Andrew: Treating asexuality as pathological is based not on evidence--it has recieved very little study--but on cultural bias and dominant views of sexuality. We could call it "sexualnormativity" if we wanted. Take for example the relationship between asexuality and autism. Even if some asexuals have maladaptive pathological conditions, it does not mean all do, nor does it mean asexuality is necessarily pathological. The fact that non-pathological asexuality is not well represented in the literature is because almost no one has tried to look for it.
Saberi: Hi Andrew. Thanks for the comments. I did not write asexuality is pathological. It is only not a completely normal condition and can have biological, psychological, social or intellectual causes, that's what I wrote. But as I have pointed out it could be associated with biological or psychological problems, then it could become pathological in a certain way. But asexuality will not be pathological if it has underlying social and intellectual causes. As in case of strictly non-pathological asexuality, it is more a preferred choice of celibacy rather than asexuality. Asexuality could be related to hypoactive sexual desire disorder as such a disorder would have biological or psychological causes. I consider asexuality as 'no desire and no practice of sex'.
Andrew:Asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction (or maybe "little or no sexual attraction.) This may or may not mean "not sexual." Under this definition, there is no reason to exclude people who masturbate from this group. Secondly, all the information that you cite, while I have seen it elsewhere is enormously problematic. At this point, we don't know what causes asexuality. We have virtually no data from probability samples or even convenience samples. Almost all data comes from people seeing therapists, who cannot legitimately be assumed to be representative of asexuals in general.
Saberi: Yeah you see, this is where you and I differ. Asexuality is usually considered as 'lack of sexual attraction'. I believe this is an inadequate definition of asexuality and can only lead to more confusion. How do you measure lack of sexual attraction in psychology? The data that psychologists will obtain in this case can really say nothing about actual asexuality. I also wrote something similar about data on asexuality being extremely problematic. As for the information that I use, most of it has been based on my ideas of asexuality and I don't know how you have seen it elsewhere. According to me asexuality is, 'no desire and no practice of sex' and the whole 'no sexual attraction' definition is inadequate from a psychological viewpoint. Thus, if a person masturbates, it shows that he or she has complete sex drive simply not directed towards anyone and the sex urge is simply latent. It does not mean that the person is asexual. That's my opinion.