/u/Ace_justvibin on Asexual psychology buckets

I don't think there's anything approaching a reasonable, randomized sample size to draw conclusions about all asexuals.

For one thing, your sample of aces, being on AVEN and this subreddit, are preselected. It is all aces who are either aware of their sexuality and accepting of it to some degree. Asexual people who are just out in the wild acting like everyone else because it's what everyone else is doing are not included in that. There is no reasonable way to estimate that 80-90% of asexuals have one or more of those issues; I sincerely doubt 80-90% of asexuals even identify as such, let alone openly enough to be posting about it online.

For another, it's entirely possible that people on the autism spectrum manifest asexuality more openly than people not on it. Just off the top of my head, I could hypothesize that people with autism are likely to have more difficulty masking (i.e. pretending to be like everyone else) than others. People with autism could also have more difficulty identifying the social cues that they're missing; I had a tough time figuring out what counted as sexual body language, what was flirtatious conversation, and so on, and I'm not on the spectrum. I can easily imagine how someone who already has difficulty with translating other people's non-verbal communication would have a harder time mirroring it. If they never got into pretending and going along with it because they didn't pick up the signal, it might be a lot easier to learn about asexuality before getting drawn into hetero normative society. The first time I saw "asexuality" I dismissed it entirely, because I was 100% sure I was straight and just like everyone around me, or rather, that everyone around me experienced attraction like me, but had just found their person earlier.

There's also the fact that being openly LGBTQ+ correlates with a number of other things too, which could easily skew the data in the direction you indicate. Suffering harassment, isolation, bullying, loneliness, et cetera could all contribute towards developing GAD or PTSD.

So I think that the population of aces on this subreddit and AVEN is essentially preselected from a variety of groups more likely than others to tick those boxes. Even with that though, 80-90% is ludicrously high. It feels like a case of the vocal minority; you see lots of people preface a post or mention within it that they fall into one of these categories, but you never see anyone say that they don't fall into any of them, because that's essentially the default. It's easy to then fall into confirmation bias and then just count how often you see someone mention that, without noticing how many posts did not mention that.

That is not to say, however, that I don't think those (and other) disorders aren't likely to be more prevalent in our community, for a variety of reasons. First off, as I referenced earlier, humans are social animals. We like to be part of groups. When we don't conform, we feel fear, as people building on from Asch's work discovered. Being ace means you're different from pretty much everyone you know. I personally have been at least questioning if I was ace for about 4 years. In that time, and come to think of it, including the 18 years before that too, I have met exactly 1 other asexual person 'in the wild' as it were. That's not a comfortable level of support and similarity. Secondly, harassment, bullying, loneliness, bigotry as a result of being different, and so on. Those take a toll on people. Now, I can't speak for everyone, just for myself, but I can tell you that the 4 years I thought I was broken, emotionally stunted, and the only one fucked up like this did not work wonders for my mental health. That wasn't even me being actively harassed, that was just me in my own head, in an LGBTQ accepting environment (though I didn't know I was ace at the time). I cannot imagine how much worse it would have been in an environment where I'd also have to worry about violence, harassment, or getting kicked out if my 'weirdness' came to light.

Honestly I'd prefer to actually cite some papers, but it's long past midnight and I'm on my phone and can't be bothered to get on my pc, so that won't happen. Suffice it to say, yes, asexuals most likely do suffer from a variety of mental disorders more than the general population does (just like LGBTQ+ people in general do), 80-90% is way out there though.

June 05, 2021 at 12:01AM