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Which do you prefer/use


Which do you prefer   

45 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you prefer

    • The attraction based definition
      11
    • The desire based definition
      16
    • A combination of both
      16
    • Neither
      1
    • Other
      1


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So this isn’t meant to be about what is or isn’t valid but I was wondering which people prefer in terms of definitions. As in do you prefer the desire based definition of asexuality (someone who doesn’t desire sex with someone else) or the attraction based definition (someone who feels little to no sexual attraction) or do you like a combination of both? I will also include a poll from those who would rather answer in a different way. 

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I don't fucking know so I said both. And I arbitrarily decided to return to pomosexual as an identity instead of orchidsexual, because what even the fuck is sexual attraction anyway? I feel "attraction" and then I feel "desires that can be categorized according to the split attraction model" - wtf is romantic attraction? wtf is sexual attraction? wtf is platonic attraction? wtf is sensual attraction? 

 

attraction is like, so undefined. 

 

I feel attraction, and that attraction can vary in many ways, but not exclusively or specifically so - I can feel attraction when I want to look at someone and then feel the same kind of attraction when I want to touch someone. I think "innate desire" makes more sense, but then the entire ace community thinks sexual attraction defines what an ace is or is not and that an ace can feel desire for sex due to pleasure. 

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1 hour ago, hois said:

fuck it I'll do a reddit poll, see how many people reply

already there are 60 votes, 43 said untargetted desire is not sexual attraction. 10 people (including me) said it was. 1 person said "something else" and replied, citing that "some people think sex with them is fun, but that's not attraction" and the other 6 abstained. (you have to vote to see results btw)

 

 

edit: so yeah, people think someone can feel no sexual attraction but still desire sex for its pleasure. 

 

edit: so now it's at 119 voting for "desireing sex for pleasure that isn't targetted at anyone isn't sexual attraction" and 20 who vote that it is.

 

So yeah, if people are saying this, then it must be true. That's how language works, it is determined by its useage. 

 

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I mean it could be attraction you could just also want to have sex with one specific person because you think they're good at sex, or because they're famous, or because they took you skydiving, or any number of reasons

 


 

I'm confused... I don't want to ask them to clarify again tho, because I don't want to be implying that they're wrong. Who am I to say I'm write. But I just feel like all of these reasons are sexual attraction.... "Oooh I like Jewel State I'd totally bone her... no allo tho" "Wow skydiving with you was such a thrill, I wanna just bone right here right now. No allo tho."

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loves sex and wants it - but doesn't feel this desire targeted anywhere

Sounds more like high libido to me than sexual attraction.

I'm sexually attracted still to a celeb crush I used to have back in college but that doesn't mean I'd like to have sex at all. My libido has been generally low for the past few years and I'd feel much comfortable doing the deed with my SO, who I'm more sensually attracted to (want to hug and kiss him but not anyone else) and have committed to as well.

There are also people who just love the sensations sex brings, but not necessarily the person they're doing it with. Sex doesn't always require a "special someone".

 

This, on the other hand, I feel makes sense. IDK what to think, tho, I've never desired sex so how can I understand those who do? hmmmm.....

 

 

edit: also this

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The asexual also enjoys dancing and thinks the girls are pretty, some of them have pretty faces and really nice hair, and he's still horny, but he doesn't actually find himself attracted to any of them. He keeps dancing around waiting for the spark to happen, but it never does. It's like he's in a gallery of pretty paintings that are nice to look at, but he has no pull towards any of them, no urge to touch them or take them home.

 

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everywhere and nowhere

I definitely prefer the desire-based definition. "Sexual attraction" is a confusing term, some people don't know what it means. Some people don't realise that sexual, romantic and esthetic attraction are different things. Some people believe that sexual attraction has to be based on appearance, on "finding someone hot". This leads to a lot of misunderstandings which benefit neither asexuals nor allosexuals - for example, a side effect is perceiving allosexuals as shallow, superficial people who want to "bang" someone as soon as they see them and find them attractive.

For me asexuality is first of all about not experiencing a need for sex. I absolutely care about inner feelings, but ultimately, the are a relatively nebulous area, with a lot of different shades possible. Desire is much simpler: allosexual people generally have a need for sex. They prefer to satisfy their libido with a partner if a partner is available. They typically feel frustrated to some extent if they can't "get" any sex (although other criteria might still prevail: for example, there are many allosexuals who prefer frustration to sex with someone with whom they have no close bond). They feel that when they are close with someone, sex becomes a "natural next step". And these experiences are exactly what asexuals lack.

