My sexual friend

[evilminininja]

My friend and I were discussing gay asexuals. he believes that you can not be striaght and A or gay and A. Im getting frustrated...

This is part of his convo with me:

it's that why he's open to everything except the anal sex, and calls himself asexual

it seems unnecessary to define yourself like that

what you do in bed with someone else is your business

why announce you don't have sex/ don't desire sex whatever to the world?

I don't know...

'cause then you could pull the we want to be who we really are

which you should

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What do i tell him

[ghosts]

Seems like he's asking a couple different questions there. Sexual attraction is separate from other types of attraction, so many asexuals are drawn to forming intimate relationships with certain people, & that's where the straight, gay, bi, lesbian, etc identities come in within this community. Just because we're not sexually drawn to other people, doesn't mean we can't be drawn to people in other ways.

As for the "why announce it to the world" comment that he seems to make - it might not make sense at first because calling yourself asexual might not seem like that big a deal. But for many of us, we have grown up feeling alienated from our peers because we didn't know asexuality existed. Many of us have thought something was wrong with us, that we're somehow "broken." What the asexual community is trying to do is change that by increasing asexual visibility and acceptance. Not many people know about asexuality as a sexual orientation right now, & that's one of the reasons why we're talking about it so much & trying to get it out there.

[evilminininja]

He thinks that being A just means you do not like sex...

That is not the case. I will give him your explanation because you word it so well

Thank you

[Shortass Lady]

what you do in bed with someone else is your business

why announce you don't have sex/ don't desire sex whatever to the world?

Why not? People are always announcing that they DO want to have sex, with the labels heteroSEXUAL, homoSEXUAL etc. They could just say 'stright', 'gay' etc, but there are the longer words too. Same for asexuals. We can be straight, or heteroasexual, or heteroromantic.

Tell him sexual people have different activities that they like and don't like to do with those they're attratced too. Same for asexuals, except on the whole one thing they don't want to do is have sex. This has to be explained separately because or else it's assumed that you do.

[Des]

I agree; you may be mixing arguments there.

If he's saying there's no such thing as straight-a or gay-a, you tell him he's wrong. If he wants to knw why, you can tell him what the differences are, but you should probably warn him ahead of time that human sexuality is complex and nobody is simply "on" or "off". If he dosn't want to hear it, then leave it alone for now.

If the question is why do you have to be so open and tell everybody you don't want sex, then maybe you sould ask yourself that same question. I mean, I know we make a lot of jokes around here, but I've never heard anyone just walking around saying "I want sex. I want sex." So if you're just going around working it into conversations all the time or bringing it up any time somebody talks about sex... don't. It's good to be open, but it's not good to shove other peoples' noses in it. Remember that the concept of asexuality is completely foreign to most people and even the most liberal individuals in the majority are going to be uncomfortable about it. If your friends are bugging you about "getting laid" and teasing you for it, then it's fine to remind them you don't like sex.

I've learned that it's usually better to stay out of such conversations than to butt in and discomfiture everybody. When people talk about a sexual experience (or more commonly, a relationship issue) they're discussing, and someone says "Well, I think we can all relate to that feeling," you don't have to pop up and say "Not me!" If you're the kind who likes the attention, go ahead, but it's not going to win you many friends, especially when someone is trying to reassure others that they're not alone. Because then what you're doing is saying "Yes you are."

If all your friends want to do is talk about sex, and it makes you uncomfortable, remember you have other options. But saying it makes you uncomfortable is going to make them uncomfortable. Try to find people who want to talk bout things other than sex. As I've said before, no one is as zealous as a newcomer to his cause. Newly sexual people are going to want to talk about it all the time anyway.