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some stupid ideas about orientation part 2


magicalcorn

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magicalcorn

so this is 100% gonna be the last time it talk about this. sorry if this seems spam-my. i made some correction add a few things and made it easier to possess hopeful. the purpose of this is to just get people thinking out of the box with this kinda stuff i dont think what i have is 100% correct at all. also a here a powerpoint

 

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In your Reddit post you claim that:

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The current way of naming types of sexual and intimate relationships orientation and attraction need fixing and better categorizing and measurement of polyamory and relationship quality.

But I'm not sure how what you've offered improves anything. I commend you for trying to make an effort to understand and categorise the complexities of human relationships, but I don't think your approach is intuitive or useful. The orientation labelling you've proposed is a mess. And it's a mess built upon a mess of existing confusing labels. If anything, we need to simplify all the labels and clarify the existing ones before introducing even more. 

 

Your central motivation for invoking a new way of describing orientation is:

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The current terms we use to describe a person’s sexual orientation has two main faults. one it does not include non binary people orientations due to hetersexual and homosexual being a binary with you only being able to be attracted to the same and or opposite gender which leaves non binary people out; one way to fix this is to start using the term ceterosexual,which mean the sexual attraction to non binary genders. But this leads to the next big problem the terms for sexual orientations are overly simplified the current naming system of sexual orientations focus on what gender identities the individual is attracted to. This fails to take into account that some people don't really care about a person's gender identity for attraction they may focus more on gender expression or sex.

The crux of your nomenclature clutter and indeed the clutter in general comes from misunderstanding or misusing the term "orientation". It is, specifically, the sexes to which you are oriented (prefer) to engage in relationships and sex. There are two sexes and and intersex and the various non-binary labels are all defined in terms of membership or non-membership in these sex classes. As for your claim some people "focus more on gender expression or sex": that would be basically everyone because the only means by which an external observer has of validating someone's sex (and thus being attracted to them) is by their mannerisms and their physical appearance. If I'm a homosexual male I'm not going to be attracted to someone who acts feminine and has female sex characteristics merely if they tell me they're the same sex. In other words: identity is not the determinant of attraction and isn't the basis of how we use these words naturally. One is not attracted to people who identify as females. One is attracted to the female sex. If you look at how someone acts and how they look, and the female box is checked in your brain, then there is a possibility of attraction. 

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magicalcorn

 

@BeakLove

sorry for the wait i was off the net for a while. thanks for the response  

23 hours ago, BeakLove said:

In your Reddit post you claim that:

But I'm not sure how what you've offered improves anything. I commend you for trying to make an effort to understand and categorise the complexities of human relationships, but I don't think your approach is intuitive or useful. 

what i'm trying to offer in simpler terms is a way say or visually represent the group of people you are attracted too.ill give you that it is not be intuitive; also trust me this format is a simplification of some lists that I've seen on this site.

 

ok on to the meat of the post.

23 hours ago, BeakLove said:

Your central motivation for invoking a new way of describing orientation is:

The crux of your nomenclature clutter and indeed the clutter in general comes from misunderstanding or misusing the term "orientation". It is, specifically, the sexes to which you are oriented (prefer) to engage in relationships and sex. There are two sexes and and intersex and the various non-binary labels are all defined in terms of membership or non-membership in these sex classes. 

 This isn't really important but i just wanted to add that every accepted definition i could find connected orientation to gender not sex,so this more like your head-canon definition which is perfectly ok to have ( i have my own head-canon definitions obviously) but dont try to show it as if its a widely excepted truth. i tried not to do that in my posts hopefully successfully  

 

23 hours ago, BeakLove said:

As for your claim some people "focus more on gender expression or sex": that would be basically everyone because the only means by which an external observer has of validating someone's sex (and thus being attracted to them) is by their mannerisms and their physical appearance. If I'm a homosexual male I'm not going to be attracted to someone who acts feminine and has female sex characteristics merely if they tell me they're the same sex. 

at best this part shows that you only believe that the gender identity chart should be removed (the rest of your post backs this up as well) but it also shows that you do agree with the distinction of gender expression and sex (also backed up with the rest of your post)  which contradicts the upper part of your post which you claim that attraction can be split into "sex classes" since while a person with that is masculine with male sex characteristics would in your model obviously fall in the male sex class and a feminine person with female sex characteristics  would be in the female sex class; that would mean both a masculine person with  female sex characteristics and a  feminine person with female sex characteristics would be in the same class even though they are opposites on all fronts. so the only solution of this contradictory overlap is to split gender expression from the sex class system and make it its own thing.