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Sister Mercurial

I don't tend to hang around in the definition debate threads, but if I ever identify as ace to someone, it's to tell them to stop bothering me because sex is not going to happen.  That's the desire-based definition, isn't it?  

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I'll probably make some people mad, but honestly I really don't see the difference between attraction and desire. I've stopped describing myself with sexuality labels entirely because I'm sick of arguments about what is attraction or desire.

 

There's something that draws certain people towards others in a sexual and/or romantic way. It's an attraction and people desire sexual and/or romantic relationships with those they are attracted to. They go hand in hand, in my perspective.

 

Nitpicking what attraction means or actually feels like doesn't interest me. 

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The French Unicorn

I prefer the attraction definition cause desire is a difficult concept for me nad I'm not sure I get what it means. You could say I am the opposite of @everywhere and nowhereon this one lol. 

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3 hours ago, Sister Mercurial said:

I don't tend to hang around in the definition debate threads, but if I ever identify as ace to someone, it's to tell them to stop bothering me because sex is not going to happen.  That's the desire-based definition, isn't it?  

Hmm not sure you could answer neither or other if you are not sure also this was never meant to be a debate I was simply curious how other people viewed the options and how they think on the matter. 

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5 hours ago, Mult said:

I'll probably make some people mad, but honestly I really don't see the difference between attraction and desire.

That's because there basically isn't any

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everywhere and nowhere
2 hours ago, Philip027 said:

That's because there basically isn't any

For me attraction and desire are two different things and one is possible without the other.

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Personally I prefer the attraction def because that makes more sense to me. You can point someone out to me and say they are 'sexy' and I would go 'ok, so what?'

That doesn't mean anything to me.

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I prefer the one that says sexual people want to have sex with other people and asexual people don't.

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3 hours ago, everywhere and nowhere said:

For me attraction and desire are two different things and one is possible without the other.

I strongly agree. And I really think the dual control model would be much better definition than either because it acknowledges that people can experience sexual attraction and not want to have sex for a wide variety of reasons.

 

1 hour ago, Ceebs said:

I prefer the one that says sexual people want to have sex with other people and asexual people don't.

It depend on what you mean by "want".

 

If you mean some sort of fantasy multiverse ala Everything, Everywhere, All At Once or Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, I'm sure there is a version of me living in Fully Automated Luxury Gay space communism with a wide variety of consensual sexual partners, all of whom are gender affirming, boundary affirming, fat affirming, and don't-give-a-damn-about-Oxford-comma-debates affirming. Then, yes, you could say that I want sex when my roving eye fancies someone and and self-preservation brain immediately decides, "I don't have the energy for that drama."

 

But I don't live in that kind of multiverse (or if I do, I'm blissfully unaware of it). I live in a universe where I say something like, "I'm attracted to cis people but I don't want sex with cis people" or "I'm focusing on self-care this decade." And when I say that, a chunk of the room will nod their heads and agree because they've burned out or been emotionally gutted from dating and relationships and are taking a break from relationships as well.

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everywhere and nowhere
8 hours ago, Guest Queerdo said:

It depend on what you mean by "want".

 

If you mean some sort of fantasy multiverse ala Everything, Everywhere, All At Once or Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, I'm sure there is a version of me living in Fully Automated Luxury Gay space communism with a wide variety of consensual sexual partners, all of whom are gender affirming, boundary affirming, fat affirming, and don't-give-a-damn-about-Oxford-comma-debates affirming. Then, yes, you could say that I want sex when my roving eye fancies someone and and self-preservation brain immediately decides, "I don't have the energy for that drama."

Yeah, this makes me feel even more how much sex-averse I am. It's not just because of circumstances or available potential partners, I cannot desire sex because it is sex, because it has qualities which are unbearable to me.

8 hours ago, Guest Queerdo said:

I really think the dual control model would be much better definition than either because it acknowledges that people can experience sexual attraction and not want to have sex for a wide variety of reasons.

I haven't really met this name, and I immediately like it (also because I have seen a lot of debates on how - as you showed - "wanting" can have different shades, "not wanting" too - my "I don't want sex" is not merely an absence of desire, but a presence of counterdesire) - so could you quote it or give some link?

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Sister Mercurial

I looked at this theory and then tried to find a test for it to see how it worked in practice, but had to give up on the test, because it assumed that the user had a lot of sexual experience.  Can't believe that no one has thought of the possibility that people who haven't had sex would want to know if it was more because of low excitation or high inhibition.  

