In a world that often categorises people according to their sexual preferences, the small percentage of people who consider themselves asexual are pushing for awareness and respect. Looking back, Allison McCorkle can laugh at her early sexual confusion. When she was in sixth grade, the cool boy her friends were swooning over rang to ask her out. Not only was McCorkle uninterested, she was also puzzled as to why anyone would feel differently. “We’re too young to be doing that,” she told her flustered suitor. A few years later, when McCorkle’s best friend gushed over a man coming out of a store – “Oh my God! He’s so hot! What do you think?” – McCorkle’s response was much the same: a confused shrug. “I had no concept of what ‘hot’ was,” she says. McCorkle, 39, from Illinois in the US, is one of an estimated 1 in 100 adults who are asexual, or feel no sexual attraction to others. Largely ignored in a culture where sex sells everything from beer to pop songs to reality TV, they face stigma among college students, who, according to one key study, view asexuals more negatively than either heterosexuals or homosexuals. Dismissive responses such as “You need to have your hormones checked” or “You just haven’t met the right person” remain common, according to British asexual activist Yasmin Benoit. And under the cloak of anonymity afforded by social media, some critics feel free to express outright hate. But in the past five years asexuals, who often refer to themselves as aces, have seen hard-won progress, with experts and ordinary people pointing to signs of increased visibility. Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue makes history with Naomi Osaka cover The first International Asexuality Day, co-founded by Benoit, was held in April, the popular TV shows “ BoJack Horseman ” and “ Sex Education ” have featured affirming storylines, publishers have offered young adult books with asexual characters, and social media has become more inclusive, with the arrival of voices such as TikTok’s Ace Dad, a married playwright in his 40s who offers hope and reassurance to teens. Ace flags are showing up in Target stores, asexuals say, and Ikea Canada recently offered a “bisexual sofa” in the colours of the ace flag. “We have a foot in the door. We didn’t before,” says McCorkle. For asexuals, the stakes can be high. “The word that comes up again and again when I hear other ace people talk about their experiences is feeling ‘broken’,” says TikTok’s Ace Dad, Cody Daigle-Orians. “When you look out at the world and you don’t see anything that looks like your experience or sounds like your experience, the world is like a funhouse mirror. It’s reflecting a distorted version of what’s true, so you feel like a broken version of yourself.” Asexuals made up 1 per cent of the population according to an analysis of survey results from more than 18,000 British people published in the Journal of Sex Research in 2004. Hongkongers are often not particularly interested in sex. According to a 2011 survey of nearly 1,000 adults by City University of Hong Kong’s Community College, Hong Kong men were satisfied with having sex an average of 1.9 times a week, while women were content with 1.6 times a week – this compares with Greeks (from one of the world’s most sexually active nations) who enjoy sex three times a week. The asexual spectrum includes people who avoid sex entirely, who are willing to have sex in relationships for the sake of their partners, or who enjoy it when they have it, even if they don’t feel sexually drawn to anyone. Some have strong romantic feelings, while others do not. Angela Chen, author of Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Beacon Press, 2020) says asexuals like her are pushing back against a culture of “compulsory sexuality”, where frequent, passionate sex is embraced as the ideal – and anything else is seen as suspect. “I wish we lived in a world where it didn’t matter (how sexual you were) because whatever you wanted was fine; it was about what helped you flourish,” says Chen. “I think being ace gives people permission, but I wish people felt like they had that permission, regardless.” Dan Hauswald, 33, from Illinois, says he isn’t tempted to have sex with utter strangers. Sex is an activity he enjoys with someone he knows, likes and trusts. Dating has been easier, says Hauswald, an exhibit designer for trade shows, since he’s become open about not feeling sexual attraction, either within relationships or outside them. On OkCupid, where he lists his orientation as asexual and mentions it in the first paragraph of his self-description, he’s received messages such as “I love how open and honest you are”. Hauswald came upon the word asexual during his senior year in college, by way of a podcast that presented asexuality very negatively. At the time, he didn’t think the term really fitted him, but later, when internet definitions broadened, he changed his mind. Three years ago he started going to local asexual meetings. Last year, when a popular Dungeons & Dragons character was revealed to be asexual, Hauswald came out to his two D & D groups, with good results in both cases. For a long time, he says, he wanted to feel sexual attraction but coming out as asexual has helped him move on. “I don’t need to be fixed because I’m not broken,” Hauswald says. “You’re just who you are, and you need to figure out how to be that true version of yourself.” McCorkle, who is non-binary and uses both they/them and she/her pronouns, was never interested in dating as teenager, but she decided to give it a try in her early 20. The results weren’t good. Looking for answers, McCorkle had turned to the burgeoning internet, where she discovered the word asexual. But this was in the early 2000s when definitions of asexual were often very strict and narrow, and McCorkle decided that, ultimately, she didn’t qualify. McCorkle struggled for another five years, before finding a more modern definition on the Asexual Visibility and Education Network website. One of McCorkle’s goals in helping to organise the local asexual community is to make sure the next generation of asexual teens have an easier time finding information and support. In the absence of such recognition, McCorkle and her best friend, Vash Strandboe, who is married, sometimes refer to each other as sisters. Strandboe wanted McCorkle to be in the room when Strandboe’s child, who is now two, was born. McCorkle says she has been there for Strandboe in the past and will be there in the future. “Relationships between romantic couples are important,” says McCorkle. “But they are not inherently more important, nor are other relationships less necessary.” For her part, Jenny Johnson, 32, of Illinois, has a lot of questions for people who experience sexual attraction. “How did you know your partner was yours?” she asks her friends. “How’d you know you wanted a second date?” The answer was often something like, “Oh, I wondered what he’d look like without his clothes”, which is interesting to Johnson, but not particularly helpful. “I would never think like that,” Johnson says. Now an analyst at an advertising agency, Johnson says that she put off dating until her mid-20s, hoping that everything that didn’t make sense to her would finally click. “It was very confusing,” she says. “I didn’t know what was going on. Things that I thought I should like I didn’t.” An avid reader of fan fiction, in which readers spin new tales about their favourite characters, she eventually came upon an account of an asexual relationship. Inspired, she plunged into online research and discovered that she was ace. “I was really excited,” she says. “I immediately went out and got an ace ring. I was like, ‘Yes! This is my identity. I want to own it 100 per cent.’” She now dates men and women, and she has grown more confident about being ace, she says, but she still bumps up against societal pressures and dismissive attitudes. “One of my friends, she came out [as asexual] and her parents straight-up didn’t believe her,” Johnson adds. “It’s been years and they still don’t believe her. Things like that still happen.”