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I Made an Introduction to Asexuality Infographic


Nottsexual

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Hello, I'm new to the forums, but I've been reading up on and contemplating asexuality for a couple years now.

 

It took me a long time to figure out the Split Attraction Model, and especially how it fit in with the usual meaning of a sexuality.

 

There's tons of text resources that helped me wrap my head around it, but I'm a very visual person, so I made it into a graphical allegory.

 

Hopefully it'll help some people come to a better understanding of their sexuality much faster than I did.

 

It's also intended as an introduction to asexuality/aromanticism for complete newbies, or a way to introduce your sexuality to friends or family in a clear way.

 

If you find it helpful, let me know! I'd be so happy to hear that it made something click, or helped you explain something to yourself or someone close to you.

 

It's pretty big, so here's a link to it instead of a direct picture: http://imgur.com/a/DdROf

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Nice! I'm still pretty new to asexuality/aromanticism myself so I don't have any other input. 

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Lucas Monteiro

I find this really great. Can help people who wants to understand more about asexuality and are new to the subject.

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Plectrophenax

Not that it matters too much, but there's a typo right at the bottom ("oreintations" instead of "orientations"). If you want to change that, there is still time.

 

And, personally, I would include the area to the left of the bell-curve "greysexual" and not "asexual" - to me, the latter only fully describes the far end of the graph. But that's a terminological question and I'm well aware of how diverse the understanding of these terms can be.

 

Aside from that, very nice, approachable and charming. Well done ^_^

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@Plectrophenax Thanks for pointing that out! I fixed it up.

 

I didn't include grey-sexual for a few reasons. For one, it's meant as an intro to the community, and grey gets into more nuance that someone could explore once they get interested in learning more. Getting more detailed would also have made a longer info graphic, and I thought it was getting a bit out of hand already. Thanks for the suggestion though ^_^

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I sometimes see the ace of hearts as a symbol of asexuality in general (because the ace of hearts looks like a heart and not an ace without a background of a card?), but when I've seen the community devided between the different aces, I always saw the ace of spades as a symbol for aromantic asexuals.

 

Also, both the asexual and the aromantic community try to answer the question mentioned in the infographic with the split attraction model, though the infographic only mentiones the spectrum of sexual attraction in that point.

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On 8/1/2017 at 8:46 AM, chandrakirti said:

I didn't know that aromantics were represented by an ace of hearts, I thought that was for the romantic aces.

yes, you're right; aro aces are ace of spades and romo aces are ace of hearts. :) 

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AceTherapist

Beautiful! And way more comprehensive than other infographics! Is there a way to show the exact sexual/romantic placements can vary? Afraid some people may take it literally (bisexuals being more sexual than allosexuals etc) or maybe show a couple possibilities for each orientation. And maybe a single mention of gray ace? Fine print? Even basic infographics have included it. I seriously love it though. Forwarding to friends and colleagues

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Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I realize the ace of hearts was a pretty big misconception, so I fixed that up. I also added a small acknowledgement for graysexuals, and a link to AVEN so people have direction if they want to learn more.

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  • 2 months later...

This is lovely and inspirational. Thank you for your work. 

 

I symbolically award you with this fresh slice of raw organic blueberry beet cheesecake:

 

raw-blueberry-beet-cheesecake-b-1200x750

 

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everywhere and nowhere

A little note: as I understand it, the rainbow was originally meant to symbolize all the non-standard orientations and identities. Not just gays and lesbians, but the very notion that under the surface of heteronormativity there is a whole new world of different identities: gays, lesbians, bi and pan people, transsexuals, transvestites, butches, drag queens et caetera et caetera. Only later did every orientation, gender identity and even preference (such as bears, leathermen etc.) get their own flag and everything became a bit muddled. It's similar with asexuality: OK, there is the asexual flag - though, to be honest, I never thought it to be particularly beautiful, even though I have a bit of jewellery in ace colors - but still, rainbow stands for DIVERSITY and not just gayness and so, obviously, asexuality should be understood as included in this diversity. Therefore I always perceive it as wrong to assume that the rainbow flag only symbolizes homosexuality. I have nothing against subgroups having their own colors too, but it should be reminded that they are still included under the great rainbow umbrella.

