You sound at least somewhere on the asexuality spectrum.
The capacity to be aroused â sexual attraction, although they do often go together (especially if you get aroused at the sight of people instead of needing physical stimulation to make the parts respond) so I wouldnât completely toss away the arousal data. However, I did read a study about conditioning marmosets to be aroused at the smell of a lemon, so it might be extensible to humans and you might have just conditioned yourself into arousal at the opposite gender. âPeople find this hot, I should try masturbating to it,â you stimulate yourself into arousal, eventually associate the opposite gender with sexual satisfaction and get aroused at the sight of them. Also, Iâm kind of suspicious of this study because after they finished the conditioning, they observed erection rate after exposure to lemon scent, but not erection rate without exposure to lemon scent: sure, the erection rate is high for lemon exposure, but how do we know this is any different from no lemon exposure? However, lots of other similar studies were done that I didnât bother to check out. And itâs still true that arousal â sexual attraction. They just go together a lot. Even with your arousal at the opposite gender, you might be asexual. Iâm just very used to hearing regular arousal at a certain gender as an allosexual experience instead of an asexual one. https://www.asexuality-handbook.com/faq/whats-the-difference-between-sexual-attraction-and-arousal.html
Also relevant that Iâm âstrictlyâ asexual, I have zero sexual desire, never have urges to have sex with another human, if you think of the asexuality spectrum as a line segment with âasexual, zero sexual desireâ at the left endpoint and âallosexual, sexual desireâ at the right I sit on top of the left endpoint. Iâm as far from allosexual as you can be. But I do experience arousal from a certain trigger that makes me want to masturbate. Not to have sex with anybody. But itâs not from anything sexual at all. Itâs something more along the lines of seeing a specific YouTuber teach math, without any desire to see them naked or in any kind of state of undress. Itâs not actually that, but you get the idea. Does involve a human, makes me aroused, but aside from that itâs not sexual whatsoever.
I canât tell you what you are, and to be honest Iâm not sure where the desire to get handsy would put you, but to me you donât sound fully hetero, you sound somewhere on the asexuality spectrum.
Thanks for the detailed response, itâs definitely given me some things to think about. I guess the best way to describe it is that when I see someone who presses the right physical attractiveness buttons for me, I still get some less-than-pure thoughts. Itâs just that the specific act of having sex with that person isnât ever on that list, even when itâs totally on the table.
Itâs mostly that I still have that drive to do other things to satisfy my libido that the asexual label never really clicked in the past. Maybe it still doesnât fit. But definitely good to think about that stuff once in a while.
Iâd like to clarify something here. Iâm pretty sure the intent here is âan urge to have sex with a specific person that isnât just as a means to an end.â If Iâm a gold digger who finds my target repulsive and I donât 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 themâbut not an impulse felt instinctually from desire for this person and for sex with this person. Itâs 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, itâs not the kind of urge the definition means, and so I wouldnât be considered sexually attracted to my target. Now with that set asideâŠ
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.
Iâm thinking this situation could happen: you can be a person who doesnât 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 donât 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 donât have the urge for sex except maybe to please your partner. You might want to satisfy the arousal, yes, but itâs not quite the same thing.
Have you ever been hungry but you also donât 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 donât 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. Itâs true your partner triggered the arousal, triggered the âIâm hungry,â but you still donât exactly crave them specifically to satisfy the desire just because they are the one who triggered the feeling in the first place.
(In reality itâs a little more complicatedâyou 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 itâs still not anything that sexual, itâs 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 partnerâthe dogâs urge is not for the bell to ding, despite the salivation at the bell sound.)
Iâm guessing here, to be honest. Iâm 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 donât really have any relevant experience to pull from, just stories from my fellow asexuals and an asexuality handbook. Also a huge disclaimer on if itâs even possible to condition arousal in a personâI donât 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 havenât 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 donât think it has to.
i understand what you mean, it makes sense to me that something like that wouldnât necessarily be considered allosexuality if the individual doesnât actually want to have sex with the person. i think i just donât 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 thatâs the commenter you were talking to, just an example.)
