What DO you mean by sex?

And finally, we get to the actual title of this blog: What DO you mean by 'sex'? I’ve found myself slightly irritated and offended when I hear the word ‘intimacy' used as a synonym for ‘sex’. It sounds as though that negates and cheapens so many other things that are intimate, and very meaningful, to me. As if ‘sex’ were the pinnacle of human relationship. So, what is ‘sex’, actually?
As traditional mainstream thinking would have it, the most narrow definition of ‘sex’ would be 1) sticking a penis into a vagina. This, for some reason, is believed to be an act of great significance with long-ranging relational ramifications. It is the ultimate test of so-called fidelity in a relationship and sometimes used as a trump card (“Okay, so we may have done A and B and C, but we never ‘had sex’”. Voila.) The narrow definition can then sometimes be expanded to 2) sticking penises into other human orifices and/or penetrating vaginas with other objects (in a non-medical context) - still the focus is on penetration and penis/vagina. All of this can still land you in jail if done without consensus. A definition broader than this would then be 3) rubbing naked genitals in some way, genitals including vulva, penis, anus, testicles, I suppose, the infamous “Down There” region (somehow this brings up images of “He Who Shall Not Be Named”). There’s something about this obsession with genitals, I don’t know. I’ve sometimes described myself as “lacking a genital fetish”, as opposed to most of the population. But even if I expand the definition further and say oh, you know, touching other naked parts of the body, or French kissing, that’s also a form of sex. And I could come up with a list of behaviors and actions which could be considered sexual. But for me, that just doesn’t cut it.
Sex, the way I relate to it, is so not about body parts. All of this can be done with me and I still don’t experience it as 'sexual’. I don’t begin to desire that genital involvement when ANY part of my body is touched, in any way, by anyone. Nor is it about physical arousal. I’ve found that I can be quite physically aroused (increased sensitivity through the body, alertness, wetness) as a symptom of feeling close and connected, and I’m still pretty indifferent to all the above concrete actions. I know even sexual men can become physically aroused simply through stimulation – without any desire to engage in the above acts. Nor is what I call sex about wanting orgasm. That is something that just doesn’t compute for my body, no matter how much sensual stimulation it experiences, there’s never this sense that there is too much tension and it needs to be released. For other people, those who masturbate and consider themselves asexual, masturbation is not seen as an inherently sexual act only because it involves the genitals. It is seen simply as a function of the body, an itch that needs scratching.
When a person loses their head over me or gets all passionately hotly sexual over my body, I don’t actually experience their desire as pleasant – I experience it as disconnecting. Like, they are having their own trip, but I’m not really involved, they are not really seeing me, they’re not really there with me. I’ve heard of mutual masturbation, and that's kind of what regular sex seems like: a solitary experience in the company of another body. It can be interesting to watch, as long as I’m not required to be turned on by it. I don’t really desire to stimulate anyone in a way that makes them need to orgasm. Feels kind of distasteful, like I’m using them, manipulating them. Like I have power over them. And it feels slightly repugnant to me to be invited to use that power imbalance to make their body do tricks.
So, in my world, it’s not about climax, it’s not about physical arousal, it’s not about body parts – and yet there is still something that I experience that I will dare to call sexual. That I will be able to relate to myself next time someone says that humans are inherently sexual beings. Rather than deny that statement, I will simply take the liberty of defining how I experience my sexuality, and what that word means to me.

...

