Asexuality

[NettleTea]

So I know asexuality is a thing. Low sex drive diminishing to nowt. Or a low libido that often doesnt get airtime because the media would have it that its the normal state of affairs for everyone to be gagging for it 24/7

Or hand in hand with things like ASD

Or developes because you are in a sexually unfulfilling relationship and if you dont use it, etc.

It can come and go, or can be a constant

However Ive seen a fair bit of it being included now in teaching materials for schools, and I wondered if this was due to trying to normalise the absence of sexual feeling so that children who undergo hormone replacement and puberty blockers, and as a result have no developement of normal sexual feelings wont know that its not very unusual in teens/young 20s. Its only fairly recently that this loss/absence of sexual function/drive has been coming to light, and its only recently that teaching about asexuality has been included in the curriculum.

LetsHaveCake, the situation you're describing is what I think of when someone describes themselves as asexual. And yes, I can empathise and understand that it's a useful term to set expectations with potential partners or family members. Ironically, you'd probably have had a comfortable option of a religious order a few generations ago, where not having any sexual interest would have been viewed through the lens of devotion to a higher calling.

I think it is an advance to set out the idea that some people do not have any sexual interest at all, ever. It feels like it's a necessary corrective to the past several decades of ever more enthusiastic sex positivity, which has now steamed past "sex is normal and not shameful" to "everyone must be gagging for it all the time, indiscriminately, and if they don't want to hear about it 24/7 it's because they're bigots."

The issues I'm having is the way internet subcultures are changing and often subverting common word definitions (the "asexual because I don't desire the many, many people I shag" version sounds like something a prostitute would tell herself to get through the day), and then freaking out when their latest definition leads to widespread normie bafflement. Big brands are getting better and better at mining online culture and selling it back to people too, so it's no surprise to see subcultural self-discovery and acceptance being marketed as tribes, flags and ever-malleable definitions.

And yes to children feeling like they should declare identities younger and younger. I have teens & tweens, and I've now seen several kids declare themselves ace or pan in years 7 or 8. My 13-year-old was musing about being ace and I had to come clean and explain that I didn't feel the first flutterings of sexual interest in other people until I was 17, and then didn't actually act on a mutual interest until a few weeks off my 20th birthday. That wasn't to tell her it was wrong to be asexual, but to let her know that her boundaries are normal (God, I shudder at the idea of her thinking it's just "being ace" to shag people you don't fancy) and to give her some time and space to grow up and complete adolescence before declaring her personal "brand."

Totally agree with all you say, @TartrazineCustard

The issues I'm having is the way internet subcultures are changing and often subverting common word definitions (the "asexual because I don't desire the many, many people I shag" version sounds like something a prostitute would tell herself to get through the day)

That's a great point.

I actually asked someone who was saying that aromantics are discriminated against at work what that constituted and they said "people at work asking if you were ever going to have a boyfriend." It's as if we're entirely losing our ability to deal with things like a work colleague being a bit over intrusive without turning it into some sort of discrimination against your "identity".

Yes. That started with people realising that it was discriminatory to ask women at work when they were going to have children (which was linked to real-world employment consequences), then stretched to childfree-by-choice people loudly complaining if anyone ever asked them if they had or wanted children (which was mainly about irritation about being made to feel like they weren't living up to a cultural expectation), and now asking anyone a question about something they regard as their identity can result in them feeling violated.

It feels like something has gone off-course. Surely the point of liberation is that if someone asked you if you have or will do "x," and the answer is no, in a just world you could just say "Nope!" and everyone would move on.

(And yes, I realise the world is often not just - but it seems like that's been given up on in favour of policing individual micro-interactions.)

I actually asked someone who was saying that aromantics are discriminated against at work what that constituted and they said "people at work asking if you were ever going to have a boyfriend." It's as if we're entirely losing our ability to deal with things like a work colleague being a bit over intrusive without turning it into some sort of discrimination against your "identity".

I agree with this.

Apart from anything else it's a deeply unproductive way of viewing the world, to always be seeing yourself as a "victim" of others and at the continual mercy of what they might say or do to disturb your identity - it's giving others huge power over you to frame things that are perfectly normal and unremarkable states in this way.