(this isnât meant to be taking anything out on you or the other commenter by any means, iâm just venting a bit.) i think i might just be personally frustrated by having so many people fall under the âasexuality umbrellaâ who live relatively normal lives in regards to sex and relationships, while iâm a rather sex repulsed ace. i feel like with the label being so broad and inclusive itâs like i need to find something else to call myself- iâd be really uncomfortable if someone heard me say âasexualâ to describe myself and think iâd be interested in sex at all, but thatâs really what the label has been coming to and idk how to feel about it.
Iâm cool with sex-favorable aces who live an allosexual-looking lifestyle still using the word. I donât want to tell them that they canât 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 isnât as important to them as it is for so many others, why they donât 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 youâre broken. And all else being equal, asexuals who donât 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 âI donât want to have sexâ a dealbreaker for many allosexuals, still isnât present in a sex-enjoying asexual. Something in me just screams ânoâ at the thought of excluding these people from our community.
However, I do get where youâre coming from. If it helps you any, a lot of people Iâve met will assume âno sexâ when I say âIâm asexual,â although if this is a partner I do make sure to clarify that Iâm an asexual who wonât engage in sex, not one who will. I think most accepting peoplesâ conception of asexuality still involves them assuming âoh, they arenât going to have sexâ even if theyâre 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 âIâm asexualâ and for a person who understands and accepts asexuality to still arrive at âthey might have sexâ when you absolutely will not just because some of us will can feel very frustrating. Especially when youâre used to using the word to say âno sexâ but it turns out that it doesnât always mean âno sex.â But in the end thereâs always the (honestly annoying if âasexualâ used to be sufficient to explain yourself) adding on âSome of us will voluntarily have sex, Iâm not one of them, Iâm sex-repulsedâ to clarify your identity before anyone gets the wrong idea.
I really do get where youâre coming from. I have a very similar situation.
Asexuality is a sexual orientation where a person doesnât experience sexual attraction towards anyone [1â3], which current estimates say applies approximately 1â4% of the population [4â10]. Asexuality is also an umbrella term for people that fall between asexuality and other orientations.
I get âasexualityâ is not the same word as âasexualâ so Iâm possibly wrong here, but Iâm thinking this means that âasexualâ 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 âIâm asexualâ people could get the idea that I still experience sexual attraction because Iâm on the asexuality spectrum, which includes things like demisexuality and graysexuality, for whom sexual attraction is a ârarelyâ and not a ânever.â Itâs infuriating. I always thought âasexualâ was strictly for people like us, and you needed to use âasexuality spectrumâ to include demisexuality and graysexuality. It turns out I was wrong. The word I thought I was using correctly for âno sexual attractionâ can actually mean identities that do include it. (I donât mind being mistaken for âwill have sex,â but I do mind âexperiences sexual attractionâ very much. These identities are valid and I accept them but theyâre also not me.) I think this is pretty similar to your own frustration. I know that most people still use âIâm asexualâ to say they experience no attraction, and not to say theyâre on the asexuality spectrum, so in practice Iâm still okay to say âIâm asexualâ and I can always just clarify âI mean that I do not experience sexual attractionâ 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 wasnât expecting you to be understanding, since expressing sentiments like this get people even banned on certain subr*ddits, so itâs refreshing. especially because most people tend to be very one way or the other- either us ârealâ asexuals experience no sexual attraction whatsoever and everyone else is allo, or absolutely anybody who experiences slightly abnormal attraction is asexual. the nuance of âyes i acknowledge graysexuals and such are real and also need support groups, but saying they are specifically asexual feels like itâs muddying the meaning of the labelâ 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 theyâre 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 donât struggle so much anymore with being sex repulsed, but in the past itâs been very difficult to deal with, and i havenât been able to find nearly as much support as youâd think in popular ace communities.
i agree with a lot of what youâve said :) thank you for sharing
i think i just donât 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 didnât really think sex-favorable aces get fair use and that their use was a mere technicality. Might be why the other subreddits reacted badly. Iâm 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.
Iâve read something before, where someone mentioned that sometimes two peoplesâ 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 sexâs prevalence in society without being told theyâre prudes trying to stop everyone from having consensual sex. Itâs 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 othersâ toes.
