Main Edition
US
FR
Living in fear (Getty)
For the ten years leading up to 2019, I was the author of a teen advice column, and my agony aunt inbox was often an early warning system for whatever youth-driven phenomenon was on its way down the cultural pike. This is why I knew what a “demisexual” was all the way back in 2013.
“I just heard about demisexuality a few days ago,” read the first letter I received on the topic. “When I read the description of it, I thought to myself ‘That is definitely me, wow!’”
For those not in the know, demisexuality refers to the state of not experiencing sexual attraction or desire without a strong emotional bond. The term originated on a role-playing forum back in the early Noughties, where a teenage girl assigned it to one of her fictional characters. But after it migrated onto Tumblr in 2011, it was adopted in earnest by extremely young and terminally online users who collected identity markers like they were baseball cards. Outside Tumblr, the reaction was largely sceptical; as many a snarky commenter pointed out in the moment, the whole idea of demisexuality also described the normal sexual experience of, if not everyone, then an awful lot of people, most of whom never felt the need or desire to append a label to their sexual preferences. The delighted self-discovery of the teen who wrote the aforementioned letter was only slightly tempered by this concern: “[Some] people are saying it’s people trying to be ‘special snowflakes’ by putting a label on this kind of attraction,” she wrote.
But if the whole thing seemed frankly silly and, okay, snowflakey, it also seemed pretty harmless. Gender and sexuality were just the latest lens through which young people were trying to understand their place in the world; “demisexuality” was to 2013 what being a little goth-curious was for a teen in 1995, more or less — except that with so much of life happening online, this identity was less about how you moved through the world than about finding just the right flag to affix to your social media profile. But unlike shopping at Claire’s Accessories, demisexuality didn’t stay a teenage conceit; a combination of creeping identitarianism in mainstream culture plus a general obsession with What The Youths Are Into eventually made the concept irresistible to adult millennial women.
“IT HAPPENED TO ME: I’m A Demisexual,” read the headline on a 2015 essay on the site XOJane, where the author boldly proclaimed that her inability to feel sexual attraction toward strangers made her “not quite heterosexual”.
The essay was met with a fair amount of ridicule, for all the obvious reasons — “they want to be oppressed so bad” was the unkind but not entirely untrue thrust of the critiques — but there was something about the way it lamented “the many struggles of living in such a sexually charged culture” that spoke to the anxieties of digital natives trying to navigate a post-sexual revolution dating scene. Hookup culture, dating apps, the endless sorting and filtering of potential suitors in a manner that resembled online shopping more than human connection: it’s no surprise that people struggling in this system jumped on a term, a hard-wired identity, that offered an explanation as to why. The young women who adopted a “demisexual” label as a means of opting out were less angry than their closest analogue, the young male incel, but both shared a sense that the system was broken. If male incels were made miserable by the spectre of the sex they wanted but could have, the demisexuals were perhaps equally tormented by the pressure to want, full stop.
Seven years after the XOJane essay, demisexuality remains a contested notion but also a far more visible one, in everything from beer marketing to dating guides, as with this recent dispatch from the dating app Hinge. A hypothetical demisexual dater asks, “What’s the best way to set expectations around waiting to get sexual?”, prompting a supportive but altogether unintelligible response from the app’s resident therapist that is short on actionable information and long on inscrutable axioms like: “Boundaries are bridges, not fences.” (Are they, though?)
Demisexual visibility seems to have less to do with a grassroots shift in human sexuality, and more to do with its corporate profitability. In a world of identity-driven marketing, a massive piece of the pie awaited any advertiser who figured out how to make young, male-attracted women (the group that includes most demisexuals) feel special and seen — and, of course, not quite heterosexual, thus saving them from the curse of being just another basic cishet bitch.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe“if the whole thing seemed frankly silly and, okay, snowflakey, it also seemed pretty harmless.”
This could summarize how my generation went so wrong with so much of this stuff. We thought it was just ignorant college kids who were playing around with language and would grow up. They never did. And now they run the world.
I mentioned to my wife (a public school teacher) yesterday that I felt like the world has become a college faculty lounge. Her answer was that I had the wrong metaphor. “It’s not a faculty lounge; it’s as if the whole world became a high school campus and the mean girls are still in charge.” That captures it perfectly.
