Kinda went off the rails here and took far too long to write so maybe outdated...will still post it...
*Entering Science Mode*
Silvanus said:
KingsGambit said:
Asexuals are not a minority, they're people with an issue (either psychological or physiological). And observing healthy humans and animals is evidence enough that asexuality isn't normal or healthy. Healthy humans and animals upon reaching adulthood desire sex. Not all the time, and libidos do vary, but there is a drive; hormones and evolution drive it. I'm not impolite, I'm stating an opinion which may be politically incorrect.
My problem is that is is baseless, not that it's politically incorrect. These are just claims. "Observing healthy humans and animals" is not supportive evidence; all I need point out is that some humans do not desire sex, and live perfectly happy lives.
Provide some actual evidence.
To be entirely fair, Miller has argumented similarly noting in a paper [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1001836320541],
Miller said:
It is fairly easy to imagine how asexuality could occur (the complicated mechanisms needed to recognize potential mates and be attracted to them need merely have a critical link broken by a mutation). Since there may be a certain irreducible number of errors in the sexual attraction process, a certain amount of asexuality could easily be explained. However, attraction to the same sex is harder to imagine evolving from scratch.
...in an effort to introduce a model to explain homosexuality as emerging in a qualitatively different way.
As such, I don't think the assumption that asexuality may hail from broken mechanisms of attraction is that much of a faulty one to make. Of course that does not imply that the condition in itself demands treatment or should be pathologized in general. When it comes to sexuality, the scientific modelling with regards to origin, emergence and the like should always be distinguished from social-normative or medical aspects.
rcs619 said:
Asexuality implies that you aren't interested in sex at all. Unless you have a legitimate medical or psychological issue, that just
isn't possible.
[Citation Needed]
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Now as for the issue of labeling that many people have objected to, with regards to sexuality: it is true that sexuality is damn complicated and all models and labels we have look mostly like guesswork. However, that does not mean that the labels by themselves are stupid. For one, science (and, yes, this goes for both social and natural sciences) is always concerned with the proper definition and categorization of things. Give something the right label, represent it in a certain way or simply interpret it with a certain term and suddenly what the nature of what you look at becomes clear or how the problem you are dealing with is solved. In physics that may be just rewriting second quantized fermionic operators as Boson operators that yield far better results in the low-energy regime implying that low-lying excitations are bosonic in nature. In political science that may be describing riots in some some state within a Marxist description that makes hell-of-a-lot more sense given that the state you are looking at features strong socio-economic class differences. Or it may be Philosophy where you need to carefully define the word "freedom" or "liberty" when you try to investigate the question of determinism.
All that features a careful categorization, description and interpretation of the data present i.e. a useful, problem-oriented application of labels. That is why I don't think that sexuality should be exempt from this i.e. that science should use and develop these kinds of categorizations and models for sexual interests in an effort to understand it, too. Calls to not label or model at all either because of the complexity of the matter or fear of pathologization are, while reasonable, not useful to develop further understanding of the matter or to solve its related problems. That the labels brought forth in this thread seem contradictory, are far too many and are sometimes dubious at best, just exemplifies how much research still needs to be done to assess this absurd dimension that is human sexuality.
However, that much for the scientific look at it: what most people complain about here is not the science but the political and psychological dimension inherent in it and that, as mentioned, I think should be kept separate from the scientific modelling prescription. The reason why this thread exists, why the asexual-flags shown exist and, to a degree, why the labels by themselves exist is in an effort to depathologize the condition and extend a hand to those having it. It shows people who are confused by their own sexuality a way to understand what it is about and to, rather obviously, supply them with a peer-group with which they can identify. And from that point alone the labels here are useful as they help people who suffer because they cannot make sense of what they feel and/or who always feel broken when, say, people constantly imply that they have to have a proper relationship to be happy or give them awkward looks when they state to not having had sex.
But that also highlights why the whole affair is problematic: labels have a normative quality and people tend to try and make things fit to them, especially when such constitutes a trait that defines different groups of people. Such a trait may be that a person has to have sex to be normal or it may be having a hearing-impairment [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant#Criticism_and_Controversy]. Both is seen as an aspirational quantity that people obsess over in an effort to define themselves and fit in with their perceived peer-group. And that is very much a real danger inherent in these labels in that they create boundaries between people which may not be relevant at all and through the arcane ways of society may result in far more pronounced perceived differences even to the point where medical intervention for a benign, harmless condition may be decided upon because it is seen as abnormal or even scientific inquiry and categorization is enslaved to promote group-thinking.
Case in point, an example hailing from a recent thread of mine [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.856277-Fetishes-and-Dysphoria-How-far-may-people-go-to-change-their-own-bodies] about autogynephilia which for the sake of this thread shall be identified as a paraphilia in which a man gets horny when imagining oneself as a woman. The existence of this paraphilia sparked some research and also one particularly interesting idea of categorization: autogynephilia seen as an an example of an Erotic Targeting Location Error (ETLE) which basically represents a relocation of the object of attraction upon oneself, as in the case here where a heterosexual man imagines oneself as a (or even the) woman he is attracted to. According to a paper by Lawrence [http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490902747727], this categorization can then also be extended to various paraphilic interests and behaviours like paraphilic infantilism as an ETLE of pedophilia or paraphilic fursuiting as an ETLE of zoophilia; Now as Moser correctly points out [http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490902747727] that categorization, and the idea of it as an "error" is, while interesting, problematic from a medical and normative aspect: for instance, does this mean that somebody who has a diaper-fetish is, in fact, a pedophile and should seek therapy? Or that fursuiting furrys should finally enter the relationships with their pets they obviously want? It pathologizes behaviours that are benign, may make the people suffering from it even more confused and supplies normative cannon-fodder for those parts of the society that want their majority group to dictate everyones behaviour in the bedroom to the dismay of those that don't fit in.
Now as I kinda lost track of what I wanted to write I'll close this WoT with what I think should be taken into account before we criticze what happens in threads such as this: we need to realize that society pushes people to what is perceived to be normal for which these labels provide a good counterpoint and to remind others that normal does not mean "it should be so". However, so do not the labels either and obsessing over them, using them as a way to be different or to having to necessarily fit is also not that useful. Still, for what it's worth this thread is a good reminder of how complicated a thing such as asexuality can be and ,despite assertions to the contrary (an SJW thread, seriously?), provides some useful insight into the matter.
