Intersections between devness and sexuality

[allisonsr]

CW: Mention of non-consensual experience

I suspect we each have incredibly unique experiences of attraction and sexuality, which is what landed us on this forum. I've been pondering lately whether my dev experience/identity is orthogonal to or part of my sexuality. I identify as somewhere between asexual and demisexual, while recognizing that demi falls inside ace.

In case you'd like a quick primer to the variations that can exist in world beyond heterosexual cisgender experience, I'm a fan of the Genderbread Man model.



Personally, I do not experience sexual attraction at all unless I feel a profound emotional connection to an individual... except when that person is the particular type of PWD that tickles my devness. Not only do I not feel turned on or attracted without intense emotional connection in the moment, I literally cannot have intercourse. I experience severe vaginismus, to the point that my muscles have lifted a 180-lb man who insisted on continuing when I didn't want to.

What we aces call you folks who experience attraction in more typical ways is "allosexual". I guess I must be asexual (demisexual) EXCEPT when it comes to People with (Visual) Disabilities, at which point I am closer to allosexual there's a potential for me to experience physical (but still not sexual) attraction.

I'm very curious to hear whether the rest of you think that devness could be at least partly be a flavor of asexuality.

If you're interested in this topic, may I recommend Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex?

[scarletfire]

This might not be the en vogue way of thinking about it these days, but I don't consider what you're describing as asexual, and I don't think it needs a specific term like demisexual. I think that's how most women experience sexual attraction and how the sexuality of most women works. I think the difference with PWDs that does not require you to get to know the person to feel the emotional attraction is that you already have an emotional response PWDs based on your knowledge of disability and the challenges it presents for them. You are capable of feeling compassion and empathy for PWDs immediately without having to build a relationship with the specific person, so the emotional response is already there.

That's my two cents.

[allisonsr]

Aug 9, 2023 2:16:18 GMT -5 scarletfire said:

This might not be the en vogue way of thinking about it these days, but I don't consider what you're describing as asexual, and I don't think it needs a specific term like demisexual. I think that's how most women experience sexual attraction and how the sexuality of most women works.

I respectfully disagree. As has been described eloquently elsewhere, here's the difference between asexuality and low libido:

Why do I need to identify as asexual?
Because when I didn't, I spent years and years going through painful invasive procedures trying to "fix" my ability to have sex. Talk therapy, hormones, pelvic floor therapy, laparoscopy. Because for years, I believed that being a woman meant that I had to feel sexual attraction to the man I married and had children with. Because every time he raped me, I thought I deserved it because I was a woman and I was taught that women should want to have sex with their life partners. Because I don't want another girl to think that she can never be a woman because her genitalia have no connection to love.
Because our culture so entwines sex with family that we teach that being a mother must equal sex (except Mary). We even think it strange when a woman adopts unless she has first attempted to conceive.
Because you (and the larger culture) equate my not wanting to have sex with not wanting to have a relationship. Because I would happily participate in all the other parts: homemaking, co-parenting, financial decision-making, mutual respect and support, life decisions, shared interests, shared community involvement. Because my not wanting sex with a man and not wanting sex with a woman is simply a variant on women who don't want to have sex with a man, but might want to have sex with a woman.
Because [the other] boxes don't have room for me.

That's a description of asexuality. And every bit of that applies to me. I feel intense romantic feelings without it ever extending to sexual ability.

[kat]

Aug 9, 2023 2:16:18 GMT -5 scarletfire said:

This might not be the en vogue way of thinking about it these days, but I don't consider what you're describing as asexual, and I don't think it needs a specific term like demisexual. I think that's how most women experience sexual attraction and how the sexuality of most women works.

I'll admit, and this might just be my ignorance, that I've always struggled with fully understanding the notion of demisexuality as well. Needing an emotional connection to feel true sexual attraction seems somewhat common amongst women - it's not everyone's experience, of course, but common - so I've always had a bit of a hard time understanding demisexuality as its own category. Does anyone who identifies with it want to chime in?

I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to belittle or erase anyone's identity with this, it's just something I've always had a hard time wrapping my mind around.

[allisonsr]

Aug 9, 2023 2:16:18 GMT -5 scarletfire said:

Needing an emotional connection to feel true sexual attraction seems somewhat common amongst women - it's not everyone's experience, of course, but common - so I've always had a bit of a hard time understanding demisexuality as its own category. Does anyone who identifies with it want to chime in?

I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to belittle or erase anyone's identity with this, it's just something I've always had a hard time wrapping my mind around.

I identify as demi on occasion, but primarily as ace. Can you help me understand your experience too to help us come to a shared understanding?

