I was recently reading this article from AVEN about asexuality and its relation to porn and masturbation. I was interested to hear your opinions on the following questions, or the topic in general. How do you define "asexual?" Can you still be considered asexual if you masturbate? What about if you watch porn? What does it mean to lack sexual attraction? Is this, in your opinion, only applicable to being sexually attracted to other people or to simply having sexual urges in the first place?
AVEN's definition of asexuality isn't widely accepted or by much of anyone other than the AVEN community (and perhaps Tumblr and a tiny group of other people.) Asexuality, according to the widely accepted definition, is a hardwired lack of interest in sex and sexual behavior. People who are asexual according to this definition simply have no interest in sex. It's boring, unimportant, unnecessary. So sexual urges, arousal, interest in watching porn would all not be a typical part of someone who is asexual according to that definition. Now... I also want to address this a little bit differently with people who are trans. The inherent issues of dysphoria that accompany the experience of recognizing that one is trans are going to affect issues of sexual arousal. There's an inherent conflict of sorts between a biological desire for sexual arousal, and a sense that one's body does not match who one is. And these factors can (and do) impact how one feels and experiences sexuality and sexual experience. But these experiences, rather than being hardwired, are transient (a result of dysphoria that is hopefully resolved with appropriate treatments or intervention) and so the asexual sexual identity isn't an accurate descriptor, in the same way that we don't identify ourselves as asexual when we have a fever of 104 and have zero interest in sex. Unfortunately, the scholarly research I've seen in this area is abysmally bad, and there's little funding or mainstream interest in studying these issues, so we don't have a very good understanding of how we effectively address sexual adjustment for people experiencing gender dysphoria. I hope this helps.
