Asexuality, Grey Sexuality, and Narcissism

Okay, Shoshanim, listen up.

This is a video about sex, the S-word.

I would like to clarify a few concepts, a few clinical terms in the video you're about to watch. So this is an add-on, an introductory part to the video you're about to watch. Learn these terms, otherwise you won't understand the video you're about to watch properly.

We start with a diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ever since the text revision of the third edition. And this is hypoactive sexual desire disorder, HSDD. Hypo, like in low, hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or in short, hypo sexuality.

Hypo sexuality is a desire disorder in the DSM. It means someone who doesn't have a libido has little or no sex, little or no desire or interest in sex. And, this is a critical feature, is not happy about it.

To be diagnosed with hypoactive sexual desire disorder, you need to be in distress. You need to be sad and angry and depressed and resentful of the fact that you have no sex drive.

If you are hypo sexual, if you don't have a sex drive, if you don't have a libido and you're perfectly happy with it, you're perfectly content with it, then you should not be diagnosed. You should not be pathologized and you should not be medicalized.

Asexuality is a legitimate, healthy sexual orientation. There's nothing wrong with it.

Only if you feel bad, only if it destroys your relationships and only if you feel uncomfortable and angry and sad, do you then require treatment and you can be diagnosed with hypoactive sexual desire disorder, HSDD.

But what is a libido?

A libido has three components. Attraction, sexual attraction to an object. The object can be another person regardless of gender. The object can be yourself. So sexual attraction to an object.

Sexual desire, in other words, the wish to act on the sexual attraction.

And action towards that object, be it yourself in the form of masturbation or sex with another object.

So I repeat, libido has three components. Sexual attraction to an object, external or you, internal, desire to act on the sexual attraction sexually, and sexual action towards that object or towards yourself.

Now, there is something called asexuality. It's not recognized. It's not in the diagnostic and statistical manual. It's not in the international classification of disorders. It's just out there, mainly on the internet.

But I think it's only a question of time before it is recognized by the profession, by psychology.

Because I think asexuality is very real as opposed to empaths or such nonsense. Asexuals are real.

Asexuality is a sexual orientation. Again, it's totally legitimate and it's totally healthy.

But it's a spectrum. It's a whole spectrum of behaviors, inclinations, propensities, preferences, and so on. It's not a single, single clinical picture or single psychological picture. It's a whole spectrum.

And there are asexuals who are not sexually attracted to anyone, have no desire to act sexually, and many of them consequently are without sex. They don't even masturbate. These individuals have no libido.

I repeat, it's not true to say that all asexuals have libido. That is not true.

If you are asexual and you're not attracted to anyone sexually, you don't desire to have sex or you are repelled by sex, and you never have sex, and you don't even masturbate, then I'm sorry to tell you, you have no libido.

And in this sense, it's very similar to hypoactive sexual desire disorder. We'll come to it in a minute.

Now, some asexuals masturbate. Other asexuals have periods of sexual activity. Some, as I said, find sex repugnant and repulsive.

So asexuality is a whole spectrum. It's a whole spectrum. It's an orientation that can be lifelong, or it can be recurrent, intermittent. Some asexuals become sexual for a while and then go back to being asexual.

Now, graysexuality is the area between asexuality and sexuality. It's on the A spectrum. So graysexuality is when you are in between.

An example is demisexuality. Demisexuality is when you can go for very long periods of time without sex, without desire, without attraction, and then you find someone, you get emotionally attached to him or to her, and then you become sexually active with desire, with attraction, with everything.

So demisexuals are people who cannot have sex unless they have deep and profound emotional bonding with the partner. It's a form of gray sexuality.

So graysexuality is in between.

If you are asexual and you have no desire, sexual desire, and you are not attracted to anyone, and you do not have sex in any form, including masturbation, and you are in distress about your asexuality, then I'm sorry again to tell you you are hyposexual. In other words, you have a pathology. You have a disorder.

It's the distress that matters, not your asexuality.

