Still At War With Labels

I'm still at war with the "demisexual" label. Scratch that - I've basically dropped it. I just changed the wording on my About page here to say "grey-asexual", because it's probably more accurate for me - being a general umbrella term. It's more general and less prescriptive.

Not that I don't still need a solid connection to be interested in getting sexual with someone - that part is quite accurate - but the part that's starting to feel inaccurate is how there isn't really a well-defined place or progression for sex in my relationships. I used to feel that once a particular kind of connection is in place, that I would then be much like a "normal" sexual person in that relationship (whatever that is?). But really, it's more like sex is just something that happens or doesn't happen in particular relationships, if it makes sense with that particular person or not. It doesn't define the relationship.

I think relationship anarchy might have affected how I look at all of this too. I've become quite used to the idea of "customised commitments", and generally taking each relationship for what it is - free from cultural and social norms that dictate which features that general social category of relationship should contain. I think this has helped me see that sex can have a different place in different relationships (both mine and others'), and that it can be quite a subjective thing what it means to people.

Maybe it's a bit flaky and misleading to talk about being on the asexual spectrum and being a relationship anarchist in the same breath - given that one is talking about inherent internal tendencies and the other is a set of values that can be taken up voluntarily and consciously, but I think this can be the name of the game a bit when you're discussing relationships. In fact, I'd say conventional relationship norms themselves often go with tendencies and orientations which are on the thick parts of bell curves of what people want to do with their lives, so I think quite a lot of this actually goes on anyway, even in "mainstream" relationship dialogue.

Not much has ultimately changed here. I guess I just find it more accurate to identify as a broadly "asexual spectrum person" than as explicitly demisexual, for what these labels are worth anyway.

What precipitated all this? A few online discussions I've taken part in lately, which were about the merits and drawbacks of labels. My current school of thought is that labels are far more useful when they're descriptive than when they're prescriptive - and this is where this little muse (and minor label adjustment) is coming from. I might have demisexual tendencies, but a more broad "on the asexual spectrum" label fits better, and it's more descriptive and general than "demisexual".

As I always say however - I think labels should be used sparingly and on a need-to-know basis. Overuse and overidentification is what seems to give them too much of a life of their own, and often make them too prescriptive and limiting.

Asexy Solopoly Adventures in Beijing

I just got back from an 8 day trip to Beijing! It was all organised relatively last-minute, so I hadn't gotten around to talking about it on here before.

Long story short: My long-distance special friend (the one mentioned at the end of this post long ago) was going to be there, so it was a good opportunity to see Beijing and surrounds, as well as to meet up with her.

Near my hotel.

This is actually the first time I've met up with another person who's on the asexual spectrum - and everything worked exactly as expected. We got wonderfully comfortable and affectionate with each other very quickly - and it stayed on a very comfortable asexy level, just as expected.

Now that I've gone home, we already miss each other, but then again - the original long distance connection is still there. It's mostly the head connection that matters, though of course it would totally be cool if we lived close enough to meet up for a weekend of hanging out and cuddles more often!

I've cultivated the Relationship Anarchist mindset for so long now that I don't really even ask myself cliché questions about where a relationship is going. To paraphrase some quotes I've read on Relationship Anarchy from other people: it just is what it is, it doesn't have to "go anywhere". There is no particular destination, the whole point of any relationship is simply to enjoy each other's company for what it is.

No doubt these customized commitments can be more "heavy" if you desire a higher level of practical "life enmeshment" with another person - but when the abstract head connection is 99% of what you're looking for in relationships, and you otherwise want to live a functionally single existence - it's all very easy and low maintenance.

Tiananmen Gate

The RA/solopoly adventures aside, the rest of the trip was mostly a classic "city break". We spent some time checking out the usual Beijing attractions: a daytrip to the Great Wall, hanging out at the Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, etc. I also spent some time plodding around on my own, including checking out the Tiananmen area on June 4th. The security surrounding the square on that day was something else!

Here are some more pics from the trip. I didn't actually concentrate too hard on my photography while there. Most of it was done with my mobile phone camera in fact. I only took my "proper" little Nikon compact to the Great Wall and Summer Palace.

Kunming Lake, Summer Palace

Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Gate

Great Wall at Jinshanling I

Great Wall at Jinshanling II

Great Wall at Jinshanling III

Great Wall at Jinshanling IV

Great Wall at Jinshanling V

Great Wall at Jinshanling VI

Temple Grounds at Summer Palace

Dragon Boat, Summer Palace

Late Afternoon at Summer Palace

Relationship Anarchy Revisited Again

It's been a while since I've blogged about this topic - which is a bit odd perhaps - considering that I've actually been involved in my first RA-based relationship in real life for the past few months! It started in October 2013 with a woman I met on OkCupid (let's call her "T"), and has been going awesomely well from day one and ever since!

I suppose the reason why I've had nothing particular to say is exactly this - the fact that it's been going very well! Theory and practice coming together in such a seamless way that there's been nothing much to say except - "Yes! This is working great! Just as expected based on theoretical RA precepts, and experience with Internet-based long distance relationships."

