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Coyote

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Everything posted by Coyote

  1. Not at all. An issue arose and you addressed it. Since you said that you were previously feeling too anxious to go into the office/lab, and since you said that you feel much more at ease going into work now, that tells me you did what you needed to do in order to make life easier on yourself as a student and a person. I know it's hard not to feel guilty, withdrawing from or establishing "hard" boundaries with people that "didn't do anything that bad," but interaction with you isn't anything anyone has A Right to, and it's not like you sent him to jail. All you did was create the conditions necessary for yourself to continue working on your goals.
  2. Ohh dear. Um... no? Not necessarily for that purpose, no. I don't think coming out should ever be discussed in terms of "should"s. But I also think "visibility" isn't necessarily what any given community should be shooting for, either. I've been working on writing some reflections on the word "visibility" lately, but I've been hesitating a bit because I wasn't sure if dissecting "visibility" would feel relevant enough to anyone -- but maybe, looking at this thread title, maybe it is. If I said "visibility isn't a good goal to have," would anybody be interested in those thoughts?
  3. It's... meant to describe a type of intracommunity norm of centering those things, so, in that sense, yes. These scales are about describing identification with or alienation from certain kinds of norms. What about them? The point of describing these norms isn't to say that they're right. Quite the contrary. The whole thing I'm trying to devise language for is how to describe certain norms, expectations, and ideas as inapplicable for yourself.
  4. Oh geez. If I were in your shoes, I would consider her behavior as being rude. While it sounds like you don't feel that strongly about it, in the end, even if she thinks you two dating would be a good idea, the fact that you are not currently dating deserves to be respected in its own right. To me, repeatedly suggesting that two people date each other is no more respectful than repeatedly suggesting that two people in a happy romantic relationship should break up. You shouldn't have to date or not date someone just because a friend thinks so. You've said here that your friend's suggestions are making things confusing for you, and you've also said that you just want to hang out with him. So it sounds like you do have a good sense of what you want in your friendship to R. As for your first friend, it sounds like her "jokes" are causing you more confusion than entertainment. To the extent that you are comfortable, I think it may be worth mentioning to her that you aren't enjoying the jokes and don't want so much advice about who to date. I don't know your friend, so I don't have a good sense of whether she will take that easily enough or whether she might become offended -- but if it were me, I'd try to mention it as lightly as possible, in an offhand "oh, you're standing on my foot" kind of way. If she responds in a persistent or confrontational way, that itself is a bad sign. The actual relationships you have and want to have with people deserve to be respected. And even if what you want may change -- it's also okay for it not to change.
  5. @assignedgothatbirth also wrote about in-person aro communities about a month back. Some relevant considerations, maybe. You can say that again. For advice purposes, it seems like it would be good to have some prompts/topics to suggest formulating those guidelines around. I know a lot of people like me aren't usually inclined to even think of an issue until it comes up, if that makes sense. I could easily see somebody getting stumped here. What... does this mean, in practice? "Drama" just means "interpersonal conflict," so... do you have any particular conflict resolution tips besides just "avoid it"? I'm wary of advice like this, tbh, because I think "avoiding drama" can sometimes motivate people to... avoid and not resolve stuff that could have been more easily resolved if it had been just addressed right off the bat, as opposed to dragging it out.
  6. Note: made some changes again. Switched out "coupled" for "rosol," in reference to the Romantic Orientation/Sexual Orientation Dyad. Switched out "planar" for "orthodox," in reference to the Only Two Types norm, courtesy of Elizabeth @Prismatangle Patrick Elliot also suggested including some examples as a separate section at the end, so here's the draft for that: 2) Ven feels his grayro/gray-a identity is very convergent with this norm (one composite orientation), whereas Alex, who is aro, ace, and demisensual, would describe themselves as more divergent from it, since they think of themselves as having three completely separate orientations. 3) Flint, who only uses sexual orientation and not romantic orientation, feels like their identity is very non-rosol. Alex feels only kinda sorta rosol, feeling like it works fine for them except that they also have a third orientation that tends to go overlooked by others. Jamie, an aromantic heterosexual person, feels like her identity couples with this dyad pretty well, so we call that being the most rosol. 4) The gray-a identities of Ven and Flint refer to axes that are very orthodox, but Alex's identity as demisensual and Luna's as bi-affectionate are more unorthodox. 5) Flint, Ven, Alex, and Luna's orientation labels are all bound to specific axes (sexuality, sensuality, etc.), so those are axial. In contrast, Mal identifies as both asexual and bisexual; their asexuality is the more axial identity while being bi is (for them) very non-axial -- i.e. "bisexual" is not really a description of their sexuality per se, but more about how they relate to and partner with others and about feeling a connection to that community.