From what I hear, allosexual people sometimes notice people to whom they might feel a physical attraction when they're just walking around minding their business. They might feel a physical sensation of attraction. I genuinely don't understand the concept of "chemistry" in the romantic sense. My lesbian daughter keeps having to explain movies to me (the vast majority of which are hetero) because I often miss out on signals of attraction.

[kat]

Aug 9, 2023 8:48:43 GMT -5 allisonsr said:

I identify as demi on occasion, but primarily as ace. Can you help me understand your experience too to help us come to a shared understanding?

From what I hear, allosexual people sometimes notice people to whom they might feel a physical attraction when they're just walking around minding their business. They might feel a physical sensation of attraction. I genuinely don't understand the concept of "chemistry" in the romantic sense. My lesbian daughter keeps having to explain movies to me (the vast majority of which are hetero) because I often miss out on signals of attraction.

I can't really speak for the "average woman's" experience as my own sexuality is anything but. I do personally encounter people I'm physically attracted to out in the world, but as I'm not really attracted to anyone but PWDs, it's extremely rare. When I was younger, the rarity of it DID sometimes make me wonder about asexuality (hard not to wonder if you're not actually attracted to anyone when there's no one attractive around!), but as I've gotten comfortable in my devness, I've realized that that's not it at all.

But that's just my personal experience. From what I've heard from other women over the years, some of them seem to not feel this initial sort of attraction towards anyone, at least not a sexual one. Some women seem to be able to think of someone as physically attractive without feeling any sort of sexual excitement that goes along with it, and others yet seem to not even feel the physical attraction unless they're close with someone. I guess you could label that demisexuality, but I've always thought it was just part of the standard spectrum of sexual experience. But maybe I'm wrong?

[ayla]

I don't personally support the "gender bread person" model/postmodern gender ideology. I think we have our biological sex (m/f/intersex) and then our adherence or non adherence to culturally mediated gender stereotypes. And I don't see what gender "identity" or gender "expression" really have to do with one's sexual orientation. If this is a framework that you find helpful, then by all means continue to use it. I just bring up my qualms with it because I think -- again, for me personally -- that splitting ourselves up into these component parts only encourages one to agonize over all the various (shifting, vague) options for self-labeling.

I can understand the freedom that can come from identifying as asexual. I have had many situations in which I felt disconnected from the experience of sexual arousal and attraction that most people seem to feel. But then -- as @kat said above -- I grew to believe that this is mainly due to the lack of "attractive" (to me) people most of the time. I'm not attracted to most, or even many, men. It's a very rare guy that can have that biochemical effect on me, but it can happen. Is this a legitimate version of asexuality (asexual in the absence of a very restricted "type"?) or is it completely different from being asexual, even though the day-to-day experience is the same? If you take a gay man and put him on a planet of all females, does he become asexual or is he still gay? What about those with very specific, niche fetishes? Hard to say they are asexual, but since they only feel a sexual response to straitjackets or ferris wheels or whatever, in day to day life they are "functionally" asexual since their triggers are not commonplace.

Therefore, the answer to your question depends largely on how you personally define asexuality. Does the label of asexuality have anything to do with the availability of potential partners, and/or the restrictiveness of one's taste in partners? What exactly does this label describe, and why? You said you "must be asexual (demisexual) EXCEPT when it comes to People with (Visual) Disabilities." Could you not also say that, like everyone, you don't feel attracted to anyone unless you find them attractive? It's just that what constitutes finding someone attractive, for you, is a very narrow category. Is asexuality a functional category, or an empirical category?

I think that a lot of female devs have pondered this topic since we, by definition, have a greatly reduced availability of attractive potential partners. How would we behave in a world where all men had our preferred disabilities? I've wondered that, and it has been asked here as well. It's an interesting philosophical question for sure. But does it really have much relevance in real life? The reality is, arousal happens when it happens. I'm sure we'd all like to have a little more control over that and a choice in the matter! Which is probably a major source of the drive to categorize and diagnose oneself.

Also, female hormones are much different than male, and result in different sexual drives (ask anyone who has ever been on testosterone). As a result, having an inconsistent, context-dependent, responsive desire is very typical for women, as are changing sexual drives and even orientations throughout life. Those who have an intersex condition (and I include brain-based differences that lead to gender dysphoria a type of intersex condition) will tend toward the desire patterns most consistent with their hormonal sex, which is always binary (one has consistent/male or cyclical/female production of sex hormones, it can't be both consistent AND cyclical simultaneously). Sexuality labels are thus much more applicable to those with male hormones, whose responses to stimuli are consistent over time. Seeing biological sex as a spectrum erases the very real impacts of our biochemistry.

