so, am I not actually grey-ace?

[MalcolmCooks]

I'm aromantic
I've also been using grey-asexual to describe myself for a long while. I've only just joined the forums here though, and reading through some threads there seems to be a lot contradiction to what people consider grey-asexual means.

 

so, I do experience sexual attraction. on very rare, isolated occassions - I am 24 years old and can think of 2 occassions where I am sure that I was sexually attracted to someone. I'm also interested in having sex and sexual activity, although I never have; I would also (I think) be able to do this without being sexually attracted to my partner.

I am open to being in a relationship, but not a romantic one, and I'm not actively seeking one out.

Also - I am a cis male and only sexually interested in women; I wouldn't have sex with a guy, I don't find them sexually appealing, and I have never been attracted to a guy.

 

So, to this end, I consider myself straight, but not heterosexual. I consider myself to be asexual because I think my overall sexual and romantic identity falls into the asexual portion of the spectrum.

 

Am I just mistaken that I'm grey-ace, and it means something different from what I thought it did?

[NickyTannock]

I don't have an answer for you, but I am interested in what answers you will receive.
So I hope you don't mind if a follow your thread for that reason.

[Puck]

It's so up to you how you wish to identify. Labels are just things to express how you feel towards other people. So you can use whichever words best resinate with you.

 

That being said, I would never personally advise going by asexual unless you only wanted relationships that didn't involve sex and/or didn't care whether or not you had sex in a relationship but wouldn't actively seek it out yourself. To me, going by asexual but wanting a sexual relationship is the same as a someone saying they were gay but also having sex with people of their opposite gender. Like, there is a perfectly acceptable term for that and that would be bisexual, which is a great label, no better or worse than gay, so why not use the one that most accurately explains your sexual wants/needs?

 

If you really want to have sex with a partner, regardless of if you feel attraction often or not, I personally would not suggest you use the term asexual. To me, gray-sexual or just straight make the most sense. But straight sounds like it doesn't resinate with you in your sexual attitudes, so sounds like gray works better for ya.

 

Also, I feel like you might find a little explanation of romantic orientation. Romanic orientations would be who you want to have a romantic relationship with. So, someone who is homo-romantic would want to have a relationship with someone of their same gender, for example. A romantic orientation doesn't always line up with one's sexual orientation, which I think you do understand.

 

So, you could actually be aromantic but heterosexual, which would mean you don't want a romantic relationship but actively want to have sex with women.

 

I hope all this helped and gave you a better understanding of things. If I can clear anything else up, let me know

[alicio]

You could also fall under Demiromantic or Demisexual

[Gldlynch]

Hey there MalcolmCooks

 

It can be a struggle when you can't quite fit yourself into a category regarding your sexual orientation.

 

You say you seek a relationship however you label yourself as aromantic - this might mean you are hetero-platonic or hetero-aromantic. You may come across people who will be confused by the orientation but essentially you are most-likely a person who desires a life companion, as opposed to a lover; a squish as opposed to a crush.

 

Grey-ace means you only experience sexual attraction towards others on a fluctuating basis - the feeling is sometimes there and sometimes it is completely absent. However, grey-ace is seperate from having a libido which is your drive to have sex. You can still experience all other forms of attraction on a regular basis as well as libido, but perhaps your sexual attraction only occurs on an occasional rhythm.

[MalcolmCooks]

12 hours ago, Puck said:

It's so up to you how you wish to identify. Labels are just things to express how you feel towards other people. So you can use whichever words best resinate with you.

 

That being said, I would never personally advise going by asexual unless you only wanted relationships that didn't involve sex and/or didn't care whether or not you had sex in a relationship but wouldn't actively seek it out yourself. To me, going by asexual but wanting a sexual relationship is the same as a someone saying they were gay but also having sex with people of their opposite gender. Like, there is a perfectly acceptable term for that and that would be bisexual, which is a great label, no better or worse than gay, so why not use the one that most accurately explains your sexual wants/needs?

 

If you really want to have sex with a partner, regardless of if you feel attraction often or not, I personally would not suggest you use the term asexual. To me, gray-sexual or just straight make the most sense. But straight sounds like it doesn't resinate with you in your sexual attitudes, so sounds like gray works better for ya.

 

Also, I feel like you might find a little explanation of romantic orientation. Romanic orientations would be who you want to have a romantic relationship with. So, someone who is homo-romantic would want to have a relationship with someone of their same gender, for example. A romantic orientation doesn't always line up with one's sexual orientation, which I think you do understand.

 

So, you could actually be aromantic but heterosexual, which would mean you don't want a romantic relationship but actively want to have sex with women.