Demisexual is just a fancy word for women (before the sexual revolution). We’re so used to thinking that everybody is the same, and we use men as the barometer. Women generally don’t want to have sex with a complete stranger. Most men do. Women can find someone attractive after they get to know them. Men are either attracted or not within the first few seconds.
The young love to label things and categorize them. What they don’t realize is how the world actually works.
In the world of identity politics they may feel like they have no voice without a label like that. It’s the Balkanization of identity these days. Tribal identity.
Most men do not want to have sex with a complete stranger. Unless your experience of men has largely been US college jocks.
Most young lads want sex with anything and everything. It’s only when you get older and you get too lazy to chase it that (and much less likely to be successful) that it drops off
Well, there is considerable pressure on male teenagers to pretend that they’re like that, and, for sure, at that age, we all talked a good game. Away from the pack mentality, the inner reality is much more nuanced. The Inbetweeners TV series was quite good on this, as well as being very funny.
Nonsense. Most men may be attracted to someone very fit in a few seconds, but most men choose not to act on such impulses, because we’re adults with consciences and responsibilities. And women are exactly the same.
Is anyone out there happy? How did all the things that come naturally get so bent out of shape? It’s like the centipede being asked how he manages to walk with all those legs.
Yesterday while having lunch in a cafe in a mall in Bristol, I noticed sitting at another table a couple in their late 30’s having lunch with their son, who was 11 or 12. He was quiet and well-behaved and all three seemed pretty cheerful, which made a very nice change.
Well, most of the happy people are in committed relationships, have jobs, and responsibilities, and don’t bother posting their sexual angst online.
This is the best if most subtle comment I have read in a long time… Let’s hope we have more and more of such people, straight, gay, or otherwise but responsible adults indeed.
Boring, lovable, stable, trustable.
Salt of the earth.
When I was young, that was how you were supposed to be! Only people who live in a culture of compulsory promiscuity, fuelled by porn and internet dating, could think that there was anything wrong with it.
Interesting to note how (yet again) what women typically want gets idealized, whereas what men typically want gets demonized. Gone are the times when each gender would be honest enough to acknowledge that “what the other side wanted” was not that unpalatable and negotiation was not only viable, but the only way forward. Women are being left alone for a reason. Sad times indeed.
#1 You don’t speak for all men. Please don’t tell us “what men typically want”.
#2 Wants can be good or bad for society and they deserve to be treated differently depending on which they are.
Society has traditionally built rules and norms and institutions to encourage productive desires (e.g. forming a stable, committed relationship), and discourage destructive desires (e.g. fornication without relationship or responsibility).
The desire of some males to fornicate with abandon no different than any anti-social behavior. We encourage shopping, but discourage shoplifting. Unfortunately 60 years ago society lost its mind and forgot the wisdom of the ages.
#1 You don’t speak for all men.
Neither does you – most definitely.
The notion that it is you who will define what is correct/acceptable is at best laughable. Conflating the desire to fornicate (which incidentally made your own life possible…) with anti-social behavior portrays you as rather delusional.
I’m not speaking for all men; lots of men are selfish and shortsighted (as are lots of women). I’m speaking from the perspective of what is good for society. Rampant promiscuity, and the decline of stable committed couples, is bad for society.
The desire to have sex with some you love and are committed to is wonderful, and the basis for all society. The desire to have sex with some random person you just met, and will likely never see again is anti-social as well as short-sighted. The results, from STDs to single parenthood (and the negative effects on children) are bad for society. The resources (time, money, emotions) wasted searching for hookups could actually be invested in a stable relationship and make you better off.
BTW, fornication is sex between two unmarried people. I do not not owe my life to that.
You say that living free and single when you’re young leads to single parenthood, however in my circle of friends the ones that have broken families are exactly the ones who lived the lifestyle you’ve deemed correct.
While the bulk of the group was out drunkenly chasing skirt through their youth, a couple of boys settled down early, stayed with one girl and started a family. Now we’re all middle aged the bulk of the group is living with families, whilst those two marriages have fallen apart and they spend their weekends trying to do what the rest got out of our system 20 years ago.
Could be true. Still an anecdote.
