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How Young is "Too Young?"


How Young is "Too Young?"  

49 members have voted

  1. 1. In your opinion, what is the youngest age someone can ID as asexual?

    • 8 or younger
      8
    • 9
      2
    • 8
      0
    • 11
      6
    • 12
      10
    • 13
      9
    • 14
      4
    • 15
      3
    • 16
      2
    • 17
      2
    • 18
      1
    • 19
      0
    • 20
      1
    • 21 or older
      1
  2. 2. In your opinion, what is the youngest age someone can know for sure that they're asexual?

    • 8 or younger
      4
    • 9
      0
    • 10
      1
    • 11
      0
    • 12
      3
    • 13
      6
    • 14
      3
    • 15
      6
    • 16
      10
    • 17
      1
    • 18
      4
    • 19
      0
    • 20
      2
    • 21 or older
      9


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I realize this can be controversial, and is not meant to invalidate the feelings or identities of younger aces, but I'm curious about what the asexual community generally thinks. This is an anonymous poll, so be honest.

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Luftschlosseule

If you're old enough to wonder if you are too young to wonder about your sexuality, you aren't.

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Horse Ham Radio

I think it really depends on the person. I picked 16 for question 2 because I feel that if anyone aged 15 and under said they were asexual, I would be more inclined to believe that their orientation might change as they got older - so I would be cautious about believing them. But for someone 16+ I would be leaning more towards believing that this is their true orientation.

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I voted for twelve to ID and twenty to know, but those are just what I'm guessing as the averages. People are highly variable in terms of mentality and maturity, and I consider it entirely possible that somebody would know much earlier than twenty or wouldn't have a clue until much later. Personal experiences and so forth would have to come into the mix, too. It seems unlikely (albeit not impossible) to me that somebody would be able to accurately guess that they are asexual before they've even hit puberty, thus why I picked twelve as the average age there, but beyond that? I really don't know, and I'm sure it's down to the individual person. I'd say it's significantly more likely for somebody to be sure once they're out of their teens, but hardly impossible for that to happen before it. Assigning any hard number to people in a subject such as this is not going to work unless you're accepting that it's just an average number or one picked more out of convenience than anything else.

 

Eight or younger seems... really young to me. Don't most kids not think about sex or romance or anything like that at that age? I mean, I'm sure there are exceptions, but that's young enough that most people still change a lot in many ways before they're adults.

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I believe 21+ purely because late bloomers are actually a thing. Somebody could also prefer to just indulge themselves into their studies completely and focus on that. But that doesn't mean somebody under that age can't be asexual. Personally, my advice would be if you are under that age range then looking into asexuality won't harm you, ID if you wish BUT keep an open mind because feeling sexual attraction whilst burying it and refusing to acknowledge the truth can only harm you. It can harm you in the same way that denying you are homosexual and playing straight can.

 

(I'm probably gonna get a lot of flack for saying that but don't care)

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I'd say that everything pre-puberty is too young. Whatever that may mean in numbers.

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You should just have grouped the age groups gaps of five (5-10, 10-15, 40-45).

You're causing bias on the result by including mostly teen ages in the significant possible answers.

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I feel that, to a certain extent, a person has to have experienced puberty in order to know who they're sexually attracted to (romantic attraction can be clear much younger, even around ages 7-9 depending on the child). That means that anyone 13-15 or older can know if they're asexual. As for the rest of the world accepting and acknowledging that identification, I think a person has to at least be in university for their identity to be viewed as valid.

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Luftschlosseule

Fun fact: Since malnourishion is on a low, compared to the previous centuries, children are hitting puberty earlier and earlier.

Quick google search led me to the Harvard Health blog. If this trend continues, "pre-puberty" might be a really small life span in the future.

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I'm disinclined to believe 8 years is old enough to know, or at least start suspecting. A lot of younger children do experiment sexually, but... For those who don't, would they fully understand the concept of asexuality? And what would they have to compare themselves to? It's not like the rest of their friends are having sexual discussions at such an age, so they probably wouldn't even realize something is different.

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If you're actively browsing on the internet, questioning your sexuality/orientation, and studying asexuality, you're probably mature/intelligent enough to create an informed decision about your own identity. If an 8 year old told me they were asexual and explained it, I'd be bowing down to my precocious prodigal future overlord. Obviously, someone who hasn't gone through puberty MAY change, but everyone has a right to form their own identity at any time.

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I put 8 and younger for both because I think there are people who know they are gay from very early on and see no reason why someone can't know they are asexual that early on too. It's not typically a sexuality people think of when questioning themselves, so if someone who is 8 or younger has found this term and definition and feels it applies to them, i see no reason to believe they don't know themselves best.

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I picked 12 for ID (even tho I guess even younger are free to ID, but from 12 years upwards it can be taken more seriously) and 16 for "knowing for sure", but I think that if you literally have to know for 100% sure, that time might never come, and at 16 you can be "sure enough".

