Asexuality and men..mmm...really?

[Dargon]

Here's a slightly graphic and less than legal experiement you can do! Well, you can do this, but I wouldn't recommend it, as you'd get yourself rather arrested.

Go into a hospital and find some dude who is in a coma. Depant him and play with his penis for a bit. It'll become erect.

Dare I ask how you know this?

It was mentioned by my psyc professor

I don't know actual statistics, but many males, I'd go so far as to say most males, require only physical sensation to become physically aroused.

I'm talking just erection, not arousal.

I guess I'm using the terms "erect" and "physically aroused" synonymously.

[cijay]

Here's a slightly graphic and less than legal experiement you can do! Well, you can do this, but I wouldn't recommend it, as you'd get yourself rather arrested.

Go into a hospital and find some dude who is in a coma. Depant him and play with his penis for a bit. It'll become erect.

Dare I ask how you know this?

It was mentioned by my psyc professor

I suppose my next question would be how does HE know it but I'm afraid of the answer so I'll just say 'phew' that you don't know this by experience. :lol:

I guess I'm using the terms "erect" and "physically aroused" synonymously.

That's what I mean. When paedophiles notice their male child/teen victims are erect, they feel it's because they're aroused, when in fact they're just having a physical reaction to what they're doing. To them, arousal is only one form.

[Dargon]

I guess I'm using the terms "erect" and "physically aroused" synonymously.

That's what I mean. When paedophiles notice their male child/teen victims are erect, they feel it's because they're aroused, when in fact they're just having a physical reaction to what they're doing. To them, arousal is only one form.

I'm agreeing, I guess my choice of words just wasn't all that great.

[roddy9uk]

Fair enough' date=' since I have always wondered how asexual men do manage to "compromise"...but some do...how, if they are not faking it? [/quote']

It is difficult but it is possible to maintain a sexuallly arousing fantasy in ones mind (bearing in mind that asexuals do not necessarily lack a sex DRIVE,,just the connection of that drive with another person).

Woa, okay that is not at all my experience. Maybe a cultural difference, but I hear men talking about sex ALL THE TIME. In fact it seems to be their favorite topic. On the flip side, even behind closed locker room doors I rarely hear women talk about sex. At least not to the extent that guys do.

Must be different culture then, either that or I was in the only Infantry Regiment comprised entirely of asexuals..:). Agreed that when I am in the States I am always mildly puzzled as to the existence of "Hooters" restaurant chain..you cannot be serious..can you?

Ah, I thought you were trying to say that sexual assault was just as likley from a woman, which it is not.

But agreed that level of sexual assault offenses does not at all correlate to level of sexual interest. There are plenty of very horny people out there who would never commit an assault, and there are probably some assaulters who do it for other reasons (power, a sense of dominance...?? whatever) who actually do not have strikingly high sex drives.

According to various learned "authorities" ALL sexual assault is simply an expression of "power".

So you [b]are[/b] actually suggesting that females commit sexual assault just as much as males, but that it is not reported?  I do not believe that.[/quote]

Don't take my word for it...The NSPCC (Childrens protection society) has all the info..where sexual abuse occurs in the home it is just as likely women are involved as men..but as to the "non=reporting" consider the following simple statements..how do you react?

a) Parent bathes child...

B) Mother bathes son

c) Father bathes daughter..

Do you not instantly react to "c" and say.."whoaa..that isn't right..." but accept a and b??..but if c is so wrong..why is not b?

But you cannot have it both ways. If, as you suggest, women are obsessed with sex because of "sexual repression" then by the same coin men are NOT sexually obsessed because they weren't repressed.

