Discussion The Prevalence of Demisexuality

[quietism]

I had a conversation with an online friend recently about demisexuality and it got me thinking a lot about the role of socialisation in sexuality.

There are two slightly different definitions of demisexuality that I know of:
(1) Demisexuality is a sexual orientation where people only experience sexual attraction to people that they have close emotional connections with. https://www.healthline.com/health/demisexual
(2) Demisexuality is a term used to describe individuals who do not experience primary sexual attraction – type of attraction that is based on immediately observable characteristics such as appearance or smell, and is experienced immediately after first encounter. A demisexual person can only experience secondary sexual attraction – a type of attraction that occurs after development of emotional bond. https://www.health.com/demisexual-7099485

(1) is referring to a requirement of X thing, but (2) refers to an inability to experience Y thing. (1) is definitely the more common definition in use, but I like (2) more at the moment, and I write this post under that pretense.

Pornography, typically fully dependent on primary sexual attraction, is incredibly popular pretty much everywhere in the world. Bars and hookup culture are incredibly pervasive. Ghosting, cheating, doxxing, revenge porn, and a myriad of other antisocial online behaviors are extremely popular and only increasing in prevalence. Social drugs, alcohol in particular, are widely accepted worldwide despite concrete and long known evidence that alcohol causes cancer [5] and significantly promotes antisocial behavior. Finally, all these behaviors are promoted and facilitated by online communications, in particular online dating/dating apps which have exploded in popularity, with one 2019 estimate having 34.9 million dating app users according to Statista [1] and another estimate that "by the end of 2019, there were more than 200 million active users of dating apps worldwide. It has been noted that more than ten million people use Tinder daily, which has been downloaded more than a hundred million times worldwide" [2] - the statistics vary in part due to different definitions of a user based on usage frequency. Statista reports that this number has only been rising. [3]

But there's another angle to all of these behaviors. They place an incredibly high importance on this so-called primary sexual attraction often just with images or text descriptions. Revenge porn doesn't humanise a person through describing emotions, it dehumanises/objectifies them to primary sexual attraction. Quoting [1]:

To objectify oneself (called self-objectification) means to adopt a third-person perception instead of a first-person one, thus placing greater value on how one appears to others instead of how one feels. This creates "an objectified body" that is "malleable, measurable, and controllable." Research suggests dating app users prioritize physical appearance to any other feature of a person's profile.

Then, I also happened to come across some rather damning statistics for transgender populations and regarding disordered eating prevalence:

Rejection because of transgender status within both heterosexual and LGB communities is high. Within a sample of 958 Canadian adults, 96.7% of cisgender heterosexual men, 98.2% of cis gender heterosexual women, 88.5% of cisgender gay men, and 71.2% of cisgender lesbian women stated "no" when asked if they would consider romantic or sexual relation ships with transgender individuals of any gender identity, while cisgender bisexual and queer individuals were more likely to state that they would (55.2%) [4]

[among dating app users,] Laxative use was 11.7% while 25% reported vomiting for weight control. Dating app users had significantly higher odds of unhealthy weight control behaviors compared to non-users, with female users having 2.3–26.9 times the chance of engaging in all six behaviors and male users having 3.2–14.6 times the chance. [1]

All of these results point towards the conclusion that physical appearance plays at least a major role, and perhaps the only significant role, in determining sexual attraction and more generally social desirability. It also reflects that individuals are aware of this preference and frequently structure their lives around obtaining this social desirability, concerningly often by using dangerous behaviors such as subclinical anorexia or bulimia. It is true that at least for some dating app users, sexual behavior may not be the main goal compared to social desirability in general, so while I'm drawing an inference here, there is still a significant sexual connotation with these particular behaviors.

I used to believe that demisexuality was the most common, or default, mode of sexuality. But all these results seriously challenge that belief for me. That people really do almost all just want hookups and frequent hollow interactions. Why is this? Is it because they're born into other stable relationships and just view this as icing on top? Or is there some more fundamental reason?

