticism comparable to a heterosexual and a level of hetero-eroticism comparable to a homosexual, namely, little to none). This type of scale accounted for asexuality for the first time. Storms conjectured that many researchers following Kinsey’s model could be mis-categorizing asexual subjects as bisexual, because both were simply defined by a lack of preference for gender in sexual partners.

1980: Writer and Artist Edward Gorey, Comes out as asexual in an interview. When asked ‘…the press makes a point of the fact that you have never married. What are your sexual preferences?’, Gorey responds “Well, I’m neither one thing nor the other particularly.” and goes on to talk about how his lack of attraction affects his work.

1983: The first study that gave empirical data about asexuals was published in by Paula Nurius, concerning the relationship between sexual orientation and mental health.

1993:Boston Marriages: Romantic but Asexual Relationships Among Contemporary Lesbians by Esther D. Rothblum and Kathleen A. Brehony was released on November 17, 1993.

1994:A survey of 18,876 British residents found that 1% of the respondents “never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all”.

1997:First online Asexual Community appears in the comment section for an article titled “My Life As An Amoeba”

2000: A Yahoo group for asexuals, Haven for the Human Amoeba, was founded.

2001: David Jay founded the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), which became the most prolific and well-known of the various asexual communities that started to form since the advent of the World Wide Web and social media.

2004: The New Scientist dedicates an issue to asexuality.

2004: Discovery dedicates an episode of “The Sex Files” to asexuality.

2005: L’amour sans le faire by Geraldin Levi Rich Jones (Joosten van Vilsteren) is released. The first book on asexuality. Geraldin was at the head of the asexual movement, launching “The Official Asexual Society” in 2000 and performing asexual comedy shows. She also was a prominent face in the early ‘00’s asexual media boom.

2005: A common symbol for the asexual community is a black ring worn on the middle finger of the right hand. The material and exact design of the ring are not important as long as it is primarily black. This symbol started on AVEN in 2005.

2007: Award winning Novelist, Keri Hulme, comes out as asexual in an interview, saying “It is part of who I am: the major impact is that I am not– and never have been– interested in sex. It was more a slow realisation that I was different from most people. By my mid-teens, I’d realised that what was of great moment and interest to other young people – their sexuality and relationships – didn’t intrigue me in the slightest.”

2009: AVEN members participated in the first asexual entry into an American pride parade when they walked in the San Francisco Pride Parade.

2010: A flag was announced as the asexual pride flag. The asexual pride flag consists of four horizontal stripes: black, grey, white, and purple from top to bottom.

2010: The New York State Division of Human Rights updated its discrimination complaint form to include asexuals in the protected sexual orientation category.

2010: Asexual Awareness Week was founded by Sara Beth Brooks in 2010. It occurs in the later half of October, and was created to both celebrate asexual, aromantic, demisexual, and grey-asexual pride and promote awareness.

2010: Fashion Consultant, Tim Gunn, says in an interview that he has identified as asexual since the 80s, saying  “Do I feel like less of a person for it? No… I’m a perfectly happy and fulfilled individual.”

2010: Comedian Janeane Garofalo comes out as asexual while live on stage in Seattle. 

2011: The Documentary “(A)sexual” is released.

2012: The first International Asexual Conference was held at the 2012 World Pride in London.

2013: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition changed the diagnosis of Hypoactive sexual desire disorder conditions to include an exception for people who self identify as asexual.

2013: American Comedian, Paula Poundstone, Comes out as Asexual in an interview 

2014:The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality, by Julie Sondra Decker, was published; it was the first mainstream published book on the subject of asexuality.

2015: George Norman became Britain’s first openly asexual parliamentary election candidate.

2017: ‘Asexual’ is updated in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to include the sexual orientation.

2018: ‘Ace’ and ‘Aromantic’ are added to the Oxford English Dictionary, and ‘Asexual’ is updated to include the sexual orientation.