emperorirene asked you:

Go on, an asexual is…? Someone who dates often and has relationships and gets married and has children? Because that’s one weird type of asexual. It’s as weird as a gay person dating a lot of people of the opposite sex (and only them), or a straight person dating a lot of people of their same sex. For someone to say a char like John Watson is asexual (or gay) is the highest degree of absurdity.

I didn’t say John was asexual, or gay.

I said the relationship/attraction he was with Sherlock is, so far as we have seen, asexual.

Which means, to be clear, not including sex.  That’s all it means.

If you think that having an asexual relationship automatically means that you must be asexual, you are drastically jumping to conclusions.

Asexuals largely do not experience sexual attraction, but it does not automatically follow that, um, sexuals (for lack of a better word) cannot experience asexual attraction.  I think you will find, in fact, that almost every person on this planet who is capable of sexual attraction is also capable of asexual attraction.

Although as a matter of fact, it’s not that weird a type of asexual.  Just because someone doesn’t experience sexual attraction does not mean that they can’t experience sexual arousal (which is a physiological response that can be triggered through mechanisms other than desire), and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they refuse to have sex anyway.  For some asexuals, while it may not turn them on, it doesn’t squick them either.  And for some of them, they’re okay with sex because it makes their partner happy, reinforces their relationship, results in pleasant physical contact with someone they love, and perhaps leads to other things that they want.  Such as children.  Asexuals are just as capable of wanting to be parents as anybody else.

If you ask around on Tumblr, you are likely to hear from a number of people who consider themselves asexual who have engaged in exactly these types of behaviors, for their own reasons.