fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2487 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2487 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Vincent D'Onofrio in "Adventures in Babysitting"]

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03.

[Legend of Korra]

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04.

[The Little Mermaid]

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05.

[Twin Peaks]

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06.

[Moby Dick]

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07.

[American Horror Story]

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08.

[Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart]

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09.

[Supernatural]

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10.

[Yogscast]

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11.

[Welcome to Night Vale]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #355.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Attraction is not the same as behavior.

You keep saying that. Does every behavior need a name?

Absolutely not. I was responding to this:

Technically it's called "I don't talk to many people outside the internet and assume everyone else has more sex than me."

Your point as I understood it was that people consider themselves gray-asexual or demisexual because they do not have much sex. My point was that it is because they are not actually sexually attracted to many people. The amount of sex they have is irrelevant.

Okay, I'll revise it.

"I don't talk to many people outside the internet and assume everyone else is absolutely obsessed with thinking about sex with people they barely know."

I'm honestly not sure what your point is?

People keep saying, "it's normal not to have sex with everyone all the time!" as though it's that behavior that people dismissed as having "special snowflake" sexualities are defining themselves against. It's not; they're defining themselves against the state of experiencing attraction to anyone at all outside of very specific contexts. Vethica is trying to point out a strawman being propped up and knocked down.

That's exactly it, yes. You explained it better than I was doing. Thanks.

If this specific context is "where romantic feelings are involved", then it's still a common experience for many people who don't feel the need to define themselves against anything.

Also, people are actually saying "It's normal not to want to have sex with everyone all the time".

This argument isn't going to get much traction with me, because I am one of those people that share the "common experience" of being uninterested in sex with people I don't have romantic feelings for -- but my reasons for that lack of interest have nothing to do with not experiencing attraction to those people. I am fully capable of experiencing sexual attraction toward people who I don't want to pursue a sexual encounter with; that's how I know I'm not demisexual or whatever other label you're dismissing. But there are people who don't experience that attraction to begin with unless the romantic feelings are present. That experience is what we're talking about here, and ime, most people are more like me than like that.

And I'm sure people who only desire sex without any emotional connection exist, and they're just as different from you as 'demisexuals'. Maybe they need a label too. It would be equally meaningless.

We are sexual creatures. We then qualify our sexual experience with so-and-so conditions. None of us are special, even if said conditions are as strict as to become requirements.

We DO have a label for those people. Unfortunately, it's also a very bad word that shouldn't be USED to label people. Starts with S, rhymes with "glut".

I am in the "really, this doesn't need a special label" camp WRT people who only want to have sex once they form an emotional connection. Mostly because I really, really hate labels. But perhaps we should start calling "sex with everything hot without a connection" people, erm, pindropsexuals!

That's actually not the word I've seen. The word is "aromantic [insert group]sexual". See? Everybody can have a special label for no apparent reason!

Thank you. I think this is something that a lot of people don't understand so I'm glad you made this comment. :)

This is a good comment.

It still leaves me wondering how the people who would qualify as "demisexual" are actually persecuted since pretty much nothing they actually do falls outside the realm of "normal" or "expected".

We're not. Anyone who says we are is very mistaken.

Fair enough. I have seen people make that claim, but not here. (Not tumblr either. I don't spend much time there.)

As far as I can tell, especially for women, demisexuality is lauded as the ideal by the general public.

Not necessary romantic feelings. For example, I think my prerequisite for sexual attraction is being in a romantic relationship with the person first (but I don't have much of a sample size). I think I've heard of other people for whom it's close friendship. It depends, is my point.

Also, people are actually saying "It's normal not to want to have sex with everyone all the time".

I can respect that, but at least some people in this thread were not saying that. That's why I responded to them saying that attraction is not the same as behavior.

Both of those fall under "emotional closeness", which I think is normal for many people. Defining it as something unique from the general sexual experience strikes me as specious.

That's fair. I think a lot of the problem is neither side really being able to understand where the other side is coming from. Which is natural, because no one has ever experienced any side other than their own. But I can see why people would not think it makes sense to be a specific orientation.

To be honest, even calling it an orientation bugs me.

Yeah, that's legit. Part of it is that that's just come to be the term people recognize, so that's what gets used. I've thought in the past that if it were called asexual with exceptions or something, it would probably not get people this upset.

I think calling it asexual would be even more incorrect, and would probably hurt the effort to validate asexuality as a unified concept. 'Demisexual' people are really just selectively sexual.

Now I'm confused. Why is "selectively sexual" a better label?

It's not a label at all, it's just a description of what that state of being is. If you experience sexual attraction, you are definitively not asexual, no matter how rare or conditional those instances of attraction are.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-25 02:42 (UTC) - Expand

DA

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-25 02:48 (UTC) - Expand

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-25 03:12 (UTC) - Expand

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-25 01:50 (UTC) - Expand

vethica - 2013-10-25 01:53 (UTC) - Expand