A wonderfully critical article on Pink News

[everywhere and nowhere]

I'm not sure if it hasn't been posted before, but I've just read the article and it's very refreshing because it doesn't just say "Some People Don't Feel Sexual Attraction And They Are The Asexuals", but is instead critical of contemporary sexual norms and the way people are asked about sex.

Asexuality: Some people just don’t want to have sex

A few quotes (btw: I have just seen that on Pink News highlighted text goes in rainbow colours, not the whole in one color, and I just love it. 🏳️‍🌈 Check it out for yourselves). Emphasis mine.

Quote

(...) Some people who suspect they might be confronted with questions about their sexuality and feel uncomfortable answering them might refuse to take part in such surveys.

Even in the best random-sample population surveys, on any topic, one in every three or four eligible people refuses to participate.

We know the people who refuse sex surveys are not the same as those who take part. Refusers are likely to be less sexually liberal in their attitudes and also younger.

Thus many sexually inactive people, especially virgins, are probably missing from sexual behaviour surveys.

For a start, in Sex in Australia, 99% of people over 30 say they have had intercourse. This is surprisingly high when you think about lifelong singles, including some disabled people, nuns and priests.

In the 19th century, lots of people had never had intercourse.

Many in domestic service, armed forces, the church and so on never married and this was thought quite normal.

Sex outside marriage, masturbation and sex with same-sex partners were all much more stigmatised than now (though sex work was far more common).

But these days, failure to achieve partnered status is often seen as a problem. So one issue for people not interested in sex is created by everyone else’s idea that they should be and that there’s something wrong with them.

Even among people in male–female regular sexual relationships, the Sex in Australia survey showed about one person in six had not had sex in the past four weeks.

Asked: “During the last year, has there been a period of one month or more when you lacked interest in having sex?”, about a quarter of all men and half of all women said yes. This is much the same in Britain and the United States.

But, somehow, the question itself sets up the expectation that not feeling like having sex is a failing or problem, especially as it’s followed by other questions about things that really sound like problems, such as painful intercourse and trouble keeping an erection.

(...)

The idea that everyone should have and enjoy sex, and continue doing so through old age, is recent. It seems a pity to replace a set of prohibitions on sex with a prohibition on not having it.

This article can also be very inspiring for people who - like me - believe that the most commonly given percentage of asexuals (1%) is probably underestimated.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

This is a breath of fresh air...especially the last paragraph.

Thanks for posting it! 🍰