However, I very much liked the image with two overlapping circles showing what is understood as "sexual" and "romantic" and these words: "If you don't desire or enjoy a majority of one category, but still love the other, that works perfectly fine!". That's it. Generally, I like the idea of relationship anarchy: anyway, any possible relationship is a connection between unique people, something which will never be identical to any other relationship ever. So why not let people develop their own rules instead of telling them that once they said "a", they must say "b" and that if they enjoy, for example, sensual touch, they have to "progress" to sex?

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Salted Karamel

While I like the idea of the color spectrum representing the various spectra of sexuality, I think you've complicated matters by using terminology and symbolism that already has related meaning to mean other things.

 

For example, in your illustrations of panromantic asexuality, aro-ace, etc., you have a grayscale spectrum representing "sexuality." This is doubly problematic: First of all, the grayscale spectrum traditionally represents the asexual-allosexual spectrum (with black being ace and white being allo), and secondly, you're using "sexuality" to mean "orientation." "Orientation" means a direction that a thing is pointed in; "sexuality," as your whole piece is about, is an entire package composed of many elements. Orientation is just one of those elements.

 

So, when I got to this part of the chart, I see the heading "straight allosexual" followed by a grayscale spectrum with a dot on one end. I thought to myself, "ah yes, this is illustrating where they fall on the ace-allo spectrum." Except you have the dot at the black end, and I thought, "hmm, I think this person has the spectrum backwards" (black is for ace because of the black ace ring), and then I realized you weren't using the grayscale spectrum to illustrate asexuality/allosexuality at all, even though that's how it's traditionally used.

 

To muddy matters further, you have pink-to-blue spectra illustrating ace-allo/aro-allo, when the colors pink and blue are traditionally used to symbolize female and male gender. Even someone who doesn't know that the grayscale spectrum is usually used for ace/allo might end up confused by this and think that you're placing these dots on a spectrum meant to indicate which genders the person is attracted to. Either way, they're going to be even more confused when they encounter the grayscale spectrum later on and have been misinformed about what it means.

 

I'm probably not explaining myself very well here, because I am a visual communicator as well and I don't do so well expressing my thoughts with words. But I can tell you I would never use this infographic to try to explain asexuality and aromanticism to someone because it's rife with misinformation and misleading information.

 

Here's some other things making this super confusing and/or misleading:

 

- "Allo" is not everything right of straight up ace. "Allo" is more like the whole right half of the bell curve. Maybe the whole right 75%, volume-wise. (The "norm" of a bell curve is determined by the middle 50%, right? I could be wrong about this, but "allo" would be wherever you determine "normal" to be and everything right of it.)

 

- You introduce both value and saturation, but only illustrate value.

 

- The introduction of both value and saturation on top of hue means you're taking us from a 1-dimensional discussion to a 3-dimensional one, but then you only ever discuss two dimensions (orientation and incidence, essentially). Maybe you're thinking of a/romanticism as being a third dimension to sexuality, but it isn't; it's a separate 2-dimensional spectrum of its own (since people can and do experience sexual and romantic attraction, or lack thereof, very separately from one another).

 

- You also never explain why you're displaying the color wheel twice each time— once as a smooth gradient, then again in chunks. (I believe I understand what you're driving at here because it's an analogy I've used myself, but you need to explain it if you use it.)

 

- You have the aro flag next to the ace of hearts, which is super confusing. I'm not even sure you need to introduce the playing card stuff here, especially if you're trying to pare this introduction down to the basics. Whether or not some aces call themselves aces of hearts or aces of spades is pretty extraneous to understanding the basics of asexuality.

 

- Is sensual touching really sexual? Is this not sensual? I fear you're going to cause more problems than you're going to solve by conflating sexuality and sensuality, when sensuality could get a whole spectrum discussion by itself.

 

- Your bullseye illustrations are just super confusing. 

 

I'm pretty tired but I hope this is helpful feedback.

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