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Why isn't asexuality a mental disorder?


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Galactic Turtle

My parents think it is. They equate not wanting physical intimacy (sex, hugging, cuddling, etc) with like... not wanting to shower or not wanting to go outside. 

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2 hours ago, Sherlocks said:

Of course, it is. I do it all the time. Everything in life is about putting on a good show. 

That's your opinion.  It's certainly not true for everyone.  

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1 hour ago, Galactic Turtle said:

My parents think it is. They equate not wanting physical intimacy (sex, hugging, cuddling, etc) with like... not wanting to shower or not wanting to go outside. 

To be honest I shower as rarely as I can get away with and hate going outside.. I guess that makes me totally freaky haha.

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Galactic Turtle
4 minutes ago, ℃å℞t☉☧hℹĿẹ• said:

To be honest I shower as rarely as I can get away with and hate going outside.. I guess that makes a totally freaky haha.

Lol me too. XD

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2 hours ago, Homer said:

At this point I believe that it's just me failing at expressing myself properly, tbh.

You're really not. <_<

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2 hours ago, Sherlocks said:

If you can figure out why a person did something then you have an understanding of that person and how they process things. 

 

You can understand 

 

*how a person thinks

*how most people behave 

*What is commonly considered traumatic

*how to deal with someone who has been in a traumatic situation

*What patterns equal what consequence 

*What is socially acceptable 

*What a person's motives are 

*How you are expected to behave around who 

*What most people find attractive 

 

What exactly is not being understood? 

TMI rape

 

Well to be honest, I'm not following this line of reasoning. You can GUESS, but you and I may make completely different guesses based on our past life experiences, personal bias, etc etc. If we both guess completely differently why someone has done something (and neither of us might be correct) we aren't actually understanding the person or their motives, we are just guessing and making assumptions as a result. 

 

An example is a case I was watching a documentary about yesterday, where a very large number of men were raping a woman they kidnapped, for about 12 hours. The sexual assault psychologist person they were interviewing in the documentary said these men wanted power over the woman and were demonstrating their power by raping her. The psychologist was like "this was too monstrous to be sexually motivated, it was all about power" (bullshit, if you ask me).. My assessment of the situation is utterly different. She was a very attractive young woman, and certain people literally get off on taking sex violently. Like, that's a very sexy situation to some people and I've personally known people who enjoy that sort of sexual situation very much (as in, with one attractive woman who is crying and screaming and a large number of men taking turns using her sexually).. People like that get all upset when they try to find porn with that happening and it's all faked etc. The fact is, there are people out there who get off on this sort of thing. These men took this opportunity because they thought they could live out a sexual fantasy and get away with it, but some of them were caught and convicted after the victim escaped. My assessment of the situation based on what I saw and based on my experience is that these men did it for sexual gratification. It didn't seem monstrous to them, it seemed very arousing and enjoyable and they didn't think there would be consequences for them because they were going to kill her and hide her body. So my conclusions about them and their motives, their thoughts and feelings etc, are extremely different from the "sexual psychologist" who had obviously bought into that ridiculous old feminist theory that men who rape do so not for sexual gratification but for power over women (yes that is true in some cases but rape is almost always about sexual gratification and power is sometimes an aspect of that. Rape can also be used for humiliation, to punish etc, but the rapist is almost always getting off sexually on that as well. Almost no rapist is doing a rape thinking it's a turn off. And in this situation, these men were living out a sexual fantasy and loving it.) Regardless, her conclusions about their motives and actions, thoughts and feelings etc, based on what she saw and knows were very different from mine. Same is true of most situations. Two people can witness the same thing and come to completely different conclusions about the motivations behind it based on their own personal biases, beliefs, opinions, and experiences. I understand that some crimes can be different and some people's motives and reasoning can be picked apart and understood sometimes depending on the crime and the person etc, but yeah, this sort of situation is often just a lot of guesswork and two people may guess something completely different and therefore have utterly different "understandings" of the person/people involved.