On 3/7/2019 at 8:55 PM, BeakLove said:

 In other words: identity is not the determinant of attraction and isn't the basis of how we use these words naturally. One is not attracted to people who identify as females. One is attracted to the female sex. If you look at how someone acts and how they look, and the female box is checked in your brain, then there is a possibility of attraction. 

it is true you don't know a persons gender identity till they tell you, that does not mean it does not change our attraction because fining out someones gender identity is not what you wanted can be a turn off for many people like how finding out a feminine person you thought had a vagina because of how they looked like had a dick would be a turn off for many. if your argument is that gender identity doesn't count because you cant tell by directly looking than sex characteristics shouldn't count either because you cant know with 100% accuracy by looking leaving gender expression as the only option on determining your orientation; which i think we both agree gender expression is not the only factor in people's orientation.  

 

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2 hours ago, magicalcorn said:

sorry for the wait i was off the net for a while. thanks for the response  

what i'm trying to offer in simpler terms is a way say or visually represent the group of people you are attracted too.ill give you that it is not be intuitive; also trust me this format is a simplification of some lists that I've seen on this site.

 

You're welcome. I am not against the search for simpler terms. I'm in full agreement that the taxonomy is too complicated. There's too many labels and none of them seem to mean anything without a heap of contextual explanation which renders the label redundant.  I also think parts of what you've done in trying to categorise, summarise, and understand relationships and how we become attracted have validity. As in turns out I'm currently doing a similar philosophical exercise, so it's interesting to read your thoughts, even if I have disagreements. So I hope you'll take my post in the spirit of genuine discussion and debate. 🙂

 

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ok on to the meat of the post. This isn't really important but i just wanted to add that every accepted definition i could find connected orientation to gender not sex,so this more like your head-canon definition which is perfectly ok to have ( i have my own head-canon definitions obviously) but dont try to show it as if its a widely excepted truth. i tried not to do that in my posts hopefully successfully  

It's not about my own personal head canon, it's about using words in a way that makes sense.

 

Even when sexual orientation is specified in terms of gender, it still reduces to talking about sexes. Why? Because ultimately everyone has a physiology and it is based on this that we determine sexual and romantic compatibility. If you are a male and will only consider partners of the opposite sex you are heterosexual. If you are a female who says they are attracted to, say, men and non-binary people (of both sexes) then you're bisexual. If you are a gender-fluid male for whom sex is unimportant but you will only consider male romantic partners, you are homosexual. And if you are a female who self-describes as asexual and would consider partners of any sex (or gender) then you're bisexual.

 

The only way sexual orientation can be meaningfully discussed is with reference to the sex-classes.  

 

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at best this part shows that you only believe that the gender identity chart should be removed (the rest of your post backs this up as well) but it also shows that you do agree with the distinction of gender expression and sex (also backed up with the rest of your post)  which contradicts the upper part of your post which you claim that attraction can be split into "sex classes" since while a person with that is masculine with male sex characteristics would in your model obviously fall in the male sex class and a feminine person with female sex characteristics  would be in the female sex class; that would mean both a masculine person with  female sex characteristics and a  feminine person with female sex characteristics would be in the same class even though they are opposites on all fronts. so the only solution of this contradictory overlap is to split gender expression from the sex class system and make it its own thing.

 

I don't see why someone can't just say "I'm into butch/masculine women" if they want to communicate that they're into biological women who act masculine. I feel like we're getting too reductive. Saying you're attracted to females or males doesn't mean every member of those groups, obviously. 

 

Yes, I accept that gender expression - how well you conform to stereotypes for your gender - is distinct from biological sex. But the motivation of what is now called "gender expression" goes back to the 60s and 70s, when John Money and others introduced the term gender as distinct from sex, to talk about gendered roles that were applied to members of the sex classes. More specifically, members of the sex class women are assigned the gender female which encapsulates responsibilities, expectations, restrictions, and roles (being a homemaker, being pretty, being subordinate, etc.) This analysis is the birthplace of modern feminism. Gender was originally conceived as a tool to talk about patriarchal imposition on women. Thus, you cannot meaningfully talk about gender roles without referring to the sex classes they're based on.