This relationship is totally stress-free and drama-free, and I think the main reason for that is that there are no expectations of it being anything "more" than it actually is. I'm convinced that this is where almost all relationship drama ultimately comes from - people having mismatched expectations of some sort - and then hanging obligations and demands on each other which are aimed at fulfilling those expectations. But when you keep these to a minimum and just go with the flow of what's actually working well between the two of you - it works well with minimal "work".

That said, it certainly helps that both T and myself are extremely independent people. Neither of us is keen on typical relationship "progression", in traditional relationship escalator type terms. Or finding a traditional "life partner" and "settling down".

Oddly enough, certain details of what's been happening lately actually mimic some of that relationship progression behaviour (eg. Staying over and cooking together, having our first weekend away together last weekend, etc) - but there's still no stress. And again, it all comes down to having no particular expectations. These things don't "mean" anything that measures up against some external notion of where the relationship is "going". It just is what it is. Everything is measured relative only to itself.

You can probably see now why I've had nothing particular to say about all this ever since it started. It's just been exactly what it's been, and it's been great! I suppose the only generalised lesson is that Relationship Anarchy WORKS! And it works very well.

Relationship Anarchy Revisited

This post is mostly going to be some musing and expanding on what I said back in January - in the Carnival of Aces post "My Relationship Anarchy". Mostly clarification of some terminology and a re-framing of certain things.

I suppose you could say I've got a clearer image in my mind now of what the problem was with how I was explaining my version of Relationship Anarchy back in those days - mostly with how confusing it was when presented to people who roll with a relatively mainstream and conventional relationship model.

The two main things I'm going to discuss are 1) how what non-monogamy means to me is "inverted" by mainstream standards, and 2) how the word "romance" is extremely problematic when applied to what it means with me. And how I'm possibly better off not being overly concerned with classifying my relationships as romantic or non-romantic altogether, to an extent anyway.

"Inverted" Non-Monogamy

This is by no means universal opinion - but for the most part - when people think non-monogamy (especially "open relationships"), the first thing that springs to mind is sexual openness. And the most common model people imagine is something like this: A committed core relationship in which the partners have agreed that they have an automatic "hall pass". In other words: the relationship is emotionally committed and probably fairly typical and conventional otherwise - other than that (usually relatively casual) sex is allowed outside of it.

Other forms of non-monogamy, especially the various combinations of polyamory, revolve around very different emotional commitment models, but that is the most common assumption in the popular imagination when it comes to "non-monogamy" - casual sex being allowed outside of an otherwise fairly standard committed relationship. The focus is on sex, at any rate. Usually relatively casual sex, while the core relationship is emotionally committed and otherwise might look very "normal" and mainstream.

My personal Relationship Anarchy ideals regarding "non-monogamy" practically turn this model on its head! Due to my demisexual issues, and generally being quite mindful and cautious about sex to boot - what I envisage for myself is a model which is more along the lines of the opposite: A (potential) core "primary" relationship which may be sexually exclusive, but then with openness to highly emotionally intimate friendships outside it. Intimate friendships which might never get sexual at all, even though they're highly emotionally intimate and may involve more affectionate physical contact than is usual for friendship.

So effectively - the emotional and sexual aspects of "openness" are reversed!

What's the point of this? Most "sexual" people might ask...

I think I can understand, at least intellectually, why this probably doesn't make much sense to most people. Most people can feel casual sexual attraction to random good-looking others. So the idea of casual sex is at least theoretically appealing, and might seem like a tempting "perk" of opening up their relationship in that sense, regardless of their morals and such and whether they'd actually personally ever do it or not. But probably more significantly - most people automatically associate "romantic" emotional bonding with sexuality, so it just doesn't make sense to them to have deep emotionally intimate relationships without sex. There's usually a fairly fixed sense of a relationship being firmly "romantic" versus "platonic" out there in the mainstream, and the presence of sex is pretty much a giveaway to which which type of relationship it is.

Of course, this all falls to pieces spectacularly when applied to people on the asexual spectrum. And I'll try my best to explain how it's all a horrible mess when applied to my own thinking on relationships - this annoying Romantic vs Platonic dichotomy.

The Problem With "Romance"

"Romance" is essentially completely disconnected from sexuality to me. I've definitely got an affectional orientation which is hetero, since I can feel that special "spark" for females, and can only develop crushes and limerence for females. But the link between this and sexuality (as well as any particular plans for how a relationship should look - in a way that would solidly differentiate it from close friendship) is ridiculously abstract - to say the least.

This has gotten to the point where I'm starting to think that applying the term "romantic" to myself is downright misleading. When I feel those feelings, it doesn't necessarily mean that I want to make that person my "girlfriend", in the usual sense. And it definitely doesn't mean that I want to have sex with her! Not immediately, and potentially not ever. It's probably better framed along the lines of - I care about her and am drawn to emotionally bonding with her. And if she ends up being a close friend whom I can open up to and talk about anything with and be affectionate with and cuddle with - that would be a totally fulfilling form of "special friendship" in itself!

But is a special friend whom you cuddle with and can talk about anything with really a "romantic" relationship in any real sense? I don't know. When I sit back and think about it, I actually confuse myself with where that line is now. If we were living in a highly cuddly culture where it wouldn't be weird, I'm pretty sure I could be "cuddle buddies" with just about any close female friend - and I'm not sure that the feelings of love and closeness in that situation would be qualitatively very different to what I used to think "romance" was. So it's like - I could easily think of all of my close friendships with women as "romantic" to a certain degree, or else think of myself as an aromantic who simply has a highly emotionally and physically affectionate response to females.

