Tag Archives: romantic orientation

The Aromantic Spectrum in the Ace Community Survey

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by René Mellema & Tristan Miller

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about the interaction between the asexual and aromantic communities.  Following our review of extant aro community surveys, we contribute to the discussion by reviewing the information we have about aromantic and aromantic-spectrum respondents to the 2017 Ace Community Survey.

Main Findings

Although our survey recruits from asexual communities rather than aromantic communities, we are able to gather information about people on the aromantic spectrum, including some allosexual people. Some of our important findings are as follows:

  1. Compared to aro community surveys, our survey finds a larger number of gray-(a)romantic, demiromantic, lithromantic, and quoiromantic people as compared to aromantic people.
  2. Among our respondents, people on the aromantic spectrum were more likely to be non-binary.  Allosexual people (regardless of romantic orientation) were more likely to be men.
  3. People on the aromantic spectrum, especially those who were also on the asexual spectrum, were less likely to have had romantic relationships.  Allosexual people on the aromantic spectrum were more likely to have non-romantic significant relationships, and to be polyamorous.
  4. Both the asexual or aromantic spectrums are negatively correlated with sexual activity.
  5. On average, allosexual people have a higher sex drive, and higher frequency of sexual fantasies, masturbation, and porn consumption, regardless of romantic orientation.

Further details are below. Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

Infographics from our 2016 survey

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We’re happy to release a peek into the 2016 data! We’ve put together two visualizations based on the 2016 Ace Community Survey. Check them out!

The text of the 2016 survey can be found here.

Update on 6/28/2018: The infographics now have creative commons licenses.  The “Experiences with sex” now excludes non-ace respondents.

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

Cross-orientations among non-aces

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Question: Are non-asexual respondents identifying with mismatching sexual and romantic orientation labels?

The asexual community has long recognized the possibility of any combination of romantic and sexual orientations, such as heteroromantic asexual or biromantic homosexual.  And in recent years, there’s been a push for the aromantic spectrum to be recognized independently from the asexual spectrum.  We’d like to estimate the number of non-aces who have applied these ideas to themselves. Continue reading →