Asexuality: Beyond The Binaries.

Ever since our childhoods, most of us have been impregnated and internalized with the hyperbolic quintessence of human emotion, i.e. love, with romantic and sexual attractions forming an ubiquitous utopia of the normal hegemonic mainstream. The notion of the eternity of sexual desire and the inherent placidity of thought processes inherent in our dystopian reality fade into oblivion when it easily obliterates the seething minority that have other vested desires and sexual orientations from a highly polarized diametrically determined picture!

Image source : tribune

This is exactly where asexuality steps in. Much implicit in its very linguistics, it encompasses a wide gamut of people who are primarily addressed to be lacking in “sexual interactions” or have little or no desire in sexual intercourse. Being a constituent of the LGBTQIA+ community, it is both an identity and a spectrum, subsuming myriad sexual orientations. But the very fact that they are not vested in the normative interests of sexual intercourse doesn’t automatically imply any dearth of human emotions in their life.

Asexuals, commonly known as aces, have the same emotional needs as cis-gendered - people do. They too yearn and crave for intimacy, shed a tear in times of stress or may be just share a shred of warmth on a winter morning. They may also have different experiences depending on various external factors which includes falling in love, having orgasms, masturbation, experiencing arousal or getting married. Thus, their very notion of alienation and uniformity in perception without recognizing the numerous intricacies in between is the preliminary concept that needs to be done away with.

The broader spectrum of asexuality mainly involves three sexual orientations namely, aromantic, demi-sexual and graysexual or grayromantic. Aromantic can be defined as a romantic orientation which is different from a sexual interaction. They prefer close intimate relationships but may not be interested in sexual intimacy. Demisexual people generally tend to form sexual relationships but only after they have forged a deep and close emotional connection with the other partner. Graysexual people constitute the blurred space between sexual and asexual people with them experiencing occasional romantic and sexual attraction or in very specific circumstances.

After an overarching overview of asexuality, what astonishes me personally is indeed a deep seated rhetorical one which resonates like the echoes of a guitar string played far late….Do we really acknowledge the shades or rather the absence of shades in love even today or is it still a bird’s eye view of sexuality with a binary aperture? What is needed is an awareness of the diversity of sexual orientations, a sensitivity towards such variety and a restricted eulogisation of the normative definitions of love that too, in an already entrenched hetero-normative society. You and I can? Let’s begin to paint it all or may be just keep it blank in the spaces in between!

- Written by Shreya Ghosh