But again , as you suggest, it could simply be a cultural difference here. Maybe it is because we live "closer together" than you do in the States but "sex" simply does not seem to be the all-pervading obsession in Britain (and as far as I am aware in Europe generally) that it is in the States. (I'll accept Sweden as an exception..sex is purportedly Sweden's national sport).

roddy

[cijay]

But again , as you suggest, it could simply be a cultural difference here. Maybe it is because we live "closer together" than you do in the States but "sex" simply does not seem to be the all-pervading obsession in Britain (and as far as I am aware in Europe generally) that it is in the States. (I'll accept Sweden as an exception..sex is purportedly Sweden's national sport).

roddy

I find one as revolting as the other, really. (We're no better but the pair off is between you and them so I'll take us out of the equation). I find both societies sex-obsessed, just the dirty old men in the US have better teeth LOL. (I use the male example because in neither country - nor here - have I been hit on and schmoozed by a woman.)

Your example of bathing is a good one. A couple I know (male/male) have two kids. Bathing, to the nay-sayers is a big issue (puberty is the other). Their daughter is six! By the time she's old enough to matter, her dads aren't going to be bathing her anymore. Actually, I doubt they're bathing her NOW but this was a few years back. (Anyway, like they pointed out, "Your problem with us is that we're gay. If you're going to worry about our kids while we're bathing them, shouldn't you worry about our son?")

[Tanwen]

I appreciate people are going to think I'm just trying to stir things up, but that really isn't the case, I'm, talking about personal experience.

My son regularly bathes his six year old daughter. It's true he's a single parent, but then maybe some think I should insist on doing it.

In every place I've worked, men have talked about sex - regularly and loudly. No, there wouldn't have been any point in complaining.

In many places I've worked, women also liked to talk about sex, not as loudly, but it happened/happens. (Tesco seems to be such a boring place to work, we need to liven things up a bit.)

So, as I said, just my personal experience.

[lux]

Oh,I'm very surprised with your answers,thank you very much,I think that they are very interesting...well,I don't know in your countries,I suposse that you are from the States or G.B.,but in my country NEVER happened that a woman attacked sexually a man,all rapists are men,and 99 per cent of people who injured or killed women and children in cases of domestic violence are men.They are facts,I don't Know if it is the latin culture or what but it is the fact.In my country,men are very jealous,and it is each day more frequently,unfortunately,that in the case that a woman divorced a man,the man chase the woman until kill her.

That's why I thought that it is strange asexual men,unless ni my country,I don't know your culture,perhaps in your countries the thing is different,here men are more sexual agressive with women,my experience is that when I went with a boy,it is sure that he would try something at the first chance,I never could to be only a friend of a boy,sadly ,they always wanted sex. :roll:

I hope you go on writing,the conversation is very interesting.

[thylacine]

Re: all of the above commentary... okay, I'm glad I'm not a guy!

[cijay]

My son regularly bathes his six year old daughter. It's true he's a single parent, but then maybe some think I should insist on doing it.

Tell anyone who thinks that to mind their own effing business.

[roddy9uk]

My son regularly bathes his six year old daughter. It's true he's a single parent, but then maybe some think I should insist on doing it.

Tell anyone who thinks that to mind their own effing business.

Easier said than done...

Fathers in the UK have this sort of thing hanging over their heads the whole time. If you doubt me ask the Equal Parenting Committee.

roddy

[M51]

I personally see nothing wrong with a father bathing his daughter. But I know that the fear of accusations is strong, and that fear is likely justified. When my father had custody of my little sister I always bathed her, not because he didn't want to or was too lazy, but he was scared to death that he would lose custody of her if anyone found out he bathed her. So I did it. He also shied away from kissing, letting her sit on his lap, etc. It's a shame that decent men have to modify their natural, loving, fatherly behavior (thus reinforcing the stereotype that fathers are distant and unaffectionate) because so many horrible men have taken advantage of little girls. No whether so many horrible women have taken advantage of little boys? I dunno. I guess I personally don't think it happens as much. If it does well that's sh#tty, too.

[roddy9uk]

. No whether so many horrible women have taken advantage of little boys? I dunno. I guess I personally don't think it happens as much. If it does well that's sh#tty, too.

Interesting that all the "old" tales seem to center on the "wicked stepmother" or witches of one sort or another (all female)...far less often on the "wicked Uncle" or whatever...