So, since I wrote the above about a month or two ago, I’ve been reframing the idea of sexuality for myself, away from genitally-oriented pleasure and release, the cultural default, and expanding the concept to an exchange of energies, a play and turning of yin and yang, a dance of delight in each other’s existence, going nowhere and serving no purpose other than being present with each other and feeling each other’s most intimate direct physical expression in a given moment, and responding to it in a cooperative way. Now I’m sure many sexuals can read that and say, yes, that's all part of good sex, of course it’s not just about genital pleasure and release, that’s way too crude. But from what I understand, apparently for most people, sexuality as they first begin to experience it in their youth, manifests itself through these genital drives, the need to “get off”, and the overwhelming desire to be sexual with particular people who they find “hot” and who cause them to have some kind of mysterious reaction in their pants. As they age and mature, they (sometimes) learn more about sex as an expression of love and sensitivity to their partner, and don’t necessarily just go for the release – although it still seems to be the norm to think that genitals must be involved or it’s just not sexual (as, I assume, in Lori Brotto’s recent survey). With me, I never followed that pattern, and so I thought something was malfunctioning and that I could ultimately not claim sexuality as part of my humanness.
I never experienced primary sexual attraction, any sex in the past was always mostly emotional for me, mostly trying to be an expression of love, the physical part was incidental, and seemed formulaic and stilted that genital stimulation would always be considered the culmination of intimacy and love. I now get the exchange and blending of energy part – it’s a very physical experience – and yet even when feeling arousal in my body, it’s still not about sticking body parts in each other and getting off. I still don’t relate to the “release” part – I’m just enjoying feeling myself with the other person, but not needing it to go anywhere, not even needing to get naked necessarily. There’s an intensified, energized feeling and a joy of communion and directness of contact and openness to each other. Which doesn’t need to reach any culmination and resolution, as far as I’m concerned. It can just continue. There’s a prevalent belief it seems that when one experiences arousal, this is always something that needs to be “taken care of”, through sex or masturbation. Not true. Not for me. I enjoy experiencing a sense of heightened arousal in the body all for its own sake. It has never occurred to me that I should mess with the genitals in order to get rid of it.
Or another experience. The first one in a series, since then. I had this meeting with someone I trust deeply. We had both agreed that we would meet and speak from complete honesty and transparency and truth, holding nothing back. I found myself so excited going to meet them, I was thinking – “this is an invitation to sex – this is sex – this is better than sex”. It was. :) To be able to be completely, completely open and available with another human being, to be entirely present with our whole minds, emotions, and bodies, to each other as we are. No barriers. Speaking from immediacy of direct experience. Then just looking in each other’s eyes. Touching not even needed. Feeling totally united and complete. Touching only becomes needed when the feeling that we are apart, and need to connect, returns.
Now I’m letting myself tentatively propose that the difference between "normal" sexuality and my sexuality is this: "normal" sexuality is driven by urges, desires to mate with specific people based on their physical attractiveness and sometimes also emotional closeness. As a person ages and gains experience, these desires can become more refined with expressions of love and less urgency to simply mate for mating sake. Many people have said to me, "I can no longer just have sex, now I only respond to making love." The same people have also expressed to me that they feel different from the average because of this. (Correct me, sexual people, if you feel this is a misrepresentation.) That is, the sexual act is viewed as having gained a spiritual significance for them.
Whereas in my world, there is no "sexual act" per se, because all authentic and deep relating with another person is viewed as equally (a)sexual, just varied in intensity: all are an opportunity to bare ourselves to each other and embrace one another, in whatever form that takes. The fact that sometimes this involves physical nakedness and arousal and touching genitals, is circumstantial.
I'm saying that maybe my sexuality has just always been more subtle than is the cultural norm. And as I say this, I mentally contract and brace, ready to be clobbered by society saying “what, you want to be better than everyone else, how dare you?” There’s this need in our conditioning, whenever something is different than the default, to immediately see it as either “devil” or “angel”, so if I assert a different sexuality, I know that many people, even well-meaning ones, will instantly go to explaining it as either “repressed, immature, undeveloped, pre-orgasmic, unwilling to let go” or “beyond the desires of the flesh, better, more evolved”. So, I consciously step out of that paradigm of linear progression towards a superior version of human, and simply say, I am a natural variation in a mosaic of possible expressions. I claim the right to be as I am.

Word games - sexual attraction again

I'm gonna do a really quick side post here because I'm in the middle of writing a longer post on "what is sex, anyway", and it doesn't look like it's gonna be finished any time soon. So this post is just to express some of my frustration and to demonstrate the circular nature of the concepts we use and the seeming impossibility to break into that self-contained universe unless you already know what it's talking about.