Your asexuality is healthy, but if you are conflicted with it, if you have dissonance, if you can't sleep at night, if you're depressed because of it, then you have a disorder, and it's hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

Now, it's ridiculous to say that there are no asexual narcissists. Yes, believe it or not, I've received numerous comments and messages on my Instagram post saying that there's no such thing as a narcissist who is asexual.

Narcissists come in every shade, every color, every stripe. There are homosexual narcissists, heterosexual narcissists, transgender narcissists, and of course asexual narcissists.

Very important to clarify again and again, not all asexuals are narcissists. I'm not saying this. I don't even know what proportion of asexuals are narcissists. If it's like the general population, less, more, I have no idea. No one has conducted studies, but I'm sure that not all asexuals are narcissists.

And of course, I am not implying that asexuality is a form of narcissism or even that it's a pathology because I don't believe it's a pathology, but all narcissists without a single exception, whether they're cerebral, whether they're somatic, whether they're overt, whether they're covert, whether they're inverted, you name it, all subtypes of narcissists, including psychopathic malignant narcissists, all of them, go through phases of asexuality in the wake of dysphoria.

Dysphoria is a fancy name for depression.

So I have to repeat this.

All narcissists without one exception, dead or alive, go through phases of asexuality during the pathology, during the evolution and progress of the pathology. There is not one exception.

Why do I say that they go through phases of asexuality? Why don't I say that all narcissists become hypo-sexual?

Do you remember the difference between hypo-sexuality and asexuality? Distress.

Asexual and asexual is perfectly healthy. Happy-go-lucky has no problem with his sexuality.

A hyposexual is an asexual who is in distress about his or her asexuality.

Now, narcissists are not in distress when the narcissist goes through a period of loss of libido, a period where he is not attracted, doesn't desire and doesn't have sex, doesn't even masturbate. When the narcissist goes through such periods, there is no distress. He does not experience any distress about it.

Narcissists experience no distress about their sexuality.

So when they go through phases or periods where they don't have sex and they don't have libido and they don't desire anyone and they are not attracted to anyone, etc., they don't feel bad about it. They don't feel angry, they don't feel depressed, they don't feel resentful, they want to change.

So in this sense, they are asexual, not hypo-sexual.

During these phases, they are asexual.

They are depressed and the asexual phases are induced by depression.

But the depression has nothing to do with the narcissist's sexuality. The narcissist is depressed about deficient or absent narcissistic supply.

So the narcissist will have trouble securing narcissistic supply and then become asexual but he will not be distressed or depressed about having become asexual.

I want to read to you the very short Instagram post that brought on my head the entire victimhood movement of asexuals all over the world.

Here is the post.

Narcissistic supply and perceived success, self-supply, are aphrodisiacs. When they are deficient or absent in the collapsed phase, the narcissist becomes dysphoric.

And again, I refer you to my video, the narcissist's three depressions.

Depression, I continue in the Instagram post, depression is closely correlated with hypo-sexuality, a loss of libido. Same as a transient subtype of asexuality.

In this sense, all narcissists have gray sexuality because sometimes they are asexual and sometimes they are sexual.

All of them are on the a-spectrum, though of course not all asexuals are narcissists. That's not what I'm saying.

Normally cerebral narcissists switch to somatic in order to restart the interrupted flow of supply. But when they have body image problems, this may take longer than normal. That was the post.

And it created a headstorm.

So I've made this video that you're about to watch. And I hope this introductory part will help you to understand some of the concepts in use in this video.

So have fun, kids. This is about sex. Remember? Remember what is sex? None of us do.

Okay, Shoshanin, onward and forward with the thrust.

When Voltaire was on his deathbed, a priest told him, renounce the devil. It is your last chance. And Voltaire said, do you really think it's time to make new enemies?

Well, I always make new enemies, Voltaire. I've just made enemies of the asexual community because I dare to say that narcissists go through asexual phases. I said it in an Instagram post.

And so I'm going to elaborate a bit on what I have written and clarify some things in order to remove doubt as to what I'm saying.

My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. And, all the asexuals out there, I am a professor of psychology, so listen up.

Here's what I was really saying.

First of all, clearly, not all asexuals are narcissists. I never said that. I absolutely never said that. I actually believe, although there's no data, I believe that only a minority of asexuals are narcissists, exactly like in the general population.