My friend had different thoughts on this. Lesbians can and do have sex with men out of compulsive hetereosexuality, or comphet. This applies to straight women too:

In addition to wondering about whether most straight men and women have a foundation of mutual interest or respect, another question that queers sometimes ponder about straight people is whether they are actually sexually attracted to one another. Studies show that many straight-identified women find penises "unattractive," are "turned off" by images of nude men, and prefer to gaze at naked women when given the option. We also know that girls and women consent to a tremendous amount of sex with men that they don't want to have and/or that is not pleasurable and that straight women are frequently in relationships with men for reasons other than attraction. [6]
[...]
While straight men's desire for women's bodies is often portrayed as an incredibly powerful force, many men's notorious confusion about what produces female orgasm, their disinterest in providing oral sex to women, and their dramatically narrow ideas about what constitutes a female body worth desiring (waxed, shaved, scented, dieted, young, etc.) suggests that heteromasculinity is characterized by a much weaker and far more conditional desire for women's bodies than is often claimed. To lesbians, men's countless missed opportunities to actually like women are baffling. [6]

In this respect the online dating statistics are kind of useless to interpret sexual attraction for women since sexual attraction itself is a contested concept in conflict with values typically held in arranged marriages and prior to roughly the 1970s when rape was legal, normal, and encouraged. But I also think this is a rarely acknowledged observation. Anyway, this information doesn't give much indication on the prevalence of demisexuality... as with most research, you tend to get more questions than answers.

What do you think? Do you consider yourself demisexual? How do you feel about this status quo? And where do you think most of society falls along demisexuality?

@L'absent courtesy ping since I thought you'd be interested.

[1] Phan, Anh, Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar, and Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo. "Threaten me softly: A review of potential dating app risks." Computers in human behavior reports 3 (2021): 100055.
[2] Castro, Ángel, and Juan Ramón Barrada. "Dating Apps and Their Sociodemographic and Psychosocial Correlates: A Systematic Review." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17, no. 18 (January 2020): 6500. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17186500.
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/417654/us-online-dating-user-numbers/
[4] Griffiths, Daniel A., and Heather L. Armstrong. "'They Were Talking to an Idea They Had About Me': A Qualitative Analysis of Transgender Individuals' Experiences Using Dating Apps." The Journal of Sex Research 61, no. 1 (January 2, 2024): 119–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2023.2176422
[5] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/risk-factors/alcohol.html
[6] Ward, Elizabeth Jane. The Tragedy of Heterosexuality. Sexual Cultures. New York: New York University Press, 2020. pp 18-19.

 

[ShatteredSerenity]

I don't know, I'm autistic so lots of things about dating were non-conventional for me. All of the women I've had relationships were highly educated, intellectual, and adventurous. They were also beautiful but that's not what attracted me. I don't know if I'm full on demi because I am attracted to plenty of women, I'm just not interested in pursuing any random hot woman I encounter, I can only feel attracted if there's a deeper connection.

 

[AshClouds]

What do you think? Do you consider yourself demisexual?

I'm not a one myself, but I find it interesting and respectable.

And where do you think most of society falls along demisexuality?

Is there a decent volume of research to confirm the prevalence? I think commercial society world wide values sexual attraction, mainly hetero-norms, and it influences most of the population.

 

[quietism]

Is there a decent volume of research to confirm the prevalence? I think commercial society world wide values sexual attraction, mainly hetero-norms, and it influences most of the population.

