Anonymous asked:
Basically I don’t think it’s a great word or a great identity category.
I think having the concepts of gay, straight, and bi are pretty good. (I know some people disagree with me on this.) But like, which gender you’re attracted to is kind of important and has a big effect on your life. And it’s a pretty discrete thing; I think most people are pretty much totally straight, and a lot of those who aren’t are pretty much totally gay.
I don’t think the same is true for ~demisexuality~. I don’t think it’s very important; like, the only time it ever comes up is when my friends and I are talking about our sexualities or comparing our internal experiences of attraction or whatever.
And I don’t think that demisexual/non-demisexual divide the world into really natural discrete categories. It’s more spectrumy: the definition of demisexuality I usually see is something like “doesn’t feel physically attracted to people they don’t know well/aren’t emotionally close to” and when I hear that I’m just like “… how attracted? how well? how close?” (One time I fantasized about kissing someone after having only two conversations with him and spending a lot of time reading things online that he wrote ten years ago. Does that make me a Fake Demisexual? Who knows?)
And it just tends to conflate a lot of things like how often you’re attracted to people, whether your attraction is more based on looks or other factors, the role emotional comfort and reciprocation play in your attraction, whether you’re interested in having casual sex, etc.
It’s like calling yourself “brunettesexual” because you’re primarily attracted to people with brown hair. Like, this is clearly not a natural category, and you know creating the word will just lead to identity politics fighting somehow. Also, no one cares.
Also, the actual word sounds like it means what gray-ace actually means, which is just confusing. And apparently someone has decided demisexuality is on the asexual spectrum? which I totally don’t get, like, if your asexual spectrum includes me I think you’re doing something wrong.
But anyway, I’ve recently decided taking a stand against the word is futile and using it does seem to make people go “oh, okay” when we’re having a conversation about this stuff. So feel free to use it to refer to me.