I've effectively been single (by choice)for most of my life and I am not being "oppressed" by other people's thoughts, questions or actions around that state nor am I a "victim" of "microaggressions". How would it benefit me to frame things in that way unless I want to claim some form of victimhood?

Sure it can be annoying sometimes to have assumptions made about you but that's true for everyone in all sorts of situations and I'm sure I've done it myself too..(and maybe even on this thread!)

@LetsHaveCake

Not massively. Mostly if someone is inquiring about my relationship situation or in discussions about dating.

Sometimes in health situations because there's an automatic assumption that you are sexually active.

With friends sometimes if sex is being discussed because I don't know what some terms mean.

But its basically mostly relevant in relationship situations.

Your posts show where the term asexual actually makes sense LetsHaveCake, for you and those who you may become involved with.

I think the ‘at work’ thing is also an appropriation of LGB people’s past struggles. If you’re in a same-sex relationship and your colleagues are homophobic, or you think they might be, you can’t honestly answer when there’s general office chat about what you did at the weekend, or have pictures of your family on your desk, and so on. You might well, as a consequence, struggle to fit in, be seen as aloof or not a team player, and your career might suffer as a result.

However, thankfully society has moved on and LGB people now have protection from overt discrimination at work and generally there’s a lot less of the covert kind too. But today’s identitarians have taken this reasonable point and made it mean that you have the right to have all aspects of your ‘identity’ unquestioningly validated by your colleagues or you’re being oppressed.

@terryleather

I actually asked someone who was saying that aromantics are discriminated against at work what that constituted and they said "people at work asking if you were ever going to have a boyfriend." It's as if we're entirely losing our ability to deal with things like a work colleague being a bit over intrusive without turning it into some sort of discrimination against your "identity".

I agree with this.

Apart from anything else it's a deeply unproductive way of viewing the world, to always be seeing yourself as a "victim" of others and at the continual mercy of what they might say or do to disturb your identity - it's giving others huge power over you to frame things that are perfectly normal and unremarkable states in this way.

I've effectively been single (by choice)for most of my life and I am not being "oppressed" by other people's thoughts, questions or actions around that state nor am I a "victim" of "microaggressions". How would it benefit me to frame things in that way unless I want to claim some form of victimhood?

Sure it can be annoying sometimes to have assumptions made about you but that's true for everyone in all sorts of situations and I'm sure I've done it myself too..(and maybe even on this thread!)

as well as seeing yourself as a victim, it also highlights how that uncomfortable feelings are being described or experienced as anxiety (although I acknowledge that MH is real and devastating, as have several family members who have been crippled by such, including hospitalisations for it)

I suspect alot of this comes from a detatchment of body from mind, driven by so much social interaction being done online, and so much description of normal emotions being pathologised and needing, again, labels and often medication.

It seems that unless we are experiencing blissful joy, all the rest needs dealing with

however Im not downplaying the massive pressure and detachment from nature, especially, modern life is having on people, especially young people who have never known anything different. At least we oldies have the priviledge of looking back fondly on our youth spent running feral til teatime and saying 'oh the kids of today'

I suspect the kids of today are grappling with the real life implications of living at almost the peak of consumerism, neoliberal post modernist corporate driven digital media, where everything needs to be categorised so that it can be sold things

Apart from anything else it's a deeply unproductive way of viewing the world, to always be seeing yourself as a "victim" of others and at the continual mercy of what they might say or do to disturb your identity - it's giving others huge power over you to frame things that are perfectly normal and unremarkable states in this way.

This is what I find strange about non-binary - it seems entirely dependent on other people. A trans person, if they pass well enough, can just be "male" or "female" to most of the people they come across but you can't be recognized as "non-binary" other than specifically informing people that that's what you are. It seems odd to have an "identity" which can't actually exist except in the minds of others.

This is a really interesting thread.

WRT categorising for marketing purposes, I'm reminded of a video of Bill Hicks on marketing that I saw on youtube years ago. Endlessly putting people into boxes to sell more stuff. As parents, we see this with pink and blue versions of everything so that parents buy two instead of one so it's not a big leap to me to see that more boxes = more money.

