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| An infographic that shows what a "deductible" is. Image source. |
I'm hosting the Carnival of Aces this month, and my topic is "The Advice You Wish You'd Had." So I want to talk about being a sex-favorable ace, because the way this is talked about in "asexuality 101" types of discussions is not great.
A few posts from other people on this:
From Queenie, I am not your dirty secret (2014), about how there is SO MUCH talk about "aces can have sex too," that sex-repulsed aces often feel pressured to have sex, or treated like there is something wrong with them for not even wanting to try sex. Even though a huge percentage of aces ("65% of asexuals, 51% of grey-As, and 37% of demisexuals") are sex-repulsed.
From Siggy, Take it from a sex-favorable ace: you don’t need to have sex (2018) (YES I AGREE) and 20 narratives of aces who like sex (2016). Talking about more specifics about sex-favorable aces' experiences, and how they very much don't fit whatever shallow impression one might get just from hearing "aces can have sex too!"
And I've been in a few situations where I'm at a queer event where I mention to people that I'm asexual, and they are like "but you have a kid" and I'm like, kind of caught off-guard by the idea that this would be confusing, like... isn't an asexual having sex specifically because they want to have a baby a really easy thing to understand? Apparently not? That's not the main reason I have sex, but at least it's a much easier reason to understand than "sexual attraction", whatever that is. (Maybe *all* my friends are wondering how I have a kid if I'm asexual, and they're all just too polite to ask.) So then I say, "well, I'm asexual, but I do have sex" and then I feel like... if this person was confused about asexuality before, and conceptualized it as just "not having sex" now they're back to conceptualizing it as "oh, just the same as non-asexuals then" which is, argggh not cool. I guess I should say something different...
So anyway, I want to kind of flesh this out more, the idea that I want to have sex but in a way that's different from how allosexuals want to have sex. ("Allosexual" means not on the asexual spectrum.) And also, if we want to talk about labels, I'm a sex-favorable asexual, but I never really felt like I had to use that term, "sex-favorable." (Background info: The ace community sometimes uses the terms sex-favorable/ sex-indifferent/ sex-averse/ sex-repulsed to label people's interest in actually having sex.) Yes, I totally fit the definition of "sex-favorable," no question about it, but I never felt like I had to use any label for it at all. I always felt like, some aces want to have sex, and some don't, and that's not really the most important aspect of being ace. I relate to a lot of things that other aces talk about, regardless of whether they're sex-favorable or sex-repulsed or anything else. But anyway, let's talk about "sex-favorable" in this post and see if it's a useful label for me.
Okay, so the summary of what "sex-favorable" means to me is: If I could do it all over again, I would have the perspective that "I would like to figure out sex, and masturbation, someday. Like, that is one of my overall life goals."
I would view it as, "Everyone's always talking about sex, and I'm really curious about what all the hype is about." And "Masturbating is one of those things that I feel like as an adult I should figure out, sort of like learning what a 'deductible' is when buying health insurance."
Like, very long term, at some point in my life, I do want to learn this. That's the view I would take, if I was in some alternate timeline where I'm young again and have access to good enough sex ed that I'm able to know what I want.
Knowing what I know now, I see that I don't feel there's any urgency to it. But I definitely felt urgency and desire and need for romantic things, rather than sexual things. When friends got engaged, I always felt like "their life is PERFECT, oh I want that SOOOO BADDDDD, when will it happen to meeee????" I hated being single so much. I was so lonely and desperate for romantic affection. And when I did have a boyfriend, I had to tell myself to slow down and hold back and don't spend all my time with him and follow him around with starry eyes and touch him all the time. I knew it would be a bad idea to open the floodgates of my romantic affection at the beginning of the relationship- that's the kind of thing you need to build up to. But wow I wanted it so much. (I also remember thinking to myself that I really couldn't imagine any set of circumstances where I would choose to break up with someone- being single was just so terrifying, I felt that even if I was in a bad relationship, I wouldn't be able to make myself believe that being single was better. This is, umm, not really a healthy perspective.)
