Can someone be romantically attracted to one gender but sexually attrated to another?

[BeakLove]

On 12/26/2023 at 5:03 PM, retrobeetism said:

There's a reason why heteroromantic homosexuality and homoromantic heterosexuality were of the first forms of splitting attraction to be analysed, named and documented

Would this include a gay person person who elects to be in a romantic relationship for societal reasons e.g. easier life partner / social acceptance?

 

On 12/20/2023 at 1:43 AM, nyx_moon said:

I have this. I am a woman, I am sexually attracted to men. My sex drive is very low yet men can get me very excited. I am attracted to women romantically, I see them as better life partners and easier and more fun to be with. I think women are beautiful and hot, but nothing that makes me wanna have sex with them. This sucks so bad. I have an agreement with my partner where we can have sexual partners, but my heart belongs to her. It truly sucks, I wish I could make this simpler and easier to deal with. Guilt, shame, insecurities, confusion and worthlessness has been big issues paired with this problem. One just has to accept themselves and make the adjustments with the right person that understands and loves you. 

Sorry to read about your struggles. How did this arrangement come about if you don't mind me asking?

 

Do you feel it's impossible for you to find a man you would be romantically into as well as sexually? Not of course suggesting this, just wondering if you feel you're incapable of developing that kind of feeling for any man even in theory. 

[retrobeetism]

49 minutes ago, BeakLove said:

Would this include a gay person person who elects to be in a romantic relationship for societal reasons e.g. easier life partner / social acceptance?

I'm not sure

 

That wouldn't be attraction. Ulrichs categorised attraction into two main categories: passionate (physical attraction) and tender (emotional attraction). At the same type there were three possibilities of attraction:

 

- Urning(in) = What we would now call gay. "Urning" are basically turians/veldians and "urningin" are lesbians.

- Dioning(in) = Straight/ people. "Dioning" are darcians and "dioningin", bennetians.

- Uranodioning(in) = A combinations of the two.

 

This combination can exist in two types:

 

Conjunctive uranodioning(in) = Both tender and passionate attractions are both uranian and dionian. a perioriented bi person

 

Disjuctive uranodioning(in) = dionian passionate feelings, but uranian tender feelings (homoromantic heterosexual). The opposite could also be possible, of course, but because when Ulrichs lived sex between two men was illegal, that wouldn't have been something he would have been able to publish.

 

Ulrichs wouldn't consider a gay man who dates/married a woman for convenience/societal pressure disjuctive uranodioning because:

 

- He doesn't feel passionate nor tender feelings for women

- At that time, for a gay men, to marry a woman was a matter of safety

 

[BeakLove]

21 hours ago, retrobeetism said:

I'm not sure

 

That wouldn't be attraction. Ulrichs categorised attraction into two main categories: passionate (physical attraction) and tender (emotional attraction). At the same type there were three possibilities of attraction:

 

[...]

 

Disjuctive uranodioning(in) = dionian passionate feelings, but uranian tender feelings (homoromantic heterosexual). The opposite could also be possible, of course, but because when Ulrichs lived sex between two men was illegal, that wouldn't have been something he would have been able to publish

I had a look. You are right he does exclude those who marry for convenience from his concept. But I'm not sure there's a direct mapping from Ulrich's model to what's meant by "homoromantic heterosexual". There's no specific sexual exclusion from the "tender" and "sentimental" feelings he refers to. To me what it seems he's getting at in the disjunctive case is being unable to feel passionate, loving feelings towards women, merely physical attraction.

 

Quote

Unlike the original model (now specified as “conjunctive”), who is genuinely attracted at every level to both men and women, the Disjunctive Uranodioning feels romantic and sexual love for masculine men but merely sensual attraction (not true love) for women. 

Source: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5031&context=lcp

 

Quote

 

Also outside Ulrichs’s own experience is the love of the Urning variety he labels “disjunctive Uranodioning,” i.e., who feels only “tender-sentimental” love for his male love-object. To illustrate this he quotes at length from the letter of a 26-year-old Czech who wrote to Ulrichs on 25 October 1867:

 

I feel my strongest, purest desire in the sight of charming boyish features…. The only thing that disturbs my illusion is, when the beautiful boy grows older and a beard develops; then my passion becomes more sober. That my inclination is natural is guaranteed by the fact that it does not decrease. In addition, only quite young, tender, shy girlish boys attract me, not strong and robust ones, and indeed only those with decent and pure hearts. How I would like to often press the beautiful boy to my heart and cover his pure eyes with hot kisses: and yet I dare not! (Memnon, 2: 88–89)

 

Source: https://hubertkennedy.angelfire.com/Ulrichs.pdf (there is some discussion around the meaning of "boy" in the book)

 

He further distinguishes between pure sexual gratification as distinct from a "true love" in the opposite case, too:

 

Quote

If Ulrichs insists that Urning-love is inborn and not acquired, he still admits that there are some men who appear to act like Urnings. He calls such a person a “uranized” man, or Uraniaster. His condition may be brought about by a lack of women (in prison, for example) or other reasons, but there is no true love here: “His pleasure consists only in the enjoyment of his own orgasm” (Memnon, 2: 62). He does not share the effect that results from contact with the loved body, which, according to Ulrichs, “reaches its highest point for the Urning in the touching of the two male members. It is just this member that above all exercises the greatest sensual attraction on him”

Again here, the distinction isn't between a sexual and non-sexual type of love but between purely sensual / physical gratification and passionate, "true" love (which is sexually charged). 

