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Asexuality - caused, or random? Your opinion.


Asexuality - caused, or random  

3 members have voted

  1. 1. Does asexuality have a deeper cause, or is it a totally random attribute given at birth?

    • Asexuality is random. I have thought about this for longer than 5min in my life.
      28
    • Asexuality is random. I have not given it much thought - this is how I instinctively feel.
      10
    • Asexuality is caused by the rest of the personality; thoughts, emotions, spiritual aspect, the past (before or after birth). I have thought about this for longer than 5min in my life.
      7
    • Asexuality is caused by the rest of the personality; thoughts, emotions, spiritual aspect, the past (before or after birth). I have not given it much thought - this is how I instinctively feel.
      3
    • I don't know. I have thought about this for longer than 5min in my life, but have not come to a likely conclusion.
      13
    • I don't know, and never cared to know.
      5


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Is asexuality randomly assigned to people at birth, or does it have a cause in the rest of the personality; thoughts, emotions, spiritual aspect, the past and so on, before or after birth? Is there a cause, known to you, unknown or unknowable, or is it a roll of a dice?

Note: I would prefer no discussion (or not much) about this as I feel it's a sensitive topic. The poll itself is enough as far as I'm concerned.

PS: I forgot to mention because I thought it's obvious, but the poll is for asexuals only as I'm interested in their point of view, not the point of view of sexuals lurking about.

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cheeringselenator

I feel like its completely random. Like picking a card out of a hat, some people are going to get asexuality others heterosexuality or bi or anything. Its just chance I think.

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I think it's a mixture of the random sorting of genes at conception and their interactions with the environment. I feel that personality and emotions are formed the same way so I can't answer the poll.

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Any, all or none of the above.

From what I've heard and read, there are "congenital asexuals" to whom explaining sexual attraction is akin to describing a color they've never seen, and then there are people who were conditioned into asexuality by circumstance.

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Is asexuality randomly assigned to people at birth,

What is this, the sexuality lottery? LOL, seriously.

Anyway, it's probably some really complex interplay of environment and genetics (including epigenetics). As is usually the case with these things...

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Opinions really don't matter, since no one (i.e., scientists) knows yet. This isn't a case of asking which flavor ice cream you like best.

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I think it's some sort of mix between nature and nurture or genetics and life experiences, or at least that's how it seems to be in my particular case. I can't say for sure because I'm not an expert by any means.

I do think however, and I'm speaking about myself here, that if I had different experiences in romantic relationships than I had, I may not have identified with asexuality the way I have. I don't know for sure if I ever would have been 100% comfortable living as a sexual person in relationships where sex was a component of the relationships (probably not), but I think that if I hadn't been in s never-ending stream of unsatisfying, emotionally abusive relationships with people who were chosen only because they were available - read as if I had ever been able to find someone worthy of falling in love with or had ever known that feeling - then maybe my ideas about my own sexuality would be different than they are today. But, for me, celibacy is much more of a component of who I am than my orientation as asexual. Now, celibacy is my choice, but even that, for me, was driven by past experiences.

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I have no idea, but I think in my case it's probably somehow related to the feeling I have of dysphoria around secondary sex characteristics. There are a LOT of aces who are trans/nonbinary/genderqueer/agender/neutrois it is seems reasonable to hypothesize that with a correlation this strong, perhaps the things that cause asexuality for many of us are also linked to the things that make us uncomfortable with the gender the doctors designated on our birth certificates, or for others (like me) with the ways our bodies changed at puberty. I am willing to entertain the possibility that perhaps the neurological changes that happen to most people, which make them comfortable in their post-puberty bodies, and which also make them desire physical sex with others, both didn't happen in my case, leaving me with a lot of dysphoria and confusion for years and years.

Physical sex with others for me is just as inconceivable as it was to me when I first learned about it as a child. It's not that I am "choosing" celibacy, because there is no such "choice" in the first place. It is as absolutely inconceivable to me as someone saying "stab yourself in the stomach, because love! fun! it will feel good! everyone else is doing it!" /horror/ Holy smokes world, please stop assuming because I am an adult I am capable of "consenting" to that. I'm not. I've never been. I've known this all along. Nothing happened that "made" me that way -- the question is what didn't happen in my case that usually happens for others.

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I voted random, but don't think th . . . random. I'm going to not post this now. Society became much more accepting of homosexuality once they saw it as a characteristic instead of a choice.

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I think there must be a genetic component. Not to say that there is a sexuality gene but maybe genetic factors, along with the environment you grew up in, are responsible for asexuality? I would be very interested in finding out more, does anyone know about any research that has been done on the topic?

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totally random, imo, i have quite a few siblings - all had the same conditions growing up - they are all hetero, i am the only asexual. BUT, i believe that some of my relatives are asexual (always wondered, when i was 18, why they never married, nor had boyfriends - and one male that married at 46). according to environment, i would then be hetero, as all those around me were hetero (w/exception of a distant cousin that was gay).

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YellowElephant

For me at least I feel that asexuality has become part of my personality, not just randomly assigned. Because of circumstances, I was a very oblivious child and I think my asexuality is sort of part of that; it's the way my brain developed and learned to function due to so many factors. But I like tracing stuff back to a particular reason or explanation so.. :)

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For me, My demisexuality definitely wasn't random. I feel it probably resulted from being raped as a kid. That's just my experience with it, though. In all honesty I don't think it really matters why. Your feelings are valid either way.

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We don't really know the causes or exact roots to anyone's sexual orientation. We know it's not strictly genetic or environmental, because identical twins raised in the same households will sometimes have different orientations. (I know a pair of twins where this is the case- one is gay and the other is straight) The closest thing we have to a theory is that it may be epigenetic- or based at least partially on conditions in the womb. The studies there are done on gay versus straight men, but that can probably be extrapolated to people of other genders and sexual orientations. We don't know for sure, though. Sexuality is weird, but cool to think about!

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