For starters, a definition - or rather, host thereof - are in order. What is asexuality? The grandaddy of all asexual sites is the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), which defines an asexual as "a person who does not experience sexual attraction to other people." This definition is simple on the surface, but the wording is important. Because asexuals tend to define themselves in relation to more established sexual orientations such as "straight" and "gay", the focus is on attraction - or the lack, thereof, as opposed to behavior. Just as a virgin gay teenager is still gay, based on who s/he is attracted to, an asexual can have sex, masturbate, and be in a relationship and still be asexual. This is something of a difficult concept for many people to wrap their heads around, but it's important not to confuse lack of libido with asexuality. Some asexuals have a libido, but what separates them from "sexuals" (that's the rather unfortunate term some asexuals call non-asexuals) is the lack of sexual attraction to people (or presumably, anything else, as I don't think they're objectumsexuals either). They use the shorthand "ace" to refer to themselves.
Still with me? It gets more complicated, because most asexuals see asexuality as a spectrum encompassing a wide variety of relational orientations and desires. Many asexuals are interested in romantic relationships, although presumably are happier if sex isn't involved (some don't mind having sex to please a partner, many have no interest whatsoever, and some are repulsed by sex). These folks identify as romantic asexuals, often putting a signifier in front of romantic to indicate what gender(s) they are attracted to romantically - such as heteroromantic, homoromantic, or bi/panromantic. A smaller but significant group of asexuals have no romantic desires or attraction to others, and they're called aromantic.
The asexual tent is a big one, however, and allows room for yet more modifiers - 'gray' and demi', as in gray-ace or demisexual. Gray is the more all-encompassing term, which refers to people who can experience sexual attraction, but in such a capacity that for whatever reason, they identify with asexuality more than non-asexuals. Demisexual seems to be used specifically to define people who are only capable of experiencing sexual attraction once they know someone well. Confusing matters a bit further, I've also seen people identify as "demiromantic" which as far as I can ascertain means they aren't generally interested in romantic partnerships, but can be under specific circumstances.
Whew, we've got the definitions out of the way. I'm trying to be as fair as possible, because when there are discussions critical of some of the concepts within asexuality, I often see people told by asexuals that they don't actually understand what the definitions are. These are based off reading lots and lots and lots of asexuals describing their identities and orientations in their own words, but if you think I have something wrong, please feel free to let me know.
The demographics of asexuality, at least as far as the Internet goes (I haven't encountered any self-identified asexuals offline), it tends to be a young group. This isn't surprising. While Kinsey and other sex researchers have acknowledged the existence of people who appeared to have no sexual attraction or interest for decades, asexuality as an identity politic is a very young movement. David Jay started AVEN in 2002, and is largely responsible for how a lot of the discourse around asexuality has been shaped. Given that the leather community is many decades old now, swingers date at least back to the 1960s, and even polyamory as a term was established in the early 1990s, asexuality is young indeed as far as sexual minority movements go. So it's to be expected that the majority of people who identify online as asexual are going to be people who grew up with the Internet, largely in their early 20s, although obviously older asexuals do exist. It is fair, however, to say that within the asexual community on the Internet, individuals older than 30 are few and far between. AVEN is still the largest online community for asexuals, but Tumblr also appears to be a hotbed of asexual activism. Since only people under 30 can figure out how to use Tumblr (this is a fact) this makes sense. Based an absolutely nothing but my own late nights reading asexual message boards, it seems that hetero or panromantic asexuals are the most common group within the asexual community, with a fair-sized minority within that group in long-term relationships with non-asexuals.
So, we're now we're educated as to what asexuality is and who asexuals are. But what do they want? Many people new to the concept of asexuality seem confused as to why there's a movement around not doing something. While there's no asexual Borg hivemind, there does seem to be a few key points of focus within asexual activism. Asexuals are interested in visibility. Think about television and film - can you think of many characters who have no sexual attraction to other people? It's a fair point. Many asexuals complain that nobody knows they exist, and when they identify themselves as asexual, people assume they are celibate for religious reasons, scared of sex, or suffering from a medical or psychological issue that can be "fixed" which brings us to another major issue. Asexuals, by their own definition, do not see asexuality as a problem to be cured. Borrowing a line from the mainstream gay rights movement, asexuals claim they were "born this way" and reject being pathologized.
These are two important and valuable goals, for asexuals and any sexual minority group, really. Provided it doesn't cause you any distress (other than the shit society will fling at you) there's nothing wrong with not wanting sex, just as there's nothing wrong with wanting kinky sex, or sex with multiple partners. Asexuality is the flipside of that old sex-positive mantra, "Your kink is not my kink (and that's OK)". It's clear that human sexuality is an incredibly, amazingly diverse spectrum that encompasses all kinds of weirdness, so why is it so hard to understand a lack of interest?
There seems to be varying opinions about fluidity within asexuality, but it seems somewhat common for some to identify as strongly asexual at first, and then demisexual later. Understandably, asexuals really hate being told they'll "grow out of it" or they "haven't met the right person" although quite clearly some people do in fact change their self-identification and it's usually in the direction of identifying as more sexual, not less. This is a similar conundrum young people in the childfree community tend to face. While certainly most people who don't want children enough to actual take on a childfree identity aren't going to have kids, it's also not surprising that older adults are skeptical that they won't feel differently later.
And yet asexuals today generally aren't defining themselves as a misunderstood sexual or lifestyle minority, such as kinksters, swingers, and the childfree, but as rather as a sexual orientation akin to homosexuality, often borrowing heavily from the language of the social justice movements. And this is where things get a bit tricky, as this has created an ongoing major internet kerfuffle between some GLBT activists and asexuals, and also thrown some asexuals into conflict with sex-positive feminists. Next time on Sex or Television: when a bunch of groups with similar interests in stickin' it to the man decide to stick it to each other, instead! Ah, identity politics. Aren't they fun?
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