“Neither do you”
Why is putting it about akin to anti social behaviour? What is it with Puritans that makes them so certain that their beliefs are only the correct ones?
If single people want to have a different partner every night what business is it of yours or anybody else’s?
Absolutely agree!
I may be wrong but most mature men do not want to have sex with strangers.
It’s no surprise there are so many messed up folk.
Just as well as they are not likely to get any nor indeed are most men.
Rosenfield continues the Unherd tradition of excellent writing combined with impeccable rational thought…
I guess I am an “Old”, but I almost pity the Melenians more than I despise their insatiable need for pathetic identity politics.
Kat Rosenfield and Dorian Lynskey are two Unherd writers I enjoy even though they write about subjects that don’t normally interest me. Rosenfield mainly writes about feminism and sexuality, while Lynskey writes about what I would refer to as popular culture, especially the movies and entertainment and their larger sociological significance. Both write well and intelligently.
I’m sometimes tempted to dismiss Rosenfeld’s articles because the subject matter (demisexuals, transsexuals, internet culture, etc) seem like aberrations to me and not worth the time and attention of an obviously intelligent writer. But I can’t deny these issues are significant in modern culture even though reading about them feels like reading a particularly dystopian novel. Still, there’s part of me that just wants to tune it all out.
We each contain multitudes.
No problem.
“And what’s under the surface of this label? Not self-knowledge, but fear: of intimacy, of heartbreak, and of being naked.” Yes, that is the toughest to face, Until then, one escapism after another, at least that is my own experiential knowledge. This quote from Fromm (I think I picked it up here on Unherd) says it all: Love “requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling, it is a practice.” I was 60 when I finally got it.
Let the horny be horny. Best argument for the sex trade.
I was only in my early teens when I worked out that there were (at least) 2 types of sexual interest:
1 One was the dull, porno kind, whereby a woman has a good body, but whose personality and outlook is not compatible with yours, and you’re just persisting with someone you have zero real interest in just for the off-chance of a dull and lonely sexual encounter; one of those where, despite having had sex, you’re still strangers to each other. One of those boring encounters that engages merely your groin and which is little more than assisted masturbation.
But this kind of sex is now the new normal.
2 Contrast that with the magic of a woman who makes your heart beat faster, someone whose very presence makes the sun come out, and with whom a 5 minute chat turns into a 2 hour chat and it still seems too short. Where you are on each other’s wavelength and get each other’s humour before anyone else does. I’ve consistently found that being on someone’s wavelength conversationally is a reliable predictor of whether or not you will be on each other’s wavelength sexually.
And this kind of sex is now a bizarre new condition, lol.
To me, the distinction between both kinds of attraction – one dull, sad and limited – the other, potentially life-changing – was pretty damned obvious, even from a young age. The second variety, as well as being infinitely more exciting and fulfilling, requires a capacity for empathy, authenticity, openness etc. The former kind is, in my view, the preserve of the immature and the cowardly (at best) or the borderline-sociopathic (at worst).
And then to read that the people like me, who made an effort to grow up a little and to prefer intimacy and joy in a sexual relationship, are now labelled as de facto weirdos (they write about this now in supposedly serious medical journals, as if I have some sort of condition lol), and all the grubby little cowardly narcissistic sociopaths, with their miserable and limited take on sexuality, are fast becoming the new normal.
f**k me …
Sounds to me like you’re overcompensating for not putting it about enough when you were younger. I love my missus, but my only regret from before I met her are the (numerous) times my attempts to get a girl I fancied into bed failed miserably. I certainly don’t regret any of the successes, even if some of them did turn out to be mad
Look at those numbers, Billy Bob Troll…
I wish I could like this comment a thousand times. What kind of a world are we living in where people prefer version 1 or know nothing different. The fact that men like you still exist give me hope.
It’s a lovely comment, isn’t it? I, too, wish that I could give much more than simply one thumbs up.
Thankyou for trying to explain, but really, they are a *ucked up generation of neurotics if they are as you describe.
My grandparently advice: You fancy who you fancy, so don’t over-complicate life. And don’t explain and don’t apologise.
As my (Irish) granny would have said “ they have little to worry them and their wants would make a poor body rich.”
