It’s an identity the majority of people are completely unaware of, but as it slowly seeps into the mainstream, more and more people are becoming familiar with the term and discovering that they too are graysexual.

It’s been accepted into the broader LGBTQ+ umbrella, particularly within the asexual community.

Back in 2015, an ‘Asexual Census’ found that 1,427 people of 9,161 participants identified as graysexual – that’s 15.5 percent.

While the term itself was first coined in the early 2000s, it has gained traction online in recent weeks.

“So I was hanging out with my friend the other day and he asked me if I could explain my sexuality to him so he could understand it a bit better because he knows what asexual is as a broad term but didn’t know specifically what it meant for me,” she shared.

Many would have been offended by the question, perceiving it as ‘ignorance’, but Chanel explained that that was not the case for her as she welcomed the curiosity.

The TikToker said: “Now to help you understand what that is like imagine the world is obsessed with tennis the way it’s obsessed with sex. Sex doesn’t exist anymore, we just have tennis.

“Your friend comes around like, ‘oh my god, it’s been eight months since I last played tennis. I know at this point my arms have cobwebs; I don’t even know if I remember how to serve anymore – at this point I’m just gonna have to go into town and find a stranger to play tennis with because, what am I going to do? I’m dying’.

The international graysexual flag (Getty stock)

“You’re out with your friends and a guy walks past and everyone under their breath is like, ‘oh my God, look at his arms. I bet he can serve. I bet he covers the court. Yeah, bet he can handle a racket.'”

She continued: “You’re on a dating app and you’re speaking to someone and every conversation that you try to have, they just keep trying to lead it back to tennis and sending you pictures of them in little shorts with a racket, and you’re like, ‘yeah, tennis is great. But anyway, back to what we were talking about before’. And they’re like, ‘yes, but tennis.'”

“Unless somebody turned up and was like, ‘Chanel should we go and play tennis’, and I’m like, ‘oh actually that’s a fun thing, yeah let’s go and do that’. I would never spontaneously think about tennis the same way that I would never spontaneously think about sex.”

Chanel went on to explain how if someone brought it up to her she would think, ‘oh yeah, that exists – that’s a fun time, why not?’, but that she has never experienced sexual attraction in her life.