Hello and welcome back! I've now done a couple of interviews with people who are
allo - who don't identify as asexual - and one thing that's come up both times
is the misconception that there's no,
sort of, sexual aspect to an asexual's life. And
I don't think this is true in general. It can be true for certain people who
identify as asexual, but it isn't for everyone. And
one big reason why people might think this is because they
conflate libido with sexual attraction. And
so I would like to spend this video explaining
what I see is the difference between the two.
So let's start with libido. Libido is defined as your sex
drive or your desire for sexual activity. People can have either a high or a low
libido. Someone who has a low libido wouldn't
have that drive for sexual activity often. Whereas someone with a high libido might
frequently or even daily have a desire for some sort of sexual
activity. Libido doesn't have a direction so it's
just an innate
urge to do something sexual. It's often compared to an itch that you
might want to scratch. It's definitely something
completely physical, and it's there... we have a libido
because it gives us as a species an incentive
to have sex and to reproduce. But it doesn't necessarily need to be
satisfied through sexual intercourse.
You can satisfy your libido by masturbating
or by having
forms of sexual activity which aren't
meant for reproduction. I've seen the analogy
between sex and food used. So a libido would be your hunger. So
you might be hungry but that doesn't mean you're necessarily craving any food
in particular. It's just a physical
need. It's worth noting that sex isn't a need in the same way as food, drink, and
sleep are. It's not necessary to survive,
but it is important to a lot of people. So the last point i wanted to go over
in terms of libido is that asexuals - people are identified as asexual - can
have a libido. This can range, like with anyone else,
from a low to high libido. so asexuals might
just be able to ignore it and go about their day,
and never think, really, to any extent about their libido. But on the other hand,
some asexuals may have a really high libido.
And they may want to satisfy that libido through masturbation.
Alternatively, they might do it through sex
You can be asexual, not feeling sexual attraction,
but still satisfy libido through sex. Basically the point I want to stress is
that the body, the physical body of someone who
identifies as asexual, or on the ace spectrum, functionally works
the same as anyone else's. You wouldn't say that
gay people's bodies work completely differently to straight
people's bodies. They're the same thing but
what the difference is is sexual attraction and your orientation
is a mental thing as opposed to a physical thing.
And that leads us rather nicely onto sexual attraction.
Sexual attraction is the desire to have sex or do sexual things with someone.
So the clear difference here is that it has a target.
Where libido is directionless - it is just a drive for
some sexual activity - sexual attraction is a desire to be with that person
or a desire to be with that gender in general.
So whereas your libido, kind of, determines the strength
of your sexual drive, the sexual attraction determines who
it is... or whom it is directed towards. You can be for example
heterosexual but have a really low libido,
and at the same time you can be asexual have a really high libido.
But also, I want to make clear that i'm not saying
that sexual attraction isn't innate to a person.
It is but in a different way to libido is.
It's something that you're born with, it's something you can't
change intentionally - it might change due to the fluidity of
sexuality - but it's not a choice. Sexual attraction,
sexual orientation is still an innate drive that you
have. It's just mental as opposed to physical. So going back to
our food analogy, sexual attraction might be wanting a
specific thing. So this
helps if we stay with the food analogy with hunger,
because hunger is libido. You can be hungry but not want anything in
particular. And conversely you can want a particular
food, but not be hungry. So you don't
necessarily need to have that drive to want to have
sex with someone. So I might want to eat a chocolate cake
but I might not be hungry. So people who identify as asexual do not
feel sexual attraction, so they don't want to have sex with
people innately. There might be other reasons
why they might have sex. So it might be to please a partner or
it might be because they have that libido and they want to
satisfy. And they're in a relationship and they don't mind sex, so maybe they
think "Okay, I'm going to have sex because my partner wants it. I want to do
something sexual, that could be masturbation or sex, and
since we both kind of want it in some way,
let's do sex." Obviously, that line of thinking won't
work for everyone but it is a reason
why some aces might want to have sex. Yeah, so that was a quick
overview of my thoughts about libido and sexual attraction.
How they're different. Let me know what you think. Do you think
that this was good video? Do you have any comments
about it? Do you think there's something I said wrong?
Are there any suggestions for future videos which you would like me to
make? If you enjoyed this video, then please
leave a like. I post videos every Saturday, so if you want to see more then
feel free to subscribe. That is all I had to say today, have a
wonderful day, and I will see you next time.