(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

The Buy-Me-Lunch Answer About Being Asexual but Loving Sex

[CN: Frank sex talk. Food and eat­ing.]

First, imag­ine you don’t get hun­gry.

Note 1- There was a Tik­Tok about being asex­u­al that came out not too long ago. I don’t have the HTML skills to embed it, but the link will take you to a loop. This fram­ing is absolute­ly based on that Tik­tok, so I want to acknowl­edge it as inspiration….and even a bit of artis­tic theft.

Note 2- While this would nor­mal­ly be an arti­cle I would put in NOT Writ­ing About Writ­ing, since the “Buy Me Lunch” series (in which I’ve writ­ten about sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der) start­ed here on Writ­ing About Writ­ing, I’m going to keep it here for now.

To be clear, asex­u­al­i­ty is a spec­trum. And real­ly it’s three spec­trums. Libido is the drive—the desire for sex­u­al release. It’s like an itch. Sex­u­al desire is what con­trols want­i­ng to have sex with anoth­er per­son. It’s pos­si­ble to have a high libido and a low sex­u­al desire (and vise ver­sa). And sex­u­al attrac­tion involves find­ing some­one sex­u­al­ly appeal­ing. Each of these three things can be high or low com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er. 

I can’t tell you what all ace peo­ple expe­ri­ence or how they feel about sex. It is a broad umbrel­la that cov­ers a lot of ground. Most peo­ple who have typ­i­cal lev­els of all three things nev­er unpack and untan­gle their libido, sex­u­al desire, and sex­u­al attrac­tion as sep­a­rate from each oth­er. It’s those of us who feel like we’re not expe­ri­enc­ing the world in the “right” way who usu­al­ly break down how all those things are dif­fer­ent and have dif­fer­ent lev­els. Some peo­ple have low libidos, low desire, and low attrac­tion and kind of con­form to the idea that is most thought of as “asex­u­al.” But there’s a lot more vari­a­tion. Some have high sex­u­al attrac­tion, but low sex­u­al desire. (They real­ly find peo­ple hot, but sel­dom act on it.) Some may have a low libido but high sex­u­al desire (they aren’t real­ly into sex for release, but love hav­ing sex for oth­er rea­sons). Oth­ers (like me) have high libidos, rea­son­able sex­u­al desire, and a very luke­warm sex­u­al attrac­tion. 

If you imag­ine all three of these things (libido, sex­u­al desire, and sex­u­al attrac­tion) as sep­a­rate axes on a graph, you get a bril­liant cube with a dizzy­ing vari­ety of expres­sions. The back left top cor­ner would look VERY dif­fer­ent than the front right bot­tom cor­ner even though both these peo­ple might iden­ti­fy as asex­u­al. There are peo­ple who are absolute­ly sex-repulsed. (I’m not.) There are peo­ple who have no libido (I do), or only expe­ri­ence their libido once or twice a month. There are peo­ple who have no or low sex­u­al desire (mine is above aver­age). There are peo­ple who expe­ri­ence no sex­u­al attrac­tion. (This is where I find I can take it or leave it.) There are peo­ple who have attrac­tion but no libido. Libido but no desire. Desire but no attrac­tion. Every expres­sion you can think of.

And it’s all under the umbrel­la of “asex­u­al.” And of course, some peo­ple iden­ti­fy that way and others—who have exact­ly the same libido, desire, and attraction—do not. 

I can only tell you what ace means to ME and why I think I’m on that spec­trum. There are peo­ple like me who enjoy sex and par­take in almost as much as they can get as often as they can get it. I feel attrac­tion, but it is usu­al­ly very aes­thet­ic and appre­cia­tive until/unless there is a lot of enthu­si­asm com­ing from the per­son toward me. But when peo­ple talk to me about being horny or need­ing sex or talk about how their desire for sex is start­ing to short-cir­cuit their ratio­nal think­ing, or like it is a pow­er­ful hunger, I don’t expe­ri­ence this feel­ing. 

I have desire. I enjoy sex, and I have a LOT of it…with sev­er­al part­ners. But my rea­sons for hav­ing sex are dif­fer­ent than most people’s. The label “demi­sex­u­al” comes pret­ty close, and I use it in a pinch, but it’s not quite right. 

It helps to think about want­i­ng sex like want­i­ng food. It’s not a per­fect anal­o­gy, but it’s good enough to be a load-bear­ing metaphor. It’s not that I don’t eat. It’s not that I don’t enjoy eat­ing. It’s not that I don’t think good food is deli­cious. It’s just that I don’t get hun­gry.

