Let's Talk About Demisexuality

CW: acephobia (in general but also specifically targeting demisexuality), discussions of sex (vaguely, of course, mostly just refrencing ideas), crude language (only a little, not from me)

“This works off of the idea of primary attraction and secondary attraction. Primary attraction is attraction to people based on first impressions, such as appearance or how they smell. Secondary attraction is attraction to people that develops over time, and forms out of the relationship one has with a person, and their emotional connection. This can be applied to both romantic attraction and sexual attraction.” (GLAAD)

It’s always exhausting to be ace in online spaces, but it was particularly awful this past week. So awful that I am working outside of my normal posting schedule to say this. I really like my regularly scheduled post for tomorrow, but it was really important to me that I got this out first. And I did had to let myself have some space from the situation before really committing to sitting down and looking at it, but I’m ready to explain it all now.

On June 4, Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo came out as queer on social media. Personally, I didn’t hear about this at all until recently -- July 5 -- when articles began popping up talking about how she clarified that she identifies as demisexual. Honestly, I’m super happy for her; it’s always wonderful when someone is able to embrace their aspec identity, and it’s no different for Michaela. This, of course, was not the case for a lot of people on the Internet. I wish I could brush this off as just a bunch of homophobic conservatives, but it’s not -- this kind of stuff came from multiple corners of the Internet. Warning for language in some of the tweets.

Unfortunately, Michaela’s coming out began a huge increase in acephobic content specifically targeting demisexuality -- and more importantly, big profiles were going after demisexual people. Personally, as an ace person, I wasn't being attacked for my sexuality, but someone whose content I really respect was. And even if they weren't, demi people are apart of the community, so it all feels a little personal. If I was exhausted and frustrated as an asexual person, and I know demi people had to have been feeling even worse. Since I have this tiny platform of mine, I figured this would be a great time to do just a little spotlight on demisexuality to help clear up a lot of the misconceptions I’ve been seeing go around recently.

Demisexuality is defined as not experiencing sexual attraction unless there is an emotional connection with someone. It falls somewhere on the spectrum “between” asexuality and allosexuality (hence the prefix) because a demi person does experience sexual attraction (allo) but it’s in very specific circumstances (ace). I’ve also heard demisexuality described as “asexual until proven otherwise.” If you’ve read through all my blog posts, you might remember me talking about demisexuality before in the post where I describe my own asexual experience:

"I remember one conversation I had with my mom after I discovered the demisexual label. I said it was weird how that was a label because "isn't that just what everyone experiences?" Now, please understand that I know this is an incredibly ignorant viewpoint, and demisexuality is completely valid. But honestly, I just didn’t believe sexual attraction was a thing, so I was assuming nobody felt it unless they already had an emotional connection to someone. Spoiler alert: no, that’s not normal."

What I expressed in this paragraph is a very common thought that people have when they hear about demisexuality: “But isn’t that what everyone thinks?” Of course, as I said before, my angle on this statement was not believing that sexual attraction was real and assuming that it would make sense once I had a boyfriend (clearly it did not, and here we are). But for most people, this thought actually is indicating one of two things:

1. They’re trying to say that “only wanting to have sex with people you’re close to isn’t special.”

2. The person is actually demi themselves and is unaware that no, allo people don’t experience sexual attraction like that. Hey, it happens to the best of us.

Anyway, this is where we must once again clarify the difference between sexual desire and sexual attraction. Disclaimer: I’m ace, I don’t really know what sexual attraction is, so bare with me. Sexual attraction refers to the feelings that you feel when you see an attractive person. Beyond just recognizing that they are attractive, you have the added thought of sex. Sexual desire refers to the actual motivation to engage in sex. Sexual desire is different than sexual attraction for everyone -- someone can desire sex without being attracted to anyone at that specific moment. Alternatively, an allo person can be sexually attracted to someone without actually wanting to engage in sexual activity with them.

There are plenty of allo people out there who choose to not have sex with someone unless they are really close. I mean, there’s a whole subsection of Christianity that is centered around the idea of "waiting for marriage." Plenty of people dislike hookup culture and want to limit the amount of people they sleep with. These people, while perfectly valid in their preferences, are not (inherently) demisexual. A Christian who chooses to save themselves for marriage may still be sexually attracted to their partner from the beginning while choosing to avoid sex itself. A demisexual person does not experience that kind of attraction at all until there is an emotional bond formed. To reference an alternative definition earlier, a demi person might live for years believing themselves to be ace before finding out that they’re actually demi.

Like asexual people, demisexual people may choose to have sex regardless of their attraction to another person. I am not demi, so I don’t think I can discuss the boundaries as well. That’s up to the demi person to determine, not for me to define. The point I want to emphasize is that the choice to have sex is independent from the presence of attraction. You can reference posts I've made in the past to understand some general ace feelings towards sex.

A lot of the aphobia we see in the tweets made in response to Michaela’s coming out are due to intentional ignorance about what demisexuality actually is. Despite many aspec people/activists trying to provide the definition for demisexuality, all these people were hearing was “not having sex until you know the person.” Therefore demisexuality was deemed as “people trying to make themselves special for not liking hook-up culture,” “people trying to make themselves queer for just being normal,” and my least favorite, “just coming out as a girl.” There were a lot of back and forth discussions (well, okay, they were just arguments) of people trying to educate the masses on demisexuality while everyone refused to actually hear our words. One person even tried to tell me (me!) that demi is not an aspect of asexuality, and to suggest so was -- and I quote -- "patently absurd and only a ideologue would truly believe such an absolute."

Yes, someone actually used the phrase "patently absurd" to someone on Twitter who was explaining her own community. I blocked him now, but what kind of audacity did this guy have to tell ace people they don't understand the asexual spectrum?

Anyway, no, demisexual people are not just trying to make themselves special. They're not "just normal" or prudes or anti-hookup culture. It's not a cry for attention, and it's not just women being women (as a side note, that argument is soaked in misogyny; I don't have time to get into it but maybe we should avoid classifying all "normal" women the same way?). Most importantly, though, demisexuality works outside of heteronormative expectations of identity/relationships, just like asexuality does.

I can cover the basics of what demisexuality is, but if you want to hear more indepth thoughts, I recommend checking out Elle Rose's blog (CLICK HERE!). They advocate for a variety of topics, but recently she has been doing a lot of work to try to educate people on demisexuality. I love their content and have a whole lot of respect for her, so if you want to learn more, you should go support them.

You cannot support asexuality without also supporting the rest of our community, which means respecting other acespec identities. As depicted in our flag, the ace community is such a huge spectrum of identities, and it's pointless to try to force every acespec person into one narrow understanding of asexuality. I'm not saying you have to be an expert on every new label that you see (there are some that I still don't really know yet), but a lack of understanding doesn't give you the right to determine an identity's validity or existence. All we ask is for you to make an effort to not perpetuate aphobia, and support aspec people. And if you've made it this far, know that I appreciate you.

From Yours Truly,

Kendall