The community, obviously, not the mythical beasts is purports to report on.

Today it has hit one of my HOT BUTTONS, so forgive me if I get a bit personal here. (Especially my little sister. You can, uh, skip this one if you want, babe.)

privilegedenyingasexuals:

A couple people have reblogged me saying that I ~clearly don’t know what demisexuality means~, because of this post. Now, I was going by the definition on AVEN: “A demisexual is a person who does not experience sexual attraction until they form a strong emotional connection with someone, often (but not always) in a romantic relationship.”

You know, because us goddamn sexual people will put out for anyone whether or not we’re in a relationship, right?

If that isn’t the definition in common usage, could someone enlighten me? I was under the impression that AVEN was the go-to resource for asexuality information.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t actually the post that was up a few minutes ago? I think it’s an edited version? But whatever, it’s the gist.

I think the main problem here is the conflation of sexual desire with sexual behavior. Yes, many, many people prefer to have sex with people they have strong emotions for or only have sex in the context of a monogamous relationship. Yes, this is in fact the societally accepted model for women’s sexual behavior, which is probably why so many of my friends, on my telling them I was demi, have said, “Oh, I think I’m kind of like that!” But, in fact, they are not, because they experience sexual desire for people they are not in a serious emotional relationship with. That is, in fact, often how they find themselves in those socially acceptable monogamous sexual relationships! They say, “That person is incredibly appealing to me!” and then they date them. That is the gist of attraction!

That doesn’t really happen for demis. I can only really speak for myself here, but finding someone I actually want to be in a relationship with? Is incredibly difficult. I can think someone is interesting or funny or good-looking, I can like to go to movies and eat dinner with them, but there’s no pull there, none of the fascination or heady new-relationship buzz that my friends and exes seem to experience when they get involved with someone. In past relationships, I’ve felt confused and crowded by the emotions of these people I barely know. The one time it clicked for me (the one time I dated someone I’d known for a long time, someone I had loved platonically for years), a few years before I finally came out as demi, this desire to be near someone, to touch them, to have a physical relationship with them was a shock to me. I was like, “Dude, I want to touch you all the time.” “Welcome to sexual attraction,” she replied, dryly. I felt completely blindsided.

I still have no idea how to get a repeat of that relationship, except “wait around until I form an incredibly close relationship with someone else, accidentally sleep with them, and see if I’m attracted to them.” (To be fair: I’m not exactly looking for a repeat of that relationship.) For sexuals, attraction appears to be like a road map to lead them into relationships (provided you are interested in monogamy at all; I’m just trying to talk about the sleeping-with-people-you-love model that privilegedenyingasexuals is discussing), to make them interested enough in someone they hardly know that they stick around long enough to get to a real emotional connection, and I do not have that map.

Sexual behavior… well, that’s not even really relevant to the definition of demisexuality. My pre-realizing-I-was-ace history, though by no means prodigious, uh, does not fit the monogamous model. Which is fine, because I define myself as demisexual — “a person who does not experience sexual attraction until they form a strong emotional connection with someone” — not as someone who is saving herself for marriage.