It is not a case of questioning who you fancy, it is a case of dealing with the pressure to feel and consummate sexual attraction. Hook-up culture – as encouraged by ‘feminists’, dating apps etc. – makes it hard to defend taking your time with someone and finding that emotional connection. Identifying as ‘demisexual’ is less neurotic than it is symptomatic of a culture that promotes instant, loveless gratification, something young women especially are expected to just, get on with.
Feminists most certainly don’t encourage ‘hook up culture’. We would prefer young women to concentrate on their education and careers and have nothing to do with men.
So, good old-fashioned men cancelling and thinly-disguised contempt for any woman who isn’t a lesbian lol. Fortunately, the majority of women pay no attention to shrewish views like yours, as anyone who lives in the real world can tell you
But taking ownership of your body, exploring you sexuality, participating in casual relationships – doesn’t feminism also stand for this?
I know little about feminism but many young women, to a greater or lesser extent and whether or not they are aware of it, view traditional courtship, with the aim of marriage and procreation, as a betrayal of so-called women’s liberation. These activities you mention–best kept vaguely defined, to the point of sloganeering–are the supposed fruits of women’s battle against male oppression.
And yet women are dissatisfied with the liberated sexual marketplace, in which hookups inevitably leave them attached to a mate who has no incentive to commit. Or else disgusted and resentful, like the protagonist of “Cat Lady.”
Furthermore it is impossible to criticize the absence of male role models and nuclear families, or to even be honest about the effect of it on young women–for this would lead to a criticism of divorce, another sacred cow of women’s liberation. Perhaps this is an example of the buzzword “cognitive dissonance?”
Career and advanced degrees are cold comfort for many of these women, but again, it is seen as a betrayal of women’s liberation not to pursue these. And so many women tend to view–are invited to view–their efforts in the workplace in terms of battling male oppression. “We have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously” and so on. The effect of careerism on their relationships is obvious for all to see.
If feminism’s aim is, as one comment has it, to have women to focus on careers and so-called education while having nothing to do with men, then it is succeeding. Young women are increasingly alone, wary of men, vowing never to have children. (At least for now, personally I think this will change.) A recent unherd article ventures some figures.
Meanwhile other young women’s dissatisfaction with this state of affairs, their desperation and their boredom with working at home, online shopping, online therapy and so on, make them easy targets for men who have no every reason to seduce and no reason to commit.
Of course many young women are “woke in the streets, gender roles in the sheets,” if only young men would realize this and act on it.
Your overthinking it. As a girl, who had any sense, you soon figured that casual sex would do you no favours. As it does for men.
You might meet someone and fall for them, or just fancy them. That usually means you want a relationship with them because they are rare. To immediately sleep with them would be reckless because you are not that sure. So you stall and get to know more.
Before the pill, which is still recent in terms of our popular culture, the music, the films, the books, women could stall for a very good practical reason, now they have to face accusations of frigidity, queerness , boring far more than they ever did.
Demisexuals are normal intelligent , brave young women. I salute them. Sex is not just a physical act with another person for an orgasm. For richness, depth and meaning, it is an emotional one as well.
In this age of accessible pornography, women who are being coerced to think otherwise are being abused and cheated.
“Sex is not just a physical act with another person for an orgasm. For richness, depth and meaning, it is an emotional one as well.
In this age of accessible pornography, women who are being coerced to think otherwise are being abused and cheated”
More frequently these women are simply being left alone, CF. Or do you think that men are walking around with a lasso to tie and “coerce” women into doing something that they don’t want? It is obviously pointless to demonize the interests of either gender. So the current state of affairs – where smart boys and girls simply avoid contact with whoever it is that is proposing something that they don’t want to engage in – should be acknowledged as a happy compromise.
Unfortunately the agenda being pushed by so many in these comments is very different – it is all about forcing people that they don’t know to erase what they want as individuals, and instead do whatever the commenter deems “laudable”, “valid”, “civilized”, etc.
So how about we all stop trying to push agendas onto people we don’t know and respect their right to agree/disagree to what each of us like to label as “ideal”?
Other people’s libido is theirs alone. it is not something you are entitled to regulate or otherwise control. I suspect you would only notice how unreasonable your stance is if someone tried to demonize some interest of yours under the pretense that “it is for the greater good”. Live and let live.
