Asexual sub-identities and definition debates

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, GiftedWithSingleness said:

What do you mean, "again"?

 This sounds so ace 🤣 (not wanting to be exclusionary of people who tried it or want to try it for whatever reason though), but this is could be transformed in a good meme 🤣

[Guest]

Sorry for bringing this up so much, but I am still laughing at that 🤣

 

[Snao Cone]

1 hour ago, Telecaster68 said:

And AVEN could evolve into mostly shitposting. 

That's the dream.

[Snao Cone]

21 minutes ago, Georgi said:

Sorry for bragging so much about it, but I am still laughing at that 🤣

 

I think you owe it to the community to post that in the AVEN-specific memes thread.

[Purple Red Panda]

1 hour ago, Telecaster68 said:

1. Would you be happy never having sex again?

 

2. If your partner never wanted to have sex again, would you be fine with that?

This is what I asked myself when I was trying to work out if I was asexual. I don't have a partner but did ask myself if I would be happy in a relationship that did not involve sex. I'd actually been mulling stuff like this over for quite a while before I even considered that I might be asexual.

[everywhere and nowhere]

3 hours ago, GiftedWithSingleness said:

What do you mean, "again"?

I suggest simply replacing "again" by "again (if applicable)". If we pay so much attention to potential exclusion, then I'd like to point out that there are also people who have never had sex and could feel alienated by the word "again".

No, really - even though I'm adamant about wanting to never have sex, the word "again" doesn't bother me much because I mentally supplement it with "(if applicable)". But using it openly instead of implying would solve the problem without creating any new problems.

 

P.S. @Georgi - how do "meme"-understanders figure out what image to use? Really, I'm completely "amemic" - I don't "get" "memes", in 90+% of cases don't feel that a "meme" introduces anything meaningful to the discussion, and besides - I still remember that the term "meme" used to mean something much broader than "funny or supposedly funny image"...

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, Nowhere Girl said:

P.S. @Georgi - how do "meme"-understanders figure out what image to use? Really, I'm completely "amemic" - I don't "get" "memes", in 90+% of cases don't feel that a "meme" introduces anything meaningful to the discussion, and besides - I still remember that the term "meme" used to mean something much broader than "funny or supposedly funny image"...

Hmmm... sometimes I just see an idea and I try to find an image that fits to it to a certain extent... sometimes I just see funny pictures (many times with my dog, for example) and just think this is such a 'meme(a)ble' picture and then try to think of a funny situation that would fit 🤣 (disclaimer: I find many normal and unfunny things funny to the extent my mother gets so annoyed; it's true that I laugh out of almost anything 🤣, but this is somehow contradicting as I don't usually understand some types of humor). 

I am not aware of the broader sense of the term 'meme' though... time to educate myself.

[LoveNotSex?]

15 hours ago, Telecaster68 said:

Yup, hence two questions about sex being a far easier way to figure it out. 

 

1. Would you be happy never having sex again?

 

2. If your partner never wanted to have sex again, would you be fine with that?

 

Sexuals tend to answer 'no' to both, asexuals tend to answer 'yes'. 

Yes, these questions are more easy to understand and answer than trying to figure out what sexual attraction is.
However - I don't know if this is just the case for me personally or could be a general issue - it doesn't really seem to cover the gray area that well.
I'd answer 'yes' here, without a significant doubt, but with respect to attraction or desire, I'd go for the gray options 'rarely', 'weakly', 'not relevant' etc. If desire or attraction is weak, rare and quite irrelevant, I'm fine with ignoring it in my life and in a relationship, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist at all. Would be interesting to know whether other gray-asexuals agree, or maybe I'm wrong, since I'm quite new to this and still questioning.

If there are two different ways to define asexuality - via attraction or desire, some asexuals relate to one of them and others to the other one, and both aren't invalid or completely misleading, wouldn't it be useful to include both into a combined definition of asexuality, as e.g. "Asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction and/or intrinsic desire for partnered sex." ?

In order to explain further what asexuality is (esxpecially for those who are questioning whether they are), the mentioned questions could be added, and maybe some examples of descriptions how allosexuals think and feel when they experience sexual attraction and desire. Such examples have been very helpful for me: If I just had the definitions, I'd probably still doubt my identity more, based on trying to interpret every word of the definition(s), but when you have some more detailed real-life descriptions (or maybe also scenes from movies, lyrics from songs etc., with explanation), it's easier to say 'ok, I've experienced this as well' or 'wait, that's really normal?'.
 

[LeChat]

19 hours ago, Telecaster68 said:

Yup, hence two questions about sex being a far easier way to figure it out. 

