Witchvox Article

Author: Vetch
Posted: April 1st. 2007
Times Viewed: 2,839

Now, I’ve read some interesting things in my inbox just lately, courtesy of someone who finds me controversial, and I felt I should probably clear things up and get my second greatest secret out in the public sphere (the first being that I’m a Pagan, of course, the heretic in my Christian community.) Would you like to know what that is?

Well, I believe there are four types of sexuality, each as valid as the next. The first is plain old heterosexuality, which makes up the majority of people’s orientation.

The second is homosexuality, gay or lesbian, which is the natural persuasion of less people but is actually pretty mainstream today.

The third is bisexuality, and I don’t know any statistics about it, but I’m willing to admit I think there are less people who love that way than the first two, but still a substantial amount.

And then we reach the fourth sexuality, which is mine, and probably the most rare – maybe 1 or 2% of the population – asexuality.

What is that? I hear some people saying. Well, I’ll tell you – it’s the state of being where a person lacks sexual attraction, finds sexual behavior unappealing to them, has no sexual attraction to either gender and no desire to have sex like other people do. Because of its rarity, little investigation has actually been done about it, and psychological theories abound that it’s an indicator of sexual repression of one of the other sexualities, abuse, ‘sublimation of sexuality for religious, personal or cultural reasons’ according to Wikipedia, or just not meeting the person they hit it off with.

I, however, think it is an orientation, along with most self-defined asexuals, because it doesn’t cause me any particular upset or anxiety (now that I know what it is) so it shouldn’t be classed as a disorder or as a sexual dysfunction. As long as I can remember, I have never been attracted to men or to women, have had no interest in having sex and little to no sexual desire, and found the whole agonizing of my female peers as vaguely disquieting because I found it silly that they got so distressed over the subject of dating and crushes. The few classmates who asked me about why I didn’t like boys probably did so out of fear I might be a lesbian, and certainly some of my male peers thought so.

AVEN, the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, classifies asexuals as type A (sex drive but no romantic attraction); type B (no sex drive but romantic attraction); or type C (neither). They no longer use this system because it feels exclusive, but for me it’s worth an explanation to myself at least that I fall into one of the latter two categories, and I just haven’t met anyone I feel romantic about that would help me distinguish better.

I get the feeling that whilst Christians are quick to condemn the gay community, they might also consider objecting to me because heterosexuality is the ‘natural order’ and because it’s not my orientation and I’ve no desire to procreate they’d find that objectionable. And what about Paganism – here we say sex is sacred, don’t we? So what does the community make of someone who doesn’t need anything to do with it? I have no idea.

My personal explanation for this curious state of mine is this – I believe that I have been reincarnated many times from previous lives, enough that this might be my penultimate or last incarnation before I retire permanently to the Summerlands. Consequently, as an old soul, I have been both genders before and probably all the sexualities down the ages I have lived. This has probably led to my becoming disconnected from my first, ‘original’ gender and the one that I exist in presently, in a female body.

I can’t really say that I care for the trappings of belonging to either gender, and I would have much preferred to stay in the Summerlands if I could, but apparently I’ve still got things to learn, people to annoy, and small changes to implement. Time for some past-life regression, I think, so I know who I used to be.

It explains a lot. It explains why I can’t identify specifically with either gender, have some personality and behavioral characteristics of both, and how I feel capable of taking both sides and neither in the great battle of the sexes. For example, I can understand the frustrations of the men who feel sidelines by extreme feminism and its effects today of female masculinization and male emasculation, and the women who feel that patriarchal society deeply owes them for all the suffering it has inflicted on them. I can afford to be impartial and biased about both, because I’m not either.

Confusing? Now imagine how I feel – it’s taken me a long while to find out what my sexuality actually is, and having put up with the torments of my peers calling me weird and a lesbian for not liking boys (disregarding that I didn’t date girls either). Being asexual, androgynous and a druid in my community is not necessarily the way to get by. It would, however, explain my latent distaste for being forced into a body that makes me automatically a sex object for my objectionable male peers, whose brains haven’t caught up yet.

In the past, asexuality has been considered a sacred form of sexuality, being a desirable state in which a person is free of all base desires. However, this isn’t compatible with the Pagan worldview, which accepts sex as a natural product of the human state. I’m not sure where I fit in to anything, and obviously my relationships with other people are likely to be awkward as I get older.

Supposing, for example, I meet someone I want to spend the rest of my life with but don’t want to sleep with; after all, considering the size of the asexual community, it is highly unlikely that I will end up with someone who completely understands my bizarre sexuality, so they might find it distressing that it’s a part of our relationship that would never be fulfilled.

In light of that, I can understand the distress of people born into the wrong bodies for their soul’s chosen gender, and am glad that I’ve forgotten what I used to be myself.

Footnotes:
Wikipedia, AVEN, and whatever else I've read upon the subject. Who knows?

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Vetch

Location: Tunbridge Wells, England

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