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undergroundpanther Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-24-08 01:04 PM
Original message
Asexuality is an orientation..

LONDON, England (CNN) -- About one percent of adults have absolutely no interest in sex, according to a new study, and that distinction is becoming one of pride among many asexuals.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/10/14/asexual.study/index.html
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YOY Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-24-08 01:11 PM
Response to Original message
1. Well I doubt that's genetic...
out of sheer logic's sake...

Then again people often do what they don't want to out of social pressure at times.
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lisa58 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-24-08 01:17 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. lol...
...my brother might be, but I think he just doesn't like women or children (of his own).
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RaleighNCDUer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-24-08 01:28 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. Well, it could be genetic in that it is received from the previous
generation, but will not be passed on to the next generation.

There could be a regressive genetic marker that is received but will not be passed on by that recipient, though the parents siblings may still pass it on.

Theoretically.
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One_Life_To_Give Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-24-08 01:34 PM
Response to Reply #1
4. Sarcasm?
That is the Homophobes argument why "Gay" can't be genetic. :shrug:
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YOY Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-24-08 01:39 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. Damn! You're right.
Edited on Thu Apr-24-08 01:41 PM by YOY
I was just trying to make a bad joke. Didn't mean it that way...

Then again...social pressure to get married to the opposite sex and have kids... It does happen to gay guys and gals, does it not? Perhaps far moreso than being asexual due to a society's possible lack of condonement of such relationships.

Just a non-hateful thought.
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undergroundpanther Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-24-08 01:56 PM
Response to Original message
6. I'm Asexual,
Edited on Thu Apr-24-08 02:03 PM by undergroundpanther
I am just not turned on by anyone sexually or anything.I do not understand what sexual fantasies are, I get bored by sex it's the same thing it just does not hold my interest.
It is my sexual orientation..My gender and identity those are two other things..but still part of what makes me, me.
You can read more about how I feel being an asexual in a post I put up a while ago called I must be weird..
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=221x40621

Here, Asexual love is expressed so well. I can't link to this poem because it isn't online.And apparently the beat poets who knew this person Kay, say she has disappeared.. So I typed it here giving credit where is is due because this poem is important it speaks to deeper understanding.. I found it in an old zine at an antique shop that was crumbling,I typed it to save it....This poem best expresses what MY form of asexuality is. Don't let the title fool ya.


Proximity: Universal spiritual and physical expression of love possible without sin, fornication, or adultery
by Kay Johnson

So I have a game that I pretend, when I'm not allowed to pretend love, when no one else will pretend love with me. It's true I fall in love much more often than any one person is supposed to do. It's true that if I can be alone with any one person for an hour or two I can achieve falling in love with him or her. But this is desperate, and they won't believe it and they won't play it, my game of universal love, So I just go along, painting it.

For if they come again, I am all trembling. For when I see them again my eyes cry "Lover!" And they are all ashamed and embarrassed in front of me, for husbands have wives and wives have husbands already and they do not understand this thing I must do to them having already done it to myself, for them. They see me and they run from me. They run because in that moment their eyes acclaim me. In that moment my eyes gave myself to them, entered them, and in that moment their eyes were opened. and their eyes cried being open. And I painted this. Yes, and when I painted the husband the wife bought the painting, saying it was for her alone. And when I painted the wife, the husband came wearing such cold anger I could not paint him at all. And those who are single, they were terrified.

For each wants to think that I speak only to him personally, and each wants to think that I want to possess him personally and he only, and that the invitation in my eyes is for him personally, and not for everyone as much as it is for him. Each thinks that there is just ONE consummation of this love, that this love must bear it's union in a physical, sexual consummation, and that if this cannot take place, the love was a lie, and it was not true. And they resent me for it and they run from me because of it.

But what in the hell do people think Friendship IS, if it is not Love, if it is not the whole love, the complete love, the completely being in love, complete as with a lover.

Yes, as proof of this thing, as proof of the reality of it, I could physically and mentally and emotionally sleep with every one of them. As Saint Francis kissed the leper, I could kiss each one of them, unite sexually with each one of them.

