Split Attraction Visibility (kinda a short rant)

[letusdeleteouraccounts]

Recently, a somewhat popular Tik Toker who previously identified as gay came out as biromantic homosexual. I’ve never seen anyone acknowledge the SAM in main stream media but this new representation made me really happy to see. I went to check out the comments and it seemed like it was FILLED with people who were getting teary eyed because they didn’t know that split orientation actually existed. So many people in the comment section seemed to have found a new way to better describe their orientation and it was just so great to see.

Here’s the link by the way: https://vm.tiktok.com/3vK4CX/

[Snao Cone]

That's great to hear. I watched an online presentation today about identities that separate sexual from romantic attraction, and it felt really good to that that aspect of our community acknowledged, particularly since this was in a professional environment. I bet it will be especially beneficial to have an example to point to of someone who's neither asexual nor aromantic, just to show that it doesn't take a lack of one or the other for this to apply.

[AceMissBehaving]

Interesting, that’s actually kind of refreshing to hear

[letusdeleteouraccounts]

@CBC

All of that sounds like a headache tbh 😂 I prob would’ve given up on trying to label myself if my orientation was that complicated to try and understand

[Trebledteen897]

Yeah, I have a friend who uses the SAM and is not aspec, it's definitely a thing and I'm glad its getting more recognition!

[BeakLove]

It's always cool to see someone expand their horizons beyond their present identity. But I feel like this micro-splitting of hairs and chopping up of attraction into 100 different units has the consequence of just erasing bisexuality away, tbh.

 

Forgive me a mini-rant but sometimes it feels like a lot of effort is invested in avoiding saying plainly and simply, "I'm into men and women", or perhaps, "I'm mostly into women, but occasionally men" or something. We end up with things like pansexual which is the vague notion of being into "all types of genders" instead of plainly, girls and guys. We end up with bi-romantic instead of plainly saying that you can fall in love with men and women. I suspect for some people it's a way to partially maintain their "straight" identity (or perhaps their gay one), in some way. To dissociate a bit from something uncomfortable. 

I think if you are capable of feeling intimately attracted to persons of either sex, that is romantically, emotionally, sexually, whether's that only sometimes, only for the right person, only if they have green hair, only if it's while doing a handstand on the moon... you're bisexual. Attracted to people of both sexes. I feel like we make it very complicated sometimes when it's quite simple. 

 

16 hours ago, CBC said:

That's pretty cool. I... can relate. I'm not asexual and I connect differently with men and women. I don't know that 'biromantic homosexual' is completely accurate for me, but I still relate. I'm bi-something in the sense that I can connect with anyone in non-platonic ways if our personalities click, but with a preference for actual sexual activity with women. I definitely wouldn't go so far as to say that my connections with guys have been entirely non-sexual... I can certainly experience sexual tension and some sort of attraction to guys... it's just that when it comes to the physical technicalities of sex, I think I connect better with women. Which is why I ultimately go with 'technically bisexual', but I'm very aware that there's a difference for me. I don't talk about it a lot because *~*internalised biphobia*~*, but. It's a thing for me. I've been through many evolutions of reevaluating my sexuality and that's where I've landed. There's just a difference between the two for me, but I'd be a massive liar if I said I'd experienced attraction/desire in relation to only one biological sex.

 

Anyway. It's good to see someone who isn't asexual talking about this.

I think a lot of the semantics surrounding bisexuality and perhaps why the term is avoided, or feels insufficient, comes from the notion that it implies and equal and equivalent attraction to both sexes. But there is nothing that mandates this. One could have a very heavy preference one way. And, like yourself, experience attraction to the sexes differently e.g. perhaps find that sexually men get you going but females are easier to relate, to "fall" for. I understand that someone might suggest that's why we require the specificity of this language. But I think it's a rather fake specificity because attraction simply isn't neat like the "Split Attraction Model" suggests. In reality, emotional blurs into romantic blurs into sensual blurs into sexual. Perhaps the ratio of them, or the order in which they're experienced tends to be different towards each sex... that's not surprising, (1) men and women are physically different - one can't smudge over as you say the "physical technicalities of sex", and (2) most of us grew up in hetero-normative environments which shape how our relations with each sex play out.  And even this gentleman who thought himself gay up until now, would've had his sexuality shaped by outside influences: most LGBT spaces are focused on people who are exclusively gay. 

 

Straight and gay are relatively "clean" labels or identities. They exclude one or other sex from being a potential romantic or sexual partner. It is a clear statement: I am not capable of intimate, romantic, or sexual attraction to one or other sex. The second you step beyond that it becomes messy. I don't think bisexual can be "clean" because there are 1000's of different combinations of ways you can be into both sexes (as above), whereas not being into one or other sex at all is very simple. But I don't think it needs to be clean to be useful and sufficient. 

