Editing Asexuality (section)

=== Sexual activity and sexuality ===
While some asexuals masturbate as a solitary form of release or have sex for the benefit of a romantic partner, others do not ([[#Definition, identity and relationships|see above]]).<ref name="Prause"/><ref name="Cerankowski and Milks"/><ref name="New Scientist"/> Fischer et al. reported that "scholars who study the physiology of asexuality suggest that people who are asexual are capable of genital arousal but may experience difficulty with so-called subjective arousal." This means that "while the body becomes aroused, subjectively – at the level of the mind and emotions – one does not experience arousal."<ref name="Fischer"/>

The [[Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction|Kinsey Institute]] sponsored another small survey on the topic in 2007, which found that self-identified asexuals "reported significantly less desire for sex with a partner, lower sexual arousability, and lower sexual excitation but did not differ consistently from non-asexuals in their sexual inhibition scores or their desire to masturbate."<ref name="Prause" />

A 1977 paper titled ''Asexual and Autoerotic Women: Two Invisible Groups'', by Myra T. Johnson, is explicitly devoted to asexuality in humans.<ref name="Cerankowski and Milks 3">{{cite book|author=Karli June Cerankowski|author2=Megan Milks|title=Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives|isbn=978-1-134-69253-8|publisher=[[Routledge]]|year=2014|page=244|access-date=January 4, 2017|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XbgTAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT244|archive-date=July 26, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200726124753/https://books.google.com/books?id=XbgTAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT244|url-status=live}}</ref> Johnson defines asexuals as those men and women "who, regardless of physical or emotional condition, actual sexual history, and marital status or ideological orientation, seem to ''prefer'' not to engage in sexual activity." She contrasts [[Autoeroticism|autoerotic]] women with asexual women: "The asexual woman&nbsp;... has no sexual desires at all [but] the autoerotic woman&nbsp;... recognizes such desires but prefers to satisfy them alone." Johnson's evidence is mostly letters to the editor found in women's magazines written by asexual/autoerotic women. She portrays them as invisible, "oppressed by a consensus that they are non-existent," and left behind by both the sexual revolution and the feminist movement. Johnson argued that society either ignores or denies their existence or insists they must be ascetic for religious reasons, neurotic, or asexual for political reasons.<ref name="Cerankowski and Milks 3"/><ref>"Asexual and Autoerotic Women: Two Invisible Groups" found in ed. Gochros, H.&nbsp;L.; J.&nbsp;S. Gochros (1977). ''The Sexually Oppressed''. Associated Press. {{ISBN|978-0-8096-1915-3}}</ref>

In a study published in 1979 in volume five of ''Advances in the Study of Affect'', as well as in another article using the same data and published in 1980 in the ''[[Journal of Personality and Social Psychology]]'', Michael D. Storms of the [[University of Kansas]] outlined his own reimagining of the Kinsey scale. Whereas Kinsey measured sexual orientation based on a combination of actual sexual behavior and fantasizing and eroticism, Storms used only fantasizing and eroticism. Storms, however, placed hetero-eroticism and homo-eroticism on separate axes rather than at two ends of a single scale; this allows for a distinction between bisexuality (exhibiting both hetero- and homo-eroticism in degrees comparable to hetero- or homosexuals, respectively) and asexuality (exhibiting a level of homo-eroticism comparable to a heterosexual and a level of hetero-eroticism comparable to a homosexual, namely, little to none). This type of scale accounted for asexuality for the first time.<ref name="Cerankowski and Milks 4">{{cite book|author=Karli June Cerankowski|author2=Megan Milks|title=Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives|isbn=978-1-134-69253-8|publisher=[[Routledge]]|year=2014|page=113|access-date=January 4, 2017|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XbgTAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT113|archive-date=July 26, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200726100210/https://books.google.com/books?id=XbgTAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT113|url-status=live}}</ref> Storms conjectured that many researchers following Kinsey's model could be mis-categorizing asexual subjects as bisexual, because both were simply defined by a lack of preference for gender in sexual partners.<ref name = Storms1980>{{Cite journal | doi = 10.1037/0022-3514.38.5.783 | last1 = Storms | first1 = Michael D. | year = 1980 | title = Theories of Sexual Orientation | journal = [[Journal of Personality and Social Psychology]] | volume = 38 | issue = 5 | pages = 783–792 | url = http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Theories_of_sexual_orientation.pdf | access-date = February 2, 2013 | archive-date = September 23, 2019 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190923043737/http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/Theories_of_sexual_orientation.pdf | url-status = live }}</ref><ref name = Storms1979>Storms, M.&nbsp;D. (1979). Sexual orientation and self-perception. ed. Pliner, Patricia et al. ''Advances in the Study of Communication and Affect. Volume 5: Perception of Emotion in Self and Others'' Plenum Press</ref>

In a 1983 study by Paula Nurius, which included 689 subjects (most of whom were students at various universities in the United States taking psychology or sociology classes), the two-dimensional fantasizing and eroticism scale was used to measure sexual orientation. Based on the results, respondents were given a score ranging from 0 to 100 for hetero-eroticism and from 0 to 100 for homo-eroticism. Respondents who scored lower than 10 on both were labeled "asexual". This consisted of 5% of the males and 10% of the females. Results showed that asexuals reported much lower frequency and desired frequency of a variety of sexual activities, including having multiple partners, anal sexual activities, having sexual encounters in a variety of locations, and autoerotic activities.<ref name="Ruspini"/><ref name="Nurius"/>