liv | Not by halves (Reply)

sovay has a really interesting proposal to use philosexual as an alternative to demisexual. I wanted to note it here because I found the neologism, and the discussion chez Sovay, helpful.

I have no problem with other people identifying as demisexual. It's just that, very often when someone describes why that label works for them, they describe an experience of sexuality that is very similar to mine, but like

sovay I feel actively alienated by the term as applied to me.

I understand that just because demisexual contains the prefix "demi", doesn't mean it's only half as good as being allosexual. But as per the discussion in the comments, it seems to be used in practice as relating to the asexual spectrum. And I, unfairly, resent that. I'm highly sexual in some ways, sex is important to me, and my sexual feelings can be intense. But I have no sexual interest at all in people I don't know, people who are merely good-looking whether they're celebrities or strangers I've only just met. (I have fallen in love at first sight, but I didn't start feeling sexually attracted to the person I fell in love with until we'd been close friends for months.) So does that make me demisexual?

I don't want to appropriate the experiences and identity of the a-spec community for one thing. But for another, well, as far as I can tell most women aren't interested in sex with strangers, and a large minority of men aren't either. I suppose there's some middle ground between experiencing attraction, and actively wanting to have sex with someone, and the term demisexual only refers to the attraction part. But even so, it feels like what's called demisexual is basically the default, and if anything we should have a special word like "xenosexual" for people who get hot and bothered when they see a photo of a model in a magazine or a sprite in a computer game of a scantily dressed person of an appropriate gender.

ethelmay notes that I think the term "demisexual" has gotten irretrievably mixed up with responsive rather than spontaneous desire. So not only is it occupying much of the same semantic space as "gray-ace", it's being crowbarred into meaning sexual desire arising primarily within overtly sexual contexts as opposed to the supposed default of sexual desire just appearing out of nowhere. I suspect that default basically comes from young men who get spontaneous erections; I'm not sure it ought to be the unmarked norm.

I don't know if philosexual is the right answer, partly because the fragment philo has too many different meanings and is often used to refer to a fetish that the speaker wants to imply is weird or deviant. But I sort of want an identity word that means, I'm attracted to people I actually like and have an emotional connection with. I'm highly sexual in the context of the small number of people I'm attracted to, I don't see myself as being on the asexual spectrum at all.

I think there's something I'm missing here. I feel I generally understand asexuality as a broad umbrella term, with the caveat that there's only so much to glean from reading other people's accounts of an experience you don't share. But demisexual is such a positive, affirming identity for lots of people and just doesn't click for me.

I also have thoughts about demigender, but I'm not sure I can articulate them without offending all my non-binary friends, so I'll keep letting that swirl around in my own head for a bit.