Can you have different a-sexual orientations depending on the gender of the person?

[Gosling]

Before I begin, I apologise that my examples will be within the gender binary (male/female, therefore homo/heterosexual) but it is late and I can't think of any other way of explaining this.

So I was wondering - can you have different a/sexual orientations depending on the gender of the other person?

For example, the tag line of this post. Could you be asexual towards people of the opposite gender but demisexual towards people of the same? i.e. you could have a relationship with someone of either gender, but only feel sexual attraction towards people of the same gender, once you have formed an emotional bond?

Or if you were demiheterosexual homosexual? That is, you feel "normal" sexual attraction towards people of the same gender, but also can develop sexual attraction towards those of the opposite gender provided you form an emotional bond with them first?

I've been thinking about this for the past few days. Not quite sure why.

Also, what about on the romantic spectrum? Can someone be demi-aromantic towards one gender but aromantic towards the other? Or romantic towards one and demi-romantic towards the other?

Sorry if this is confusing. Let me make up a fictional person to try and explain this:

They are called Sam. They are demi-homo-romantic hetero-romantic asexual. This means that they mainly would like a romantic relationship with someone of the opposite gender but if they become close with someone of the same gender they can desire a romantic relationship with them too, and they do not feel sexual attraction to any gender.

I think I've got the terminology right there.

Is this making any sense at all? Any thought?

[P is for...]

absolutely.

all of those scenarios, and more, are possible. and in fact i think it's relatively common for asexuals to have, say, a strong aesthetic attraction but no romantic attraction to one gender, and both an aesthetic and a romantic attraction to another. (you've specified we're staying within the binary for the sake of argument, so i'll oblige.) or to be homo-romantic but hetero-demisexual, or vice versa.

when you essentially take sex out of the equation--and even though demisexuals and grey-As experience limited attraction, i think many of them agree the same standards apply--all the rules go out the window. it's completely possible, or even run-of-the-mill, as an asexual to have one's attractions be something of a jumbled mess of contradictions. but as i've said to many people, what could never make sense in the rest of the world often makes perfect sense here. we may all have commonalities; but every one of us is different in our way. and every one of us has a valid orientation, whether romantic, aromantic, panromantic, demiromantic, or what have you. just because things are confusing or hard to describe doesn't mean they don't exist; and the fact that they do, despite the difficulty in pinning them down, is one of the more beautiful and appealing things to me about the asexual community.

[Guest]

I totally can see this happening. In fact, for a while I was questioning whether I was panromantic asexual (as I currently identify) or panromantic gynosexual. David Jay (that's his name, right?), the founder of AVEN, even said in one of his interviews that he dated both men and women, but 75% women and only 25% men.

As to "Can someone be demi-aromantic towards one gender but aromantic towards the other?" I would guess that someone in that position would simply identify with demi-aromantic towards whatever gender and leave other genders out, implying a lack of romantic attraction to the unstated genders. 'Course, it's up to them in the end, but it just seems simpler to me.

[TSD]

Funny, I was just wrote like 3 pages trying to figure out how to model sexual attraction.

Generally I would try and use a different "orientation" for Primary Sexual Attraction, Secondary Sexual Attraction, and Romantic Attraction. So someone could feel varying levels of each attraction towards none, one, or more genders for each category. And I don't think any of those necessarily affects the other. Which sounds exactly like what you are describing.

Also, if you want to try and avoid the gender binary I think you could just imagine having a certain amount of attraction (or not) towards each gender, adding as many genders as you want. If you do that the usual categories of homo-, hetero-, bi-, and a- don't cover everything but I don't see anything wrong with that.

So I guess my answer is yes, you could. Although I tend to think of "sexual orientation" as being a term that refers to primary sexual attraction with the exception of demisexuals, it probably makes more sense to see "sexual orientation" as being a combination of both primary sexual orientation and secondary sexual orientation.

[Sally]

They are called Sam. They are demi-homo-romantic hetero-romantic asexual. This means that they mainly would like a romantic relationship with someone of the opposite gender but if they become close with someone of the same gender they can desire a romantic relationship with them too, and they do not feel sexual attraction to any gender.

I think I've got the terminology right there.

Is this making any sense at all? Any thought?

I think you could just simply that by calling Sam a romantic asexual. Who they are romantically attracted to is up to them and doesn't need to be specified.

[GirlDreamer]

I believe that this is more common than people think actually. I think the Kinsley scale is a perfect example of this, even though that scale is ment for sexual attraction, I think it applies to all kinds of attractions too (romantic, aestethic, physical+++)

[FmrMbr]

The main thing to remember is that with nearly seven billion unique individuals in the world it is highly unlikely that you will ever think of an orientation that doesn't exist.

However I'm not sure the sort of thing you describe is any more common among asexuals and demi-sexuals than among fully sexual people. For two examples, I have a heterosexual relative who is bi-romantic, and I had a former coworker who said he was only ever attracted (I'm not sure what kind(s) of attraction he meant) upon first sight to women, but that he often became attracted to men once he became friends with them. I think it's something that gets talked about less in real life than it does on sites like AVEN is all.

[Cazz333]

I suppose someone could be a demi-romantic sexual?

[GirlDreamer]

I suppose someone could be a demi-romantic sexual?

I think thats possible. There's so many different types of attraction out there, so why not? Some are demi-romantic and some are demi- sexual, so why shouldn't you be able to combine them?