Putting Indian asexuals on the global map

“We don’t talk about heterosexual sexual health, forget talking about homosexual sexual health. Discussing asexuality is much further away,” says Dr Pragati Singh. The Delhi resident will conduct a fundraiser workshop in the capital this weekend where she will talk about asexuality and about how a person can work out one's sexual and romantic orientation.

The public health professional is the founder of Indian Aces, a community for asexuals — those who don’t experience sexual attraction towards anyone. Founded in 2014, and reactivated a little more than a year ago, Indian Aces serves as a sounding board for asexuals, ranging from 15-year-olds to senior citizens, and organises meet-ups. “For some, sexuality is fluid. You can identify as asexual today and maybe later as homosexual or a pansexual,” says Singh, who is better known in the community as Grace. “The other school of thought proposes that sexual orientation is something you’re born with, that one discovers what one’s actual sexuality is with time.”
 
Singh, who has been transitioning into the domain of public sexual health, is hoping to raise, through the workshop and donations, Rs1.3 lakh to make it to the 23rd Congress of the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS), where her research paper on asexuality has been selected for presentation and publication. The largest congregation of sexologists and sexological societies will be held in Prague from May 28 to 31. Singh will talk about the trends observed in self-identified asexuals in India and of Indian-origin.

“I’ve extensively surveyed 300 people who identify as asexuals. A vast majority of these are from India and the US, followed by the UK and Canada,” says Singh, who identifies as hetero-demisexual. “Among the clinically significant trends I observed are high rates of mental illness, a history of sexual abuse, the diagnosis of PTSD and the globally-recognised phenomenon that there are more female asexuals than male.”

Singh says asexuality is a phenomenon that has a nomenclature, is recognised and spoken about in the urban areas, which is not to say that asexuals may not exist in the countryside. “A lot of people come to me at events and say that they didn't even know that there was a word for how they feel, there is a sense of validation,” says Singh, and adds: “Among the most interesting findings has been the fact that a significant number of asexuals have high libido, debunking the notion that their lack of sexual attraction can be attributed to, or implies, low libido.”

Singh was spurred to do the survey last year in an attempt to launch a full-service matchmaking website for asexuals aimed initially at preventing marital rape and unmet expectations in general, by helping find partners for those on the asexual spectrum i.e. demisexuals and grasexuals as well as to facilitate Marriage of Convenience (MOC). A crowd-funding campaign for the same is also on the anvil. Singh hopes to launch the website after returning from WAS, where she hopes to put asexuals — an otherwise unknown lot on the LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual) spectrum – on the map.