What Percentage Of The Population Is Asexual?
Asexuality is defined as the lack of sexual attraction to anyone, or a low or non-existant interest in engaging in sexual activity. It is often considered a lack of sexual orientation, or sometimes an orientation on its own, like hetero, homo, and bisexuality. But how many people in the world are actually asexual?
Asexuality expert Anthony F. Bogaert conducted research in 2004 that found that as many as 1% of the world may be asexual.
Despite the LGBT community slowly finding more and more acceptance all over the world, Bogaert thinks we have a long way to go before society can embrace asexuality as an actual sexual orientation. Even with asexuality being portrayed in popular television characters like Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes, it is still not commonly accepted or understood.
Bogaert recently wrote a column for The Independent, in which he explained why accepting asexuality could be good for our sex-crazed world.
“Examining asexuality also can afford a clear view on how deeply infused sex is in our society—from the pervasiveness of sex in the media to our enduring interest in gossip on the sex lives of others. We also may begin to see more clearly the strange and often mad complexity of sex, with its jealousies, obsessions, and distortions of reality.
Sex is unquestionably part of the great story of human life – our means of reproduction and a deep source of passion and pleasure for many – but it is also a strange and mad world at times, and one that is better understood if we take a glimpse or two from the outside.”
