I'm asexual. I can't tell you exactly what my romantic orientation is- men are included, but I don't know if women are excluded. I've had crushes on women, but none that would actually ever come near being a relationship, probably more of a schoolgirl-ish admiration/friendship/desire for approval sort of thing. I'm not sure how much romantic love would matter for me anyway in a long term relationship-it would be mostly companionship and emotional closeness which would matter to me, and I don't think gender would make any difference for that.
I think it's really interesting to hear people distinguish between the gender they're interested in sexually and other people they find attractive but not sexually- I guess this is just like the way asexual people talk about romantic orientation as being (obviously) separate from sexual orientation. But why should it be limited only to asexual people? I think if anything, it validates the idea of asexuality more if romantic orientation is recognised separately from sexual orientation, given that many asexual people do experience romantic attraction.
It's good to hear from some people identifying as pansexual, too- the world needs to move on from recognising only straight/gay/bi (though I guess in some places you're lucky if you get even this) and understand that sexuality comes in lots of different shapes and sizes.
When I wrote the poll, I expected people to answer with whatever they identified with most, even though it's not a perfect way of doing things. I guess I expected to find at least one person to say that they didn't know- which I think is a perfectly valid answer, though I suppose when I was younger I sort of assumed that everyone would know their sexuality at 18 (I have no idea how!) and that was it, for life. There is a sort of expectation that you do know, especially as an adult, but not knowing might be the most honest answer and that, I think, is what's most important: being honest with and true to yourself.
This is a somewhat flawed way of doing things, though- I think you'd have to do 0= attraction to opposite gender and 6= attraction to same gender and include whatever form of attraction people want to measure. Though bearing in mind what I said earlier, you might have to do separate scales for sexual and romantic attraction and include another option (i, maybe) for people who don't experience sexual or romantic attraction to either gender. And you still run up against the issue of gender being described in a binary way.Yep, I assumed you hadn't because it would get rather complicated! We could always do a Kinsey-style poll later (if memory serves it's 0-6 with 0 being completely heterosexual, 6 being completely homosexual, i think?), and also a sex-drive-type one (0 being asexual and 6 being the opposite, er... Tiger Woods? I'm suffering brain fade tonight.) On that scale I'd guess I'm about 1 or 2 on orientation and 1 on drive.
This never crossed my mind (but then, I'm asexual- lots of sex stuff doesn't cross my mind, heh). Mind you, there was no more space for extra poll options, since you're only allowed 10.I'm very offended that zoosexual isn't an option.