Discrimination against asexual people

Discrimination against asexual people, also known as acephobia or aphobia, encompasses a range of negative attitudes, behaviours, and feelings toward asexuality or people who identify as part of the asexual spectrum. Negative feelings or characterisations toward asexuality include dehumanisation, the belief that asexuality is a mental illness, that asexual people cannot feel love, and the refusal to accept asexuality as a genuine sexual orientation. Asexuality is sometimes confused with celibacy, abstinence, antisexualism, or hyposexuality.

There have been efforts to combat anti-asexual discrimination through legislation or education (such as through workshops on asexuality).

Classification

Behaviours and attitudes that are considered discriminatory include the idea that asexuality is a mental illness, that asexuality is a phase or a choice, the idea that asexual people cannot feel love, and those that make asexual people feel dehumanised. Aspects of discrimination experienced can depend on other parts of one's identity. Despite an increase in media attention over the years, asexuality remains widely poorly-understood; one Sky News survey found that 53 per cent of 1,119 respondents felt confident in defining asexuality, but that 75 per cent of this group did so incorrectly, or defined asexual people as simply lacking a libido.

Asexual people sometimes face discriminatory or dismissive attitudes or behaviours both within and beyond the LGBT community. In 2011, LGBT activist Dan Savage stated that asexuality was a choice, describing it as "choosing not to have sex" and deeming it unworthy of attention.

Ruth Westheimer, a sex therapist, professor, and author, also faced criticism by some for her view that the ability to achieve orgasm would mean that a person could not be asexual, and was further criticised by some in 2015 for implying that asexuality was a problem in need of solving. A study on 169 asexual people published in April 2016 by Yale University found that many encountered dismissal and scepticism on coming out. There have been efforts to stop the exclusion of asexuals from LGBT pride events.

Asexual people whose asexuality has been accepted only because there is no other explanation for their lack of interest in sexual activity have come to be known as "unassailable asexual . Disbelieving attitudes towards asexuality can leave asexual people afraid to come out.

A 2017 LGBT survey conducted by the Government of the United Kingdom found that despite just two per cent of more than 108,000 respondents identifying as asexual, they had the joint-lowest (alongside pansexual people) average life satisfaction of any sexual orientation amongst cisgender respondents. The results of the survey also showed asexual people to be the least comfortable cisgender LGBT group within the United Kingdom, and 89 per cent of cisgender asexual respondents – the highest percentage of any group surveyed – were reluctant to be open with their identity for fear of negative reactions.

Social discrimination

Asexual people may be socially discriminated against due to beliefs of heterosexuality being the default sexuality, or the belief that asexual people are just gay or lesbian people in denial of their "real" identity. Some asexual people have even been known to experience gay bashing due to their asexuality being misperceived as homosexuality. Asexuality has also been used as a tool in anti-blackness to "de-sexualise" some black people through racist stereotypes, such as in the mammy archetype in the United States.

Two studies found that asexual people are more dehumanised than heterosexuals, homosexuals, and bisexuals, often being compared to animals or robots due to their sexuality.

Having emerged more recently as an identity, asexual people often have less legal protection than gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, although in New York, the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act categorises asexuals as a protected class. Asexuals have also been known to have been subjected to corrective rape. They may be pressured into engaging in sexual activity, and into going to a doctor to have their asexuality "fixed". A 2015 survey found that 43.5 per cent of the almost 8000 asexual people polled had encountered sexual violence, despite the misconception that asexual people never encounter or are involved in sexual situations and are therefore unable to be sexually assaulted.

Some, such as the sociologist Mark Carrigan, believe that discrimination against asexual people has more to do with marginalisation than the typical hatred associated with other forms of sexuality-based discrimination such as homophobia, and that much discrimination against asexual people results from a lack of understanding and awareness of asexuality.

A study of 248 asexual college students shows that some asexual people do not identify with the LGBT umbrella. There is also controversy over the inclusion of asexuality in the LGBT and queer umbrellas for a variety of reasons, including the belief that asexuals do not experience oppression akin to homophobia and transphobia, and the belief that asexuality is not a sexual orientation. Sherronda J. Brown of ''Wear Your Voice'' stated that some people who oppose the inclusion of asexual people in the LGBT community have been known to argue that asexuals are not discriminated against at all, and that asexual people experience straight privilege. Brown criticised this view as erasing the asexual identity on the assumption that asexual people are fraudulent infiltrators of the LGBT community, and because it assumes that everyone is straight unless proven otherwise.

A study of 148 undergraduates at a Canadian university found evidence to suggest that negative attitudes towards asexuals were higher than that of homosexuals and bisexuals. The study also showed that participants were less likely to rent to asexuals than their heterosexual counterparts. However, they were more likely to rent to asexuals than bisexuals. In addition, the study found a positive correlation between right-wing authoritarian identification and negative attitudes towards asexuality.

In another study, 101 participants (none of whom belonged to a sexual minority) were asked to complete an online survey on SurveyMonkey. To rule out unfamiliarity as the cause of negative attitudes, they included questions on sapiosexuals