Questionnaire

Please note:  All surveys are currently disabled while the responses are being analyzed.  Thank you for your interest!

Welcome to my multi-part asexuality questionnaire.  My aim is to dive into the thoughts and experiences of asexual and ace spectrum people.  I want to try to produce a rich picture of what it means to be asexual, to explore asexuality in its own words.

I’m doing this through a series of questionnaires.  Each one will have a number of questions around a specific theme.   Some of the questions may be fun.  Some of the questions may be awkward.  Some of the questions may be thought-provoking.  Some of the questions may be difficult to answer.  I’m going to ask a wide range of questions, because asexuality is a wide ranging thing.  If I limit the questions I ask, I’ll only end up with a partial view of how people experience asexuality and life as an asexual.

After a while, I’ll collect some of the answers you’ve all given into a post on the topic.  These posts will attempt to explore the diversity of asexuality, so the more diverse the answers, the better the posts will be able to represent a true sense of how asexuals feel.  Eventually, I hope to collect these posts into another book about asexuality.  (So yes, this is all just a devious plan to get other people to write my next book for me!)

I was somewhat inspired, ironically enough, by the Hite Report.  It collected the experiences of hundreds of people and presented them as written.  It didn’t try to be a textbook, it simply tried to be a catalog of feelings and experiences.  I’ve also been inspired by the “30 Day Asexuality Challenge” I see people filling out.  It’s 30 questions about asexuality, and I see person after person pouring their life story into their responses.  …  Only to have those responses lost to the ether.  No one’s collecting them and bringing them together to say “This is what asexuality is”.

If you have any issues with the questions being asked, or have any questions you’d like to see be asked, or if you have any other comments about the project, please let me know.

Before you begin, please note:

  • Tell me your story. I want to know about your life. Don’t treat this as a test, where the “right” answer is only acceptable answer.  I’m not looking for the textbook response here. The only right answer is your answer, whatever it may be.
  • Answers can be as short or as long as you need them to be. (But please make them longer than just “yes” or “no”.) Please consider all questions to be open ended, so please don’t feel constrained or limited by the question and please provide as much information as you feel comfortable providing.  You’re also free to fill out each questionnaire multiple times.
  • Speak your mind and don’t censor yourself.
  • There are no “wrong” answers and there are no “boring” answers.  Even if you answer every question with “No, I haven’t”, I’ll learn something from it.
  • You do not have to answer every question.  There’s nothing wrong with leaving some of the answers blank if you don’t want to answer them.
  • As this survey is designed to gather experiences and opinions of asexual spectrum people, please only participate if you are asexual, demisexual, gray-asexual, or otherwise fit on the spectrum. Unless a question notes that it is specifically about asexual people to the exclusion of demisexuals and gray-asexuals, please assume that all uses of the words “asexual” or “asexuality” are inclusive of the entire spectrum.

The Questions:

Please note:  All surveys are currently disabled while the responses are being analyzed.  Thank you for your interest!

Questionnaire #1: General Asexuality Questions

Questionnaire #2: Coming Out:  Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Questionnaire #3: Sex (Over 18 only, please!): Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Questionnaire #4: Community and Visibility: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Questionnaire #5: Relationships: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Questionnaire #6: Dealing With Ignorant Comments

Questionnaire #7: Words: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Questionnaire #8: Masturbation (Over 18 only, please!)  This one is split into two separate questionnaires.  Please take only one.

  • For asexuals who do not masturbate: Part 1
  • For asexuals who masturbate:  Part 1 | Part 2

 

The Summaries:

These questionnaire summaries are posts that were written with the help of the questionnaire responses.  I couldn’t have written these without you, so thank you for taking your time to answer!

Coming Out – Experiences

Coming Out – Advice

Disclaimer:

Answers will be kept anonymous, but NOT confidential. Answers may be used in a blog post, a book, as well as potentially other asexuality awareness materials. The answers may also be shared with others for similar purposes. Answers may be edited for spelling, grammar, etc., but will not be edited for content.  Answering the questionnaire is not a guarantee that your responses will be used.

This survey is not intended to be scientific and statistical inferences will not be drawn from the results.

No payment, credit, or attribution of any kind will be provided to anyone for the use of their responses. (Sorry, that means no free copies.)