No, I'm not going to go with the latter there. I don't think it would be honest - but it's very tempting sometimes to throw away the term "romance" altogether when applied to my views on emotionally intimate relationships. Because the way it comes with so much sexual and relationship-traditionalist baggage completely ties my mental model of emotional bonding with women up in knots. It simply isn't such a clear and simple dichotomy in my mind. And trying to conform myself to it artificially leads to more problems than it solves.

Affectionate Friendship

My latest "thing" is something I call affectionate friendship. This isn't a term I invented of course, but I've come to the conclusion that this is the most intuitive way of connecting with me.

It can't really be said to be either a "proper" romantic relationship, nor "just" a friendship - but in Relationship Anarchy thinking - that doesn't matter. What matters is that people are on the same page and are connecting on a level that makes sense to them, as individuals. Regardless of how it conforms to mainstream ideas about what different "kinds" of relationships are "supposed to" look like.

And affectionate friendship is the most intuitive way to connect with me. I'd say around 90% of the time I feel affectional attraction to a girl - getting an ongoing and committed affectionate friendship out of the connection feels like it would be the most wonderful conclusion. It's not incomplete or confusing to me at all. Nor any more competitive nor exclusive than any other friendship.

Unfortunately, by "normal" standards, this is in a weird twilight zone. Not quite "just" friendship, and not really a proper "romantic relationship" either. Have something like this with someone else when you're in a conventional monogamous relationship - and you're definitely held to be "emotionally cheating" on your partner. Have it when you're single, and you're told that you're not in a "real" or "complete" relationship. Funny how that works. Still, it feels good to finally have something that makes sense to me. Something that I can actually offer up as a way of connecting that doesn't make me feel compromised and demented - the way standard "dating" does.

And as I've often said before, I strongly believe that love is love. The different "flavours" of love really don't have to dictate that a relationship has to be shoe-horned into a certain socially accepted "category". So in conclusion: affectionate friendship will be the common baseline of all my future relationships. And it's a wonderful form of ongoing relationship that can exist for its own sake, non-exclusively.

Demisexual Sex Positivity

The theme for this month's Carnival of Aces is "Sex Positivity".

This is actually a very interesting topic for me, considering that I've got an internal inclination which tends to mimic "conservative" sexual attitudes and behaviour. Indeed, for most of my life I was actually quite confused about where I fit in - on one hand I was always ideologically fairly sex-positive, and on the other my own internal gut feelings always made me hold back sexually - by modern "hookup culture" standards at any rate.

I'll mostly discuss my own personal history and experiences here, and what sex-positivity means to me.

Background

I grew up in classic modern Western sex-positive circumstances: comprehensive sex education at school and at home, open-minded attitudes all around, and no particular shame or prohibition mentality with anything sexual at all. It wasn't quite a case of "just use protection but otherwise go out there and go nuts", but something relatively close to that. It was an environment where it was assumed that teenagers would experiment - and the focus was on keeping them safe if they do - rather than trying to prevent them from doing it in the first place.

The first memory I have of being a bit "different" was when I was sitting there in high school Health Education class, during a term when sex education was being discussed. Being comprehensive sex ed, it went into all the gritty details of teenage pregnancy, STDs, etc - and the mechanics of how to avoid them. I remember sitting there thinking - "Well, what's the big deal? Why not just not have sex?". At the time I simply didn't realise that this probably wasn't a very typical reaction for a 15 year old boy.

Mind you, it certainly wasn't a lack of purely physiological "drive", if you catch my drift. That was all there and working (raging more like it, teenage boy and all, pardon the TMI) - it just wasn't connecting to a psychological and emotional desire to have partnered sex with anyone. On some level I just felt that sex is something that would eventually happen in a certain kind of loving relationship - and this whole idea that people seriously want to do it relatively casually with others of a given gender just never really gelled properly with me. I remember thinking that maybe I'm just more "restrained and disciplined" than others are, or something.

Of course, over time this clash between my external environment and internal inclinations eventually started taking on a strange mixed ideological life of its own. I was still relatively sex-positive in theory, but in practice it started to look extremely strange and undisciplined to me what people were doing to themselves. Especially when I started seeing the fallout of unplanned pregnancies and such, in my later high school years.

The Clash

So basically from my teens, right through to my early 30s when I finally discovered demisexuality, I was living in this weird twilight zone - where I was more or less sex-positive by philosophy, but also quite judgemental and seemingly "conservative" about certain things - especially when things "went wrong" for people. My conversations about sexual attitudes always followed this pattern: 

Everything is fine so long as it's safe and consensual, but then X, Y, Z...

And the XYZ conditions were usually things that actually made me sound decidedly sex-negative. Or at least conditional enough to clash with a more clear-cut sex-positive attitude, which usually annoyed people. Unsurprisingly, I annoyed both sex-positivists as well as traditional sexual conservatives, because in both cases I wasn't really taking a coherent position for one side or the other.

This effect is still hard to shake sometimes.

