Stonewall releases report on "dehumanising" discrimination against asexuals

[GinAllAround]

I'm not doubting that you can be judged socially for saying you're asexual but is it really the same as being gay or lesbian?

Although I agree that it shouldn't be classed as a MH condition, I've never heard of anyone being denied a job or housing for being asexual or being beaten up or taunted in the streets.

And what extra legal protection/rights do asexual people need? Surely they have the same rights as anyone else?

www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/new-research-shining-light-‘dehumanising’-discrimination-faced-ace-people

I'm asexual 28 days of the month I think 😂

If they’re asexual how do they know they both have fertility problems? Especially since they haven’t been able to meet the threshold to be referred to a fertility clinic.

But yes I do agree with that.

or the woman who says she found sexual harassment uncomfortable and that’s because she’s asexual ( yeah all other women love it ). How can people be to stupid as to think it’s about sex?? It’s about control, putting you in your place because you are a woman.
Yes, exactly. I read an article somewhere (think it was the Grun) about a gender neutral (dimorphically female) person last week who worked in a shop and said they had a badge saying "don't touch me" and men grabbed their bum and they found it upsetting because of their autism and asexuality.

The rest of us obviously just fucking love it when we're sexually assaulted. 🙄

I think put pro-stonewall posters may need to have it written as clearly as possible.

We are both in agreement that this simply isn’t discrimination against asexual
people.

It’s utterly depressing that in 2023 we are supposed to pretend that there is a problem when people who don’t want to have sex aren’t conceiving babies as a result of not having sex - and that it should require expensive medical treatment in the NHS because they don’t want their identity to be invalidated.

If people want to have fertility treatment because they don’t want to have sex - they should be willing to pay for it privately.

This is not what the NHS is for. And that’s not discrimination. Any more than the NHS should be paying to try to help me (as a single woman) to conceive a child because I would rather be single, not sexually active and certainly don’t want to have to coparent with a man.

Indeed, it’s just ridiculous.

Sexual assault and harassment are not made worse because you identify as asexual. They’re just bad for anyone who is subjected to them.

Trying to convince us that it is some kind of dreadful discrimination unique to asexual people, just isn’t very nice Stonewall.

And yes, there's this.

It's absolutely infuriating.

Stonewall are clearly grifters, trying to milk money out of any group willing to give it to them.

Their entire original raison d'être is down the fucking toilet. Along with all the LGB people they used to support. But they won't drop them from the acronym, oh no, because it is the LGB that gives the entire fucking issue legitimacy.

Honestly, these people are not seeing how they are being exploited, because Stonewall have identified the money to be made in self victimisation.

another1bitestheduck, what do you really think Stonewall could ever achieve with this? Apart from it's overwhelming desire to include as many people as possible in its acronym in order to make money?

They won't achieve anything. Because, and I don't mean this horribly, most of the public really don't give a flying fuck if other people aren't attracted by sex. It's really very common. The women on this board are more empathetic towards other women than most, and even most women here don't consider it an issue.

The overwhelming reaction would be irritation that someone was so self-centred.

This reminds me of when a friend of a friend 'came out' as polyamorous to his parents. Took them for a meal for his big announcement. Like yeah you're a bloke who wants to sleep around, just like all the other ones. How is that even an identity?

Surely if they go to a private clinic they can do whatever they like?

Everyone has skin in the game in the descent of our society into stupidity, especially when it’s coming from an organisation that has a history of instilling bonkers ideology into government/official policy that affects everyone.

Stonewall have become a ridiculous institution. I recall I time I thought they did good work, about 15 years ago. I consider them at best irrelevant and at worst shit-stirring and quite dangerous now.

I have no idea whether anyone I know is asexual- why would I discuss that with anyone? If anyone close to me wanted to tell me that, I would listen but would have no judgement or interest really. I have no interest in anyone else's sex life/choices-unless they were to detrimentally affect my life.

