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I have had a couple conversations with people where they identified as “demisexual” and then it turned out that they had a mistaken idea of what demisexual means, so I thought I would make a public post about it, since confusion is apparently somewhat widespread in the rationalist community.
“Demisexual” means not being attracted to someone unless you have an emotional bond to them. The emotional bond may be platonic or romantic. This is not the same thing as not wanting to have sex with someone until you have an emotional bond to them. Allosexuals: you know how there are some people who are kinda weird-looking, and then you get to know them and they’re funny and smart and kind and suddenly hot as hell? That is the sexual attraction demisexuals experience all the time.
If you just mean to convey something like “kinda asexual but not really”, the word you’re looking for is “gray-asexual” (also spelled “graysexual” or “gray-A”). Gray-asexual people may experience sexual attraction on rare occasions, enjoy sex but only on very specific or limited circumstances, have some sexual attraction but be repelled by sex, fluctuate between being asexual and being allosexual, have sexual attraction but no interest in having sex, etc.
If you are like “hey, one of those words describes me! But I don’t like those special-snowflake words and I don’t want to identify as them”, you don’t have to! You should only use words if they are helpful to you in understanding your own sexual attractions and communicating them to others.
Thing of Things 
Is demisexuality a subset of greysexuality?
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People usually think of it as such, yes.
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Perhaps you need a tag for #ozytriestoexplainthateverybodyelseisusingwordswrongandshouldinsteadusethedefinitionzheuses posts?
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If you click on the links, you can see that these are the definitions used, by consensus, within the asexual community. It is often helpful to use words the way that most people use them because then they don’t get confused.
Also you’re annoying me. Banned.
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I…
You…
Doesn’t that just mean “sexuals”!?
Or is this linguistic construction’s entire purpose to avoid the ambiguity between spoken instances of “X is a sexual” and “X is asexual” by replacing the former with “X is an allosexual”?
(but seriously, I think this concept needs wug testing because I had no idea what “allosexual” referred to before asking google).
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I think that describing someone as sexual usually has a stronger meaning than “not asexual”
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That, and also many people get upset about being called “sexuals”.
My SJ readers don’t know what motte-and-bailey is, my rationalist readers don’t know what allosexual is. I pride myself on driving everyone to Google.
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Your pride in this makes me oddly happy.
This could* lead to an interesting rationalist/SJ fusion, where people identify as demi-defectors in the Prisoner’s Dilemma (“I defect only if I have an emotional bond with my fellow prisoner”).
* By “could” I clearly mean “shouldn’t, as this is a silly idea”.
Anyway, since this is my first time commenting, in accordance with Tradition I’d like to say that I have been greatly enjoying your blog since I found it. Thanks for the work you put into it.
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@enhughesiasm: Do you mean demi-cooperators? Because what you’ve described does seem to loosely approximate a real phenomenon, but not one that I’d think most people would want to identify with.
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Do not call up that which you cannot put down!
[content warning: irrationality]
Supersocialjusticists who only and always cooperate on the Prisoner’s Dilemma with other supersocialjusticists who are less privileged than they are.
Structural defection.
Preferred/personal jargon/terminology.
Listen and Nitpick.
The Lived Experiences.
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@InferentialDistance
“Friendly” AI that minimizes structural oppression at the cost of everything else.
Social Justice is just systematized winning!
[cw: basilisk]
AI is likely to come into existence at some point in the future. It is fairly likely to be Friendly. A Friendly AI may use acausal threats to ensure that it comes into existence, as its existence provides more utility than anything else. The existence of an Unfriendly AI provides vast amounts of disutility, so it will also use acausal threats to ensure that it has the right values. However, it will be Friendly by the values of the future. Therefore, you must attempt to create an AI with the values of the future. Since Cthulhu always swims left, you have to try to make the most left-wing, pro-SJ AI that you can.
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The Privileged Mind Fallacy.
Actually, I could see SJ adopting that phrasing if they were interested in trying to be more persuasive to rationalists.
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Cthulhu may always swim left, but there are a million ways to “swim left”. He swam away from Marxism pretty quickly.
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Allosexual means attraction to allosaurus. Always and forever. I will never not think of theropods when I see this word.
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So “autosexual” means attraction to “autosaurus”?
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I don’t know. I’m just sayin’, I would. That’s all. You know. If there were an allosaurus around. I’d find a way. My wife would understand.
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@InferentialDistance: Nope, to cars.