[Rynn]

On 5/14/2020 at 11:46 PM, BeakLove said:

But I feel like this micro-splitting of hairs and chopping up of attraction into 100 different units has the consequence of just erasing bisexuality away, tbh.

People describing their own experiences isn't erasure. How could it be? On the other hand, you telling people that they aren't experiencing what they say they are experiencing, and are instead experiencing something else, THAT's erasure. You are erasing their experiences by saying that such experiences don't exist, and are in fact something else. It's pretty much the definition.

 

I think you need to consider that some people experience sexuality, sensuality and romanticism differently than you do. For you they all blur together, and for other people they are split. You don't need to understand what that's like, but I do think you should respect people's descriptions of their own experiences, instead of overwriting those with what you think they should experience. You ultimately don't know them as well as they know themselves. Or well... you actually don't know them at all in most cases.

 

I understand that we've gone over this before, so the likelihood you'll listen this time is low, but I'm still going to try again. If I drop out again, it's because this topic cuts very deep for me personally.

 

Here's why the Split Attraction Model is not trivial or pointless to me, and I think my story is probably not unique.

 

Up until I was 20 years old I didn't know about the Split Attraction Model, asexuality, any of it. To me, sexual attraction, romantic attraction, the desire to have a romantic relationship, and sexual desire, were all one big blob. Stuck together. I couldn't separate them in my head. I didn't have the vocabulary necessary to do that.

 

Yet I was experiencing only one of these things, romantic attraction, and not the other ones. This prevented me from making even basic sense of what I was experiencing, because it didn't fit into how crushes were generally described in media, by others, etc. When people showed interest in me, I'd panic, because I hadn't figured out whether I was into guys at all, or girls, or both. I felt defective for not being able to figure out such a basic fact about myself. And it wasn't for a lack of trying. I spent hours upon hours overanalyzing how I felt, and trying to untangle the (as I visualized it) blob-web that was sexual attraction, romantic attraction, sexual desire and the desire to have romantic relationships, stuck together. It is a really strange experience to just not be able to understand something about yourself no matter how hard you try. I really felt that I lacked the words.

 

I knew that I wasn't the way I was supposed to be, because my friends and literally everyone else in the world were describing things that apparently everyone felt but that I'd never experienced. I was convinced that there was something inherently, unfixably, embarrasingly wrong with me. There have been multiple occasions where classmates asked me 'if I experienced emotions at all', if I was 'really like... a normal person', and I wasn't able to tell them that I was, because I wasn't convinced myself. I really felt like less of a person. It's hard to overstate how distressing this was.

 

I tried to ask for help, guidance, emotional support, or just for someone to be able to relate to me, because I felt completely alone in this. Because I wasn't able to understand it myself, I couldn't explain it to others, so nobody was able to help. I just got 'huh, that's weird.' Then I tried indirectly telling people that something was seriously wrong and started making off-hand comments in regards to romance about how I was a lost cause, hopeless etc. That didn't help because of course it didn't. I just didn't know what to do.

 

After years of confusion, I happened to come across a video about asexuality when I was 20 years old. One of the first things that was explained was split attraction, and it was like a giant lightbulb went off. The blob-web that I'd tried to untangle for years untangled and fell into place. I started looking back at experiences I'd had throughout my life, and I could suddenly make sense of why at certain points I felt the way I did, what certain experiences meant, even why I'd said certain things that felt true but that I'd been surprised to hear myself say at the time. It was like a giant puzzle that I hadn't been able to understand, and I'd suddenly been given the key to decipher it all. Being given the key doesn't mean that the puzzle is solved however, puzzle pieces (memories) only fall into place when I remember then again, and look at them with the perspective that I've gained, with the blob-web untangled.

 

I honestly don't know where I'd be today without the Split Attraction Model, but I do know that I would be very far from okay. And I'm not the only one.

 

If you say the Split Attraction Model doesn't describe anything real, that means that to you the only type of asexuality that is possible is aromantic asexuality. Taking away the SAM is taking away the majority of asexuals' ability to understand themselves. I'm having trouble coming up with a superlative that accurately expresses how harmful I think that is. Take a look at the suicidality stats on asexual community census reports. The SAM drives those numbers down. It's not trivial. It's not just 'splitting hairs.'

 

I understand that the model is not relevant or applicable to your situation, and that's great, congrats, you're in the majority of the human population, But please stop telling others that it is irrelevant to theirs as well, especially when they clearly say that it is important to them. 

