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I like Holly Math Nerd, but she's got... some issues (as she readily admits). She insists that the number of women who enjoy sex for sex's sake and will not be damaged by having sex without an emotional bond is nearly an empty set. I... have enough experience to believe that is not the case. I absolutely believe Women Are Different and that most women need/desire an emotional bond in a way men generally do not. But there totally are women who enjoy being sluts, and I don't think that number is so very small (though they may come to regret the physical and social costs of their behavior later).
"Demisexual" is a stupid term, and especially stupid to lump under the anything-but-boring-straight rainbow umbrella, but it's not a universal descriptor for a "normal" woman.
Tangentially (and fitting my theme of Literary Snobbery), a while ago we had some Discourse about Tony Tulathimutte's The Feminist. I just got done reading his complete collection, Rejection. It's very good, though very Online and Of The Moment. The first story is The Feminist, but the second story is basically a gender-reversed version, with a female incel who goes completely off the rails after an ill-fated one-night stand with her best friend. I think the whole collection is fun reading, and rich Culture War fodder. Tulathimutte, being a Thai-American Stanford grad and feted Literary Author, both capitalizes on and leans into/satirizes every stereotype and assumption you are projecting onto him, in a much more clever and intellectual way than, say, Rebecca Kuang's entertaining but subtle-as-an-anvil-launched-by-catapult Yellowface.
"Demisexual" is a nearly perfect term for a "normal" woman to use, though; you just buried the lede as to why.
If it is in the interests of Most Women to assert a need for an emotional bond[1] before sex, but market conditions (where the marginal value of "seeing a woman naked" has dropped to zero, so it is simply an expectation that women offer sex to men up front rather than exchanging it for commitment as their biology and instincts are screaming at them to do) contradict that, then it is only natural that they'd seek to hide behind the framework of sexual identity as a bargaining tactic ("you should pay more because I'm Special, also other people will think you're lesser/bully you if you don't buy into my brand"[2]). Asexuality is used in the same way, by the same sorts of people, for much the same reason.
Furthermore, it is in Most Women's interest to deny that
liberatedwomen who aren't quite as encumbered exist, because from this socioeconomic standpoint, they function as strike-breakers in comparison to the emergent collective bargaining of Most Women (and it is beneficial at the margins since 'man's willingness to risk -> break pointless rules' is generally attractive to women in itself).It occurs to me that in a recently-established environment of equality we should expect mothers to [not necessarily intentionally] sabotage their sons romantically by failing to explicitly point out how and why female sexuality works. Uniquely, men are evolved to do this with their daughters with respect to male sexuality because up until about 150 years ago the inequality tilted that way- since this is a new requirement for women, an outsized proportion of mothers will fail to do this (and will then hide behind "social justice" as a means to escape blame for that failure).
[1] More cynically, this is "before the man has offered the desired price [in commitment] for the sex; the emotional bond is instinctual after that".
[2] Pair-bonding/dating is inherently a market negotiation; "all marriage is just prostitution" is the correct framing so long as you give prostitution a neutral moral valence (furthermore I assert that when people don't, it's also just basic instinct- a company seeks to protect its trade secrets, and both Men, Inc. and Women, Inc. don't like it when you reveal relationships follow market dynamics and/or resent being a slave to them).
I'd point out that a belief that "all women want sex, they just act coy about it" is going to get you straight into the old path of "no doesn't mean no, it just means she wants you to push harder to make her say yes" which will get you, and any young men you teach about 'what women really want', into trouble.
There are women who act coy about it. There are also women who genuinely don't want sex, or not casual sex, or who don't experience "oh my god I'm so horny right now I need to jump on the first guy I see" at all. Asexuality is a genuine thing for both men and woman. Agreed, not everybody who claims the label, but we can say that about autism and ADHD and the rest of such self-diagnoses, which does not mean that autism is not a real condition.
Well, when you figure that one out, tell me because I've been a woman all my life and I'm damned if I can work out why some women do what they do when it comes to men. If you mean the simplistic model of "women want meat, men want sex, swap one for the other" good luck there honey. "Your meat is not good enough" - harsh truth or women just being bitches?
I suppose so, in the sense that both men and women can be paraplegic or born blind or whatever.
The ADHD comparison falls apart in that when someone claims to have ADHD they're trying to get the treatment for ADHD (meds, extra exam time) to get an advantage. People who claim to be asexual claim don't want to be treated for it at all.
There's a difference between people with low libido, who find this distressing and alienating to partners, and who want to have more sex and be more interested in sex, and so they seek treatment, and people who are asexual, happy about that, and don't want to change.
The self-diagnosed online types who have a laundry list of illnesses from the physical to mental, to prove what sensitive little flowers they are and how you cannot be mean to them at all, are the ones who may latch on to asexuality/demisexuality as another way to burnish their resumés, as it were: now I'm queer as well (if I can't manage to be trans or gay or lesbian or bi) so if you say anything at all that I disagree with, I can now accuse you of homophobia as well as the rest of the list of your crimes against the differently abled.
I disagree that the second group of people exist, or should exist. Lacking a libido isn't a natural and full category of human, it's a moral, emotional, and physical cripple incapable of basic human functioning. Extremely low libido should be distressing and will always be alienating to partners, it isn't an "identity" that society should be acknowledging as a point of negotiation.
"Wifely" or "Husbandly" duties are a basic part of marriage, sexuality is a basic part of humanity.
We need to reject these kinds of ideas root and branch, they are essentially anti-human.
See, here is where our opinions sharply diverge. I don't want to fucky-fucky like a rabbit in spring? Well gosh, then I'm not a real human! Asexuality does not mean incapacity to have emotional and relational bonds with others, it just means 'no sex'. It doesn't even mean 'no romantic love', that's aromanticism!
Taking a look at the news pages about the people who do experience sexual arousal and so are not 'moral, emotional and physical cripples incapable of basic human functioning', what do I see about these paragons who have the fullness of erotic desire?
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio/2025/05/14/fred-and-rose-west-a-british-horror-story-review-a-chilling-gaze-into-a-monstrous-soulless-void/
Serial killer couple from decades past. They were in love and sexually functional, you know!
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39x1ggj3e3o
Man murders his daughter by deliberately running over her. If he had a wife and family, he had normal sexual and romantic human relationships, unlike those soulless asexuals!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/14/prison-officer-came-in-on-days-off-to-have-sex-with-rapist/
Female prison officer attempted to get pregnant by convict. They're so in love, your honour! Okay, the guy is a convicted rapist, but that just means he is so overflowing with normal human attraction to potential sexual partners that he shares the love vigorously!
I can find a lot of stories of that type, if we want to argue about moral cripples.
Dude that's not even "Hitler was a vegetarian!"
This is like saying "Hitler had legs."
Hitler certainly fucked.
People who don't have the full range of human emotions and experiences are cripples. That doesn't make them morally bad people, sure, but it's wrong to pretend they aren't cripples. Being deaf is substantively worse than not being deaf, and deaf "activists" who want to lobby against cochlear implants are insane.
It's also wrong to say that people who don't experience X the way other people do are non-functional.
I can be perfectly functional doing my job where I have to take needs and wants into account, without having the desire to fuck the clients (in this particular job, that would be Extremely Problematic if I did, given the age-ranges involved).
"People who don't experience sexual desire are non-functional" is not the smackdown argument you present it as, given the steaming mess that sexual desire leads a lot of "normal, functional, non-cripple" people into. Maybe dialling down the instinct to "me horny me gotta fuck" might, in fact, be a benefit for society? If it stops teachers sexually assaulting eleven year olds, for one instance?
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