[Su-Yin]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/...509924438.html

this is something new to me...ive never came close nor heard of anyone being asexual
anyone here asexual or know anyone who is?

Let's talk about sex - or maybe not. For those who identify themselves as asexual, there's nothing quite as dull as the pleasures of the flesh, writes Deborah Smith
Like many young men, Michael enjoys cricket, parties and reading. But having sex, says the 22-year-old university student, is about as much fun as "watching paint dry".

Social pressure to date girls during his teens meant that he ended up having sexual relationships with half a dozen young women. "But it wasn't very fulfilling," he recalls. And three years ago he realised he did not want to have sex ever again.

Michael, from Launceston, well remembers the first time he put a label to his sexual orientation. Rumours were circulating that he was interested in men, because he had stopped dating girls. "Are you straight or gay?" a female friend asked him at a party. "I said, 'I'm neither. I'm asexual'," he recalls.

Michael may not be the rarity most would think. Some surveys of sexual behaviour indicate there could be almost as many people who are asexual as are gay. But in a society where sex is all pervasive, asexual people tend to be invisible.

This sexually inactive group could include people from happily celibate nuns to those who are too sick, poor or unattractive to form a relationship, and who do not want to pay for sex or have a casual fling. Others may fear intimacy or have been put off sex by repressive parental attitudes.

But the group is likely to include asexual people who simply don't want any sex, says Richters. "It seems clear to me there is a huge range in how interested people are in sex, from those who hardly have it to those who are biting the wall if they don't get it every day. Most are in the middle.".