New research dropped in October 2026 about asexuality. Here’s the summary.
The Invisible Orientation: Why Asexual People’s Human Rights Matter Now
When conversations about LGBTIQ+ human rights take place, asexual people are too often overlooked—or told that their experiences do not count. Outright International’s October 2026 discussion paper, Asexual People’s Human Rights, brings these experiences into focus. Developed in collaboration with British activist Yasmin Benoit and informed by input from ten asexual advocates around the world, the paper examines discrimination, pathologization, and violence affecting ace communities. It invites policymakers, healthcare providers, human rights organizations, and queer movements to address these often-invisible abuses.
The evidence comes with an important limitation: research on asexual people remains scarce, and much of the available data comes from the Global North. The paper combines existing research with advocates’ accounts to identify concerns without claiming to establish their worldwide prevalence.
Understanding Asexuality and Acephobia
Asexuality is an umbrella term describing people who experience little to no sexual attraction toward others, regardless of gender. Unlike voluntary celibacy—a choice to abstain from sexual activity—asexuality concerns attraction. It does not necessarily mean abstaining from sex, lacking intimate relationships, or being aromantic. Asexual people may experience romantic attraction, form relationships, and engage in sexual activity.
Some ace people understand asexuality as a sexual orientation; others describe it as a lack of sexual orientation. Neither understanding makes asexuality a disorder or justifies excluding asexual people from human rights protections.
The report defines acephobia as prejudice rooted in the belief that asexuality is abnormal or deviant. A 2024 survey of 400 people in England found that 23% believed asexuality was a mental health issue, while 11% said asexual people did not exist. A 2012 study involving heterosexual respondents in the United States and Canada found more negative attitudes toward asexual people than toward heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual people, alongside greater dehumanization.
Exclusion can also occur within LGBTIQ+ communities. The paper describes asexual people having their experiences of queerphobia dismissed, reinforcing the idea that their identities and needs fall outside the movement’s concerns.
Discrimination, Violence, and Coercion
The assumption that asexual people are protected from abuse because they experience little or no sexual attraction is contradicted by the research and testimony gathered in the paper. It documents conversion practices, sexual violence, pressure to marry, school bullying, and workplace hostility. The strength and scope of the evidence vary: some findings come from surveys, while others are individual cases or community reports.
Conversion Practices and “Corrective” Abuse
Asexuality is sometimes treated as something that must be “fixed.” In the UK’s 2018 National LGBT Survey, 7.9% of asexual respondents reported having been offered conversion practices and 2.3% reported having undergone them. Among the sexual-orientation groups compared in the report, asexual respondents had the highest offered rate and a joint-highest undergone rate.
In Vietnam, a 2024 survey of 475 asexual respondents found that 40.2% had experienced abuse from perpetrators who expressed a desire or exerted pressure to perform a “corrective” act. That finding concerns abuse associated with corrective intent or pressure; it should not be read as saying that every person in that group experienced a completed “corrective” act.
Sexual Violence and Forced Marriage
An Australian university survey found that 15% of asexual respondents reported experiencing sexual assault, compared with 6% of heterosexual respondents and 8% of gay or lesbian respondents. A separate U.S. college survey found that 3.5% of asexual respondents reported sexual trauma, compared with 2.4% of non-asexual respondents. The U.S. measure included sexually abusive relationships and forced or coercive unwanted sexual contact in the preceding year.
The paper also documents community accounts of asexual people being pressured or forced to marry and have children, sometimes with the intention of changing their orientation. It explicitly notes, however, that quantitative data on the prevalence of forced marriage affecting asexual people were unavailable.
Hostility at School and Work
A case documented by the Asian Network of A-Spec Queer Activists and reproduced in the paper illustrates how institutional responses can compound abuse. An asexual nonbinary teenager in Bangladesh was sexually assaulted by classmates attempting to “test” their orientation. After reporting the assault, the teenager was permanently expelled, with the school accusing them of “corrupting” the environment.