One concept that I would really like defined, is the ever elusive sexual attraction. I mean, what literally, concretely, specifically happens in the experience of people, in their bodies, in their emotions, in their perceptions, that they then go and label that "sexual attraction". It's an open question to anyone who wants to answer it.

Here are the results of my wild goose chase around dictionaries:
sexual attraction: attractiveness on the basis of sexual desire
sexual desire: a desire for sexual intimacy
sexual intimacy: (no definition)
sexual: of or relating to or characterized by sexuality
sexuality: sex
sex: sexual activity
sexual activity: activities associated with sexual intercourse
sexual intercourse: the act of sexual procreation between a man and a woman; the man's penis is inserted into the woman's vagina and excited until orgasm and ejaculation occur

Well there we go. Apparently sexual attraction is all about desiring to insert penises into vaginas and exciting them until ejaculation occurs.

I have a sense that even some sexuals would find that definition too narrow and limiting.

Does anyone else get a feeling that there is a LOT of vagueness and indirectness here? Like every time you ask, you get sent to someone else (or some other dictionary entry) that might answer your question. These terms are either not well and clearly defined and explained, or I don't inhabit the same experiential universe as the dictionary-makers.

Imagine that you come from Alfa Centauri and you know nothing about "wug" (stand-in for "sex" here). Now go and read articles attempting to define "sexual attraction/desire" and replace "sex" with the word "wug" and see how self-referential they are and how they don't really explain anything in a helpful way. It's all about the externals of the experience - what influences it, what different kinds there are, what disciplines have studied it, what it has been called and how it has been classified, where and in which species it exists, what are some other words to call it, what can adversely affect it - but really NOTHING about IT, from the inside, how IT feels! As if we all know what we are talking about.

