Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Asexuality is normal, for some

Oops: Re-posted to add link.

I'm always surprised that people, particularly doctors, have a problem with the idea that there are people who don't have sex and are quite happy. They just don't want to have sex. Period.

I once wrote a post about a shrink I was seeing. (I can't find it at the moment.) This blowhard insisted that I have sex. While I'm celibate rather than asexual (I find it fun to Google "Alex Minsky" images, for instance), I have no interest in engaging in sex. It's been this way since I was 36, at which point I decided sex was too time-consuming and produced little in the way of rewards. I'm 64 now -- and quite happy with my celibacy, thank you.

This article at HuffPo about asexuality reminded me of many unpleasant experiences I had with doctors and shrinks who insisted that there must be something wrong with me if I wasn't sexually active. That is so weird. I find the doctors who profess this opinion to be strange critters. We have to do what you do? Why? (It's kind of like religious people telling atheists we can't be happy without god. Get real; we're happy.)
"We clashed with physicians who thought that what we were doing is dangerous,” he recalled. “They said that we were advocating that it was OK to not be sexual. There was this really strong ethos that sex is a vital part of the human experience and without it, there's something wrong.”

In 2005 Leonard Derogatis, director of the Maryland Center for Sexual Health at Johns Hopkins University, told The New York Times it was hard for him to see asexuals as "normal" human beings. 
That's the wall we celibate and asexual people face: disbelief. I don't get it. We're obviously happy. Ask our friends. Why is it so difficult to accept someone's statement that they're happy without sex? Aren't we the ones who would know if we're unhappy?