But how can I stop with one? I cannot stop with one. I cannot even have one at a time. I want all of them.

Everyone manages to stop with one. They get one lover and they stop with one. You have no idea the amount of willpower this takes for them. They call it "infidelity," this overt universal love when it's expressed physically.

But bodies are only houses the souls live in. If the soul is given, the body is open as easily. The soul is the key to it all and where the soul is given the body is open as easily.

And here's the trouble of it all. They find if they let the soul flow out, the body is opened as easily and everyone has no fidelity any longer, and everyone truly deep down in their soul, wants to love every one of them as Saint Francis kissed the leper. I could love everyone, and if we were all released from the barriers of our imaginations, the whole world would turn into an ecstatic holocaust. We would be throwing ourselves upon bodies of each other constantly, indiscriminately. Because that is the nature of us.

Only a few wild ones dare give in to it. The rest play at it, play at it, I say, only. These are called flirtations. We play at it, we joke, we kid each other about it.

Thus must the souls be damned up, lest they flow, for if they flow then the bodies flow too, and have no power to stop themselves. Thus would our souls and bodies go fornicating everywhere. Thus are people afraid of the love of the soul, thus must they damn their souls up separately within them, thus must they lock the soul in, thus must they deny it.

For where the soul is completely given, where it is open, the body stands open as well. and to realize the potentiality for the essential whoredom of each of us, this is the monster that might threaten to undo us, this is the guilt that must be kept hidden. So heroically we inhibit, we pretend it is not so. And to achieve love on top of this denial of love - this takes a saint.

But take our clothes off, and we are all saints in our most simple passionate love for each other. Remove our inhibitions, and the love of man for man and the love of man for woman and the love of woman for woman and the love of woman for man is all the most basic reality our souls and bodies have been created for. This touching of each other on our skins, the physical warmth of another body, this is what we were created for. Even the warmth of an animal, even a dog's lapping in our mouths with his solicitous tongue, there is pleasure that he loves us and touches us we could take pleasure in it, we could kiss the animal back on his tongue without tongue. Our tongues are willing, our hearts are willing, but something tells us this is wrong, this touching of wet tongues between two animals, this love. And so we have convinced ourselves it is repulsive, that we do not want to be got wet by his tongue, that it is an imposition of him to want to lap us up and we will not surrender to any kind of love. And how we do succeed at this! Lordy.

We succeed so that we draw away instinctively from a dog's wet tongue. We succeed to such an extent that we do not want his muddy paws on our clean clothes. We succeed to such an extent we really have convinced ourselves that our dresses, our white slacks, should not be over run by dog hairs, by fleas by animal smells, nor our skin even by his touch.

We convince ourselves we don't like cats at all.

They, more than dogs, are too openly sensuous. Do you know what they overtly do when they come and sit on your stomach at night? Do you know the rhythm they have, how with their paws they innocently knead your stomach and dare purr at the same time, and rub themselves, their whole selves, against you, indecently as love and sensuality itself...

Yes, we should give in to one, we should dare give into one and just love one little animal. We should be undone for every dog and cat approaching us. We should be utterly undone for every human being approaching us.

For the soul has been sublimated into sex. Who did it, if Freud did not do it? Every yearning of the soul of man for man or the soul of woman for man, or the soul of man for woman or of woman for woman has been sublimated into sexual significance, and this is all today that we are conscious of when we say love, when we say sensuality.

The dog, the cat, when they rub us with their flesh, yes with their flesh, when the cat kneads and purrs, when the dog wants to kiss us in the mouths. Oh the sensual and beautiful soul of the animal. It's not the full sexual union of its sexual organs with yours it's asking for, but simply closeness of its little sensual soul which IS its body. The touching of skin. The lying down close to each other, curled up against each other. The transmitting of warmth from skin to skin the transmitting of kisses and moisture. The lying close to each other for a long time, exchanging of something electrical, a charge that leaps from skin to skin. This touching of skins as friends lie down together, as friends want to be holding each other's hands, wanting to be putting an arm across a shoulder, wanting to be somehow unaccountably sitting close, next to each other.

This is in itself, fulfillment.

This is something which is not known, today.