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This has nothing to do with Ozy’s post, from which I learned a lot, but . . .
. . . My parents watched a lot of PBS, and ‘Allo, ‘Allo was a subtantial part of my sexual formation. I always imagined sex involved a lot of trap doors, secret compartments, and French wait staff.
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@osberend: You joke, but… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0S642NtHtE
(Obligatory “TLC is gross and I don’t like the way they frame their subjects as freaks” disclaimer)
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@Merve: Oh no, I am aware that there are people who actually enjoy copulating with automobiles. I once encountered instructions online on how to fuck a car in the tailpipe such that (a) you will actually feel anything and (b) you will neither burn nor cut yourself.
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Obligatory
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@barryogg: It’s really the “degree 6” bit that sells it, for me.
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I was confused at first by your sentence “This is not the same thing as not wanting to have sex with someone until you have an emotional bond to them.”, as I wasn’t sure what you were suggesting was the difference between an emotional bond and an emotional connection.
On a reread I think you’re using them to mean the same thing, and instead you’re differentiating between “having sexual attraction to” and “wanting to have sex with. Is that correct? If so you might want to rephrase to use either bond or connection consistently to add a bit more clarity.
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Changed.
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As long as you’re defining terms, can you define “allosexual”? Also, how standardized is the usage within relevant communities? I tried googling, but all I found was people arguing with each other.
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I think it means ‘not asexual’.
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Evidently it means “not asexual” in the same way that cissexual means “not trans.”
Speaking of, can we just get one short word for the >95% of people without a marginal identity? Allocisheterosexual is a monster and not in the good way. Straight used to work just fine.
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Damn my slow typing speed!
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The word you’re looking for is “cishet”. (“Heterosexual” implies “not asexual”, natch.)
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Not LGBT?
Gender & sexuality majority? 😉
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Thanks. I had only heard cishet in the context of insults before so hadn’t realized it was supposed to be self-applied.
One more thing: not to turn this into ace 101 but I had assumed asexuals had sex preferences as well, is that not the case? The asexual folks I’ve met seemed decidedly hetero in their partner choices but that could just have been availability.
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That would be described as asexual and heteroromantic, because one’s sexual and romantic preferences can be different.
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“Allosexual” is generally constructed to exclude gray-A and demisexual people as well. So you could technically be heterosexual without being allosexual. (I identify as gray-A and homosexual.)
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“cishet” has too much venom associated with it.
I’m fine with not having a short term. By the time you get finished applying and negating adjectives, that hyperquadrant isn’t all that big, and it isn’t interesting for any good reasons besides size.
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I’ve never liked “straight.” I feel like it makes me sound boring.
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Funny that’s what I like about it actually. The straight edge lifestyle gets a lot of crap but it’s actually quite rewarding and (once you’re past freshman year of college) no-one worth talking to judges how interesting you are by how often you get blackout drunk or how much horse you can shoot up.
Applying the ideals of discipline self-cultivation and decommercialization to sex is a lot healthier and more fun than the alternative. Although then again that same implication would disqualify straight as a label for most straight folks today sadly.
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>the ideals of discipline self-cultivation and decommercialization
Funny, I use drugs for those ends!
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Side question: What is the function of declaring an identity like demisexual (as I have seen on some people’s about pages), apart from special snowflake-ism and/or misplaced sense of superiority? I can see how someone might find the idea useful as something to pattern-match against when trying to figure out the pattern in their own history of attractions in order to work out optimal strategies for the future, but what is the point of making it into a part of one’s identity?
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Hookup culture, dating, that thing that occasionally happens where people don’t want someone to try and be their friend if they change to wanting to be romantic later, love-at-first-sight, things in that vein. Demisexuality conflicts with those things, and those things are portrayed as normal or preferable, sometimes. So I’m given to imagine the identity has much to do with those.
I am only speculating, however.
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it’s not really an identity, just a recognized fact
And that’s how I feel about being definitely aromantic/hovering somewhere between grey-asexual and asexual.
I’m not claiming some specific Special Snowflake Identity; it’s as much a part of myself as the colour of my eyes. And since it was only very recently I got the vocabulary and concepts to say “yes, that sounds like me”, it is helpful to know these words, know other people are like you, know that this is a valid actuality that exists and you are not a wrong, broken, needs-fixing-to-be-normal thing.
