Asexual? Lesbian? Or Pan?

Oy vey.

"demisexual" and "grey asexual" are not widely accepted terms, and there's no research to support the idea that they exist, except as part of the normal, ordinary variation of widely accepted sexual orientations. Nor is there any credible research to support the idea of a separation between romantic and sexual orientations. All of these ideas have been perpetrated by a tiny group that has nothing to base any of these contentions on, and unfortunately, this groupthink is spreading among some groups that don't value scientific study.

It is far, far more likely that, particularly at your age, you simply haven't developed strong sexual attraction. This is something that some people feel at 12 and other people don't feel until their 20s... and a very small minority of the population (less than 1%) never develop sexual feelings at all.

It's also possible that if there are other factors going on for you (depression, anxiety, nervousness, worry)... that those can be affecting your sexual attraction and arousal, because all of those factors do have a significant impact on those things, so if those are there, it's going to be impossible to get an accurate read on where your real attraction level lies. The same is true if you're on almost any mood-altering medication.

So, for my money, unless you really need to have a label, I simply wouldn't worry about it... go on and experience life, take your time, try whatever appeals to you as far as relationships and sexuality... and let your answer come to you in time.

 

To be clear... I don't care what label someone uses. I do care that they get accurate information in trying to figure out who they are. So my intention is certainly not to harm anyone. Quite the opposite. If you read what I wrote, I was essentially saying "Be yourself, whatever that is." The OP asked for input on what identity she might be and I said, in essence, "Given where you are, it's hard to tell, so why not simply be who you are without worrying about the label."

When one adopts a label that could essentially constrain the ability to experience the full range of connection that human beings are capable of... that's doing oneself a disservice. Now, if that label is instead an objective description of who one is, that's one thing, and that makes sense.

But the pattern is that people are increasingly mistaking easily solvable problems (depression, anxiety, medication-based depression of sexual arousal) for permanent, unchangable personality charactieristics.

When various people who have adopted these labels -- whether after a period of self-reflection and understanding, or because somebody convinced them to do so -- encourage others to adopt them as a first choice, that is a huge disservice, and really irresponsible. I get why it happens... people in any circumstance who are outside the mainstream are constantly looking for others to help validate where they are, because we are fundamentally wired for connection. But it doesn't make it right. And that's why I'm as strongly vocal about it as I am.

 

I really need to make a sticky post or reference of some sort on this because I end up repeating myself endlessly. (I've written on this many times, in many different ways, and you can search my posts related to these topics if you want to see more detail.) But here we go again.

Yes, lack of wide acceptance is not the same as lack of existence. However, in this case, we do in fact have about 40 years worth of credible, solid study on many variations of sexual attraction, orientation, arousal, and just about everything else, in most every permutation, and about 70 years of study going back further if we look at Kinsey's work, which was an outlier in its time. And unlike the tired and inaccurate comparison about how homosexuality used to be considered an illness and wasn't accepted, we can't really use that argument here because orientation and attraction and arousal *have* been studied extensively... and nowhere in that study has the concept of these unrecognized orientations ever shown up. Given the combination of qualitative methodologies (focused on identifying and documenting behavior and particularly good at identifying new areas for research) and quantitative research (more robust and reproducible), it's pretty likely something would have come up with this by now if it were objectively measurable. And that hasn't happened. Additionally, one is really hard pressed to find many credible clinicians, who would be the ones in the trenches seeing these things day in and day out, supporting any indication that these actually exist separate from the (almost hopelessly confounded) conditions such as anxiety and depression that are causative factors for what these groups are describing as a sexual orientation.

So can we say, definitively, that these unrecognized identities don't exist? No. But we can say that, with 40 years of study on sexual identity, and the consensus of experience of the overwhelming majority of professionals in the field, that they've seen no evidence of them, which is pretty close to the same thing.

Actually, no. We don't want wide acceptance of something that doesn't exist, because that doesn't help anyone. And since we don't know if these identities do actually exist, outside of the confounds described above, or what fits within the normal, ordinary spectrum of mainstream sexual identities, promoting something simply because a tiny handful of people believe it exists really doesn't serve anyone's interests in the long run, including the people who might identify as something that could be masking another issue that, arguably, should be explored to see if it can be resolved.

Since we are wired for connection -- it is basically why we are here, and that's pretty well documented -- the ability to connect emotionally and intimately with others serves, for most people, as an important part of that connection. Yes, there is a tiny portion of the population (less than 1% by most data I've seen) who are genuinely without sexual attraction or orientation in a way that appears to be hardwired. But most of the self-identified people on "the asexual spectrum" either don't match the criteria for that identification, or if they do, there is a confounding factor (medication, anxiety, depression, family-of-origin history, reduced emotional expression) that causes the same depression of sexual attraction/arousal, and it's irresponsible to suggest to someone that they might have an unchangeable condition that limits their level of connection when it might be caused by another factor that could be corrected.

The field of psychology has some brilliant scholars that have come up with some very innovative and creative ways to look at these things from a quantitative perspective. And from a qualitative perspective, it's even easier. In fact, there's already a mountain of research that's looked at attraction, orientation, arousal, and depression of sexual drive in a myriad of different ways. This is most definitely a researchable topic, and while I've not seen research dedicated specifically to this field (probably because most researchers believe the issue has already adequately been covered), it has certainly been explored.

And therein lies the problem. If I have the flu, I'm not going to have much in the way of sexual arousal, because my body is going to suppress the hormones and neurotransmitters associated with arousal so it can fight disease. I'm not "asexual" or "gray asexual" on the days I have the flu... I simply have a condition that's limiting my arousal and attraction. Nor am I asexual because I had a bad day at work and don't feel aroused when I get home. Nor if I take a medication that suppresses sex drive. There are dozens of variants that can affect arousal for an hour to years. So it's not accurate (and generally not helpful) to label ourselves as something that's supposed to be pretty static and unchanging (as sexual orientation is generally recognized to be) if it is changing due to unrelated factors (medication, depression, anxiety, mood, etc.)

If you were to ask a random sampling of people over 25, let's say straignt people to make it simple, I think you'd be surprised how many of them never felt any real sexual attraction or arousal until their late teens. In fact, several generations ago, puberty came much later (on average) than it does now. So there are still many people who simply have no arousal or attraction until late teens or sometimes early 20s. Then you add in the family-of-origin, emotional and psychological factors... and you have a pretty large segment of the population who has these experiences. But it wasn't until just a few years ago that somebody decided they needed to label what has been around for probably hundreds of years, and is widely recognized to fit within the normal spectrum of human behavior, as some sort of special orientation.

Actually, I completely understand and get this, but here too, there's a huge risk, and it's identified pretty clearly by Brené Brown's work on shame. Basically, shame is the deeply held belief that we are not worthy of love and belonging. So if we feel "different" than others, we will feel that we don't belong. We may spend years trying to "fit in" (this is what LGBT people do when closeted) but that has a severe impact on self-esteem, because we *know* we don't belong, and that just makes our shame worse.

When we choose a label for the sake of "fitting in", we are doing exactly that: We are fitting in, rather than belonging, especially if the label is an unrecognized one. It is when we understand and acknowledge that labels don't affect who we are, and don't create connection, or keep us from having connection, that we are truly able to be comfortable with ourselves exactly as we are, without needing a special label to justify our existence.