mikroblogolas:

demiproblems:

Here’s my evidence that it’s not “normal”:

• I’ve never had a crush on a celebrity, ever (and yes, I’m ages past puberty). 
• I’ve never found anyone “physically” attractive….just aesthetically so. This means I literally do not experience sexual attraction. 
• What I DO experience is emotional attraction…as in, if I’m not emotionally connected to you, I’m not going to be attracted to you, and I CERTAINLY won’t be desiring to have sex with you.
• Now, people say, “BUT THAT’S NORMAL!” No…it isn’t. […] The reason it’s not normal is because:

1. Your attraction to someone isn’t just emotional (though our society places value on that), it’s multi-faceted: you probably find them physically attractive, you probably have an emotional connection to them, you probably find them sexually attractive, etc, etc.
2. I don’t have this. It’s emotional connection or nothing. I literally do not feel attraction to other people unless it is of the aesthetic kind, or REAL attraction of the emotional kind. To limn my point: say you see a really cool looking car, and you say, “Damn, this is one sexy car!”….but would you have sex with said car (well, unless you’re an objectum-sexual)? Now, sure, some people would, and that’s all fine and dandy, but that’s what it is with me — I  can find people aesthetically attractive and appreciate that, but it doesn’t make me sexually attracted to them.
3. And it’s been like this since I was kid. I remember being 5 or 6 (and surprisingly enough, my puberty actually did start this early), and having my mom and grandma pointing girls (and later boys when they were realizing I wasn’t all that straight) out and going, “Awww, isn’t he/she so cute?!?!” and I’d go, “Uh….sure. I don’t see it that way, but whatever works for you.”

I seriously don’t have time to respond to all the “I don’t have celebrity crushes, therefore I am asexual” stuff (in short: lots of non-ace people prefer real people they know to celebrity images on the TV, including me; it is not particularly radical or “abnormal” to not have crushes on / want to make out with random famous people you don’t know), but to the stuff in bold:

What do you think “physically attractive” actually means? When you find someone physically attractive, it means you like how they look physically. As opposed to their personality or intelligence or musical skills. It does not mean that they literally arouse a physical response in you. Finding someone physically attractive does NOT entail having an erection or getting wet looking at them. It means finding their physical appearance attractive. You call this finding them “aesthetically” attractive. Most people happen to use the term “physically attractive.”

And just to make sure that I’m not totally off base here, I checked with the Internet. Here is Wikipedia:

Physical attractiveness refers to a person’s physical traits which are perceived to be aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. The term often implies sexual attractiveness or desirability, but can also be distinct from the two; for example, humans may regard the young as attractive for various reasons, but without sexual attraction. There are many factors which influence one person’s attraction to another, with physical aspects being one of them. In many cases, humans attribute positive characteristics, such as intelligence and honesty, to physically attractive people without consciously realizing it.

In other words, physical=aesthetic, which may or may not cross over into sexual and include factors like emotion, personality, etc. — which you also happen to include when you find a specific individual sexually attractive.

I also have to ask: When your mother and grandmother pointed out five- or six-year-old girls (and later boys) to you as “cute,” do you think they were sexually interested in these children? Because I’m pretty sure they weren’t. So why do you assume that that was what was expected of you, and that you somehow failed because you didn’t want to have sex with them either?

Certainly there are points at which “aesthetic” can cross into “sexual” (and no one is prescribing that this happen in an emotionless void), but the suggestion that non-ace people experience some kind of wild, wet carnal lust towards everyone they describe as “cute” or “hot” is absurd. I’m not going to say no one does ever, because of course some people do, and sexuality is diverse! — but a lot of people say, “Damn, that is a sexy person” in the exact same way as in your example about the car — to mean aesthetic appeal without active sexual desire. And it is perfectly normal to not desire sex out of the blue.

Sex, love, and attraction are complicated… not the binary, clear-cut categories that I see suggested in practically everything I’ve ever seen about demisexuality. That’s why I get frustrated by this. Almost every explanation of demisexuality I’ve seen makes patently false claims about “normative” sexuality. As I’ve said before, the discourse on sexuality is incredibly screwed up, both in the misogynistic, sex-negative-yet-sex-obsessed madonna-whore paradox–espousing culture at wide but also in the similarly racist, thin-centric, ableist, if-you-don’t-have-orgasms-you-don’t-know-the-true-meaning-of-life sex positivity that’s supposed to counter it. Demisexual discourse takes the myths promoted by these cultures as Ultimate Facts about human sexuality and then claims a political identity in opposition to a few aspects of this bullshit. …instead of calling out the whole thing for the bullshit it is.

There are many ways of being sexual, “normal” isn’t a mold to cram the diversity of human experience into, and sexuality is complicated. This is why we desperately need a new discourse on sexuality and a hell of a lot more of the intelligent, inclusive sex education that wouldn’t leave people feeling like they’re broken for not experiencing sexuality the way their TV shows and peers tell them they should.

Agreed with the commentary by mikroblogolas.  The final paragraph especially is something I feel strongly about.