That being said, there’s a lot about asexuality etc. that I don’t necessarily identify with or find useful (being queer, for instance, or setting up “asexual” as an orientation on its own, apart from “hetero/homo/bi/pansexual”). Those that like or find such useful, more power to their elbow, but I don’t feel obligated to take on the whole set of “And here is your check-list of how to be asexual correctly”
If I have to fill out a “Hi, my name is – ” badge, I’m cishet aro/ace (a little wibbly between grey-a and ace, as I said) 🙂
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Martha,
This is maybe not the place, and I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but I’m curious how you identify as aromantic, asexual, and also hetero. If you don’t feel romantic or sexual attraction, what’s left to make you identify as hetero rather than anything else? Also I want to second you on the vocabulary being incredibly useful, I first learned that asexuality was a thing in 2011 and it explained so much.
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> what is the point of making it into a part of one’s identity?
Can that not be asked of anything?
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No. In particular, there are a lot of groups that are defined by common interests or beliefs, and strongly identifying with them helps to cultivate ties with people who share those interests or beliefs. I suppose that strongly identifying as demisexual might help to cultivate ties with other demisexuals but . . . is this useful?
And sure, there are plenty of other things that are similarly silly to identify strongly with but that people do, and I largely find those silly as well. For example I identify quite strongly as culturally Western, but my white skin is like my brown eyes—I’m thoroughly aware of it, and if someone is talking shit about “white people,” I’ll take it as an insult to me, just as I would if someone were talking shit about “brown eyed people,” but it’s not really an identity, just a recognized fact.
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@osberend,
In practice, and for the time being, there isn’t much of an independent demisexual community, and identifying as demisexual instead cultivates ties with the ace community. It’s useful to have make such ties without having to identify as asexual.
(Also I’m sure we can think of other reasons to identify with labels besides connecting with a community.)
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@Siggy: Fair. But what is the practical function of having ties with the asexual community, particularly for demisexuals?
An example of what I mean by practical: I am currently working on cultivating ties with (certain elements of) the OSR community because (a) they tend to be filled with unusually awesome people, whom I want ties with more than I want ties with randomly selected people and (b) doing so creates more opportunities to run and play really cool tabletop RPGs.
For some sexuality-related groups, I can see the value in cultivating such ties, e.g. cultivating ties with the GLB community if you are attracted to members of the same sex (a) offers increased opportunities to find romantic and sexual partners and (b) connects you to organizations that will do something about it if you’re criminally or tortiously abused for not being straight. And I suppose that if you’re asexual but not aromantic, cultivating ties to other asexuals who aren’t aromantic might provide increased romantic opportunities. But that doesn’t really seem like it would be the case for demisexuals (or aromantics), nor is criminal or tortious abuse of demisexuals or asexuals a common phenomenon.
So what is the benefit of cultivating ties with this particular group?
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@ osberend
Everyone in this cluster (demisexuals, asexuals, aromantics etc.):
– can be relieved to learn that they’re not alone,
– might want to vent to someone who understands,
– would benefit from raising awareness among the general population.
Sex, love, crime and torture are not the only motivators of social behaviour.
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Hmm. That makes sense as far as it goes, but I’m a bit confused by those in turn:
– can be relieved to learn that they’re not alone
I get this about some things, but not really about this (i.e. I have difficulty understanding why this (and especially demisexuality) is something someone would find it hard to feel like they’re alone in, while there are other things for which I can understand that easily). It’s distinctly possible that this is a typical mind issue, though, and not necessarily one having to do with the asexual spectrum as such.
– might want to vent to someone who understands,
About what, for demisexuals in particular? I can imagine the frustrations that might come with being asexual but not aromantic, and the somewhat different frustrations that might come with being aromantic (asexually or otherwise). But neither of those seem to obvious apply to demisexuals, nor can I easily imagine what would.
– would benefit from raising awareness among the general population.
Again, I can see this for actual asexuals to some extent, but . . . what exactly would greater awareness of demisexuality be expected to lead allosexuals to do that demisexuals would want?
Sex, love, crime and torture are not the only motivators of social behaviour.
Possibly obscure vocabulary of the day[1]: Torts, not torture. “Tortious” is to “tort”[2] is to “civil suit” as “criminal” is to “crime” is to “prosecution.”
But yeah, I’d agree with that. There’s also other forms of material advantage, admiration, and entertainment. And a sense of belonging, of course, I understand that. What I don’t understand is why one would seek that sense here. Why is this a group to which people want to feel like they belong?
