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Thursday, Apr 23, 2026
Opinion

SPECS Panther Column — Let’s talk about attraction

SPECS Panther is a mascot for SPECS (Sex Positive Education for College Students) and serves the Middlebury community. As a part of Health & Wellness Education, SPECS Panther seeks to educate and spark independent dialogue, not be the end-all be-all resource on campus. We encourage Middlebury students to break down stigma by engaging in sex-positive conversation — wherever, with whomever and about whatever is most comfortable, easy, and safe for you. Our editions will be educational!
SPECS Panther is a mascot for SPECS (Sex Positive Education for College Students) and serves the Middlebury community. As a part of Health & Wellness Education, SPECS Panther seeks to educate and spark independent dialogue, not be the end-all be-all resource on campus. We encourage Middlebury students to break down stigma by engaging in sex-positive conversation — wherever, with whomever and about whatever is most comfortable, easy, and safe for you. Our editions will be educational!

At SPECS, we talk a lot about sex — the importance of regular STI testing, the nuances of consent, birth control choices, pleasure and more — but not as much about attraction and how it manifests beyond sexual experiences. In celebration of Asexuality Awareness Day, which took place on April 6, we are dedicating this month’s SPECS Panther article to discussing the intricacies of attraction and defining asexuality. 

To begin, we all have different attraction-based positions, meaning we experience attraction in different ways. Throughout our lives, different forms of attraction can impact our experiences and relationships. Sexual attraction is just one form of attraction; countless other types are always present and informing our experiences. Some of the other forms of attraction are:

  1. Aesthetic attraction, which is based on the aesthetic appreciation of objects, people, nature, etc. and is commonly associated with a sensation of awe.

  2. Romantic attraction, which is often marked by the inclination to be romantically involved with a person/persons.

  3. Platonic attraction, which is non-romantic/non-sexual and grounded in deep friendships and emotional closeness.

  4. Sexual attraction is a form of attraction indicating sexual desire and sexual expression.

  5. Emotional attraction, which is based on the desire to connect with someone on a meaningful level and is driven by their personal qualities, interests, or morals. 

Multiple forms of attraction can be present and intersect at various moments throughout someone’s life. For example, one may feel platonic and sexual attraction toward a friend and aesthetic attraction toward the beauty of a medieval altarpiece. Importantly, attraction is non-hierarchical, meaning that there is not one form of attraction that trumps others. Sex educator and author of Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex, Angela Chen, discusses the idea of compulsory sexuality, which she describes as “a set of assumptions and behaviors that support the idea that every normal person is sexual, that not wanting (socially approved) sex is unnatural and wrong, and that people who don’t care about sexuality are missing out on an utterly necessary experience.” While sex is important for some people, the assumption that it is everyone’s primary form of attraction is incorrect. Society conditions us to believe that sexual attraction is the most important type of attraction in human relationships, but this idea is harmful both to the asexual (ace) community and the allosexual community (encompassing those who experience sexual attraction) alike. 

Recognizing the different types of attraction can help destabilize compulsory sexuality and uplift asexual voices who experience non-sexual pleasure. While people have differing definitions of asexuality, it's commonly understood as an umbrella term that encompasses people who experience little to no sexual attraction. Many ace people describe joy in identifying with the asexual community and embracing their own attraction-based positions. 

Importantly, asexuality is not a deficit, but an equally rewarding experience of attraction and pleasure. To explain further, author Sarah Costello writes that “It [asexuality] can lead towards much more resilient communities. Rather than just relying on one single person, your sexual or romantic partner, to provide so many different things for you, you have a web of people who are providing you with all sorts of different things.” There is also not one single form of asexuality, similarly to how allosexual people display a wide variety of desires and attractions. Asexuality, like any spectrum, encompasses a wide variety of identities and individuals.

As we discussed, there are countless attraction-based positions, and we hope this article can help flatten the socially constructed hierarchy that devalues non-sexual attraction. However, this is just an introduction to asexuality — to better understand it, refer to some of the resources we list below:

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

Sounds Fake but Okay: An Asexual and Aromantic Perspective on Love, Relationships, Sex, and Pretty Much Anything Else by Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown

Blog: The Asexual Agenda

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