You sound at least somewhere on the asexuality spectrum.
The capacity to be aroused â sexual attraction, although they do often go together (especially if you get aroused at the sight of people instead of needing physical stimulation to make the parts respond) so I wouldnât completely toss away the arousal data. However, I did read a study about conditioning marmosets to be aroused at the smell of a lemon, so it might be extensible to humans and you might have just conditioned yourself into arousal at the opposite gender. âPeople find this hot, I should try masturbating to it,â you stimulate yourself into arousal, eventually associate the opposite gender with sexual satisfaction and get aroused at the sight of them. Also, Iâm kind of suspicious of this study because after they finished the conditioning, they observed erection rate after exposure to lemon scent, but not erection rate without exposure to lemon scent: sure, the erection rate is high for lemon exposure, but how do we know this is any different from no lemon exposure? However, lots of other similar studies were done that I didnât bother to check out. And itâs still true that arousal â sexual attraction. They just go together a lot. Even with your arousal at the opposite gender, you might be asexual. Iâm just very used to hearing regular arousal at a certain gender as an allosexual experience instead of an asexual one. https://www.asexuality-handbook.com/faq/whats-the-difference-between-sexual-attraction-and-arousal.html
Also relevant that Iâm âstrictlyâ asexual, I have zero sexual desire, never have urges to have sex with another human, if you think of the asexuality spectrum as a line segment with âasexual, zero sexual desireâ at the left endpoint and âallosexual, sexual desireâ at the right I sit on top of the left endpoint. Iâm as far from allosexual as you can be. But I do experience arousal from a certain trigger that makes me want to masturbate. Not to have sex with anybody. But itâs not from anything sexual at all. Itâs something more along the lines of seeing a specific YouTuber teach math, without any desire to see them naked or in any kind of state of undress. Itâs not actually that, but you get the idea. Does involve a human, makes me aroused, but aside from that itâs not sexual whatsoever.
I canât tell you what you are, and to be honest Iâm not sure where the desire to get handsy would put you, but to me you donât sound fully hetero, you sound somewhere on the asexuality spectrum.
https://www.asexuality-handbook.com/faq/am-i-asexual.html
Thanks for the detailed response, itâs definitely given me some things to think about. I guess the best way to describe it is that when I see someone who presses the right physical attractiveness buttons for me, I still get some less-than-pure thoughts. Itâs just that the specific act of having sex with that person isnât ever on that list, even when itâs totally on the table.
Itâs mostly that I still have that drive to do other things to satisfy my libido that the asexual label never really clicked in the past. Maybe it still doesnât fit. But definitely good to think about that stuff once in a while.
sorry, iâm 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
Iâd like to clarify something here. Iâm pretty sure the intent here is âan urge to have sex with a specific person that isnât just as a means to an end.â If Iâm a gold digger who finds my target repulsive and I donât 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 themâbut not an impulse felt instinctually from desire for this person and for sex with this person. Itâs 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, itâs not the kind of urge the definition means, and so I wouldnât be considered sexually attracted to my target. Now with that set asideâŠ
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.
Iâm thinking this situation could happen: you can be a person who doesnât 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 donât 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 donât have the urge for sex except maybe to please your partner. You might want to satisfy the arousal, yes, but itâs not quite the same thing.
Have you ever been hungry but you also donât 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 donât 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. Itâs true your partner triggered the arousal, triggered the âIâm hungry,â but you still donât exactly crave them specifically to satisfy the desire just because they are the one who triggered the feeling in the first place.
(In reality itâs a little more complicatedâyou 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 itâs still not anything that sexual, itâs 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 partnerâthe dogâs urge is not for the bell to ding, despite the salivation at the bell sound.)
Iâm guessing here, to be honest. Iâm 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 donât really have any relevant experience to pull from, just stories from my fellow asexuals and an asexuality handbook. Also a huge disclaimer on if itâs even possible to condition arousal in a personâI donât 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 havenât 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 donât think it has to.
i understand what you mean, it makes sense to me that something like that wouldnât necessarily be considered allosexuality if the individual doesnât actually want to have sex with the person. i think i just donât 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 thatâs the commenter you were talking to, just an example.)