 

That was totally off topic sorry people.

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28 minutes ago, ℃å℞t☉☧hℹĿẹ• said:

To be honest I shower as rarely as I can get away with and hate going outside.. I guess that makes a totally freaky haha.

Me too. But that means I have to shower before I meet people or go outside...

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27 minutes ago, Fox6 said:

Me too. But that means I have to shower before I meet people or go outside...

Oh shame, you quoted me before I'd realised I failed at English when I initially typed that comment *blush* I've fixed it now! Haha.

 

I avoid meeting people like the plague but I do sadly have to go outside every day to drop my kids at school and kindy and pic them up again. But I don't really get smelly or greasy haha so no one notices if I haven't showered for a while :P

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Galactic Turtle
2 minutes ago, Fox6 said:

Me too. But that means I have to shower before I meet people or go outside...

Yeah before i had a roommate, I'd go a week or more without showering until I had to go outside for food since I worked from home.

 

*shuts up to stop derailing topic*

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2 hours ago, ℃å℞t☉☧hℹĿẹ• said:

TMI rape

 

Well to be honest, I'm not following this line of reasoning. You can GUESS, but you and I may make completely different guesses based on our past life experiences, personal bias, etc etc. If we both guess completely differently why someone has done something (and neither of us might be correct) we aren't actually understanding the person or their motives, we are just guessing and making assumptions as a result. 

 

An example is a case I was watching a documentary about yesterday, where a very large number of men were raping a woman they kidnapped, for about 12 hours. The sexual assault psychologist person they were interviewing in the documentary said these men wanted power over the woman and were demonstrating their power by raping her. The psychologist was like "this was too monstrous to be sexually motivated, it was all about power" (bullshit, if you ask me).. My assessment of the situation is utterly different. She was a very attractive young woman, and certain people literally get off on taking sex violently. Like, that's a very sexy situation to some people and I've personally known people who enjoy that sort of sexual situation very much (as in, with one attractive woman who is crying and screaming and a large number of men taking turns using her sexually).. People like that get all upset when they try to find porn with that happening and it's all faked etc. The fact is, there are people out there who get off on this sort of thing. These men took this opportunity because they thought they could live out a sexual fantasy and get away with it, but some of them were caught and convicted after the victim escaped. My assessment of the situation based on what I saw and based on my experience is that these men did it for sexual gratification. It didn't seem monstrous to them, it seemed very arousing and enjoyable and they didn't think there would be consequences for them because they were going to kill her and hide her body. So my conclusions about them and their motives, their thoughts and feelings etc, are extremely different from the "sexual psychologist" who had obviously bought into that ridiculous old feminist theory that men who rape do so not for sexual gratification but for power over women (yes that is true in some cases but rape is almost always about sexual gratification and power is sometimes an aspect of that. Rape can also be used for humiliation, to punish etc, but the rapist is almost always getting off sexually on that as well. Almost no rapist is doing a rape thinking it's a turn off. And in this situation, these men were living out a sexual fantasy and loving it.) Regardless, her conclusions about their motives and actions, thoughts and feelings etc, based on what she saw and knows were very different from mine. Same is true of most situations. Two people can witness the same thing and come to completely different conclusions about the motivations behind it based on their own personal biases, beliefs, opinions, and experiences. I understand that some crimes can be different and some people's motives and reasoning can be picked apart and understood sometimes depending on the crime and the person etc, but yeah, this sort of situation is often just a lot of guesswork and two people may guess something completely different and therefore have utterly different "understandings" of the person/people involved.

 

That was totally off topic sorry people.

 
 
 

You can not have a bias when assessing people. Otherwise, you are judging them. There is the difference between assessing people and judging them for not fitting your ideals. Also what you said about rape is widely believed to be the case. I personally think anyone who is willing to rape anyone for any reason is probably suffering a severe mental/personality disorder because that shows a blatant disregard for another person well being and personal space. However I not going to derail this by making a case for why rapists are most likely mentally disturbed in some way. However, I must also say the majority of people suffering from a disorder are probably more likely to be suffering then making others suffer. . 

