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#demi ace
scretladyspider · 6 months
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demisexuality can be so hard to explain because it’s misconstrued as you just wanting to trust the other person before you have sex with them. and I get why the misconception happens. But demisexuality differs in that there isn’t sexual attraction at all before that bond forms.
I think what people have difficulty with is the idea that there are people out there who aren’t experiencing sexual attraction at all until a certain point, if ever, because we’re taught that sex, libido, and sexual attraction are all the same, both in and out of queer spaces.
And when you’re learning about asexuality and demisexuality, you may learn that people have romantic and aesthetic attraction separately from sexual attraction, and that sexual and romantic attraction aren’t necessarily intertwined, and that may challenge your worldview on sex.
But “I trust you enough to have sex with you” isn’t the same as “I’m not sexually attracted to anyone but you, and the reason I’m sexually attracted to you now after we’ve established this close bond is literally because of the bond of trust we’ve been able to form”.
It’s easy to see how those can get conflated. On the surface, if you’re unfamiliar with asexuality, they may sound the same. But it’s important to acknowledge the difference between “no sex until I trust you” and “no sexual attraction unless I trust you and maybe not even then”.
Demisexuality is housed under the asexuality spectrum. It’s part of the gray area between being allosexual and asexual. It’s part of why the definition for asexuality includes “little to no sexual attraction”. It’s a mostly asexual experience with an asterisk.
While being demisexual may have impacts on a persons sexual activity, even demisexuals have a varied relationship to the act of participating in sex. Libido and sexual attraction are not always intertwined either, which can make telling the difference tricky.
I think of sexual attraction as libido that has a compass. Since I rarely ever experience sexual attraction, but do have libido, it’s noticeable for me when that libido actually has a direction to go, rather than being a floating, nebulous, independent thing.
Remember, not everyone is demisexual. There’s a difference between waiting to have sex and not having sexual attraction at all until a certain point. This also inherently ties demisexuality to romantic attraction and relationships, and not all demisexuals are alloromantic.
But if you read what demisexuality is and think “everyone is like that” or “that’s just being a woman”, you either 1) are demisexual 2) don’t understand what it is or 3) both. And it’s okay to not know. Just as long as you’re willing to try to learn.
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foxprints · 5 months
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Happy Ace Visibility Week!
💜🩶🤍🖤💚
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gray-ace-space · 5 months
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no judgements here these are all completely morally neutral ways of experiencing it!
@newpath3432 because you suggested the poll
@aegosexual-moments @cat-flavored @apples9 @arlyiahshay @limetimo because you might also be interested
rb for sample size
(especially curious to hear the allos' perspectives)
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astridmargrethe · 5 months
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I’m so sick and tired of all the pornbots/pornsites cluttering up my feed/messaging me these days. I feel like all I’m doing on here now is blocking bots 🤬🤦🏼‍♀️ I’m ACE! Leave me alone! I’m not interested 🤬
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Almost three years ago now I wrote a post about ship tagging and needing to update our tagging conventions to include a third symbol. And I really really think this is a change that should be made. That needs to be made.
We use / to indicate romantic and/or sexual relationships.
We use & to indicate platonic and familial relationships.
But we don't have any shorthand to tag a ship as queerplatonic or any other relationship type that doesn't fit neatly into the original / and & categories.
Anyone that's been following me since 2020 has likely seen me use ship tags that include a +. That + is there to indicate that I ship these characters in a way that is different than what's traditionally expected when a tag uses / or &. The ship is neither of those, it is both of those, it is something else entirely.
Having a third tag type would make it so much easier and more inclusive for those writing non traditional relationships. No more having to tag with both A/B and A&B (which can lead to confusion and accusations of misleading tagging etc). No more feeling confusion and guilt and trepidation when trying to tag something, knowing someone looking for / wouldn't necessarily consider it as /, while also knowing someone looking for & would potentially be appalled. No more having to include extra qualifiers and explanations in the tags and author's notes to avoid misunderstandings. We need something that breaks the relationship categorical binary of romantic/sexual vs not romantic/sexual.