Enter Demisexuality

Once I discovered that there is indeed a "thing" which makes my natural sexual inclinations not quite usual - I actually felt quite humbled by some of the borderline sex-negative attitudes I sometimes held. I realised that I'm not so much "disciplined and restrained", but rather simply oblivious to the very motivations to take partnered sex in a "casual fun" way. Not physically necessarily, but psychologically and emotionally. Outside of a certain kind of deep emotional connection, I'm as good as asexual. So there is nothing to be "disciplined" about. Nothing to be tempted by and have to turn down.

Almost overnight, I became more sex-positive than ever. My attitude now runs along the following lines:

Casual sex is all good fun and awesome, as long as it's:

1. Safe.
2. Sane.
3. Consensual.
4. Doesn't involve me!

This isn't necessarily any different to how I used to feel before of course, but now it's just more explicit. And now I know that the reason why I don't want it to involve me isn't some kind of self-discipline or moral superiority - but simply an inherent lack of interest in taking sex in a certain casual way in the first place.

What "Sex Positivity" Means To Me

The above set of conditions more or less summarises it I think, but just to expand on it, what it mostly comes down to for me is simply this: Not treating a sexual act as inherently "morally charged", simply because it's a sexual act.

So for example: if a sexual act has X chance of a bad outcome, and a non-sexual act has the same X chance of a similarly serious bad outcome, I don't believe the sexual act needs to carry any particular cultural baggage of "extra" shame or seriousness, just by virtue of being a sexual act.

This is deceptively subtle, but when you honestly run things though SSC conditions, it's easy to see how a lot of "sexual things" that society has a problem with don't really have much solid logic to them. It often really is just a case of cultural taboo based (non)thinking.

Thoughts on Glamour Photography

I have a few friends on Facebook who are photographers and make-up artists. So virtually every day, some of their glamour work comes through on my feed.

The other day, when coming across the umpteenth glamour pic of a young female model, the following thought popped into my mind: "Man, what's with all the chicks? I wanna see some ripped shirtless dudes too!" - That thought made me smile, both for how "queer" it would sound if I actually said that in a comment, as well as for how completely innocent it actually is. This is basically a demonstration of why I think of myself as "demisexual". Despite being at war with that label internally, I don't have a better word to describe this phenomenon at the moment.

In short: I simply have no sense of seeing anything sexually appealing in anyone upfront. Glamour photography of women versus similar "beefcake" shots of men have exactly the same effect on me. I can appreciate the beauty, health, and fitness of people as people, and nobody manages to get me going in any kind of sexually titillating way. In both cases, the though is something like: "Wow! Props to your genes, diet, and exercise regimen!" - and this is essentially all that I get out of "people watching" of any kind, regardless of the genders of the people I see. It's totally sex-neutral. So why did I get the thought of wanting to see dudes as well? Variety. Simple variety. The gender one-sidedness of the glamour genre simply bores me for being one-sided.

All that said, I am hetero-romantic. Meaning that I never feel any sense of romantic attraction to males. So on some weird level (which I can't even really explain), glamour shots of cute girls can sometimes mean something to me which images of men never can. It's totally non-sexual though, and in fact, it's usually something that I can only see in images which are not particularly "sexy", but mostly elegant or "cute". It's like there is some kind of subconscious trigger in them of memories of innocent puppy love, rather than anything sexual - since sexual attraction is something I simply don't feel for strangers anyway.

It's interesting to imagine sometimes what other people must be seeing in these things. For the longest time I thought of it as some sort of hype. It was like I could see something in it, but couldn't quite put my finger on what all the fuss and excitement is about. Why certain highly "sexy" poses get so many more likes, attention and "OMG UR SO HOT!!!!1!111!!one" comments than more neutral poses do, etc etc etc.

At the end of the day, it's not a big deal I suppose. But it does make me smile when people erase and invalidate demisexuality, because I highly doubt that most heterosexual men really see no sexually meaningful difference between glamour and "beefcake" pics. That both are in fact mostly "just beautiful people" to their mind.

At War With Labels

Yes, this again...

I've been having more and more conflicting thoughts about my use of the "demisexual" label and identity. Not that I've really actively "come out" much in real life - but mostly in the sense of an internal conflict.

Should I use it, or not?
Is it really something particularly unique, or not?
Isn't everyone's sexuality unique anyway?
etc

The last point there is what really gets me thinking sometimes. "Sexual" people on AVEN mention this a lot too - that even among highly sexual people, what attracts people to each other (and what they're "into" sexually) can vary so widely that it can be just as much of a compatibility issue as being somewhere in the grey-asexual/demisexual area.

The core of my problem is basically this though: not experiencing primary sexual attraction is a fairly big clash with stereotypical male heterosexual culture. It's just assumed that straight guys go crazy for random "hot chicks", enjoy the likes of strip clubs, are excited by women "showing lots of skin" in public, that sexual imagery in advertising works on us, that all of us are potential sex industry consumers if it wasn't for moral qualms about it, etc etc etc. When you don't experience the fundamental drive behind any of that at all, it's really a bit like being a whole other "kind". Not really a "normal" heterosexual male at all. And at the moment, about the only way to present yourself as not appreciating these things is via some kind of ethical or moral concerns about it - which of course are a completely separate issue. When you're "demisexual", it doesn't even get to the point of having to consider that, because you're not even seeing anything sexually alluring in that stuff in the first place.