Curious to hear you thoughts! This is definitely a complex topic.

[dutchdev]

I have never analyzed my devness in such dept, although I do consider it an orientation.

What I do feel is that we over label and that it works counterproductive. I think a lot of the above mentioned are spectrums and labelling them, or expecting people to label themselfs makes it more difficult to travel on that spectrum.

My kids (boys) can (and do) wear nail polish, skirts or there hair long. They can decide to only like dolls or cars and I'm sorry that we don't live in a society yet were that is the norm, not the exception. I want them to feel the liberty to experiment and try out anything, without judgement.

My goal is that if one of my sons is gay (or on the gay end of the sexuality spectrum), he never has to "come out". They are kids now, but if we talk about potential future partners (for now mostly in jest) we never gender them. I hope that if one of them turns out to be more attracted to men, they'll simple say "I will bring my new partner to diner this Sunday" and that's that.


This all is said not withstanding the serious difficulties that still exist in some communities to be different from the norm.

[dutchdev]

Question: How would you explain Demisexual?

Until this thread I had never heard of the term, and that is coming from someone who has had 2 workshops a week in the last month dedicated to pride. In the country that, as I believe Ayla put it, has progressivism as an export product. In the city where the first gay marriage in the world took place.

I googled the term and basically came up with, sexual attraction is not only physical but requires an emotional bond.

In which case I am a demi sexual, as I discussed on the Discord server, pictures alone don't do anything for me. I need to know somebody and appreciate their personality before I feel any form of sexual attraction.

[allisonsr]

Aug 10, 2023 14:56:00 GMT -5 dutchdev said:

Question: How would you explain Demisexual?

Like everything, it depends on the individual, but my very personal experience is that I'm usually asexual, somewhere between sex-indifferent and sex-repulsed. I enjoy intimacy and physical affection, but not penetration.

Except with 4 men, with each of whom I felt an intense emotional and romantic connection. I've experienced emotional and romantic connection separately, but I need both to be able to have sex.

The connection wasn't always one that built over time; in one case, it was within hours of meeting. But I don't understand it when other people describe bodies or faces as hot. I mean, I can calculate it based on symmetry and musculature and things like dimples I know people find appealing. I genuinely don't experience attraction or judgment of attractiveness or fantasy like I observe others doing. And I've never felt a physical hunger for intercourse as I've heard described by others.

I've been in love with women too, but never had any desire for that to pair with any sort of physical contact beyond a hug here or there.

But I've also had really great sex (intercourse) with men and find it fairly easy to orgasm. For me personally, the label helps me make sense of my experience of existing in my body and mind, but I wouldn't deign to tell anyone else what they experience.

It's helpful to hear everyone else's experiences. There's so much wonderful variation!

[Dani]

I also feel that we are over-labeling nowadays and making a bigger deal out of things than are necessary.

Like the other day, there was a news thing about some guy (celebrity) coming out as pansexual. It was on the front page, and all I could think of was, "Who actually cares"....and most comments were kind of similar. No one cared, really.

I always find our discussions about devness and how it manifests itself in each and every one of us interesting. I'm also for maybe finding common traits we have as devs or maybe not and learning about everyone's preferences. That's always interesting for sure because even though we are devotees, it's still such an individual experience for each person.

[not THAT violet]

Aug 10, 2023 22:47:18 GMT -5 Dani said:

I also feel that we are over-labeling nowadays and making a bigger deal out of things than are necessary.

Like the other day, there was a news thing about some guy (celebrity) coming out as pansexual. It was on the front page, and all I could think of was, "Who actually cares"....and most comments were kind of similar. No one cared, really.

Maybe not to you, but [speaking as a VERY white person with no direct connection except in some workshops, etc.] it might mean a lot to some Black men, in particular.

For anyone unfamiliar, the celebrity is Wayne Brady, who says he is attracted to men and women but doesn’t currently have a partner, and his ex-wife is married to a younger guy and they’ve had a baby whom Brady plans to help co-parent. It was a puff piece, but certainly more impactful than Rita Ora and Taika Waititi’s TOTALLY CANDID wedding pics (they were actually pretty cute and I love Taika but still).

