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Asexual Men Musings


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This thread is intended to be a safe place for Asexual Men to discuss their perspectives, feelings and experiences in a world that portrays men as hyper-sexual. As this is in Asexual Musings and Rantings, I would prefer to keep the discussion focused towards Musings (Reflective thought) versus Rantings. Feel free to create a new thread if you feel your post my contain 'too much' ranting. Please also keep in mind this may be the first thread new Asexuals (especially asexual men) may come across!



Steph


Asexual Musings and Rantings Moderator


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I just came on the forum to post my views as to where this pinned thread would best fit, and there it is already in place. 🙂

So to get things started I'd like to find out if other male asexuals find it difficult to be among other men who are sexual. Personally I feel like there is an unspoken link between the sexual males, regardless of whether they're hetero, homo, bi etc... and this tends to make me feel excluded even if it's not intentional. Maybe it's just because I'm an introvert, but it would be interesting to know what other guys here think.

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It can be, but in fairness I think it depends upon the men. My regular group of male friends are actually cagey about sex and sexual feeling, so it's easy to be openly asexual around them. Around my dad's friends - we practice archery together - it's rather harder. They're a bunch of middle-aged builders, after all.

During the summer on the way to the range it get's kind of awkward when the other two are catcalling at girls along the way > > Sometimes at the club one of them will make a remark about one of the female members and it takes me noticeably longer to a) Figure out who he means and b) Figure out what's supposed to be remarkable about her

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For me, the asexuality bit was one of my first big clues that I wasn't quite like the peers of my own sex. It felt like the majority of them transformed somewhere around intermediate/high school, and I couldn't understand why. Was something wrong with me? Well, I don't FEEL like anything's wrong with me. It must be all you guys that are the weird ones! I batted the whole "I'm weird" and "no, THEY'RE weird" ideas back and forth around in my head ever since.

One thing is for sure though, it was starting around this point that I felt like I largely couldn't relate to my own sex; I actually started finding them repulsive, and I started gravitating more toward the opposite sex for company. I suppose it's the sort of stereotypical thing that gay characters in media would do (that is, casually fraternize with the opposite sex as if they were friends, because *obviously* males and females can't associate otherwise without it being sexual) except that I knew that I wasn't gay. About as far as you can be from it, actually.

While it's often said that females can be just as sexual and sexually expressive as males can be (and I've run into a few of those sorts so I know that it's true), my experience was that females as a whole are either better at withholding it, or at least better at withholding it from me (that is to say, someone who's obviously male). There's been a number of females I've had as company over the years that I admit to being quite thankful that I had around, in order for me to not feel as alien as I would have otherwise.

So to get things started I'd like to find out if other make asexuals find it difficult to be among other men who are sexual.

I find it to be difficult around *anyone* who's sexual. That's not to say that I find it difficult to be around 99~% of the population, but just the particularly sexually expressive people. Granted, for me at least, the vast majority of those people have been male.

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While it's often said that females can be just as sexual and sexually expressive as males can be (and I've run into a few of those sorts so I know that it's true), my experience was that females as a whole are either better at withholding it, or at least better at withholding it from me (that is to say, someone who's obviously male). There's been a number of females I've had as company over the years that I admit to being quite thankful that I had around, in order for me to not feel as alien as I would have otherwise.

I've noticed that, too. You can often drop some of the pretence of being straight around female groups since in general they actually appreciate it. It's faintly annoying that the main reason I've had positive reactions to my asexuality is because it makes me a "safe" friend (No worrying about the possibility of a sudden come-on). I can't get too annoyed at the people who say it, since I can see why, but even so ... when girls say things like "I wish all guys were like that!", I can't help but think "Yeah, sure, you say that now, but what will you say when you realise your asexual boyfriend isn't sexually interested in you."

I think that's one of the main reasons I often keep up the pretence of being straight even when I'm around female groups who would react positively to it. I don't want to be typecast into the "gay best friend" role.

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Anyone else feel a lot more comfortable around girls than other guys? I've noticed this a lot with myself and was wondering if it was just me or if it was an asexual thing

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whitesphere

As long as I can remember, I've always been closer to girls than guys as friends. Right now, my 2 closest friends of over 10 years are both women. For me, it's not about shared sexuality that turns me off male friends as much as it is I am outwardly emotional and feel uncomfortable being around men because most men don't react to that well. And now that I haven't had any male friends for so long, I'm not at all comfortable being around men as friends. As co-workers, not a problem. As friends? No.

What complicates matters is, although I don't really have a sex drive, I do have a romantic drive and want all that entails when I'm emotionally ready and find the right woman. I feel I'm not in the clearly "gay male friend" safe area, but am not quite in the "sexual male partner" area either, but am in some grey zone of "Well, he's kind of interested but probably won't want sex"

I think a big thing that will help me here is moving more towards being my own beloved (i.e. unconditional self love). That's a big work in progress for me.

