Masters Thesis - "Asexuality as a Spectrum"

Hi all,

I'm not sure how many of you are deeply interested in academic reading, but this seems like a fairly significant piece given the paucity of research on asexuality, let alone the gray-A side of things. Apparently this past spring, someone by the name of Caroline H. McClave wrote their Masters thesis at Columbia University using survey data that includes people who could label as gray-A. It's by no means a perfect or comprehensive study--it focuses people who experience sexual attraction but don't desire to act on it, as they were easily identified through existing data. But it exists, and it's available for free online!

Asexuality as a Spectrum: A National Probability Sample Comparison to the Sexual Community in the UK

I'm skeptical of portions of the paper, but heck, it's a start, and the person writing it has obviously taken the time to research terminology in the ace community.

What do you think? I'd be especially curious to hear from those who have a better handle on ace identities, since I'm pretty new to many of these ideas.

Edit : I've just begun to read it and she says that asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction.
Can you be more specific about what you're talking about ? Because if it's based on people who don't act on their sexual attraction, it's more like abstinence, and the thesis (and all the given numbers) would be totally "false" (sorry I can't find the proper word) :/

I think the survey question she's using asks to whom you've EVER experienced sexual attraction, so she's trying to catch people who a) used to but don't anymore, or b) do have sexual attraction, but so weakly that they don't want to act on it. I'm guessing the metric used also catches a lot of celibate/abstinent people as well, though. :/