This is something Freud had no idea of, that where there is love, there is no lust connected to the sexual organ. The lust is for looking, the lust is for proximity. The lust is for touching of the hand, the skin, the lust is for the interchange of some cosmic electrical energy. And it is done, it is accomplished simply by proximity, by the sharing and exchanging of warmth, by the touching of skin to skin. It is done by body warmth, as a child when it wants to be loved wants the body warmth of it's mother, the skin contact.

The sexual organs have a different kind of love all by themselves. But the love simply of the skin for another skin, of one bodily warmth for another warmth, of the contact of one being for the contact of another being - this is spiritual sensuality. It does not seek to consummate itself by the use of sexual organs, it is satisfied innocently and fully and completely, simply by the sharing of warmth, by skin contact, by the kiss, by moisture.

And the soul is fully and innocently contented to this contact. It is contented, where there is love of the soul. But where there is not the love of the soul, then the sexual organs rise and open their own private lust having nothing to do with the soul. Having private laws of their own.

And even where there is love of the soul, all innocent and natural, society in it's very fear of sexuality proclaims that sex is what's wanted after all. So we aim for it, as if it were a target, and we will not be contented until we thrust our arrows into that red place, the target's sexual center.

But it is not sexual union the soul is after. It's some chemical interchange from skin to skin, from being to being, from proximity to proximity, from sitting next to each other, from sleeping in the same bed. From the clasping of hands, from the touching of skins.


Taken from Journal for the Protection of All Beings, issue no. 1, 1961.© 1961, by City Lights Books.
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BillSam Donating Member (440 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-24-08 05:08 PM
Response to Original message
7. Asexuality, a complete disiniterest in sex
is often a sign of extreme depression, and anyone who feels that way might benefit from counseling.

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undergroundpanther Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-24-08 11:01 PM
Response to Reply #7
9. to assume this is always the case
is kinda arrogant bill sam, not everyone who is asexual is suffering from depression or some other psych issue.Why is it so threatening someone can be sane and asexual?
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Toasterlad Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-24-08 07:13 PM
Response to Original message
8. Also an Orientation: Bobble-Head Doll Enthusiasts
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BillSam Donating Member (440 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-25-08 07:10 PM
Response to Reply #8
11. LOL
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La Lioness Priyanka Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-25-08 10:47 AM
Response to Original message
10. we need balance in the world. there has to be atleast one asexual to compensate
for my sexuality.

:hi:
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phrigndumass Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-26-08 02:38 PM
Response to Original message
12. Asexuals also run the gambit on the Kinsey scale
Disinterest in sex can be part of a psychological personality trait (some use the term "disorder"), and some asexuals are happy in long-term relationships. A study was done (I think there was an article on it in the Advocate quite a long time ago) asking asexuals questions about their sexual orientation, regardless of their nonsexual status, and a majority, over 50%, considered themselves to be either bisexual or gay.

These are our brothers and sisters, too.

:hi:
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TeeYiYi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-26-08 05:43 PM
Response to Original message
13. I wonder what percentage . . .
. . . of people from this study are on medications that dull or destroy sexual desire and the ability to have sexual arousal and release.

I'm not saying that you are not asexual, undergroundpanther. You very well may be. I'm just saying that unless you're over a certain age or on drugs that are altering desire and release, asexuality in my experience is pretty rare.

I speak from first hand experience. I went 13 or 14 years without a significant other or dating whatsoever. I lost all desire after I went on powerful pain meds following a car accident. The longer I went without, the easier it became. When I got off the drugs, my libido came back. I actually forced myself to get involved with someone again, after all that time, and THEN went off the meds so that the sex would be more fulfilling for both of us. Our relationship only lasted 6 months, but it was enough to jump start my desire to start dating again and inspire me to find other methods of pain relief.

I wonder how they qualified this study. I was absolutely asexual for a long period of time, and not by choice. But the reason was definitely environmental and not biological; ie. from birth.

Have you always been asexual, undergroundpanther?

TYY
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davidinalameda Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Apr-26-08 06:09 PM
Response to Original message
14. I thought people dressed up like animals turned you on?
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