 

1. Would you be happy never having sex again?

 

2. If your partner never wanted to have sex again, would you be fine with that?

 

Sexuals tend to answer 'no' to both, asexuals tend to answer 'yes'.

Hmm...these questions might be easier for those who've already tried and had sex with someone else; for some virgins, the answers to these might be, "I don't know/I'm unsure, because I've never tried it with someone else, never dated, or tried having a partner."

[Snao Cone]

5 minutes ago, LeChat said:

Hmm...these questions might be easier for those who've already tried and had sex with someone else; for some virgins, the answers to these might be, "I don't know/I'm unsure, because I've never tried it with someone else, never dated, or tried having a partner."

 

2 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

True, but they're going to be even more pushed to decide if they're feeling sexual attraction.

I think this is why it's important to encourage them to re-evaluate this as they come across new experiences, and that there's nothing wrong with changing how they identify in light of new information (which should be how we examine our lives in general). It's not just coming across that in relationships either. At various stages in life we should generally be asking "What else do I want?" or "What do I want to try?" and if relationships/sex continues to hold no appeal to them, then there's no need to go to the next level of questions. 

[everywhere and nowhere]

8 hours ago, LoveNotSex? said:

If there are two different ways to define asexuality - via attraction or desire, some asexuals relate to one of them and others to the other one, and both aren't invalid or completely misleading, wouldn't it be useful to include both into a combined definition of asexuality, as e.g. "Asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction and/or intrinsic desire for partnered sex." ?

I have already noticed repeatedly that these definitions can sometimes be in conflict with one another. But still... really, I don't want  to be a gatekeeper! I just don't! but still I just don't consider "desire without attraction" to be asexual.

We have had our share of those people and they sometimes insist quite aggressively that they are asexual. By "desire without attraction" I mean people who desire sex, but don't consider anyone sexually attractive. I understand and don't doubt that such people exist, but understanding them as asexual seems very harmful to people who are indeed asexual and want the society to recognise that not everyone desires sex and that there's nothing wrong with those who don't. And then the "desire without attraction" people come and tell others that asexuality means desiring sex "just like everybody else" and just not caring about appearance...

Plus an extra downside: it is probably this kind of discussions which later result in many people thinking that attraction only counts as sexual attraction if it's based on appearance and that desiring sex because of other qualities of a person is something else entirely...

[Karst]

On 11/25/2020 at 10:49 AM, Telecaster68 said:

There's plenty of observable evidence that wanting partnered sex is innate though. It's a different thing. 

Even though sexual orientation is generally agreed to be innate, society and upbringing has a lot of influence on how a person expresses and labels their desires. 

[Karst]

I've probably said this before on other threads, but here's my take on things.

Sexuality and asexuality are a huge, messy continuum of desires, and orientation labels are an attempt to divide things up into manageable groups.  Sometimes it's helpful for people, and sometimes it isn't.  And no matter how you label things, some people are always going to fall on the boundaries, or change at some point in their lives.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't use labels- having words for who you are and what you want is helpful.  I just think that they shouldn't necessarily be so rigid.  Sometimes, loose categories are actually more useful.

[Apollo11]

On 11/26/2020 at 3:53 PM, LoveNotSex? said:

Yes, these questions are more easy to understand and answer than trying to figure out what sexual attraction is.
However - I don't know if this is just the case for me personally or could be a general issue - it doesn't really seem to cover the gray area that well.
I'd answer 'yes' here, without a significant doubt, but with respect to attraction or desire, I'd go for the gray options 'rarely', 'weakly', 'not relevant' etc. If desire or attraction is weak, rare and quite irrelevant, I'm fine with ignoring it in my life and in a relationship, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist at all. Would be interesting to know whether other gray-asexuals agree, or maybe I'm wrong, since I'm quite new to this and still questioning.

If there are two different ways to define asexuality - via attraction or desire, some asexuals relate to one of them and others to the other one, and both aren't invalid or completely misleading, wouldn't it be useful to include both into a combined definition of asexuality, as e.g. "Asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction and/or intrinsic desire for partnered sex." ?

In order to explain further what asexuality is (esxpecially for those who are questioning whether they are), the mentioned questions could be added, and maybe some examples of descriptions how allosexuals think and feel when they experience sexual attraction and desire. Such examples have been very helpful for me: If I just had the definitions, I'd probably still doubt my identity more, based on trying to interpret every word of the definition(s), but when you have some more detailed real-life descriptions (or maybe also scenes from movies, lyrics from songs etc., with explanation), it's easier to say 'ok, I've experienced this as well' or 'wait, that's really normal?'.
 

I am gray-A and I 100% relate to what you are saying.

[iff]

@Gifted With Singleness

 

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