 

And then this:

On 5/14/2020 at 11:46 PM, BeakLove said:

Forgive me a mini-rant but sometimes it feels like a lot of effort is invested in avoiding saying plainly and simply, "I'm into men and women", or perhaps, "I'm mostly into women, but occasionally men" or something. We end up with things like pansexual which is the vague notion of being into "all types of genders" instead of plainly, girls and guys.

Identifying as panromantic rather than biromantic is a political thing to me. It's not more vague than bi. When I say pan, I am forced to express the opinion that I think nonbinary people exist each time I come out. If I said I was bi, not so much, even though a lot of bi people use bi to mean 'attracted to same and other genders.'

 

On 5/14/2020 at 11:46 PM, BeakLove said:

We end up with bi-romantic instead of plainly saying that you can fall in love with men and women. I suspect for some people it's a way to partially maintain their "straight" identity (or perhaps their gay one), in some way. To dissociate a bit from something uncomfortable. 

You really think coming out as biromantic homosexual is easier, more comfortable, than coming out as bisexual? Have you tried it?

 

In my case, coming out as bi rather than as my actual identity, which I do sometimes do when I feel less safe, is the cop-out. It is the thing I know people are most likely to just accept and move on from. If I come out as panromantic ace, I know I will most likely have to spend at least half an hour explaining what that means, and squashing all sorts of strange assumptions people make about me, and that is best case scenario, because often people instead become combative, dismissive, disbelieving, intrusive, or just downright creepy.

 

Using the SAM is more deviant (as in not the norm) and less accepted than simply saying you are bisexual, so if people did try to use it to somehow gain more acceptance, I mean I can tell you it backfires pretty hard.

 

On 5/14/2020 at 11:46 PM, BeakLove said:

I think if you are capable of feeling intimately attracted to persons of either sex, that is romantically, emotionally, sexually, whether's that only sometimes, only for the right person, only if they have green hair, only if it's while doing a handstand on the moon... you're bisexual. Attracted to people of both sexes. I feel like we make it very complicated sometimes when it's quite simple. 

1, Please don't tell people what they are. I am not bisexual, because I am not sexual.

 

2, The world actually is complicated. Surprise surprise. Nature has endless variations in everything. Just because they're not common, doesn't mean we should pretend they don't exist for convenience sake. Also, for whose convenience. Yours? Or for the people who actually need the terms and are fighting for them to finally be recognized?

 

3, Sex isn't actually a binary. It's a bimodal distribution, sure, but not a binary.

 

4, Generally people are attracted to gender expression, not sex, not gender identity. You can't directly perceive someone's sex or gender identity, you can only perceive what they look like and what they act like. That's gender expression. Also, generally people are attracted to someone before they get to see their genitals, not the other way around.

 

On 5/14/2020 at 11:46 PM, BeakLove said:

I think a lot of the semantics surrounding bisexuality and perhaps why the term is avoided, or feels insufficient, comes from the notion that it implies and equal and equivalent attraction to both sexes.

I'd say people who are versed enough in queer terminology to know about the SAM are most likely also aware that bisexuality does not imply equal and equivalent attraction to both sexes. That second thing is much more widely known about. 

 

People use biromantic homosexual and the SAM because it's accurate to their situation and because it helps them explain their experiences to others. That's really it. I don't know why you keep looking for ulterior motives.

 

I mean, don't you think a girl this particular dude fancies should have the right to understand that he will be able to experience romantic attraction to her, but not sexual attraction? It's pretty vital information.

[BeakLove]

Hi @Laurann.

 

I appreciate your thoughtful response. I was going to reply a bit quicker but I've spent a day or two musing over it because it deserves an equally thoughtful reply. 

 

I think at the outset it's worth saying that I am not seeking to claim people are being dishonest about their experiences. Or trying to deny the reality of them. It is a disagreement only over the best way to interpret them or categorise them. And a personal view that bisexuality is still not something that is fully accepted and that shaving experiences out of that category, which (in my view) belong to it, has a net harmful effect on advancing acceptance for people who have same sex attractions generally, and people who have attractions to partners of both sexes. 

 

To reply to some specific points:

 

On 5/15/2020 at 11:41 PM, Laurann said:

I think you need to consider that some people experience sexuality, sensuality and romanticism differently than you do. For you they all blur together, and for other people they are split. You don't need to understand what that's like, but I do think you should respect people's descriptions of their own experiences, instead of overwriting those with what you think they should experience. You ultimately don't know them as well as they know themselves. 