 

Also not sure how much further we can take this conversation as you went to a very dark place with this and I dont know if this maybe crossing the guidelines of the website. 

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Treating sexual orientations as disorders, as far as I'm aware, has done more harm and no good. Making asexuality into a disorder will achieve nothing other than a means for people to mistreat people who are asexual.

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46 minutes ago, Tal Shi'ar said:

Treating sexual orientations as disorders, as far as I'm aware, has done more harm and no good. Making asexuality into a disorder will achieve nothing other than a means for people to mistreat people who are asexual.

Exactly. So, since it's important for everyone to know (asexuals and sexual people who visit AVEN) that asexuality is no longer considered a disorder by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders handbook, does this thread need to be pinned, or is there another thread already pinned about this topic that I wasn't aware of?

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

Gays have already suffered under this delusion, please don't foist it upon us. An orientation is just that. It's akin to saying that people with blue eyes are disordered.

Why would anyone who is happy enough without needing sex, actually want to be classified as mentally or physically deviant? What's deviant anyway? I'm sure there are as many 'types' as there are people ....

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Galactic Turtle
On 2/17/2017 at 4:47 PM, Ruru+Saphhy=Garnet said:

I had a question about this article. In it, it says:

Quote

The available research does not support other negative accounts of asexuality, either. For example, asexuality does not seem to be linked to trauma. Also, asexuals do not typically respond with extreme aversion or disgust when viewing genitals.

 

I've asked similar questions on AVEN before, but is a repulsion to something more likely to be indicative of an underlying problem? For example, not liking cucumbers is one thing. You simply won't eat them. But being afraid of or breaking out into tears at the sight of a cucumber would strike many people as odd. I was wondering if the same thing applied to viewing sexual situations. 

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4 hours ago, chandrakirti said:

Why would anyone who is happy enough without needing sex, actually want to be classified as mentally or physically deviant? What's deviant anyway? I'm sure there are as many 'types' as there are people ....

Exactly!

 

I may have wondered why I wasn't all that excited about sex, but it never affected my day to day life. I never felt "less" of a person or despondent because of my lack of desire.

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Ruru+Saphhy=Garnet
3 hours ago, Galactic Turtle said:

I had a question about this article. In it, it says:

I've asked similar questions on AVEN before, but is a repulsion to something more likely to be indicative of an underlying problem? For example, not liking cucumbers is one thing. You simply won't eat them. But being afraid of or breaking out into tears at the sight of a cucumber would strike many people as odd. I was wondering if the same thing applied to viewing sexual situations. 

Perhaps. I think if sex repulsion/genital repulsion isn't causing any form of distress, I don't think it is indicative of a problem.

But if someone breaks into tears in regards to sex/genital repulsion it may very well be an indicator of a underlying problem.

But I could be totally wrong,though. Just giving my opinion.

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Mental disorders have to include something that negatively affects the quality of your life, and makes you feel very upset and/or causes you do be unable to successfully live your life. Asexuality doesn't inhibit anyone from anything, really. 

 

I mean, asexuals can still date. They can get married. They can have kids (by having sex specifically in order to reproduce, or by adopting). They can go to work. They can pay their bills. Etc. 

 

I am a little miffed about how so many mental disorders count lack of sex drive as a symptom... I mean, if you normally have a higher sex drive and it causes you concern that it's lowering, that might count, but it's easy for doctors to look at an asexual, notice their lack of physical attraction to anyone, and assume this is "unnatural." Even if it doesn't bother you at all. Even if you're glad to be asexual and like your orientation. I'm more worried about that, to be honest. 

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Janus the Fox

Quite a bit has changed in the DSM-V, not even negative or positive mental health symptoms are not in of itself a disorder, I'm a person that hears voices with alt personalities, it is not a pathological disorder itself.

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