Defining Asexuality in contrast to Allosexuality (plant mommy edition)
one of the really revealing things about the asexuality discourse is when people say stuff like that akash stroking elvira's breast in the original HDG counts as "sex". to many allosexual people, the definition of sex is as simple and non-specific as "anything that makes me want to fuck". it has nothing to do with the actual, dictionary definition of sex as a penetrative/procreative act; sex is literally whatever makes them horny to them. like you can see this everywhere; it's apparent in how joking about a piece of architecture being phallus-shaped is called 'making a sex joke'; the entire point of allosexuality is that it's an inherently all-encompassing domain, everything that can possibly be sexual is made sexual
this is why when you have people who actually adhere to an in-any-way-strict definition of sex, the allos start getting incredibly confused and you get comments like "what do you mean stroking someone's breast isn't an inherently sexual act???", or confusion around the fact that florets can take a bath filled with class-A xenodrugs and get all moany about it and that can have nothing to do with sex
part of the reason for the latter in particular, i believe, is that the majority of people exclusively associate the concept of pleasure with the feelings that come from sex (erotic / orgasmic pleasure), and don't actually consider that there are other forms of pleasure possible. it's like: one of the running gags in anime is that characters will moan when they eat really good food, right? and then all the people in the comments sections will go and make sex jokes about it
i think to some extent, part of the reason why allo people get so defensive when asexuality is brought up is that they can not conceptualise the idea of being able to experience intimacy or pleasure without it being linked to the drive to orgasm. i do really think that's what it boils down to for the vast majority of allosexual people who struggle with asexuality: they look at an ace person who's writing hypnokink drugging smut and they're just like "how the fuck do you not want to jerk off to this?" and the ace person is like "idk i just don't? how come you do?" and there is no answer to this on either side, each is largely incomprehensible to the other
this is not something i could personally understand until i started duloxetine. duloxetine is an antidepressant (an SNRI, to be specific) for those who don't know; and one of its side effects is it basically just deletes your sex drive. pre-duloxetine, i had a pretty standard sex drive and needed to masturbate daily/every two days or get afflicted by the [Too Horny To Focus] debuff, but then post duloxetine that just went away entirely. for a while, probably because of a lifetime of associations, the habit of seeing kinky thing and going "oh i should touch myself to that" stuck around, but then gradually, over time, i just... stopped wanting to? nowadays i can still jerk off, and occasionally do for some reason or another: but it's extremely whatever? the like, all-consuming Need to be doing that that i had pre-meds is just, not there any more
and, honestly, with that gone, it really does feel like you engage with life completely differently. i earnestly believe that living with a high sex drive (which isn't the same thing as being allosexual, i am aware; to *me personally* they kind of were though) is something which colours just about every single aspect of your existence. because like, people always talk about the difficulty of getting sex; but it's not even *just* sex, i had access to as much sex as i wanted pre-meds, but it wasn't *good sex*. i had a bunch of like, largely whatever people who'd fuck me any time i wanted, but no one to like, fuckin brainwash me and put me through an intensive conditioning regimen so that i would cum every time someone played a clicker at me (i solved this by becoming that person)
and i think, because the sex drive is so obscenely strong "by default" for a lot of unmedicated people, it is borderline impossible to not just be thinking about that all the god damn time? because actual good sex is damn near fucking unobtainable depending on what you're into, how many marginalised groups you're part of, how disabled and how autistic you are; but your brain doesn't give a fuck about that and it's gonna keep wanting that shit 24/7 anyway because that's what we're wired to do as a species baybeeeeeee
so yeah. on some level i genuinely get it: i was kind of an aphobic piece of shit before my meds. i'm ace now because uh, yeah, without that drive to constantly seek out sex in the back of my head? ...shit's actually pretty mid, i gotta be real with you (and to be clear, i am talking 'i have had drug-fuelled orgies with multiple hypnokinky transgirls' type sex, and the actual making people cum part was by far the least interesting ). taking away the desire to cum did not make me appreciate florets getting their teeth brushed any less, though: if anything, it made it easier to appreciate it, because now i can pay more attention to the inherent eroticism of getting your teeth brushed by a 10ft tall hyper-domineering alien without getting distracted by the need to jerk off about it
long-ass tl;dr: all allosexual people should get the opportunity to try sex reducing meds and see if they like it. pretty sure an awful lot of them would
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