In the creation of this new knowledge, Bates friendship and mentorship run deep: Robbins\u2019 coauthors are her thesis adviser, Professor of Psychology Kathy Low \u2014 who Robbins says “always gives me a chance to learn from her” \u2014 and her classmate and friend, Annie Query.<\/p>\n
![\"image1\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/10\/image1-225x300.jpg\")
Nicolette Robbins ’11 uses the findings from her senior thesis in psychology to publish groundbreaking research on the experiences of coming out as asexual.<\/p><\/div>\n
Asexuality is defined as when someone experiences little or no sexual attraction, and is thought to describe perhaps 1 percent of the population.<\/p>\n
Thanks to years of research, we know quite a bit about the LGBTQ coming-out experience. But no similar research has been done on the asexual side. Now, thanks to Team Robbins, we know that the two experiences are psychologically comparable \u2014 with one major exception, having to do with the Internet.<\/p>\n
The similarities include what happens first, \u201cfeeling different at puberty,\u201d says Robbins, who is a research assistant at the Yale School of Medicine looking ahead to graduate school.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a ubiquitous experience in the realm of alternative sexuality, feeling different, confused, that something is wrong. These are common experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other similar themes include the impulse to come out as asexual as an act of self-expression and a way to achieve \u201cidentity salience,\u201d a term that describes how our various self-identities (parent, churchgoer, employee, gay person) tend to get along.<\/p>\n
While homosexuality is a known and accepted type of sexuality, asexuality isn\u2019t quite there yet. So for someone to come out as asexual, the person first has \u201cto discover that this is even a legitimate option,\u201d Robbins says.<\/p>\n
This is where the Internet comes in.<\/p>\n
For someone discovering the concept of asexuality, everything from learning terminology to finding a community typically occurs online. People who start to explore their asexual identity tend to find \u201cdirect online interaction with other asexuals to see if the identity is an apt fit,\u201d a process that Robbins calls \u201cpivotal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The online aspect makes the asexual coming-out experience \u201cunique,\u201d Robbins says. Indeed, the Internet has played a \u201ccrucial role in legitimizing asexuality and building a community.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Internet has always helped to facilitate the emergence of different types of sexuality and allowed those people to feel that they are not alone,\u201d Robbins adds.<\/p>\n
New information that can “inform interventions, programming, therapy and other kinds of interactions with individuals who identify as asexual.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
From her experience as both a researcher and clinician, Low says the new research helps to further “legitimize the orientation” of asexuality, and it gives teachers, counselors, and clinicians information to “inform interventions, programming, therapy and other kinds of interactions with individuals who identify as asexual.<\/p>\n
“If I were doing therapy with an adolescent who was asexual, I might search the published literature to learn more, and turn up this article, which describes what at least one sample of asexual individuals report experiencing.”<\/p>\n
Robbins got the idea to pursue asexuality as she pondered her senior thesis. She had set the bar pretty high. \u201cI wanted to look at something totally new.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mind kept going back to one of Low\u2019s psychology courses, \u201cWomen, Culture, and Health,\u201d and she recalled how Low had created a safe place in class to talk about \u201cthings people don\u2019t talk about\u201d in the realm of sexuality.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I could do it all.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Around the same time, Low had seen a call for research on asexuality from another scholar. She mentioned it to Robbins, who \u201clooked into it. At the time there were only about seven publications on asexuality.\u201d<\/p>\n
So Robbins launched herself into a broad thesis project, hoping to survey a sample of asexuals; study the relationship between asexuality, sexual aversion, and sexual desire; and gain a better understanding of the coming-out experience for asexuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I could do it all,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
But the topic may have met her \u201ctotally new\u201d criterion a bit too well. Robbins couldn\u2019t find enough answers to get her started.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t even answer the question \u2018How many asexuals are there?\u2019 Every study we looked at used different criteria to recruit their sample. The prevalence went all the way from 0.03 percent of the population to 1 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
So Robbins pulled a Hannibal of sorts, finding a way by making her own.<\/p>\n
She created her own statistically valid questionnaire and obtained 169 coming-out narratives from subjects recruited from online communities dedicated to asexuality.<\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t like the idea of creating something that assigns identity.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In the end, the experience of creating the questionnaire, not the narratives themselves, formed the major part of Robbins\u2019 final thesis. And while Robbins is proud of the thesis \u2014 it won her the department\u2019s Drake Bradley Prize in Statistics \u2014 she\u2019s ambivalent about the questionnaire.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do believe it is useful for researchers, but I don\u2019t like the idea of creating something that assigns identity. I don\u2019t like the idea of not letting people be the ultimate authority of their own sexual identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, I don\u2019t know if assigning an official label is helpful when really what I want to get across to the public is that asexuality is so diverse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, an asexual person can have no romantic feelings (aromantic asexual), or they can have romantic feelings but not sexual ones (romantic asexual). Within that realm, they may be heteroromantic, homoromantic, panromantic, demisexual, demiromantic, and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cRather saying that a person is more asexual or less asexual than someone else,\u201d she says, \u201cit\u2019s more helpful to say that they are just asexual in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n
With her thesis completed, Robbins used her final Short Term to take a good look at the narratives. Annie Query, her friend and fellow psych major who has since earned a master\u2019s in social work from the Smith College School of Social Work, helped review and rate the narratives.<\/p>\n
The successful publication reflects Robbins’ “exceptional tenacity.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cWe then came together and discussed the emergent themes we had found,\u201d Robbins says.<\/p>\n
Professor of Psychology Kathy Low credits Robbins’ “exceptional tenacity” for the achievement of turning her senior thesis into a published article. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
A research assistant at the Yale School of Medicine looking ahead to graduate school, Robbins says that Low has \u201chelped me achieve pretty much every single step from college to now.\u201d<\/p>\n
For her part, Low says the successful publication of the research reflects Robbins’ “exceptional tenacity.” While many seniors create publishable work, many have “difficulty returning to thesis and editing it down to manuscript length.”<\/p>\n
Robbins, however, “really took the initiative with this, and it is a real accomplishment to be first author on a paper like this just a few years out of Bates.”<\/p>\n
A biennial Bates survey shows that around 85 percent of graduating seniors say they\u2019ve developed a close and personal relationship with at least one faculty member.<\/p>\n
![\"Professor](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/10\/kathy-low_0154-copy-400x267.jpg\")