To argue that this should is not a suitable topic for the Girl Guides

[MovedByFanciesThatAreCurled]

Girlguiding is for girls, aged 10-14. So why then do they feel the need to promote this on their social media?

This week is #AceWeek - a time to raise awareness and understanding of the asexual community. So here’s a shout-out to all of our asexual volunteers and members – thank you for everything you do in Girlguiding.

The reference to ‘members’ is quite clear. What on earth were they thinking in making reference to young girls’ sex lives (or lack of them according to the focus of the Tweet). How, as an organisation, have they strayed so far? I have two boys in the Scouts/Beavers and if this came up on either of their social media pages I would pull them out. Why is it seen to be an acceptable for Girlguiding?!!

Dictionary definition of attraction in several well known dictionaries I just checked all have a variation on strongly liking, often sexually, how another person looks or behaves.

If a person who is asexual can be in love with a partner then they must have liked how that person behaves, at least, at some point presumably? And those people will have been either male or female so the person who first liked then loved their partner will be straight or homosexual or bisexual if they’ve ‘just’ liked then loved a partner from both sexes.

Sexuality doesn’t mean being sexually attracted to a person. It which sex a person is attracted to. Many people will also feel sexual attraction to them, but plenty of us it isn’t as straight forward as that and variations on what constitutes attraction will vary somewhat, because it’s not like it’s something we can get out and compare (no pun intended). It can involve lots of sexual or physical reactions but it also involves emotional reactions and one persons attraction might not be the same as another’s. In the absence of such things there’s well known definitions of words that have been in dictionaries for eons. That doesn’t need dressed up as super special with a rainbow ribbon on top.

The problem is it all smells a bit like welcoming unsavoury types

thanks @Leafstamp - WTF - why do you classify asexuals as an unsavoury type?
Because they don;t want to have sex with you?

They're on the politically correct bandwagon. It seems every organisation nowadays has the same agenda.

Would a relationship with another asexual person be an option?

Yes, personally this is something I would consider, I would like to be in a relationship and to have a family but obviously the chances of meeting another asexual person in my local area are slim. There are asexual dating sites but I have social anxiety plus PTSD from a past trauma and I don’t find it easy to trust the motives of the people on there, I get anxious that I would meet someone who says they are asexual but that then when it comes to it they would pressure or force sex on me. Obviously these are my issues many of which fall outside simply my asexuality and I probably need more therapy to address them further and move on in my life, but sorry probably not the thread to be discussing all that.

YABU

I’m asexual and only found out about the term asexuality three years ago (aged 30)

Imagine my relief, having spent 10 years feeling like a freak of nature and forcing myself to kiss, touch and sleep with people in the hopes of ‘waking up’ my sexuality.

Imagine my relief knowing that there are other people like me and I am not ‘broken’.

If only I had known it’s okay to not want sex (contrary to the standard assumption and predominant narrative that you’re randy as anything, because hormones and it’s ‘normal for teens’ behave like this etc), perhaps I wouldn’t have felt such societal pressure or the need to put myself through unwanted sexual experiences.

@Lynne1Cat

They're on the politically correct bandwagon. It seems every organisation nowadays has the same agenda.

What bandwagon? What agenda?

People who don’t want to sleep with others should be forced to?

Okay then

@MolkosTeenageAngst ok i get that you are asexual from your description, but what many other people are describing would be commonly understood as having a low sex drive or libido and not an orientation that needs protection from discrimination and abuse. I think it is valid to discuss being asexual as it is on the opppsite ennd of the spectrum as those people who are hypersexed. Have any studies been done on people who have no sex drive / sexual attraction in terms of hormone levels?

YANBU

It is not for GG to talk to young children about sex or sexuality. And young teens may well be "asexual" but they may just not be interested in sex yet and don't need a label.

Fine to be aware of things but celebrating labels pushes young people into thinking the need an "identity" at an age where everything is still fluid. Nailing your mast to a gender or sexuality at such a young age is wrong IMO and at that age people should be left alone to work things out for themselves whilst supported if they have questions and accepted for who they are without it being a massive deal to the point it is the only thing that validates them and the most interesting thing about them.

DS is only 9 but I am bringing him up that he can wear what he likes, play with what he likes and when he is older sleep with (or not sleep with) whoever he likes. But if that is central to his personality and the most interesting thing about him I'll feel like I've failed.

