The Golden Orchid association (1644-1949) - a group of women in China that included lesbians, bisexuals, and “women who wanted to avoid both marriage options, and any romantic or sexual partnership” that today we would call asexual or aromantic. 

Another Golden Orchid association link (which, interestingly, describes what appears to be a poly relationship). 

Personal experience of a queer-identifying person noting that aces were part of the bi community in the 80s and 90s.

A book published in 1999 supports the previous link of someone’s personal experience, and notes that asexuals could be considered part of Kinsey’s “Group 3″ (the bisexuals) because they were “about equally homosexual and heterosexual” and “have no strong preferences for one or the other” just like bisexuals. 

Another book that supports the personal experience source by noting that asexuals were considered part of the bisexual “Group 3″, which was published in 1999.

Another post of someone’s personal experiences of asexuals being part of the LGBT+ community in the 90s. 

A source from 1999 noting that, while some female-female relationships in the early to mid-twentieth century were obviously lesbian relationships, not all of them were, but that it would be a mistake to label them all “friendships”. It specifically notes that asexual partnered relationships also existed. 

This book describes a series of interviews done in 1990 by Catherine Whitney who interviewed heterosexual women married to gay men, and found that they were often asexual. It also describes how, in 1990, Ann Landers (a very popular advice columnist) asked her readers if married couples could enjoy a full life without sex and was flooded with 35,000 responses from people of all ages who had little or no sex and didn’t miss it. It also describes how “Boston marriage” was originally coined with a not-necessarily-always-accurate implication that such a relationship between women was nonsexual, but that later on the assumption was reversed to imply women in a sexual lesbian relationship, and how that caused some women involved in such relationships to hide the asexual nature of their relationships for fear of being called frauds by the larger lesbian community.

This 1997 book that states “To be a Kinsey 3 (bisexual) is to be equally attracted to men and women, i.e. completely bisexual…it is also to be equally unattracted to men and women, i.e. completely asexual. Bisexuality is never about two, only about one – asexual, or self-fulfilling – or three – continuously and equally attracted to both men and women”.

Proof of asexuality being considered as a concrete, distinct orientation before 2000:

One of the first online posts about asexuality in its current use, was made in 1997. 

A study on anorexia and bulemia in gay and bisexual men done in 1999 found that 58% of anorexia patients were asexual. 

The 1997 Australasian Gay & Lesbian Law Journal mentions asexual as a “relevant sexual identity”.

A 1983 issue of the Journal of Sex Research studied the Mental Health Implications of Sexual Orientation among heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and asexual people. 

The article “Asexuality as Orientation: Some Historical Perspectives” describes different historical studies on asexuality, including a study from Johnson in 1977 where the word asexual was used to describe women “regardless of physical or emotional condition, actual sexual history, and marital status or ideological orientation, [who] seem to prefer not to engage in sexual activity”. It also describes a 1980 study by Storms who included asexual as one of four orientation categories when mapping out sexual orientation. It also describes a 1983 study by Nurius that found out of 685 participants, 5% of males and 10% of females were asexual. It also describes a 1990 study by Berkley et al. that included questions “related to homosexuality, heterosexuality, and asexuality” and included four items (out of 45) that were specific to asexuality. 

This book published in 1922 contains a lot of what I personally would describe as narcissism and pseudo-science, but acknowledges asexuality nonetheless: “In addition to the ordinary distinctive males and females, we have asexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, and old women of both sexes.”

This book from 1996 that notes “A transsexual may have a heterosexual orientation, a homosexual orientation, a bisexual orientation – or an asexual orientation” and clarifies that “a very small number – are asexual or bisexual.”

This book mentions a study by Malyon in 1981 that noted the options available to gay and lesbian teenagers choosing whether, or how, to come out by “[describing] three possible modes of adaptation in adolescence: repression of sexual desire, suppression of homosexual impulses in favor of heterosexual or asexual orientation, or a homosexual disclosure.”

Kinds of oppression that asexuals face:

Eunjung Kim wrote a chapter titled “How Much Sex Is Healthy? The Pleasures of Asexuality” that describes how “the absence of sexual desires, feelings, and activities is seen as abnormal and reflective of poor health” in Western contemporary culture “because of the explicit connection between sexual activeness and healthiness” and argues that “medical explanations of asexuality as an abnormality that has to be corrected constitute a large part of the stigmatization and marginalization experienced by asexual people.” It also discusses the ways in which some groups, specifically Asian American males, that are desexualized can erase the space for asexual Asian American men to simply exist.