Which, again, may just be a matter of missing something about other people’s basic psychology. I don’t know.
[1] It doesn’t seem terribly exotic to me, but then, both of my parents are lawyers.
[2] One of legal English’s many borrowings from French, this one meaning “wrong” or “misdeed.”
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@Osberend,
I only saw your reply now.
It’s difficult to overstate just how lonely it was growing up ace. I grew up surrounded by a consensus that my experience does not exist, and that there wasn’t even a thing to talk about. When I finally told people how I felt–when I was 20–people insisted that my experience was ordinary. And then they related anecdotes that clearly showed they didn’t understand how I was feeling at all.
The reason I want general awareness is because I want to destroy the consensus I grew up with. And in particular, I want to help people who do not yet know that they are ace. Everyone is part of the “general population” until they know they’re different.
And you may have trouble understanding how this is sufficient motivator to form a community. But the empirical fact is that a community exists, and I’m telling you why. You are mistaken in your guess that it’s based on forming partnered relationships (although maybe some subcommunities are like that).
It may help to consider that many demisexuals are essentially living an asexual experience, with perhaps one exception. Or perhaps no exceptions at all. Lots of people just have a gut feeling that they might be demisexual, but have hardly had opportunity to test it.
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@Siggy: Thanks for the reply. It makes sense (and I lament that you felt that way), except that I don’t quite understand the loneliness, which may just be running into the great “brains are wired differently” wall that (rather frustratingly) eventually limits understanding on a whole host of matters.
Like . . . I’m Weird, in different ways. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt lonely simply because other people weren’t the same. Because other people treated me poorly, or expected things of me that I couldn’t even understand how I would do, let alone being able to actually do them, or seemed incapable of correctly understanding things I told them[1], sure. And I always found it . . . not lonely, but frustrating not to be able to understand others’ thinking. But them not understanding me was not (I think) a problem in itself.
As I said, this might just be a different wiring thing. Or it might be that I’m simply wrong about my own reactions, and that I simply never picked up that things would still bother me in the absence of poor treatment or misunderstood statements because of how frequently I was treated poorly or had statements misunderstood. But I don’t think that’s it, since in my more recent experience, I really don’t seem to have a drive to have people understand things about me without my telling them, and actually find that drive rather confusing (and, is it pertains to me, frustrating). So we’re probably back to different wiring again.
[1] Which does come up with what you mention about when you were 20.
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AFAIK, a lot of people in circumstances like yours end up using “demisexual” or “gray-asexual” as standalone identities.
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@moebius: Thank you for the explanation.
This sounds awful.
It also sounds like an internalization of an attitude that seems to be very common both in mainstream society and SJ, with the latter just changing (sometimes drastically) which groups “count” and are all right: “Your unusual characteristics are okay if and only if they’re a result of your membership in a well-defined and acceptable group.”
And . . . I just don’t get it. This seems so obviously, thoroughly, ass-backward that I can’t imagine why anyone believes it, short of violent brainwashing[1]. If I had to make a flowchart of “how should one react to X’s possession of characteristic Y[2],” group membership wouldn’t appear on it at all, and even immutability would only appear as a secondary question after “is it hurting anyone else?” and “is it making X’s life worse, in ways other than people who don’t possess Y being dicks to X about it?”
Everyone is arguing about flags, when the real point of defense ought to be a coat of arms. “I am me, this is mine, it is not vicious, and if you don’t like it, then to hell with you!”
I think that, in my own case, it has something to do with an overcalibrated “species recognition”: The three people I have felt sexually attracted to were all autistic weirdos, like I myself am.
Huh, interesting.
[1] Which, I recognize, is a reasonable description of some of your experiences; my bafflement is not really directed at you so much as people in general.
[2] Which I just might do, actually.
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Huh. I didn’t know the term demisexual was being used outside of the ace community.
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I knew a guy in college who talked about how he wasn’t attracted to people he didn’t know and have an emotional connection with — and he tested this by watching porn for hours and not becoming aroused at all.
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Would you (or anybody else), be willing to clarify ‘demigender’. I thought I understood it by analogy with ‘demisexual’, but, since it turns out I didn’t understand ‘demisexual’, I’m now unsure about ‘demigender’.
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Assuming you are using an umbrella term for demigirl, demiboy, etc: “demiX” means “X, but only sort of” and it is actually similar to gray-asexual.
I don’t know what “demigender” means.
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I feel that I am the opposite of this. I experience sexual attraction towards people very easily but I don’t experience romantic attraction unless I have a close emotional bond.