(this isnât meant to be taking anything out on you or the other commenter by any means, iâm just venting a bit.) i think i might just be personally frustrated by having so many people fall under the âasexuality umbrellaâ who live relatively normal lives in regards to sex and relationships, while iâm a rather sex repulsed ace. i feel like with the label being so broad and inclusive itâs like i need to find something else to call myself- iâd be really uncomfortable if someone heard me say âasexualâ to describe myself and think iâd be interested in sex at all, but thatâs really what the label has been coming to and idk how to feel about it.
Iâm cool with sex-favorable aces who live an allosexual-looking lifestyle still using the word. I donât want to tell them that they canât 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 isnât as important to them as it is for so many others, why they donât 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 youâre broken. And all else being equal, asexuals who donât 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 âI donât want to have sexâ a dealbreaker for many allosexuals, still isnât present in a sex-enjoying asexual. Something in me just screams ânoâ at the thought of excluding these people from our community.
However, I do get where youâre coming from. If it helps you any, a lot of people Iâve met will assume âno sexâ when I say âIâm asexual,â although if this is a partner I do make sure to clarify that Iâm an asexual who wonât engage in sex, not one who will. I think most accepting peoplesâ conception of asexuality still involves them assuming âoh, they arenât going to have sexâ even if theyâre 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 âIâm asexualâ and for a person who understands and accepts asexuality to still arrive at âthey might have sexâ when you absolutely will not just because some of us will can feel very frustrating. Especially when youâre used to using the word to say âno sexâ but it turns out that it doesnât always mean âno sex.â But in the end thereâs always the (honestly annoying if âasexualâ used to be sufficient to explain yourself) adding on âSome of us will voluntarily have sex, Iâm not one of them, Iâm sex-repulsedâ to clarify your identity before anyone gets the wrong idea.
I really do get where youâre coming from. I have a very similar situation.
â https://www.asexuality-handbook.com/what-is-asexuality.html
I get âasexualityâ is not the same word as âasexualâ so Iâm possibly wrong here, but Iâm thinking this means that âasexualâ 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 âIâm asexualâ people could get the idea that I still experience sexual attraction because Iâm on the asexuality spectrum, which includes things like demisexuality and graysexuality, for whom sexual attraction is a ârarelyâ and not a ânever.â Itâs infuriating. I always thought âasexualâ was strictly for people like us, and you needed to use âasexuality spectrumâ to include demisexuality and graysexuality. It turns out I was wrong. The word I thought I was using correctly for âno sexual attractionâ can actually mean identities that do include it. (I donât mind being mistaken for âwill have sex,â but I do mind âexperiences sexual attractionâ very much. These identities are valid and I accept them but theyâre also not me.) I think this is pretty similar to your own frustration. I know that most people still use âIâm asexualâ to say they experience no attraction, and not to say theyâre on the asexuality spectrum, so in practice Iâm still okay to say âIâm asexualâ and I can always just clarify âI mean that I do not experience sexual attractionâ 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 wasnât expecting you to be understanding, since expressing sentiments like this get people even banned on certain subr*ddits, so itâs refreshing. especially because most people tend to be very one way or the other- either us ârealâ asexuals experience no sexual attraction whatsoever and everyone else is allo, or absolutely anybody who experiences slightly abnormal attraction is asexual. the nuance of âyes i acknowledge graysexuals and such are real and also need support groups, but saying they are specifically asexual feels like itâs muddying the meaning of the labelâ 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 theyâre 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 donât struggle so much anymore with being sex repulsed, but in the past itâs been very difficult to deal with, and i havenât been able to find nearly as much support as youâd think in popular ace communities.
i agree with a lot of what youâve said :) thank you for sharing
Nothing here specifically reads as antagonistic, but when I read this quote I got the impression you didnât really think sex-favorable aces get fair use and that their use was a mere technicality. Might be why the other subreddits reacted badly. Iâm glad to see that you do actually think that sex-favorable aces get fair use.
Iâve read something before, where someone mentioned that sometimes two peoplesâ 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 sexâs prevalence in society without being told theyâre prudes trying to stop everyone from having consensual sex. Itâs 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 othersâ toes.