Mythbusters: Asexuality and Eating Disorders

QHST would like to know what YOU think!

Dudes and dudettes, welcome to a very special edition of this column. As you’ve probably all worked out already, it’s asexuality awareness week! That means, in case you haven’t worked it out yet, that this week is going to be full of posts about asexuality.

And this week, I’m going to discuss with you all the possible correlations between asexuality and eating disorders.

When I started researching this a few weeks back, I was expecting to find a lot more than I did on the topic. Instead I found numerous threads and pages rejecting the idea. So I continued researching.

Irregular eating patterns, starvation, low body weight and vitamin imbalances are all major physical factors in restrictive eating disorders. When a female gets below a weight which their body doesn’t like, they suffer from amenorrhea (their periods stop). This causes infertility, or the inability to distinguish if one is pregnant or not. Yet, that doesn’t directly imply a link. It does, however, suggest that hormone levels may be affected.

It raises another question too- do hormone levels affect whether a person will be asexual or not?

In my research, I’ve found people who query it, and people who completely shoot down the argument. And with fair reason- hormone levels don’t cause asexuality. It’s already common knowledge, or so we hope.

So with this little mythbusters session happening here, we’ve found one correlation that’s preeeetty much completely inaccurate. Eating disorders and hormone levels are not necessarily linked. Hormone levels and asexuality are very much not linked.

Next idea.

In considering that asexuality stems from a desire not to engage in sex, I began to wonder if this could be triggered by low self-esteem (please remember I am not generalising any group of people, only trying to explore possible links, and this is purely to shoot down false theories).

The fact of the matter remains, that eating disorders aren’t solely based on self-esteem. They are more often than not caused by other struggles in a person’s life, culminating in disordered eating and thus resulting in lowered self-esteem (because of the intrusive thoughts insulting an individual suffering from an eating disorder daily).

Logically; yes, this lack of desire is probably a likely outcome. But, it is where that and the disorder meet, where it gets confusing.

There’s a large proportion of teenagers who suffer from eating disorders. They are a “teenage” illness, little girls starving themselves so they can fit into a new dress or get some attention. (Those are stereotypes. I know. It was sarcasm.)

The onset of eating disorders in someone’s teens is most likely going to confuse them, if it results in/happens around the lack of attraction to people etc. It’s understandable; high school is a melting pot of teenage hormones going mad. If you don't feel the same way as everyone else your age, you start wondering why.

And when a person's growing up with the disorders, it can be difficult to distinguish between asexuality and a temporary lack of interest, because the individual can’t know the difference if they have nothing to compare it to. The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), said “there is no litmus test to determine if someone is asexual. Asexuality is like any other identity – at its core, it’s just a word that people use to help figure themselves out.”

Asexuality (and other sexualities) are an identity used to describe a person. Identities are never right or wrong, and they can take a long time to completely work out. An eating disorder, however is a mental illness. It attacks your identity, preferences, and emotions, and is often a manifestation of other issues in a person’s life.

From the lack of information I've found, and the rejection of the idea at every turn, I've come to the conclusion that eating disorders and asexuality have little to no relation to one another. An eating disordered person may consider themselves to be asexual, but the two factors are independent variables. I know plenty of asexual people with no hint of disordered eating, and plenty of eating disordered people with no hint of asexuality. 

If you have anything you'd like to input into this, please comment below or send me a tweet! I'm still very curious to see if anyone considers their asexuality as being related to something else, whether an eating disorder or otherwise. 

Thanks for reading, and happy Asexuality Awareness Week!