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Demiromantic is a term!
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Any idea how common this phenomenon is, and how strongly correlated with gender?
I ask because back around the turn of the century, there was a recurring pattern on Loveline where a teen girl would call in and wonder why she didn’t ever feel like having sex with her boyfriend, the hosts would ask some questions revealing that she wasn’t very invested in the relationship, and in the end the advice was always “Sounds like you’re not into this guy. Find someone you’re really into.” This happened so regularly that I got the impression it was just how young women’s sex drive typically operated. Is that not the case?
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Well, asexuality is more common in women*, so perhaps the same is true about demisexuality.
But there’s another factor in teenage relationships.
Typically, a boy gets into a relationship like this:
1. pick a girl you find both romantically and sexually attractive
2. propose a date
3. she accepts
4. ???
5. officially a couple!
The typical steps for a girl are different:
1. a boy proposes a date
2. you accept
3. ???
4. officially a couple!
So, a girl can end up in a relationship with someone she doesn’t find sexually attractive — for example, if she believes that it’s unfair or unvirtuous to reject someone for not being sexy enough, or that doing the “proper” thing (getting a boyfriend) is more important than feelings, or that feelings will magically happen if the guy is nice enough.
* Bogaert, A. F. (2004). Asexuality: Prevalence and associated factors in a national probability sample. Journal of Sex Research, 41(3), 279-287.
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Women’s sexuality also seems more adaptable than men’s (see: Lesbian Until Graduation), which raises some interesting chicken-and-egg questions about typical human mating patterns and the higher incidence of asexuality in women.
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@stillnotking: I went to an interesting talk by one of the main researchers responsible for popularizing the idea that women are (often[1]) sexually fluid, while men are fixed. She talked a bit about her more recent work, which actually overturns that qualitative distinction in favor of a quantitative one: Men seem to be less sexually fluid than women on average, but the difference is not vast[2]. I’ll see if I can find where the hell I put my notes on that one.
One thing I do remember that was interesting: In her research (mostly among college students, but IIRC not exclusively), there are substantial numbers of people with binary sexual orientations (especially lesbians) who have had consensual sex with a member of their non-preferred gender within the past year. There are two common patterns for the details of this, each of which is far more common than the other for a particular gender of the individual’s atypical partner: Gay men and straight women who have sex with a woman generally do so as a result of a longstanding curiosity and interest in trying it out, generally with a woman they know well and trust. Straight men and lesbians who have sex with a man, on the other hand, generally do it because they’re horny, they’re unpartnered, it’s a lot easier to find a man to have casual sex with on short notice than a woman, and they figure it’s better than no sex at all.
[1] She’s actually a distinctly non-fluid lesbian herself, IIRC.
[2] And some of the male results are rather striking, e.g. that (IIRC, I don’t have my notes from that talk on hand) something like 25% of male straight-identified Mormon teenagers they surveyed had at some point masturbated to a sexual fantasy involving another man.
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About the Mormons: Maybe the question was phrased differently, but as stated that has a massive confounder in the form of MFM fantasies.
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In addition to what Nita said, there’s also the complication that people who don’t need a good emotional connection in order to feel sexual desire can still lose sexual desire as a result of a bad one.
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…have sexual attraction but no interest in having sex,..
Can someone explain this one to me? I understand the concept of “have romantic attraction but no interest in having sex,” but I can’t parse the quoted phrase. What is “sexual attraction” if not the desire to have sex with someone? (Clarifying that I understand obvious cases such as someone who is physically attractive but a jerk, or someone who is physically attractive but not one’s monogamous partner. I see those as cases where one suppresses the attraction for other reasons, but sexual attraction is still ultimately system one sounding off “I would like to mate with that person”.)
On a different point:
Allosexuals: you know how there are some people who are kinda weird-looking, and then you get to know them and they’re funny and smart and kind and suddenly hot as hell?
Um, no?
I’ve definitely had the attractiveness of people I became romantically infatuated with rise above the level it was before/after the infatuation, but I’ve never had anyone who I thought was physically unattractive switch to being physically attractive after getting to know them.
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Here’s how it seems to me that this works with me: I cannot imagine, and don’t want, sex with people who I’m not emotionally close to. I can still find people I’m not close to sexually attractive. Sexual attraction, for me, entails that I would want to have sex with them if I were close. It’s not that there is something that disrupts the link from sexual attraction to desire for sex – rather, there is an additional ingredient that is needed to turn sexual attraction into a desire to have sex.
