“A sexual orientation that has always existed like the others”: what is asexuality?

The word is freed more and more on this sexuality, but remains little known by a good number of people: asexuality. Still many stereotypes and a lot of confusion revolve around this sexual orientation. guest in Well done for youMagali Croset, author of The No Sex Revolution at Les Éditions de L’Observatoire, explains what this sexuality really is.

A married life that is completely possible

It is quite simply a person who feels little or no sexual attraction for another person. The author is formal: she has always existed. “It’s a sexual orientation that has always existed like the others. Simply, it was not visible, it was not mentioned”, explains Magali Croset.

With the arrival of the Internet for about thirty years, but also by the creation of associations such as the Association for Asexual Visibility (AVA) in 2010, this has enabled people to talk, meet and discuss on this theme. “Then also, the media make it possible to put words well, to understand”, adds the author.

“But when you’re asexual, that doesn’t mean you can’t fall in love,” notes the author. It is therefore naturally possible to form a couple between asexuals, but also with a non-asexual person. Magali Croiset defines them as “a dissociated couple” and emphasizes that they are not doomed to failure. “These couples met on the basis of love and hold on to it. So putting love back into this discussion also seems essential to me, ‘explains at the microphone of Europe 1 the author of The No Sex Revolution.

A different libido

We must also deconstruct the idea that an asexual person cannot receive tenderness and does not prevent them from experiencing solo sexuality. The author details that there are two types of libido. “There is the object libido where you project your desires onto an outside person, which is the case for other sexual orientations. And then in the context of asexuality, in a single word, it is ‘the libido of the self’ which takes over”, testifies Magali Croset.

That is to say, this libido is guided by the drive for self-preservation. “She will protect and refocus the maintenance of existence rather than seeking expansion, explosion, discharge,” says the author. Their carnal desire is sometimes transferred to something else: it is about sublimation in psychology and psychoanalysis. “It means a transfer, a displacement of sexual energy, of sexual libido into another form of libido,” she points out.

Knowing that the libido is an appetite for life, according to her, it is another form of libido which is manifested in particular by a production or a creation. “So people who work a lot, such as athletes or artists, transfer their sexual libido to a creative libido like Michelangelo or Kafka”, punctuates Magali Croset.