I guess I just find the intellectual dishonesty of the above frustrating. And I don't like being put in that position where a whole heap of cultural baggage is assigned to me because I'm a "straight male", when I'm effectively nothing like what appears to be a far more typical way to tick.

Of course, I could drop all labels and explain my sexuality as an individual thing to people who need to know on a case by case basis - and just ignore the issue of being wrongfully assigned stereotypical heterosexual male cultural baggage. But on the other hand, it's nice to have the concept captured in a single word, both for personal purposes and for that social identity.

Ack. Stalemate.

Communicating Demisexuality

The theme for this month's Carnival of Aces is Language and Communication.

I've decided to focus on demisexuality because it's such a controversial orientation/inclination/thing, and really brings the subtleties of the language describing sexual and romantic orientations into focus. Much of this post will be personal - and talk about my own journey with finding words to describe how I tick - so please don't expect too much academic rigour here.

As I've explained in the past - a big part of what being on the asexual spectrum is about (for many people anyway) is some form of disconnect between sexual and affectional ("romantic") orientations. What does this mean, exactly? Ahhhh, let's take a look at the following picture...

When I first saw this picture - I must have stared at it for a good half hour. And then eventually it hit me: I've never been directly sexually attracted to anyone!

Language: Affectional vs Sexual Orientations

It's probably very hard to relate to if you're a reasonably mainstream sexual person who is oriented towards a certain gender, but affectional and sexual orientations can actually be completely separate things. Certain rare people even have separate sexual and affectional orientations for different genders, while for most people on the ace spectrum - it's usually more just a case of them having an affectional orientation - while their sexual orientation is weak, missing, or highly abstract (as is the case with demisexuals).

What affectional orientation sans sexual orientation means is, essentially, that you might find people of a certain gender cute and attractive and you develop crushes on them and "fall in love" with them, but it's not a sexual thing for you. For most people the two aspects of attraction run together so closely that there isn't any need to think of them as separate things - while for some of us they're distinct enough that they require separate attention.

Language Difficulty 1: "Romantic"

I don't particularly like the term "romantic" when talking about affectional orientations. The problem is that it tends to conjure up the mainstream image of what "romance" means to most people - which is almost always a sexual pair-bonding thing. I like the term "affectional orientation" because it's slightly more exotic, and people who are new to the terminology of asexuality usually need to look it up and check up on what it's about - while "romantic" causes confusion because it comes with a lot more cultural baggage.

Indeed, in my case "affectional" feels particularly poignant, because really this is all that my upfront attraction to any new girl can be about - desire for intellectual, emotional, and later sensual affection. Nothing beyond affectionate contact such as cuddling, in the physical realm of things. Not for a long time anyway.

Language Difficulty 2: "Demi-"

The word demi means "half". Some people think it's misleading because it implies that demisexuals have an "incomplete" sexuality, but I actually don't mind the term too much. 

Although it doesn't quite describe the dynamic of how demisexuality works, it does sort of embody the point that demisexuals can be either asexual or sexual, depending on the relationship context that they're in at any given time.

For me personally, this is exactly how it is: between relationships I'm as good as asexual. Right now, there is literally not a single person on the face of this entire planet who I'm realistically interested in having sex with. But when I'm in the right emotional headspace with someone in a relationship, I can become essentially no different to anyone else in a standard sexual relationship. So it's like my "sex life" is potentially dominated by either asexuality or sexuality, half-half.

In Defence of Demisexuality

Finally, I'll address the controversy: is demisexuality really a necessary label? Or is it overkill? And are we heteroromantic demisexuals just "normal" - albeit somewhat sexually conservative, heterosexuals - and being special snowflakes demanding attention with this label?

To some degree, I can actually see both sides of this. And as I've explained in previous posts regarding my "label fatigue", I do sometimes wish it was all unnecessary. 

But then again, this is what language is all about. Different groups have different specific words for highly specific nitpicky things that have meaning for them (eg. Apparently some Australian Aboriginal languages have dozens of words for different types of tree bark, because it was such an important material for them). There is nothing wrong with words sometimes seeming too specific out of the context of a given in-group, as long as they are useful within the in-group. Or to get a certain point across to outsiders, or to the world at large.

So is demisexuality a unique orientation? Or "just" an inclination? It doesn't really matter to me. I'm happy to just say it's a thing - and as long as it's ever useful to communicate something and avoid potential misunderstandings in relationships, it was a useful piece of language.

My Relationship Anarchy

The theme for this month's Carnival of Aces is non-traditional relationships and polyamory. This is something I've been meaning to blog about for a while, but never quite knew where to start, because my own theories on this are still a bit of a work in progress.

I should probably start by explaining my actual history with this...

Early Beginnings

It all started a couple of years ago (before I knew anything about asexuality) when I finally realised that my attractions to women are never immediately sexual - and do not (necessarily) fit the typical sexual pair-bonding paradigm. Indeed, my immediate pattern of attraction to a new girl is virtually indistinguishable from something like...simply wanting a kind of "close friendship with cuddle benefits".

(The term "romantic friendship" sounds about right - although this often refers to a particular form of this which was common in the 19th century, so I'm sometimes hesitant to use it because of the historical baggage confusion. But it seems to be getting reclaimed these days as a more broad term for these types of relationships, so I'll use it here).