Idk I just feel like there are so many types of relationships that just can't be defined as one category or the other. The addition of ship tags using + could do a lot to remedy that.
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aro-comics · 9 months
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May's Comic (Part 1)
Full comic available here on Issuu!
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Important Content Warning for this Section - there are mentions of suicide in the first few pages.
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Didn't realize there's a limit of 30 images per post, haha. I will be uploading the rest of this series in parts then over the course of the next few hours (by the time you read this, anyway)
Full transcript can be found here for ease of reference.
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shir0ch4ns-art · 9 months
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A random thought I had at work today was the fact that I never realized my sexuality growing up because of religion.... but not in the way you think.
Growing up it wasn't a very religious household but religion was still there (kinda christian/catholic vibes but leaning more christian) but one thing was very apparent-sex before marriage is bad™️. So my little young self was like, ok boss, and just never felt the need or urge for sex...for like...the entirety of my educational life. Like ever. Even after being like well sex isn't as big of a sin as they say but yeah no I don't want/need it. The whole time I thought my celibacy was a choice because I didn't know asexuals existed. I didn't even know the word until my husband pointed it out while we were still dating in college. He fucking gave me the word and identity when I thought something was wrong with me because I wasn't acting normal according to my parents. My religious parents who told me sex was bad as a kid and didn't expect the child to follow through on this into adulthood. Who thought I'd probably have multiple secret boyfriends or have had sex with at least the only one I've managed to get by some goddang miracle by this point. And when I said no and that I never dated anyone they discreetly and sometimes blatantly called me weird or odd and I'm just like????am I not being a good christian girl, the fuck????do you WANT me to have premarital sex????
So anyway ace people also get harrased by religious parents just in a different and vastly confusing way ✌️
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belinhagamer999 · 2 years
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1: Arointruthought
[PT: 1: Arointruthought /END PT]
When you’re aro but you have intrusive thoughts of romance, being in romance, and romantic things, these thoughts can influence your identity, can be related to or you just have it. This label is for neurodivergent people and neurotypical too!
2: Aceintruthought
[PT: 2: Aceintruthought /END PT]
When you’re ace but you have intrusive thoughts of sex, being in sexual relationship, and sexual things, these thoughts can influence your identity, can be related or you just have it. This label is for neurodivergent people and neurotypical too!
[IMADE ID: left image, identified as arointruthought: a flag with six even, horizontal stripes. colors from top to bottom are bright green, grass green, pale green, pale gray, gray, and charcoal gray. /END ID]
[IMAGE ID: right image, identified as aceintruthought: a flag with six even, horizontal stripes. colors from top to bottom are dark purple, bright purple, pale purple, lavender-gray, gray, and charcoal gray. /END ID]
Reminder: [PT: Reminder: /END PT] intrusive thoughts are not the same as fantasies of sex or romance, they’re unwanted thoughts!
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paw-pride · 3 months
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gray sexual and demiromantic, pretty please? :3
Greysexual, and demisexual paws!
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Demi- flags with the triangle will be vertical because it looks wonky horizontal
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microwaveable-icons · 6 months
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some demi-aroace daves for one of our dave fictives (me) B)
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pupstarz · 5 months
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♠️🦴♠️
🦴🦷🦴
♠️🦴♠️
‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚🎧⊹ ♡✩°。⋆⸜ 🎧✮💿 :✿༉‧₊˚🖤❀༉‧₊˚. 🫐‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪🪻 ִֶָ☾. D3miz3xua1 ztimb0ard!1 // demisexual stimboard!1
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scretladyspider · 1 year
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Let’s talk about what demisexuality is not.
First off: what is demisexuality? We have to establish what it is to talk about what it isn’t.
‘demisexuality’ describes not experiencing sexual attraction until a close bond is formed. This doesn’t mean demis are attracted to everyone we bond with, and we can have differing desires towards sex. Demisexuals may or may not be demiromantic — they’re not one and the same.
While demisexuals can also be demiromantic, this isn’t true as a rule. Just like being asexual doesn’t necessarily mean you’re aromantic. It’s possible to be both, nothing wrong with that — but they’re not inherently synonymous.
