Lith, WTF, Sapio, etc aka Romantic Orientations list review

[Robin L]

If stuff on here requires reviewing, shouldn't they also be edited on the AVENwiki?

[Guest]

I think putting them in the first FAQ, but not into the opening post, was indeed the best option. I was glad to find the term "lith-" in that thread back when I joined, so I wouldn't like it to disappear from the thread entirely; however, I agree it's not an orientation and not immediately relevant to the majority of folks, so it shouldn't clutter up the main list in the OP.

Hope you get it to work as intended. :)

[Arctangent]

I see the terms around often enough that I feel like they should be defined somewhere - perhaps in the opening post or the FAQ; I'd be fine with it either way. I think it's helpful for anyone who's new and being inundated with all the romantic identity related terminology.

[ithaca]

It seems there's no objections thus far to moving those terms into the FAQ (second post) rather than the OP (though I was hoping for more participation :p )

If it stays this way, I'll edit it by the end of the week.

[wtfdynamics]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to posting on AVEN but I've been lurking for a while and have been active in the ace blogging community for over a year. I know little about lith- and sapioromantic, but I do identify as wtfromantic and I think I've read almost everything aces have posted online on the subject. I don't have a strong preference on listing wtfromantic in the romantic orientations overview, because I do feel it is conceptually different than the orientations listed from aromantic through transromantic. I would be more interested in seeing a sentence after "A person may be aromantic or romantic, or somewhere in between." that reads something like "However, not everyone finds the concept of romantic attraction personally useful" and that such an addition should be discussed.

I'd also like to address the question I think some people have, which is "If WTFromantic is 'something that someone may use whilst they are unsure of where they sit romantically', to quote Doppel, why don't they just use questioning"? Here's my own perspective, which appears to be somewhat unusual but certainly not unique.

I think that if I called myself "romantically questioning," I would be saying, "I'm not sure whether or not I experience romantic attraction- my orientation depends on whether these feelings I have toward certain people are romantic or not, and I haven't figured that out yet." And while that would be accurate, it would be incomplete. That sentence should actually end with "I haven't figured that out, and I suspect this is because romantic attraction is not a useful concept for me." Honestly, the whole question of "Do you experience romantic attraction?" is not a good question to ask me- if it were a multiple choice question with responses of "(A aromantic), (B homoromantic), … , (N: other: fill in the blank), or (unsure)" then I wouldn't pick unsure but instead cross out the entire question and scrawl over it "DOES NOT COMPUTE." One of the reasons I'm okay with such a silly and strange word as wtfromantic is because I find romantic attraction to be a silly and strange concept when juxtaposed with my own experiences, although I respect the fact that other people find it personally meaningful and useful.

In addition, the word question as a verb has definitions like "to put a question to," "to express doubt about," and "to analyze or examine," which I think has contributed to the impression that someone who is "questioning" is actively trying to figure out their orientation, which has occasionally been accurate for me but not often- I don't know if I have a romantic orientation, but usually I don't worry about it. So "unsure" feels better than "questioning" but still doesn't get at everything in my last paragraph.

I'm no expert on questioning, since I've always been pretty secure in my asexuality and didn't pay much attention to romantic orientation until recently. Maybe "questioning" has broader applicability than I've previously thought. But I guess I see wtfromantic as a little bit meta, a questioning not just of one's orientation but also of the _concept_ of romantic orientation. A sizable number of aces have similar feelings- I've got a round-up of people describing their situation over here. So while I understand that people have different opinions of the term wtfromantic, I don't think AVEN should let that stand in the way of acknowledging that romantic attraction is not a universally applicable concept, and an acknowledgement would be a great addition to the romantic orientation overview.

[ithaca]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to posting on AVEN but I've been lurking for a while and have been active in the ace blogging community for over a year. I know little about lith- and sapioromantic, but I do identify as wtfromantic and I think I've read almost everything aces have posted online on the subject. I don't have a strong preference on listing wtfromantic in the romantic orientations overview, because I do feel it is conceptually different than the orientations listed from aromantic through transromantic. I would be more interested in seeing a sentence after "A person may be aromantic or romantic, or somewhere in between." that reads something like "However, not everyone finds the concept of romantic attraction personally useful" and that such an addition should be discussed.