 

Gender identity is an attempt to try and split the notion of "one's internal gender" from their biological sex. It's hard to find a coherent definition: even in the scientific literature it is referred to as this vague sense/feeling of "being a gender" and we're meant to get what means. What would cause you to "feel like" a gender? Well, either your reaction to gendered stereotypes or to your biological sex. However, many people feel deeply uncomfortable with the stereotypes and roles imposed on them (see last paragraph) without feeling a scintilla of urge to re-map their sex characteristics. And strangely enough, no one I've talked to who is not transgender seems to have this inner sense/feeling. Therefore, I can only conclude that this identity exists only those for whom their internal model of reality is at variance with the reality imposed by biological sex. 

 

Thus, even here, you can't meaningfully talk about the concept of gender identity without referring to the sex classes. Because being transgender is to be uncomfortable with one's own birth sex, that is the source of the dysphoria. 

 

Hopefully you can see that everything comes back to sex no matter how many wrappers are put around it. Therefore, there is no contradiction in what I've said. I accept gender and sex are distinct, related concepts. I completely accept that masculine and feminine attributes, and alignment with stereotypes form part of our partner preferences - they encapsulate our 'type', so-to-speak. But when it comes to discussing orientation, we are talking about sex. And even when we consider the other factors, it still reduces to sex. That is the sharp dividing line for basically everyone. 

 

In short: the sex classes male and female are based on possessing sex characteristics regardless of how you act. You are one or the other. Gender expression - your masculinity and femininity - encapsulates your alignment with cultural stereotypes associated with being one of those sexes - your gender. So yes, the female sex class contains both feminine-acting women and masculine-acting women. I return to my initial point: if you want to clarify that you're only into masculine women, you can just say it. And for clarity, if you're into both biological women and female-identifying people with penises, then you're bisexual. Indeed, the word "bisexual" covers a bunch of these edge cases without creating needless complication. 

 

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 it is true you don't know a persons gender identity till they tell you, that does not mean it does not change our attraction because fining out someones gender identity is not what you wanted can be a turn off for many people like how finding out a feminine person you thought had a vagina because of how they looked like had a dick would be a turn off for many. if your argument is that gender identity doesn't count because you cant tell by directly looking than sex characteristics shouldn't count either because you cant know with 100% accuracy by looking leaving gender expression as the only option on determining your orientation; which i think we both agree gender expression is not the only factor in people's orientation.  

Yes finding out someone identifies differently may well be a turn off. But then so are lots of things they might tell you. When people explicitly tell you if they're a man or woman, if there is ambiguity, it is either for politeness or short-hand for "yes, I have a dick/vagina".

 

Sex characteristics are not just genitalia obviously. We evaluate membership of sex classes through shoulder broadness, facial shape, hair, waist-to-hip ratio, bustiness, bum shape, you name it. I accept that there are some instances where it is hard to tell. I also accept your example that someone attracted to someone because they put them into the woman bucket and thought they had a vagina, and then found out they had a penis will almost inevitably lose that attraction. Sometimes our assumptions are wrong. But it's a pretty good assumption 99% of the time. Let me also propose the counter example: if this same person sleeps with a woman that he then later finds out has undergone sex re-assignment surgery, is he no longer heterosexual? After all, it is not the fact of her identity that allowed attraction to proceed but that her transition had been sufficiently effective to check the "woman" box in the man's head. 

 

Going back to the beginning: I don't mean to try to knock everything you've worked on. I think trying to pull together the various strands of thought, labels, identities and organise the taxonomy is a valid endeavor. But ultimately if you want to consolidate and simplify new relationship nomenclature you've got to understand why it's so complicated to start with, and I would argue that it's because it's poorly thought-out. As you said yourself there are endless lists of terms nobody actually knows nor cares about. In my opinion, the current terms for sexual orientation can comfortably accommodate non-binary people, transgender people, and people with low libido or asexual. Non-binary people don't identify with either bucket of gender roles, but they still have a biological sex and a sexual/romantic preference: opposite sex, same sex, or both. Transgender people for whom surgery and socialisation treatment is sufficiently effective will have sexual/romantic preference labelled with respect to their transitioned sex. And people for whom sex is either an unimportant or undesired element of their relationships still have romantic preference: opposite sex, same sex, or both. I just don't see what's added with the additional labels other than confusion and an accompanying lecture to describe the terms. 

 

Thank you for responding and putting the effort in. 

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