As a working-class Black woman, discrimination is something I’ve had to overcome my entire life. This has made me particularly attuned to how different aspects of your identity can have an impact on how you’re perceived and how you’re treated. I’ve found that while racism is at least something we’re talking about and (ever so slowly) starting to address, asexuality (when you experience little or no sexual attraction to other people) is a much quieter conversation – even in LGBTQ+ spaces.

When there was a national campaign to ban conversion therapy in the UK, an outcry rightfully came from the LGBTQ+ community and our allies when trans people were excluded from the proposed ban. But no such outcry came about the fact that asexual people weren’t protected by the ban, either – despite the government finding that one in 10 asexual people in the UK have been offered or have undergone conversion therapy. That worrying statistic was widely ignored, just as asexual discrimination often is.

It’s no surprise that it isn’t at the forefront of people’s minds, even if they do care about issues facing the LGBTQ+ community. After all, those that fall beyond the ‘+’ are often forgotten. Asexuality has been described as the ‘invisible orientation’ for years., partially due to its lack of representation but also due to it being easier to hide than some of the others. However, spending a lifetime hiding isn’t necessarily a privilege. 

Most people not knowing what asexuality is doesn’t stop them from having opinions about it. Prejudice is often born from ignorance. People fear and hate what they don’t understand. In a heteronormative society, anyone who falls outside of that box is considered an anomaly, and if you don’t experience sexual attraction at all, you’re an outlier within an outlier. Although most people would know better than to assume that someone’s homosexuality was some kind of side effect, personality flaw, limitation or illness that needed to be cured, in my experience, asexuality isn’t granted the same degree of understanding.

I was 15 when I first heard the term ‘asexual’ as it referred to sexual orientation rather than asexual reproduction. I thought I had finally found the answer to the probing and invasive questions my peers, one that proved there was nothing ‘wrong’ with me. Little did I realise that my asexuality would be seen as the symptom or at least a cover for my ‘real’ ailment. It was assumed that a hormonal imbalance or a mental disorder must be the true cause. My development must be stunted; maybe I was ‘slow’ or responding to childhood trauma. It must be because I had supposed anti-sex attitudes; I was frigid, prude or maybe I lacked empathy or social skills. 

In the end, I went back into the closet to preserve my own sanity and remained there until I was in my early 20s, working as a model and building a public profile of my own. I decided to try to fill the gap in Black asexual representation, and it was only when my activism became more well-known that people in my personal life started to believe and understand me. However, I also became exposed to relentless waves of hate, exacerbated not just by acephobia, but by my race and gender.

Alongside the usual racist and sexist vitriol, I was often met with comments saying that asexuality isn’t something that should be talked about. That no one cares, and that asexuality doesn’t lead to you facing any problems. No one would attack you for being asexual. Quite ironically, these comments always seemed to come after the death and rape threats. As they appeared under every post about my work, I couldn’t help but remember the time when I was chased through a dark, empty train station by a man who kept screaming “Do you masturbate?” at me after he learned I was asexual. Or the time an older woman called me a “frigid weirdo” who “just needs to get laid” at a Pride event. 

I also thought of the many people who had confided in me about their experiences. Most poignantly, someone I met back in 2019, who cried as they told me about their experience of conversion therapy. During a routine appointment with their gynaecologist, they were asked if they were sexually active and, in reply, expressed not wanting to have sex. As a result, they were referred to a psychosexual therapist, who recommended that they undergo a physical exam of their genitals. Following the conclusion that there was nothing physically wrong, the focus shifted to identifying the ‘psychological issue’ that caused their lack of sexual attraction. 

The inclination of healthcare providers to medicalise asexuality and to pathologise asexual people is rooted in queerphobia. We have seen the same thing happen to trans people and gay people throughout recent history. As far as the International Classification of Diseases (maintained by the World Health Organisation) is concerned, if you don’t experience the desire to have sex with other people, that’s a medical issue, a sexual dysfunction. On top of that, asexuality isn’t explicitly protected under the UK Equality Act 2010, which doesn’t recognise it as a sexual orientation. These glaring inequalities directly contribute to making asexual people more vulnerable to discrimination and less able to do anything about it.

That was why I reached out to Stonewall, Europe’s leading LGBTQ+ rights organisation. They were pivotal in repealing Section 28, ending the ban on LGBTQ+ people in the armed forces, equalising the age of consent and introducing civil partnerships. More recently, they had expressed an interest in making their work more inclusive of asexuality, and I took them up on that. In 2021, we started the UK’s first asexual rights initiative, the Stonewall x Yasmin Benoit Ace Project, and our first undertaking was to produce a report on asexual experiences and discrimination in the UK.

When I sent out a call for participants in our focus groups, there was an influx of those wanting to share their experiences – many of which were negative. It was during this research that I heard even more accounts of asexual discrimination in healthcare. One woman told me that she had visited a doctor because her pain medication wasn’t working. Her doctor asked about her sexual activity, and she told him she was asexual. He then saw that she was also taking antidepressants and assumed that her asexuality, as well as her medical issues including period pain, were in her head. “You have complex psychological issues around sex,” he told her, and refused to send her to a gynaecologist until she saw a psychosexual therapist. Only after that therapist referred her back to a doctor was she able to continue seeking help for her medical issues. 

She had to wait three months for the ‘compulsory’ therapist appointment, another three months to see the doctor for her pain, three more months to access the pelvic pain clinic and it was six-to-seven months to meet anyone in person. Overall, it took almost a year and a half after the initial GP appointment to get the help she needed because her doctor was more concerned with her asexuality. The extra year of waiting for treatment left her with extensive muscular damage to her pelvis.

Another asexual woman, who suffers from endometriosis, mentioned being asexual to her GP. As she didn’t shave her legs or stomach, the GP assumed she must have polycystic ovaries, which can cause extra hair growth and a lower sex drive. She was then subjected to six months of tests – including a stomach scan – all of which were “useless” and did not conclude that she had polycystic ovaries. During that time, she lived with continuous pain caused by endometriosis and lived in constant fear of what the true cause was. If the GP had been less focused on her asexuality, that could have been avoided. 

Our report contains multiple similar accounts, which reveal a pattern of asexual discrimination in healthcare. It shows that the issue mainly impacts women and people with vaginas, who are more likely to see gynaecologists and be asked about their sexual activity, thus leading to invasive questions and the inclination to ‘fix’ them. Many reported being anxious in healthcare settings and having lasting physical and psychological damage after their experiences. This, of course, is only added to the alienation that comes with being asexual in a society that doesn’t understand or accept you.

It’s time for that to change. It’s time that we put the same effort into understanding, recognising, uplifting and amplifying the asexual community as we do other parts of the LGBTQ+ community.

You can read the full Stonewall report into asexual discrimination here.

Images: courtesy of Yasmin Benoit; Stonewall; Getty