 

 

 

[retrobeetism]

3 hours ago, BeakLove said:

I had a look. You are right he does exclude those who marry for convenience from his concept. But I'm not sure there's a direct mapping from Ulrich's model to what's meant by "homoromantic heterosexual". There's no specific sexual exclusion from the "tender" and "sentimental" feelings he refers to. To me what it seems he's getting at in the disjunctive case is being unable to feel passionate, loving feelings towards women, merely physical attraction.

Ulrichs himself says a disjunktiver uranodioning as "feeling tender feelings to men, but passionate feelings to women". The problem here seems to be modern bias that love and feelings are exclusive to non-physical emotionally-driven types of attraction.

 

It's complecated to translate it as homoromantic (or simply homoemotional) heterosexual (heterophysical), not because he clearly wasn't talking about physical attraction, but because Urning is not only a sexuality, but a gender and basically refers to any queer person who was AMAB and doesn't act as society (of his time mainly) mandates men to act. Many urnings were in fact what we now would call transfems and/or nonbinary.

 

He classified it further into:

 

Urningthum: Passionate and tender feelings for men; no feelings for women. Subdivided into:

 

   Mannling: very masculine, except for feminine psyche. Attracted to effeminate/feminine men

 

  Weibling: feminine in appearance, behaviour and psyche. Attracted to masculine men.

 

 Virilisierte Mannlinge: Urnings who have learned to act like Dionings.

 

(This includes gay men having or choosing to date or marrying women)

 

Uranodioning: Attraction towards both men and women. Divided into:

 

    Konjuktiver: Both tender and passionate feelings for men and women

 

   Disjunktiver: Tender feelings for men, passionate feelings for women.

 

Then there are two type of Urning-acting dionings:

 

 Manuring: feminine in appearance and behaviour, with a male psyche and a sex drive towards women.

 

 Uraniaster: a Dioning engaging in situational homosexuality.

 

 

 

 

[BeakLove]

2 hours ago, retrobeetism said:

Ulrichs himself says a disjunktiver uranodioning as "feeling tender feelings to men, but passionate feelings to women". The problem here seems to be modern bias that love and feelings are exclusive to non-physical emotionally-driven types of attraction.

Well in his original writing disjunktiver uranodioning is very specifically tender, infatuated feelings towards young, not fully grown male youths. Whether the chaste nature of the examples he cites is down to restraint or a sexual repulsion is up to interpretation. It is hard to read some of those flowery, passionate descriptions and not see some sort of sexual energy; even if the idea of actualising the feelings through sexual contact is undesirable. There's an element of forbidden fruit crossed with childish nostalgia; that the pure and passionate love would almost be sullied were sensual desires given into. 

 

He does thus posit there may be two sexual drives - one for sensuality and one for romantic feelings - and suggests that attraction for everyone is "split" in the sense that romantic feelings precede sexual development. But due to lack of data considers the notion of independent love drives an open question. 

 

I feel like the concept of someone who gets romantic / passionate feelings for one or both sexes, but these do not manifest as sexual activity (as they don't like / want sex) is not hard to get your head around. But personally I struggle with the extension of this simple idea to the complicated one of completely discordant romantic and sexual drives. Everyone's own experience is true and legitimate; still it's hard for me to imagine how you could be sexually attracted to a given sex but completely incapable of romantic feelings developing in any circumstance, if you are capable of such with the other sex. Perhaps the situational homo/bi-sexuality where any sexual "attraction" is merely the product of gratification and disappears thereafter is the best example.

 

But if you can genuinely find for example, female bodies "hot" and "attractive" but find yourself more sentimentally attached to a more "male" mind surely there are women with male interests / masculine personality that could engender both. 

 

Quote

It's complecated to translate it as homoromantic (or simply homoemotional) heterosexual (heterophysical), not because he clearly wasn't talking about physical attraction, but because Urning is not only a sexuality, but a gender and basically refers to any queer person who was AMAB and doesn't act as society (of his time mainly) mandates men to act. Many urnings were in fact what we now would call transfems and/or nonbinary.

 

Yes that is definitely a complicating factor. His model of sexuality stems from the notion of a "woman-ly" mind being attracted to a "man-ly" one as he sees it as a way to reconcile his own effeminate tendencies with his man-loving sexuality. His cluttered taxonomy is really an attempt to preserve the idea that "men" only fall in love with "women".

 

Today most gay men would reject the notion of having a woman's soul or mind. His coupling of erotic desire and a "female mind" is a circular argument, but it was his understandable attempt to justify the "natural-ness" of the condition.