MY TAKE ON DEMISEXUALITY

At last a sexual category I can identify with!  DEMISEXUAL.   Like all the other categories, someone just made up the word so they get to define it.  They say,  “A demisexual is a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone. . .  When a demisexual is emotionally connected to someone else (whether the feelings are romantic love or deep friendship), the demisexual experiences sexual attraction and desire, but only towards the specific partner or partners.

. . . “Demisexuals are not choosing to abstain; they simply lack sexual attraction until a close relationship is formed.”

I don’t know what this theorist would make of the pattern in which a person has had a deep, physical, complete relationship with someone that can never be duplicated again, often because of never being that young again.  It does discourage more relationships that don’t seem likely to ever duplicate that intensity.  I don’t think that’s demisexuality.  Also, getting a little buzz out of someone who is reminiscent of that first love is not demisexuality.  

I really don’t like the word very much, but it does usefully distinguish between two stages of intimate relationship, and I’m grateful that the “primary” one is the one given attention, that the physical is secondary.  I confess that I’m lacking in the capacity for instant desire.   I mean, I might note approval of a big handsome hairy powerful man, but that would be no reason to hop into bed with him, no guarantee of having any affection for each other.  If I did progress to the point of real intimacy, it would rip me apart when it ended.  Which is another good reason not to get involved again.

But I’m grateful that now I have a label and a “letter” to claim:  LGBTXD.  Until now I was merely an X.   I’m also pleased that there are more points identified on the continuum that is sexual desire, not even mentioning gender identification, because surely a person could be LGBT and D at the same time and surely whether one thinks of oneself as male or female has little to do with it.  One can have emotional connection of considerable intensity and depth with a child, a very old person, a disabled person.  It wouldn’t even have to be in words: it could be in terms of music or art.  D’s, as I understand them, could easily accommodate an epistolary relationship based on the exchange of letters or even a relationship with someone who is dead but who left a written record that may trigger a strong emotional connection.  Our society completely ignores this.  Victorians did not, but they had many occasions to be connected only by letters.

An intense connection in terms of emotion and thinking, which is quite common in an academic setting but certainly not confined to it, can be innocently public.  The delight and intensity of it can please people nearby.  People referring to overheard dialogue with my close friends along these lines have called us “the two philosophers,” not the two lovers.  I haven’t experienced many others wanting to butt in or feeling jealous about it.  But when we came into the same space, I could see the other person light up and feel myself become incandescent at the connection.   I get a little rush from spotting their name in my email.  There is none of the dominance or exclusiveness or ownership that gets into physical sexual relationships, maybe because these talking friendships aren’t a basis of economic dependence or governed by the laws that are necessary when children or property ownership are involved.

The only “problem” with being a D is that no one has figured out how to commodify it, unless you count old-fashioned romance novels -- as contrasted with the contemporary bodice-rippers about hook-up culture where you go straight to bed and then get to know each other.  People conflate sex and love so much that it’s hard to describe a love that isn’t physical, much less orgasmic.  You can pay for sex, but not for Demisexuality.  It happens at a deep level, below consciousness, in “felt” concepts rather than words.  Part of it is the product of prior experiences and part of it is a matter of something sought, something yearned for, a kind of meshing.

Adults having explicit sex with children is problematic, partly because it is forced, partly because it is often physically damaging due to the mismatch of size and strength, and because it requires emotional capacity that can be exceeded or distorted.  It rewires the brain in ways that may be crippling for the rest of life, dropping out necessary steps of development.  It can’t help being one-sided -- but there are exceptions.  I don’t know whether this might be true of D-sexuality that has not become physical.

In fact, I don’t know enough about how D-sexuality (being technically A-sexual until a deep emotional and intellectual connection is already established) eventually becomes overt physical sex.  Is it at a point of crossover to kissing and embracing?  Or must there be full-on fucking to change from demi- to full?  What if one wants to move to the physical and the other doesn’t?  That might apply to an adult relating to a child.  Is it a failure if the friendship just stays a friendship?  Why would it be?

Demisexuality is often a matter of long-distance relationships -- in the past on paper and now via electronics -- that CAN translate into a desire to make real body contact.  Again, if one person feels a strong emotional and intellectual connection and the other is only after some fucking, the asymmetry renders it immoral.  So I would add the requirement of emotional/intellectual equality to any legitimate demisexuality.

That means people need to be really developed in terms of their brain and heart life; children are not likely to handle such a relationship without some risk being involved, not least the grief of an ending.  The adult or dominant half of the relationship must take responsibility for that.

Most people might guess that a relationship based on the exchange of ideas or even shared affinities would be dry and formal.  But I’ve had ecstatic conversations -- even in writing -- about theatre or art.  Ideas can be deliriously Dionysian and if we recognized that more clearly, people would demand more education.  But it’s still not necessarily some kind of foreplay for going to bed.  It can be complete in itself and it can persist without the two people even being in proximity.  It’s not fantasies about lust;  it’s something real happening in the mind.  

The product will not be children but maybe a book, a symphony or a painting.  Even more likely, and closer to my experience, it might be progress in a cause, a new way of seeing, a genuine cultural advance.  Such rewards are not needed as justification for a relationship that exists for itself, as its own reward, which is a wonderful thing -- I sometimes worry that it is getting lost.