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Wanting To Have Sexual Intercourse For The Purpose of Having A Baby Is Still Sexual Desire


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You desire the donuts then, even though they go against your diet.

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Cincinnatus

You desire the donuts then, even though they go against your diet.

MMMMM.....donuts...

Yeah, that was the point I was trying to make, I desire donuts for the sake of eating donuts because my brain craves their donutty goodness, not for some other reason. That's a narrow definition of desire and roughly equates with attraction. My rational brain doesn't appreciate this nor the fact that I just used the fake word "donutty".

I desire salad because it prevents me from being in Jabba the Hut's weight class. That's a wider definition of desire that I don't think really equates with attraction. My rational brain appreciates this, but by lizard brain really doesn't get it and would rather be doing something else.

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@Cin...

Funny thing is, I agree with the description of your example completely, but I still arrive at my conclusion, which apparently is radically different from yours.

The gay man who has sex with a woman (for reasons of having children, being accepted by society as "normal", etc.) does not desire this sex, in the same way you do not desire to eat salad - this lack of desire is exactly what makes him not straight. He does desire the secondary effects I mention in parentheses, despite not desiring the sex itself - in the same way you would prefer not to eat salad, if you could reach the same health effect by just eating donuts. Staying healthy is your desire; eating salad is just a (in itself, undesired and maybe even undesirable) means to that goal.

I will never agree that desire is a behavior, though. This is just a bizarre statement to me. Desire is an emotion, no more and no less. How you choose to deal with that desire - that is the level of behavior. (This is the exact spot where the difference between asexuality and celibacy lies, btw: Celibacy is purely behavioral; asexuality is purely a matter of (lack of) desire.)

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I will never agree that desire is a behavior, though. This is just a bizarre statement to me. Desire is an emotion, no more and no less. How you choose to deal with that desire - that is the level of behavior. (This is the exact spot where the difference between asexuality and celibacy lies, btw: Celibacy is purely behavioral; asexuality is purely a matter of (lack of) desire.)

In an ideal world people would behave according to their desires, but we're far from that in this mortal life. In Heaven all of those repressed homosexuals who lived straight and narrow to abide by God should be getting all the sodomite action they want.

What people effectively are is a combination of desire and behaviour. For practical purposes, the choices somebody makes are part of them, and that part of them is relevant to the outside world. Perhaps on a more personal level they're not what they appear to be, but they choose to not make that a part of their identity. It's not always lying either. Somebody who attends church and participates in its activities is a member of a religious community even if they don't believe in its deity or take its stories literally. Their atheism isn't a part of their identity as much as their attachment to the community is. Somebody who is bisexual but only wants hetero relationships is effectively hetero, and if that's how they want to identify then it's not really up for argument.

I'm going to challenge myself to tie this back in with the original topic now: if an asexual person wants a conventional family with children produced in a conventional way, they may not want to identify as asexual and that's okay. It may not serve them a purpose to be a declared asexual. When behaviour is consistent and doesn't impact other lives, it's not an outsider's place to correct someone identifying based on that instead of internal desires.

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Cincinnatus

You have valid points and is certainly a valid point of view, Mysticus. Reading your last post, I don't think we are that far apart honestly. I didn't mean to imply that behavior is desire, but rather that behavior is the pursuit of fulfilling a desire (sexual or not). Don't think there is not much point in beating this dead horse, so I'll leave this be.


<snip> I'm going to challenge myself to tie this back in with the original topic now: if an asexual person wants a conventional family with children produced in a conventional way, they may not want to identify as asexual and that's okay. It may not serve them a purpose to be a declared asexual. When behaviour is consistent and doesn't impact other lives, it's not an outsider's place to correct someone identifying based on that instead of internal desires.

Yeah, I'll say the reason I waded into this (besides the fact that it was way past my bed time and I wasn't perfectly functional) was really the converse of this. I just want to say that if someone who chooses to identify as asexual who is having sex for some utility (other than fulfilling their instinctual impulse to have partnered sex) should not be prevented from identifying as such. But yes, I agree 100% if someone does not identify as asexual there no reasonable way for an outsider to suggest that they may be.

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But if you desire the utility, that's still desire. If you're building a house and you just bought some new fancy saw thingy, you'll probably want to use the new fancy saw thingy to cut your timber. There are other methods of cutting... many tools laying around to choose from... but you want to use that one particular saw.

Yes, you desire to cut the wood. But more specifically, you desire to cut the wood with that specific tool.

Not everyone who cuts wood also desires a specific tool... most people just use what's laying around or what will work best. Just because most people don't desire a specific tool doesn't mean that those who do aren't experiencing desire.

See how that works?

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  • 3 weeks later...

But if you desire the utility, that's still desire. If you're building a house and you just bought some new fancy saw thingy, you'll probably want to use the new fancy saw thingy to cut your timber. There are other methods of cutting... many tools laying around to choose from... but you want to use that one particular saw.

Yes, you desire to cut the wood. But more specifically, you desire to cut the wood with that specific tool.

Not everyone who cuts wood also desires a specific tool... most people just use what's laying around or what will work best. Just because most people don't desire a specific tool doesn't mean that those who do aren't experiencing desire.

See how that works?

