I’d like to clarify something here. I’m pretty sure the intent here is “an urge to have sex with a specific person that isn’t just as a means to an end.” If I’m a gold digger who finds my target repulsive and I don’t think sex with them would be enjoyable, but I know having sex with them will make them more likely to love me and give me money? I do have an urge, a desire to have sex with them—but not an impulse felt instinctually from desire for this person and for sex with this person. It’s a desire that comes from the fact that sex is means to an end to my real desire of money. So although I do have an urge to have sex with my specific target, it’s not the kind of urge the definition means, and so I wouldn’t be considered sexually attracted to my target. Now with that set aside…
I imagine that arousal at the sight of someone need not always pair with a desire to have sex. Penis-havers sometimes experience random erections apropos of nothing, so we already have arousal being separate from attraction. Enough physical stimulation can make your parts respond with arousal even if you personally feel pretty neutral or even negative about having sex.
I’m thinking this situation could happen: you can be a person who doesn’t really get the urge for sex yourself, but you do have a partner you care about who likes it. So you have sex with this person regularly. Your parts respond from the physical stimulation involved in sex. Eventually, your brain pairs this person with sex and arousal, and pre-arouses your parts around them. I don’t mean to be reductive at all when I say this: I am thinking of classical conditioning, that same process by which you get a dog to salivate at the ding of a bell. Ding it right before you give them food, and eventually they associate the food with the bell sound and salivate at the bell sound too. But you still don’t have the urge for sex except maybe to please your partner. You might want to satisfy the arousal, yes, but it’s not quite the same thing.
Have you ever been hungry but you also don’t really feel a craving for food, so you just pick at random? You might even find it an annoying chore to make yourself eat to satisfy the hunger. You don’t want to eat pizza except perhaps as a means to an end to satisfy the hunger. This would be like that. No desire inherent, just getting rid of a biological feeling. It’s true your partner triggered the arousal, triggered the “I’m hungry,” but you still don’t exactly crave them specifically to satisfy the desire just because they are the one who triggered the feeling in the first place.
(In reality it’s a little more complicated—you might prefer your partner to satisfy this desire because you do value the bonding that may come with sex and you want to bond with your partner. Or because they know how to give you the best physical pleasure. But it’s still not anything that sexual, it’s all about its secondary effects. Sex is still a means to an end. Your urge is not for sex with your partner, despite the arousal that occurs at the sight of your partner—the dog’s urge is not for the bell to ding, despite the salivation at the bell sound.)
I’m guessing here, to be honest. I’m a virgin by choice, and no human outside of that completely nonsexual cartoon arousal trigger has made me want to do anything sexual. And the only sexual thing that arousal trigger made me want to do is to masturbate. Not to see it do something sexual, to have sex with it or a real version of it, or to have sex with another person. I don’t really have any relevant experience to pull from, just stories from my fellow asexuals and an asexuality handbook. Also a huge disclaimer on if it’s even possible to condition arousal in a person—I don’t know if that marmoset study where they got conditioned to have erections at the smell of a lemon is extensible to humans, and I think there was a methodology error in it (I mentioned it in an above reply). I also haven’t checked for any reproductions of that study to verify its findings.
Arousal at the sight of a person very frequently goes together with attraction, but I don’t think it has to.
i understand what you mean, it makes sense to me that something like that wouldn’t necessarily be considered allosexuality if the individual doesn’t actually want to have sex with the person. i think i just don’t see the purpose of differentiation at a point- for example a sex favourable person who both gets aroused by their partner and actively seeks out and enjoys sex on a regular basis could feasibly be labelled as asexual within this community, and i feel like that would be a very misleading term to use to describe them. (not saying that’s the commenter you were talking to, just an example.)
(this isn’t meant to be taking anything out on you or the other commenter by any means, i’m just venting a bit.) i think i might just be personally frustrated by having so many people fall under the “asexuality umbrella” who live relatively normal lives in regards to sex and relationships, while i’m a rather sex repulsed ace. i feel like with the label being so broad and inclusive it’s like i need to find something else to call myself- i’d be really uncomfortable if someone heard me say “asexual” to describe myself and think i’d be interested in sex at all, but that’s really what the label has been coming to and idk how to feel about it.
