Asexuality and Sexual Desire/Pleasure

Sexual Desire

In my article Asexuality, Attraction, and Desire, I define sexual attraction as, “sexual desire targeted toward a specific person” where sexual desire is roughly “desire for sexual pleasures”.

• While I had this as a part of my definition as a result of engaging with the philosophical literature, I still didn’t realize just how central pleasure was to everything.

After reading Come As You Are by Dr. Emily Nagoski I think that my conception of sexual desire become much more nuanced (which is a good thing).

• She introduces the concepts of spontaneous and responsive desire. “spontaneous desire emerges in anticipation of pleasure, responsive desire emerges in response to pleasure” (Source).

The idea of responsive desire further complicates the idea of sexual attraction.

• For one, the social understanding/ideal of desire is mostly focused on spontaneous desire, conversations of asexuality included.
• It may also mean that there is an experience component to sexual discovery.
  • Or at the very least, that experience plays a role to the fluidity of sexuality.
  • This does not mean that you are not asexual if you haven’t explored, but that it may change over time.
• I think that if you don’t have (a lot of) spontaneous desire, not a lot of exposure to sexual pleasure, and/or bad experiences with sex, then it makes a lot of sense that sexual pleasure wouldn’t really be top of mind which would make you fall under the A-Spec umbrella

Sexual Pleasure

Nagoski states that “desire = pleasure in context” (221) and that “sexual desire emerges in response to pleasure” (223).

• The pleasure in question can be wanting (anticipating) versus wanting more (enjoying).
• In both instances pleasure comes before desire, it just happens that in spontaneous desire is hasn’t actually happened yet, whereas in responsive desire, it has.

I think that if you experience sexual pleasure and want more of it with a particular person then that it is sexual attraction.

• In the same vein, if you don’t experience sexual pleasure, then it makes sense to say that you don’t experience sexual desire and that it follows that you are A-Spec/asexual.
  • I think it is important to note that the number of people who do not experience sexual pleasure of any kind is quite low, but at the same time, we should expect them to be overrepresented in A-Spec spaces compared to the world at large.
• I think that a more pleasure-centric view of sexual attraction can help assist introspection, especially those in which are trying to figure out if they are asexual.

A Pleasure-Centric View of Sexual Attraction

“attraction has two main components: the desire and how it is targeted (if at all)” Ways of Being A-Spec

A pleasure-centric view would look for desire for pleasure, when it comes about, and who it is targeted toward.

• If you’re generally interested in sex but it only starts to occur with people you are emotionally connected with, you’re probably demisexual.
• If you’re interested in sex but the people seem kind of interchangeable, then you might be asexual (but sex-seeking).
  • Sexual inclination spectrum

If you’re not sure about if you want sexual pleasure, this is not a suggestion to go out and try having sex to see what happens.

• For one, this is harmful rhetoric that has been levied toward asexuals for forever.
  • While it can help to explore your asexuality, there are plenty of introspective activities that can help you understand your own ideas in relation to sex.
    • Sex is something that is socially constructed and thus your concepts are mediated by your upbringing and internalization of social concepts.
• Additionally, sexual pleasure is mental and is usually not helped by taking a clinical approach and/or coming from a place of anxiety.