Asexual repression and other important issues not addressed by the Asexual Community

Details: Category: Cake Recipes; Published on Thursday, 26 May 2011 23:19; Written by Lara Landis; Hits: 947

When the topic of Asexuality comes up among those ignorant of the orientation, the word repression will come up not far behind. Although Asexual News reported on that the New York Times addressed the issue of Asexuals repressing their sexuality earlier today, the Asexual News post was made in error.

Although the story of repressed sexuality focused on a gay person abusing someone else to hide his own secret, Aces never think about what might happen when someone who is Asexual represses their own sexuality. Such a scenario may not lead to spectacular news stories of televangelists and prominent preachers getting caught picking up male prostitutes, but such a scenrio may lead to to a life of hypersexuality in an attempt to jump start feelings that may never exist within a person.

While Asexuals encourage academic studies on the Asexual population, we often let these studies come from outside of the Asexual community. Using such a strategy results in information that helps people who are not Asexual understand us, but it does not address the issues that our community faces. Even the Asexual community has not yet speculated about what repressed Asexuality might look like. The community is too busy trying to deny the repressed heterosexuality or repressed homosexuality to consider this possibility.

The Asexual community has looked outward for acceptance and visibility. The struggle for increased awareness is far from over. As valuable as looking outward may be, we also need to look inward. There are problems that exist within our own community. Simply ignoring these problems does not make them go away. Someone needs to do a study on the suicide rates among us. Someone needs to look at the longevity rates for a group of people who are likely to live alone. How many people identify as Asexual and live below the poverty line? Even the issue of Asexual identity repression would be a valid one for study, if any repressed Asexuals are ever found.