"'Asexual,' as we use it, does not mean 'without sex' but 'relating sexually to no one.' This does not of course exclude masturbation but implied that if one has sexual feelings, they do not require another person for their expression, Asexuality is, simply, self-contained sexuality."
I found this quote in reading Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture, which has been a really amazing read so far. This has been the first definition of asexuality that has made my heart sing. It makes me excited to recognize myself in a world of possibility, instead of a world of lack. "Little to no attraction" or "lacking sexual attraction" always dug into my feeling of emptiness, of being left out of some feeling I didn't understand in the first place -- but "relating sexually to no one" and "self-contained sexuality" express a state of being that is whole and requires no ill-defined ideas of "attraction" to wrestle with at all.
I need to read both of these.