Category Archives: Discussion

Posts focusing on discussion of surveys, with little or no new data presented

Extant Aro Surveys

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“Aromantic” is an identity that is often defined as lacking romantic attraction.  There is also an aromantic spectrum (often shortened to “arospec”, “aro”, or occasionally, “aromantic”), which includes many aromantic-related identities such as greyromantic, quoiromantic, and lithromantic.  While aro people have long existed in ace communities, in recent years there has been growing interest in the aromantic spectrum as an independent entity. In particular, there are communities that are centered around aro identities, and which strive to include aromantic people who are not on the asexual spectrum.

The Ace Community Survey Team is interested in serving aro communities, especially where our existing infrastructure makes us uniquely capable of doing so. However, we must first recognize the survey work that aro communities have already done. Our goal is to: a) highlight notable aro community surveys that have published results, b) state some of the basic results, and c) identify topics that interest the creators of these surveys.

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How the CDC defines and classifies sexual violence

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Content note: explicit descriptions of sexual violence, including rape.

The Asexual Community Survey has asked questions related to sexual violence since 2015. In the 2018 survey, we expanded these questions in order to more closely match those in the 2010 Summary Report on the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) produced by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although the CDC’s definitions of sexual violence are publicly available in the NISVS report, few lay people would sift through over a hundred pages in order to find them. The lack of easily accessible information concerns us, because it deprives some victims of tools they need to understand their own experiences. The goal of this article is to explain the CDC categories and their use in the 2018 Asexual Community Survey.

Disclaimer: Some readers may be surprised by how their personal experiences are classified by the CDC. We will not tell anyone that they are wrong to classify their personal experiences in any particular way, and readers are free to view the CDC’s definitions as imperfect, incomplete, or incorrect. Even if readers agree with the definitions, they may find some other description of their personal experiences to be more salient.

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Muslim respondents to the 2014 asexual community census

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The following analysis was performed by Laura, originally posted here and here.  It has been reproduced with permission of the author.

The asexual census team were kind enough to provide me with the data from the 2014 AVEN community survey for the Muslim respondents (the data for 2015 is not yet available for analysis by outside researchers). [The survey team adds: since time of writing, 2015 data has become available.]  The analysis provided in this post in my own derivation and is not an official result. All errors are my own.

“Muslim respondents” are defined as those who selected “Muslim” as their religious preference. Here is some information about the Muslim respondents:

  • 71 respondents selected Muslim as their religious preference. For context, there were a total of 14,210 respondents. This means that 0.5% of respondents were Muslim.
  • 32 Muslim respondents were residents of the United States. The next most common country of residence was the United Kingdom, with 5 respondents. 20 respondents reside in countries with majority Muslim populations. The Muslim-majority country with the largest number of respondents is Indonesia, which had 3 respondents. (Fun fact: Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country.) A total of 23 countries were listed.
  • 42 Muslim respondents (59%) gave their gender identity as woman/female. 11 Muslim respondents (16%) identified as man/male . For comparison, 62.1% of all respondents identified as woman/female and 13.3% of all respondents as man/male.
  • 20 Muslim respondents (28%) listed a non-binary gender identity. The most common response was agender, which had 6 respondents (9%). For comparison, 24.6% of all respondents listed a non-binary gender identify, and 8.5% were agender specifically.
  • 32 Muslim respondents identified as asexual (45%), 16 as gray-A (23%), and 11 as demisexual (16%). 12 Muslim respondents (17%) did not identify as on the asexual spectrum. For comparison, 49% of all respondents identified as asexual, 16.2% as gray-A, 11% as demisexual, and 23.4% as non-ace.
  • Of the non-ace Muslim respondents, 5 identified as straight and the other 7 as various non-straight identities. The most common of these identities was bisexual, with 4 respondents.

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Identity in the AVEN Census and AVENes Survey of 2014

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Originally posted in Spanish in Chrysocolla Town’s blog. It was translated by the author and posted here with permission.

Here we have an attempt to compare the AVEN Community Census 2014 and the AVENes Survey 2014 for asexuals, regarding asexual identities, gender identities, and romantic orientations. And I say attempt because, although some data may be comparable, a big chunk isn’t since the instruments didn’t ask the same questions (in form or substance), didn’t give the same response options, nor were they aimed at the same populations.

My original idea was to wait until the results of the 2015 surveys before writing about identity diversity in the asexual community, but that’s going to take months and I’m racing against time here, so I made this quick review on what I was most interested with what data I had.

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Mini History Lesson: Previous Asexual Community Surveys

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The 2014 AceCommunity Census was far from the first asexual community survey to be conducted. Asexual community surveys have been conducted at least as far back as 2008.  Here we present a brief history lesson on various surveys, and what we learned from them.  If you’re just interested in the results, see the end of the post. Continue reading →