Hello Can'tExplain, I didn't mention at any point that I thought asexuals had as bad or worse a deal than anyone else. I merely asked a few questions from a visibility point of view. I wasn't aware that my post would turn into the Oppression Olympics.

To answer your post, however:

Asexuals can find that their friends and family laugh in their faces and tell them they are wrong. That can be wounding for trust and relationships with those people and although to lose a few friends might be survivable, I'm sure someone who is gay can understand the fear of losing everybody. Parents can also assume that they must have done something wrong in their upbringing of the child, which again can be damaging.

With 99% of the population being non-asexual, it is extremely isolating and confusing living in that world. It isn't really like being a foreigner, because there are a lot of foreigners in Western countries and often people are willing to help you out. An asexual might not know other asexuals in their local area and no one understands you. Imagine how much sex is used in media, in modern conversations, all around us. People like to talk about their relationships a lot. Going through school/college, sex is a major focus of everything and someone not interested can find themselves alone or even bullied or harassed.

An asexual who doesn't know they are asexual can end up going through a lot of distress, alienation, medical treatment that labels them as "broken" (and when months or even years of medical treatment fails to work, imagine how that feels), fractured relationships and can force them into doing sexual acts they don't want to do, leaving them traumatised as well.

There is also such thing as corrective rape, although thankfully I've only heard of that once in the time I've been on AVEN. Many others have found themselves forced by partners, which to some degree might qualify as the same thing.

Being laughed at or ridiculed takes its toll when you know someone is going to mock you whenever you say something about it. The thread on "Worst Responses" on AVEN is far longer than the "Best Responses" and makes for a lot of sad reading. It makes you wonder why people have such a hard time being accepting of it. As someone once said, it seems the Sexual Revolution didn't include the right to not have sex.

And of course, don't forget that in some mentality, if you aren't straight, you are gay. Who cares if you don't show any sign of being interested in the same sex? If you show none in the opposite sex, you are gay. Asexuals can suffer homosexual abuse for that reason.

Thank you for your thoughts