Not interested sexually in either gender. Should I worry?

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DragonKazooie89
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06 Jun 2008, 10:47 pm

I am 18 years old and I am not turned on by either men or women even if they are attractive or not. I'm not even interested in dating but I like hanging out with people I know or share the same interests I do. Do you think I could be asexual, have not fully psychosocially developed yet or does having Asperger's Syndrome mean that you have an abnormal endocrine system?



MR_BOGAN
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06 Jun 2008, 10:51 pm

You are who you are. I wouldn't worry about that.


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WillMcC
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06 Jun 2008, 11:08 pm

I'm 24 and I've been in the same situation, and it seems to be normal on the spectrum. It makes the thought of having kids difficult



Tim_Tex
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06 Jun 2008, 11:11 pm

What Mr. Bogan said.


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sgrannel
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06 Jun 2008, 11:13 pm

Let's see if you say the same thing when you're 40. I've been told that many women's sex drives don't start to kick in until 30-40.


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The_Chosen_One
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06 Jun 2008, 11:37 pm

No need to worry - this kind of thing is a lot more common than most people realise. Just do the best to be happy about who you are.


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imipak
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06 Jun 2008, 11:47 pm

DragonKazooie89 wrote:
I am 18 years old and I am not turned on by either men or women even if they are attractive or not. I'm not even interested in dating but I like hanging out with people I know or share the same interests I do. Do you think I could be asexual, have not fully psychosocially developed yet or does having Asperger's Syndrome mean that you have an abnormal endocrine system?


So many totally unrelated conditions get pushed into the autistic spectrum that some psychologists I know no longer believe it is a useful term. Whether it is useful or not, there will almost certainly be one set of conditions in the AS that alter emotional and sexual responses. As to whether you have those sets of conditions, I'd say probably not.

Asexuality is more common than typically thought, but nobody understands it, making it very hard to say whether a particular person is asexual or not. It is also unclear it is a useful concept, if the libido exists on a spectrum, as any spectrum must have a zero point, making zero part of the whole and not a distinct concept.

As to whether you have psychosocially fully developed, I suggest reversing the question. You are 18 years old and YOU have your head on your shoulers. Your peers are going through hazing rituals, sexting each other (and ending up on the Internet, making future job prospects non-existant), suffering suicidal levels of depression through breakups (there's one mother and two teens on trial for causing such a suicide), and generally living life out the bottle. And you want to know if YOU are mature???? 10/10 for spotting maturity is a part of the problem, but minus sveral million for incorrect allocation.

Consider this also. The brain develops a gender totally independently of the body. Completely different biological processes and a completely different time. It is the brain's gender that decides attraction. In some cases, this can be opposite the gender of the body, which screws the mind up. Let us suppose, however, that a brain does not become unbalanced in this way, but develops equally and symmetrically, with nothing dominant and nothing subservient. The brain would be genderless, but not because it lacked anything, but because it DIDN'T lack anything.

Finally, consider this. If a brain is being heavily used, really pushed and really developed, it can re-assign parts of the brain from one function to another. This is why taxi drivers in London, England, show up on MRI scans as having expanded the parts of the brain to do with recall by 15%, even though their skulls obviously don't change size. I see no reason to asume that a brain could not label sexual desire a redundant waste of brain power and reallocate the brain cells to something the brain considered more important.

I am not saying any of these apply to you, only that they are likely to apply to somebody, eventually, and that they illustrate that there are many, many reasons and ways in which a "symptom" can be caused. Symptoms really tell you nothing more than you're not a "normal" person. But since nobody else is either, that's not that useful.

(Correction: I think I did once see a normal person, somewhere.)



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06 Jun 2008, 11:55 pm

Some people develop slower then others. You should just wait and see what happens, and not make a decision right away (which is hard not to do but it worth it at the end)