mikroblogolas:

freibiergesicht:

livingdemisexually:

On identifying as queer

My sexuality is not normative. But it looks normative. My romantic interest is primarily in men and male identified people and I’m a cis woman whose appearance is pretty femme. When I spend time with the people I date, we look like a straight couple.

But sexual attraction is a whole different story for me. Visually, I prefer stereotypically feminine bodies, though ones that are different from mine. (I’m hourglass shaped, with moderately full hips, a moderately defined waist, and very large breasts. Visually, though, I find bodies with very full hips, a very small waist, and medium breasts most attractive.)

Quite honestly, I find stereotypically male bodies kind of funny looking and definitely not sexy (sorry guys!). Those are the bodies I am most likely to be sexual with, but it’s not because of physical attraction - it’s because I form romantic attractions that lead to me wanting a physical relationship in order to please that person.

Complicated, right?

That’s what demisexuality is. Complicated. I’ve never identified as queer because I look so normative. I’m cis and can easily pass as straight even though that’s not quite accurate. But my sexuality is not normative. It’s complicated and misunderstood. It’s part of the reason I’ve struggled so much with dating. Maybe queer does fit. I’m still not sure.

I think this is basically an extremely normative non-ace narrative, tbh.  Or at least, this could have pretty much been written by me (without the demi stuff) when I was 25.  At the time I was in a long-term romantic and sexual relationship with a man who I wasn’t physically attracted to, but I did enjoy sex with him and as a result desired sex with him.  But I didn’t find “male bodies” (using the language of the OP, referring to cis male bodies) aesthetically attractive at all.  I discovered in my later 20s that I did have the ability to shallowly be sexually attracted to people - including men - based just on their looks/body but that is a relatively recent development over the time I’ve been sexually active.   

This shows just how much is strange in the way a lot of demisexuals/grey-aces talk about attraction.  

It’s pretty normative for hetero/bi women to enjoy sex with men, particularly men they like/are in love with, without finding themselves turned on by their bodies alone.  Because the mainstream elements in Western culture hypersexualize (certain types) of bodies, objectification, commodification, etc.   All of us are really programmed to see women’s bodies (at least some of them) as at the very least, aesthetically pleasing, if not also inherently sexual.  (Which is one reason I can be skeptical of some women who ID as bi but their only interest in women seems to be limited to finding Angelina Jolie or other such icons hot.  It was a reason I’ve waffled on IDing as bisexual myself on and off for a long time.  I wasn’t sure if I could separate an aesthetic/sexual attraction to women that was part of how patriarchy trains us to view women from a genuine desire on a sexual and romantic level.  I’ve mostly figured that out now but I still think a lot of women uncritically take their aesthetic attraction to idealized women as a signifier of sexual orientation and I’m not really sure it is?  Tangent.) 

So much of demisexuality in a concept is this very….limited attempt to separate in a very literal, boring way all the weird complex things that make up “attraction”.  They say you can be sexually aroused via having sex with someone but that doesn’t mean you have sexual attraction to someone, because you don’t get sexually aroused just by their body alone.  That is extremely common for a lot of people to the point where separating it off as a unique way of interacting with sexuality is pretty much meaningless.  And this explanation above seems to think that finding womens’ bodies aesthetically pleasing someone gives one same-sex attraction even though they admit they are not romantically and thus not sexually attracted to women.

The OP’s sexuality is actually, in my experience, very normative and yet she insists it’s not.  And goes one step further to imply it’s queer.  There’s no winning that argument because she’ll say, “But I don’t feel normative.”  Hey that’s sexuality in general?  Or being human in general?  Most of us don’t see ourselves as normal.  Being cis and straight can still feel really fucking weird, particularly if you’re a woman, because our culture has all these unrealistic and bizarre messages about what sexuality and sexual attraction is.  I used to think my sexual attractions/sexual orientation was totally bizarre and unique and special too, until I started talking really openly with a lot of other people who identified in all kinds of different ways and realized, “Wow, they’re just like me too!”  So maybe the problem is not that demisexuals are unique or non-normative but that how our culture talks about sexuality is just not diverse enough to make a lot of people feel included.  But the response to that shouldn’t be “Here’s this new thing and it’s totally unique” but instead a broadening of how we understand sexuality in general.

Bolding mine. But I love everything else freibiergesicht says above as well.

Also — not to sound like a broken record or anything — it really speaks to the problem with mainstream and sex-positive discourse about sexuality that practically the only places that self-identified demisexuals are able to share their experience of sexuality and feelings of alienation are in ace/demi spaces on the Internet.

I’m still not sure where I stand on the use of the descriptor “demisexual”, but this is all interesting reading nevertheless.

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.