“Other people’s libido is theirs alone. it is not something you are entitled to regulate or otherwise control.”
Rape victims beg to disagree.
Oh dear!
‘I would prefer young men to concentrate on their education and careers and have nothing to do with women’s
I would prefer men and women to do as they please without fear or favour.
What pressure? Defend against whom? I just don’t get it I’m afraid.
My point was that you are under no obligation to “feel and consumate sexual attraction”, or indeed any other feeling – They are your feelings and yours alone. If you will not defend your own autonomy, no one will do it for you.
Who writes this gibberish? The point about sex, the POINT, is that YOU CAN GET PREGNANT and if there’s anything less of a selling point for young women than another man’s child, especially with the father still semi-attached, exerting a pull on her emotions but making little real contribution, I’m hard put to think what it might be.
Women place great emphasis on emotional bonding in conjunction with sex because for many of them, the consequences are life-defining.
True, you can get pregnant, but you don’t have to.
It’s as if very few people on this forum have heard of birth control. They still have the puritan values of the Victorians
Birth control is quite fallible.
There are a, whole lot of older women who do not place any emotional ties on sexual encounters. We have done the “making babies” bit or not. We are post menopausal. And guess what, we just want to have fun. The problem is too many men still want to procreate even when they are older and see themselves as more attractive to younger women, who only want them if they have loads of money. Come find us, we might make you happy!!
Demisexual is a word spoken with a wink and a nod. It was once widely accepted that “sex without love” is precisely dehumanizing. It represents the rebarbarization or reanimalization of the human race. But now one can say so only in code. The writer here circled around this point rather nicely I think.
Diane Keaton: “Sex without love is an empty experience”
Woody Allen: “Yes but as empty experiences go it’s one of the best”
Annie Hall is still one of the best films about navigating the boy meets girl scenario as it used to be… in 1977 anyway!
How perfect!
Woody Allen: “Yes but as empty experiences go it’s one of the best”
He should know, as the exploiter of such.
“the rebarbarization or reanimalization of the human race. ”
New times may require new attitudes toward our evolved natures, but beware unintended consequences…
Something’s seriously wrong with our society that there is a need for a new “sexual orientation” identity label for the non-promiscuous. I notice also the implication that only women require this label; because it’s just assumed that all men are are unthinking rutting animals incapable of restraint or a desire for emotional connections and commitment.
A very good observation. We are at a point where everybody other than heterosexual white men is somehow a victim, and entitled to special consideration and treatment. What’s truly frightening though is that the so-called self-declared victims are not interested in shedding their perceived victimhood. Instead they revel in it! Being a victim is not something to be resolved and a status one escapes, but it’s become a special marker and ensures a constant stream of attention and pity. Of course, we are currently progressing to the next level of insanity in this bottomless spiral: women, especially white women, are experiencing the shift from victim to perpetrator and oppressor of people of colour and men who claim to be women. I wonder who will be next in this race into the abyss?
With respect, this article is a bit silly. Women have always strongly preferred physical intimacy within a relationship (and men have pushed for sex without commitment). The whole notion that young women should have the sex drive and appetites of young men is absurd, even offensive, as it makes maleness the template for human beings. And yet it’s so pervasive that many women who have normal female inclinations (remember Midge Decter’s “keep your knees together until you see a ring”?) now think it means they’re not normal women. Some triumph for feminism this “sexual revolution” turned out to be.
It varies, between people. There are plenty of working-class, and upper-class, women who enjoy uncommitted, casual sex. There always have been. Just as there are lots of timid white middle-class Western feminist women who are scared of sex, and who moralise about it. Most Western middle-class urban feminists are entirely clueless about the bawdiness and agency of working class rural women.
The historical data on illegitimacy don’t bear this out. British studies of some unique surnames (Sykes was one, IIRC) showed a legitimacy rate of something like 99% per generation.
No. If men and women want the same thing, it’s not only because one sex is trying to be like the other, it’s because men and women have far more in common than their differences. Women who drink beer aren’t trying to be like men, they just like beer. Some young women have a high sex drive and some don’t, and that has nothing to do with the “appetites of young men”.
Some do, some don’t. As if we didn’t know.