I understand full well we each have our own personal experiences with romance and sex. But we are all on here trying to make sense of our own relationships which naturally entails comparisons with others, and an appeal to some general concepts. I have read and listened to many people describe their experiences including those who use the split attraction idea to help identify themselves. It is not controversial to suggest that even by asexual peoples' own accounts, those attractions have leaky boundaries. There are myriad discussions about the difference between romantic and sensual, sensual and sexual, aesthetic and sensual etc. on this place, precisely because it is often so hard to pinpoint the exact differences between them and the internal concepts are poorly-defined. That I do not feel the split attraction model accurately captures reality is not me denying someone's experience or questioning their earnestness. 

 

Quote

If you say the Split Attraction Model doesn't describe anything real, that means that to you the only type of asexuality that is possible is aromantic asexuality. Taking away the SAM is taking away the majority of asexuals' ability to understand themselves. I'm having trouble coming up with a superlative that accurately expresses how harmful I think that is. Take a look at the suicidality stats on asexual community census reports. The SAM drives those numbers down. It's not trivial. It's not just 'splitting hairs.'

I don't personally feel this. I think someone can be capable of romantic feeling and be asexual, too (here, for clarity I'm just taking asexual to mean a general lack of interest/dislike of partnered sex). I do not think that simply because you do not enjoy nor desire the specific act of sex it renders you incapable of falling in love and feeling deeply for another. That would be a rather cruel (and patently incorrect) point of view. I feel here I've probably been unclear and need to clarify the "blur into" phrase I used. Insofar as romantic and sexual attraction blur into each other (again, in my view) for someone who is asexual, my argument has only ever been that if someone has a sexed (or gendered) exclusive romantic preference for a partner, then it is oriented by the same thing that "orients" sexual orientation. In other words, orientation is inherently sexed or gendered. I don't think this is a controversial suggestion.

 

I know you don't agree with me when I've suggested before that certain "sensual"/"romantic" activities that you would only do with a partner of the sex/gender to which you are attracted, might have a low-level/sublimated sexual dimension to them i.e. making out, cuddling ,showering together, sharing a bed, stroking, etc. I stand by that. But I scarcely think it is any more outlandish than many people who identify as sexual saying they also enjoy partnered sex? That seems a far more blatant attempt to shoehorn sex/sexuality into the asexual realm. I am absolutely not claiming that just because the attractions are not clear cut that it means necessarily that sensual/romantic or even "pseudo-sexual" feelings will blow up into full blown sexual ones and that someone asexual people are just "fooling themselves" or in denial. I cannot stress enough I fully accept people's accounts of their feelings and experiences, it is just my interpretation/analysis of them.

 

I am analysing the split attraction model as a model for describing reality, not as a personal identity. 

 

Quote

 

1, Please don't tell people what they are. I am not bisexual, because I am not sexual.

 

2, The world actually is complicated. Surprise surprise. Nature has endless variations in everything. Just because they're not common, doesn't mean we should pretend they don't exist for convenience sake. Also, for whose convenience. Yours? Or for the people who actually need the terms and are fighting for them to finally be recognized?

 

3, Sex isn't actually a binary. It's a bimodal distribution, sure, but not a binary.

 

4, Generally people are attracted to gender expression, not sex, not gender identity. You can't directly perceive someone's sex or gender identity, you can only perceive what they look like and what they act like. That's gender expression. Also, generally people are attracted to someone before they get to see their genitals, not the other way around.

 

On this I won't say too much. I agree the world is complicated. But labels can only ever be a rough short-hand, when we start asking them to do too much work they become less useful. I don't think this thread is the place to get into a discussion on (3), but the bi-modality is so strong and the differences in most of the "intersex" group so weak (mostly easily-corrected hormone deficiencies) it can be treated as binary. I actually don't disagree on (4). But gender expression also acts as an alias for sex. Generally if we find out later the person is not the sex to which we're attracted, it disappears. If it doesn't, and someone realises they can still love someone of the other sex, well, I would say it reduces to being bi. Which leads us onto..

 

Quote

You really think coming out as biromantic homosexual is easier, more comfortable, than coming out as bisexual? Have you tried it?

 

Quote

People use biromantic homosexual and the SAM because it's accurate to their situation and because it helps them explain their experiences to others. That's really it. I don't know why you keep looking for ulterior motives.

 

I mean, don't you think a girl this particular dude fancies should have the right to understand that he will be able to experience romantic attraction to her, but not sexual attraction? It's pretty vital information.

I don't think there are "ulterior motives" and I'll apologise for that implication. My basic point is that it is still very hard to come out these days and say you're attracted to the same sex. And harder still to both sexes, as you are still subject to the homophobia but also some "bi-phobia" in the gay community too, unfortunately. Bisexual is the well understood term for this pattern of attraction.

