SlightlyMetaphysical of Asexual curiosities has had enough of a certain near-universal gender stereotype. Even better, he beautifully illustrates how men are socially constructed as the obligate, reflexively sexual “sex class.” Check it out.

“Isn’t it annoying how men are really sex-obsessed?”
“Not all men are sex-obsessed. If you thought about it for a moment, you’d realise that a lot of the men you know aren’t.”
“Give me an example.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, you don’t count. You’re asexual.”

“I think everyone would secretly do anything for sex, they’re just hiding it.”
“Again, not true. I wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, but you don’t count. You’re asexual.”

So what’s with this idea that, because I’m asexual, I’m outside of the normal spectrum of sexuality? I’m statistically written off? I think partly, it’s an example of how people construct a ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy in their stereotypes, especially of gender. They think that, for example, men like sex, and so think of men who like sex as being most typically men, and then, when they think of the people who they know who are typically male, surprise surprise, they all like sex.

He said it here.

Got that? The notion of men as the sex class is so entrenched that men who don’t fit the profile aren’t even permitted in the data set! It’s like… well, we wanted to do a sexual-interest profile of men. But since including them always screw up our results we discard asexuals before we do our analysis.

I’ll go him one better! In the face of such stereotypes about men, men with low or no libido are going to be extremely unlikely to disclose their actual preferences… and actually rather likely to pretend otherwise. Either way they have very little incentive to buck the stereotype.