I’m cool with sex-favorable aces who live an allosexual-looking lifestyle still using the word. I don’t want to tell them that they can’t be asexual because they consented to sex. Differentiation exists in practice as well as in theory because these sex-favorable people who engage in sex still might wonder why their experience is a little different, why sex isn’t as important to them as it is for so many others, why they don’t seem to feel that innate pull to have sex with others even though it does feel good like everyone said it would. Why are they different? Because their whole orientation is different, not because you’re broken. And all else being equal, asexuals who don’t want sex would probably do better in a relationship with an asexual, including sex-enjoying asexuals, than with an allosexual. The fundamental drive that tends to be responsible for making sex important to allosexuals, for making “I don’t want to have sex” a dealbreaker for many allosexuals, still isn’t present in a sex-enjoying asexual. Something in me just screams “no” at the thought of excluding these people from our community.
However, I do get where you’re coming from. If it helps you any, a lot of people I’ve met will assume “no sex” when I say “I’m asexual,” although if this is a partner I do make sure to clarify that I’m an asexual who won’t engage in sex, not one who will. I think most accepting peoples’ conception of asexuality still involves them assuming “oh, they aren’t going to have sex” even if they’re aware that some asexuals will engage in it voluntarily. The technical possibility for misinterpretation while still understanding asexuality is there. The possibility for you to say “I’m asexual” and for a person who understands and accepts asexuality to still arrive at “they might have sex” when you absolutely will not just because some of us will can feel very frustrating. Especially when you’re used to using the word to say “no sex” but it turns out that it doesn’t always mean “no sex.” But in the end there’s always the (honestly annoying if “asexual” used to be sufficient to explain yourself) adding on “Some of us will voluntarily have sex, I’m not one of them, I’m sex-repulsed” to clarify your identity before anyone gets the wrong idea.
I really do get where you’re coming from. I have a very similar situation.
Asexuality is a sexual orientation where a person doesn’t experience sexual attraction towards anyone [1–3], which current estimates say applies approximately 1–4% of the population [4–10]. Asexuality is also an umbrella term for people that fall between asexuality and other orientations.
I get “asexuality” is not the same word as “asexual” so I’m possibly wrong here, but I’m thinking this means that “asexual” is used both for people like us who experience no sexual attraction, and for people on the asexuality spectrum who do rarely experience it. So when I say “I’m asexual” people could get the idea that I still experience sexual attraction because I’m on the asexuality spectrum, which includes things like demisexuality and graysexuality, for whom sexual attraction is a “rarely” and not a “never.” It’s infuriating. I always thought “asexual” was strictly for people like us, and you needed to use “asexuality spectrum” to include demisexuality and graysexuality. It turns out I was wrong. The word I thought I was using correctly for “no sexual attraction” can actually mean identities that do include it. (I don’t mind being mistaken for “will have sex,” but I do mind “experiences sexual attraction” very much. These identities are valid and I accept them but they’re also not me.) I think this is pretty similar to your own frustration. I know that most people still use “I’m asexual” to say they experience no attraction, and not to say they’re on the asexuality spectrum, so in practice I’m still okay to say “I’m asexual” and I can always just clarify “I mean that I do not experience sexual attraction” in order to get rid of misconceptions about me being demi or gray. Still frustrating. So I absolutely get where you are coming from.
i really appreciate this response! i wasn’t expecting you to be understanding, since expressing sentiments like this get people even banned on certain subr*ddits, so it’s refreshing. especially because most people tend to be very one way or the other- either us “real” asexuals experience no sexual attraction whatsoever and everyone else is allo, or absolutely anybody who experiences slightly abnormal attraction is asexual. the nuance of “yes i acknowledge graysexuals and such are real and also need support groups, but saying they are specifically asexual feels like it’s muddying the meaning of the label” is very much where i lie and i like getting to have others who agree :)
i do agree that sex favourable aces get fair use for the term and need support for their unique struggles as well. being sexually attractive to your partner is an understandable necessity in relationships for some, and not being able to provide that for your partner or make them feel desired in that way sounds difficult. though i admit i do find it kind of annoying when people get mad at others online for assuming asexual means no sex, though i understand where they’re coming from.
