A Life Without Sex: The Third Phase of the Asexuality Movement

[Gustaf]

Asexual is not a mental illness, and the very fact that you would go there is emblematic of the way asexuals are excluded, rendered invisible, and otherwise marginalized by sexuals.

No, I didn't exclude them.  Sick people are very much 'with us', and can be quite visible as long as they're ambulatory or functional - in point of fact when they go on killing sprees they become quite the center of attention. 

True, they're 'on the margin', but after all, isn't it true that the vast majority of people have a working gonad and a brain connected to it?

Why would that entail sickness on the part of the minority? It's an entirely benign sickness at worse, and hence not in the conventional sense a sickness at all.

Benign? A life without sexual compulsions is missing a very necessary ingredient that drives intimate relationships. Legitimate asexuality presumably has pretty negative psychological consequences that cause you to be on the margins of society and never reaching full self-actualization.

I couldn't imagine living without a sexual drive. Maybe in some ways it could be beneficial but it's too foreign a concept for me and it's at the center of the human experience.

What about procreating, raising children, etc?

Just because you can't imagine a lifestyle doesn't make it justified to condemn it.

[Gustaf]

Asexual is not a mental illness, and the very fact that you would go there is emblematic of the way asexuals are excluded, rendered invisible, and otherwise marginalized by sexuals.

No, I didn't exclude them.  Sick people are very much 'with us', and can be quite visible as long as they're ambulatory or functional - in point of fact when they go on killing sprees they become quite the center of attention.  

True, they're 'on the margin', but after all, isn't it true that the vast majority of people have a working gonad and a brain connected to it?

Why would that entail sickness on the part of the minority? It's an entirely benign sickness at worse, and hence not in the conventional sense a sickness at all.

Benign? A life without sexual compulsions is missing a very necessary ingredient that drives intimate relationships. Legitimate asexuality presumably has pretty negative psychological consequences that cause you to be on the margins of society and never reaching full self-actualization.

I couldn't imagine living without a sexual drive. Maybe in some ways it could be beneficial but it's too foreign a concept for me and it's at the center of the human experience.

What about procreating, raising children, etc?

Just because you can't imagine a lifestyle doesn't make it justified to condemn it.

That's fair but I see there being significant difficulties finding a partner who simply wants to raise children and has only a romantic interest. I see that being tough to overcome.

That's fair. I wasn't trying to condemn it so much as I wanted to say that asexuality seems detrimental psychologically as long as society isn't understanding of it. I'd say the same of homosexuality.

I think you misunderstand me. I meant that many people would view things like raising children  as being at the centre of the human experience. Yet, a fair share don't want to or can't. And of course gay people are precluded from doing so, at least in the standard way. Yet, few would say that all such people are psychologically damaged.

I'll admit that I don't get asexuality. At the same time, I don't really care how people live their lives.

[Gustaf]

not all asexuals are celibate. Some do engage in sex for social reasons.

How do they get *cough* erect in the case of men or naturally lubricated in the case of women *cough* if there is no sexual desire?

Somebody had to ask...

Don't know about men, but women easily get lubricated without feeling particularly horny.  Many women, for example, become lubricated as a result of watching pornography in spite of not reporting a strong desire for sex.

Since you don't know I'd like to take this opportunity to inform you that men do not become easily lubricated without sexual desire.

Anyway, I'd like to point that there are evolutionary theories saying that for a species like humans working in a group it CAN, theoretically, be beneficial for the group's survival to have individual members who devote their time to group-beneficial activities rather than caring for their own children.

Essentially, that was the reason why celibacy has been encouraged in certain contexts throughout history.

[Gustaf]

To turn the nail on its head, do you also approve of anorexia?  Tis the same sort of disorder, pal.

How? You need to eat for your body to continue functioning.
r matter.

I don't think it is helpful to define mental illness as only involving that which causes the body to cease functioning.  You might stand all day in the highway median screaming at traffic with magic marker eyebrows and a toilet seat round your neck and after all this would not cause the body to cease functioning.

"Cause the body to cease functioning" seems like the wrong formulation. Rather, I'd use something like "being able to live in society"

Someone who stands all day screaming at traffic, etc would not be able to provide for themselves and would be apprehended by the authorities for disorderly behaviour. So it's not a lifestyle which is sustainable, just like being anorectic. Being asexual is though.