it was an interesting article.
Also raises the q of what sexual desire actually is, given that it can be projected onto almost anything (ie anything can be a fetish). And so does being asexual mean lacking that ability or wish to project?
I don't think asexuality can be reduced to a tendency not to fetishize. A fetish is the sexualisation of something that's not inherently sexual, isn't it? If you're just attracted to someone because, er, you find them attractive, that's not a fetish, as I understand the term.
well, the idea is that everything is a possible fetish, that nothing is inherently sexual (or not inherently sexual, depending on how you look at it, i guess).
I think whoever said that might have been talking out of their (no doubt highly fetishised) ringpiece.
Well yeah but if you fancy someone just because you think they're hot that's different from being massively obsessed with feet (or even tits, or whatever). I don't think fetishism is a precondition for sexual attraction, anyway.
Human sexual activities or human sexual practices or human sexual behavior refers to the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality. People engage in a variety of sexual acts from time to time, and for a wide variety of reasons. Sexual activity normally results in sexual arousal and physiological changes in the aroused person, some of which are pronounced while others are more subtle. Sexual activity also includes conduct and activities which are intended to arouse the sexual interest of another, such as strategies to find or attract partners (mating and display behavior), and personal interactions between individuals, such as flirting and foreplay.
why? there's nothing that sex is necessarily about, other than some kind of exercise of libidinal energy (insert any less wanky term you like). it's (obv) not definitively about procreation, it's not about anything you can pin down very easily (which is totally consistent with the fact that for a lot of people it represents the same/very similar things, or at least seems to).
Fair enough, but I would say that sex organs themselves are inherently sexual - I mean, that's what they're actually for - in a way that feet, say, are not. Yes some people have a foot 'thing', it's one of the commoner fetishes AFAIK, but for most of us they're a means of getting around the place rather than getting off. Whereas for the vast, vast majority of people, 'sexual activity' will at some point involve a man's outy bits and/or a woman's inny bits. Even foot nuts probably don't just rub their feet against someone else's feet (I should imagine!).
genitals are involved because they're so bound up with pleasure (clitoris particularly good example cos pleasure is its only function), but the object of sexual pleasure/arousal is far less defined. If it was just about genitals, anyone would fuck anyone/anything in any state as long as it had a vagina/penis (i know this is some people's sexual direction, but you know what i mean!).
research shows there is no gender split; men and women are equally likely to be asexual. However, asexual men are much more likely to masturbate than asexual women; as likely, it would seem, as men with "normal" sex drives, suggesting that they are responding to a physical imperative. When Brotto conducted an experiment to measure the vaginal reactions of female participants to visual sexual stimulus, the physical reactions among asexual women were the same as that of women who report an otherwise "normal" sex drive. Brotto also says there is nothing to suggest that asexual people are any more or less likely to have suffered childhood abuse than anyone else.
Also porn and many other societal representations of sex are massively interesting here in the way that they actually shape people's desires.
Suppose this all connects with the idea that sexuality is not innate, but a consequence of things within oneself and one's history that can't simply be dismissed as genetic/'it just is'.
research shows there is no gender split; men and women are equally likely to be asexual. However, asexual men are much more likely to masturbate than asexual women; as likely, it would seem, as men with "normal" sex drives, suggesting that they are responding to a physical imperative.