On commitment

I've had a lot of programming around believing that a really mature intimate relationship is of course something that is monogamously exclusive and committed. Making this kind of promises, however, goes against what comes naturally to me. And so voices come up in my head accusing me of being irresponsible, immature and inconsiderate. So today I would like to make a case for how this can be seen from another perspective. I am probably not going to be able to see all sides of the situation, and my bias will come through, and I just want to say I’m aware of that and welcome input on whatever I may be blind to.
Let me look at commitment first. What are we actually talking about? The voice that comes up strong is the one saying "you're afraid of commitment". It’s the trump card, calling 'chicken’. The person calling ‘chicken' is assuming that making a commitment to “being with” someone for the foreseeable future is a value shared by all. This person views commitment as something desirable, though difficult to attain and maintain, since it possibly goes against one’s assumed fickle and treacherous nature, and so someone willing to make the ‘sacrifice’ of committing, is seen as valiant, strong and noble. The value of "commitment" upholds consistency as something to be desired, as in: I made a choice to be with this one person, and now I should stick to it, because this is how I continue to know that the decision I made in the first place was a good and right decision. If I were to move on from this one person, it might mean to me that I made a wrong decision in the past, and that would be distressing (usually in proportion to the length of the relationship). Or, if I were to move on, it would mean I am weak and unable to deal with problems that arise in any relationship, it would mean I am a failure. Or, I feel such love for this person, ergo it means we should keep trying to “be together” as a couple. People say things like, “I want this relationship to succeed”, and they mean they want an agreement of me+you=couple to be permanent, stable and safe. In fact now that I put it that way, I’m seeing a deeply Christian morality behind the idea of commitment. There’s a lot of implicit belief in human nature as being essentially sinful and wrong, and to remedy that, we must “do the right thing” (as opposed to the “wrong” thing) and make relationship contracts that will override our “destructive” natural impulses, and abide by those contracts to ensure everlasting correctness and righteousness.
From my perspective, I am not afraid of commitment any more than I am afraid of smoking cigarettes. It just has no appeal to me. It’s not that it’s only fear of getting cancer that’s keeping me from smoking - it's that I have never felt a desire to light a cigarette in the first place. And, trying to be a consistent person is not a value that I share. Even more, the idea of “committing” to someone just makes absolutely no sense to me. I promise to “be with” you? What does that even mean? Oh, I know what it means on a most basic operational level – I will not have sex with any other person. That is foreign to me in so many ways. First, I don’t know what it means to be “with” someone, so all the issues around entering relationships and ending them are bizarre to me. My internal experience is that my close relationships with people may change in intensity over time, but they don't end, nor do I enter them. There are no defining moments of “getting together” or "breaking up”. It’s as if the whole society is taking very seriously some rules that are permanently confusing to me. I’ve found that I can have sex and yet feel no attachment to that particular person, no sense of “being with”. I’ve also found that I can feel deeply intimate and one with someone, and yet there is no sex or desire for sex involved. Sex is irrelevant to me, whereas to others it seems to be pivotal in how they construe that relationship.
My best understanding of what it means to “be with” someone, is this. A person wanting to have an agreement of commitment and exclusivity, really wants to experience mutual trust, total intimacy, closeness and love. Those are wonderful things to experience. And for some reason, the way they are able to completely trust and open to somebody, is if they can have a guarantee that they are their partner’s most important person, valued above anyone else, and will continue to be so in the future. In a sense, they want a reassurance of a kind of unconditional love and acceptance, in order to give the same back. So I guess exclusive relationship contracts really work, when both people need that, and give those unspoken promises to each other simultaneously and call it “getting together”. It’s exhilarating to feel that you are free to exchange this complete trust and openness and love, and it also explains the corresponding drama and grief over loss of such reassurances – it’s as if unconditional love has been lost to them. That is tragic.
As for myself, I first thought that I was entirely incompatible with the idea of commitment. How could I possibly make promises about how I was going to feel about someone later on, when the mere thought of fixating some kind of safety for my future like that, in terms of “what should be”, is terribly deadening, and I can just feel it draining aliveness and spontaneity and delight out of the flow of a relationship in the present moment. Then it occurred to me that there is something I want to commit to – no, something that I don’t even have to try to commit to, because I am already committed to it through and through. I can’t commit to “being with” a person. But I am committed to, and always respond and am attracted to, a person’s willingness to be open, transparent, intimate, real. I am committed to being the same way. I am committed to truth and to addressing any issues, difficulties or incompatibilities as soon as they arise, rather than sweeping them under the carpet or hiding anything unpleasant in the interest of trying to “stay together”. I would much rather have full disclosure regardless of where that leads, than to try to make myself look acceptable so that I can have the safety of being “with” someone. I am committed to doing whatever with another free agent on a purely voluntary basis, from delight in each other, rather than trying to “make” a committed relationship work. Now does this mean that because I have made no contract of commitment, I am going to turn on a dime, and after consistently being close and intimate with someone, simply abandon them one day without warning? I am open to that risk – but I think it’s highly unlikely, and I believe that kind of situation is actually more likely in relationships where the goal is to stay committed to each other regardless of what’s going on for you, rather than in relationships where you are open to acknowledging and discussing any changes and developments as they arise. I can’t imagine ever just “dropping out” of the life of anyone I have been close with, if they are still willing to continue opening and growing with me. Whether this involves sex at some point or not, whether we are currently close or far apart, doesn’t matter much to me. There are people who have touched my life deeply, and I never stop loving them.