But, possibly, we’re hear to make some sense of the article, and extreme both-siderism doesn’t cut it.
Excellent article. I’ve just started noticing the Hinge Demisexual adds on London underground. There’s a minor editing mistake: missing ‘not’ in “male incels were made miserable by the spectre of the sex they wanted but could have” .
I thought that too, but it works both with and without the ‘not”.
Do you mean ‘have’ works with an unsaid ‘if they man up & put the effort into self improvement, getting out there & maybe lowering their standards a bit?’. That’s doubtless true for some, but IMO Kat is too perceptive not to know that would be mostly untrue for a sizeable portion of incels, at least with current dating dynamics.
It’s always seemed obvious to me that demisexual is just the best attempt yet by the woke to come up with an answer to that impossible question “what is a woman?”
Tumblr has caused so many problems in the world, it is unreal.
“ “I don’t want to have sex unless we’re emotionally connected” is a statement open to criticism; demisexuality is an identity that cannot be questioned. ”
How exactly is this statement open to criticism in any pleasant way, and why can a snowflakes identity not be questioned? I genuinely cannot comprehend half of the statements in this article- there are just too many leaps for me.
Kat is describing the mentality of these kids: if they say “I don’t want to have sex unless we’re emotionally connected”, there is the possibility that their partner could reason them out of this position. By claiming an identity of ‘demisexual’, it becomes an immutable characteristic- the partner literally has to wait until the demisexual feels the emotional connection before sex can happen, as they cannot be reasoned out of their identity.
I think it’s complete bollocks. You think it’s complete bollocks. Even Kat seems to think it’s complete bollocks. But it is a kind of self-protection mechanism utilising identitarian terms, and that’s where these kids are now socially.
So what used to be known as promiscuity is now so ‘normal’ that the wish to get know a potential partner slowly before progressing tenderly into physical love must now be regarded as a special, perhaps even somewhat aberrant, condition. Thank God I’m old.
I don’t think we can have a complete conversation about this without talking about 1) how extremely long it’s taking men to mature i.e. 40 is the new 20, 2) the destructive effect that pornography has on women’s sexual relationships with men and 3) the ubiquitous availability of hook-up apps. All three of these things considered “normal” today. Even the sex therapists prescribe porn for women who lose interest in their partners rather than considering that the partner is emotionless and self-serving and that women really are different from men. I can see why young women want to refocus on real emotional bonds for attraction rather than trying to figure out why supposedly cis men prefer a**l sex which most women find disgusting and for good reason. Similarly, maybe the young women are thinking it’s not their sexual duty to learn how not to vomit while performing a b******b for their “partner” while men cry that there’s something in the wedding cake that kills blow jobs rather than reviewing their expectations. These and many other reasons certainly could trigger women to pause and figure out how they will ever be able to endure a long-term marriage or relationship with such expected duties for dufuses.
Or, in other words, it’s all men’s fault because they are disgusting.
Oh, women can be disgusting, too.
Especially emotionally.
But things can work out…
Buy a dog, die alone.
Or, if you’re a feminist, buy a few cats.
The buy a dog thing sounds a bit specious, because dog walking in parks is renowned as an effective way to meet and get to know fellow dog walkers of the requisite sex.
This article is a perfect example of why I regard Unherd as the gold standard of modern journalism.
I’m glad to see so much sense in the responses to this column. Bravo especially to Sophie H., Caroline Watson, and CF Hankinson
I haven’t thought much about “demisexuals” but they sound like young girls who are desperately trying to find a way using progressive-culture-approved terms and values to get a little delay, a little time, a little courtship, to get a man to prove he really wants them (which is of course the ultimate turn-on) in a post-sexual revolution world which has been a disaster for women, especially sexually. We’ve been told that we’re not normal, that we’re prudes, or frigid if our sexual response is **different than our male friends**, i.e. less free-floating, slower to turn on, and certainly harder to satisfy without proper foreplay.
I don’t care if it sounds old fashioned but “the contemporary notion of sexual desire as a thing that either exists or doesn’t, organically and entirely out of context” is bonkers — and it’s making women who don’t know any better miserable.