I don't know, I do a lot of things I don't want to do to get something that I do want. Like going to work, I go to work to make money. I don't want to go work, if I could never go to work again then I wouldn't. However I do want the money. Of course sex for pregnancies sake is different, considering that there are other options, unless you don't have the money, even then get a turkey baster and a willing volunteer. Of course my desire to have sex, to figure out if I am asexual is different too, because I want to go into that with the express purpose of having sex, but I'm not really looking forward too it. I want the answer to the question. I'm also at this point wondering if I am situationally asexual, with the situation being the fact that I wasn't born male. So transitioning may reveal to me that I am sexual and was merely completely unable to have sex in the "wrong" body. I don't know, it's an interesting argument regardless.

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Oh don't mind me, I'm just here for the comments.

Personally as a trans man giving birth is just...not for me. Most of the time I forget I even have ovaries and that's the way I'd like it to stay.

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Oh don't mind me, I'm just here for the comments.

Personally as a trans man giving birth is just...not for me. Most of the time I forget I even have ovaries and that's the way I'd like it to stay.

I know right, I try to forget that my child bearing ability exists most days. It just feels so wrong.
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I guess the assumption that asexual people who want natural children can't be asexual is similar to the assumption that trans people who want natural children can't be trans. Like, if a trans woman has decided she wants a child that was produced with her sperm, then clearly she likes that she has a body that produces sperm and thus she is a man. Similarly, if a trans man wants his eggs fertilized so he can have a genetic offspring, whether he carries the baby or not, then he must want to be every motherly feminine stereotype possible. It's just way more complex than that. Most people don't spend much of their lives pregnant or the person who impregnated a currently pregnant individual. It's not the only way we express ourselves. The feelings and behaviours outside of the pregnancy or the means to get pregnant make up more of us than that one choice.

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If I understood the original argument correctly it goes: an asexual is actually a sexual person if they want to have sex in order to have a child. The reasons for it don't matter, as long as there is the "want" part.

I disagree with this.

If I see that some option is better than others (sex vs. turkey) then I might want to choose it over the others in order to achieve my goal desire (baby).

This for me doesn't mean I desire the option I chose (sex).

If I want to get in shape and I'm given the choice to start doing crossfitness, poledancing, taekwondo or weightlifting (no, no, no, no) then the fact that I choose taekwondo does NOT mean that I desire doing taekwondo. There might be one or more conscious and/or unconscious reasons or choosing taekwondo over the others but if you tell me "Ooh, so you are experiencing desire towards taekwondo" then you are insensitive to my inner struggle of "do I really want to be fit more than I don't want to do sports". Taekwondo might be the only sport I find ecologically/economically/religiously/any-other-ly to be the least evil choice. Still doesn't make me desire it.

*EDIT*

Or if you feel that: want = desire, then let me put it this way.

If I choose to do taekwondo over poledancing, weightlifting or crossfitness, it doesn't automatically mean that I want to do it. It just means it is the lesser evil since while I dislike it I really really do not like the other three for whatever reasons.

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I guess the assumption that asexual people who want natural children can't be asexual is similar to the assumption that trans people who want natural children can't be trans. Like, if a trans woman has decided she wants a child that was produced with her sperm, then clearly she likes that she has a body that produces sperm and thus she is a man. Similarly, if a trans man wants his eggs fertilized so he can have a genetic offspring, whether he carries the baby or not, then he must want to be every motherly feminine stereotype possible. It's just way more complex than that. Most people don't spend much of their lives pregnant or the person who impregnated a currently pregnant individual. It's not the only way we express ourselves. The feelings and behaviours outside of the pregnancy or the means to get pregnant make up more of us than that one choice.

I have no problem if another trans person wants biological kids. I don't believe in the "I'm more trans than you are" game. I just have no interest, it would really mess up my emotions for one thing, and I've just never wanted kids.

It is kinda the same process though isn't it. Its the no true scotsman again.

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If I want kids in order to raise someone, doesn't mean I have the baby pull. If I get impregnanted by accident, it doesn't mean I have the baby desire either. Or if I want an heir, or I have something equally selfish in mind (sorry, babies are just plain offputting for me). Same goes with an asexual person. If they have sex for whatever reason, for their partner, out of duty and "should", for a thrill, for babies, for a personal gain, then it doesn't mean they have the biological sexual desire every allo person does. Other than that - it's just semantics. IMHO the desire we all seem to be talking about is a biological urge in its nature, something coming from the reptile brain. Some people have unusual reptile brains, just like some people have unusual hands or hair, it's about it, isn't it?

Semantics, purely semantic discussion. Because yes, the way Skulls puts it, it makes sense, and is logically coherent. She just defines desire as being of any nature, not only the biological, instinctual, reptile nature, while most often people mean it here this way.

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I used to "want" to have sex for vanity....to feel someone was attracted to me, because I thought it was expected of me, because I didn't want to be called a *****tease, a couple of times to conceive, because I didn't want to be chucked out on my ear, because I couldn't stand the whingeing. Not quite sure that any of those reasons count as "desire". I did frequently feel like I was selling myself.

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  • 1 month later...

So, we (me and my partner) talked about the possibility of having children recently, something which she's a lot less averse to these days than used to be the case.

Me: "But how'd that work? Artificial insemination?"

Her: "I generally prefer the natural way of things."

And I guess that means she experiences desire now? :P

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I leave out a qualifier that could be inferred from context ONCE, and Mysti is on my case straight away. ^_^

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