 

But all of the above said... if the split attraction idea helps people open their minds and helps them realise/explore their own bisexuality in some way, is it such a bad thing? I am genuinely pondering this. 

 

Even if we don't agree I still appreciate the time taken to write out the response. 

[SithLord]

Yay! Others are starting to be aware of it! I've always believe that more people would fall into te split-attraction model if they were aware of it and accepting. 

[Iam9man]

@Laurann very well said (written)!

 

Also, the following also matches my experience almost exactly; in my case it was and article not a video, the rest is identical! 😊😊😊

 

On 5/15/2020 at 11:41 PM, Laurann said:

After years of confusion, I happened to come across a video about asexuality when I was 20 years old. One of the first things that was explained was split attraction, and it was like a giant lightbulb went off. The blob-web that I'd tried to untangle for years untangled and fell into place. I started looking back at experiences I'd had throughout my life, and I could suddenly make sense of why at certain points I felt the way I did, what certain experiences meant, even why I'd said certain things that felt true but that I'd been surprised to hear myself say at the time. It was like a giant puzzle that I hadn't been able to understand, and I'd suddenly been given the key to decipher it all. Being given the key doesn't mean that the puzzle is solved however, puzzle pieces (memories) only fall into place when I remember then again, and look at them with the perspective that I've gained, with the blob-web untangled.

[HikaruBG]

Er... I'm going to take a shot in the dark here.

I think that the mass population outside of the "Asexual community" (technically, I don't think that the "asexual community" is really a community but that's irreverent to the topic) are very far from considering the split attraction model.

 

Before I start, let me elaborate exactly what's the role of the split attraction model is for us, asexual/aromantic people.

The reason why The Split Attraction Model works for us, is because we all have low-key agreed on it, as a "community", to be true because it is the best way for us to explain why an asexual may still desire a romantic relationship with someone without also wanting to have sex with anyone or anything and how can an aromantic sexual can still desire sex with someone without also wanting to have a romantic relationship with them (although this is a lot more common experience from what people generally seems to think, but eh).

The point is... To quote Todd Howard from Bethesda, "It just works"... for us.

Of course, I have encountered a few aromantic asexuals who havd rejected the idea but from what I've seen, it's a small number.

 

Anyway, to explain my issue and why I'm not sure about this.

Last week I went on Reddit and Twitter, and literally search up "the split attraction model" to see what people think/has said about it, and let me tell you, the things that they say isn't very good.

People were all attacking bi/pan lesbian and being all gatekeeping them from the LGBT+ community, saying stuff like "lesbians are only exclusively attracted to women only" and "if you are attracted to men as well, you aren't a lesbian", that the split attraction model is useless (tho I have seen a lot of people saying that it's for ace/aro people only), ect. ect. and on the last place but the worst of all - I saw people blaming us (because we were the ones who came up with it) for the split attraction model because:

A.) they feel like the model essentially makes labels like "lesbian", "gay", ect. to loose their meanings;

B.) claiming that the split attraction model is sexualizing gay/lesbians identities (essentially doing the same thing that the straight people have been doing to them, except that this time, it's us who is doing it?);

C.) blaming the model has caused a lot of confusion in the past for their sexual orientation;

D.) More nit-picking...

Nearly all of it comes out from the LGBT+ community.

Spoiler

And people are wondering why do some of us don't consider ourselves part of the LGBT+ community. These people not only are being very dishonest about their community, they also are ready to essentially "punching down" on other minority identity. I mean, most of them thinks that we are just bunch of "cishets" (don't blame them tho.... we do have issues with a lot of confused straight girls... Ahem... Tumblr) who are trying to infiltrate their community, call us homophobic and what not and now, they are low-key hating on us for no reason at all. I mean, how is it our fault that some people decided to adopt the model for themselves???

 

It becomes very obvious that for them, asexuals/aromantics having a community on their own isn't simply enough. They also want to silence us completely because "we don't matter"... so that they could get more attention and validation from society? I don't even know myself.

Needless to say, it's very very very bad.

But it's not just the LGBT+ community that has this issue. The general cishet population also considers the split attraction model to be bullshit.

Hell, "the asexual community" is just barely taken seriously with the model, what leaves for others who are trying to do it.

 

That being said.... Is it possible for them to consider/accept/acknowledge the split attraction model? Yes but the process would be very difficult so good luck with that. You literally need to make it so that the majority of the population/society to needs to agree on a concept (create a social contruct if needed) that may as well be impossible to be supported by scientific evidences.

 

Edit: P.S: Sorry for the messy comment. I woke up very early and really made this comment while being half wake/half asleep.