However, asexuality is a very important and integral part of narcissism, of pathological narcissism. So all narcissists are asexual at one time or another, but not all asexuals, of course, are narcissists.

Narcissistic supply and perceived success, self-supply, are very important to the economy of the narcissist's precarious personality structure, disorganized personality.

Narcissistic supply is a fancy way of saying attention. And perceived success is when the narcissist keeps reminding himself that he is successful, he is accomplished, he is amazing, he is irresistible, he is this and he is that.

That is a form of self-supply. It's a little like self-soothing.

Okay, narcissistic supply and self-supply are aphrodisiacs. They are aphrodisiacs. They increase the libido of the narcissist. They enhance it.

When the narcissist has plenty of narcissistic supply or when he succeeds to self-supply in lieu of external supply, he becomes turned on, he becomes libidinal, becomes much more interested in sex.

And when narcissistic supply or self-supply are deficient, let alone absent in the collapsed phase of the narcissist, when the narcissist is incapable of garnering narcissistic supply anymore, the narcissist becomes dysphoric.

And I advise you to watch my video titled The Narcissist Three Depressions.

Anyhow, no supply dysphoria. Dysphoria is another word for depression, all kinds of depression.

So when there's no supply, when it's deficient or absent, the narcissist becomes sad, depressed.

And depression is closely correlated with hypo-sexuality even in totally healthy and normal people. When totally healthy and normal people become depressed for whatever reason, reactively or internally, endogenously or exogenously, whatever the etiology, whatever the cause of the depression may be, even when healthy people become depressed, they lose their sex drive. Depression is associated with hypo-sexuality.

And in the case of the narcissist, it's no different.

So no supply or little supply, depression and a drop in libido, a drop in the sex drive, which leads either to hypo-sexuality, less frequency of sex or decreased or diminished interest in sex, or to total sexlessness.

Now sexlessness is a subtype of asexuality.

Not all asexual are sexless. It's a common mistake.

But there are asexuals who are sexless, who never exercise sex because they find sex repulsive or because they have no interest whatsoever in sex, very similar to a schizoid person.

So sexlessness and hypo-sexuality are common reactions of the narcissist to the dysphoria engendered by absent or diminished narcissistic supply.

It's a transient subtype of asexuality and all narcissists go through it time and again.

So clinically, it's recurrent, a recurrent subtype of asexuality.

In this sense, all narcissists have gray sexuality and all of them are on the A spectrum.

I repeat, all narcissists have gray sexuality and all of them are on the A, asexuality spectrum.

But of course, I am not saying that all asexuals are narcissists. That's not what I'm saying.

Now, normally the cerebral narcissist, when he fails to obtain narcissistic supply using his intelligence or intellect or academic accomplishments or what have you, when this happens, when there's a collapse, the cerebral narcissist is deprived of narcissistic supply. He switches to a somatic phase. He becomes somatic. He tries to obtain supply using his body, his sexuality.

And this is in order to restart the interrupted flow of supply. Obtaining supply via sex is usually much easier and much more immediate than obtaining supply by, for example, writing a book.

So when the cerebral narcissist's flow of supply is interrupted, very often he switches to a somatic phase.

But when the narcissist has a body image problem, it may take longer than normal. And until such time as he makes this transition, again, the narcissist is likely to be hyposexual or sexless, asexual, some type of asexual. That's all I said in my Instagram post.

And that brought out of the woodwork numerous asexuals who posted inane, aggressive, violent sometimes comments, which I have, of course, immediately removed.

And this proves that asexuality has become a form of identity politics. It's no longer about the clinical phenomenon or not clinical phenomenon, because I happen to think that asexuality is totally normal. I don't think there's any pathology there.

But clearly, these people have been sensitized to the point that they have become essentially violent and aggressive, very similar to all other woke movements.

As sexuality is going the wrong way, it's becoming exclusionary, aggressive, violent, and remember what happened to other victimhood movements, probably infested by narcissists and psychopaths who are trying to leverage and take over the entire movement.

Beware you mentally healthy asexuals. You are being probably exploited and abused by narcissistic and psychopathic asexuals.