LEA VITTORIA UVA
WAITING TO BE RECOGNIZED
Often credited with giving
asexuality validity in the world of
academia, Bogaert, who last year
published the book Understanding Asexuality, has been a vocal
champion for asexuals throughout the past decade.
“Though there have been models
out there that put asexuality theoretically as a possibility, none had
really addressed it,” said Bogaert.
“I was the one who put it on a map
from a research perspective.”
Bogaert says that one of the
first mentions of asexuality in scientific literature was made in the
late 1940s by famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey, who created a sexuality scale from zero to six, in which
zero was exclusive heterosexuality
and six was exclusive homosexuality. At the time, Kinsey created
a separate “X” category for individuals who did not fit within the
scale. Some academicians now
think that Kinsey may have been
referring to asexuals.
Despite Kinsey’s recognition
of this possible alternative orientation, there was virtually no
further discussion of it in the
medical and scientific world until
Bogaert published a landmark paper about asexuality in 2004.
Using data from a national
HUFFINGTON
08.25.13
British survey, Bogaert concluded
at the time that 1 percent (about
580,000 people) of Britain’s
population could be defined as
asexual. That figure has since
been used to give an estimate of
the number of aces among the
global population.
Though Bogaert’s first paper
on asexuality had its flaws, and
researchers have since been at
odds over whether 1 percent is an
overestimate or an underestimate,
it was nonetheless critical for
the launch of a new field of study
and worked to give validity to the
newly formed ace community.
Two years later, Bogaert made
AVEN
Founder
David Jay
(right) poses
at the first
Asexual
WorldPride
Conference
in London,
England, in
July 2012.