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On 9/23/2022 at 3:43 PM, Philip027 said:

That's because there basically isn't any

thank you, I was puzzling over the difference and couldn't identify any.  If you desire having sex with someone else, doesn't that mean attraction???

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19 minutes ago, cato said:

thank you, I was puzzling over the difference and couldn't identify any.  If you desire having sex with someone else, doesn't that mean attraction???

Sure, but it doesn't follow that attraction always means the desire to have sex with someone. Especially when finding and negotiating compatibility is so much bother.

 

But, this is likely a blind men and the elephant story, except with one team not feeling the elephant at all shouting, "it's a tree, only a tree!"

 

We can say a cat is a mammal. But it doesn't follow that a mammal is therefore a 🐈 cat, that dogs are cats, and whales must be fish since cats are the platonic idea of mammals.

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8 minutes ago, Guest Queerdo said:

Sure, but it doesn't follow that attraction always means the desire to have sex with someone. Especially when finding and negotiating compatibility is so much bother.

To be clear, I don't think attraction is always followed by intent to do the thing; there are lots of reasons why you might find someone attractive, but not actually want to do the deed with them.  But I think they are fairly tightly intertwined as related concepts.  Being attracted to someone means at minimum a passive desire, even if it's not a desire actively acted upon.

 

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But, this is likely a blind men and the elephant story, except with one team not feeling the elephant at all shouting, "it's a tree, only a tree!"

I did think about that, that asexuals aren't really the best to comment on what desire constitutes, since asexuality is a defined lack of it.  But I think asexuals are also best equipped to say what they do not experience.  If they cannot delineate desire from attraction, it's likely they can't because they experience neither, in which case having neither is part of being asexual.

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5 minutes ago, Guest Queerdo said:

Sure, but it doesn't follow that attraction always means the desire to have sex with someone. Especially when finding and negotiating compatibility is so much bother.

We’re talking about sexual attraction here, If it’s any other kind of attraction of course it isn’t sexual but otherwise it is.


There can be aego which is basically a term that means enjoying sex only in solo and they can have fantasies but sexual attraction when it is used mean, directed at someone so again, it doesn’t apply here.

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31 minutes ago, cato said:

thank you, I was puzzling over the difference and couldn't identify any.  If you desire having sex with someone else, doesn't that mean attraction???

Basically, yep!  About the most you could separate the two by is that desire refers to a generic desire for sex, whereas attraction directs it toward someone specifically.  Regardless though, sex requires another person, so if you want sex, there inherently must be another person involved.  If not, then it isn't sex that you want.  So, like I said, they really aren't as different as they're sometimes made out to be.

 

I've found the people trying to drastically separate the two much further than that typically fall into one of two groups: they are misunderstanding what attraction is (possibly because they do not experience it), or they're trying to justify how they still qualify as asexual despite still desiring sex from their partners (which technically is also a misunderstanding of what attraction is, so potato potahto)

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52 minutes ago, cato said:

To be clear, I don't think attraction is always followed by intent to do the thing; there are lots of reasons why you might find someone attractive, but not actually want to do the deed with them. 

If you don't want to do the deed, then how is it desire? My monkey brain is generates hundreds, if not thousands of emotional reactions on a daily basis. Including things like "a cigarette would be great right now" and "what if my feet were literally nailed to the floor." Many of those ideas are silly, stupid, and harmful. Separating out impulse from desire is an essential skill of emotional intelligence.

 

And didn't you just separate them yourself?

 

52 minutes ago, cato said:

If they cannot delineate desire from attraction, it's likely they can't because they experience neither, in which case having neither is part of being asexual.

Do you want to eat every donut or watch every show you see an ad for? (Which opens up the whole thing of how does this model explain art that appeals to sexual attraction to sell donuts.)

 

But if ace people can't delineate desire (for partnered sex) from attraction, then the have no business declaring that other outcomes for sexual attraction are NOT about attraction at all. And it's not as if sexual people have about the varieties of experiencing the erotic.

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41 minutes ago, somebody00 said:

e’re talking about sexual attraction here, If it’s any other kind of attraction of course it isn’t sexual but otherwise it is.

"It's a tree, it's only a tree! Everyone who feels something different is wrong!"

 

29 minutes ago, Philip027 said:

Regardless though, sex requires another person, so if you want sex, there inherently must be another person involved. 

This really isn't that much different from evolution-denial at this point. You're making a ton of claims that all the evidence is wrong without any evidence to stand on.

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Please, explain to the class how sex happens without another person.

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