Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

I love you Fig.
I remember watching a piece on sexuality and when they came to the asexual part all the speakers were going on about how it wasn’t in human nature to be asexual and it was a life style choice and symptom that something was wrong with the person and one of those speakers was gay, saying the exact same thing about asexuals that homophobes say about him. I just wanted to throw things at the tv for the sheer hypocrisy of it all.

[Wow, thanks Adela. Don’t get me wrong — sometimes asexuality, like homosexuality or (surprise! closet anyone?) heterosexuality is a symptom of something that’s gone wrong. But “sometimes” isn’t the same thing as “never.” Oh, and finally? How many people are non-asexual out of a sense of obligation, or not even realizing they have a choice, when they’d probably be happier not going there at all? And that really is the situation a lot of gay people have found themselves in so yeah, a little reflection on everybody’s part would be called for. Oh. Oh! And by the way, Freud’s polymorphous perversity notwithstanding, we’re all born asexual in the sense that exploration notwithstanding we all discover our eventual long-term attractions. Thanks again. —fl]

It occurs to me that the issue is that people tend to assume something must have happened to “switch off” someone’s sexuality, and it’s acknowledged that a change in the libido levels (in either direction) can be a symptom of illness (either physical or mental). But it’s possible to suggest that a sudden “switching on” of sexuality could equally be interpreted in the same way, and is only accepted in most people because we understand the hormonal processes of puberty as being behind it when it happens in our teens (it occurs to me that there’s a lot more analysis could be done on that thought).

As long as it’s accepted that there is not a single baseline by which all human experience can be measured, then issues of what is “normal” refer only to statistical frequency, and not to “human nature”. But assuming that one’s own baseline holds true for all humans (and if you assume a different baseline, then you’ll quickly end up diagnosing yourself as ill!) means that you’ll end up tying yourself in knots trying to get your intuitive diagnosis to match the diagnosis suggested by the baseline.

[Nicely put, SDE. Thanks. —fl]

We may all be born “asexual” but I think that people often don’t recognize that very young children can be sexual beings, which makes them easy prey for pedophiles. It is also one of the reasons that children who have been the victims of pedophiles don’t tell, they think that it was their fault because they liked the attention or they participated in some way so that they feel ashamed and they don’t tell.

Before I started reading this, I thought that all children were sexual beings. For example, when my son was a toddler, while changing his diaper I would wipe his penis, and occasionally his penis would stiffen and he would laugh and say “Again!” or “That tickles in a good way.” Of course I did not do it again, and I would just laugh with him and put his diaper on. Another example is my daughter who at the age of 5 was in love with a boy in her kindergarten class. Her feelings were very real and although I wanted to help her have a realistic idea of what would happen (they would probably not get married) I also tried very hard to respect her and recognize her feelings as real. So very young children can be (and I think often are) sexual beings. Presumably a person who is asexual because (s)he was born that way would not have such feelings ever.

I wonder if people who are asexual are that way because they naturally have low hormone levels? It is probably more complicated than that, but that would make sense as a partial explanation.

[Dang it all, I should have been more clear about that. One of the misconceptions about asexuals is that they have no erotic or sensual side. And yes, some really might be icebergs, but many are perfectly erotic and, sometimes, even orgasmic on their own but not aroused by either gender the way gay or straight people are not aroused by the gender they’re, um, not aroused by. :-) So anyway I really didn’t mean to imply younger people don’t have sensual or even sexual awareness. It’s that they don’t become organized into what we typically think of as structured, oriented sexuality until maybe puberty. Which is one of the reasons, by the way, why I think it’s a bad idea for adults, especially, to interrupt children’s or even adolescent’s sexual development since, if they don’t have a chance to organize it for themselves they may wind up saddled with what the adult desires for him or herself. Which, while even pleasurable for children (see awareness, sexual/sensual), may not suit them very well as adults. Hope that’s more clear than the admittedly short-hand way I said it earlier. Thanks, Sugar Mag. —fl]