Acephobia

What the acephobia studies measured

A study of 148 heterosexual undergraduates at a Canadian university and a study of 101 heterosexual people conducted through an online survey platform both found the same thing: participants evaluated asexual people more negatively, and as less human, than heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual people.

The first study went further and asked about housing. Participants were less likely to rent to an asexual person than to a heterosexual one, equally likely as to a homosexual one, and more likely than to a bisexual one. It also found a positive correlation between right-wing authoritarian identification and negative attitudes towards asexuality.

The second study anticipated the obvious objection, which is that people are simply reacting to something they have never heard of, and tested it by adding questions about sapiosexuals. Participants were less familiar with sapiosexuality and still held more positive attitudes towards it than towards asexuality. Unfamiliarity, on that evidence, does not account for the discrimination.

Two studies found the dehumanisation specifically, with asexual people compared to animals or to robots on account of their sexuality.

What people get wrong about asexuality

Public understanding is weaker than public confidence. A broadcaster's survey found that 53 percent of 1,119 respondents felt confident about defining asexuality, and that 75 percent of that confident group defined it incorrectly, or simply as a lack of libido.

Asexuality is regularly confused with celibacy, abstinence, antisexualism and hyposexuality, none of which it is. The recurring characterisations are narrower than that confusion suggests:

• that it is a mental illness
• that it is a phase or a choice
• that asexual people cannot feel love
• that it is not a genuine sexual orientation at all

There is a term for what acceptance often depends on. An unassailable asexual is somebody whose asexuality has been accepted only because no other explanation for their lack of interest in sex was available. Disbelief of this kind leaves people afraid to come out at all.

Why the sources disagree about acephobia

The sociologist Mark Carrigan holds that discrimination against asexual people has more to do with marginalisation than with the hatred characteristic of Homophobia, Lesbophobia and other discrimination based on sexuality, and that much of it results from a lack of understanding and awareness.

Sherronda J. Brown, author of a book on compulsory sexuality, argues the opposite: that acephobia is directly tied to a belief that asexuality is impossible or wrong, and that asexual people deserve to be punished or fixed.

The sapiosexual control in the second study bears on that disagreement, since it suggests that ignorance alone does not produce the effect. Asexual people are also described as being seen as using their orientation as an excuse to avoid certain social interactions, which makes them a rejected group by association with negative social traits rather than by unfamiliarity.

Where asexual erasure becomes structural

Some of it is a matter of forms. Online dating services including two of the largest offer no option to identify as asexual, which obstructs the ability to find a romantic partner at all.

Some of it is argued in public. In 2020 the LGB Alliance responded to the question of whether asexuality should be a protected sexual orientation by saying that suggesting ever-expanding definitions for protected characteristics does nothing to promote mutual respect in society. On 6 April 2025 the writer J.K. Rowling criticised the inclusion of asexual people under the LGBTQIA umbrella and mocked International Asexuality Day in a series of posts denying asexuality as a valid identity.

Some of it comes from inside. In 2011 the activist Dan Savage described asexuality as a choice, as choosing not to have sex, and judged it unworthy of attention. In 2018 an LGBT charity in the United Kingdom noted that asexual communities are frequently overlooked within the wider community through a lack of awareness and apprehension. A study of 248 asexual college students found that some asexual people do not identify with that umbrella themselves.

Efforts against the discrimination have taken two forms, legislation and education, the latter usually through workshops. As a form of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, as Biphobia is, acephobia is placed under the broader social concept of kyriarchy.