When I discovered asexuality (and my own demisexuality), and that it is indeed quite possible for relationships not to be based on the standard sexual pair bonding script, a huge light bulb went off in my head. There wasn't any particular epiphany moment per se, but at some point in early 2012 I just knew that I'd never look at relationships the same way again.

This article in "The Atlantic" is what really sealed it for me. Especially the following passage:

"If we stop defining our significant relationships only as those that are romantic or sexual, being single will take on a whole new meaning. If we broaden our emotional focus from the person we share bodily fluids with to the sum of our friendships, acquaintances, and colleagues, our communities will grow stronger. If we stop treating penetrative sex as the be all and end all of physical intimacy, we will experience greater heights of pleasure. And if we can accept that although sex can be ecstatic and affirming and fulfilling, it is not all those things to all people all of the time, we will relieve it of some of its cultural baggage."

It was like...wow!!...this is exactly how I've felt about sex and relationships all my life - and suddenly here is a community of people who seem to be wired the same as me, and making conclusions regarding love, sex and relationships which seem completely obvious to me in hindsight.

So that got me thinking - how do I apply all this?

Dating, Romance and Sex

Probably the single most confusing thing about all this was coming to terms with the idea that "romance" and sex are totally separate things to me. They always were separate for me, but the idea that they run together was so deeply socially conditioned into my thinking that I simply didn't consciously see it. But I did, however, always feel like something was slightly "off" about how the dating world works.

This is what makes demisexuality (as well as being sexually non-repulsed) so tricky. It's not like an immediate and obvious case of Does Not Compute regarding sex, the way repulsed asexuality is. It's more that sex just seems like a totally random and unnecessary thing to (immediately at least) combine with romance - because romance is something that grows on its own for me, almost entirely from intellectual and emotional connecting. And indeed, non-sexual affectionate contact is all that I can desire (and handle!) upfront anyway.

But even more to the point, I was now being haunted by the above line from that article - "If we stop defining our significant relationships only as those that are romantic or sexual, being single will take on a whole new meaning." - Indeed. 

How do you define "single"? Are you still single if you have an ongoing romantic friendship with someone? Multiple romantic friendships? Or is it only a sexual relationship that counts? Or does it all come down to sitting down, having The Talk, and agreeing that you are in a relationship?

Polyamory

A few things happened which made me question the idea of traditional monogamy in the past few years - needless to say, none of them had anything to do with wanting to "sleep around"! 

It all basically gelled around this idea of how we can have different types of significant relationships with different people - which may conventionally qualify as "'just' friendship", "romance", or perhaps something in-between - say "romantic friendship". Then it suddenly started looking very petty and arbitrary to me to throw an exclusive bubble around just one such relationship, to the exclusion of others. When sex is in the picture, I can actually understand the value of exclusivity. After all, historically-speaking, birth control and protection were either extremely ineffective or essentially non-existent, so it did make some sense to reign in promiscuous sex. But this begs the question - why do we still have to apply this rule to non-sexual-yet-romantic ways of connecting? Which is 99% of what I'm about.

In a word - it is not sex that defines polyamory for me - it's emotional connecting. It's the idea of having close, tender emotional connections with people which have no fixed boundaries, as opposed to the traditional monogamous model - where there is a vast emotional exclusion zone around the Romantic Couple - and everybody else is "just" a friend, and has to keep a wide berth to avoid the contact from being seen as inappropriate. 

But alas, since 99% of the world is sexual, polyamory will probably always carry the "just an excuse to sleep around" cultural baggage. Hence I've sometimes been hesitant to use it, especially to identify publicly as such...

"Relationship Anarchy"

My thinking these days is probably best described by the term "relationship anarchy", and a heavily asexual-influenced version of it at that. 

As mentioned briefly in a previous post about labels, I like the idea of doing away with restrictive categories altogether - what really matters is that the people involved in relationships are open and honest with each other, and agree to their own tailored specifics. And I think that broad categories (eg. Friend vs Lover) actually get in the way of happiness here - because people end up having to accept pre-packaged things which might not be entirely suitable for a particular given connection - but are nevertheless so deeply ingrained in the culture that they never truly questioned how connecting with people could be done differently. 

This might be less true of sexuals than people on the asexual spectrum though, which I believe may be the main reason why these theories are quite controversial out in the mainstream world. 

For sexuals, it seems to run like this: You either find someone sexually attractive, in which case you'll want to sleep with them - or else you don't find them sexually attractive, in which case you'll never want to sleep with them. But more to the point - any kind of "romantic" context with them will probably seem awkward and pointless. Why? Because sexuals generally don't experience this disconnect between romance and sex that we do. Attraction is either both romantic and sexual as a package deal, or else it is purely platonic. There seems to not be much possibility of anything in-between.

I'm not entirely sure this theory is correct. I've seen some evidence of sexuals being capable of relationships which can exist in that fuzzy area between purely platonic and romance, but it seems to be incredibly rare. Whereas with people on the asexual spectrum, it seems to be quite common to at least understand the point of this - even if many still subscribe to a more traditional monogamous outlook on actually forming serious relationships.

What I'd like to explore

I currently have a kind of online version of a "romantic friendship", with an asexual girl overseas who's in a polyamorous relationship. It's actually incredibly liberating to be able to share with someone intellectually and emotionally without second-guessing whether it's "appropriate" or not - because everything has been discussed upfront and everybody has agreed that it's okay.