Having seen personally what women (and I do mean plural) can do..all I can say is that personally I can never entirely trust another woman again.

roddy

[Parth]

I personally see nothing wrong with a father bathing his daughter. But I know that the fear of accusations is strong, and that fear is likely justified. When my father had custody of my little sister I always bathed her, not because he didn't want to or was too lazy, but he was scared to death that he would lose custody of her if anyone found out he bathed her. So I did it. He also shied away from kissing, letting her sit on his lap, etc.

That's so sad! My uncle has the most awesome repore with his two daughters and I wouldn't think twice if he bathed them.

The question is: what about single fathers?

[isillote]

I personally think that whilst of course there should be laws to protect children from abusers of any kind, the world now seems to be looking for abuse in the most innocent of actions. When I was a child my father bathed me. We used to play games in the bath and it was all perfectly innocent. I used to spend hours with the widowed old man upstairs. He would sit me on his knee and tell me stories and no one thought he was abusing me. I loved him and have very happy memories. I'm a supply teacher, and in many schools I am not supposed to touch children in any way whatsoever. So this means I'm not supposed to give a distressed child a hug, or comfort them physically? I can't help but feel that the overly-suspicious society we live in is causing a lot of people to avoid showing perfectly natural, normal physical affection towards children, which has got to be unhealthy. And it won't stop child abusers. They don't care about the law.

Sorry to rant, but this is something I feel strongly about.

[Nico-Nico Friendo]

I personally think that whilst of course there should be laws to protect children from abusers of any kind, the world now seems to be looking for abuse in the most innocent of actions. When I was a child my father bathed me. We used to play games in the bath and it was all perfectly innocent. I used to spend hours with the widowed old man upstairs. He would sit me on his knee and tell me stories and no one thought he was abusing me. I loved him and have very happy memories. I'm a supply teacher, and in many schools I am not supposed to touch children in any way whatsoever. So this means I'm not supposed to give a distressed child a hug, or comfort them physically? I can't help but feel that the overly-suspicious society we live in is causing a lot of people to avoid showing perfectly natural, normal physical affection towards children, which has got to be unhealthy. And it won't stop child abusers. They don't care about the law.

Sorry to rant, but this is something I feel strongly about.

It is sad. :cry: I hate this society. It is messed up on so many levels. What will such children be like when they grow up? I shudder to imagine.

[suspicious & paranoid voice/] Oh my gosh! One of my male teachers actually hugged me when I was sad! Oh, no! What does that mean? [/suspicious & paranoid voice]

[Ziffler]

This has became an interesting thread. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Yes, during my lifetime I have had to fight off 3 different aggressive women with only sex on their minds. That doesn't mean that all women are predators but it does mean that I found 3 that were.

My dad, who is 79 years old now, brags about his sexual encounter with a school teacher when he was 14. Of course he bragged about it then also to his friends. But my dad is a sexual male who enjoys sex and when a teacher offered he went for it.

I guess what I am trying to say, society looks at sex between adult males and minors differently than between adult females and minors. I personally see both as predators, but society rarely looks at the adult female as a predator.

I listen to my dad, when the news reports of an adult male who has sexed a minor, he is ready to cut the guys genitalia off. Yet when the news reports of an adult female teacher who has been having sex with her 13 year old student, he considers that a great conquest for the kid.

It is a double standard and we have had that double standard for generations. But never-the-less they are both predators.

That's my opinion for what it's worth.

Ok, I'll butt out now and read more of your very interesting posts.

[thylacine]

Yeah, Ziff... it's even more a pain in the ass when it's woman trying to get it on with another woman, who of course isn't interested! (When you're asexual & female, everyone assumes you're a lesbian... even some of the lesbians!)

[Ziffler]

Oh yes. I have had my share of gay males try to hook up with me also. :lol: :lol: :lol:

And they get the whole asexual thing even less than the sexuals do. Gay men, think if you aren't sexing females then you have to be wanting males. At least sexuals can consider things like celebacy or impotents or religion or some other factors. :lol: :lol: :lol:

[cijay]

My son regularly bathes his six year old daughter. It's true he's a single parent, but then maybe some think I should insist on doing it.