I'd also like to address the question I think some people have, which is "If WTFromantic is 'something that someone may use whilst they are unsure of where they sit romantically', to quote Doppel, why don't they just use questioning"? Here's my own perspective, which appears to be somewhat unusual but certainly not unique.

I think that if I called myself "romantically questioning," I would be saying, "I'm not sure whether or not I experience romantic attraction- my orientation depends on whether these feelings I have toward certain people are romantic or not, and I haven't figured that out yet." And while that would be accurate, it would be incomplete. That sentence should actually end with "I haven't figured that out, and I suspect this is because romantic attraction is not a useful concept for me." Honestly, the whole question of "Do you experience romantic attraction?" is not a good question to ask me- if it were a multiple choice question with responses of "(A aromantic), (B homoromantic), … , (N: other: fill in the blank), or (unsure)" then I wouldn't pick unsure but instead cross out the entire question and scrawl over it "DOES NOT COMPUTE." One of the reasons I'm okay with such a silly and strange word as wtfromantic is because I find romantic attraction to be a silly and strange concept when juxtaposed with my own experiences, although I respect the fact that other people find it personally meaningful and useful.

In addition, the word question as a verb has definitions like "to put a question to," "to express doubt about," and "to analyze or examine," which I think has contributed to the impression that someone who is "questioning" is actively trying to figure out their orientation, which has occasionally been accurate for me but not often- I don't know if I have a romantic orientation, but usually I don't worry about it. So "unsure" feels better than "questioning" but still doesn't get at everything in my last paragraph.

I'm no expert on questioning, since I've always been pretty secure in my asexuality and didn't pay much attention to romantic orientation until recently. Maybe "questioning" has broader applicability than I've previously thought. But I guess I see wtfromantic as a little bit meta, a questioning not just of one's orientation but also of the _concept_ of romantic orientation. A sizable number of aces have similar feelings- I've got a round-up of people describing their situation over here. So while I understand that people have different opinions of the term wtfromantic, I don't think AVEN should let that stand in the way of acknowledging that romantic attraction is not a universally applicable concept, and an acknowledgement would be a great addition to the romantic orientation overview.

I've updated the Lexicon and FAQ as mentioned, and I've also added a link to the post right above mine in the FAQ about WTFromantic (I hope you don't mind, wtfdynamics :) )

[ScaryThingsLikeDolls]

I hate to come on a thread just to say "Yep", but, yeah.

I feel Panromantic, Aromantic, heteroromantic, homoromantic, polyromantic, and biromantic are romantic orientations, and then terms like demiromantic, gray-romantic, sapioromantic, lithromantic, Wtfromantics, are ways of more clearly expressing your orientation to fit you better. Personalizing it, if you will.

Some of us have hard orientations to describe.

It's like, what paints a clearer picture in your head?

a)A red car.

or

b) A metallic Scarlett pick-up-truck with bulbous wheels that stone so brightly in the sun it hurt your eyes a tad.

[wtfdynamics]

I've updated the Lexicon and FAQ as mentioned, and I've also added a link to the post right above mine in the FAQ about WTFromantic (I hope you don't mind, wtfdynamics :) )

Nope, don't mind at all, in fact I'm somewhat flattered! I'm really glad you included a link to Sciatrix, who coined the word wtfromantic in the first place- I should have linked to her in my first post. However, I'd still like to hear responses to the proposal of an addition to the overview acknowledging that not everyone finds romantic orientation to be a personally useful concept. As it stands, I feel the final sentence of "A person may be aromantic or romantic, or somewhere in between" is misleading because it gives the impression that everyone occupies a space on a spectrum/scale/model from aromantic to romantic, and there are a fair number of people who suspect or straight up know that they do not fit into this model.