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8 hours ago, Votes4Goats said:

I put 8 and younger for both because I think there are people who know they are gay from very early on and see no reason why someone can't know they are asexual that early on too. It's not typically a sexuality people think of when questioning themselves, so if someone who is 8 or younger has found this term and definition and feels it applies to them, i see no reason to believe they don't know themselves best.

Hmm, some people probably knew super early on, or in hindsight can see signs of being gay, but if we took a large sample of 8-year olds (let alone younger) and asked their orientation, it would be interesting to see, how many have completely changed their mind by the time when they're teens or adults. Heck, a lot of kids (regardless of gender) want to marry their mum or dad!

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When I was 8, girls and boys wouldn't even sit next to each other cause they had yucky germs. 

 

What 8 year old would honestly admit to feeling anything sexual. If my kid came up to me and said that they wanted sex, Is be damn well worried that they were being abused. 

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Janus the Fox
14 hours ago, Ciri said:

When I was 8, girls and boys wouldn't even sit next to each other cause they had yucky germs. 

 

What 8 year old would honestly admit to feeling anything sexual. If my kid came up to me and said that they wanted sex, Is be damn well worried that they were being abused. 

School around my time, i remember boys and girls where designated onto different tables, like a table for 4 kids, never mixed at 8 years of age.  Teachers know sexual development starts around then typically, or according to any teaching handbooks, rules, laws, regulations at the time.  8 is perhaps the start of the word that start being asked, heard around the playground as this good, mysterious thing, plenty of playground gossip around topics relating to the genitals.  In law though there are cases of kids as young as 6 having sex, abused or not.

 

Baring in mind, back then, UK schools where disallowed to teach anything LGBT under Thatchers Section 28 Law, so, anything beyond your typical gender and heteronormative/family values where not taught or encouraged.  Plenty of confused kids, plenty of early boomers, confused of what they're feeling and plenty of kids can't understand what's going on dependent on learning ability.  This Section 28 effectively disallowed the typical nuance of difference beyond family values. 

 

Without that such learning, plenty of questioning goes on in kids that don't fit the traditional family values at that time.  Plenty of perhaps more vocal celebrities describe such a questioning potentially, much later in life, due to this lack of nuanced sexual learning due to Section 28 or such being deviant/perverted, disgusting fetishistic behaviour often perceived in media, anything 1970s - 1990s up to earlier 2000s when such law was repealed.

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I really can't see it being anymore than a developing gender identity at that age. Playground discussion is more 'Look! I have a willy! Why don't girls have one?' They're learning that boys and girls are different (and may be wondering why they are a girl but have a 'willy' in some cases!) not what they want to do with it.

Yeah, they might experiment at masturbation at that age, that's pretty common. But nothing beyond that and definitely not partnered.

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Janus the Fox

Anywhere beyond 4 is often when gender develops, 8 is often the time a child socially develops and become curious of their and others bodies.  I'd say around that time, kids can get often physical with each other with the likes of "Playing Doctor" with friends or with family like brothers and sisters of around the same age.  Absolutely masturbation normally gets experimental, kids may see that elsewhere or gets commented on in the playground, or however thoughts or such what goes on in children normally.

 

I'd say... around that time kids play "boyfriend-Girlfriend"  but nothing that is sexually/romantically complex.  Each kid has a very differing social development involving other people, some go much ahead, some go or stay at a certain level, plenty of environmental, learning, neuro-developmental variables I would presume.

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In any case... even if there are super early bloomers in sexuals, you can't exactly be an "early blooming asexual" - what would that even mean?

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I'd say 12 is the beginning of the border, where a lot of people tend to start have some sort of idea of what could be going on, but at the same time since they're only starting their development, it may be too early to tell for sure. I however think this is a good age to be at least aware of other orientations like asexuality as young people are maturing, as it can save a lot of screwing around later.

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Hermit Advocate

At least 8 to start wondering, but more around 16 to know for certain, they will know more about themselves at this point. I suspected I was asexual back when i was 13-14, but I didn't know for certain til I was 19-20.

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I think one can identify to whatever they want at any age, but to know for certain I'd say at least a couple of years after puberty imho, around 15-16 since orientation can be fluid at that age and late bloomers do exist, after that it's less likely to change; I myself came across the term at 16 and started wondering about it but didn't completely identify as ace until 18, at that point I was pretty much sure.

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Type42Firefly

I don't think the fact that a kid might turn out wrong means they "can't know for sure" now.


And even if a kid is a late bloomer, when friends ask their orientation, there's no real benefit to shrugging as opposed to taking a guess.

 
I'd imagine possibly-ace kids wouldn't think to label their sexuality until their friends did (speaking from experience), and I'd think that most kids would start feeling attraction within a few years of one another, maybe sometime around middle school... my friends in middle school always had more interesting things (to them) to discuss than dating/sex, so I don't have a very good gauge for when that age is.

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