The X Factor
Filed by: Guest Blogger
September 22, 2010 8:30 AM

http://www.bilerico.com/2010/09/the_x_factor.php

Editors' Note: Guest blogger Sara Beth Brooks recently completed the Leadership, Organizing, and Action: Leading Change program at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She is pursuing a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies and lives in Sacramento, CA. Sara Beth is publishing a weeklong series on asexuality this week.

sb-bilerico.jpgWhen Alfred Kinsey studied human sexuality, he really broke the mold. Never before had modern society been offered such a scientific explanation for our carnal desires. Kinsey broke down the binary of sex and built the academic foundation for what we now refer to as the spectrum of sexuality. This spectrum helps dispel the myth that humans fit entirely into any one box or another, sparking a discussion about binaries that is still in full swing today.

Kinsey's respondents included people who had "no socio-sexual contacts or reactions". We did not have a name and Kinsey was not interested in us, so he called us category X and set us aside. In 1977, the term "asexual" became attached with Kinsey's category X. It was noted that asexuals were "oppressed by a consensus that they are nonexistent," yet continued to appear as 1% of the population in academic data. Throughout the '80s and '90s, intermittent studies on sexuality continued to support the existence of Kinsey's category X, including a massive 1994 British study administered in the wake of the AIDS crisis.