Sexual attraction

Since declaring myself asexual about a year and a half ago, I have done more experimentation, had more candid discussions and experienced more diverse situations involving sexuality than in my whole previous life. And I have been able to do that because I now felt secure in the knowledge that the only thing that is required of me, is to follow my own natural impulses, and there was no pressure to act in any way that I might have previously thought I needed to act, out of an obligation to comply with “normal”. So I want to shout that from the rooftops to “experts” who fear that asexual people are closing themselves off prematurely: I and many others share your value of self-exploration. Very much.
I am fortunate to have experienced a trusting, emotionally intimate and mutually supportive relationship with a close friend, who does feel sexual attraction towards me. Now that I know that a) I am not required to respond, and that b) I am free to have any reaction, people who are attracted to me no longer freak me out, and I feel quite comfortable addressing this. I feel open to receiving and feeling whatever is being felt by them or me.
I’ve found that although it never occurred to me to have sexual ideas (I may have wanted to be more physically affectionate) before my friend’s attraction was made explicit to me – I am able to respond to the feeling of sexual attraction. My body senses and resonates with the longing, and feels a quickening of energy when near, which is enjoyable. At some point, I want to write a separate post about the concepts of “proceptive” and “receptive” sexual desire – I seem to lack proceptive, the initiative and drive part, but am capable of receptive arousal. At the same time, I can’t seriously imagine initiating something like this without a strong desire on the part of the other: I just wouldn’t believe myself.
So recently I’ve been feeling the feelings that this brings up. It still doesn’t really involve sexual fantasy in terms of body parts, but it does involve an attraction to something. It occurs to me that the desire I feel, is basically for surrender. It’s a desire to be completely open, free, loving. Desire for absence of any conflict and tension, utter flow and total intimacy, absolute nakedness in the sense of having nothing to hide, being completely real. I imagine these are desires shared across sexual orientations. I may or may not express them through sex – it would not be my first choice, as I lack the primary drive.
The presence of this person inspires a great openness in me. And I think I get now that what is commonly referred to as “sexual attraction” is when you think you need that particular person to cause these wonderful feelings of letting go, openness and unguardedness for you. I find that problematic. It places the responsibility for feeling your feelings, on an external stimulus. Whereas in fact, the way I see it, what’s primary is my longing to be completely open, real and transparent. The reason there is attraction to a particular person is because we somehow only ALLOW ourselves to feel those feelings around them, because we consider that person safe. We close down around other people because we consider them unsafe. I realized this in the middle of a wave of gripping desire to be close to my friend. That what I really wanted, was not this person per se, it was the feelings I am able to have with them. I realized: “I’m really longing to surrender.” And what came to me was – “Just be the openness.” Allow yourself to feel that much intimacy and flow, right now, with yourself. That switch was very soothing and nourishing and pleasurable, and released the obsessive focus on the person instantly.
This is not to say that I intend to just be by myself all the time. Only that there’s a possibility to share this intimacy with each other freely, rather than obsessively, rather than believing the other person has to provide it for us.

Casual relationship

I found a term for a satisfying and fulfilling style of relationship that I engage in. It's called "casual relationship". I like the Wikipedia definition because it does not stress the sexual aspect.

So here's my definition, patched together from various sources and my own interpretation of it:

Casual relationship. A relationship with emotional and physical closeness, that may involve sexuality or may come close to sexual expression, when desired. There is no aspiration to long-term commitment and no expectation of exclusivity. The relationship may be part-time and does not dominate one's life and choices. It may be strong and intimate, but is intended to endure only so long as both parties wish it to. It includes mutual support, affection and enjoyment.

I read about this on the web and see biased language such as "motives for entering a casual relationship", or "because they are unwilling to commit to a full-fledged relationship" and "doesn't have time for a proper boyfriend". So I want to categorically declare that this type of relationship can be a legitimate relationship in its own right and not a transitional stage on the way to something else, or a compromise.

Question everything you know

Browsing through the forums on AVEN, I come across many young people just entering the community, asking the same question: "Am I asexual? Do I belong here?"

To them I want to say: Welcome. There is no stamp of approval and no authority to declare who is “really” asexual. We are just people who have found that none of the generally available sexual-orientation labels have been a good fit. The fact that you are searching and wanting to be true to whatever it is you really feel or don’t feel, means you belong. Here is a place where you can be perfectly honest with yourself. What you (don’t) feel or want, is natural and okay, for the simple reason that you actually (don’t) feel or want it, and you are a human being, so it must be natural for some human beings. There is no "correct" way to be asexual.

A lot of effort has gone into trying to get “asexuality” accepted in the eyes of society as a fourth “sexual orientation”, to kind of legitimize and rationalize that if you tweak and rearrange existing models, asexuality will fit in too. And reorienting mass mentality to include the possibility that you exist (!) can be perfectly useful in practical situations. But my personal take on it is that I opt out of the whole “sexual orientation" model. I abandon the existing preconceived ill-fitting framework and build my own interpretation of the world, based on how I myself actually experience it. There is so much more hue and variety in real life than any model can encompass. The labels “straight”, “gay”, “bi”, are only a lens we use for convenience so we can have a feeling that we are able to manage and contain an infinitely complex reality. People don’t realize that, and implicitly believe that humans should conform to the language labels they happen to have inherited from the way their society arbitrarily parses reality. My own feeling is that the concept of “sexual orientation” is due for a rethinking.