Tell anyone who thinks that to mind their own effing business.

Easier said than done...

Fathers in the UK have this sort of thing hanging over their heads the whole time. If you doubt me ask the Equal Parenting Committee.

roddy

It's VERY easy to tell someone to mind his own effing business.

I don't need to ask the Equal Parenting Committee. I know what goes on with single fathers and m/m parenting partners. That's how I know it's very easy to tell someone to mind his own effing business.

[roddy9uk]

It's VERY easy to tell someone to mind his own effing business..

Sure..IF you happen to be female..maybe being Canadian helps too. I wouldn't know about that. What I DO know is that, in the UK (which after all is where I live) that a Father taking that attitude is asking to be banned from seeing his children ever again.

M/m parents? To the best of my knowledge there are none..or if there are they are statistically insignificant. Some years back a M/m couple did aoply to the courts for the right to adopt. They were very rich and succeeded. The other year they were back in court charged with sexual abuse of the children they adopted.

Male "single parents"? Yes they exist. About 5% of Fathers keep custody of the children , mainly when the mother has fled the country, is in prison on serious charges or has died. The courts accept few other reasons for granting custody to a man. Over half the children in this country no longer live with their natural father. Access to the children will not be enforced by the courts even where the courts have originally ordered it.

In the UK a father accused of sexual abuse of his own children is assumed guilty until proven innocent. Such cases can take many years to settle and contact with the children is denied until it IS settled. What Father would DARE take the attitude you seem to suggest?

No, Cijay, a father does NOT tell someone to "mind their own business", effing or otherwise, in the circumstances as described. We love our children too dearly for that.

roddy

[cijay]

It's VERY easy to tell someone to mind his own effing business..

Sure..IF you happen to be female..maybe being Canadian helps too. I wouldn't know about that. What I DO know is that, in the UK (which after all is where I live) that a Father taking that attitude is asking to be banned from seeing his children ever again.

M/m parents? To the best of my knowledge there are none..or if there are they are statistically insignificant. Some years back a M/m couple did aoply to the courts for the right to adopt. They were very rich and succeeded. The other year they were back in court charged with sexual abuse of the children they adopted.

Male "single parents"? Yes they exist. About 5% of Fathers keep custody of the children , mainly when the mother has fled the country, is in prison on serious charges or has died. The courts accept few other reasons for granting custody to a man. Over half the children in this country no longer live with their natural father. Access to the children will not be enforced by the courts even where the courts have originally ordered it.

In the UK a father accused of sexual abuse of his own children is assumed guilty until proven innocent. Such cases can take many years to settle and contact with the children is denied until it IS settled. What Father would DARE take the attitude you seem to suggest?

No, Cijay, a father does NOT tell someone to "mind their own business", effing or otherwise, in the circumstances as described. We love our children too dearly for that.

roddy

You're assuming I'm Canadian are you? Ta. Two of the m/m coules I talk about are in the UK. One in Liverpool, one in Nottingham. Both have managed quite nicely to tell people to mind their own effing business.

[roddy9uk]

You're assuming I'm Canadian are you?

Perhaps I should have said "living in Canada"..not an unreasonable assumption given your profile...

Two of the m/m coules I talk about are in the UK. One in Liverpool, one in Nottingham. Both have managed quite nicely to tell people to mind their own effing business.

I said.."or statistically insignificant". One swallow does not a summer make. The case I referred to was headlne news half a dozen years ago on the basis that it was "ground-breaking". Now, clearly the press could have been completely wrong...but I have seen no evidence to suggest they were. I don't doubt what you say..I do doubt very much the significance of it.

