Asexuality: A Mental Disorder?

I wrote this in my journal yesterday and thought some of this community may appreciate it?:

I was "stuck" at the library for a half hour today and couldn't find any Kate Bornstein or Kevin Guilfoile, so I decided to analyze the DSM-5, which was not in the reference section and took a good 10 minutes to find.

Pica's interesting, so I turned to the feeding/eating disorders section, avoiding Anorexia Nervosa, and read about that. I had a few minutes, so I then turned to a random page. I noticed "sexual disorders" at the top of the left hand page, and was about to switch out of that (I'm asexual, so I don't really want to read about people's mental concerns with ejaculation) when I saw that the right hand page was headed with "Male Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder" (302.71) Weird, I thought, because that kind of implies that having a lack of sexual interest means you're disordered. Intrigued, I read for a bit. Increasingly appalling. Hold on a minute while I side-track to females.

I found 302.72, "Female Sexual Arousal Disorder" a few pages away. Similarly, Criterion A (the major outlining criterion for a disorder) listed a bunch of requirements like few/no sexual fantasies; few/no sexual desires; few/no sexual interest during sexual intercourse; and little/no genital response during sexual intercourse.

Sounds like asexuality to me.

I do have to give credit to the American Psychological Association, because their big thing has recently (by recently I mean the past 50 years or so) been to clarify that you only get a diagnosis if the clinician determines impaired interpersonal functioning or "clinically significant distress." And that's probably the best thing they've ever done to help reduce over-diagnosing situations. But you have to also take into account that, in most cases, psychiatry is extremely subjective. There are probably thousands of "clinicians" out there who diagnose based on a parent's request or, furthermore, their own biases.
       
And this is a major problem with 302.71 and 302.72. Any “clinician” can determine that some kid who’s bullied about his/her asexuality has a sexual disorder. Not only is that humiliating for the kid (302.71 and 302.72 are side-by-side with Genito-pelvic Pain/Penetration Disorder and Pedophilia) but what will it do to his/her self-esteem? Yes, s/he has clinically significant distress; we live in a world where sexual activity is expected and abstinence is mocked. No wonder that causes issues. However, does that mean this "condition" is disordered. For anyone, being "given" a mental illness is stigmatizing. And when your sexuality isn't actually disordered, being labeled as mentally ill for it can have a devastating effect.

I've heard a lot of aces talking about feeling that there's something wrong with them, and how it takes ages to actually come to terms with the fact that they're not any less of a person just because they don't feel inclined to have sex.

I hope it's abundantly clear to everyone that asexuality is not disordered, whether it causes "impaired functioning" in the eyes of a clinician or not. Any impaired functioning is cause by social stigmas against those who choose to avoid sexual contact when it's available.

And I plan on going back to the library soon and making a copy of the diagnostic criteria to laugh about.