Asexuals also face sexual harassment, rape threats, corrective sexual assault, and corrective rape (which, no, is not a lesbian-only term according to actual South Africans) specifically because they are asexual. 

There was a recent study by the AAU to identify sexual assault on college campuses, and broke down the responders to their survey by sexual orientation, including asexual. The results clearly show that asexuals are not immune to unwanted sexual contact, stalking, intimate partner violence, or sexual harassment.

A chapter of “Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives” that notes the specific way that asexual people are talked to/about: “Because asexual difference cannot be iterated in the linguistic field where sex and a sexed position dominate the discourse of sexuality and desire, the asexual subject is linguistically and visually dismantled and reconstructed in the position of a fetish object. This fetishistic conversion happens because the asexual person is made into an image, or spectacle, for consumption.” and “The difference between the unassailable asexual (someone who lacks all of the traits commonly blamed for asexuality such as past history of abuse, disability, etc.) and the spectacular asexual is that while the unassailable asexual allegedly makes asexuality digestible for a skeptical public and presents an accessible image, the spectacular asexual is always consumed as a fetish object, regardless of mental health, ability, and gender.”

The study “Intergroup bias toward “Group X”: Evidence of prejudice, dehumanization, avoidance, and discrimination of asexuals” is exactly what it sounds like. The article’s abstract states: “In two studies (university student and community samples) we examined the extent to which those not desiring sexual activity are viewed negatively by heterosexuals. We provide the first empirical evidence of intergroup bias against asexuals (the so-called “Group X”), a social target evaluated more negatively, viewed as less human, and less valued as contact partners, relative to heterosexuals and other sexual minorities. Heterosexuals were also willing to discriminate against asexuals (matching discrimination against homosexuals). Potential confounds (e.g., bias against singles or unfamiliar groups) were ruled out as explanations.”

The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality describes many issues that asexuals face, including: how asexuality is seen as “invisible” and lends to people thinking it does not exist, how asexuality is actively erased as “unimportant” or not its own identity, the explicitly and implicitly negative messages associated with a lack of sexual attraction, the fear asexuals face when they believe there is something physically or psychologically wrong with them for being asexual, the belief asexuals face about how they must be deeply flawed since they do not conform to other sexual identities, how asexuals face cultural ideologies that sexuality is biologically based and ubiquitous (that all humans possess sexual desire) and that don’t acknowledge asexuality, that to describe oneself as asexual is a statement of moral superiority or purity or failure to find a suitable partner, that asexuality is an immature state they will “grow out of”, that asexuality is a description of action or a preference, that asexuality is unnatural or unhealthy or has to be a symptom of something else, etc.

Asexuality has been shown in the media in a negative light for decades, reflecting the idea that (for various reasons steeped in classism and racism) any woman who wasn’t willing to marry and procreate was a threat to the status quo, as seen in this 1955 book that notes: “Women who did not marry incurred political and social scorn for another reason. The influx of eastern and southern European immigrants in the United States pushed the question into eugenic terms–the wrong people were reproducing. Educated women came primarily from white middle- and upper-class stock, the most desired element by dominant social norms. When these women refused to marry and reproduce, they forced a new concern into the public discourse. it is not a coincidence that the stereotypical asexual unmarried older woman emerged at this time as a source of popular humor.”

Some people in some religions are very explicit about hating asexuals specifically because they are asexual, seeing asexuality as “a perversion akin to homosexuality and bestiality”. 

Other religions see asexuals as actually sinful if they choose not to have sex with their spouse.

While not every member of every religion looks down on asexuals, many people in portions of various religions choose to view asexuals negatively. 

Some people even recommend asexuals avoid being in a relationship with non-asexuals and assert that “promoting and trying to spread” asexuality, or behaving in an asexual manner, is wrong or unhealthy. 

Because of these religious beliefs about asexuality, that also opens up asexuals to discrimination in various legal ways, including (but not limited to) things like the new adoption bill in Texas. 

Asexuality was implicitly pathologized until very recently, and even now, the DSM-V states that a diagnosis of HSDD may not be given only if the patient has a preexisting knowledge of asexuality and chooses to ID that way.