Ultimately what these poor young things seem to be trying to defend is their desire to be women!! And — news flash — womens’ sexual response is dramatically different than mens’ meaning that women (particularly those of reproductive age) are hardwired to look for and respond to commitment. Yes, it’s been noted by The Science (mocking emoji here) that for biological and emotional reasons women often get more interested in sex-for-its-own sake in their, say, mid-thirties and beyond. But teenaged women for crissake NEED courtship and a slow blossoming of desire. Give them that or we will all collectively continue to go mad.
Look, I don’t know Rosenfield’s entire oeuvre, but it sounds like she was being a bit hard on teenaged girls trying to make their way in a pornogrified world where any excuse for modesty, delay, and actual foreplay (which consists of delay, a slow build) have been stripped away.
Foreplay IS play, but current Puritans don’t play.
It’s all serious.
“…inability to feel sexual attraction toward strangers made her ‘not quite heterosexual.'” Please someone have these people google Tom Wolfe’s “The Great Re-Learning.”
I just tracked that down and read it. I confess I’m missing the connection.
These people just keep re-discovering what has been obvious to untold generations of humans and claiming it’s a brand new thing. In this case it’s the notion that sex is best with people you know, love, and respect. What a shocking surprise.
Yes. Feminism has turned the screws on just about everyone.
Nope. Nowt to do with my kind of feminism…
Nor mine. There is nothing feminist about young women being pressurised into compulsory promiscuity.
Para 6, line 15, should “could” be “couldn’t”? By the way, how do you know your agony inbox is/was representative, and that social media are not creating their own myths? After all, if one tries to correct an SM (can I use that abbreviation?) myth, that just creates another SM myth. I’m just asking, as I see plenty of young people around paired up, living ordinary lives, shopping, with pushchairs, etc.
I don’t think it’s a typo. Kat has asserted before that incels could have sex, just not with the women they find most desirable.
Demisexuality…XOJane article…incels (both sexes, and there are only two),…cishet b***h….cat person’ The ridiculous meets the credulous. Will it ever end?
Unherd has become a wonderful source for great writing; by and for intelligent people.
Ms. Rosenfield’s work is a perfect example.
I wasn’t too old when I worked out that there were (at least) 2 types of sexual interest:
1 One was the dull, porno kind, whereby the woman had a good body, but whose personality and outlook is not compatible with yours, and you’re just persisting with someone you have zero real interest in just for the off-chance of a fungible sexual encounter; one of those where, despite having had sex, you’re still largely strangers to each other. One of those encounters that engages merely your groin and which is little more than assisted masturbation.
2 Contrast that with the magic of someone who makes your heart beat faster, and with whom a 5 minute chat turns into a 2 hour chat and it still seems too short. Where you are on each other’s wavelength and get each other’s humour before anyone else does. I’ve consistently found that being on someone’s wavelength conversationally is a reliable predictor of whether or not you will be on each other’s wavelength sexually.
To me, the distinction between both kinds of attraction – one dull, sad and limited – the other, potentially life-changing – was pretty damned obvious, and just a matter of increasing common-sense as you grew up a bit. The second variety, as well as being infinitely more exciting and fulfilling, requires a capacity for empathy, authenticity, openness etc. The former kind is, in my view, the preserve of the immature and the cowardly (at best) or the borderline-sociopathic (at worst).
And then to read that the people like me, who prefer intimacy and affection in a sexual relationship, are now labelled as de facto weirdos (they write about this now in supposedly serious medical journals, as if we have some sort of “condition” lol), and all the grubby little cowardly narcissistic sociopaths, with their miserable and limited take on sexuality, are fast becoming the new normal.
Dear God.
I wasn’t too old when I worked out that there were (at least) 2 types of sexual interest:
1 One was the dull, porno kind, whereby the woman had a good body, but whose personality and outlook is not compatible with yours, and you’re just persisting with someone you have zero real interest in just for the off-chance of a fungible sexual encounter; one of those where, despite having had sex, you’re still largely strangers to each other. One of those encounters that engages merely your groin and which is little more than assisted masturbation.
2 Contrast that with the magic of someone who makes your heart beat faster, and with whom a 5 minute chat turns into a 2 hour chat and it still seems too short. Where you are on each other’s wavelength and get each other’s humour before anyone else does. I’ve consistently found that being on someone’s wavelength conversationally is a reliable predictor of whether or not you will be on each other’s wavelength sexually.