What would be interesting to explore is how this kind of relationship would work out in real life. Given that I'm not one for "serious relationships" in terms of wanting a permanent domestic life partnership and suchlike, I'm actually quite attracted to the idea of simply having romantic friendships while basically remaining "single" - in the practical everyday independent living sense. While I won't set out absolutes such as "living separately is mandatory", this is so close to the truth that it might as well be the case.

So yes, romantic friendships is where it's at for me at the moment. If anyone does inspire me for something "more" involved, it'll be a small miracle I think. But even then, there's no going back to traditional monogamous thinking. Although, being demisexual, I have to say that I'd have no problem with sexual exclusivity - the real impossibility is to not think of multiple relationships as emotionally significant any more. And of course, that the existence of multiple deep emotional connections is okay. Correction: Not just okay, but celebrated as a beautiful thing!

Labels - Point/Counterpoint

I've been thinking about labels quite a lot lately. And not just subtle things like the difference between being a "normal" sexual person versus grey-asexual.

One of my main issues with labels is quite nicely summarised in the first minute or so of the following video (totally different theme, but makes the same general point):

The point about picking up all the cultural baggage that a label entails is actually a very insidious thing. And not just because it makes other people make assumptions about you, but also because you can start boxing yourself too far into the identity yourself.

For example: when I first learned about demisexuality and identified with it, I ran with it quite eagerly and started attributing all sorts of things to it. Most of these were probably related, but some possibly not. But when I look back now, I definitely feel I was too eager to use this newly found label as a blanket explanation for all sorts of things about my sexuality and how I seem to process attraction subtly differently than the norm.

Point

The real point of labels is to explain outlier attraction processes to others. If everybody in the world was romantic and heterosexual, then we simply wouldn't need any words to describe sexual and romantic orientations at all. Everybody would be attracted to the opposite gender, and in more or less the same way. Romantic and sexual attractions would be in sync in everyone, and none of this label drama would be necessary. We would never need labels to communicate what we desire, in whom, and in what ways.

Of course, the world isn't so neat and tidy. Apart from obviously different orientations from the heteronorm (such as being gay, bi or outright asexual), there are those for whom romantic and sexual orientations aren't quite in sync, or work as generally expected. These can actually be particularly difficult to deal with because their effect is relatively subtle. The human brain loves certainty - neat and tidy black and white categories (ie. "You're straight therefore you're into the opposite sex, and you see good looking specimens of them as sexually appealing on sight, period!") - so these things can be quite confusing and scary, not only to ourselves but also to others. Especially those who get involved with us while we're still figuring ourselves out. 

This is the value in identifying with one of these "subtle" labels - such as demisexuality or grey-asexuality. As long as it's done after an honest and thorough self-evaluation, it can give a good idea to others that what they can expect from you probably won't run to the usual heteronormative dating script. It doesn't even necessarily matter if the outcome looks similar to how many people who don't identify with the label end up in their relationships - the point is that it was useful and potentially avoided misunderstandings and pain. 

Once again: as long as we haven't tied ourselves up in knots by over-attributing all sorts of stuff to the label that wasn't necessary - and was potentially misleading.

Counterpoint

The other side of the coin is that there is a Postmodern "relationship anarchist" in me - one who would like to do away with labels altogether. One who basically says People Are People, and how any two of us relate to one another should be entirely individual and not be labelled or pre-packaged in any way at all. Under this model, even the likes of "friend" versus "partner" would be rejected as labels for how we connect, and each relationship would be totally unique and run its course on its own terms.

By definition, this kind of outlook completely eliminates all the subtle labels - since it has even done away with the obvious unsubtle ones! If it no longer matters who you are attracted to and in what ways generally - because you're approaching each relationship on its own terms and not as part of some set of pre-packaged expectations - then your underlying "orientation" really doesn't matter that much. You'll get to know each person and mutually find the unique boundaries that make sense for the two of you, without deferring to any external definitions at all.

Of course, this is probably impractical when taken to the extremes. eg. If someone is staunchly gay, it certainly makes sense not to lead people of the opposite sex on. Or if someone is an outright repulsed asexual, it doesn't make sense to lead highly sexual people on, expecting that dating you might eventually lead to a sexual relationship, etc. But for the more subtle cases, it does make a lot of sense I think. 

Conclusion

On the whole, I think labels can be useful so long as they are used to describe things that are identifiable patterns which would occur even without them being there. As soon as they become a thing-in-themselves, some kind of badge of identity that starts carrying socio-cultural baggage, things can start to get corrupted and murky. Then it's no longer a case of looking back and thinking: "Ahh, I did such and such because I'm demisexual...." but "I'm going to do such and such in the future because I'm demisexual...", and this has a way of limiting us, in potentially harmful and unnecessary ways.

Still, in my version of Utopia, labels wouldn't matter at all. Every relationship would be unique and wouldn't have to be limited by any pre-set expectations of what it should be, and how it's defined by any labels outside the two people who are having it.

Asexy Mind vs Body

I'm having AVEN withdrawal...

