Stonewall releases report on "dehumanising" discrimination against asexuals

Definitely tiny convenience sample.

It’s also comparing dissimilar things.

People with a single sex partner ‘out’ themselves at work by doing prosaic things like saying ‘my wife’ or referring to a partner by name. They generally are not talking about their sex life.

To ‘come out’ as asexual anywhere you need to instigate a conversation about your sex life and sexual preferences. Generally people don’t do that at work.

Otherwise people will just assume you are single. Loads of people are single.

And those married asexual people - literally no one cares if you are having sex. They might remember that your husband is called Clive and he’s very keen on cycling though.

It always is with Stonewall. They just manipulate the results to get whatever bullshit answer they want (and probably because they have no-one with the skills to put together valid data or even to udestand why what they are doing is invalid).

Not wanting sex doesn’t mean asexual people do not want to be parents. They deserve access to fertility treatments even if they are not having sex.

Asexual people do have access to fertilitiy treatments. Oh, wait. You don't mean access do you? You mean you want it paid for because you are super special.

No one should be forced to have sex to become a parent in this day and age.

Nobody is 'forced' to have sex to become a parent (at least not by the state).

Me either.

Why would you tell someone that unless they were coming on to you and you needed to explain it was a non starter?

I might as well explain to people on arrival that I'm a Dark Winter Libra Kibbe Dramatic Classic bibliophile. Why would they care?

I suspect the people surveyed might not be representative of the general population.

I think it's a tiny convenience sample, from something I read about it.

At work, half of ace people (49%) weren’t out to any colleagues, more than twice the rate of all LGBTQ+ respondents (18%).

50% of all the people who responded to this survey tell their work colleagues that they aren't having sex. The other 50% are apparently oppressed by the fact their colleagues don't know about their sex lives.

I suspect the people surveyed might not be representative of the general population.

If anyone declared to me that they were "asexual", my reply would be "Is that a way of saying that you're not interested in me sexually? Good to know."

Because I wouldn't be able to think of any other reason they'd tell me that.

(Well, politely ignoring the possibility of the *I'm so different and special, me" aspect )

1. How does this make asexual people different from single people?
2. This is a funding issue. There isn't enough funding for all heterosexual couples who have been having unprotected sex for years and still can't conceive to access fertility treatment on the NHS. All the couples I know in the UK who have had a baby through IVF had to pay to go privately. Even lesbian couples who cannot conceive without a sperm donor are required to try several rounds of IUI before they are eligible for IVF. There simply isn't enough money to help all the people out there with proven infertility, but you want it to be used to fund fertility treatment for people who aren't known to have any fertility problems? What?
3. Asexual women are not prevented from accessing contraception.
4. Asexual people are not prevented from accessing STI screening and treatment.
5. Asexual couples have exactly the same marriage and civil partnership rights as all other couples.

Jo Bartosch wrote this excellent and very amusing article:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/10/31/asexual-rights-and-the-endless-quest-for-victimhood/

"The complaints documented in the report are predictably ludicrous. Some respondents bemoan the fact they can’t ‘come out’ as asexual at work, as if British employees are mandated to chunter on about their sex lives to management.

Others whinge that when they’ve mentioned their lack of sexual interest to ‘healthcare providers’, asexuality was ‘not recognised as a type of sexual orientation’. Instead it ‘was treated as a disorder that needed to be fixed’. And while, on the one hand, the authors argue that asexuality ought not to be pathologised, with their other free hand, they note that 41.8 per cent of ace respondents ‘considered themselves to have mental-health issues, most commonly with anxiety or depression’."

If people who don't have sex want to have a baby then crack on with IVF, just don't expect the NHS to fund it.

How on earth does this make sense?

The woman who conceives a child after a three minute bunk up, then carries the child, gives birth to the child and raises the child is no more worthy or valued than the woman who conceives a child through IVF, then carries the child, gives birth to the child and raises the child.

If you honestly think the value of pregnancy and motherhood lies in the sex that results in conception rather than everything else, that is ridiculous.

Everything you've said here could apply to single people who don't claim a special genderist identity.

Try again.

There are a lot of unhappily married people out there who will tell you that marriage does not always imply sex.

"This was discrimination against opposite sex couples who were asexual but wanted a partnership without the sex- as marriage always implies sex."

I don't remember any questions about my sex life when getting married or anything in the vows that suggested anything to do with sex.

I think that it's less that marriage implies sex and more that some people have mistakenly inferred that marriage always means sex.

No one is trying to ‘cure asexuality’ by pointing out that you and your partner could just try having sex to make a baby or accept that you aren’t having one because you aren’t interested in having sex.

I've only read the first 40-50 posts in the thread so apologies if I'm repeating a point someone else has made subsequently. Do asexual people like the couple mentioned think that everyone who has a baby the usual way always does so through joyous enthusiastic sex that they are permanently turned on for? Do they have any conception (sorry) idea of how many babies are conceived through grit-your-teeth-and-do-it-anyway, means-to-an-end-style sex when neither of you are really in the mood but the fertility tracker says you're about to ovulate? That's especially the case when you're facing the possibility of actual infertility and starting a family isn't happening as easily as you hoped, but you have to prove to the clinic that you've been trying for X amount of time before they'll even give you an appointment.

Yes, let's have all local authorities etc mark "Asexual Day of Visibility" and fly the flag. And people can learn in their jobs about the plight of asexual people in the U.K. in 2023.

I know.

Keep going, I say. Let's have it.

Datun

I just remain utterly baffled that stonewall could look at the utter state of well everything and go “you know who is really being victimised & got it tough? People who don’t want to have sex”

I mean how much of a privilege bubble would you have to live in?

as marriage always implies sex.

that's funny, because there are a dozens of 1970s and 80s comics who built their entire act around the exact opposite.

This was discrimination against opposite sex couples who were asexual but wanted a partnership without the sex- as marriage always implies sex.

lots of married people don’t have sex. I don’t because I have vaginal atrophy. No one gives a flying fuck whther ppl in civil partnerships or marriages are having sex or not except the 2 people involved

Asexuality isn't just 'not wanting to have sex'. Essentially it amounts to not having a sexual attraction to anyone.

What does that mean? You don't fancy anyone?

Do you have any idea how many people don't fancy anyone? How many can just take or leave sex?

It's not a thing. It's completely normal. So much so that until five minutes ago, it was often considered an innate part of the female psyche.

That, of course, was on the basis of sexism. But nonetheless, not having a physical reaction to another person is unremarkable.

Sex drive, and therefore arousal, is on a spectrum.

And until this determination to label every aspect of human behaviour, everyone knew that.