Re-blog if you’re an asexual or demisexual person (or ally) who is sex-positive
A few days ago, this blog post from Flagging Opinicus Rampant titled “Is demisexuality anti-queer?” started circulating on Tumblr with “asexual” as one of the tags:
Sometimes I support the idea that proliferation of identities approximates deconstruction, but demisexual is the dumbest thing ever, right down to its etymology. Fair enough if you take an extended hibernation, limiting your sexual activity to summer and spring, but any non-temporal reading suggests that demisexual is halfway on “the asexual spectrum”, between the poles of asexuality and “full” sexuality.
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It would be silly enough for a sexual identity to not only accept but reinforce a notion of normative sexuality, but the normative sexuality implied by demisexual isn’t even correct. For women at least, normative sexuality presupposes “deep emotional connection” as a requisite condition for sex — if it didn’t, we wouldn’t have concepts like “nymphomania”. Isn’t there enough slut-shaming in society as it is?
I don’t buy the argument that demisexual can exist without denigrating promiscuity. Even if individual demisexuals don’t use their identities as a value judgement on other people’s sexuality, demisexual already assumes a normative centre, and elaborates the sex of that centre as being based on “primary characteristics”. Never mind that the primacy of those characteristics (such as gender) might be something we actively resist. Never mind how we might understand our own motivations or attractions and the ebb and flow of desire. How does a demisexual differ from me (sexual, pan, poly, fussy)? Presumably I’ll want sex earlier in a relationship than they will, or with people I don’t know as well as they’d need to — but if I haven’t fucked someone by the third date I assume they just like to pay for meals and lose arguments. I hear that most girls work slower — apparently there’s even rules about it. So how is a demisexual different from your run-of-the-mill, sex-after-love romantic? And doesn’t demisexual deny the fluidity of sexual(ity)*?
Even if all this is true, it may yet be insufficient grounds on which to deny anyone’s self-identification (though I don’t accept that it’s never justified to do so). And I realise that many other sexual identities involve similar value judgements: eg, when people talk about bisexual or pansexual as being attracted “to a person, not a gender”, when I think that describes people of all sexual identities, even if gender might be a factor (which it is for many bi and pan people anyway). Or how poly people talk about monogamy sometimes. I think it’s always rude to pretend your tastes are more profound and less superficial than others. Nevertheless, I feel that demisexual is especially problematic and I’d like to hear the rebuttal.
What does all this have to do with flagging? I think flagging is about communicating something that usually isn’t immediately perceptible, which destabilises the distinction between primary and secondary attraction. More than that, hanky code creates a sexual lexicography that enables a level of specificity and intentionality that I think is inherently queer, regardless of who practices it, while demisexual seems to me anti-queer in reinforcing fixed and stable sexual identities. This isn’t about sex positivity necessarily — I think dominant culture is both relentlessly sexual and particularly anxious about sex; I wouldn’t call it repressive or oversexualised – but a critical relation to normative sex.
I commented in response:
You set up an argument with the wrong definition of primary sexual attraction and therefore the wrong definition of demisexual.
You interpret “primary sexual attraction” as “attraction to primary sex characteristics,” which is not the correct interpretation. Primary sex characteristics are genitals, and people usually don’t see their sex partner’s genitals until they have sex. Primary sexual attraction happens before clothes come off. I have always interpreted “primary sexual attraction” as a person’s immediate biological reaction to the presence/appearance of another person whose personality details are not known. There is no value judgment involved in immediate biological reactions; the biological reaction just happens or it doesn’t. A person’s body reactions can be to other people’s primary sex characteristics or to characteristics that have nothing to do with reproductive systems but may be gendered (like long hair or hairy legs). Primary sexual attraction is when you see a person you’ve never met and are like “Wow, that person is hot!” (for whatever reason). That’s all it is, in my understanding. I can’t speak from much experience.
The difference between a “run-of-the-mill sex-after-love romantic” and a demisexual person is that they describe themselves differently. They might have the same body reactions to the same stimuli, but the difference is how they think about the role of sex in their lives. For someone to say “Sex is not that important to me” is not a value judgment on others who might value sex more. It is a personal value judgment about sex only as relating to the speaker, which is different from a value judgment about sex as relating to everyone.
That said, I used to self-describe as asexual until I experienced semi-sexual feelings about a person when I was 20. For a time, I questioned whether or not to describe myself as demisexual. I ultimately decided that neither demisexual nor asexual described me: my experience is too sexual for me to call myself asexual, but what I do experience is not sexual enough for me to describe myself as asexual. I’m not personally interested in genital sexual activity–there are other things that sexually pleasure me–and most people who self-describe as demisexual enjoy some form of genital sexual activity. I don’t, and I don’t have a problem with people who do. I encourage people to do what pleases them and pleasures them the most with regard to sexuality.
No one concept constitutes “normal” or “full” sexuality. A person’s own sexuality is normal and full if that person knows what they like and is okay with it. I think there are far fewer demisexual elitist people than you assert. Most asexual people I have spoken to, including David Jay, the founder of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, are vocally sex-positive. Demisexual people I have spoken to are even more vocally sex-positive. I’m a sex-positive polyamorous transmasculine genderfuck feminist queer whose sexuality is in the grey area between asexual and demisexual. I exist. Among demisexual and asexual people, if you care to look, people like me are not that rare.