There are people obsessed with sex- with porn, with 'celebs' showing their bodies, with their own sex lives, with celebrating, flaunting and sharing their sexuality with the world. I am not one of those people and I find that most of us are not one of those people. It's sordid and exploitative and is part of the reason we have young men and boys who are more sexist and girls who feel they should be flaunting and revealing their bodies to attract attention (under the guise of feminist freedoms to do as they like). It is all inappropriate and is taking us to a very backward place and time as a society.

I'm not a prude in any sense and have a very relaxed loving relationship with DH but feel no need to share the details of that with anyone else in our lives or with society generally. It's no one else's business, is irrelevant at work or anywhere else except our own space.

Oh Lord. I bet they were thinking, well at least he's paying for dinner.

Huh? What?

I thought it was people who don't want to have sex.

Absolutely.

But that report is all about how is so
awful that the NHS isn’t rushing in to provide it for free.

Nauticant is right. I remember the thread with an asexual person talking about how they have sex. It doesn’t surprise me this is the latest from Stonewall, trying to extract logical thinking on that thread was just like a TRA thread.

So another version of calling yourself queer when you are in a straight relationship but dye your hair blue and say TWAW?

Looking at another aspect of the article, I don't think asexuality should be reclassified as a mental health diagnosis as Stonewall are pushing for. It's not a mental illness to not want to have sex with people or not be sexually attracted to them, that pathologises part of the bell curve and is a Victorian patriarchal view of sexuality that only that idiot Freud would agree with.

Also reclassifying it as a mental illness paves the way to "treating" it. Which costs money. And earns money for whoever creates the "treatment" just like it did for the trans "treatments".

How is that different to lesbian couples qualifying for IVF?

If a woman is not getting pregnant because she's in a relationship with/having sex with another woman, she will be eligible for fertility treatment on the NHS (admittedly this is still a bit of a postcode lottery - but the principle is there).

It would obviously be abhorrent to tell a lesbian 'if you want to get pregnant just go have sex with a man'.

So why should someone who is not having sex with anyone because of their asexuality be treated differently and told that if they want to get pregnant they have to just suck it up and have sex with a man?

Indeed.

There have been self identifying asexuals on threads here before, enlightening us all as to how hard it is when everything is not about you - thus completely innocuous conversations become a torment of microagressions and upset because someone had the audacity to talk about their romantic relationship and the sexual attraction they feel to their partner or that it's upsetting that there's not enough characters on tv not feeling sexual attraction...

I also learned that asexuals have sex, masturbate, have children, have partners infact do absolutely everything that everyone else does except have sexual desire.

Not feeling sexual desire is a purely person matter and has no relevance to wider society. It is not in any way "oppression".

I can only conclude that making this identity claim, like so many other identity claims based in genderism, is a power play - for Stonewall it's something else for them to glom on to so the cash keeps flowing.

@PlanetJanette but IVF isn't first-line treatment for lesbians either, that's the point! Insemination with donor sperm is!

This has got nothing to do with asexuality etc, this is about Stonewall inventing another form of discrimination to keep the money rolling in and to try to justify its own existence.

All those at Stonewall are earning nice lots of money for doing not a lot and they would struggle to find real jobs.

Stonewall are a professional grifting organisation.

This is the page about defining asexuality from that report.

Note it features demisexual (which, frankly, describes enormous numbers of people who experience sexual desire in the context of emotional connection - it’s frankly weird that stonewall are determined to present this as a deviation requiring a label) and greysexual (which seems to describe people who need to be in the right mood to want to have sex - which is even more likely to be just about everyone).

They'd be getting a very robust 'prefer not to answer, that's my private life and I object to this info being held ' from me.

Yes, always follow the money to unravel this nonsense.

I can just see them in the project meetings desperately maintaining the facade to each other, "Well, the trans project is coming to an end and we've done all we can for the time being and made so much progress for them, what other projects can we champion?"
Which really means: "We've bled the trans issue dry of money and public opinion about it is changing so what can we manipulate people into giving us money for this time?"

Sometimes it is a medical-related issue, for instance depression and/or anti-depressants can remove libido. But then what does this have to do with Stonewall advocacy? Surely it's a discussion for one's doctor particularly if it's iatrogenic.