I thought that since I had this overwhelming urgency and desire for romance, that also meant I had urgency and desire for sex. Because, the way that I always heard sex described was in very romantic terms- it's the highest expression of love, it's intimacy, it's giving yourself to another person, it's two becoming one, it's being fully vulnerable and fully loved with another person. I remember when I broke up with my first boyfriend and I was devastated and trying to figure out when I would get out of the hell that was being single, asking when I would finally get married and have my happily-ever-after- but the way I phrased it in my mind was, "how much longer will I have to wait till I can have sex?" Because I thought of "sex" as "you're married to this person who is perfect for you, and you know you're committed to them forever, and the sex is the fulfillment of all that romantic longing, the sex is the perfect love that these desires all lead to."
So I thought I really really wanted sex, in a more urgent way than just a checkbox on the bucket list.
But nope, lol. Turns out sex isn't "the highest expression of love" and all that romantic stuff. No, sex is getting together with another person and doing stuff with each other's genitals. I'm serious. Really. That's all it is. (I mean, I knew that's what it was in a dictionary-definition sense, but I always believed it would feel way more romantic than that. Turns out, no.)
(And maybe it should have been a hint for me, when I was so obsessed and in love and always having crushes, but never thought about actually having sex with the boys that I liked. [With a few exceptions...] Maybe it should have been a hint, that I had never masturbated, never even considered it, it was not on my mind at all. Yeah we can also file that under "the advice I wish I'd had.")
Anyway, my point is, I had that "urgency" for romance but not for sex. For sex, that can wait. (Or rather, that's the view I would take in this alternate universe where I have access to information about asexuality as a teenager. My real life didn't really go that way.)
And I think about a hypothetical, in this alternate universe, where I'm single and happen to mention to my friends that I am interested in having sex- in my mind a far-off long-term idea which would only happen under very specific circumstances- and then there's a guy I'm attracted to, and my friends tell me I should totally go try to have sex with him, like that same night. ??? Like what on earth, no, hypothetical friends, that is NOT how I meant it. Sex isn't the kind of thing I would do just because I'm attracted to someone. What on earth. Sex is far too weird, and I need a lot of time to analyze the situation and make a decision. And NOPE, I can tell you the circumstances are never going to be right if it's someone I just met. Like, the goal is to only do this with 1 person, that I really trust, in my entire lifetime. There's no need for me to have additional experience beyond that. What would be the point? Why bother, if the circumstances aren't really what I want?
If you tell your friends "I want to buy a house" do they bring you a mortgage contract and expect you to sign it right then and there?
I've seen anecdotes written by sex-repulsed/sex-averse aces, about how some guy they met was like "but some aces can have sex!" and tried to use that as an argument for why they should have sex with *him* *specifically*. Like, what on earth? My dude, I'm saying I want to have sex at some point over the course of my life. This is not a meaningful difference in the probability for *you*, compared to if I wanted to have sex with no one ever.
So sex-repulsed aces are saying this is why it's a problem to put so much emphasis on "some aces have sex!" and like, I'm sex-favorable and this would also be a problem for me, if someone interprets "some aces have sex" as "it is totally possible that I can convince this ace to have sex with me." Like no, that is NOT what it means.
So, if I could do it all over, I would view it like "sex and masturbation are things I'd like to figure out someday." But what actually happened in my actual life, well I've blogged about this a lot so I'll just summarize it here- it was a whole confusing process of totally buying into Christian purity culture, then working my way out of it, but still terrified of premarital sex, then when I finally did have sex it made no sense, then I figured out I'm asexual.
And when I found the concept of asexuality, it was great news, because yes, I very much did want to figure out how to have sex, and I couldn't make any progress on it when I believed I was just a really confused heterosexual. Asexuality was necessary as a starting point for me- I finally figured out that the reason sex makes no sense is that sex just really does make no sense and I don't have sexual attraction. Whereas, in confused-heterosexual-land, I was stuck in this weird line of thinking, like "apparently, I have these desires, and apparently when I'm with my partner, things are just supposed to happen naturally and lead to sex, and apparently it's supposed to feel good" and couldn't make any progress because I was always stuck on the question of how to conceptualize my feelings so that they matched the feelings that I was "supposed" to have.