*For some people who are aroace, include demi aroaces, their sexual and romantic orientations are deeply intertwined and there isn’t a big difference between the two. Other people use the split attraction model, which recognizes a difference in sexual and romantic orientations.
Many people think that “everyone is demisexual” because they read the definition and say “oh, that’s just being normal”. They’re confusing not experiencing sexual at ALL with waiting until a relationship is serious to have sex.
Demisexuality is a sexual orientation. The thing people confuse it with is a decision regarding sexual behavior that can be made regardless of orientation— the decision to wait to have sex until you’re emotionally close. That decision can be made by anyone, demisexual or not.
Often people read the definition and say “I’m demisexual, I wait to have sex until it’s not just sex. I want emotional fulfillment too.” When it’s explained that demisexuals rarely have sexual attraction and only under certain conditions does it occur, one of two things happens:
they misunderstand and assume that demisexuals are also experiencing sexual attraction without the bond and just not acting on it, or
they begin to understand that there’s a difference between sexual attraction and action.
More often than not it’s the former.
It’s interesting that this misunderstanding happens when demisexuality is described because allosexuals (people who aren’t ace) abstain from sex all the time but still feel sexual attraction. There’s this underlying assumption that everyone experiences sexual attraction.
But… just imagine that feeling of not being attracted and expand it. It’s doubtful that you experience sexual attraction to every person you see is physically attractive. Just expand that and there you go. Or imagine it like not seeing a particular color until you suddenly can.
Demisexuals aren’t all cisgender and heteroromantic. But there’s nothing wrong with demis who are! If ace isn’t enough for you to respect someone is LGBTQIA+, you don’t understand or accept asexuality or the orientations under its spectrum.
Demisexuality is NOT “just being a woman”. Demisexuality also isn’t “the patriarchy convinced young girls not having casual sex was a sexuality”.
There’s so much wrong with both of these, and they tie together, so I put them together here. Not only does this thinking see cis women and feminine people as being inherently “more” asexual, it robs allos and aces alike of bodily autonomy towards sex and sexuality. It bleeds out from conservative Christianity — it’s the same ideas that lead us to abstinence only sex “education” and that women must be sexually available at all times or their husband will cheat to “get his needs met”. Saying that cis women & feminine people are just all demisexual or ace removes the bodily autonomy of those who want sex and those who don’t by assigning a culturally acceptable narrative as more important than lived experience. But sexuality isn’t limited by cisheterosexism.
The truth is there are still a lot of people learning they’re under the asexual umbrella as educators and advocacy groups get education out there, and even in queer spaces asexuality isn’t always accepted, let alone its spectrum. A lot of people don’t even know it’s an option!
In addition, and partially because of, tropes like this, asexuality and everything under it are considered more “feminine”. Sex is seen as a symbol of status and depending on your gender and presentation, that status gets lowered or raised depending on the number of partners had.
Cis men and masculine aces exist, and also have to contend with cultural pressures to “perform” sexually, whether they want to or not. Erasing these experiences doesn’t help further acceptance towards asexuality or just sexuality in general.
And! Cis women and feminine people can have and enjoy casual sex! Others don’t but still experience sexual attraction regularly. Being allosexual isn’t limited to the masculine. Libido can also exist without sexual attraction. Human sexuality is just not as narrow as you think.
That’s where I’ll leave this one. Remember, it’s okay to be demisexual. It’s not okay to dunk on a group of people you didn’t bother to try to understand. Keep an open mind. There’s room at the table for learning, not bigotry.
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cristallun · 5 months
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3 ace pride dragon adopts!