*caveat - sleep with who he likes provided they are not a child, or a family member and they feel the same way about proceedings.

Obviously

Sexual attraction towards another person and experiencing sexual feelings/ a sex drive/ being horny etc are not the same.

Indeed. But if someone has a sex drive they are not, by definition, asexual. You can’t sensibly lump people with no sex drive together with people who are “horny” and say they are in the same category.

[quote Flapjak]@MolkosTeenageAngst ok i get that you are asexual from your description, but what many other people are describing would be commonly understood as having a low sex drive or libido and not an orientation that needs protection from discrimination and abuse. I think it is valid to discuss being asexual as it is on the opppsite ennd of the spectrum as those people who are hypersexed. Have any studies been done on people who have no sex drive / sexual attraction in terms of hormone levels?[/quote]
I don’t know the answers in terms of having no or a low sex drive and hormone levels, although I think the question again suggests that to be asexual is not normal and is something that could or should be treated.

I think the difference with being asexual and having a low sex drive is that presumably people with a low sex drive still feel physically attracted to others, they are still aware as to whether they are gay or straight? They might not want to progress to having sex but they still feel attraction and crushes towards others. Sex drive and libido is something that naturally waxes and wanes for people but sexual orientation, as in which sex you are attracted to, typically doesn’t. An asexual person isn’t attracted to either/ any sex or gender regardless of their own sex drive. I disagree being asexual is opposite to being hyper sexed, I would say it is the opposite of being bisexual as in instead of feeling attraction to both sexes you feel attraction to neither sex. Personally I don’t think sex drive needs to come into it, mine is low but know there are plenty of people in committed relationships who also have a low sex drive just as there will be asexual people with higher sex drives (which may or may not be satisfied with masturbation etc, not all asexual people with a typical sex drive will seek out another person to have consensual sex with although some may).

That said I understand that this is just my understanding of what it means to be asexual, I suppose I can’t police how others may consider who fits under the term. Maybe there are men/ women who I would consider to be straight/ gay who would self-identify as asexual due to their low sex drives, despite having what I would consider a sexual orientation and specific attraction towards others. Indeed I have looked on asexual dating websites before and all of them ask you to specify whether you are seeking a man or a woman which is confusing to me considering I’m not attracted to either sex, and so of course I don’t really have a preference, but I accept it may feel different to others.

@WiseUpJanetWeiss

Sexual attraction towards another person and experiencing sexual feelings/ a sex drive/ being horny etc are not the same.

Indeed. But if someone has a sex drive they are not, by definition, asexual. You can’t sensibly lump people with no sex drive together with people who are “horny” and say they are in the same category.

Well there are ways to satisfy being horny which don’t involve another person. Many asexual people don’t feel sexual attraction towards others and so don’t want a partner and so satisfy their sex drives with madturbation/ toys etc.

Being asexual means you are not physically attracted to any/ either sex or gender. It doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t want or enjoy sexual pleasure.

Equally some people who are straight/ gay etc may choose to abstain, whether temporarily or permanently, from sex. But being celibate doesn’t mean they are asexual if they still experience physical attraction to others, regardless of whether they act on it.

My understanding is that being asexual is about who you are physically attracted to, or rather the fact that you don’t feel that physical attraction, and nothing to do with whether you are able to become sexually aroused or experience sexual pleasure. The two are not mutually exclusive.

@WiseUpJanetWeiss

Sexual attraction towards another person and experiencing sexual feelings/ a sex drive/ being horny etc are not the same.

Indeed. But if someone has a sex drive they are not, by definition, asexual. You can’t sensibly lump people with no sex drive together with people who are “horny” and say they are in the same category.

This ^^

Judging by some of the explanations of asexuality on this thread I should be classing myself as asexual.

While I have a high sex drive I don’t find people sexually attractive by looking at them.

I need to know a man and trust him implicitly and feel safe before I feel attraction of any sort. And while I fall in love and definitely enjoy sex I’m not sure if this would be what the asexual posters mean by sexual attraction. I feel a huge pull to dh, but it’s not like I blush when I see him or anything, not like I get butterflies or turned on just because I see him. Same with the description of crushes and fancying people -I had boyfriend after boyfriend growing up. I never had any interest in any of them until they chased after me, and I never had any interest in anyone else while I was with each boyfriend. I thought actors/musicians were good looking or beautiful or looked interesting or cool, but these weren’t terribly strong feelings, definitely not sexual ones. I got silly over excited about writers I loved or musicians whose songs I was crazy about, but it was never a sexual thing- I never understood how my friends were carving 4real into their arms to show their love for Richie James Edwards without barely knowing any of the songs he wrote, I was way more interested in pouring over his lyrics.