Workplace research also reveals barriers to safety and openness. UK studies cited in the report document bullying, negative reactions to disclosure, and reluctance among ace people to come out at work. In a Canadian survey, 26% of asexual respondents reported being uncomfortable disclosing their orientation at work—the highest proportion among the sexual-minority groups compared.
Medical Pathologization
One of the paper’s central concerns is the treatment of asexuality as a medical or psychological problem. The American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5, published in 2013, includes an asexuality-related diagnostic safeguard: a lifelong lack of sexual desire should not be diagnosed as a desire disorder when better explained by a person’s self-identification as asexual. The report notes that this qualification appears in the full manual but not its shortened desk reference.
The World Health Organization’s ICD-11 lacks an equivalent explicit safeguard, according to the paper. Outright warns that this omission can leave asexual people vulnerable to pathologization, although it does not establish that the omission alone causes the harmful practices described.
The paper documents accounts of clinicians treating asexuality as a disorder or presumed symptom, recommending unwanted treatment, or dismissing unrelated health concerns. One case involved an asexual trans man in Bangladesh being prescribed an elevated testosterone dose to increase his sex drive. Such cases illustrate potential harms; they do not establish how frequently each practice occurs.
There are also signs of progress. In 2023, a Mexican federal court ordered the National Health System to stop prescribing psychotherapeutic intervention to treat asexuality and to train health personnel on the subject. The distinction matters: the ruling concerned treating asexuality itself as a condition requiring correction, not restricting asexual people’s access to psychotherapy for other needs. Mexican ace activists described it as the first ruling of its kind in Latin America.
Legal Blind Spots and Criminalization
According to Outright’s October 2026 paper, no UN member state explicitly names asexuality in its national nondiscrimination laws. That does not mean asexual people lack all legal protection. The paper emphasizes that universal human rights apply to them and that existing sexual-orientation protections should be interpreted inclusively.
Nevertheless, statutory definitions can create uncertainty. The report identifies at least nine countries—including the UK, Australia, and Spain—whose legal definitions of sexual orientation could be interpreted as excluding asexual people. The wording varies between countries, but the underlying concern is that definitions built around attraction may fail to clearly cover people who experience little or none. The paper also documents a Dutch asylum rejection involving an asexual applicant, illustrating the potential consequences of exclusionary interpretations.
More explicitly hostile measures create additional risks. The paper states that Niger’s 2026 penal code criminalizes “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA+) practices,” with prison sentences of five to ten years. At the time of writing, Outright had not received reports of asexual people being arrested under that provision. Criminalization and documented enforcement must therefore be distinguished.
The report also warns that vaguely worded “propaganda” restrictions could be applied to asexual visibility. It discusses restrictions concerning “nontraditional sexual orientations” in Russia and Kazakhstan, similar restrictions in Bulgarian preschool and school education, and Belarusian provisions concerning homosexuality, gender transition, and childlessness. Its concern is their potential application to ace people—not a finding that every country has already used these laws to censor asexuality.
Building Explicit Protections
Some jurisdictions demonstrate how clearer legal language can address these gaps. New York State explicitly includes asexuality in its nondiscrimination definition of sexual orientation. Queensland’s amended definition expressly addresses a lack of capacity for attraction. New South Wales and South Australia include lack of sexual attraction in legislation addressing conversion practices, while several U.S. cities protect asexual and aromantic relationships through family- or relationship-structure provisions. These measures serve different purposes, but each makes protection more explicit.
Outright’s paper closes with questions for policymakers, healthcare providers, donors, human rights organizations, and queer movements. How can laws protect ace people more clearly? How can healthcare systems avoid pathologizing their identities? What support do ace-led organizations need, and how can broader movements include their concerns?
The paper’s central message is that human rights do not depend on whether someone experiences sexual attraction. Making that principle meaningful requires recognizing asexual people’s experiences, addressing documented abuses, and ensuring that legal protections, healthcare, and community support do not leave them invisible.