I agree with Hobbes! here on the "(sexual) women certainly do NOT want all men to not be interested in them sexually." I've seen firsthand how frustrating it is for a sexual woman not to have sexual interest reciprocated. It is emotionally devastating as well for a sexual woman to have a partner who doesn't want to have sex with her.

I think they were talking about the men who apparently let their libidos override their basic manners and etiquette around women.

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I'm definitely more comfortable around women than men. Just about all of my closest friends are women. Men seem so damn earnest yet incurious about everything.

I get the feeling that I have a sort of subconscious acquired misandry; I kinda avoid interacting with men, just because of how creepy some of them can be. Older guys who are strangers remarking to me out of the blue how cute a girl across the room is, with the unspoken expectation that I would respond. Younger guys telling me about "nailing" an attractive girl as though expecting me to be enthusiastically approving. Then obviously, family and friends asking about girls in my life, who I'm dating, when I'll give them great-grandchildren or whatever (and with that last, I've never had a female relative or friend mention that, ever).

I don't know what to think. It's confusing. Why is it so hard for these guys to understand that I don't care, and yet the women in my life are perfectly accepting of the idea that I don't look at them as a potential sexual interest, or through the eyes of a predator? Of course there are heavily-ingrained societal reasons built over the course of human history and all that, but that doesn't make it that much less confusing to me. It's 2015. Why?

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Anyone else feel a lot more comfortable around girls than other guys? I've noticed this a lot with myself and was wondering if it was just me or if it was an asexual thing

I don't think it's just an asexual thing. Because females have less superfluous sexual feeling then men (at least that's what it seems like to me), they seem less inclined to talk about that kind of thing openly. Especially around the opposite gender.

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SorryNotSorry

I just came on the forum to post my views as to where this pinned thread would best fit, and there it is already in place. :-)

So to get things started I'd like to find out if other make asexuals find it difficult to be among other men who are sexual. Personally I feel like there is an unspoken link between the sexual males, regardless of whether they're hetero, homo, bi etc... and this tends to make me feel excluded even if it's not intentional. Maybe it's just because I'm an introvert, but it would be interesting to know what other guys here think.

Yes... because not all of them get it. Sometimes sexual men have spoken or acted in ways that have made me think they need a good smack up 'longside the head once in a while. :mad: They get to acting stupid 'n' proud and that's when I feel the urge to tell them to knock it off.

BTW as an asexual straight man, one of my pet hates is the implication that any kind of personal interaction with women is understood to be a lead-up to sex and possibly fatherhood... this is the reason why I made a promise to myself not to make any more efforts to get romantically involved with non-asexual women.

Simply put, I got tired of trying to win prizes I didn't want.

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Sage Raven Domino

I got tired of trying to win prizes I didn't want.

I couldn't have put it conciser! :cake:

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nerdperson777

I feel like I don't fit in this thread because it says "men" and I don't identify as man, and it seems that most that's going on here are DMABs. Since I'm not DMAB, I've often been put into groups with girls when I was younger. I wanted to join the boy groups but not really. I've found myself more comfortable around female bodied people than male. I think it might be because I'm sex-repulsed and I feel that with any male-bodied person, they could do things to me that I don't want. As long as the person has those body parts, I'm just paranoid about that chance. So then I normally find myself being friends with female bodied people or not buff manly guys. Maybe it's just a femme guy thing with me.

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I feel like I don't fit in this thread because it says "men" and I don't identify as man, and it seems that most that's going on here are DMABs. Since I'm not DMAB, I've often been put into groups with girls when I was younger. I wanted to join the boy groups but not really. I've found myself more comfortable around female bodied people than male. I think it might be because I'm sex-repulsed and I feel that with any male-bodied person, they could do things to me that I don't want. As long as the person has those body parts, I'm just paranoid about that chance. So then I normally find myself being friends with female bodied people or not buff manly guys. Maybe it's just a femme guy thing with me.

All Men are welcomed here! (And everyone for that matter, but you understand where I'm going with the dedicated thread idea. Okay enough rambling). I reworded the thread with Transmen in mind but if you have any way I could alter it I invite suggestions ^_^

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Are there less asexual men than women? I guess I always assumed the asexual community was half women half men.

Based upon the 2014 AVEN Survey (page 6). The statistics are as follows for Aces:

Woman/Female: 62%

Other: 26.1%

Man/Male: 11.9%

EDIT: Arghh! Diamond with the lightning reflexes!

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Are there less asexual men than women? I guess I always assumed the asexual community was half women half men.

Based upon the 2014 AVEN Survey (page 6). The statistics are as follows for Aces:

Woman/Female: 62%

Other: 26.1%

Man/Male: 11.9%

EDIT: Arghh! Diamond with the lightning reflexes!

