@DonLonG yeah, I am new to wearing rings, necklaces. Though, wouldn’t mind wearing one or two. I think it’s a good idea as well. @Sashamcgee
(Just a bit of explanation behind my post earlier here; im okay with elder people as well as straight people. But it is a fact that theyve set the grounds for the newer generations with little to no knowledge about such complex topics as sexuality, and berate anything 'out of the norm', making the newer generations suffer as well. So yeah, im obviously not going to be fine with such a person doing that AGAIN.)
@Lovelight yeeesss! I always love unique pieces or pieces that tell a story
I'm asexual through medical reasons does that count?
@DonLonG That ring is awesome! I hadn't heard about rings as a way to flag asexuality before, I'm going to look in to that now.
Happy Asexual Awareness Week, @Biblioromantic! Thanks for the good wishes.
@DonLonG, I have a black ring I'll sometimes wear, but I'm not much of a jewelry person so I probably don't wear it enough to get identified by it. I haven't seen anybody else wearing one in person, either... but then I'm a night shift worker, and there don't tend to be a lot of people out and about when I am. Oh well.
As a side note, I also didn't know what asexuality was until I'd already gotten myself into a bind or two. At least I figured out I wasn't gay—but it would've been nice to know ace was an option beforehand.
@notcuddledyet: Not sure how medical stuff would change who you're sexually attracted to.
I'm 100% straight
@notcuddledyet: Then you're 100% not ace. Congrats!
Thanks for the well wishes, @DarrenWalker ! Happy #aceweek to you too!
Ace rings are super helpful. I love mine, never take it off. Aces tend to be rare, and seeing someone else wearing a black ring on the right middle finger causes a little thrill, like finding a new instant friend. Wearing mine has also opened lots of doors for me with connecting with other aces because I co-admin a local group for aces and allies. We currently have over 400 members. So we're rare, but not as rare as you'd think.
I was asexual once for 10 months. It started with a one year practice of abstinance in my 30's. Two months into abstaining my sex drive turned off. I immersed myself in yoga, meditation, and the Gospel of Sri Rama Krishna along with other yogic readings. After one year, Rosetta coaxed me out of abstinance and my sex drive turned back on. The only difference was that I retained a sort of on/off switch to my sex drive that I did not have before. I practiced abstinence recently and it had zero affect on me. Though I do not indentify as asexual, that was a pretty sweet 10 months.
I have met 3 other aces in real life, no rings. but i have thought about getting one. a 400 member local group is awesome!
@PeopleLikeUs: Sex drive isn't the same thing as sexual orientation.
Look at it this way:
Suppose there's a door. If it opens one way, you're straight. If it opens the other way, you're gay. If it swings both ways, you're bi. If the apparent door is actually a wall, you're ace. That's orientation. Whether the door is open or shut is drive. You can shut the door—turn your drive off—without changing where the hinges are.
[Note: This isn't a perfect metaphor, because some ace people do have a sex drive, there's just no one they're drawn to have sex with....)
@DarrenWalker A heterosexual can experience homosexuality and not be gay or bi. The same is true with asexuality.
@PeopleLikeUs: Sexuality is complex—most people aren't 100% whatever their orientation is. So a guy can be straight (say 95% straight) and still get surprised by that 5% he didn't know he had.
Edit: This seems kind of obvious, but I might as well say it:
He's not any gayer when he notices that little bit of gayness than he is when he isn't noticing it. He might act gayer, but that's different. It's like me—I don't get nerdier when I'm around nerdy people. I am always seventy or eighty percent nerd: I just act nerdier in certain situations (and less nerdy in others).
@DarrenWalker ^^^ makes sense.
@PeopleLikeUs: ^_^ Yay.
It's also true with a 100% cis het. In other words, this 100% cis het male can experience homosexuality and still be 100% het.
@PeopleLikeUs: If 100% of your sexual attraction is only ever for the female body, no percentage of it is ever for the male body. So if you're experiencing homosexual attraction... you're probably not 100% het. Maybe 99%, or even 99.99%.
Hardly anybody's 100% any sexual orientation. I'm maybe 1% into women (and 0.59% into men? I dunno). But I'm definitely well over 75% ace, so that's what I call myself: asexual.
It's not a binary thing—either completely, 100% straight or else not straight at all. It's a spectrum.
A 100% cis het male can extend being with himself to another male.
@PeopleLikeUs: Totally! Anybody can hang out with anybody—talk, play video games, watch movies, cuddle—without sexual attraction being involved at all. You can extend that wonderful platonic gift of "being with me" to anybody you like.
