Asexuality: a content analysis of sex therapy journals

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite recent progress in society’s understanding of sexuality as a nuanced, highly individualised concept, asexuality is a continually under-researched and misunderstood sexual identity and community. Via content analysis, the authors examined 41 publications in nine leading journals in the sex therapy field to assess how asexuality has been represented in literature over the past decade. The purpose of the review was to determine if this literature acknowledges the spectrum of asexual identities, whether asexuality and aromanticism are conflated terms, and whether asexuality is pathologized. The review determined that 41.5% of publications did not note the heterogeneity of identities under the asexuality umbrella, 12.2% conflated the terms asexuality and aromanticism, and 0% pathologized asexuality. Implications are discussed.