Thread by @EpistemicHope

I'm currently reading "The Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality", in which the authors outline a central framework:

"Arousal pathways should be thought of as existing in one of three states: positive, neutral, and negative. Negative arousal is experienced as a 'gross' sensation."

Broadly, they are conceptualizing the disgust reaction that a person might have to various sexual acts (say incest, or necrophilia) as something like "inverse arousal." The same basic thing, but with the sign flipped.

I, personally, apparently have a much lower sex drive than most men: I seem to be much less compelled by arousal, or typically have a weaker form of arousal, or something.

If we're gonna label me, it's not far off to say that I'm asexual. I'm comparatively uninterested in sex.

I also seem to have a low disgust response. I've never really "got" the revulsion that people in media express at the thought of their parents having sex, for instance. *

The way people would shiver and not want to think about it, has always been vaguely amusing to me.

Same with incest: I don't feel much of a native revulsion to the thought of cousins having sex with each other.

I now wondering, for the first time, if my low disgust response and my low sex drive are the same thing, or flip sides of the same coin.

Like, in my case, the whole signaling pathway is "dimmer", or "weaker" than it is for most people.

(Or maybe its that other pathways are "brighter" or "stronger"? Or something even more complicated.)

I'm curious: does anyone else have this experience?

Do you have both the low sexuality and the low disgust response?

Does anyone have just one or the other?

1 - Low sexuality | Low disgust
2 - Low sexuality | High disgust
3 - High sexuality | Low disgust
4 - High Sexuality | High disgust

(Pick whichever one fits best)

* - I say "people in media", instead of "most people" , because I'm suspicious that that media representation is actually a false consensus about what's typical.

Case in point, I bet that there are many men who natively about as interested in sex as I am, but behave in the "typical" male sex-obsessed pattern, because of socialization: it's a way to cohere with their peer group.

And in most cases they wouldn't even notice, that the desire isn't native, they typical mind about their experience.

If you don't actively dislike it, there's no flag that "something is wrong". And maybe you can just go with the flow your whole life, never noticing.

I was in my 20s, when I noticed that flowers don't actually smell good to me. (They smell kind of like musky dust?)

But when people had shown me flowers, I had sniffed them heartily, because that was the thing that you do with flowers.

I bet a bunch of things are like that.

slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/wha…

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