 

I hope all this helped and gave you a better understanding of things. If I can clear anything else up, let me know

I think I understand what you are saying

 

I may be new to these forums, but, I'm not a newbie in general.  I thought the general consensus in the asexual community at large is that asexuality is a matter of sexual attraction, not sex drive, and certainly not curiousity about experiencing sex, which is how I would best describe my feelings.
Anyway I definately think of myself as aro first, as in, that's the most important part of my identity. But I often do say that I'm ace, pretty much just as shorthand to mean that I'm part of the community or in that part of the spectrum, not to mean that I'm fully asexual. Do you think this is misleading of me? I just really am not the sort to introduce myself with a string of "obscure" labels. I don't want to have to explain every facet of my orientation right off the bat but I can be resonably certain that most people I am mentioning it to know about asexuality in general. But then, on the other hand, if someone explicitly asks about girlfriends and stuff, my first thing will be to say I'm aromantic.

 

As a side note it's also really unfair to say that bisexual people shouldn't call themselves gay; they do experience same-gender attraction which is..... gay. They are not homosexual, but they are gay. In my experience with the way these terms are used by people who are actually homosexual and bisexual, they're not 100% interchangable.

12 hours ago, Gldlynch said:

You say you seek a relationship however you label yourself as aromantic

no, I say that I would be open to a non-romantic relationship, but am not actively seeking one out. There are more facets to a good relationship than just the romance, like companionship, intimacy, and support - these are what appeal to me, but they often get lumped in with the romance by non-aromantic people. If it happens, it happens, but I think I would be just as happy if it never did.

 

12 hours ago, Gldlynch said:

Grey-ace means you only experience sexual attraction towards others on a fluctuating basis - the feeling is sometimes there and sometimes it is completely absent.

here's another completely different definition. what I am gathering is that grey-ace is used for a lot of similar things that fall anywhere in the area between "pure" asexuality and allosexuality. In which case, yeah I'm pretty much comfortable calling myself grey-ace!

So, then I guess what my question really is, do people not think that grey-asexual people "count" as asexual?

[Puck]

3 minutes ago, MalcolmCooks said:

I may be new to these forums, but, I'm not a newbie in general.  I thought the general consensus in the asexual community at large is that asexuality is a matter of sexual attraction, not sex drive, and certainly not curiousity about experiencing sex, which is how I would best describe my feelings.

To be clear, attraction and drive are separate, but drive is not necessarily about partnered sex. So an asexual who has a high drive would masturbate a lot, but still would not want to have sex. Now, if the asexual had a partner and a drive or libido, they might get off when having sex with that partner, that partner might meet their libido needs, but the asexual still would never seek out sex with that partner. It'd be like if Jane needed a bookshelf and they were going to go to Target themselves to get one, but then a neighbor said they had one that they weren't using so Jane could just have it; Jane had her bookshelf need met but next time she needs one, she's still going to head to Target instead of asking her neighbor.

 

Does that make sense to you?

 

7 minutes ago, MalcolmCooks said:

Anyway I definately think of myself as aro first, as in, that's the most important part of my identity. But I often do say that I'm ace, pretty much just as shorthand to mean that I'm part of the community or in that part of the spectrum, not to mean that I'm fully asexual. Do you think this is misleading of me? I just really am not the sort to introduce myself with a string of "obscure" labels. I don't want to have to explain every facet of my orientation right off the bat but I can be resonably certain that most people I am mentioning it to know about asexuality in general. But then, on the other hand, if someone explicitly asks about girlfriends and stuff, my first thing will be to say I'm aromantic.

As I said before, I would say you should feel fine using whatever label you want. Just saying that you are ace because you are closer to asexual on the sexual spectrum is fine. Just know that if you in turn do start having sex and continuing to use the label, it's gonna be confusing to everyone, sexuals and asexuals alike. I agree with you that I don't like obscure labels, but again, asexuals don't want partnered sex so if you do want partnered sex, it just seems a strange label. You are still welcome in the asexual community, its a wonderfully open place for anyone on the asexual end of the sexual spectrum. But the term asexual still really only means "no sex for me, thanks."

 

9 minutes ago, MalcolmCooks said:

As a side note it's also really unfair to say that bisexual people shouldn't call themselves gay; they do experience same-gender attraction which is..... gay. They are not homosexual, but they are gay. In my experience with the way these terms are used by people who are actually homosexual and bisexual, they're not 100% interchangable.

I have been actively involved with different LGBTQ+ communities for over a decade and have never met a bi person who has called themselves gay nor anyone who has referred to bi people as gay. I've only heard people who are homosexual describe themselves as gay.... But perhaps in your area this is different. I've just never experienced that. Same way a bi person wouldn't say that they were straight. They aren't, they are bi. Gay, straight, and bi are just three separate but equally wonderful things, in my experience.

 

[Gldlynch]

On 06/03/2018 at 5:03 PM, Gldlynch said:

[...] you are most-likely a person who desires a life companion, as opposed to a lover; a squish as opposed to a crush.

^ Did that part make a little more sense? There's nothing wrong with being open to a relationship, even the non-romantic or non-sexual sort. It's all about finding the right person to share that experience with (:

 

I think grey-ace people are part of the asexual family. Asexual can be a fixed term or an umbrella term. It can range from a person being fully sex-repulsed to people who experience it occasionally. In my opinion, a grey-ace identity is just as valid as any other asexual identity (: