What Does Demisexual Mean? Knowing the Definitions, Signs, and Misconceptions

The opposite of asexual is allosexual, meaning you regularly experience sexual attraction to other people. An allosexual person might watch a movie and immediately find one of the characters sexy. That kind of response doesn't necessarily happen for people who are demisexual. And it happens rarely, if ever, for someone who identifies as asexual. 

Such a thought or feeling could crop up for a demisexual person later on in the film, as they witness the character navigate increasingly vulnerable and intimate situations. But the added context of the character arc would be critical for sexy feelings to occur. 

What is the difference between graysexual and demisexual?

On the spectrum of sexual desire, asexual and allosexual represent the two extremes. Somewhere in between them, we have graysexuality: The middle ground wherein a person does experience sexual attraction, but it happens infrequently and only under certain conditions or in certain contexts with certain people. In other words, a graysexual person has experienced sexual attraction before, knows it is possible for them, and knows that it could happen again, but probably doesn't hold much expectation around it. Because when it does happen, it feels like the exception to the rule as opposed to the norm. 

Unlike someone who identifies as demisexual, a sense of emotional closeness is not required for a graysexual person to experience sexual attraction on occasion. Being graysexual, also known as gray asexual or gray ace, is more about how often and how much you've experienced sexual attraction to people—the consistency and frequency of that feeling—than why and how you are attracted to people. 

Which means that, yes, you can be both gray ace and demisexual. It's totally possible to identify with more than one ace spectrum sexuality at the same time. You can also identify with an ace spectrum identity and one or more non-ace sexual orientations, queer, pansexual, and heterosexual. 

“If somebody identified as gray ace and demisexual,” Dr. Sutker explains, “then their experience might be something like, 'I don't get attracted to people very often. It only have a couple of times in my life. When it did, it was after this close connection with them as a person developed, and it only happened with three people.’” 

How can someone be demisexual?

Perhaps the most open demisexual in the public eye is Ev'yan Whitney (she/they), a well-known sexuality doula and educator. Beyond this, pop culture doesn’t have many explicit examples of demisexuality. While we could make guesses as to a TV or movie character’s orientation, there is no way to know without that person openly stating how they identify with a specific sexual orientation. In the case of demisexuals, and a wide variety of other marginalized identities, this can be quite infuriating. It'd be amazing to see demisexuality represented on the next season of a show like Sex Education or Big Mouth.

Especially because those who identify as demisexual can often feel misunderstood or shamed. “Demis can be mislabeled as having a ‘sexual dysfunction’ and feel frustrated in a relationship for years, simply because their erotic needs are not being taken care of or recognized,” says Lucy Rowett, a certified sex coach and clinical sexologist. Just because society has overhyped hookup culture doesn’t mean it’s the “right way” to have sex. It’s perfectly normal and fine if someone needs a connection in order to feel frisky.