Our entire language around relationship matters is dominated by terminology and styles of speaking that accurately reflect the experience of people (males in particular) who are strongly driven by sexual attraction. In addition, sex has been historically associated with virility and power and strength and dominance and all sorts of desirable qualities that leaders in a tribe will possess. And they are the ones who have set the standards for all of us, who have described their experience for all of us, who we have been programmed to emulate and look up to. However, not everyone's reality and internal makeup is that of a specimen who is driven to rise to the top of the clan and mate with many individuals. Enough people in the world do experience sexual attraction that most of society seems to be able to at least relate to that, and view sexual partnership as the be-all and end-all of personal happiness and fulfillment. But then you see people who are radically unlike that “ideal”, and they are questioning if their experience of themselves and their lack of wanting to mate, is legitimate or is it pathological. Good grief people! Of course it is legitimate. It is just the way you are. Your world has been interpreted for you through the eyes of somebody else. It’s time to acknowledge that, and take back the right to be yourself. Discover for yourself what you actually feel. Invent your own language to accurately reflect your own experience, and know your own needs and desires. Own what you feel. There are so many ways to like people and be connected and intimate and loving with them that have nothing to do with sex. We only think they should, because we have been programmed to believe it.

One thing I do give psychologists credit for, is that they say something is a “disorder” only when it causes you distress. To all the new people who are feeling troubled: if there is anything causing distress, I would encourage anyone to investigate it. For example if there is a social anxiety and you are suffering because of it, I would recommend working with that. It may well be that after you relax around people, you may discover that you could enjoy having sex with them. It may equally well be that after you have worked through your fears around being with people, you discover that you actually enjoy being by yourself, or that you still don’t experience any sexual attraction to anybody. But now you will be able to state it with confidence, and won’t feel like you have to hide. In either case, you win. This community is a good place to explore your feelings. Being true to yourself is always a good guide. I like that quote from dr. Seuss: “Always be who you are, and say what you feel, because people who mind don’t matter, and people who matter don’t mind.” Good luck.

Different ways to say

I feel so grateful and blessed for the people in my life and for all the understanding I receive. I was talking to a friend online who lives in another country, and we had not seen each other in a while. We came to the subject of relationships and he was asking me if I was open to a new relationship. I kind of went, well, it's complicated, and he asked about the details, so I started explaining how I felt and what I had discovered and gave him the link to Aven FAQ.
At one point he was trying to make sense of it and saying, wait, I'm confused, so you don't really want sex, but you like sensuality? I tried to ask him to say what exactly was confusing, but he just turned right around and said: I didn't get it, but emotionally I got it. There are just different ways of saying "I love you".
Even right now as I write this, I feel deeply touched by that kind of understanding and acceptance. That, to me, is an act of love. Just seeing me as I am, without trying to find any reasons for it.
One of the other things he said, when I was explaining how I've never really cared about sex, was - "You have always felt this way?" And I said "Yes". And realized how his question underscores for me that what I have always felt is not the same as what he has felt. That this must be new and odd to him. That he, in fact, must have those desires I find so hard to comprehend. Realizing that I had never imagined him as a sexual being. That I have the automatic assumption that all my friends are like me: even though I intellectually know they are sexual, instinctively I assume that they just form relationships the way people watch television, because it happens to be there and it's an imitation of what society does. But to think of my friends as genuinely desiring sex with one another, and having it be an important component of their relationships. Still wrapping my head around that one.
I imagine it must be the same in reverse: even though someone intellectually knows that you are not sexually driven, they will automatically make unconscious assumptions about what you are like, based on what they themselves are like and have always known. Just because they haven't yet deeply considered what it would be like to really LIVE from a different perspective. Can't blame that.