Peo­ple eat for lots of rea­sons. And hon­est­ly, a lot of those (pos­si­bly even most of those) have noth­ing to do with hunger. We often eat when we “could eat” based on oth­er fac­tors which is more about no longer being absolute­ly full from the last time we ate rather than actu­al­ly being hun­gry.

• Because the food tastes good
• Because we like that KIND of food
• To try some­thing we don’t get to have very often or have nev­er tried before
• Because it might be a while before there’s anoth­er chance to eat
• Because some­one made us food and we want to show our appre­ci­a­tion
• Because a com­pan­ion is hun­gry and we want to enjoy the time togeth­er
• Because we want to enjoy the expe­ri­ence of eat­ing with some­one
• To be con­nect­ed with or bond with oth­er peo­ple eat­ing or the cook
• To help us cope with neg­a­tive emo­tions, bore­dom, or just to gen­er­ate some good feel­ings
• Because it feels good

Sim­i­lar­ly we can feel reject­ed if we’re not invit­ed to a din­ner par­ty, even if we weren’t hun­gry or are not offered a help­ing of some­thing when oth­er peo­ple are get­ting it. We can feel envi­ous if some­one else is get­ting food and we are not. We can wor­ry about miss­ing out on the con­nec­tion, the bond­ing if we aren’t invit­ed to meals. We can feel left out if every­one got a piece of cake but us. 

It does­n’t mat­ter if we weren’t, strict­ly speak­ing, HUNGRY. 

Being on the ace spec­trum does­n’t mean I don’t enjoy sex. It does­n’t mean I don’t ever want it. It does­n’t mean I can’t feel reject­ed. It does­n’t mean I can’t feel inse­cure if it feels like no one is attract­ed to me or seems to want me. It cer­tain­ly does­n’t mean that if some­one wants sex with me, I’ll say no or I’ll usu­al­ly say no. (In fact, per­son­al­ly, I usu­al­ly say yes.) It just means that I’m not doing it because I’m HORNY. I can kind of take or leave the actu­al act. I’m doing it to be with them. To bond with them. To feel con­nect­ed. Maybe because I haven’t had that type of sex before or very often. Because they want it, and I want to make them feel good and desir­able. Because sex is fun and feels good.

It does mean I don’t real­ly make deci­sions try­ing to get laid. It means I tend to ini­ti­ate less and nev­er pres­sure. (Which also means that some­times a part­ner has to nudge me to do a bit more of insti­ga­tion so they don’t feel unde­sir­able.) It means that I rarely, if ever, expe­ri­ence pure­ly sex­u­al attraction…for any­one. Things like trust and con­nec­tion are much more impor­tant to me. I expe­ri­ence emo­tion­al attrac­tion, pla­ton­ic attrac­tion, aes­thet­ic attrac­tion, and even sen­su­al and phys­i­cal attraction—and I am per­fect­ly capa­ble of lever­ag­ing one or some (or all) of those attrac­tions into good sex—but I rarely, if ever, expe­ri­ence a raw sex­u­al attrac­tion that trans­lates into desire. 

I often say that I don’t sleep with some­one because I crave sex with them. I sleep with some­one because I crave con­nec­tion and inti­ma­cy with them and sex is one of MANY ways to get that—and def­i­nite­ly one of the most fun.

We’re all wired dif­fer­ent­ly and have dif­fer­ent his­to­ries. (Part of my ace-ness is wrapped up in hang ups over con­sent, enthu­si­asm, and even per­for­mance anx­i­ety. It hangs on being AMAB, social­ized male, but aware of how prob­lem­at­ic AFABs can find us when we’re let­ting our­selves lis­ten to the cul­tur­al nar­ra­tive that per­sis­tence pays off. It means I just don’t have near­ly as much fun with some­one I’m not con­nect­ed to with a deep bond of trust. All that has much more to do with my child­hood trau­mas than biol­o­gy.) Being ace is nev­er as sim­ple as “I don’t like sex”(…although for some peo­ple, that sums it up nice­ly). It’s a label that is real­ly only the start­ing point, so folks should be more will­ing to get the buy-[them]-lunch answer when it comes up.

[If you would like to actu­al­ly buy me lunch, feel wel­come to drop a cou­ple of bucks into the tip jar.]

Next: The Buy-Me-Lunch Answer About My Gen­der

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