There's a new sexual chic on the move, something so radical, so out there, so over-the-top that it has even left its adherents aghast.
It's called asexuality. And like hetero, homo and bi, it's a type of sexual orientation, except it's only now coming out of its own small closet and spawning a fiercely proud community.
It refers to people who have absolutely no interest in having sex. They don't want it. Don't miss it. Never expect to have it. And the only scientific study done so far on the phenomenon, released this summer, reckons that about one in 100 people are born this way.
"In terms of knowing this is the way I am, and that it's not necessarily something that will change, that was a struggle that took years to come to terms with," says David Jay, 22, an American who is the public face of the world's fledgling asexuality movement.
His motto: "You don't have to be sexual to be human."
Mr. Jay and the concept of asexuality were catapulted onto the world stage last month in a long article about the phenomenon in New Scientist, the scientific journal. That resulted in a clamour of attention from newspapers, radio and television trying to take the pulse of this new, previously unknown and unsuspected sexual orientation.
Even The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has taken deadpan notice. The show of Oct. 19 took direct aim, quoting the New Scientist article's conclusion that the issue of "A" pride might start attracting more attention and then averring: "Since asexuals are unencumbered by having or thinking about sex, they currently plan on achieving 'A' rights by next week and complete world domination by December."
The centre of asexuality is a website Mr. Jay set up in 2002, AVEN: Asexuality Visibility and Education Network at http://www.asexuality.org. As of Thursday, it had 2,160 members from around the world (including many from Canada) and a raft of merchandise in its virtual store celebrating the phenomenon. That includes the cheeky T-shirt slogan "ineffable."
The orientation is still suspect, especially in a Western culture that, from Sigmund Freud to Alfred Kinsey to Viagra has assumed that if you're not having sex, you need to be cured. A sign? Do a Google search on "asexuality" and the sophisticated engine will ask you if you're really looking for "sexuality."
In fact, some hetero-, homo- and bi-types look at the picture of Mr. Jay published in New Scientist and declare that when he meets the right person, his repressed sex drive will take over and he'll be the front man for a different type of sexual movement altogether: the newly sexually sated.
He doesn't see it that way. "It's a matter of pointing out that we're living fine lives and there's no reason we should want sex," he said in an interview this week. "We say: 'We don't see this as a problem, so why do you?' "
Anthony Bogaert, an expert in human sexuality at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., thinks that Mr. Jay is right. "I do think this is a real phenomenon," he said. "I do expect this might be an interesting new kind of sexual orientation."
And he thinks for many asexuals, it's a permanent state, not the prelude to falling in love and sliding under the sheets.
Prof. Bogaert is the author of the only known study on asexuals, published in August in The Journal of Sex Research. He derived it from a study conducted with 18,000 randomly chosen and statistically representative British subjects in the early 1990s when researchers were frantic to learn as much as they could about sexual activity in an era of AIDS.
One of the questions was a rarity in sexual research. Usually, the surveys ask only whom the respondent is sexually attracted to. The British survey also allowed them the option of ticking a box that said: "I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all."
It came to 1 per cent of the 18,000 and Dr. Bogaert was intrigued. He crunched the numbers a bit more and found that more women than men identified with this group. Asexuals tended to be a little more religious than others. As well, they were more likely than others to have health problems.
So what are the dirty details? Does an asexual feel love, become aroused, masturbate, conduct sex play or even have intercourse just for the heck of it?
That's a bit of a sticky question because the definition of who qualifies as an asexual is unclear.
To Dr. Bogaert, an asexual has no sexual interest in anybody but may still have arousal. To Mr. Jay, the key difference between being "A" and not is this: "Asexuals are not motivated to be sexual with the people they find physically attractive and may not find anyone physically attractive at all."
Some find the thought of sex repulsive. Some puzzle over the politics of sexuality. Some never give it a thought.
"All told, it's something I could do," said Mr. Jay, who has never had sex and has always felt asexual. "I'm just not interested in doing it."
Mr. Jay said the focus now is on helping members of the asexual community come together, ask the right questions and challenge the status quo that uses sexuality to sell everything from toilet brushes to pudding.
Still, he likens the movement to the early days of the gay-rights movement. Some asexuals feel broken. Some are worried that they are just hiding from the real world, or that it's just a phase, or that something dire happened to them in childhood that made them they way they are.
To which Mr. Jay says, "Pshaw."
"In my opinion, asexuality is much more nature than nurture," he says. "It's not malleable."
Alanna Mitchell is a senior feature writer for The Globe and Mail.