That's really interesting, I never knew that.

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Sage Raven Domino

Asexual females are adjusting to the situation well by finding sexual males who're willing to compromise or be celibate (there are plenty of them, though I don't know the stats). I still can't overcome the shock caused by being as useless as back when I was identifying as heterosexual.

Edit:

Are there gender stats split by country? What do you think is the extent of gender imbalance in the UK and Germany?

As far as I can see in the Russian alt-lang forum, males aren't in such a big, if any, shortage here. (But of course there are too few of us to match all the foreign female androromantic aces, lol.)

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Personally I feel a lot more confident about being open about asexuality to my female acquaintances than my male ones. I tend to feel that females are more sympathetic to the concept of asexuality than males, who just think that I am one less competitor for the leg over they want. Which is a bit rich when I seriously question whether I am male, or intersex. waiting for the answer to that question is doing nothing for my mental stability at the moment.

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SorryNotSorry

Based upon the 2014 AVEN Survey (page 6). The statistics are as follows for Aces:

Woman/Female: 62%

Other: 26.1%

Man/Male: 11.9%

WHOA... 26.1% is a lot of hermaphrodites. The medical texts totally lied to me!!!

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Sage Raven Domino

Those are mostly not hermaphrodites biologically, just those whose gender identification is neither purely male nor purely female. I'm surprised by how small the percentage of such people is - I thought that aces naturally have more freedom for an unusual gender identification because they usually don't need to be sexually attractive to sexual people of 'standard' genders. Moi, I've started questioning my gender only after I begun identifying as ace.

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That statistic on male aces is shocking.

It's not really noticeable when you're in the threads.

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Sage Raven Domino

True that, but I seldom pay attention to the gender of a previously unknown poster, unless they mention gender-specific issues. That's one of the reasons of not noticing the imbalance. Plus, aren't male and unusual gender posters more active on average than female ones?

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Depends, I mean for the most part the relative lack of males on AVEN is easy to miss - except when it comes to sex, funnily enough. Nearly all the threads about sexual experience, whether it relates to being grey-A, relationships, rants, whatever, are dominated by posts from females and female-bodied people. This partly why I suggested a pinned thread like this in the first place. As a questioning man browsing these forums for the first time, you wouldn't come across a lot of posts about asexuality from a male perspective ... which can be awkward when you're trying to decide whether the ace label fits

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i seem to remember someone saying that while the percentage of men was low compared to the percentage of women in the aven census, it's actually (relatively) high compared to percentages of men elsewhere on the internet.

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:D However, males are bigger chatterboxes than females (contrary to the stereotype), which makes their presence (in terms of letters written) closer to half.

Looking at today's list of top posters confirms that: it's led by me, lazy tyke and Skycaptain.

Men are bigger chatboxes, yet the article states

"One gender isn't inherently more talkative than the other, it's just that a lot of times it depends on the situation and gender role influences," Leaper said.

This statement makes sense to me due to me noticing that some people speak more frequently based on subject, location, and why they are with.

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Sage Raven Domino

"Men tend to be more talkative than women, but particularly when they're interacting in mixed-gender settings," Leaper said, explaining that this could also be a result of men traditionally being socialized to dominate.

This factor is especially pronounced in female-dominated communities like AVEN, where some males (like moi) can feel they're not dominant if they fail to express a firm opinion on everything that's going on :D

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Based upon the 2014 AVEN Survey (page 6). The statistics are as follows for Aces:

Man/Male: 11.9%

EDIT: Arghh! Diamond with the lightning reflexes!

I always knew I was special :lol: Of course these are self-reported statistics. I would venture a guess that there are many more men who fit into the category yet do not know about asexuality (like I did not) or simply keep quiet about it as men are supposed to be sexual. I know many men who are in my age group (early 50's) and single like me. I have heard comments from others who think they are secretly gay but knowing what I know they strike me as asexual like myself. The major trait we all share is education and extremely technical/detail oriented coming from technical/engineering/sciences backgrounds.

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Sage Raven Domino

I wouldn't jump to such conclusions yet. Exact sciences require so much dedication that sexual people often have to harness their drives, sublimate them into study. I don't know many students of human sciences, so can't tell how prevalent asexuality is among them. But among math students, I suspect I met some latent aces, but they were of both genders, and I don't think that the percentage of males among them was even close to the percentage of males in maths in general.

Besides, if you were an androromantic female ace, would you actively try to drag latent male aces out of the closet in order to partner u with them? I guess that you'd rather be lazy and use the dating infrastructure to find an openly ace male or, even worse, a sexual male who'd agree to be celibate for life (but I don't believe they can do this without hidden longterm effects on the mental health). So it's the percentage of openly ace males that matters for practical purposes.

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