9 thoughts on “Questionnaire

  1. Can you let me know what you end up doing with this? I’d love to read it if any of this gets published.

    This survey actually helped me organize my thoughts a lot. The questions helped me look more critically at some of my experiences, and I feel like I understand myself a little better now. Thanks for that! :)

    • There’s AVEN (asexuality.org), various Facebook groups, the #asexual and #asexuality tags on Tumblr, /r/asexuality on Reddit, and there’s a site called “Ace Book” that I’ve never actually signed up for.

  2. Would you accept answers on your questionnaire from a slightly sapiophilic demisexual or do you just want people who are ace?

  3. Is there anything still being done with this questionnaire? Did the answers get bundled or was there some “general conclusion” to keep things anonymous? So far only the coming out bits I’ve seen, but I’m curious towards the other themes.

    • Sadly, the project fell apart because I didn’t have the motivation or energy to deal with some issues at the time. (And the software I was using was absolutely terrible…)
      I got a lot of answers, but I got a lot of spam, I got a lot of responses that were mangled by the software, and I got a lot of random hate, too.

  4. A friend of mine started telling me about how he discovered that he is Asexual, and as he is telling me about it, it rang a very loud bell inside of me. Everything he was saying made so much sense to me, and I had no idea it was a thing before he mentioned it. He gave me the link to this website and I can relate to a LOT of things mentioned, it has been super helpful.

    Like how I would rather play a videogame, watch a movie, or make music then have sex. When I see a girl I’m often blown away and overwhelmed by how pretty or cute I find them, but I just want to have lunch or coffee with them and maybe cuddle, I’m not thinking about having sex with them. I’ve only had sex a few times, and the whole process didn’t make sense to me, and something felt very off. Up until now I have just assumed that I was bad at sex (as I had a very awkward and bad sexual encounter), and have been afraid to approach girls because inevitably, meeting a girl you’re interested in leads to sex, and that is something I feel I am not good at. I also related to not enjoying porn. I’ve never liked porn, and i can’t stand the acting in it!! (or the music!). But porn weirds me out and doesn’t make me feel a thing.

    There are only a few things that still leave me a bit confused about myself. I don’t fantasize about sex…but I fantasize about several woman being naked around me and taking their clothes off around me, touching me. But in these fantasies I never actually have sex with them, nor do I go down on them or finger them. But I do like a woman’s breasts and butt…does this mean I am sexually attracted to them? The porn I have enjoyed watching is porn where there is one guy and several girls, just around him touching him and taking their clothes off. Once it gets to the point where they are having explicit sex I loose interest and get a little grossed out. I have always liked the sensation of being touched by a girl, particularly in a gentle and soothing way, sort of like a massage.

    When I was a freshman in high school, I had a REALLY embarrassing experience. I asked 4 different girls that I was friends with, to have a “massage fest” with me. These were all girls I found to be pretty, and I literally just wanted the 4 of them to sit around me and place their hands all over me and massage me. Eventually my friends found out and I was made fun of (only once thankfully, they let it go).

    To this day I don’t ask girls to have “massage-fests” of course but it’s the sensation of touch that I crave I think, but I do also imagine the girls naked and taking their clothes off as well, however I skip the actual sex process in my mind. So I guess that is what confuses me about whether I am Asexual or not, can anyone offer any advice? I wasn’t sure where to post this question.

    Sorry for the long reply! Just had a lot on my mind after going through this website. Even if it turns out I’m not asexual this website has been extremely helpful (:

    • okay you’ve probably figured out yourself by now but asexuality is defined by a lack of sexual attraction, and the definition of sexual attraction that i’ve read is the desire to add sexual intercourse into a relationship with a person
      you do not have to be repulsed by sex to be asexual, you do not have to not want to be touched by people–all you have to do (by definition) not desire to have sex with people. like even if you were fantisizing about having sex with someone (real person or not), if you were like “i would be really uncomfortable doing this in real life because i do not desire to add that component to our interactions” then that (at least to me) still falls under the no sexual attraction thing.
      personally, i have a girlfriend, and i desire to be touched by her on my body (in ways that can be considered erotic and would produce arousal), but i do not desire to have sex with her. even if i’m having a fantasy about her it tends to stop at the genitals. i consider this a lack of sexual attraction (other people may think differently)
      if you’re ace, then awesome, if you’re not, then awesome. to me you sound ace but ultimately it is your decision what you call yourself

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