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Considering Asexuality as a Sexual Orientation and Implications for Acquired Female Sexual Arousal/Interest Disorder

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Notes

  1. Brotto and Yule erroneously reversed the findings of Ingudomnukul et al., reporting that 17% of asexual women participants showed traits of autism, when, in fact, the finding was that 17% of autistic women participants were coded as asexual.

  2. I question these numbers—e.g., Bogaert's 1% is distinct from self-identified asexuality—but that is immaterial here.

  3. This did not mean interpreting women's sexual orientation (stereotypically) to be shapelessly fluid or easy to change.

  4. Personal communication with David Jay, August 25, 2015.

  5. Personal communication with New York ace community organizer Bauer, September 13, 2016.

  6. Personal communication with Austin ace community organizer Sciatrix, September 13, 2016.

  7. This is stated explicitly in Ace Toronto's Mission Statement: https://acetoronto.wordpress.com/mission-statement/.

  8. David Jay proposed a repurposing of the semi-obscure slang “ace” to refer to the entire asexual spectrum community, for a San Francisco conference in June 2011 (because “asexual” was considered inadequate for this purpose by attendees) and that usage has since spread. (Personal communication with David Jay, March 26, 2016).

  9. Personal communications with AVEN user Shivers, June 26, 2005; October 6, 2016.

  10. While lesbians are women (including some who are trans women) or women-aligned people, some are also non-binary. Not all lesbians use “she” pronouns. There are a variety of other possible pronouns, including “they” and “xe” (though their usage is not specific to lesbians—non-binary or otherwise).

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Michael Doré—member of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network’s Board of Directors—for showing me the archives of www.asexuality.org on the Internet Archive “Wayback Machine” (https://archive.org/web/).

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Correspondence to CJ DeLuzio Chasin.

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Chasin, C.D. Considering Asexuality as a Sexual Orientation and Implications for Acquired Female Sexual Arousal/Interest Disorder. Arch Sex Behav 46, 631–635 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0893-1

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