YUSU

For asexual or questioning students coming to York...

YUSU LGBT welcomes all asexual people who consider themselves to be part of the LGBT community, including those heteroromantic cisgendered (cisgendered means “identifying as/with the gender assigned at birth”) asexual people who society might take to be heterosexual. Asexual people can encounter many of the same challenges as LGBT people (coming out and homophobic bullying being just two examples) and, of course, many asexual people are also LGBT.

An asexual person is a person who does not feel sexual attraction. Although they may be interested in having relationships, they do not desire to have sex with their partners. Most people have a group or type of person they do not feel sexually attracted to. Heterosexual people, for example, do not feel sexual attraction to members of their own gender. Asexual people simply don’t feel sexually attracted to anyone. Asexuality is as valid a sexual orientation as any other. Many asexual people define themselves as having a romantic orientation; homoromantic, heteroromantic, biromantic, panromantic, aromantic and queer identified asexual people exist. Some sexual people (i.e. people who do feel sexual attraction) now also identify their romantic orientation separately from their sexual orientation, thus someone could be a biromantic homosexual woman. This woman could choose to identify as a lesbian, as could a homoromantic asexual woman.

Asexual people are often told that there is something wrong with them for not feeling sexual attraction but asexuality a lifelong orientation, not an illness nor a choice. Also, despite views to the contrary, asexual people are from many genders and sexes, many races and many parts of the world.

This FAQ is one of the best asexuality FAQs on the internet:

http://www.asexuality.org/home/overview.html

The website also hosts the largest online community of asexual people, their partners and allies. If you think you might be asexual or that your partner might be, you aren’t alone! About 1 % of people are asexual and there are asexual students at York, some of whom are part of YUSU LGBT and/or LGBT Social.

William Smith, current YUSU Trans Rep

Copyright © William Smith and Hann Bunn 2010