Incidentally..since you raised the point I have checked on the statistica available.. Adoption by same-sex couples (whether male or female) has only been legal since Dec 2005. According to that source there have been "very few" applications (let alone actual adoptions).

http://www.fyne.co.uk/index.php?item=241

I have also , personally, been through the mill of court battles for custoday and access. I had legal advice over that period. I also had contact with hundreds of other parents in the same boat. Were ALL of them lying about what they were told and advised? Do solicitors give such advice as "Avoid references to cuddling and pray she doesn't make a thing about it.." just for the sake of speaking? Why would a judge ask me, specifically, whether the children would have "private bathing facilities"?

roddy

[Tanwen]

My son doesn't have custody of his daughter, his ex wife does, but for various reasons, Rhi lives with us (no, I've never done anything straigthtforward in my life and see no reason to start now :shock: ), so she can threaten to take Rhi back and he would have to let her go. JP and Rhi have a close and affectionate relationship, she knows if she wants a cuddle, then she'll get one; but to an extent he's restricted by the knowledge that she's also a very open child and tells her teacher and childminder just about everything and if there's a wrong way of taking anything, then his ex will take it!

Considering everything she's been through, she's a remarkably well adjusted pain in the backside (I mean Rhiannon, not JP's ex-wife ).

[cijay]

You're assuming I'm Canadian are you?

Perhaps I should have said "living in Canada"..not an unreasonable assumption given your profile...

Two of the m/m coules I talk about are in the UK. One in Liverpool, one in Nottingham. Both have managed quite nicely to tell people to mind their own effing business.

I said.."or statistically insignificant". One swallow does not a summer make. The case I referred to was headlne news half a dozen years ago on the basis that it was "ground-breaking". Now, clearly the press could have been completely wrong...but I have seen no evidence to suggest they were. I don't doubt what you say..I do doubt very much the significance of it.

Incidentally..since you raised the point I have checked on the statistica available.. Adoption by same-sex couples (whether male or female) has only been legal since Dec 2005. According to that source there have been "very few" applications (let alone actual adoptions).

http://www.fyne.co.uk/index.php?item=241

I have also , personally, been through the mill of court battles for custoday and access. I had legal advice over that period. I also had contact with hundreds of other parents in the same boat. Were ALL of them lying about what they were told and advised? Do solicitors give such advice as "Avoid references to cuddling and pray she doesn't make a thing about it.." just for the sake of speaking? Why would a judge ask me, specifically, whether the children would have "private bathing facilities"?

roddy

The couples I'm talking about didn't adopt. In both cases there, one of the fathers is the biological father of the children.

I'm not disputing what you're saying about the biases against the father, it happens here too , perhaps WAY more than you're aware of and I can't answer questions about why your legal advisors did this and that. I'm just saying my friends over there have no problem telling people to mind their own business if it's not a matter that concerns them. (Judges, however uninformed and prejudiced they are DO have business in it.) I know you guys get the shit end of the stick a lot, it's not something I favour either. I'm just saying that you CAN tell those whose business it's NOT to mind their own business.

[PollyB]

Sorry Roddy, I'm British but I agree with cijay - I think it's terribly sad that (probably all) Western legal systems, in the quest for abusers, push good adults into feeling uncomfortable about bathing and cuddling, as my father bathed and cuddled me. (And I was abused by a trusted young man as a child, just not by my father.)

However because I move in lesbian/gay/queer circles, I know a number of British single sex households, including m/m couples, that manage to be very good parents with confident, loved children, and to defend their right to be just that.

Some of them actually are long-term adopters, who were required, until the recent law change, to have only one name as a "single person" on the adoption certificate, but have quietly existed for decades and are good at what they do. There are also lesbian and gay foster carers of teenagers through the Albert Kennedy Trust, a very good charity working with homeless young LGBT people that has been around since 1989. I don't know statistics, I just know the people, and this point has come up before on other threads.

I also can't find anyone who knows of the particular couple you refer to, unless it was the (wealthy) male couple in a 1999 TV documentary, who paid a lot to go through a US surrogacy agency for an American woman to have children for them, using their sperm and donor eggs, but then had temporary difficulty registering the twins as their biological children in the UK. This was a complicated story raising a lot of media heat but not an adoption (and I can find no reference to them in an abuse court case; they later emigrated to Spain).