i think the biggest issue that comes with the broadness of the label is that those like me- sex repulsed aces- oftentimes feel unsafe or uncomfortable in asexual spaces, which is a true shame. on top of that, it is exceedingly difficult (speaking from experience) to find exclusively sex repulsed spaces, even when actively searching for them. i don’t struggle so much anymore with being sex repulsed, but in the past it’s been very difficult to deal with, and i haven’t been able to find nearly as much support as you’d think in popular ace communities.
i agree with a lot of what you’ve said :) thank you for sharing
i think i just don’t see the purpose of differentiation at a point- for example a sex favourable person who both gets aroused by their partner and actively seeks out and enjoys sex on a regular basis could feasibly be labelled as asexual within this community, and i feel like that would be a very misleading term to use to describe them.
Nothing here specifically reads as antagonistic, but when I read this quote I got the impression you didn’t really think sex-favorable aces get fair use and that their use was a mere technicality. Might be why the other subreddits reacted badly. I’m glad to see that you do actually think that sex-favorable aces get fair use.
i think the biggest issue that comes with the broadness of the label is that those like me- sex repulsed aces- oftentimes feel unsafe or uncomfortable in asexual spaces, which is a true shame. on top of that, it is exceedingly difficult (speaking from experience) to find exclusively sex repulsed spaces, even when actively searching for them.
I’ve read something before, where someone mentioned that sometimes two peoples’ completely valid needs conflict hard with each other. Sex-favorable aces want to be able to talk about their experiences with sex as an asexual without feeling suppressed or gatekept from being asexual, while sex-repulsed aces want to have a space free of sex and to talk about and vent about their negative feelings toward sex’s prevalence in society without being told they’re prudes trying to stop everyone from having consensual sex. It’s difficult to manage. And unless we get a big enough asexual community where we can splinter off into spaces for sex-favorables and sex-repulsed, or the community has us tag sexual content and vents about sex so the repulsed and favorable can filter them out respectively, we all live under the same roof and end up stepping on each others’ toes.
sorry, i’m a bit confused- how is arousal at the sight of someone not sexual attraction? what even is sexual attraction then?
Sexual attraction: an urge to have sex with a specific person. https://www.asexuality-handbook.com/glossary.html
I’d like to clarify something here. I’m pretty sure the intent here is “an urge to have sex with a specific person that isn’t just as a means to an end.” If I’m a gold digger who finds my target repulsive and I don’t think sex with them would be enjoyable, but I know having sex with them will make them more likely to love me and give me money? I do have an urge, a desire to have sex with them—but not an impulse felt instinctually from desire for this person and for sex with this person. It’s a desire that comes from the fact that sex is means to an end to my real desire of money. So although I do have an urge to have sex with my specific target, it’s not the kind of urge the definition means, and so I wouldn’t be considered sexually attracted to my target. Now with that set aside…
I imagine that arousal at the sight of someone need not always pair with a desire to have sex. Penis-havers sometimes experience random erections apropos of nothing, so we already have arousal being separate from attraction. Enough physical stimulation can make your parts respond with arousal even if you personally feel pretty neutral or even negative about having sex.
I’m thinking this situation could happen: you can be a person who doesn’t really get the urge for sex yourself, but you do have a partner you care about who likes it. So you have sex with this person regularly. Your parts respond from the physical stimulation involved in sex. Eventually, your brain pairs this person with sex and arousal, and pre-arouses your parts around them. I don’t mean to be reductive at all when I say this: I am thinking of classical conditioning, that same process by which you get a dog to salivate at the ding of a bell. Ding it right before you give them food, and eventually they associate the food with the bell sound and salivate at the bell sound too. But you still don’t have the urge for sex except maybe to please your partner. You might want to satisfy the arousal, yes, but it’s not quite the same thing.
Have you ever been hungry but you also don’t really feel a craving for food, so you just pick at random? You might even find it an annoying chore to make yourself eat to satisfy the hunger. You don’t want to eat pizza except perhaps as a means to an end to satisfy the hunger. This would be like that. No desire inherent, just getting rid of a biological feeling. It’s true your partner triggered the arousal, triggered the “I’m hungry,” but you still don’t exactly crave them specifically to satisfy the desire just because they are the one who triggered the feeling in the first place.
(In reality it’s a little more complicated—you might prefer your partner to satisfy this desire because you do value the bonding that may come with sex and you want to bond with your partner. Or because they know how to give you the best physical pleasure. But it’s still not anything that sexual, it’s all about its secondary effects. Sex is still a means to an end. Your urge is not for sex with your partner, despite the arousal that occurs at the sight of your partner—the dog’s urge is not for the bell to ding, despite the salivation at the bell sound.)
I’m guessing here, to be honest. I’m a virgin by choice, and no human outside of that completely nonsexual cartoon arousal trigger has made me want to do anything sexual. And the only sexual thing that arousal trigger made me want to do is to masturbate. Not to see it do something sexual, to have sex with it or a real version of it, or to have sex with another person. I don’t really have any relevant experience to pull from, just stories from my fellow asexuals and an asexuality handbook. Also a huge disclaimer on if it’s even possible to condition arousal in a person—I don’t know if that marmoset study where they got conditioned to have erections at the smell of a lemon is extensible to humans, and I think there was a methodology error in it (I mentioned it in an above reply). I also haven’t checked for any reproductions of that study to verify its findings.
Arousal at the sight of a person very frequently goes together with attraction, but I don’t think it has to.
i understand what you mean, it makes sense to me that something like that wouldn’t necessarily be considered allosexuality if the individual doesn’t actually want to have sex with the person. i think i just don’t see the purpose of differentiation at a point- for example a sex favourable person who both gets aroused by their partner and actively seeks out and enjoys sex on a regular basis could feasibly be labelled as asexual within this community, and i feel like that would be a very misleading term to use to describe them. (not saying that’s the commenter you were talking to, just an example.)
(this isn’t meant to be taking anything out on you or the other commenter by any means, i’m just venting a bit.) i think i might just be personally frustrated by having so many people fall under the “asexuality umbrella” who live relatively normal lives in regards to sex and relationships, while i’m a rather sex repulsed ace. i feel like with the label being so broad and inclusive it’s like i need to find something else to call myself- i’d be really uncomfortable if someone heard me say “asexual” to describe myself and think i’d be interested in sex at all, but that’s really what the label has been coming to and idk how to feel about it.
I’m cool with sex-favorable aces who live an allosexual-looking lifestyle still using the word. I don’t want to tell them that they can’t be asexual because they consented to sex. Differentiation exists in practice as well as in theory because these sex-favorable people who engage in sex still might wonder why their experience is a little different, why sex isn’t as important to them as it is for so many others, why they don’t seem to feel that innate pull to have sex with others even though it does feel good like everyone said it would. Why are they different? Because their whole orientation is different, not because you’re broken. And all else being equal, asexuals who don’t want sex would probably do better in a relationship with an asexual, including sex-enjoying asexuals, than with an allosexual. The fundamental drive that tends to be responsible for making sex important to allosexuals, for making “I don’t want to have sex” a dealbreaker for many allosexuals, still isn’t present in a sex-enjoying asexual. Something in me just screams “no” at the thought of excluding these people from our community.
However, I do get where you’re coming from. If it helps you any, a lot of people I’ve met will assume “no sex” when I say “I’m asexual,” although if this is a partner I do make sure to clarify that I’m an asexual who won’t engage in sex, not one who will. I think most accepting peoples’ conception of asexuality still involves them assuming “oh, they aren’t going to have sex” even if they’re aware that some asexuals will engage in it voluntarily. The technical possibility for misinterpretation while still understanding asexuality is there. The possibility for you to say “I’m asexual” and for a person who understands and accepts asexuality to still arrive at “they might have sex” when you absolutely will not just because some of us will can feel very frustrating. Especially when you’re used to using the word to say “no sex” but it turns out that it doesn’t always mean “no sex.” But in the end there’s always the (honestly annoying if “asexual” used to be sufficient to explain yourself) adding on “Some of us will voluntarily have sex, I’m not one of them, I’m sex-repulsed” to clarify your identity before anyone gets the wrong idea.
I really do get where you’re coming from. I have a very similar situation.
— https://www.asexuality-handbook.com/what-is-asexuality.html
I get “asexuality” is not the same word as “asexual” so I’m possibly wrong here, but I’m thinking this means that “asexual” is used both for people like us who experience no sexual attraction, and for people on the asexuality spectrum who do rarely experience it. So when I say “I’m asexual” people could get the idea that I still experience sexual attraction because I’m on the asexuality spectrum, which includes things like demisexuality and graysexuality, for whom sexual attraction is a “rarely” and not a “never.” It’s infuriating. I always thought “asexual” was strictly for people like us, and you needed to use “asexuality spectrum” to include demisexuality and graysexuality. It turns out I was wrong. The word I thought I was using correctly for “no sexual attraction” can actually mean identities that do include it. (I don’t mind being mistaken for “will have sex,” but I do mind “experiences sexual attraction” very much. These identities are valid and I accept them but they’re also not me.) I think this is pretty similar to your own frustration. I know that most people still use “I’m asexual” to say they experience no attraction, and not to say they’re on the asexuality spectrum, so in practice I’m still okay to say “I’m asexual” and I can always just clarify “I mean that I do not experience sexual attraction” in order to get rid of misconceptions about me being demi or gray. Still frustrating. So I absolutely get where you are coming from.
i really appreciate this response! i wasn’t expecting you to be understanding, since expressing sentiments like this get people even banned on certain subr*ddits, so it’s refreshing. especially because most people tend to be very one way or the other- either us “real” asexuals experience no sexual attraction whatsoever and everyone else is allo, or absolutely anybody who experiences slightly abnormal attraction is asexual. the nuance of “yes i acknowledge graysexuals and such are real and also need support groups, but saying they are specifically asexual feels like it’s muddying the meaning of the label” is very much where i lie and i like getting to have others who agree :)
i do agree that sex favourable aces get fair use for the term and need support for their unique struggles as well. being sexually attractive to your partner is an understandable necessity in relationships for some, and not being able to provide that for your partner or make them feel desired in that way sounds difficult. though i admit i do find it kind of annoying when people get mad at others online for assuming asexual means no sex, though i understand where they’re coming from.
i think the biggest issue that comes with the broadness of the label is that those like me- sex repulsed aces- oftentimes feel unsafe or uncomfortable in asexual spaces, which is a true shame. on top of that, it is exceedingly difficult (speaking from experience) to find exclusively sex repulsed spaces, even when actively searching for them. i don’t struggle so much anymore with being sex repulsed, but in the past it’s been very difficult to deal with, and i haven’t been able to find nearly as much support as you’d think in popular ace communities.
i agree with a lot of what you’ve said :) thank you for sharing
Nothing here specifically reads as antagonistic, but when I read this quote I got the impression you didn’t really think sex-favorable aces get fair use and that their use was a mere technicality. Might be why the other subreddits reacted badly. I’m glad to see that you do actually think that sex-favorable aces get fair use.
I’ve read something before, where someone mentioned that sometimes two peoples’ completely valid needs conflict hard with each other. Sex-favorable aces want to be able to talk about their experiences with sex as an asexual without feeling suppressed or gatekept from being asexual, while sex-repulsed aces want to have a space free of sex and to talk about and vent about their negative feelings toward sex’s prevalence in society without being told they’re prudes trying to stop everyone from having consensual sex. It’s difficult to manage. And unless we get a big enough asexual community where we can splinter off into spaces for sex-favorables and sex-repulsed, or the community has us tag sexual content and vents about sex so the repulsed and favorable can filter them out respectively, we all live under the same roof and end up stepping on each others’ toes.