TL;DR: 

Asexuals have long been considered part of the bisexual community. When people used to talk about bisexuals, it included asexuals because asexuals were the bisexuals too. Bisexual history is asexual history.

Asexuals have also long been considered as a stand-alone orientation that was part of larger non-straight communities and could be studied in comparison to other sexual orientations. 

Asexuals face many of the same issues that other marginalized orientations face as well as issues specific to their orientation. These include erasure, medicalization, misidentification, harassment, rape specifically targeted at them for being asexual, and religious intolerance, to name just a few.  

What’s that?

Both of them have signs showing lists of orientations with “Asexual” included?

And that zero experience turned out to be a problem, because we hadn't had much to do with birds and the thing about a bird's feathers, right, is that you've got a feather that sits in a little sheath thing that's rooted in the body. So what you want to do is pull the feather and sheath both out. But if you're a little kid who's never done this before, all too often, the feather comes out and leaves the sheath in the body. So we'd be doing our best but the ducks would come out maybe a quarter plucked properly and otherwise still full of these feather sheaths, and then it's a matter of going back and pulling all these little sheaths out.

I remember quite clearly, my mother and aunt helping us with this part, because it's fiddly and we were taking forever. They'd take the plucked ducks and re-pluck them properly. And I remember my mum making a remark to my aunt (not maliciously, she didn't know I could hear and was just making conversation), "You know, it would've been easier for us to just do it from the start and not have to deal with all these fiddly little bits." And she was absolutely right -- my brother and I were involved for our benefit in the same way you get a young kid to "help" wash the dishes, we were learning a life skill. But even though we'd done most of the work, we'd removed most of the unwanted mass from the duck's skin, we'd actually made things harder. We'd removed all the feathers and a quarter of the sheaths, but the sheaths are much easier to remove with the feathers attached, so working on a "mostly plucked" duck was a lot more work for the adults than just doing the whole duck from scratch would have been.

my girlfriend is also my man is also "my partner" if i'm in a professional setting. yesterday we went to a ren faire and a man mimed at me - you're together? and at my delighted nod, his baffled, you're gay? made me laugh. a woman with rainbow hair said i love the two of you together. you're both so beautiful it's absurd.

my dad introduced my partner as my "..... friend. or whatever" the other day. he knows we're dating. in the same way, i was never able to get my sister's husband to stop saying that's gay like it's 2008. he still uses the word fa***t, and my sister's defense of him has always been well, he's just kidding.

my lover and i dance to old music in a tiny kitchen. we judge new music together and take food critique very seriously. we watch love is blind before we fall asleep and agree that if they had a queer season, it would be bloody but also make for excellent tv. of fucking course queer people would meet someone for 2 weeks and agree to get married. what are you saying.

at a bar with friends, a man puts his hand on my wrist. got a boyfriend? and yes, i do have a boyfriend, she's amazing. i am texting her while i wander around a gas station named after geese. i am visiting a swing state for a wedding. in the candy aisle i overhear: she's actually like a lesbian it's disgusting. two teenage girls with packaged sandwiches in their hands, giggling. no literally, like. i'm not, like. okay with her being there while we're all, like, naked and changing.

my girlfriend and i tailgate, drink gin and cider out of cups. from the frat group beside us, a man corrects himself with one of his friends: bro, i mean, nonbinary entity, and it makes everyone around him laugh, myself included. he razzes his friend the same way i would have killed for at 19 years old - like nothing happened, he continues: you apply sunscreen like an alien. he does a little sassy (and fairly accurate) dance interpretation of the motion. his friend is laughing so hard they're crying.

i am lucky, i live in a safe neighborhood in a safe state. my masc passenger princess comes up from DC. i drive her for an hour to where all the leaves are a violent arrangement of color. we walk along the trails, letting autumn into our blood. in this part of the state, there's a lot of pickup trucks and trump signs. when we chastely kiss before getting into the car, i accidentally make eye contact with a woman holding her child's wrist. she looks disgusted. she looks fucking pissed.

two hours later my girl and i are eating dinner on a patio, soaking in the last warmth of new england sun before the chill of winter sets in. we are giggling and trying to talk through plastic vampire teeth. at another table, i see a young woman sit up straighter. i watch her watch us. she blushes and takes her partner's hand from across the table. shy, like the taste of evening has just become something deeper.