Brady has an established, award-winning, multifaceted career - acting, hosting, whatever. The Black community has historically had a pretty fraught relationship with gender and sexuality issues due to the strong presence of traditional evangelical Christianity. Men and masculinity are especially big issues - think about “being on the down-low” (Black men, often presenting as happily settled in hetero relationships, having clandestine encounters and relationships with other men). That’s a big deal from a public health standpoint as well as a trust and honesty thing… which may also be entangled with the Southern Baptist, etc. view on forgiveness of sin, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

EITHER WAY… none of us in this thread (that I know of) are Black men, especially Black men in the public eye who may have something to lose. If you don’t see someone out there doing what you wish you could do, it seems a lot less possible.

So even though this “announcement” doesn’t mean anything to me, it may mean a lot to Black men and boys (and other people trying to explain to their grandmas who watch game shows that that nice man they like likes men and it shouldn’t be a big deal - as happened, for example, with Amy Schneider’s appearance on Jeopardy!).

[dutchdev]

Aug 13, 2023 19:02:35 GMT -5 not THAT violet said:

Aug 10, 2023 22:47:18 GMT -5 Dani said:

I also feel that we are over-labeling nowadays and making a bigger deal out of things than are necessary.

Like the other day, there was a news thing about some guy (celebrity) coming out as pansexual. It was on the front page, and all I could think of was, "Who actually cares"....and most comments were kind of similar. No one cared, really.

Maybe not to you, but [speaking as a VERY white person with no direct connection except in some workshops, etc.] it might mean a lot to some Black men, in particular.

For anyone unfamiliar, the celebrity is Wayne Brady, who says he is attracted to men and women but doesn’t currently have a partner, and his ex-wife is married to a younger guy and they’ve had a baby whom Brady plans to help co-parent. It was a puff piece, but certainly more impactful than Rita Ora and Taika Waititi’s TOTALLY CANDID wedding pics (they were actually pretty cute and I love Taika but still).

Brady has an established, award-winning, multifaceted career - acting, hosting, whatever. The Black community has historically had a pretty fraught relationship with gender and sexuality issues due to the strong presence of traditional evangelical Christianity. Men and masculinity are especially big issues - think about “being on the down-low” (Black men, often presenting as happily settled in hetero relationships, having clandestine encounters and relationships with other men). That’s a big deal from a public health standpoint as well as a trust and honesty thing… which may also be entangled with the Southern Baptist, etc. view on forgiveness of sin, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

EITHER WAY… none of us in this thread (that I know of) are Black men, especially Black men in the public eye who may have something to lose. If you don’t see someone out there doing what you wish you could do, it seems a lot less possible.

So even though this “announcement” doesn’t mean anything to me, it may mean a lot to Black men and boys (and other people trying to explain to their grandmas who watch game shows that that nice man they like likes men and it shouldn’t be a big deal - as happened, for example, with Amy Schneider’s appearance on Jeopardy!).

I agree with you, that representation matters. In all minorities (or underrepresented groups) I believe that seeing somebody like you out in the public eye makes it easier for people to be themself or even just strike up a conversation regarding the topic.

[hjfundus]

Jesus, YES! Please ignore all the uneducated allos who have decided to just debate labels here and feel free to PM me because I feel we are on the same page. I am also somewhere on the ace spectrum.

I have been thinking that since I was younger, PWD have been the thing that can get me off the most without any trouble. I have a PHYSICAL sexual response to this unlike anything else. (I have always wanted a doctor to study this, but when I see sometthing devvy, I get a physical pang in my chest and it jolts down to my genitals - physically). So this is something quite biologically wired into me I think. So if I would describe sexual attraction, that is the nearest I have been to experiencing it. And I will get really turned on and want to masturbate. I am still unsure what sexual attraction feels like, but I'm guessing it's similar to this? Because I don't get this with other situations really. I don't get sexually attracted to people without disabilities in the same way.

I have also tried to push away my dev thoughts when having sexual interactions in real life, and basing how "successful" sex was on how much I was able to not think of dev things. (upsidedown smiley face). I have always tried to keep my devness separate and not let it "interfere" with my (ha!) "normal"/main sexuality. (super heavy quotes on "normal"). I think because it' been such a source of shame, I've never wanted to combine the two.

But I am also kind of scared that this devvy sexual attraction is only fantasy and not something that I would experience in real life if I had sex with a PWD. 

To answer your question, I have no idea if it could be classed as a part of asexuality. I feel pretty ace, and don't experience much sexual attraction, apart from PWD. So yeah, it's hard to know whether this kink is a separate part of your sexuality or part of the whole...

[ayla]

hjfundus it's sad that you want to dismiss me as an "uneducated allo" when your experience sounds identical to my own. From your second paragraph on, that could have been written by me. We are just bringing a different set of lenses to a lot of the same facts and might have been able to gain valuable insights from one another.