I created them for last years' asexual awareness week
You can found more information about my adopts rules and what I accept as offers here
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gray-ace-space · 5 months
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poll results
some days ago, i made a post. that post sparked discussion, and a poll was suggested. so i made one. it lasted a week with over 1000 people participating, and here are the results!
the poll question was:
when a person you're sexually attracted to tells you they're not interested in sex, do your sexual thoughts / feelings about them stop?
final results:
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i am now going to attempt to summarize these results. i will preface this by saying i have no formal training or education in statistics, so it's possible i fucked up somewhere, but i tried my best.
out of 1155 people surveyed:
23% chose one of the 4 allosexual options (approx. 266 people)
24.9% chose one of the 4 acespec options (approx. 288 people)
the majority - 44.1% - said they didn't feel sexual attraction at all (approx. 509 people)
7.9% weren't sure if they were acespec (approx. 91 people)
the latter two are quite useless information for the purposes of this survey: i only put them in because i know people like to press buttons and feel included. i will disregard them for the rest of this post.
since there was a bit more people in the acespec group than in the allo group overall, i will take each of the two groups as its own 100% so i can compare them proportionally instead of directly.
after fucking with the numbers a bit here's what i got:
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no: 33.5% of allos, 17.7% of acespecs
i won't actively think about it, but feelings will persist: 35.2% of allos, 27.3% of acespecs
sometimes yes, sometimes no / it depends: 24.3% of allos, 35.3% of acespecs
yes: 6.9% of allos, 19.7% of acespecs
for a while, "no" was leading for the allos, but at the end "won't actively think about it" won out. those are their two top options, almost equal in popularity.
"yes" for allos was the least popular of all the options by far, so i think it's safe to assume the thing i shared in the post that started this was not, in fact, very allosexual of me.
the acespec half surprised me a little: while "no" was the least popular acespec response, "yes" was only barely above it, and the two biggest groups are the "on the fence" ones. for me this really emphasizes how diverse and complex acespec experiences are.
in general, the poll confirmed my hypothesis, which was that for allos sexual attraction doesn't "switch off" as often or as easily as it does for acespecs.
thank you again to everyone who participated and reblogged!
oh, and if you're one of the acespecs who voted for "depends," feel free to add to this post saying what you think it depends on! with it being the most popular response, i'm very curious.
also, i can not emphasize this enough, if i fucked up somewhere in my labeling or calculations, pls tell me
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smolbeanie1221 · 2 months
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Being aroace spec can be so confusing
My first relationship was with a girl, and I kinda just went along with what she wanted to do bc I figured, well she’s enjoying it so I must be enjoying this too… I didn’t mind anything we did, I just didn’t care or think about it.
Second relationship was with a guy, and at this point my mom had made me feel incredibly guilty for having been with a girl before, joys of being afab in a religious family and the first person you date is a girl. And he was… definitely pushy. Again tho, I just went along with it bc I figured, well he wants to do this and I just have to be bi so there’s a chance I’ll be a normal girl and end up with a guy someday so I have to be enjoying this too… Yeah I definitely was feeling a lot of pressure there.
At this point, I had not felt actual sexual attraction towards anyone, and I don’t think I was ever romantically in love with either of those people.
Third relationship was with a guy who was also one of my best friends. We were kinda dating for a summer and it was a better relationship than the previous, but in the end we went back to just being friends and it was better that way.
At this point, I’m very confused, but I discover this wonderful thing called ASEXUALITY. And everything suddenly made sense. Except for one small thing.
Fourth relationship that never actually became a relationship. I was in some type of love with a different best friend, I would say demi/sapio-romantic (romantically attracted because of both an emotional and mind connection basically). But he was definitely aromantic, but allosexual. I was romantically attracted to him, but asexual… right??? For years I was confused because I wanted an actual official relationship and I would’ve been more than okay with sleeping with him. But… that can’t be sexual attraction?? I’m ace?? Right?? Ahhhhhh. Yeah so I was very confused around him. Turns out, I’m actually demi-ace, but I didn’t realize that until years later after I lost contact with him, and I’ve been too scared to reach out to him lol. Anyways I have a gf now anyways. And that’s been the only time that the demi part of my ace-ness has come out, pun intended lol.
Actual fourth relationship. Definitely romantic and completely non-sexual. Really good relationship for over a year, and that partner helped me become more comfortable with my gender identity and we both were ace and it was really good for a while. It just wasn’t a relationship that was built to grow, so eventually we drifted apart.
Fifth relationship. A non-romantic and non-sexual relationship. Lasted less than a year, but made me realize that I was also aro spec bc being in a relationship that did not have romantic or sexual expectations felt so comfortable and right.