I'm failing at multi-quoting right now, but to reply to ScaryThingsLikeDolls:

I hate to come on a thread just to say "Yep", but, yeah.

I feel Panromantic, Aromantic, heteroromantic, homoromantic, polyromantic, and biromantic are romantic orientations, and then terms like demiromantic, gray-romantic, sapioromantic, lithromantic, Wtfromantics, are ways of more clearly expressing your orientation to fit you better. Personalizing it, if you will.

Some of us have hard orientations to describe.

It's like, what paints a clearer picture in your head?

a)A red car.

or

b) A metallic Scarlett pick-up-truck with bulbous wheels that stone so brightly in the sun it hurt your eyes a tad.

I won't comment on the proposition that gray-romantic, lithromantic, and sapioromantic are adjectival to orientation, but I'd like to share my own take on how wtfromantic would fit into that analogy, because man I love analogies! For me, wtfromantic means that I have no idea whether I have a "car" because I ask everyone else to describe their cars to me and there doesn't seem to be any consensus on the number of wheels they have, the material they're made of, or the method of propulsion. I mean, I have a thing that sounds like how a few of my friends describe their cars, mostly, but hardly anything like what those other people over there are describing. I'm pretty much at the point of throwing my whole car question out the window and saying I neither have nor don't have a "car", although I'm happy to acknowledge and discuss other people's cars.

Put another way (and I hope I'm not beating a dead horse, I'll be quiet now) if "What's your romantic orientation?" is the wrong question for me, wtfromantic can't really be a personalization of my romantic orientation. Other people who use the word (or similar ones) might have different opinions, though!

[Sally]

How would you pronounce WTFromantic? It's just so natural to say what-the-f*ckromantic.

[wtfdynamics]

How would you pronounce WTFromantic? It's just so natural to say what-the-f*ckromantic.

In my head, I say what-the-f*ckromantic. If I'm saying it out loud, which isn't that often, I either say dub'-tee-eff-romantic or what-the-eff-romantic. I have a friend who pronounces it "phonetically," something like wutf-romantic.

…to be honest, though, if I were starting from scratch I'd be more likely to use a term like “not classifiably romantic.” Up until my first ace reading binge last year, my thoughts on romantic attraction had run something like this: "Dating doesn't appeal to me. … Wait, my best friend is amazing and gorgeous and I love her so much it hurts. Does this mean I'm romantically attracted to her? … But I don't want to date her. This whole question is silly. Schoolwork and theatre are more important. *Repeat every year or two*" And when I read Sciatrix's posts expressing similar bemusement in conjunction with the word WTFromantic, I got suuuper excited about her articulation and her terminology. So while what-the-f*ckromantic does feel very apt and natural to me, I think my loyalty to the word is also tied to the specifics of how I started reading about romantic bewilderment. I'd probably go with “not classifiably romantic” if I started paneling or something.

[Arcovia]

How would you pronounce WTFromantic? It's just so natural to say what-the-f*ckromantic.

I pronouce it watuffromantic in my head, but that's just me.

[Guest]

How would you pronounce WTFromantic? It's just so natural to say what-the-f*ckromantic.

I pronouce it watuffromantic in my head, but that's just me.

Not just you... in my head it's WUH-ta-fro-MAN-tic. :D

[you*hear*but*do*you*listen]

How about the following changes:

This is a list of terms to describe a/romantic orientations (the terms are listed alphabetically, not for importance):

• Aromantic: a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others.
• Biromantic: A person who is romantically attracted to members of two different sexes or genders.
• Heteroromantic: a person who is romantically attracted to members of the opposite sex or gender.
• Homoromantic: a person who is romantically attracted to members of the same sex or gender.
• Panromantic or Omniromantic: a person who is romantically attracted to others but is not limited by the other's sex or gender. Similar to biromantic except that it includes genders beyond male and female including transgender, genderqueer and third gender.

