I would imagine those people are conflating “asexuality” with “person who is not asexual but experiencing a lack of libido
It’s correct that these are different things that are usually conflated, but the way society treats a lack of libido is rooted in the same norms that asexuals suffer under: the idea that people must have sex to be complete, live fulfilling lives and have healthy relationships.
That’s not to say people who genuinely suffer from a low libido shouldn’t find ways to fix that, but that doesn’t hold true for anybody who has a low libido and the automatic assumption that this has to be a problem worth fixing is absolutely part of why being ace is so widely stigmatized.
It’s correct that these are different things that are usually conflated, but the way society treats a lack of libido is rooted in the same norms that asexuals suffer under: the idea that people must have sex to be complete, live fulfilling lives and have healthy relationships.
That’s not to say people who genuinely suffer from a low libido shouldn’t find ways to fix that, but that doesn’t hold true for anybody who has a low libido and the automatic assumption that this has to be a problem worth fixing is absolutely part of why being ace is so widely stigmatized.
There’s a book that calls this “compulsory sexuality”
I usually see the term allonormativity used to describe this, but that fits as well.
Yeah, but I think “compulsory sexuality” has a particular way of emphasizing that asexual people aren’t the only ones being pushed in this way