Judging by the explanations here I should be asexual.

Personally I’d say I was straight. With the ‘usual’ fooling around with girls for the boys watching phase as teen. But I don’t see the point there outside of that for me as I’ve never fell in love with a woman, so I think I’m bog standard straight.

I could possibly explain it by being a typical infj combined with ptsd from abusive childhood, I’ve definitely been known to describe it as not being very superficial of by saying I am very self absorbed and don’t really notice others that much, or that I’m down right selfish and have zero interest in fucking anyone who doesn’t make me feel like the centre of their universe.

I don’t think any of the ways I have termed this previously alter the fact that I’m plain old straight.

I've always considered Girl Guides etc a social & practical skills thing ( as most of the badges are for practical life skills & I was a Girl Guide for 4 yrars). I think sex education & gender issues should be in a school context. Having it in a Guiding environment is a can of worms re possible mixed messages, confusion & the educational skills of those delivering the message etc. Do they have a structured Policy on the subject & it's delivery: & is it available for parents would be my question.

Being asexual means you are not physically attracted to any/ either sex or gender. It doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t want or enjoy sexual pleasure.

Who gets to make these definitions? Asexual literally means “without sex”. Surely the alphabet soup could find space for one word that means “has no interest in sex” and another that means “prefers sex with self”. Autosexual perhaps.

@BloodinGutters

You sound straight to me too. I have probably been clumsy in how I have referred to physical/ sexual attraction as obviously it’s not something I have ever felt and so I don’t know what it feels like for people who are straight/ gay etc. Maybe sexual/ physical attraction was too specific and not broad enough, maybe I just mean attraction in general. I have never felt attraction to others or had a crush etc in a way that was ever anything other than platonic, I never felt any differently towards anybody I have had sex with than I did towards any other person. I didn’t feel differently towards my boyfriend than I did any other close friend, I couldn’t really make a distinction between the way people would feel towards a potential partner and the way you would feel towards a close friend. I can’t tell what makes one attraction feel different to the other because there is no distinction to me.

It sounds like you had crushes on writers/ musicians and had an interest in boys who chased you. That sounds to me like some kind of attraction which was different towards what you would feel towards a person you admired or were friends with but had no interest in beyond platonically? As I said I would be the complete wrong person to say what that attraction is, having never felt it, but whatever that feeling was that made you ‘interested’ in a boy after he chased you is presumably the attraction you feel that makes it more than platonic and which enabled you to know you were straight?

This is Yasmin Benoit who set up the hashtag this is what ace looks like

This is her celebration of ace week.

Yasmin is very unhappy about girl guiding getting grief for this.

Some women fancy men.
Some women fancy women.
Some women fancy both.
Some women fancy neither.
It's all fine.
Here endeth my lesson for 10-14 year olds.

@Lynne1Cat

They're on the politically correct bandwagon. It seems every organisation nowadays has the same agenda.

Do you have any idea how unhinged you sound?

Do you remember the section 28 hysteria? This kind of talk is EXACTLY the same. You sound absolutely batshit.

[quote MolkosTeenageAngst]@BloodinGutters

You sound straight to me too. I have probably been clumsy in how I have referred to physical/ sexual attraction as obviously it’s not something I have ever felt and so I don’t know what it feels like for people who are straight/ gay etc. Maybe sexual/ physical attraction was too specific and not broad enough, maybe I just mean attraction in general. I have never felt attraction to others or had a crush etc in a way that was ever anything other than platonic, I never felt any differently towards anybody I have had sex with than I did towards any other person. I didn’t feel differently towards my boyfriend than I did any other close friend, I couldn’t really make a distinction between the way people would feel towards a potential partner and the way you would feel towards a close friend. I can’t tell what makes one attraction feel different to the other because there is no distinction to me.