  7. I'm not jazzed about it either. Previously I had it as dyadic/nondyadic, but Rowan pointed out that has probably too much similarity to intersex terminology. And naturally I also threw binary/nonbinary right out. Naturally. I'm actually hoping that some of these norms will change, but in the meantime I'm looking to hammer some kind of "Spit Orientation Model" that doesn't simply end up replicating the same SAM/non-SAM binary all over again. Anyway, I'm happy to change that one too, once we settle on something. Possibly... "traditional"/"non-traditional" could work as a placeholder, for now. Siggy also recently suggested "planar." But could just as well make it something more specific, I guess -- like if we can agree on "RoSe" or "ROSO" or something.
  8. Doesn't look like Mark's comment made it over here to the relevant thread, so I'm quoting it here: Although technically the "primary and secondary attraction" model* is kinda dated and I'm not interested in reviving/endorsing it as a way of looking at things, it's worth knowing that that's one of the associations that "tertiary attraction" might invoke for people. *sidenote: hey look, it's an oldschool "model" actually theorized and named as such as an intentional effort at modeling. A couple of thoughts on this. "Blur" would, I think strike me as too similar to some of what's being described in this post on greyromanticism and this post on graysexuality: "knowing you’re feeling something but you can’t be more specific than that," "vague and fuzzy experiences," "confusing," etc. I don't know if that's dissuasive to anyone or not, but more generally I would think of "blur" as best suited to describing ambiguity of experience, not... things going culturally unrecognized, even when clear to the individual. Oblique, I'm... not as sure about? Curious to see what others say. But also what I want to know is: What context are people looking to use this for? Like what kinds of sentences or conversations, where it would be easier to talk if you had this umbrella term instead of having to write out the list? I've got a situation right now where I guess I could use this concept, but I'm wondering about what other situations people are/have been in where they've felt this as a lexical gap. I'm not so sure of that. I mean... maybe? But I don't know. I certainly had a completely different impression of what the reason was.
  9. That makes sense. While I was thinking of "canon" in the sense of "literary canon," like "traditional," I think the associations you described are probably more prevalent in the ace community overall (can't speak for the aro community -- maybe the same, maybe not?). Possibly "traditional" could work as a placeholder, but I dunno about that as a final choice... Same goes for "parallel," actually. Suggestions? _____ Okay, thank you, that's good to hear. That's not initially what I was hearing (whether I read you wrong or what), but what matters to me is what you currently say, not what you previously said. Right, just like conversations hosted exclusively on Tumblr may be inaccessible to others. This is all the more reason why I would like to get this particular conversation onto additional platforms, if possible. Do you have any suggestions for how to go about that? Sure. I'm not sure what specifically this is directed at, but I'm with you on that too, for whatever it's worth. Good, so do I. My understanding of how that starts is for everyone to get to feel heard. One thing that I have felt unheard on before (and also in this conversation) is that I am excluded from a large part of community discussions because of how Tumblr as a platform is designed. Tumblr makes it harder for me to gain access to discussions. To say "Tumblr makes it easier for people to gain access to discussions" feels like treating either me or my difficulties like I/they aren't real. If you can just acknowledge that, then we're golden. What are some things you are feeling unheard on? I have felt these sort of things a lot myself over the past two threads I've made. Point being, I can empathize with that. In various cases I've felt like people were talking down to me, treating me like I'm stupid, outright ignoring relevant parts of my posts, drastically misinterpreting my words, insinuating things at me rather than directly stating or asking, generally not trying to understand what I'm saying, and being unnecessarily hostile with me. For the most part, I have tried to ignore these feelings, because in a lot of cases they're not my main priority, they're not always rational/fair reactions to have or to share, and basically I don't expect other people to care. They're not feelings I want to spread to other people, though. When I feel like I've been insulted to my face -- for example, feeling (however irrationally) like I'm being told there's something wrong with me for not finding Tumblr easy -- then generally, what I want is for the source of hurt to be removed, not for other people to get hurt too. Does that help any to hear? If your question is "Is everyone upset with me?" then -- obviously I can't speak for every user, so I won't try to. But if that's a question that it helps you to hear the answer to in order to stay in the thread, then we can go around and do that. I'll start. Right now, what I'm feeling is uneasy and uncertain, because I'm not sure yet how to find a good balance between my personal communication style and yours. For example, aside from things already mentioned, I am getting the sense that your communication style is maybe more indirect than mine, and that makes me more on edge because I can't tell when your statements have hidden questions in them. I'm just generally tense from not being sure how anything in this reply is going to be received.
