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What is 'Sexual Attraction'...?


KoolKat13

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What is sexual attraction and how do I know if I am experiencing it?

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If you feel drawn to engage in sexual acts with someone, you're probably experiencing it.

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What LeDeer said. Do you desire to interact sexually with someone? If so, that's probably the best indicator.

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It’s like when you see a dog and you think it’s just so cute and fluffy and you just want to pet it so bad. It looks like such a good, soft dog that would feel so nice to pet. You have the choice about whether or not you actually ask to pet the dog. But even if you don’t pet the dog, that doesn’t mean that you didn’t have the desire to pet it. Or you could pet the dog even if you didn’t have the desire to.

 

That’s kind of what sexual attraction is like, except the dog is a person and the petting is doing sexual things.

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On 7/5/2018 at 1:24 PM, Maristine said:

It’s like when you see a dog and you think it’s just so cute and fluffy and you just want to pet it so bad. It looks like such a good, soft dog that would feel so nice to pet. You have the choice about whether or not you actually ask to pet the dog. But even if you don’t pet the dog, that doesn’t mean that you didn’t have the desire to pet it. Or you could pet the dog even if you didn’t have the desire to.

 

That’s kind of what sexual attraction is like, except the dog is a person and the petting is doing sexual things.

I had to read it twice.  And I'm chuckling to myself a bit..... because I love to pet dogs ----real petting with real dogs......and could care less about having sex with people.  The most I get is a  "Oh he's cute."   But I certainly don't want to.....ahem "pet" him.

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In Julia Sondra Decker's book, The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality (which I highly recommend by the way!), she says that asexuals do not experience sexual attraction to others, and that this can look like asexuals feeling that "sex isn't intrinsically worth pursuing for its own sake, or that they aren't interested in sex, or that they don't want or enjoy sex, or that they don't want to make sex part of their relationships" (p. 4).

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On 7/5/2018 at 8:24 PM, Maristine said:

It’s like when you see a dog and you think it’s just so cute and fluffy and you just want to pet it so bad. It looks like such a good, soft dog that would feel so nice to pet. You have the choice about whether or not you actually ask to pet the dog. But even if you don’t pet the dog, that doesn’t mean that you didn’t have the desire to pet it. Or you could pet the dog even if you didn’t have the desire to.

 

That’s kind of what sexual attraction is like, except the dog is a person and the petting is doing sexual things.

Tfw you don't pet the dog because you can't 🙁

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The closest I can think to describe it is a combination of directed libido and a desire to have sex with another.

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5 hours ago, koreeann said:

In Julia Sondra Decker's book, The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality (which I highly recommend by the way!), she says that asexuals do not experience sexual attraction to others, and that this can look like asexuals feeling that "sex isn't intrinsically worth pursuing for its own sake, or that they aren't interested in sex, or that they don't want or enjoy sex, or that they don't want to make sex part of their relationships" (p. 4).

Exactly. Sexual attraction (when it comes to defining an entire sexual orientation) is about the desire to connect sexually with certain other people for pleasure. All sorts of different things can trigger this desire, but it's certainly not always appearance. For some people, appearance just isn't important at all. There is a myth on AVEN (that I see repeated over and over in the ace community) that sexual attraction is desiring sex with someone based on attraction to aspects of their appearance. It just doesn't work that way for everyone though. So yeah, if we are defining sexual attraction accurately as a desire for partnered sex with certain other people then an asexual person has no desire to connect sexually with other people  for pleasure. Easy.

 

 

If you (general you here) think you'd want to have sex with someone for pleasure and/or intimacy (regardless of whether that's because you think they're cute or because you're in love with them or whatever) then, at that time you're wanting sex with them then you're experiencing a type of attraction that is sexual. :)

 

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23 hours ago, koreeann said:

In Julia Sondra Decker's book, The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality (which I highly recommend by the way!), she says that asexuals do not experience sexual attraction to others, and that this can look like asexuals feeling that "sex isn't intrinsically worth pursuing for its own sake, or that they aren't interested in sex, or that they don't want or enjoy sex, or that they don't want to make sex part of their relationships" (p. 4).

I've read that book, and I also highly recommend it. :) 📘❤️

 

Sadly, it's still rather hard to find a whole book dedicated to asexuality. :( 

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David Jay's original definition of sexual attraction from his 2001 student webpage version of AVEN, accessible via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine:

 

"So what IS sexual attraction?

Sexual attraction is a much discussed but little-analyzed topic. It is, of course, impossible to accurately and completely describe what sexual attraction is, what it feels like or how you know that it is there, so we'll settle for just describing how it behaves.c

Sexual attraction is just a part of getting to know someone. When we get to know someone we build a pool of information about them, what they look like and how they have acted around us and how we expect them to act. 

This requires links from your idea of Joe to all sorts of different parts of your brain. Memories on Earth day, his visual image, the emotions related to the expectation that he will lend you money. Certain people will be linked in this way to your sex drive. Who gets linked and who does not is based on criteria like age, gender, whether or not you have a good time around them, etc. Some people are going to have a stronger link than others.



It's not hard to see how this carries over into sexual orientation. Different people will link their sex drive to different characteristics like gender identity. Some people will also form stronger links on average than others. Asexual people simply form very weak links. It is important to note that asexuality is caused by this lack of sexual attraction, not necessarily a lack of sex drive."

http://web.archive.org/web/20020604080657/http://djay.web.wesleyan.edu:80/Theory/attraction.htm

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