@TartrazineCustard

LetsHaveCake, the situation you're describing is what I think of when someone describes themselves as asexual. And yes, I can empathise and understand that it's a useful term to set expectations with potential partners or family members. Ironically, you'd probably have had a comfortable option of a religious order a few generations ago, where not having any sexual interest would have been viewed through the lens of devotion to a higher calling.

I think it is an advance to set out the idea that some people do not have any sexual interest at all, ever. It feels like it's a necessary corrective to the past several decades of ever more enthusiastic sex positivity, which has now steamed past "sex is normal and not shameful" to "everyone must be gagging for it all the time, indiscriminately, and if they don't want to hear about it 24/7 it's because they're bigots."

The issues I'm having is the way internet subcultures are changing and often subverting common word definitions (the "asexual because I don't desire the many, many people I shag" version sounds like something a prostitute would tell herself to get through the day), and then freaking out when their latest definition leads to widespread normie bafflement. Big brands are getting better and better at mining online culture and selling it back to people too, so it's no surprise to see subcultural self-discovery and acceptance being marketed as tribes, flags and ever-malleable definitions.

And yes to children feeling like they should declare identities younger and younger. I have teens & tweens, and I've now seen several kids declare themselves ace or pan in years 7 or 8. My 13-year-old was musing about being ace and I had to come clean and explain that I didn't feel the first flutterings of sexual interest in other people until I was 17, and then didn't actually act on a mutual interest until a few weeks off my 20th birthday. That wasn't to tell her it was wrong to be asexual, but to let her know that her boundaries are normal (God, I shudder at the idea of her thinking it's just "being ace" to shag people you don't fancy) and to give her some time and space to grow up and complete adolescence before declaring her personal "brand."

Sadly too busy being an atheist to go into a religious order! But yes, if I had been born in the middle ages, I'd have probably have wanted the nunnery option.

I think where people on the asexual spectrum are most likely to receive discrimination/oppression is around things like corrective rape, family systems with things like arranged marriage or traditional marriage expectations - perhaps families with such beliefs would want to seek out some form of conversion therapy.

I'm a straight asexual so I don't find myself affected at work or in most other areas.

@DickKerrLadies

This is a really interesting thread.

WRT categorising for marketing purposes, I'm reminded of a video of Bill Hicks on marketing that I saw on youtube years ago. Endlessly putting people into boxes to sell more stuff. As parents, we see this with pink and blue versions of everything so that parents buy two instead of one so it's not a big leap to me to see that more boxes = more money.

Great opportunity for my favourite Bill Hicks line to people who work in advertising: "every word you say is like a turd falling into my drink."

Very interesting debate on a subject I know little about. I've read of someone with mainly young colleagues, who couldn't believe this older indvidual didn't have any kind of tattoo, and actually asked him if it was because he wasn't passionate enough about anything. To not have a visible badge of some kind of interest/allegiance was clearly seen as abnormal. It must be increasingly hard to be private/reserved about your personal life at work, regardless of your sexuality.

People's sex lives are far less interesting than they think they are. I'd prefer to hear less about them generally (work colleagues and celebrities).

This is what I find strange about non-binary - it seems entirely dependent on other people. A trans person, if they pass well enough, can just be "male" or "female" to most of the people they come across but you can't be recognized as "non-binary" other than specifically informing people that that's what you are. It seems odd to have an "identity" which can't actually exist except in the minds of others.

This goes back to what I said previously about power plays which I think much of this is, along with youth being youth and a hefty dose of narcissism thrown in too.

At this time there appears to be much social capital to be gained from being marginalised and oppressed so for those who are not actually disadvantaged or discriminated against, making an aspect of your personality, preferences or circumstances into an identity to claim victimhood must be hugely attractive to some.

However those indulging in this power play whether consciously or not will have an effect on others , one of which will be to drown out the voices of those who are actually marginalised and oppressed.
It's the Deptford Project but on a bigger scale.

as well as seeing yourself as a victim, it also highlights how that uncomfortable feelings are being described or experienced as anxiety (although I acknowledge that MH is real and devastating, as have several family members who have been crippled by such, including hospitalisations for it)

I suspect alot of this comes from a detatchment of body from mind, driven by so much social interaction being done online, and so much description of normal emotions being pathologised and needing, again, labels and often medication.

It seems that unless we are experiencing blissful joy, all the rest needs dealing with

This makes a lot of sense to me too, this idea that there must be no negativity ever and if there is it is unbearable.

And as for the detachment of body and mind, that leads to questionable ideas like "born in the wrong body"

@LetsHaveCake

Not massively. Mostly if someone is inquiring about my relationship situation or in discussions about dating.

Sometimes in health situations because there's an automatic assumption that you are sexually active.

With friends sometimes if sex is being discussed because I don't know what some terms mean.

But its basically mostly relevant in relationship situations.

These things would be the same for anyone who was celibate.

If you remove this weird need to inhabit a "sexual identity" you no longer have pressure to have one.

Just be. An adult response is to be oneself without the need to find some sort of predetermined limits around that.

Even in sexual relationships - you can say things like "I have a low sex drive". Admittedly it is not easy these days to date without an expectation of sex, but it is possible to have deep friendships without sex which might be more appealing to someone with no interest in a sexual relationship. (Especially if other supposedly asexual people are potentially going to want sex anyway!)

On the other hand with the prevalence of the Internet I'd hope that it would be easier for asexual people to find each other. As long as they can filter out the self-identified asexuals (including the promiscuous ones) from actual asexuals.

Maybe. But I still can't see the advantage of the term asexual over "I am not interested in sex."

@IrenetheQuaint your posts on here are the closest to how I feel about the whole thing.

I felt so isolated, weird, wrong, abnormal to be a 16/17/18 year old who was not yet interested in sex. I felt like every other person my age was doing it and I genuinely believed I'd missed a window of opportunity to have a relationship that did not revolve around sex. As a result I kind of kept desperately trying to have sex in the hope that having it would be amazing and I'd discover what I was missing. I did not. Actually I just gave myself trauma and basically ruined my sex drive even more. It took until I was about 22/23 before I actually had a healthy sexual relationship, probably I was actually ready by then.

I was not asexual, I was a late developer, and I will probably always have a naturally low sex drive. But my god, I feel lucky that I was one of those early-00s internet kids because it meant once I discovered that as an "identity" I had language to process what was happening to me, what I was feeling, why it felt different, but most importantly why I wasn't wrong or broken.

Agreed totally that it absolutely should be acceptable to not be interested in sex until later in life, and that should not have to be labelled as asexual. But we are not there yet. Also considering there are people who identify with the asexual movement/identity/whatever you want to call it for their whole lives then surely it is valid. Probably not one to bring out onto the table at work because it's wholly irrelevant, but useful to have support groups/web forums, for it to be recognised as a thing.

Just catching up

I can understand the feeling of being out of step in a society that is totally fixated on sex. And tbf romance has always been written about. Well and sex too I suppose. It's a human preoccupation.

So that's similar to the experience of being homosexual in a heteronornative world. And sort of overlaps with the discomfort that many women and girls feel with the fact that almost all of it is male gaze, rape is used as an excuse to show female nudity (and the view during, if shown, is inevitably the male gaze IE you are seeing through the rapists eyes, grim). Plus porn, the constant judgment of women's bodies etc in the paper.

These are all real issues and they overlap and could and should be tackled together- for all of the people who essentially only get to consume content that is for the het male gaze and often a predatory one at that. Plus it's a highly sexed objectifying male gaze.

I agree that labels such as demisexual are probably handy for those who don't want sex yet thanks.

And that's not tackling the root problem which is usually male sexual entitlement, seeing different acts as a checklist etc.

And for asexual replacing prude etc. Have the sort of boys who behaved like that in the past really mixed away from the frigid/ slut approach? Given the rate of sexual assault in schools I'm guessing not.

None of this does anything to tackle the root of these issues. Tackling them is difficult is why. It's the same with male violence etc generally. That's why you get victim blaming etc. Facing up to it being a male issue is just too hard. And men won't have it. You get namalt etc.

