asexuals who experience sexual attraction but don't like sex ๐ค asexuals who like sex but don't experience sexual attraction:
being allowed to confuse people with their identities, and in fact, should be encouraged to confuse people even more
i thought asexuality was purely about the lack of sexual attraction tho?
can someone clear me up on this? genuine question i wanna know for sure.
I've got a whole post about this, but basically, the "little to no sexual attraction" definition of asexuality was created on AVEN for Ace 101-level visibility, not to actually enforce who can call themselves asexual. People who don't meet the "little to no sexual attraction" definition โ or people who technically meet it, but who feel their asexuality revolves around a different criterion that's more personally meaningful to them than attraction โ have been calling themselves ace for as long as ace communities have been around. But unfortunately, the "visibility" definition worked a little too well, and the modern ace community has forgotten a lot of that crucial history!
You'll hear "asexuality is purely about attraction, not action" a lot in defense of how asexuals who have sex are still asexual โ and, to be clear, asexuals who have sex are still asexual, resoundingly so, and including them is important, I highlighted them in the original post for a reason โ but "attraction only, not action" is not the correct argument to make for their inclusion! The correct argument is "different asexual people will be asexual for different reasons, where some people consider their attraction/lack thereof the most important factor, regardless of whether they have sex, whereas other people consider their aversion to sex the most important factor, regardless of whether they experience sexual attraction โ and they are all equally asexual." The point is that we all get to decide for ourselves what the most important factor in defining our sexual orientation is. Attraction for some, actual sexual interest for others, probably a secret third thing for even more people too.
Personally, I identify as ace because I experience feelings that meet some subjective definitions of sexual attraction, but definitely don't meet the criteria of others, and rather than trying to decide which of those flawed definitions is most correct, I find the fact that I don't like having sex to be a lot more personally important to how I conceptualize my orientation. It frees me from having to agonize over what sexual attraction really is, when the concept is 95% irrelevant to me anyway. I don't know what being forced to define my sexual orientation based on attraction would do for me other than making me really annoyed about sexual attraction as a vague social construct, while impairing me from communicating any aspects of my relationship to sex that I actually find meaningful or relevant to my life. That's not quite the same as being an ace who experiences sexual attraction, since my whole view has been shaped by being in that gray area, but hopefully it gives you an idea of the problems with the attraction framework being mandatory instead of optional.