Sixth relationship. The one that broke my heart. My other best friend in that time frame, we were incredibly close and bonded over everything, from our mental health struggles to books to sheetz runs to everything. Eventually we officially were boyfriends in a qpr. They were my number one person for so long, my life partner. There was never anything romantic or sexual, but we loved each other deeply. Until life happened and they changed and I had to break up with them and got my heart broken.
All of these took place from late middle school to early college by the way. I went from, oh I’m a girl and I like girls! To, shit I can’t like girls so I have to like boys too bc I have to be bisexual at least. To, ohhhh so I can actually not want to sleep with people and that’s normal too?? So I’m nonbinary and asexual? That makes sense. To, why why if I’m ace would I be more than okay sleeping with him??? To, huh i think I’m aro spec too. To, okay I’m definitely aro spec, probably demi-aro technically and… probably demi-ace too? Yeah that’s probably right.
At the same time, I didn’t feel as tho romantic was necessarily the right word for me. I mean I’ve experienced romantic attraction I think, but it usually felt kinda forced by either my partner’s expectations or by society’s expectations. I think that’s why my non-romantic non-sexual relationships felt so comfortable to me, bc there wasn’t any of that expectation. I have no freaking idea what romantic attraction really feels like to me. I’ve experienced it I think (??), but for several reasons including outside expectations and general-emotional-processing-issues at those times, I have a hard time knowing any emotions I was feeling at that time in my life. The “butterflies” and “spacey eyed” and “gooey lovey” feelings I felt could’ve been romantic, sure. But they could’ve also been someone who was heavily emotionally repressed all their life just being happy to have someone that they loved who loved them back and getting excited over how cute they were and enjoying their rambles and just generally being happy with someone and also liking some physical contact like hugs and cuddles bc physical touch is their love language with everyone and they like hugs with everyone they care about, and it wasn’t necessarily romantic…..
I get a similar feeling to “butterflies” when I’m nervous about something or excited to see someone in my family I haven’t seen for a while bc I love them and am excited and happy. Not necessarily a “romantic indicator”. I get “spacey eyed” all the time, and usually it’s bc I’m obsessing over my latest fanfic idea. Again, not a “romantic indicator”. I get “gooey lovey” feelings when I see an adorable animal, when someone in my family or close friend group does something really sweet for me or I’m really happy to see them or I get a hug from anyone I love. Once again, not a “romantic indicator”.
Because of all this, I have settled on alterous as my general term for the type of attraction I have with people I have or wanted to date. Alterous to me means this: “I want to be with you and talk with you and do everything with you, I just don’t care how it looks for us or how we categorize ourselves.” I would also attach romance-inclined or sex-inclined as a prefix type thing when applicable. Fourth relationship that never actually happened? Sex and romance-inclined alterous. Fourth actual relationship? Romance-inclined alterous. This doesn’t actually mean that I will feel romantic or sexual attraction or interest or desire with someone, but I may be inclined to want aspects of that type of relationship and I might have those actual feelings from time to time.
The partner that I have now, seventh relationship for those counting lol. This relationship feels stronger and better than any that I’ve had in the past. There’s no pressure or expectation about sex, and she knows that I’m on the aro spectrum, so there’s no romantic pressure either. At the same time, I love the romantic type aspects we have, but I can’t with any certainty say that my feelings are romantic, or at least not romantic all the time. But I feel about her differently than I have about anyone else. There’s several possible reasons, but one main thing I think is that I’m now in a healthier place emotionally so I can better feel and process all my emotions, including my feelings towards her.
Anyways, at this point I would say I’m aroace spec. Demi-altrose (alterous, romantic, sexual).
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Do people know there's a difference between:
an aro spec character being "cured" of their aromanticism by their "one true love" by the end of the narrative
And:
An aro spec character who finds one of the few people they happen to click with in an amorous (but not necessarily romantic) way by the end of the narrative
Does anyone understand that aromanticism is a SPECTRUM and that someone writing an aro character finding someone they want to be in a relationship with might be doing so for reasons other than 'curing' them?
And the same thing for ace spec characters! And, you know, actual people.
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