I want to say more on this thread, but will put it in a different post (to be written later as I need to get off AVEN and go out!). Edited twice.

[roddy9uk]

Sorry Roddy, I'm British but I agree with cijay - I think it's terribly sad that (probably all) Western legal systems, in the quest for abusers, push good adults into feeling uncomfortable about bathing and cuddling, as my father bathed and cuddled me. .

I think you are completely misreading my post...

and thereby misunderstanding my point..

But you have in fact CONFIRMED what I was saying and contradicted what Cijay was saying. Single male parents can not afford to treat lightly..and certainly not treat aggressively... any questions as to their fitness as parents. At no point did I EVER suggest that a single male parent was unft simply by virtue of being male. Others most certainly DO suggest just that.

I am sorry to hear that you were abused. It would be natural for that to colour your views (even if only subconsciously). My children were abused by a woman. Two of my best friends (female) tell me they were abused by their mothers... My own children escaped by a hairs breadth from the "attentions" of a murderess (Beverly Allitt). That does not cause me to think that ALL women are likely to abuse children. It simply tells me that, there being no evidence to the contrary, abuse is as likely to come from the female as from the male (although perhaps in different forms).

roddy

[PollyB]

I wasn't clear then, because I was merely agreeing with Cijay about knowing male gay parents in the UK, and she herself acknowledged that lone fathers can have a hard time with legal services everywhere.

As a matter of fact, I have had a friend who was sexually abused as a little girl by an adult woman as well - it was her grandmother - and had a hard time getting other feminists to believe her story. I do think that is beginning to change, as, finally, is the attitude in Ziffler's story, that a woman teacher having sex with a young male pupil is just a joke.

I've never believed all men behave in one way and all women, another, and I don't know anybody who does if they think about it. I do believe abuse is about power, which can be the power men assume over women, the power adults assume over children, or a combination of the two, and certainly the visible examples of male abusers continue to be more common than female.

[dead2sex]

:roll: Women abuse all the time. Men use agression to get sex. Women use sex to gain social status. What's the difference?? In both scenarios it is a person using a tool to get what they want. Face it, everyone is competing against the other no matter the gender. Every human steps on other humans in order to get an advantage to secure progeny.

Does this mean human actions are right, moral, or just?? Heck no! We simply use the weapons available to us as individuals. Men may use physical strength, women may use charisma and emotional manipulation. Both wind up as some form of abuse.

Women complain about the physical aggression of men in unwanted sexual encounters, but how many women would admit to the effects of emotional blackmail and manipulation has on the minds of husbands, lovers, and children??

We all abuse eachother with the weapons we have regardless of gender. Mental rape is just as bad as physical rape.

[BunnyK.]

Mental rape is just as bad as physical rape.

I'd advise you to really think hard about what you say next time you sit down and type at your keyboard.

You're saying that emotional manipulation, which is A) easy to spot, B) rarely reaches a degree which can't be easily resisted, and C) causes no physical harm or pain is equivalent to rape, in which someone FORCIBLY TAKES CONTROL OF YOUR BODY AND USES IT TO PLEASE THEMSELF???

Honestly, get real. That's just insulting.

And if you think men don't use emotional manipulation, you're clearly not operating on the same planet I am (says the woman whose boyfriend is practically the patron saint of creative misinterpretation).

[Rikusephirosu]

BunnyK is definently correct. Because the male could be using mental aggression as well, whether it be yelling at you, insulting you, calling you names and speaking down at you degrading you, thats all mental abuse. Mental abuse harms your mind, but that is not as bad as someone taking you against your own will. Mental abuse can be fixed or can not but its not giving you permanent marks or scars on your body or in it. Mental abuse holds no candle to physical abuse at all. Women can physically abuse, they have fists and such dont they? Not all men are strong, not all women are weak. If a man doesnt touch a woman to get what he wants he can very well blackmail her or mentally abuse her. Both can manipulate each other. Only difference is the male can rape the female. The man has to be weak minded to fall pray to emotional manipulations, heck not even I fall prey to it from a male or female and Im a female.. :roll: