Straight people think that either you know you’re gay from childhood or something big happens one day and you Realize (and it is like that to some of course) but lbr for many it goes like
You don’t sound broken at all. “Ace” is a sort of umbrella term to indicate lack of sexual attraction *to people,* not lack of sexual drive or desire. There is a spectrum of this lack, as well, going from absolutely no attraction to “I’m ace in most ways, but it’s complicated.” And that’s okay. It can be frustrating to try and explain, even to yourself, and that’s okay, too.
You are not broken. You may not have the exact word for it, but it’s not broken. I promise.
Look up autochorissexuality. It’s a facet of asexuality, characterized by a disconnect from the object of one’s sexual interest.
Basically, people and various works of fiction can be hot, and you may or may not experience arousal, but you don’t actually want to go and have sex with them. You may or may not eventually have and enjoy sex, and you may or may not masturbate. Brains are a bit odd, and sometimes things change, but it’s OK if they don’t.
I’m autochorissexual, and I find some people hot, but it’s almost always fictional characters. If/when I think about sexy things, it’s with two fictional people doing things, I don’t ever think about myself with other people. I don’t have any interest in sex for myself, physical or mental. I’ve run into some other people online who also do that. Your experiences may vary, though.
Someone who doesn’t experience romantic attraction is aromantic. It’s a thing too.
Whatever your experiences regarding sexuality, you aren’t broken. Sometimes it’s hard to find the right word to describe yourself, and sometimes there isn’t really any one right word. That’s OK. It’s also OK for those things to change, and it’s OK for them not to change. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.
Not necessarily. Gay men are sexually attracted to other men. You don’t need to be sexually attracted to someone to have and enjoy sex with them. Friction is friction, your junk doesn’t know the difference.
I’d guess that the above is a result of the horribly pervasive idea that all physical contact between adults is inherently sexual. Men who are basically touch-starved, looking for contact from other men, and thinking that it has to be sexual contact. There may not actually be any sexual attraction.
A lot of people don’t understand how difficult it can be to know you are asexual for sure, and to be confident that the label is true on you. You spend years asking yourself, “How can I know if I feel sexual attraction or not?”
Trying to prove you DON’T experience something is actually ridiculously hard especially when you are nowhere close to understanding what it is you’re trying to disprove.
It’s a lot like playing a game of Where’s Waldo, but you have no idea what Waldo looks like and you rely entirely on the partial description of him you get from other people.
Take this image, and find “Jeremy” in it:
At first you’re like, “Who tf is Jeremy? That’s a thing?”
And then from discrete descriptions you hear in the hallways, you find out Jeremy has a red shirt.
And so you point to everyone on that picture who has a red shirt like, “Hey hey, red, THIS could be him. Certainly one of these is him!”
But, alas, you’ve gotten it confused with someone similar, but not him at all. This happens when you mistake romantic attraction or aesthetic attraction for sexual attraction or, if you’re aro, platonic attraction for romantic attraction. You’ve misidentified him because he was wearing the same color shirt and looked somewhat like what others were talking about.
You go online and ask for more descriptions of Jeremy, and you may gleam a few details. People are like, “Oh no, Jeremy has stripes on his shirt, and a funky…I don’t know, over the shoulder scarf thingy. Look, it’s really hard to explain. Trust me, if you have seen Jeremy, you would KNOW him.” Which is like ??? confusing, although it is true.
If only you could prove Jeremy isn’t on your board you would know you’re ace//aro, but it’s hard to ever be 100% certain he isn’t there when you have no clue what he looks like.
Which is why it is important for aces//aros to just, forget about trying to be 100% certain and just identify anyways. That’s what helped me the most, knowing that I didn’t have to prove something, I could just assume, “Yeah, if I had felt sexual attraction, I would know. I don’t have to prove without a doubt I don’t in order to use the word.” It’s okay, you give yourself your own validation.
all right guys here it is THE BIG GAY ANIMAL SEX POST
or in other words, “Why Nonhuman Homosexual and Asexual Behavior has both Survival and Reproductive Benefits” aka that lit review i’d like to write if i could ever be arsed to get around to it
yes reproductive benefits you heard correctly we’re gonna get there but first we better do a basic rundown of what I mean by homosexual/asexual behaviors
IRREVERENT DISCUSSION OF ANIMAL SEX BEHIND CUT YOU’VE BEEN WARNED
Like just stop for a second with the “grey ace” and “demisexual” and “sapiosexual” labels and think about what it says about our pornofied, oversexualized society that “wanting to get to know people before having sex with them” and “wanting your sexual partner to have a good, compatible personality” and “not wanting to fuck everyone you meet” are now considered atypical sexual orientations instead of common fucking sense.
That’s not what everyone is saying, though.
People who are demisexual are not attracted to someone they don’t have an emotional relationship with. Physical attraction does not happen until they know the person emotionally. There is a massive difference between “I don’t know that person, so I’m not attracted to them” and “I don’t know that person, so I won’t have sex with them, but they’re hot anyway”. A lot of people choose not to have sex with attractive people that they don’t know, whereas demisexual people are not physically attracted to strangers.
It’s the same reason why being celibate does not mean you’re asexual- there is a difference between not acting on attraction and not being attracted in the first place.
Sapiosexual people are turned on by intelligence, not compatible personality. This technically might be closer to a fetish than a sexuality, but it’s definitely something that people experience, and it has nothing to do with personality.
Grey asexual people are a bit more complicated to sum up. The closest summary is probably “I am generally not attracted to people but it happens every now and then”, but it’s something of a catch-all term for people who are near asexual but occasionally experience physical attraction to others. It may also indicate people who are asexual but have a strong libido, or who aren’t quite comfortable calling themselves asexual for other reasons.
Also, there is nothing shameful about wanting to have sex with strangers. It would be shameful to expect that of others, but close relationships are not necessary for sex. Nor are sexual encounters with strangers necessarily unhealthy, as long as common sense is used in choosing partners.
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