  10. Alright. Alternative response: I would love to be persuaded that I read zer words wrong and that ze was actually saying Tumblr is only easier for zem personally, not easier overall. Right now the examples are in the blogpost, and I didn't want to get too far into the weeds with application just yet. But it's true that I never completely indicated which ideas were supposed to map to each narrative... So on that note, here's what I was thinking for the five narratives I initially introduced: 1) As someone who is "just" gray-asexual, Flint's relationship-to-norms on the scales is highly divergent and nonparallel, but also reliant on a canon axis. 2) Ven was the one who doesn't like to distinguish between his greyromanticism and his gray-asexuality, so his is very convergent and canon. 3) Alex (demisensual) and 4) Luna (bi-affectionate) both have an orientation on a noncanon axis. 5) A part of Mal's identity (as bi) is non-axial. ...I think I'm getting closer to something actually workable here, but I still want to keep soliciting input to make sure I'm not operating off of any problem assumptions (like the ones that have already been discovered, with y'all's help). As a next step, I'm thinking I might put up a thread on Pillowfort soon. Would any of y'all be willing to help me reach out to the people who only use Tumblr, as well? Possibly with a link to some kind of google survey or something, in case they don't like guest posting to forums. Thoughts? _______ Fun fact, part of our disagreement on this was that she didn't even view the conflict as addressing/about the ace community, at least initially. I can't link you directly to the comments in question because the post is viewlocked, but she did have some basis for this. I also get the impression (although she didn't outright say this) that she was initially viewing the "split attraction" concept as most relevant to bi and pan people. (Just goes to show what a mess that reactionary movement was, if they couldn't even make it that clear what they were even reacting to, but hey. Didn't exactly occur in a culture of linking.) It's also almost like these things keep happening on this one site in particular, year after year for almost a decade.... ? I wonder if there could be anything worth addressing about Tumblr as a primary choice of community platform...
  11. And not just attraction! ....hm, at this rate maybe I should make that one of the norms on the list. Oh that's a good comparison. Yes, exactly like that.
  12. Yes, I would love for them to clarify that they didn't mean to be hostile, if that's the case. Cool. So -- your aromanticism and asexuality feel convergent, and at the same time, your identity draws on another, noncanon axis, is that right? That language works? I completely understand what you're saying about the failures of the first version making it sound like it could only pertain to having just one. That was definitely an assumption of mine that I hadn't thought to really question too much until you pointed it out. Hopefully, the wording of these four different scales -- convergence/parallel/canon/axis -- can also allow people to talk about different tensions/alignments that can even be different among their different identities, rather than trying to create a model that sorts entire people wholecloth. (Just for ref: how I'd map the relationship between my gray-asexual identity & these norms along these scales would be divergent, nonparallel, canon, and axial. That's because my only orientation is a specific sexual orientation, and I don't have a romantic orientation.)
  13. The origins of the term "SAM" are explained in the first bulleted list in the post, where I give a timeline of how it came about. Short version: it came from people who wanted to criticize ace language, like the idea of romantic orientation. In answer to that, some tumblr aces and aros started using it in a new and completely different way. This new way involved sorting people into "people who use SAM" and "people who don't use the SAM." This way of sorting is completely binary, by definition (you either do or you don't). I gave some examples of how that binary can break down. If you buy the idea that it's a bad binary, you don't need to read the examples. If you don't get what I mean by calling it a bad binary, the part to look at is this part: I'll also address this other bullet point briefly, and can explain more if you want-- Examples of two different definitions I have seen are "naming romantic orientation separate from sexual orientation" (like you said) and "differentiating between types of attraction in general" (w/o anything to do with naming orientations themselves). In practice this causes communication problems when the two are treated as the exact same thing. I can provide further examples of this upon request. It's a work in progress. You've got to be kidding me. What definition of "easier" and "access" are you working off of here? Tumblr, the notoriously poorly designed platform which doesn't even allow direct guest commenting? You're calling that place flatly "easier for people to gain access" at? Are you just under the impression that "easier for you personally" equals "easier for everyone," or what? Are you spitting in my face intentionally, or have I just been too subtle about the fact that I could write an entire post on the downsides/detriments/problems with Tumblr as a community hub & was only keeping things concise solely because you asked me not to write so much? Look, Magni, I'm trying to be considerate with you in spite of us coming from apparently very different perspectives, preferences, and priorities. Are you willing to meet me halfway here, or is the fact that I feel dismissed and personally insulted at this the exact outcome you intended for? I think using multiple platforms is something that makes sense in some cases, yes. No one place should be the exclusive hub of everything. It may have additional connotations to you, but it does literally mean third. And I do mean "literally" in the true and exact sense of "literal