The forums have been down for an upgrade for about two days now. I forget how much my morning Internet routine these days revolves around checking up on my AVEN threads and seeing what's new. Oh well, this has at least inspired me to post about something that's been on my mind for a little while - which isn't new at all as a concept on AVEN of course - but it might be interesting to others. That is, the "mind vs body" nature of asexuality.

Mind vs Body

When people first hear about asexuality, the first response from many is to ask something like "...but don't you get horny at all?" - basically implying that there is an obvious and unquestionable link between physiological sexual function and psychological sex drive. To get right to the point: this is basically what stands at the very centre of what asexuality is all about - it's a disconnect between these two things.

(I should note: there are some people who identify as "non-libidoist" and/or their asexuality is reinforced by having a low to non-existent physiological sex drive, but for the purposes of this post I'm focusing on the "libidoist" type - like myself - which appears to be more common anyway.)

In simple words: our lack of interest in partnered sex has nothing to do with any lack of physiological libido, or lack of physical pleasure received from sex - rather, it is a disconnect between that and the psychological desire to bond with other people in a sexual way. Essentially, purely physical sexual function and desire for "partnered sex" are separate things in our minds, and not mentally integrated into an obvious whole like they are for most people.

So how does this work?

The best way to think of it (and this analogy only works if you're gay or straight - it won't work for bisexuals) is that all people look like sexual blank slates to you. Imagine being in an environment where everybody is of the gender that you are not attracted to. Even though you've still got a purely physical libido, it has nowhere to go, there is no one you want to share it with. So even though you might still physically get "horny", you simply shelve the thought of partnered sex.

This is - very roughly speaking - how the world looks to me in sexual terms. I don't see people in an inherently sexual way upfront. "Sexiness" is something that I've learned to see in people in a purely intellectual way, but for the longest time I couldn't understand why people carry on so much about it - it always felt like hype and exaggeration, until I was 33 years old and finally worked out that something is indeed missing from my picture.

All that said, there is another disconnect in the picture here, just to make things even more confusing...

Romantic vs Sexual orientations

I'm a heteroromantic demisexual. When I was a teenager, I started noticing girls (and getting crushes on them) at pretty much the same time as all the other boys did. 

But here's the thing: there was never an immediate sexual follow-up to my crushes. All I ever saw, felt, and fantasised about was wanting to share a vague sense of closeness, love, and affection with them. On a physical level, the most explicit thoughts that would pop into my mind would be the likes of cuddling, kissing, sleeping together (as in literally), and generally being close and affectionate with each other. Sex was always something that sat far in the background - it was never any kind of primary driver or motivator at all.

Fast forward 20 years: this is still where I'm at. 

As you can probably imagine - this was all very easy to conflate with a sense of moralistic sexual conservatism (and I just happened to be involved with girls from conservative cultures which reinforced the feeling that this is "normal"). This is the curse of demisexuality: behaviourally it looks essentially identical to simply being traditionally "moral" about sex, and waiting until you are in a serious relationship. When I was younger, I never gave this much thought, though at times I did indulge this sense a bit (in a morally "elitist" sense). 

Linking the two

For out and out "romantic asexuals", there is no link between love and sex at all. Romantic relationships are ideally sexfree for them, but probably include all the other usual trappings of what's expected from romantic partners.

For demisexuals, and other people towards the grey-asexual end of the spectrum, it's a bit more complicated. Sex can become an important aspect of a romantic relationship (eventually), but it's not a primary driver, or a crucial component. This is the disconnect that makes demisexual dating complicated. As explained above, it's not so much a purely physical lack of sex in the relationship - it's the lack of shared headspace. A lack of shared sense of the importance of partnered sex as a component of romantically connecting with another person.

Demisexual online dating

I pulled down my OkCupid profile yesterday. I'd made some interesting pen pals on there, but after 9 months, I finally realised that it wasn't going to lead anywhere in "dating" terms.

The basic problem with "dating" for me has always been that I fall outside the two major patterns that most people fall into in the modern dating world: those who are looking for casual (sexual) hookups, and those who are looking to settle down and marry.

1) The problem with the first one is obvious - I'm demisexual. So close to asexual that I might as well be asexual. At least at first and for a long time when getting to know a new person. This rules out any kind of casual hookup shenanigans.

2) I'm not actively looking to "settle down". I'm not even sure I want to ever move in and live with someone, let alone get married and have children. This has less to do with being on the asexual spectrum of course - plenty of highly sexual people also don't want these trappings of conventional relationships - but when the two are combined it must have really made some people wonder what the heck I was doing on a dating website.

Learning about being grey-asexual/demisexual has been both an incredibly liberating and an incredibly isolating experience at the same time. On the one hand, it's great to finally connect the dots and understand what's been driving me for these 34 years of existence, and why exactly I fall outside certain psychological patterns that the vast majority of humans seem to take for granted. On the other hand, there is a lot of overlap which is sometimes hard to deal with.

I went on OkCupid early this year with the idea that it should be fine. I knew I was different now, and I thought that this knowledge would help me navigate the dating world better than back when I thought I was "normal" but just vaguely broken somehow. But it's difficult. And the real difficulty isn't sexual or even practical per se - it's purely psychological. When you're driven by a totally different pattern of attraction, you simply give off the wrong signals. People expect a certain level of upfront sexual interest to accompany "romantic" interest, and when you simply don't feel this, you give off the wrong vibe.