Are there any other terms. I’m just curious
You sound at least somewhere on the asexuality spectrum.
The capacity to be aroused ≠ sexual attraction, although they do often go together (especially if you get aroused at the sight of people instead of needing physical stimulation to make the parts respond) so I wouldn’t completely toss away the arousal data. However, I did read a study about conditioning marmosets to be aroused at the smell of a lemon, so it might be extensible to humans and you might have just conditioned yourself into arousal at the opposite gender. “People find this hot, I should try masturbating to it,” you stimulate yourself into arousal, eventually associate the opposite gender with sexual satisfaction and get aroused at the sight of them. Also, I’m kind of suspicious of this study because after they finished the conditioning, they observed erection rate after exposure to lemon scent, but not erection rate without exposure to lemon scent: sure, the erection rate is high for lemon exposure, but how do we know this is any different from no lemon exposure? However, lots of other similar studies were done that I didn’t bother to check out. And it’s still true that arousal ≠ sexual attraction. They just go together a lot. Even with your arousal at the opposite gender, you might be asexual. I’m just very used to hearing regular arousal at a certain gender as an allosexual experience instead of an asexual one. https://www.asexuality-handbook.com/faq/whats-the-difference-between-sexual-attraction-and-arousal.html
Also relevant that I’m ’strictly’ asexual, I have zero sexual desire, never have urges to have sex with another human, if you think of the asexuality spectrum as a line segment with “asexual, zero sexual desire” at the left endpoint and “allosexual, sexual desire” at the right I sit on top of the left endpoint. I’m as far from allosexual as you can be. But I do experience arousal from a certain trigger that makes me want to masturbate. Not to have sex with anybody. But it’s not from anything sexual at all. It’s something more along the lines of seeing a specific YouTuber teach math, without any desire to see them naked or in any kind of state of undress. It’s not actually that, but you get the idea. Does involve a human, makes me aroused, but aside from that it’s not sexual whatsoever.
I can’t tell you what you are, and to be honest I’m not sure where the desire to get handsy would put you, but to me you don’t sound fully hetero, you sound somewhere on the asexuality spectrum.
Thanks for the detailed response, it’s definitely given me some things to think about. I guess the best way to describe it is that when I see someone who presses the right physical attractiveness buttons for me, I still get some less-than-pure thoughts. It’s just that the specific act of having sex with that person isn’t ever on that list, even when it’s totally on the table.
It’s mostly that I still have that drive to do other things to satisfy my libido that the asexual label never really clicked in the past. Maybe it still doesn’t fit. But definitely good to think about that stuff once in a while.
sorry, i’m a bit confused- how is arousal at the sight of someone not sexual attraction? what even is sexual attraction then?
Sexual attraction: an urge to have sex with a specific person. https://www.asexuality-handbook.com/glossary.html
I’d like to clarify something here. I’m pretty sure the intent here is “an urge to have sex with a specific person that isn’t just as a means to an end.” If I’m a gold digger who finds my target repulsive and I don’t think sex with them would be enjoyable, but I know having sex with them will make them more likely to love me and give me money? I do have an urge, a desire to have sex with them—but not an impulse felt instinctually from desire for this person and for sex with this person. It’s a desire that comes from the fact that sex is means to an end to my real desire of money. So although I do have an urge to have sex with my specific target, it’s not the kind of urge the definition means, and so I wouldn’t be considered sexually attracted to my target. Now with that set aside…
I imagine that arousal at the sight of someone need not always pair with a desire to have sex. Penis-havers sometimes experience random erections apropos of nothing, so we already have arousal being separate from attraction. Enough physical stimulation can make your parts respond with arousal even if you personally feel pretty neutral or even negative about having sex.
I’m thinking this situation could happen: you can be a person who doesn’t really get the urge for sex yourself, but you do have a partner you care about who likes it. So you have sex with this person regularly. Your parts respond from the physical stimulation involved in sex. Eventually, your brain pairs this person with sex and arousal, and pre-arouses your parts around them. I don’t mean to be reductive at all when I say this: I am thinking of classical conditioning, that same process by which you get a dog to salivate at the ding of a bell. Ding it right before you give them food, and eventually they associate the food with the bell sound and salivate at the bell sound too. But you still don’t have the urge for sex except maybe to please your partner. You might want to satisfy the arousal, yes, but it’s not quite the same thing.
Have you ever been hungry but you also don’t really feel a craving for food, so you just pick at random? You might even find it an annoying chore to make yourself eat to satisfy the hunger. You don’t want to eat pizza except perhaps as a means to an end to satisfy the hunger. This would be like that. No desire inherent, just getting rid of a biological feeling. It’s true your partner triggered the arousal, triggered the “I’m hungry,” but you still don’t exactly crave them specifically to satisfy the desire just because they are the one who triggered the feeling in the first place.
(In reality it’s a little more complicated—you might prefer your partner to satisfy this desire because you do value the bonding that may come with sex and you want to bond with your partner. Or because they know how to give you the best physical pleasure. But it’s still not anything that sexual, it’s all about its secondary effects. Sex is still a means to an end. Your urge is not for sex with your partner, despite the arousal that occurs at the sight of your partner—the dog’s urge is not for the bell to ding, despite the salivation at the bell sound.)
I’m guessing here, to be honest. I’m a virgin by choice, and no human outside of that completely nonsexual cartoon arousal trigger has made me want to do anything sexual. And the only sexual thing that arousal trigger made me want to do is to masturbate. Not to see it do something sexual, to have sex with it or a real version of it, or to have sex with another person. I don’t really have any relevant experience to pull from, just stories from my fellow asexuals and an asexuality handbook. Also a huge disclaimer on if it’s even possible to condition arousal in a person—I don’t know if that marmoset study where they got conditioned to have erections at the smell of a lemon is extensible to humans, and I think there was a methodology error in it (I mentioned it in an above reply). I also haven’t checked for any reproductions of that study to verify its findings.
Arousal at the sight of a person very frequently goes together with attraction, but I don’t think it has to.
i understand what you mean, it makes sense to me that something like that wouldn’t necessarily be considered allosexuality if the individual doesn’t actually want to have sex with the person. i think i just don’t see the purpose of differentiation at a point- for example a sex favourable person who both gets aroused by their partner and actively seeks out and enjoys sex on a regular basis could feasibly be labelled as asexual within this community, and i feel like that would be a very misleading term to use to describe them. (not saying that’s the commenter you were talking to, just an example.)
(this isn’t meant to be taking anything out on you or the other commenter by any means, i’m just venting a bit.) i think i might just be personally frustrated by having so many people fall under the “asexuality umbrella” who live relatively normal lives in regards to sex and relationships, while i’m a rather sex repulsed ace. i feel like with the label being so broad and inclusive it’s like i need to find something else to call myself- i’d be really uncomfortable if someone heard me say “asexual” to describe myself and think i’d be interested in sex at all, but that’s really what the label has been coming to and idk how to feel about it.
