reply-replies

[dragonlady7]

asexuality, demisexuality, this isn't ace discourse, but this is what ace discourse should be about!, god couldn't we talk about something interesting for once, instead of Who Is Valid

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astroloquacious https://astroloquacious.tumblr.com/ replied to your post“nottheliterati replied to your post “a deep thought maybe? on…” https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/627897819397865472/nottheliterati-replied-to-your-post-a-deep

Ah, ignore my prior comment then. I do think (queer) people know what demi-bi is, but if it doesn’t feel like it fits, it doesn’t fit. (Explaining your identity to non-LGBT+ community members or people who don’t have at least one close LGBT+ friend.) is a whole ‘nother story.)

See, I never heard that one, and it sounds an awful lot like “demi-boy” which is like, a whole separate other thing on a different axis entirely. But like… I mean, it’s not that I never hang out with queers at all, so it’s weird to me that I’ve never heard it ever in all this time and feel like I had to put all that together from scratch.

And sorry, I think I’ve lost some replies in the shuffle of a real busy offline life today, but someone (oh, it was you, LOL hi) pointed out that they don’t know anyone who’s both demi straight– and i think that’s an important relevant point too, and I’d expand that to be monosexual in general either straight OR gay– it seems to me like being demisexual tends to also have a super high co-incidence of being bi/pan, because if your model of attraction works that way you’re clearly generally operating on some different level or axis that’s not the “normal” (i.e., the way we have any language at all to describe) way attraction works. And there was definitely an earlier reply or reblog from salamanderinspace https://tmblr.co/mm6g8jrlkfrdmys_pia2pqw that has by now scrolled off my activities pane where they mentioned having attractions based on totally unusual aspects of experiences, and maybe it’s that ace-spec stuff like this just isn’t examined much?

Oh yes, here’s the reblog https://salamanderinspace.tumblr.com/post/627805841369776128/a-deep-thought-maybe-on-demisexuality. an excerpt:

For a long time I identified as asexual, but I’m not asexual, I’m very much a sexual person and I feel both arousal and attraction… it’s just extremely rare that I genuinely experience those things for PEOPLE. Much more often I’ll feel attraction around fictional characters or types of art…when Jenny Slate says she’s had sex with the moon, I feel that. I have sometimes felt aroused by pictures of body parts, but more because they’re pictures than because they’re body parts; I’m feeling more of a connection with the photographer and the story they’re telling than the subject.

[…]

But I think what we need really is actually a whole system of new words which describe - NOT whether you feel attraction, and NOT who you feel it for, but what is the specific attribute or mechanism that causes you to feel attraction/arousal.

really, though, the whole reblog is so interesting– and like, yes, yes, that the attraction is not necessarily sexual and shouldn’t be taken to be about sex, it’s more than that and it’s different than that!!

I think it’s a fuckin’ shame that Ace Discourse has taken over to substitute a fucking pointless discussion of Whether Aces Are Queers for a meaningful and fascinating discussion that I think could be super illuminating about the really, really different ways a lot of people experience the spectrum of attraction– I really think there’s an entire universe of non-allosexual modes of attraction that have nothing to do with, like, gender, classical physical attractiveness, literally anything Hollywood has ever heard of, any of the things that stand for Sexiness in movies, etc.– there’s just a whole universe of stuff that is super, super normal, but we totally lack any way of discussing it. And since sexual attraction is a thing so intrinsic to a person, it’s basically impossible to understand someone whose modes of it work radically differently than yours.

Like, I genuinely, literally cannot comprehend what it is that like “normal” allosexual straight people experience when they see some boring straight person in a bar and are like “That’s The One”– It is as incomprehensible to me as, like, calculus. I know calculus exists and is like, a kind of math or something, I think there’s letters in it sometimes, they use it for like spaceships and things, but that’s as much as I could tell you. I know “love at first sight” exists and I totally know there are people who only like, say, brunette chicks with slim thighs, but I can’t really tell you anything more concrete than that and I can’t actually begin to comprehend what it would be like to experience life like that.

So the problem with ID’ing as bi or pan simply because I experience attraction independently of the subject’s physical sex or gender presentation is that it feels very distinct from people who are bi or pan and experience attraction dependent on the subject’s physical sex or gender presentation, if that makes any sense?? It feels like an entirely different thing, not that I couldn’t find common cause with such a person? but i often feel so weirdly alienated by bi memes that are meant to be in-jokey, LOL.

girderednerve https://girderednerve.tumblr.com/ replied to your post “a deep thought maybe? on demisexuality” https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/627791794638340096/a-deep-thought-maybe-on-demisexuality

this is So relatable, i too would like to be able to describe more or less how i feel or approach attraction with some term that doesn’t require a three-minute explainer & a vetting process. it feels kind of frustrating that most of the language available here seems designed to describe (/pathologize?) behavior instead of express attitudes & emotions, but what’s new, right?

YES. I guess really that’s what I’m objecting to– I have always, always hated how pathologized it all seems, and how it’s like. You have to have a 3.5x5″ laminated card with 1000 words on each side to explain your gender identity and the pride flag you specifically are entitled to wear (like a clan tartan) (you need a genealogy to show you’ve the right to that one) (like, am i bi through the distaff line if I’ve had oral sex with a woman, can you squeak me in on a technicality even if I’ve been celibate, I paid my dues by almost getting expelled from boarding school for getting discovered naked in bed with a girl, listen I always bought drinks at the drag karaoke night I’m in the system, how does this work) – ugh.

Like– all of this is complicated and I shouldn’t be able to boil down the entire essence of what makes me, me, and how I love and who I love and why I love and when, to a simple phrase, but god, it would be nice to have some more nuanced language around some of this, it would be nice to have something to explain this entire spectrum, which is maybe more like a color wheel, which is maybe actually more of a kind of sphere, which is actually maybe a bit more like the branches and roots of a tree, which is really kind of more than a single mind can understand because it’s a part of the whole of the existence of living things on this planet and beyond–

anyway I just wish I had a way to talk about what gets dismissed as “the ace spectrum” where I could explain some of this without launching into a whole deal about it.

Comments

[paean]

This is why (and I'm maybe simpler to explain than you are), I prefer to just call myself queer. The problem with that is that everyone then wants you to tell them what kind of queer, but when a simple letter in LGBT doesn't cover everything, it's a fucking hassle. So you have my sympathy.