It sounds like you had crushes on writers/ musicians and had an interest in boys who chased you. That sounds to me like some kind of attraction which was different towards what you would feel towards a person you admired or were friends with but had no interest in beyond platonically? As I said I would be the complete wrong person to say what that attraction is, having never felt it, but whatever that feeling was that made you ‘interested’ in a boy after he chased you is presumably the attraction you feel that makes it more than platonic and which enabled you to know you were straight?[/quote]
Nope not crushes on writers/musicians- I made that very clear. Just excited by their words, their art, not sexually so.

You aren’t the only person on this thread who says they are asexual. Posters up thread said they can be asexual and fall in love with someone and enjoy sex and feel horny, but not be sexually attracted to someone. That describes me very well. I’m just well aware it isn’t anything other than being straight, with a heap of introversion and trauma in my case.

Is there a legal definition of asexuality? Is it defined under the equality act protected characteristics? If there is that’s the definition and people need to stop interpreting it however they like. Otherwise these continual variations on it are meaningless, your definition is no more right than the varying definitions upthread. And judging by several of the explanations up thread I almost definitely fit that category, but I think that would be bloody precious of me to claim that. I have zero need for acceptance or validation that I don’t find others hot.

@Clymene

This is Yasmin Benoit who set up the hashtag this is what ace looks like

This is her celebration of ace week.

Yasmin is very unhappy about girl guiding getting grief for this.

Is this the asexual underwear collection promised?

Not sure how that’s asexual though. Is it because it chafes?

@tennischamp



This was not posted by the Guides but it's useful to help understand what asexual looks like

@tennischamp

this post was the bettor of the two - this is what asexual looks like
Yup, invisible

[quote MolkosTeenageAngst]@BloodinGutters

You sound straight to me too. I have probably been clumsy in how I have referred to physical/ sexual attraction as obviously it’s not something I have ever felt and so I don’t know what it feels like for people who are straight/ gay etc. Maybe sexual/ physical attraction was too specific and not broad enough, maybe I just mean attraction in general. I have never felt attraction to others or had a crush etc in a way that was ever anything other than platonic, I never felt any differently towards anybody I have had sex with than I did towards any other person. I didn’t feel differently towards my boyfriend than I did any other close friend, I couldn’t really make a distinction between the way people would feel towards a potential partner and the way you would feel towards a close friend. I can’t tell what makes one attraction feel different to the other because there is no distinction to me.

It sounds like you had crushes on writers/ musicians and had an interest in boys who chased you. That sounds to me like some kind of attraction which was different towards what you would feel towards a person you admired or were friends with but had no interest in beyond platonically? As I said I would be the complete wrong person to say what that attraction is, having never felt it, but whatever that feeling was that made you ‘interested’ in a boy after he chased you is presumably the attraction you feel that makes it more than platonic and which enabled you to know you were straight?[/quote]
Oh I also have no idea what it feels like for people who are straight/gay either.

I’ve never been in anybody’s head but mine.

They are only promoting a sexuality as a thing so all the children who don’t experience adult sexual feelings after taking sex change hormones as teenagers think they have an identity. Wake up women, fight this nonsense.

@BloodinGutters

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to offend you or suggest that you don’t know your own identity or to misconstrue what you were saying. Apologies if I misunderstood your excitement at the words of writers as a crush, I wasn’t meaning a crush in a sexual sense at all but I suppose as something more than platonic. My friends first started talking about having crushes in primary school so my assumption is a crush isn’t always sexual, but equally is something more than platonic, but it sounds like that wasn’t what you meant or I’ve misunderstood/ over analysed it.

I think if you identify as straight then you are straight and that, like all sexualities, there is probably a spectrum. You’re right that I don’t think there is a legal definition of asexual (and I’m not aware of what the legal definitions of straight/ gay etc are) and so it’s open to interpretation and I imagine like with all sexualities the exact definition of what it means to fall within it may vary a bit between others. I was only expressing my definition of what I take being asexual to mean but accept other people who also identify in the same way may feel differently or that there will be people who fit my definition or the definition of others who don’t identify as asexual.

Obviously there is no test for sexuality and it isn’t black and white so it’s not possible to categorise everybody, and nor should we try to. I find asexuality had been a helpful label in understanding why I have never had crushes, why I didn’t have relationships growing up and why I’ve never enjoyed sex and in beginning to frame myself as something other than abnormal but that doesn’t mean I think anybody else has to label themselves as such or that I would profess to be an expert. Sorry if it came across like that.