From the sources I could find, asexuality, demisexuality and gray sexuality were generally discussed together. To my knowledge there are no quantative studies of demisexuality. I just read through this doctoral thesis, it's honestly pretty short for one. (I wish my phd thesis was this easy..)
Fiorini, Michael Scott. "Asexuality and Demisexuality: Clinical Implications of Sexual Identity." University of Denver (2022)

It mentions the DSM-5's Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder (FSIAD) and Male Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (MHSDD) are used to pathologise demisexuality, the first vignette in particular I like cause I think it describes a lot about me. Although this has totally unknown prevalence for demisexuality, there is some evidence for it being widespread to pathologise asexuality in the past, mainly prior to the DSM-5 release in 2013. The thesis also reports despite okcupid and tinder recording demisexuality as an option, they do not provide public statistics. Some quotes that stood out to me:

Many articles covering demisexuality indicate its contrast due to its visibility during the rise of "hook-up culture" and the mainstream use of online dating. The sexual scripts of demisexuals and the sexual scripts of hookup culture may therefore differ significantly. How demisexuality interacts in the online dating space is an area of research significance, as it may indicate demisexual-specific challenges in finding acceptable romantic and sexual partnerships.

The current contested status of demisexuality as a legitimate sexual orientation draws some historical parallels with bisexuality. Both demisexuality and bisexuality challenge sexual binaries of gender preferences and sexual attraction, respectively. This has historically presented challenges for the acceptance and acknowledgment of bisexuality as an orientation, as is currently being seen in the discourse around demisexuality.

A fairly common assumption is that demisexuality or demisexual behaviors are acceptable when attributed to women and unacceptable or unusual in men, depending on the cultural context and expectations. It may furthermore be mischaracterized as "pickiness" or idealized as "playing hard to get" within Western culture.

Demographics studies typically do show a significantly and predominantly female population reporting asexual or questioning experiences, and this has been reflected in the most recent population data available. (source)

Note that this data is obtained from surveys through a convenience sample of 10,648 responses and reports 9.5% of responses identified as demisexual, I would classify this as a low reliability source especially considering 27.3% of respondents came from tumblr. The thesis also mentions this: "[future] areas of exploration can include but are not limited to the incidence in the general population, socio-economic status and outcomes, relationship composition, and comorbidity of psychopathology where present."

 

[MindFog]

This is hard for me to answer because I'm Ace but I only get attracted romantically to people also if I know them for a long time.

Maybe that's the thing, it's hard to separate romantic and sexual attraction in these studies.

 

[quietism]

This is hard for me to answer because I'm Ace but I only get attracted romantically to people also if I know them for a long time.

Maybe that's the thing, it's hard to separate romantic and sexual attraction in these studies.

Sounds like demiromantic and asexual? Depends on the study, but most of them do distinguish between romanticism and sexuality.

 

[ForgottenAgain]

I don't think I'm demisexual. Porn and similar does nothing for me, I need a compelling story of some kind, like a romance novel. As for attraction, I feel sexually attracted to the person I'm in love with, thought this was the norm for everyone.

I can find other people attractive if they do something attractive, like showing intelligence or if they have a certain physical appearance but I wouldn't go so far as saying it is sexual attraction. It's incredibly faint compared to what I feel towards the person I love, but it's something.

 

[the_etherealmuse]

I'm asexual, and quite possibly aromantic too. Sexual and romantic attraction elude me, and interacting with most humans drains me.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I'd never heard of the term before. I suppose I'd like to think I'm demi-sexual. That my love would be deep and sincere. I think I'd only act upon demi-sexual attraction certainly. I'm of the old fashioned 'mate for life' brigade so- it would have to be a match on all levels- especially emotionally/ personality- wise.

In terms of crushes and attraction though. Sadly- no. I'm a sucker for looks and 'star quality' as my friend put it. I think I have the sense to realise I wouldn't be attractive to a person like that though so- I've only admired them from afar. Plus, I likely also knew that personality wise- we weren't a good match- even if it had been remotely possible physically.

 

[wanttobelieve65]

I have only ever felt romantic attraction towards waifish androgynous women who I am incapable of finding sexually attractive. Meanwhile I am sexually attracted to conventional, generally curvier women who I am unable to view romantically.