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As a kid, well before I had any sexual feelings, I had ... 'pre-sexual' feelings? Things made me feel funny, and I was oddly fascinated with stuff I realize in hindsight was actually sexual. But as a kid, it wasn't sexual exactly. What was it? Is there a word for pre-sexual?

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I know exactly what you mean and can't describe it any better than you. I'm gonna say it's flat-out sexual. Just not with the hormone driven part. Meaning our sexuality is a deeper part of us than we realize.

Aella

@Aella_Girl

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@lukewyman1

I'm not against the term itself, but I do think the way it viscerally felt doesn't map closely onto the 'sexual' conceptsphere for me. I had all the excited fascination but with zero genital response.

6:37 AM · Jan 29, 2021

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Yeah, zero genital response here too. Definitely get that you want vocabulary to define each separately. Put it this way: I'll bet that primordial part of us is the part that gay, bi, or str8, etc., and the hormones throw gasoline on the fire.

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and

This is interesting to me, cuz my experience was the inverse; discovered early on that “if you play with it, it feels good,” but it was totally disconnected (consciously, anyway) from external stimulus until sometime in early puberty

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and

Totally agree. My crushes on opposite sex started long before puberty. Definite attraction to feminity. Not physical at all. On a deeper level. Metaphysical or spiritual.

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and

Presexual?

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and

I feel like fetish and kink develop in people at a very early age and I know mine personally did. My interest in it was completely non-sexual at the time because I had no way of knowing better, and even now that I know better, I still enjoy my fetish non-sexually sometimes