A historical journey through the overlooked traces of asexuality before the internet, from the 19th century to the emergence of the first online ACE communities.
There is a widespread yet mistaken
belief that asexuality suddenly appeared on the internet overnight. However,
language does not invent realities; it is simply developed as we become aware
of them and learn how to name them.
Asexuality has always existed, long
before social media. As with many other human realities, the number of asexual
people has not increased; rather, awareness and understanding have grown,
allowing people to identify and make it visible. For much of history, this was
impossible, resulting in a dramatic absence of records due to the lack of
testimonies, historical erasure, and the misinterpretation of the few accounts
that did survive. After all, what cannot be named is often treated as if it
does not exist, and it is impossible to raise awareness about something if
people are unaware of it and do not even possess the language to describe it.
This is the main reason for the
scarcity of historical references: not only are they few in number, but many
experiences that today might be understood as asexual or aromantic could also
have been interpreted differently at the time. They were recorded through the
concepts available in their historical context, concepts broad enough to
encompass many different realities, such as religious choices, the
prioritization of other pursuits, political beliefs, aspects of sexuality such
as libido, or medical conditions.
This framework of thought was
applied to fictional figures as well, including the mythological and spiritual
representation of angels and certain characters from various mythologies. It
was also applied to real people, such as those who practiced religious
celibacy.
Certain social movements reflected
these realities as well. For example, the “spinster” movement emerged in the
1880s [1]: English-speaking women who rejected traditional gender expectations.
They argued that “sex is not a human necessity,” advocated living independently
from men, and defended emotional bonds between women.
Similarly, during the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, “Boston marriages” became increasingly common (later
documented by Rothblum and Brehony) [2]. These were arrangements in which women
lived together in order to avoid dependence on men. It has often been theorized
that many of these women were lesbian or bisexual, and it is likely that some
were also asexual, but the language of the time was not nuanced enough to
distinguish between these identities.
Over time, attempts were made to
define these realities more precisely. In 1869, journalist Karl-Maria Kertbeny
used the word “monosexual” to describe someone who did not engage in sexual
relations and only practiced masturbation [3]. Three years later, in 1872,
sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld spoke of “sexual anesthesia” (a term later lost in
Spanish translations when it was replaced with “celibate”) [4]. In 1897, German
sexologist Emma Trosse offered what is considered the first definition of
asexuality [5].
In the 20th century, the concept
became more refined. As early as 1907, activist Carl Schlegel publicly demanded
equal laws for “homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, and asexuals” [6]. In
1953, biologist Alfred Kinsey added Category X to his famous scale to describe
“persons with no socio-sexual contacts or reactions” [7]. In the years that
followed, various professionals proposed different terms and explanations in an
effort to define asexuality more clearly.
The earliest surviving explicitly
asexual personal testimonies date back to the 1970s and 1980s, when newspapers
provided spaces for readers to send letters, some of which openly expressed
asexual experiences. Around that same period, activists also began publishing
foundational texts. One notable example is Lisa Orlando’s The Asexual
Manifesto [8], published in 1972, a pioneering document that laid some of
the groundwork for modern asexual activism.
These testimonies — alongside those
that were never expressed and those that were lost to history — reveal
humanity’s enduring attempt to articulate these experiences. People searched
for words, demanded recognition, and longed for community. For every published
letter, there were likely thousands of individuals who never found the courage,
information, or means to define their identity, living under the
misunderstanding, dismissal, and exclusion of a highly sexualized society.
The arrival of the internet and the
creation of platforms such as AVEN in 2001, followed later by Tumblr, Twitter,
and Instagram, did not “create” asexuality. They simply provided, at last, the
tools and spaces that history had long denied, enabling visibility and
collective awareness of this reality.
Asexuality is not a contemporary
trend; it is a sexual orientation that has survived historical erasure.
References
[1] Cavanagh, S. L. "Spinsters,
Schoolmarms, And Queers: Female Teacher Gender And Sexuality In Medicine And
Psychoanalytic Theory And History." Discourse 27.4 (2006): 421–440.
Print.
[2] Rothblum, E. D., and Brehony, K.
A. (1993). Boston Marriages: Romantic but Asexual Relationships among
Contemporary Lesbians. University of Massachusetts Press.
[3] Peripheral Desires: The
German Discovery of Sex. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015, p. 122.
[4] Bauer, J. Edgar. (2012). "Sappho
und Sokrates": On Magnus Hirschfeld's Reconceptualization of the Human and
the Critical Task of "Sexualaufklärung".
[5] Leidinger, Christiane (2013). Transgressionen
– Streifzüge durch Leben und Werk von Emma Trosse (1863–1949).
Männerschwarm Verlag GmbH.
[6] Schlegel, C. (1907). Presbytery
of New Orleans. The Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia.
[7] Kinsey, A. C. et al. (1953). Sexual
Behavior in the Human Female. Indiana University Press.
[8] Orlando, Lisa (September 1972). "The
Asexual Manifesto". Asexual Caucus/New York Radical Feminists.
University of Waterloo.
[9] Robb, George. "Between
Science and Spiritualism: Frances Swiney's Vision of a Sexless Future." Diogenes,
vol. 52, no. 4, Nov. 2005, pp. 163–168.
[10]
Gutiérrez, C. (2022). La revolución (a) sexual. Editorial Egales.
Signature:
Celia Gutiérrez
Author of La Revolución (A)sexual
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