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Demisexual or grey sexuality


Demi-Gorgonzola

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4 hours ago, Pramana said:

a demisexual wouldn't have sexual desires or feelings for people based on immediately apparent characteristics such as sex/gender

NOR DO MANY NORMAL SEXUAL PEOPLE, will it help you understand if I type it in caps?

 

Sexual people (many of them anyway) don't just walk around getting 'sexual desires' for other people based on immediately apparent chatacteristics like their gender/appearance/smell/voice/mannerisms etc. Example: "Oh look, there's a human with tits and a vagina, now I'm experiencing sexual desire because I'm a hetero man" urgh, it DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT. Yes SOME sexual people can be walking through town, see a nice round arse, and experience sexual desires for the person attached to that arse as a result of the feelings the arse gives them, but that's a PERSONALITY trait, not something inherent in all 'regular' sexual humans. Even many men (*gasp* I know, shocking right) can tell you they can't get to the point of actively experiencing sexual desires for a person unless they're emotionally drawn to many non-immediate aspects of that person including their personality, thoughts, humour etc.

 

What you're describing is a PERSONALITY TRAIT that some sexual people have, it's NOT an inherent and fundamental characteristic that all sexual people have which is what *makes* them sexual and not 'demisexual' or ace. How many more years of having this explained to you will it take for you to understand it?

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1 minute ago, FictoVore. said:

How many more years of having this explained to you will it take for you to understand it?

As I described previously, I talked to a few of the leading asexuality researchers regarding the main arguments presented by various desire-definition supporters, and the response I got back was that those arguments were based on elementary logical errors ("like asking what makes people sexual", when the relevant question should be "what makes people have a sexual orientation"). The other main response I received is that the texture of these debates fluctuates in response to changes in the political landscape, such that community controversies reflect concerns that underlie identity politics.

Furthermore, if you read the background theory from analytic philosophy on sexual orientations, and the evolutionary psychology research, you'll see that there's a convergence around a a particular approach to sexual orientations, which is then reflected in the applied research on asexuality. I know this because I've read most of this material. That's why I'm confident in my views.

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1 hour ago, Pramana said:

Furthermore, if you read the background theory from analytic philosophy on sexual orientations, and the evolutionary psychology research, you'll see that there's a convergence around a a particular approach to sexual orientations, which is then reflected in the applied research on asexuality. I know this because I've read most of this material. That's why I'm confident in my views.

You can do all the theoretical-based and philosophical reading you like. It's not going to beat accounts by real sexual people. You go and do a survey for sexual people on how much of an impact personality has on whether or not they're attracted to a person. Have you never heard someone say something like 'insert-personality-trait-here is an instant turn off to me'? 

 

I don't think you're taking anything that Ficto and/or I say seriously. You seem unwilling to consider any opposing point of view. This is disappointing, as however much theoretical and philosophical thinking and reading you undertake, real life accounts from real sexual people are essential to consider when performing research into these areas. 

 

If what this applied research states does not fit real life observations of sexual people's experiences, then its proposed hypotheses do not hold up, regardless of how many people are saying it. 'Analytic philosophy', and research is nothing without experiment. And many, many sexual people are clearly refuting what these 'reading materials' are telling you.

 

And yes, observations are not the same as controlled experiments which are very hard to carry out in psychology. Yet another reason to take these readings with a grain of salt.

 

Also, I'm not sure if you ignored the last post I made or just missed it, I'm curious to see your response.

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48 minutes ago, Baam said:

You can do all the theoretical-based and philosophical reading you like. It's not going to beat accounts by real sexual people. You go and do a survey for sexual people on how much of an impact personality has on whether or not they're attracted to a person. Have you never heard someone say something like 'insert-personality-trait-here is an instant turn off to me'? 

 

I don't think you're taking anything that Ficto and/or I say seriously. You seem unwilling to consider any opposing point of view. This is disappointing, as however much theoretical and philosophical thinking and reading you undertake, real life accounts from real sexual people are essential to consider when performing research into these areas. 

 

If what this applied research states does not fit real life observations of sexual people's experiences, then its proposed hypotheses do not hold up, regardless of how many people are saying it. 'Analytic philosophy', and research is nothing without experiment. And many, many sexual people are clearly refuting what these 'reading materials' are telling you.

 

And yes, observations are not the same as controlled experiments which are very hard to carry out in psychology. Yet another reason to take these readings with a grain of salt.

 

Also, I'm not sure if you ignored the last post I made or just missed it, I'm curious to see your response.

I would argue that you're fundamentally off the mark regarding the nature of rationality and knowledge. You also appear to be unaware of how psychological research is actually conducted. It is based on evidence collected from self-reports of individual people, and then assessed through statistical methods. That is why it is more reliable than anecdotal evidence, and in fact anecdotal evidence is not evidence. A problem with anecdotal evidence is that there is no way to tell whether it represents an average or an extreme outlier. Another problem is that if it is only collected from one forum, then it may represent a heavily biased sample group. I am surprised that you are unaware of these matters.

Regarding the analytic philosophy aspect, well if you've made an invalid argument, then it's invalid, and that can't be changed by evidence, since it is a logical rather than an empirical question. Again, I am surprised that you are unaware of this.

Now when you say "many, many sexual people" above, how many people do you mean exactly? Could you give me a real number? Human sexuality is a well researched area, tens of thousands of published books and articles, decades of research, people who have spent their careers on the topic. And yes, that research was mostly done by sexual people, so I do in fact favour following sexual people when reaching conclusions, although I tend to side with those who have proven credentials in the relevant fields. Once again, I am surprised that you are unaware of this.

To address the point about sex/gender and personality, there are two reasons why orientations have been traditionally defined in terms of sex/gender attraction:
1. Evolutionary psychology suggests that attraction evolved to orient mammalian organisms to opposite sex mates, with further preferences within that sex/gender category. For example, the idea is that most heterosexual males would probably prefer to have sex even with a female that they hated than with another male who they really liked personally, suggesting that sex/gender preferences are more important. Thus, if you want to challenge the traditional view on this point, you would need to show that in fact the opposite is true for a majority of heterosexual males, and likewise for other main sex/gender orientation groups.
2. Politically, legal/religious systems have prohibited sexual behaviour based on sex/gender, rather than personality. Modern sexual orientation research has been motivated by a desire to change those restrictions, and thus a focus on sex/gender attractions. Analytic philosophers approach the issue from this direction, for the same reason.

Following that last point, I would argue that a lot of these debates on AVEN are really about issues in identity politics. And I know from conversations (and now even some published queer theory on the matter), that is how academics researching asexuality are interpreting the situation.

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20 hours ago, Pramana said:

Following that last point, I would argue that a lot of these debates on AVEN are really about issues in identity politics. 

Predominantly the fact that you're trying to dictate the identity of every sexual person here, every single time we claim our experience is completely different from the academic nonsense you've been reading about. Hence why we keep arguing with you.

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9 minutes ago, FictoVore. said:

Predominantly the fact that you're trying to dictate the identity of every sexual person here, every single we time we claim our experience is completely different from the academic nonsense you've been reading about. Hence why we keep arguing with you.

Academic psychologists, who have played an important role in legitimizing minority sexual orientations (in fact, I would argue that to a fair extent the asexual community was created by academic theorizing, as that influence is apparent in David Jay's use of concepts, and a couple of the main academics publishing on asexuality are asexual people from the AVEN community) aren't going to be motivated to change their views based on anti-academic propaganda.

One of the reasons why I like to read academic literature is so that I can speak that language, and talk to academics through formulating arguments that they will take seriously.

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