Romanticism and aromanticism, as sexuality and asexuality, can be put on a scale of intensity or frequency, therefore the following terms can also be taken into consideration:

• Demiromantic: a type of grey-romantic who only experiences romantic attraction after developing an emotional connection beforehand. According to the model derived from Ragber's "secondary and primary sexual attraction model", demiromantics do not experience primary romantic attraction, but they are capable of secondary romantic attraction.
• Grey-romantic or Gray-romantic: a person with a romantic orientation that is somewhere between aromantic and romantic. One type of gray-romantic is called demiromantic.

People who have a non-binary gender identity may find the following terms useful:

• Androromantic: a person (regardless of their gender) who is romantically attracted towards male-identified people; it helps defining romantic attraction for people who don't identify in the gender binary system, and can't say which gender is “same” or “opposite” to theirs.
• Gyneromantic or Gynoromantic: a person (regardless of their gender) who is romantically attracted towards female-identified people; it helps defining romantic attraction for people who don't identify in the gender binary system, and can't say which gender is “same” or “opposite” to theirs.
• Transromantic: a person who is romantically attracted towards transgender person(s). Generally used in the trans* community to describe trans* people who are exclusively attracted to other trans* people.

Other terms that can be found used, more often than not in the asexual community, but are not romantic orientations (more like characteristics or preferences) could be:

• Lithromantic: a person who experience romantic love but do not desire their feelings to be reciprocated. This term is less "recognized" (as less known).
• Sapioromantic: a person who is romantically attracted by intelligence as first characteristic. This term is less "recognized" (as less known).
• WTFromantic: very loose definition. A wtfromantic will typically be someone on the aromantic spectrum, who does not experience romanticism in the traditional manner, but who cannot fully say they are aromantic or grey-aromantic. This term is less "recognized" (as less known).

What do you think?

I also think "WTFromantic" is a bit tongue-in-cheek, yes?

[R_1]

Still am looking for a name change for wtfromantic because the wtf part suggests you're into weird things.

Atypical Indecisive Ig-aromantic?

The reason why I use ig as ignostic is about not having a position unless definitions are given for god and people assume much about the concept of god as there is too many meaning. So therefore, I'd say that a indecisive Ig-aromantic represents someone who stands on the atheistic ignostic as this ignostic cannot clearly call himself an atheist or an agnostic for similar reasons.

[5_♦♣]

1: Agnostic is spelled with an a.

2: If people think WTFromantic is confusing/weird, agnostic (a)romantic would be doubly so.

3: Whatever happened to 'questioning'?

[ithaca]

3: Whatever happened to 'questioning'?

A person who identifies as wtfromantic replied here.

[5_♦♣]

I know (FGS I mod this forum), I was referring to Rept suggestion of atypical indecisive agnostic romantic.

[R_1]

1: Agnostic is spelled with an a.

2: If people think WTFromantic is confusing/weird, agnostic (a)romantic would be doubly so.

3: Whatever happened to 'questioning'?

Ignosticism is a theological position. It is not a typo.

Ignosticism or igtheism is the theological position that every other theological position (including agnosticism and atheism) assumes too much about the concept of God and many other theological concepts. - Wikipedia

The pasted info is the inspiration for ig-aromantic part.

[Arctic Fox]

Atypical Indecisive Ig-aromantic?

The reason why I use ig as ignostic is about not having a position unless definitions are given for god and people assume much about the concept of god as there is too many meaning. So therefore, I'd say that a indecisive Ig-aromantic represents someone who stands on the atheistic ignostic as this ignostic cannot clearly call himself an atheist or an agnostic for similar reasons.

While I am against using labels, certainly complex ones like that, I did find ignosticism an interesting read, and can see the parallel between asexuality and God in that context. Sexuality is a highly subjective construct, so surely it is not possible to objectively answer the question 'am I asexual?'

[ScaryThingsLikeDolls]

As a new point, I'm starting to put more and more value into these terms as I'm starting to find that, honestly, gender doesn't really matter to me as much as I thought.