DANIEL COPULSKY

15. AT THE INTERSECTION OF POLYAMORY AND ASEXUALITY

COMING TO TERMS: CAN SOMEONE BE ASEXUAL AND POLYAMOROUS? When talking about minority sexualities and relationships, it is helpful to review the terms used for these identities and clarify which groups are being discussed. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that individual use of this language varies widely. Even when a definition reflects the general consensus of a community, it can never capture the full range of personal experiences held by all those who share an identity. Asexual means not experiencing sexual attraction to people of any gender, like homosexual means feeling sexual attraction to people of the same gender. Asexuality describes sexual attraction, who or what a person is sexually aroused by, rather than sexual behavior, with whom and how a person enacts sexuality. Just as some heterosexuals or bisexuals choose not to have sex, there are a variety of reasons some asexuals choose to engage in sexual behavior. Sexual attraction is also distinct from romantic attraction, a person’s romantic interests. Some aexuals enjoy romantic activities like going on dates, cuddling, or writing love letters, and may have a desire to form this kind of romantic relationship with specific people. An asexual who is interested in romantic or intimate relationships may have a romantic orientation towards people of one or more genders. For example, much like homosexuals desire sexual relationships with people of the same gender, homoromantics desire romantic relationships with people of the same gender. A person’s sexual and romantic orientations may align (like a bisexual who is also biromantic) or not (like a bisexual who is heteroromantic). The degree to which people experience sexual attraction is a spectrum as well. The broader asexual (or “ace”) community includes a range of desires and degrees of sexual attraction, such as gray-asexuals and demisexuals. Those who identify as gray-asexuals experience limited sexual attraction,

© KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004414105_016 D. COPULSKY while demisexuals experience sexual attraction only after forming an emotional connection. At the other end of this spectrum are allosexuals, people who do experience sexual attraction. Polyamory describes being in more than one loving relationship at the same time, or a disposition to have this kind of relationship structure. Many polyamorous relationships include sex, and this is certainly part of the appeal of polyamory for some people, but it is not a necessary component. Polyamory is often seen as falling under the umbrella of non-monogamy, a broader category of being in more than one sexual, romantic, or intimate relationship. A distinction is also made between cheating and ethical or consensual non-monogamy, where multiple relationships are pursued with the knowledge and consent of all those involved. There are a multitude of ways people structure polyamorous relationships. Polyamory might look like a triad of three partners in one relationship. It might also look like a couple who make their relationship a primary focus while each dating someone else. Or it might look like a person who has multiple partners in a web of interconnected relationships. By some definitions, a polyamorous relationship can even include a monogamous person, if they date only one partner while their partner also dates one or more other people. There are some people who do not experience sexual attraction and are also drawn to having multiple romantic or intimate relationships. These are polyamorous asexuals, and an asexual could be in any of the kinds of polyamorous relationships described above.

BY THE NUMBERS: HOW MANY POLYAMOROUS ASEXUALS ARE THERE? People have practiced some form of non-monogamy for as long as humans have existed, with non-monogamous relationships structured a multitude of different ways from then until now (Ryan & Jethá, 2010). Only in the past thirty years, however, was the term polyamory coined and a community formed around this particular identity (Sheff, 2013). Likewise, humans have always had a wide variety of individual experiences of sexual attraction, yet the community of self-identified asexuals came together only in the past two decades (Hinderliter, 2009). In this short time, it seems that polyamory grew particularly popular among asexuals. Anecdotal observations of polyamorous asexuality are easy to find. One polyamorous asexual describes: “No longer a whisper, polyamory has become the main relationship model for romantic asexuals. Every panel

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