Challenges With Demisexuality

[exchemist]

Nothing is missing. Let me explain how I experience this

I have no sexual attraction towards anyone. Now, this doesn't mean that I don't date anyone or can't enjoy sex, because I can do those things, but the feeling of sexual attraction itself doesn't exist - not until I'm well into a relationship. Sometimes I've had it take me almost a year before those feelings started to manifest themselves. The first time this happened with me, it did take me by surprise



No one who is asexual talks about it in the open because, specifically, when we do we get awkward conversations like the ones that have been happening in this thread. Not fun to have with people face to face, especially when it effects their opinions of you

No one is pressuring anyone. These are the cards we hold to our chests that folks don't ever have to see



I mean, that's fair. Honestly not a lot of research has been done on the matter. People still have life experiences, though, and not all of them are the same. When folks compare their notes and realize something is up, this is what you get - at least until more research is done

We may be talking slightly at cross purposes. I'm with you entirely that nothing is missing. That has been the point I have been making. What I find a bit objectionable is the label, firstly because I don't think it's a great idea going around labelling the various shades on the spectrum of human sexuality, and and secondly because the label that someone has chosen, probably a man, is one that insinuates something is missing - half, in fact.

But as @JustGeorge has apparently found it helpful, I have to concede it may have served a purpose in her case, so maybe there is a counterargument, in modern American sexual culture at least.

 

[JustGeorge]

Hmm, so much for the sisterhood then.

I always found it funny that the one person who was the most vocal about my right to abstain was a roommate who generally had multiple partners per week.

She seldom brought them home out of respect for my son and I, but on the occasion I'd come across one of these 'quick fling' guys, I'd be uncharacteristically rude to them. She seemed to find it funny, but did ask me why I did that. "You're easy, I don't want them thinking I am by association." Made perfect sense to her!

 

[exchemist]

You might find it interesting that I received harsher judgement from female peers on this topic than male ones(excluding those males that were attempting to pursue me).

Incidentally, what I find slightly ironic in all of this that I find you a slightly flirtatious woman (meant in the nicest possible way). You are about as far from any stereotype of the asexual ice queen as one could ever imagine. You have a select fan club of (discerning?) men here who find ourselves teasing and chatting you up almost instinctively, in a way we do not with other female participants. We can smell the oestrogen over the wires, or something. So it's all rather a paradox.

 

[The Hammer]

No idea what a 'gray race' analogy is about

I just found this:

The Gray Race​

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › The_Gray_Race



View attachment 87059
The Gray Race is the ninth full-length album of the punk rock band Bad Religion, which was released in 1996.

Awesome band!

 

[JustGeorge]

Incidentally, what I find slightly ironic in all of this that I find you a slightly flirtatious woman (meant in the nicest possible way). You are about as far from any stereotype of the asexual ice queen as one could ever imagine. You have a select fan club of (discerning?) men here who find ourselves teasing and chatting you up almost instinctively, in a way we do not with other female participants. We can smell the oestrogen over the wires, or something. So it's all rather a paradox.

Surprises me a bit, really!

My mom told someone(who was concerned about my clothing choices) that whatever I wore was fine, I wasn't looking for attention, and I didn't even know how to flirt. Mom was right!

I was painfully shy due to anxiety, and while guys wanted to talk to me, I was too shy for them to know what to say. So, they'd approach my very loud friend(the one who'd eventually become the roommate I mentioned) and asked what I liked. She'd tell them that I was into guys with long hair, and I'd inevitably get some guy coming up with the line "So, I've been thinking of growing my hair out..." I came to recognize it was a way of a guy showing interest, but always wondered how they knew(she didn't tell me for years how they all seemed to know).

 

[exchemist]

Surprises me a bit, really!

My mom told someone(who was concerned about my clothing choices) that whatever I wore was fine, I wasn't looking for attention, and I didn't even know how to flirt. Mom was right!

I was painfully shy due to anxiety, and while guys wanted to talk to me, I was too shy for them to know what to say. So, they'd approach my very loud friend(the one who'd eventually become the roommate I mentioned) and asked what I liked. She'd tell them that I was into guys with long hair, and I'd inevitably get some guy coming up with the line "So, I've been thinking of growing my hair out..." I came to recognize it was a way of a guy showing interest, but always wondered how they knew(she didn't tell me for years how they all seemed to know).

Well you have plenty of confidence now, that's for sure, at least by correspondence. Maybe it is married life, autistic child and all, that has done it.

 

[JustGeorge]

Well you have plenty of confidence now, that's for sure, at least by correspondence. Maybe it is married life, autistic child and all, that has done it.

I had a small miracle in my late 20s that rid me of that nasty anxiety beast. I'm anything but shy now(and its such a relief). Was a bit after being married and Ares was a baby.

I'll say being rid of that really saved me in relation to parenting Ares... I'm not sure how I'd have done it otherwise.

 

[crossfire]

Yeah, it feels to me as if there is far too much labelling and pigeon-holing going on. I'm uneasy about it, as it seems to me both reductive and pseudo-scientific. It also has, maybe just to my increasingly elderly nose, a smell of that ghastly crusading American sexual politics that wants to slot everyone into a tribe so they can tell which "side" they are on and makes us all fight one another. (Exhibit A: J K Rowling; Exhibit B: Trump, and so on)

But to be fair, I see that @JustGeorge seems to have found the classification personally helpful in reassuring her she is not that unusual. So maybe it has its value, at least on the modern American sexual scene. This, from her description, seems to have become very demanding of instant attraction, in a way that is alien to my experiences of 30-50 years ago in the UK. Perhaps it's the advent of things like internet dating, or else simply the completion of the process of commodifying sex and detaching it from love, Brave New World style, that the 60s sexual revolution started. I admit to being amazed at the approach of my son and his peers at university today, with their "hookups", "friends with benefits" etc.

Without a label to draw boundaries, everything is "negotiable" then, eh? "Negotiating" with a demisexual regarding sex is probably counterproductive, as manipulation will probably damage any emotional bonds within the demisexual, simultaneously quashing any budding sexual attraction that might be developing along with it.

 

[Bthoth]

Hmmm... Let's say someone is hungry. They can choose to eat or not. Let's say someone isn't hungry. They can still choose to eat or not. The choice is there, but beneath the choice is the initial feeling of hunger. Is the feeling of hunger a choice or not, because what I'm talking about is the primal feeling itself

Of course, you repaint the picture to sound right.

People who are asexual have no feeling of attraction, or very little.

OK. i did not debate that.

They can choose to engage in relationships or not. The choice is there, but beneath that is the initial feeling of attraction

OK.......... Yor so smaught

Now, you can choose to believe that stuff or not, but what folks are referring to is the initial feeling they experience when people talk about it, not the act of abstaining or not




Ok

OK.......... Make a religion.