So what I'm saying is, to actually achieve my bucket-list goal of figuring out how to have sex, I needed asexuality. I needed to realize the reality that this is something that takes time to figure out, not something that "comes naturally."
But anyway, even though I had to work through a lot of bad teaching and bad sex-ed, I got there eventually, now I'm with my husband and can check these items off the bucket list, and enjoy living in a way that incorporates them, and I'm happy with that.
Okay, and 1 more thing I want to say: Some parts of my "ideal" for what I want from sex during my lifetime match up with purity culture's "God's plan for your life", and I HATE that. I'm like, I want to have sex with only 1 person, and only when it's the right circumstance for it... argggh I sound like a nice church girl. That's what purity culture said everyone is "supposed" to do, that this is the "correct" view of the role sex should play in your life, and having a desire for something different than that is a horrible sin. Ugh I hate it. I hate how what I want matches that kind of holier-than-thou teaching. Here's what I really think: It's about knowing what you want. It's about knowing yourself. Wanting sex at some certain frequency does not make you better or worse than other people. There are no "correct" desires that you are "supposed" to have.
Please note, though, that my romantic desires very much did not fit into the restrictive box that purity culture gave me. I wasn't able to follow "God's plan" on that. I had to work so hard to repress my romantic desires, and I assumed I was also repressing my sexual desires, but turns out I didn't have any of those. And also, I had sex before marriage, and I plan to never stop talking about it, because it was a good decision for me, and that just invalidates the entire foundation of purity culture.
So. There you have it. I've written before about being asexual and also the fact that I have sex, but I don't think I've used the word "sex-favorable" before, but there it is. I'm using it here in this post because I think it would help the ace community if there was more discussion on what *specifically* it might mean to be a sex-favorable ace. Otherwise, people just hear "aces can have sex too" and come away with the idea that most aces want to have sex/ can be talked into having sex/ have the same feelings on it as allosexuals do, or some nonsense like that.
If I was trying to give a 101-level answer, I would say, "I think most aces don't want to have sex ever. Some aces do want to have sex, but probably for different reasons than allosexual people do." (Or, does anyone have other suggestions on this? Leave a comment about it!)
For aces who don't want to have sex- yeah, I totally get it. For me, this very much feels like "I examined the options and made a decision." Like, there are options that one would need to examine, as a prerequisite for being able to determine that one is interested in sex. It doesn't feel like "well OBVIOUSLY this is what EVERYONE should think." It makes a lot of sense to me, to not be interested in sex or masturbation. I like how in the ace community, we discuss reasons to have sex, coming from the assumption that yeah sex is weird so if you want to do it, that's a bit unusual and we wonder what the reasons might be for that decision. Not like allosexual-world, where you need a reason to *not* have sex.
And yes, I know that other sex-favorable aces may have a completely different perspective than me. (Feel free to leave a comment!) I can only talk about myself- and I'm writing about it here because I think it's important to show that being a sex-favorable ace is a completely different thing from being allosexual. Apparently, most people feel like they "need" to have sex frequently??? Apparently, most people think sex is an important part of a romantic relationship???? Apparently, most people find it hard to not masturbate????? Apparently, most people's sex drive is associated with their health, and low sex drive is an indication of a problem?????? (What even is sex drive?) Apparently, most people have sex with the person they are dating??????? Apparently, most people think that if a married couple is not having sex frequently, that means there's something wrong with their marriage???????? Just baffling, all of it.
I do have sex, but when I hear society talking about sex, it doesn't sound like anything I can relate to at all. I seem to have completely different feelings on this than allosexuals. And that's what it means for me to be a sex-favorable asexual.
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Related:
My Husband Is Not The Entire Focus Of My Sex Life
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