As for the desire thing. It's tricky isn't it and trickier for some, and for reasons that are again hard to think about.

CSA can result in both no interest at all or being oversexed.
Rape as well.
Porn I'm sure is enough to make some girls think no thanks that looks terrifying and painful.
Through life. Things like. Being pregnant, BF, taking certain anti depressants, menopause etc etc. Some apply to men but for women there's much more.

None of that is true asexuality, but it's all a lack of desire for one reason or another and can be longer term.

Also female lack of desire is not seen as an issue. The vaginal mesh scandal, a French doc on hearing some women were in too much pain for vaginal sex, said why don't they do anal then.

The contraceptive pill as well and other hormonal contraception can kill desire, ironically.

Like I say this is all based from a norm of randy male. That is a terrible framing but it's there in the subtext for our young people to consume. Combined with modern available porn the whole things a total shitshow.

@SmokedDuck

If you remove this weird need to inhabit a "sexual identity" you no longer have pressure to have one.

Just be. An adult response is to be oneself without the need to find some sort of predetermined limits around that.

Even in sexual relationships - you can say things like "I have a low sex drive". Admittedly it is not easy these days to date without an expectation of sex, but it is possible to have deep friendships without sex which might be more appealing to someone with no interest in a sexual relationship. (Especially if other supposedly asexual people are potentially going to want sex anyway!)

What if asexuals would like to ”just be” and be able to say the truth, that they are, in fact, asexuals.

It’s just easier and more simple that way.

Also, relationship without sex, isin’t deep friendship, it’s a (romantic) relationship/partnership.

Sorry that was really long!

But why do work colleagues need to know you're asexual? Unless they're in a homosexual romantic relationship?

With gay/ lesbian people it was about having a partner/ someone at home and having to hide it all. Be careful what they said. Never mention their partner or be careful how they referred to them. No photos on desks. Knowing being found out would be uncomfortable at best and end of job at worst. And maybe done for in that industry.

Sex between men was only legalised here in the 60s.

You couldn't walk down the street holding hands. And violence is still perpetrated against gay men and lesbians. And many people I know still do not generally hold hands with their partners, put an arm round, a quick kiss in public. Unless they are somewhere 'safe' eg a certain bar or part of a city.

If you're asexual then you just say you're single surely. Nobody can see it. You don't get attacked on the street for it. Unless you are in a homosexual relationship and then that's the gay bit not the asexual bit.

Asking when are you having kids/ getting a boyfriend is just rude. It happens to women all the time. The answer again is fix the root problem, it's personal don't be so intrusive. Not giving a sexuality explanation which will probably prompt more questions than it answers let's be honest.

Yes life is crap in a sex obsessed randy heteronornative male gaze society that seems to have a taste for sexual domination of women by men.

I don't think having extra labels is the answer tbh.

Anyone know if there is a male female split /age data on people who identity as asexual?

I would be willing to bet it's more women than men and more younger people.

I also suspect that a true lifetime lack of desire is pretty rare and would be similar male and female.

Looking back I was sexually active for years before I actually wanted it. I didn't really get frisky iyswim. I liked the attention I suppose and the closeness.

It's just all very complicated isn't it. And if course so many girls and women around the world have no choice when how and if they have sex and who with, irrespective of sexuality. Which is horrifying.

I think i’m coming more from being single.
So when people ask why i’m single, i wish i could just say because i’m asexual and haven’t found anyone who is okey with that.

Also, people (straight, gays, bi) talk about their dating lives, i would also like to talk about issues that i face (i’m in the closet, haven’t told anyone,ever) instead of hiding, being quiet, never opening up to anyone.

So, i wish i could talk about my life more openly.
Mäni, being ace isin’t all i am, but it does make a big part of it.
It’s very lonely and isolaring.

No idea what male gaze and porn has to do with this.
People who don’t feel sexual attraction don’t feel sexual attractin.
Male gaze and porn or not.

And it’s not just teenagers and early 20’s, people of all ages are asexuals.

I know most of you don’t care to read about this, your minds are very clearly made, but whatever, off my cheast at least.