The argument over “demisexuality” is not over whether people who “lack... sexual attraction to others without a strong emotional connection“ exist but over whether that's an uncommon or unusual way to experience one's underlying heterosexuality, bisexuality, or homosexuality. The article is also full of people talking about how no one understands what demisexuality is and how they need to do “myth-busting” as a result, but they are also all saying different things about what demisexuality is and isn’t. They cause the confusion and lack of understanding they complain about because they tend to be the same people who whine about the great big crime of “gatekeeping.” Finally, because they’re attaching themselves to a movement for legal rights and protections, what legal issues does their demisexuality, as any of them define it, implicate?

First, they never stop to think that generally the people who make light of demisexuality generally experience sexual attraction similarly and are literally saying to them that they can relate and reassuring them they're normal. What a complete reversal of the gay rights movement. If society kept telling LGB people in words and actions that we were normal then we would be delighted and have no need for the gay rights movement. And it would just be embarrassing and awkward and not perverse for self-proclaimed “demisexuals” to try to wheedle themselves in by saying “no, we are not normal, just like you” were they not trying to claim entitlement to our spaces, resources, organizations, infrastructure, and language, and trying to convert them for their own purposes.

Second, in order to reach the conclusion that one is demisexual, presumably self-proclaimed demisexuals have experienced sexual attraction to one or more people after developing an emotional connection. What sex are those people? Heterosexual people have a sexual orientation too, but there is no current, recent, or historical deprivation of opposite sex rights. If everyone Ms. Cuomo has experienced sexual attraction to is male, then she and her defenders can kindly fuck off with trying to cash in on a movement for same-sex rights and protections and making it about her and claiming some kind of victimhood in being told “no.”

On a similar note, the way so many self-proclaimed “demisexuals” describe their "demisexuality" seems similar to how many other people describe their "pansexuality." They claim “demisexual”/"pansexual" as their standalone “sexual orientation” and seek to imply that they are bisexual without calling themselves bisexual because they know that most people accurately understand that bisexual means attraction to both sexes and is legitimately within the scope of LGBT. It’s a cheat code with a wink. It's pretty obvious if you say that your sexual orientation is "demisexual" without more, you're straight and have some self-awareness that you're an LGBT intruder. Their words and actions indicate that they believe “sexual orientation” is who you are open to being sexually attracted to. Such self-proclaimed demisexuals and pansexuals think if they keep the door open to the possibility that they may experience same-sex attraction at some unknown future time in their lives, this makes them something other than heterosexual because they see “heterosexual” as close-minded, boring, and normal and “LGBTQ+” as open-minded, exciting, and different.

Whereas heterosexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality can be clearly defined and observed on a scientific level regardless of what someone calls themselves, people don't seem to be talking about necessarily the same things when they call themselves “demisexual.” If you want people to understand what you mean when you call yourself something and understand the importance of that identity to you, you need to be prepared to clearly define boundaries around what it is and what it is not. That starts with cleaning your own house, just like we here at s/LGBDroptheT seek to do with ours.

Finally, I recently dealt extensively with an individual IRL who unironically identifies as a "demisexual soft boy on the queer spectrum" IRL in a group therapy setting. He is just a straight black dude and self-proclaimed Black Panther waxing poetic about racism and the patriarchy while acting overtly racist exclusively toward white women. He clearly uses the same-sex rights movement to further his own extreme racial politics and felt free to tell my unimpressed self how he "identified with the queer experience" because he didn't feel masculine while acting like an archetype of a man insecure with his masculinity and taking it out on women. But we both know there would be hell to pay if I told him that I "identified with the black experience" and that he would be free to tell me how offensive he found it. To give him some additional color, he had an extremely violent criminal father and was a victim of child physical and sexual abuse and has borderline personality disorder and complex PTSD. He also admittedly has what he calls “boundary issues” in his relationships that drive women away. He initially kept trying to hide the fact that he was just a straight dude and would refer to his exes as “they” and “partner” before finally slipping up and calling them “she.” He did finally state that he was “basically a cishet dude” in a rant about the patriarchy. His unchecked antics turned the group dynamics into hell but I at least got some stories out of it and confirmation that these ideologies are cancer.