Comments on: We’re all different: when sex isn’t attractive

By: Code11

Code11 — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 07:53:53 +0000

I also very much like this post. However, I would like to note that definition-wise, asexuality is about lack of sexual *attraction*, not sex drive/libido, or arousal, or desire-for-sex. Those things vary among people, and while there are definitely a lot of asexuals who have no sex drives and are not interested in sex at all, there are others too. There are even people who are asexual and kinky or asexual and into BDSM, etc. (And since this a post on diversity, I just wanted this diversity to be represented too).

By: Sunshine Love

Sunshine Love — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:21:09 +0000

I really like this post, and Wendy’s comment about lightning thoughts and the people who have them. It definitely is something I’ve come to appreciate in other people since realizing that it’s apparently not the norm.

“Speaking of, do you find it hard to actually handwrite your thoughts and such? I often can’t hand write blog posts, or essays, because my hand can’t move as fast at my thoughts.”

Absolutely. Let’s hear it for touch typing. I can’t take notes by hand, either – something which caused me endless aggravation at my last school where the teachers thought it was cute to ban laptops in the classrooms without a doctor’s note. No stigma there, fuckers.

By: Ily

Ily — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:57:45 +0000

Hey, thanks for the shout-out! As an asexual, I’ve struggled to accept the concept as well. But like any other orientation, you accept it or make yourself miserable. Every non-hetero sexuality has its own difficulties; ours is not that different. But, if I have anything to say about it, “I’m asexual” will, for the next generation, carry the same level of understanding that “I’m gay” does. Give us a few years :-)

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:28:43 +0000

I think that it is fairly hard to accept for a lot of people, both among observers and those who think they might be asexual. For those who desire a stronger sex drive, it could be an unwelcome identity. Furthermore, it is so heavily pathologized as something needing to be fixed that it is hard not to be surprised when someone proudly claims it as an identity. To be perfectly honest, I had an initial reaction that someone who is asexual would be missing out on so much that of course they would want help with correcting the problem! What I didn’t really think about was the inverse, that sexual desire makes me crazy, do stupid things, and frankly could be seen as a mental illness :)

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:23:07 +0000

Asexuality is the only sexual orientation that I’ve ever had to struggle to accept. That was at least partly biographical. I went through sexual years without sexual or even romantic affectional desires. It ended once I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and started taking supplemental thyroxin.

I’m sure it must be a terrible burden to have people ask you about feelings that you don’t have. Especially since your response is going to cause disbelief or a judgment that you must be ill.

At least it is one form of sexuality that doesn’t leave you feel threatened by the Christians nuts and the police.

By: Wendy

Wendy — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:05:08 +0000

Oh racing thoughts.

I had a similar experience with my racing thoughts. I mean, thats they way I *thought*. You don’t think existential thoughts about how you think when your a kid. (Well, sometimes. I did actually spend a long time amazed at the thought that people *think* as well as speak in other languages when I was about 13. And there was that existential crisis during my 15th year when I realized that numbers were not real, and utterly intangible. When I made the same realization about words a few years later, I actually stopped what I was doing and freaked out for about an hour.)

Also, with the muti-tasking – I at first thought I was awesome at it, until i realized I wasn’t actually finishing anything. Took a while to get the hang of multi-tasking while getting stuff done, because my brain thinks faster than I can move –

Speaking of, do you find it hard to actually handwrite your thoughts and such? I often can’t hand write blog posts, or essays, because my hand can’t move as fast at my thoughts.

I really like the comparison of racing thoughts and ways of thinking to sexuality.

That I have racing thoughts, and think differently from most people (and thus converse and interact differently) is really no different from the fact that I like kinky sex, and thus, think and perceive sex differently, and interact differently than someone who isn’t does.

Also – When interacting with people, I find I get along better with others who have racing thoughts, (Or lightning thoughts – I like that name!) because we *think the same way*, or rather, process thoughts the same way. I hop all over the spectrum when in casual conversation, and pick up threads from thoughts that happened ten minutes ago – its very difficult to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t think that way. While I can and am able to sit down and have a linear conversation, its not my prefered way of talking.
Now that I think about it, this may explain why the majority of my friends have been to some degree, bipolar, or suffer from anxiety or depression or other mental issues – our patterns of thinking were similar, or at least different from the ‘norm’, even if our opinions and thoughts were not.
(And of all my symptoms that I have dealt with via medication, racing thoughts have been one of the least affected. To a lesser degree, while medicated but under stress, I will have obsessive thoughts.)

And now, I find myself more comfortable interacting with other kinky/pervy/queer people, because when it comes to sex and sexuality, and by extent, our lives, we view and understand them differently than someone who is vanilla. While we may not all agree on what our views are, we still think about and process mentally sex and sexuality in a completely different way. It is, perhaps, the process of thinking that brings us all together moreso than what our thoughts and views are.

And finally – I’m glad to see there are communities for asexual people now, where they can band together. God bless the internet. I had a friend who thought he might be asexual, and he didn’t really have anywhere to go and figure it out – everyone thought ti was weird and fucked up that, as a male, (particularly an intelligent, good looking one) he wouldn’t be interested in sex.

Eventually he realized he wasn’t, but at the time it made me sad that asexuality wasn’t really accepted as an option, but rather some sort of abnormality. And I think that, had he been a girl, it would have been more accepted(and god would that have pissed me off. Its ok for a girl to say she doesn’t have sexual interest in anyone, but not for a boy? Sex drives are subjective to the person, not the gender. I find it irritating that *my* sex drive had been described as rather masculine (much like the sex drives of historical female seductress have been.) plenty of men are not nearly as interested in sex as I am, plenty of women are, and vice versa. Such is life.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:27:07 +0000

Thanks for bringing up this rather important issue… While there has been discussion of the Kinsey scale type continuum between homosexuality and heterosexuality ad nauseum, there has been remarkably little discussion of the asexual to hypersexual continuum. Props to David Jay and AVEN for beginning to popularize the concept. Personally, I have found it to be immensely helpful in my theoretical understanding of sexuality. I like the visual that AVEN uses, where you take the line representing sexual orientation, add a point outside the line, and add two lines to make a triangle. The points of the triangle now represent 1: Heterosexual, Hypersexual 2: Homosexual, Hypersexual, and 3: Asexual (orientation irrelevant). Most people can locate themselves somewhere within this spectrum. Doing so is informative. Think about it: how many relationship issues are caused by differences in sexual desire (or to use the pop-psych phrase, uneven libidos)? Also, socially approved levels of sexual desire are different based on gender, with men expected to be considerably higher than women. What about the fact that peoples level of sexual desire varies over time? Or that the sexual desire might even be different based upon activity (i.e. “being beaten gets me off, but I could take or leave intercourse”)? Additionally, one could think about how those who have a low level of sexual desire are discriminated against in a “sex-centric” culture. The implications continue, and have considerable explanatory power…