Edit: Unless you were saying that a 100% straight cis male could see having sex with another physically male person as somehow the same as masturbation...? In which case, no.
There is a difference between attraction and behavior. There is also a difference between those two and orientation.
Attraction is internal. The pull toward someone, to want to behave in a certain way with them or have a certain type of relationship with them, that's attraction.
Behavior is external. What someone chooses to do may have roots in attraction, but it is a decision to engage, to act, to consent to be acted upon within certain parameters.
A pattern of attraction, not behavior, determines orientation. Heterosexual people aren't heterosexual because they have sex with the opposite gender once or even many times; they're heterosexual because they're attracted to the opposite gender whether or not they choose to engage in sexual activity. Likewise, asexual people are asexual because they do not experience sexual attraction to anyone whether or not they choose to engage in sexual activity.
@Biblioromantic Nice! So, back to asexuality, my statement;
I was asexual once for 10 months.
True or false?
I identify as cis male.
Well, @PeopleLikeUs, you're saying you're a male-bodied person with a traditionally male personality [cis male] who is sexually attracted strictly to people with female bodies [100% straight].
You're also saying that for 10 months your sex drive dropped to basically nothing—but you're calling this lack of sex drive "asexuality," which is wrong.
Asexuality isn't a lack of sex drive. Some aces have tons of drive.
Asexuality is being sexually attracted to nobody, no matter what type of body they've got. Now, when your sex drive is low, you might not notice which direction/s you're oriented... but that doesn't mean you stop being straight (or gay, or bi, or whatever). You're still oriented the same way, you're just low on drive.
Once your drive picks back up, you're still oriented the same way (in your case, towards the female-bodied types). Your orientation never changed: you were never ace, you were always straight.
I think I got it.
So, a better opeing line would have been;
I lost my attraction to women once for about 10 months.
@Biblioromantic thank you for this! Have an amazing week!
@PeopleLikeUs: Something like that, I guess. I'm kind of hesitant to okay it because your sexual orientation—your attraction to whatever body type—isn't something you can lose. It's there even if it's not active.
Sort of like, I dunno... your car's still pointed the same direction even when the engine's not running.
Unless for those ten months you still had a normal-for-you sex drive, still wanted sex as much as you ever do, just didn't want to have it with anybody? Didn't want to touch anyone, didn't want anyone touching you, just wanted the physiological responses, didn't want to think about what you were actually doing? That'd be a standard asexual orientation complete with sex drive.
If you didn't want sex at all, though (and then when your drive came back up you noticed you were attracted to women again)... that'd just be "My sex drive once shut down for about 10 months."
This is an interesting discussion between @PeopleLikeUs and @DarrenWalker , so I thought I would add my 2 cents to put a twist on it.
I always had a hard time figuring out where I was on the spectrum. A lot of times I feel 100% Asexual. But sometimes I will feel fully heterosexual, feeling sexual attraction for just a brief moment before some autopilot course correction kicks in and steers me to a heteroromantic asexual compromise.
Thanks to the effects of psilocybin (which has been decriminalized in Denver), I have been able to allow my left brain (consciousness) to have a conversation with my right brain (subconscious) and came to some profound conclusions.
My left brain is demi-heterosexual. And my right brain is aromantic asexual.
This means that consciously there is an immediate attraction to women romanticly, and sometimes sexually after I get to know them well. Unfortunately, my subconscious has no interest in women or men what so ever. And since it controls certain involuntary systems in my body, even if I do get to know someone enough to gain sexual attraction to them, my other half won't allow me to act on those impulses and completely freaks out if I try to consciously overrule it.
But it's not all bad and does come with some benefits. I haven't had a nightmare in years. When I get that dream that I'm giving a presentation in front of the class, and suddenly realize I forgot to put on my pants and underwear, instead of getting embarrassed, I just tear my shirt off so I match and do it nude. Although nudity is very rare, nothing is ever sexualized in my dreams. And because of that, I have also never had a wet dream. Not once, not even as a teenager.
@DonLonG: That last bit is simultaneously hilarious and kind of cool.
Edit: "And now I match, so there is nothing to be embarrassed about!"
@DarrenWalker yeah it can be a little confusing sometimes. My left side logical brain is Athiest, but my right side creative brain is Christian. What happens when I die? Will my consciousness go to hell, and my subconscious will be in heaven? Will I burn in a lake of fire, but unconsciously love it?
omg, I just went to my profile and realized it turned midnight in my timezone when it updated my age because today is my birthday.
This brought about two realizations: 1. First, I just moved out of the 30-40 age range a lot of people have on this site. 2. And second, the last thing I said while I was still 40 was talking about wet dreams.