Just in time for Asexual Awareness Week, October 25-31, a new study says that more teens identify as Ace than you may think.
The Trevor Project recently released new research on the Ace community. The organization that supports LGBTQ youth sampled over 40,000 LGBTQ youth and found that 10% identified as asexual or ace spectrum. When given the chance to describe their sexual orientation further, the asexual youth stated that they were: demisexual (15%), greysexual (9%), and/or polyamorous (9%). Romantic attraction was also explored with 20% saying they were panromantic, 17% saying they were biromantic, and 13% saying they were aromantic.
But what do all these terms mean? The Trevor Project defined asexuality as someone experiencing or exhibiting a lessoned or lack of sexual attraction to others. Keep in mind that this is not a negative thing and asexuality can look very different depending on the person. Then, demisexual means that they don’t experience primary sexual attraction but can experience sexual attraction after getting to know someone. Meanwhile, greysexuality is a person who experiences rare or infrequent sexual attraction.
Then the romantic attraction terms are based more on the emotional level of dating and not the sexual. So someone who is aromantic does not experience romantic attraction, someone who is biromantic can experience romantic attraction to men or women, and panromanticism is an attraction to a specific person and not so much a gender identity.
“Asexual youth are often forgotten in both research and outreach efforts,” Myeshia Price-Feeney,Ph.D., a research scientist for the Trevor Project said in the organization’s statement.
Due to ace erasure and lack of a general understanding of the concept, ace youth typically “selected other ways of describing their overall sexual orientation,” according to Price-Feeney. Ace teens then typically “desire to represent their sexuality in more nuanced ways.”
The study also found that a significant part of the ace community also belongs to the trans and non-binary communities. While 3 percent of cis men and 9 percent of cis women identified as ace, 13 percent of trans men and 6 trans women said the same. In the end, 20 percent of non-binary youth and 15 percent of the youth questioning their gender identities reported being ace.
So as we get to understand sexuality more in the next few years, it’s important that we take the time to understand the ace community too. They need and deserve this recognition in order to live more fleshed out lives.
Source: Trevor Proejct,
