-Romantic and -Sexual Label Discourse

[Karoushi]

So I've been seeing a bit of discourse lately from people who are non-aces about how using the ___- romantic label is pointless and assuming that by separating it from the ___-sexual label, being ___-sexual means that you only care about sex and how that's toxic specifically for gay people and just??? It just seems so weird to me because nobody is asserting that? I understand that a lot of people's sexual and romantic attraction aligns with each other so there's no point in saying something like "heteroromantic heterosexual" but like the whole point of the subsection for romantic attraction are for asexuals who still feel romantic attraction towards others, if at all. And if those labels allows someone to understand their sexuality better then what's the issue? Some people are chill with just 'asexual' and others probably want to designate their specific romantic attraction as well. I don't know. What are you guy's take on this? Have you seen this kind of discourse too? Because I've mostly been seeing it on Twitter. 

[Colonel Aureliano Buendía]

I haven't seen much of this, but I understand the anxiety people might feel about this, as language is important and many LGBTQ+ people feel defensive about their identities, with good reason. But I agree with you in the end. Having seperate terms for romantic and sexual orientations is pretty important for clarity in many cases, and it's not like anyone is mistaking everyone who says they're heterosexual for aromantics. The language used in a-spec and aro-spec spaces needs to work for the main demographic in those spaces, not to change the meanings of words used by others.

[Baam]

There's a lot of crap on Twitter, I wouldn't pay too much attention. It's really not toxic for gay or lesbian people, I'm not sure how it's come to that conclusion. The over-sexualisation of the LGB community isn't the asexuality community's fault. I use the term grey-lesbian because i'm grey-sexual and also a lesbian (grey-homosexual & grey-homoromantic). If someone thinks that being a sexual aromantic means you're a sex-crazed freak then that's their problem; its their misunderstanding and intolerance that's the issue, not the language itself.

[Ceebs]

Non-ace here. I see no problem with separating them in majority aro/ace communities -- in fact it seems rather necessary -- but I wouldn't use them otherwise unless under specific circumstances, like perhaps I was referring to a person I knew for certain to be bisexual but only heteroromantic. There's absolutely no need otherwise to describe a gay person as a homoromantic homosexual, for example. If someone says 'homosexual', it's generally assumed they're also romantically attracted to the same sex, since the majority of humans are not aromantic and the sexual/romantic stuff goes hand in hand, as you said. And personally I'm not going to start adopting aro/ace terminology into my everyday language other than when directly discussing aro/ace people.

[Baam]

13 minutes ago, CBC said:

Non-ace here. I see no problem with separating them in majority aro/ace communities -- in fact it seems rather necessary -- but I wouldn't use them otherwise unless under specific circumstances, like perhaps I was referring to a person I knew for certain to be bisexual but only heteroromantic. There's absolutely no need otherwise to describe a gay person as a homoromantic homosexual, for example. If someone says 'homosexual', it's generally assumed they're also romantically attracted to the same sex, since the majority of humans are not aromantic and the sexual/romantic stuff goes hand in hand, as you said. And personally I'm not going to start adopting aro/ace terminology into my everyday language other than when directly discussing aro/ace people.

@Karoushi said she understood that it's pointless if their sexuality and romantic orientation aligns:

1 hour ago, Karoushi said:

I understand that a lot of people's sexual and romantic attraction aligns with each other so there's no point in saying something like "heteroromantic heterosexual" but like the whole point of the subsection for romantic attraction are for asexuals who still feel romantic attraction towards others, if at all.

I think the main problem she was asking for opinions was on:

1 hour ago, Karoushi said:

So I've been seeing a bit of discourse lately from people who are non-aces about how using the ___- romantic label is pointless and assuming that by separating it from the ___-sexual label, being ___-sexual means that you only care about sex and how that's toxic specifically for gay people and just???

 

[Ceebs]

Right, separating the two for people who aren't ace or aro is generally pretty useless, yeah... so what am I missing here, are these people saying that they shouldn't be used by ace/aro folks either?

[Anthracite_Impreza]

7 hours ago, Karoushi said:

Because I've mostly been seeing it on Twitter

There's your problem

[Philip027]

Yeah, it's just split-orientation-people erasure, move on, nothing new to see here...

7 hours ago, Karoushi said:

So I've been seeing a bit of discourse lately from people who are non-aces about how using the ___- romantic label is pointless and assuming that by separating it from the ___-sexual label, being ___-sexual means that you only care about sex

...Nah, that's what we have the terms hypersexual, nymphomaniac, etc for.

 

As pointed out, most of the time we don't bother pointing out romantic orientation because for most people it falls in line with their sexual orientation anyway.  Way for these people to not check their matched-orientation privilege.

[Galactic Turtle]

I've also seen this floating around. Something about the split attraction model being homophobic for sexualizing gay youth or whatever.

 

I think it boils down to the lack of ability for some people to view those types of attractions as separate things and/or the lack of ability for some people to actually believe anyone could be a-anything. 

[Baam]

19 hours ago, CBC said:

Right, separating the two for people who aren't ace or aro is generally pretty useless, yeah... so what am I missing here, are these people saying that they shouldn't be used by ace/aro folks either?

Yeah I think that's it. Because it's somehow toxic, especially to LG people apparently?

 

(Reading back my post looked a little like I was attacking you, sorry if it seemed that way, I was just interested in your opinion.)

[The Dryad]

.....people have way too much to harp about, worrying about things that hardly concern you- aces shouldn't feel threatened by people identifying by romantic and sexual orientations....if anything it gives us more in common in the LGBT+ clubhouse that we supposedly belong to, so maybe we'll finally fit in?