To me, the distinction between both kinds of attraction – one dull, sad and limited – the other, potentially life-changing – was pretty damned obvious, and just a matter of increasing common-sense as you grew up a bit. The second variety, as well as being infinitely more exciting and fulfilling, requires a capacity for empathy, authenticity, openness etc. The former kind is, in my view, the preserve of the immature and the cowardly (at best) or the borderline-sociopathic (at worst).
And then to read that the people like me, who prefer intimacy and affection in a sexual relationship, are now labelled as de facto weirdos (they write about this now in supposedly serious medical journals, as if we have some sort of “condition” lol), and all the grubby little cowardly narcissistic sociopaths, with their miserable and limited take on sexuality, are fast becoming the new normal.
Dear God.
I’m male and would call myself demisexual – not really that fussed about it, certainly not ‘scared of sex’ but not obsessed by it, and don’t randomly want to have sex with strangers which we’re all taught that, as men, we’re supposed to.
I’m male and would call myself demisexual – not really that fussed about it, certainly not ‘scared of sex’ but not obsessed by it, and don’t randomly want to have sex with strangers which we’re all taught that, as men, we’re supposed to.
HLO
“Inability to feel sexual attraction toward strangers”. So now the woke are trying to invent a reality where their dogmas trump nature. One thing is to acknowledge that there are risks for a woman to indulge in desire that she might feel on account of pregnancy, etc. The leap from that to “being unable to feel lust whenever it does not suit one’s agenda” is just a tall lie striving to support a spineless political statement. If you are indeed unable to experience lust, the loss is entirely yours – and commiseration for your misery does not translate into tolerance for political power play. What a sterling example of what it means to be woke!
What’s the loss exactly? Lust mostly drives stupid, self-destructive behavior.
What’s wrong with reserving sex for committed relationships? You do realize that married people have A LOT more sex than singles.
Unlike you, other humans are free to enjoy lust with no obligation to comply with these very dead cannons that you seem to espouse. Amazing how entitled you feel to define what is good and what is bad… I will wisely leave you to your own little world of ill-concealed misandry.
Again, what’s the loss? What does lust give you that love and desire don’t give to married couples? Sex is A LOT better in committed relationships, and you don’t waste lots of time and effort to get it. You also treat your partner as an actual fully formed human being, not an object for the gratification of your desire.
The dead canons (spelling) are what make us human, and separate us from animals in heat. How is love not better that lust?
Oh boy… The wokes I referred to were clearly lying – about “not being able to feel lust” unless it was under their idealized universe of love. That is undeniably BS and obviously politically driven. The discussion is about “why is his person so desperately seeking to disavow sex for lust in order to “promote” sex within a romantic relationship?”, and then you cut in screaming that anyone that dares disagreeing with what you prefer must be burned alive, does not qualify as a human, etc.
The people obsessed with disavowing lust always come across as desperate and impositive. The demisexuals I addressed in my comment share this trait with you.
So here is my impression of our exchange: You have a problem with lust. You get instantly ticked at the mention of it, because in your head you “decided” that it must be some sort of demon that destroys romantic attachment. Much as it might infuriate you, the rest of the human population is free to think otherwise.
That would be canons, not cannons.
Tut tut. What a fuss about nothing.
Who cares?
Any parent, concerned about their kids growing up in a f****d-up world
Eros is dead! We have killed they/them, you and I!
In my experience most girls are demisexual; most women are not.
It’s diagnostic of the neurodivergent hyper-emotional state we call liberalism to belligerently reject normalcy only to come full circle and claim to have discovered that exact same normalcy under some different name and pronounce it wonderful. Tom Wolfe wrote an essay about this juvenile idiocy way back in the 70s called, “The Great Re-Learning.” It is beyond depressing to realize not only have we not outgrown it, it’s stronger than ever.
more bilge from America..
more bilge from America..
I thought Uherd was for those who wish to participate in serious discussion of current affairs.
Not this garbage.
I notice your only other contribution to this comment section is a spelling correction to another reader’s comment. I suppose that was your attempt to “participate in serious discussion of current affairs”.
Plenty of other people found this article worthy of discussion. If it’s not for you, other fine articles are available.