Nancy felt like a freak back in high school when all her typically teenage friends were obsessed with talking about sex, dating, and making out.

"I wondered what was wrong with these people. I had no interest in sex at all," the 51-year-old Washington woman tells me over the phone. "I felt like a clinical observer, observing another species. I didn’t identify."

In fact, Nancy has only ever had sex once in her life–with a boy she fell in love with at age 19–and then only, she says, because she figured "it wouldn’t kill her."

Nancy soon realized, however, that not wanting to have sex with people you fall in love with doesn’t always go over so well.

"I’ve learned that I shouldn’t start something I can’t finish," she explains.

As a teenager in the ’70s, someone like Nancy would probably indeed be called a "freak of nature." She preferred "asexual," a word she came up with on her own, but she says, "I always thought I was the only one."

Better late than never, she recently searched online and found AVEN, the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (asexuality.org).

Nancy, who has been happily married for the last six years to a mentally disabled man "with a wonderful sense of humour and a low sex drive," admits she feels a bit jealous because nothing like AVEN existed for her through those brutal teenage years.

"I can’t imagine how different my life would have been if I had found a place to meet others like me," she laments.

Group no-sex

That’s partly why 21-year-old David Jay started AVEN two years ago.

"In high school, I spent a lot of time struggling with my sexuality," explains Jay, a student at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, who has never had sex. "People talked about having crushes on people, and all that hokey ‘do you like someone; do you like-like someone’ stuff, and I didn’t get it. I had no frame of personal experience to understand what people were talking about."

Jay got involved in queer politics in college and learned a lot about the complexities of sexuality and the importance of forming communities around sexual identity.

He "came out" as asexual and quickly recognized how little information was available on the subject. Since starting AVEN, 800 members have now found a place to discuss, commiserate, and share stories.

Most amusing are the predictable responses that sexual people always offer to those with an inability to feel sexual attraction: You’re sexually repressed/you haven’t had sex with me/you hate men/you hate women/you’ve experienced sexual trauma and are afraid to have sex/you haven’t met the right person.

But, Nancy argues, she’s met plenty of "right" people, she certainly doesn’t hate men or women, and she says the asexuals she’s met have suffered no more sexual trauma than the rest of us. And as for the plumbing, it’s just fine, thank you very much.

"I’ve masturbated," she admits. "Everything works, but I still don’t see what all the fuss is about."

While the idea of never wanting sex seems hard for most of us to accept, Nancy likens it to putting a straight man into a world that says, "now you have to be attracted to men."

Unfortunately, very few studies have been done to explain asexuality.

Jay knows of one study being done at the Kinsey Institute. Their preliminary findings seem to back up what most asexuals already believe: asexuality is not a pathology. It is just something some people are–an identity.

Hot, but not for you

Described from a biological standpoint, asexuality refers to an organism with no sexual organs and that reproduces itself–like the one-celled amoeba–by simply dividing itself in two. Asexuality, as it applies to humans, is more about dividing sexual response from sexual attraction.

Jay explains that while sexual activity can feel good (he admits he masturbates, though not all asexuals do), it’s not something you’re compelled to act upon with another person.

"It’s possible to have the neuro hardware kicking out sexual sensations, but those sensations have to be interpreted by higher centers of the brain as sexual attraction," explains 44-year-old Don from New Mexico, who has a background in biology. "You can feel pleasure and not associate it with sexual attraction. It’s just hard wiring."

Don has never had sex and considered himself "heterosexual and celibate" until he discovered AVEN last September. "I didn’t think it was unusual that I never wanted sex, because I thought I was waiting for marriage," he explains. "I figured sooner or later it was going to change, but I eventually realized it wasn’t going to."

That’s because celibacy (a choice) is very different than asexuality, which is an identity, explains Jay.

"Asexuality is not about sexual purity or taking a moral stance against sex," he tells me. "It’s also not virginity-related. It’s not like you lose your asexuality if you engage in sexual activity."

In fact, some asexual people who are in a relationship with a sexual person will have sex and still consider themselves asexual because they are simply doing it to please their partner.

For the rest of us, a relationship without sex is usually just considered a friendship.

"We have so many ridiculous conventions surrounding relationships and dating," he explains. "I like the idea of being able to start with a clean slate in terms of what my expectations of relationships are, and how I want to be intimate with people. It is both scary and exciting."

Which is why a community like AVEN is so welcome.

"It feels great to find people who are able to discuss the topic in a meaningful way and not regard you as some kind of dangerous person, which so many people do when you tell them you’re not into sex," says Don. "After all, it seems absurd to see us as dangerous–I’m not going to get anyone pregnant, spread disease, or sexually abuse anyone. When I see the damage done by sexual relationships, maybe my way of life isn’t so bad after all."