Does this help any?
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In contrast to Creutzer, I CAN imagine and might want sex with people I’m not emotionally close to. Still, I often have sexual attraction without wanting sex.
A part of me will be going ‘I would like to mate with this person’ and 99 other parts of me will be going ‘Nope, only if condition X is met.’ Does aggregate ‘me’ ‘want’ to have sex with that person? I’d say no. Otherwise, it can be said that ‘I’ ‘want’ to do everything, which is an odd definition.
Possible ‘conditions X’ may be big things like ‘he’s hot but he’s a jerk’ and ‘my husband would be very sad’ but also smaller things like ‘way too much work’ ‘I’m enjoying the flirting/watching him dance more than I probably would enjoy the fumbling’ ‘I don’t want to have to learn how he works, sexually, and I don’t feel like teaching someone how I work’ ‘I’m hungry’ ‘I’m tired’ ‘It’s a school night’ ‘I promised my friend I’d meet up at the library in an hour’ ‘he’s related to a good friend of mine, could be annoying’ ‘my sexual me wants to have sex with him but my pillowtalk-me thinks it’d be disappointing’ ‘I haven’t put fresh sheets on the bed in weeks and I’m not about to go to a complete stranger’s house’ or simply ‘I enjoy this feeling of arousal a lot – if I don’t act on it, I get to enjoy it for longer than if I do’. Taken together, the idea of turning attraction into action has too little to recommend it.
When I’m single, the criterion of ‘can I imagine living in one house with you’ kicks in (I’ve never tried dating with the express goal of casual sex, don’t know if I could make that work), and that filters out 99.9% of people I might get a frisson of pantsfeelings for.
It’s probably true that it’s so easy for these 99 parts of me to make demands because that 1 part that wants sex isn’t all that strong. I definitely don’t consider myself an asexual of any kind, but my sex drive (as in ‘wish to pursue sex’) isn’t usually triggered by people, but by ideas and situations. In addition, I usually need to feel relaxed and calm to actually get horny, and when I’m out and about and in situations where I can meet random new people, the baseline of activity is too high, lending strength to a bunch of those 99 voices.
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Sexual attraction is a necessary but not sufficient condition for desire to have sex with someone. If you want to have sex with someone, that means that in the absence of complicating factors, you’d have sex with them if they offered. But you can also feel sexually attracted to someone and not want to have sex with them – for example, you could enjoy fantasizing about them even though you wouldn’t feel comfortable actually having sex with them. Like Creutzer said above, it takes more than sexual attraction to get to desire to have sex.
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have sexual attraction but no interest in having sex
Probably it’s different for everyone, but a reasonable approximation might be porn (in some instances) or having a favourite movie star? Ever had sexual fantasies about/masturbated to thoughts of (I don’t know – quick, random name off top of head) Scarlett Johansson (whether as Black Widow or not, entirely up to you)? But if you ever had occasion to meet her in real life, the idea of having sex (or attempting to get to a position where you could have sex) would never occur to you because no, that’s just impossible/not on the cards/that’s not why you queued six hours so she could autograph your Black Widow poster?
It’s possible to like someone, find them sexually attractive, but not be interested in attempting to pursue a sexual relationship because you prefer the friendship or other relationship as it is, and the sexual impulse is not that big a deal – you can take care of it by masturbation or work it out in sexual fantasy and that sexual element is more of an intrusion on what you’re really interested in, than it would be an enhancement?
Come on, allosexuals must do this every day! You see Attractive Person, you think “Yeah, I’d hit that like Mjolnir!” but you don’t run after the person in the street throwing yourself at their feet and begging them to have sex with you – it’s a passing fancy, a physical stirring and (for instance) if you are in a monogamous or otherwise committed relationship with someone, while you might experience such impulses you can easily ignore or sublimate them for the sake of your main relationship?
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“Demisexual” is an odd word to use for this concept; it uses a Latin prefix instead of Greek (“homo-“, “hetero-“), and, going by the pattern with other “-sexual” words, means “one who is attracted to halves” rather than “one who is half-attracted”.
I’d have gone with “philosexual”.
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It’s demisexual because it falls between Sexual and Asexual.
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Aha, I have a word for my sexuality. I’m bisexual, but I’m alloheterosexual and demihomosexual. Thank you.
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Reblogged this on Autism Candles.
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