meaning." Yes! ...Sort of. I didn't see it get used a lot. But the words were "peri-oriented" and "vari-oriented." They are mentioned some in the comments here and here. ______ Technically I think that may be anachronistic. They weren't "exclusionists" yet (in that I don't think people were using that term yet), and not all of them were on that "side." I'm saying this because I actually know one of those early users (who even did some of the research for my blogposts!), and she's pretty chill; we've had some pretty interesting discussions about asexuality & bisexuality together. I could introduce you to her, if you like. She didn't appreciate me characterizing the term as "coined to criticize aces," even, although I still think that's basically a decent summary (albeit oversimplified). Point being: I think it's worth staying away from us-vs-them language on this. You can say that again. The overall dynamic feels like they scratched out our words and wrote over them. And people just let them. That's true. I admit "reclamation" has certain connotations that don't perfectly fit the situation. I don't have any evidence to suggest that, at the time, it was done with any direct intention of it being reclamatory. People seemed to just... go with it. lol, no language-using being is "pre-discourse." Discourse is just language. (I know this has been re-defined too, and I have completely separate ideological objections to that.) I'd say... attraction can lead to, or be a defining component of, someone's orientation and/or identity, but some people can have an orientation or identity that factors in things rather than (or strongly in addition to) their attraction. I used orientation and identity here interchangeably, but the may be a difference for other folks. There are a lot more factors that can go into how someone thinks of their orientation, yeah. Elizabeth has told me she is working on a post to explain more about this. _______ @Prismatangle @luvtheheaven @zhyrs You've been referred to as the "heavy conceptual thinkers." Cousin Coyote is so proud. [ Note: I have updated and changed a lot about the descriptions again today. ]
  14. Mmmaybe? ...I hesitate because, as I've said, I wasn't intending that one to describe myself, and so I hesitate to speak for them. That's not generally how I've seen it written about, though. I don't know. Maybe. Siggy did seem willing to see himself in that description, though, so I'll pull from what he said: "These lexical gaps were keenly felt by me–I basically didn’t identify with a romantic orientation for a long time, not even 'quoi' because if I ever did identify as a romantic orientation, even one that matched my sexual orientation, there would be too strong a connotation of being different from my sexual orientation." _____ That is the idea here, yes. Then you are invited to ask me some direct questions to which I can provide direct answers, because I don't know where to start unless you give me a starting point. In that post, for instance, I've talked some about where "SAM" came from and how it's been reclaimed. I've talked some about where applying that SAM/non-SAM binary to people doesn't work. I've talked some about my thoughts on how we can do better. What part can I help you with? Honestly the #1 way to make community discussion more accessible would be to stop having so disproportionately much of it happen exclusively on Tumblr, but I digress. I don't care how new or old it is. My thinking is -- and this may be too strong of a comparison, but -- calling some attractions "tertiary" feels a little like calling a nonbinary person "third gender." It inherently implies a first and second for there to be a third. That represents basically the exact same centering of romance and sexuality that I want to call into question here. ______ Hmm. Okay. Do you think I should reword the first description to make more room for multiple orientations, or do you think that belongs in a separate description of its own? Bearing in mind that what I'm trying to describe is relationships to certain norms, not individual choice of labels.
  15. Hi! Completely fair choice in my book. Forums are for talking, after all. ...Also, you bring up some good points, but. I don't know how to address them lol. Besides just *nods* Oh! Okay. Maybe you didn't read the previous thread or the blogposts I linked (completely fair, it is a Lot and I did want people to be able to just jump in). FTR though, I am Not Of The Opinion that classifying people into "people who use the SAM" vs. "people who don't" "makes things more clear" (and in fact... laughed out loud when I saw that sentence, because this is right on the heels of a huge conversation about it where even within the thread people were defining it at least two different ways -- sometimes even coming from the same person!). For more on that, I recommend reading the Remodeling post where I explain how the reclamation of that term from the anti-ace bloc poses some problems, but you can also take a read through this whole argument, or for instance starting with my replies to Echidna here. Please understand that I've already gone through this with several people, and as a result, may be a little less willing to go through the whole song and dance all over again. If you want to argue with me that classifying people as "people who use the SAM" vs. "people who don't" is a crystal clear classification system that doesn't chop me personally in half, then... all I can say is please refer back to the places where I've already talked about this, so you can understand why I'm avoiding it at least. Better yet: take a look at the five narratives to complicate the SAM/non-SAM binary from my Remodeling post and then tell me which is which. ETA: Sorry, in retrospect this reply was rude of me. I am willing to discuss more and talk through things. I'm just... kinda tired of how some of this has played out before, and feeling like a lot of people are largely uninterested in listening or even finding out what I mean. I think I get you, yeah. I'm thinking about how to reword it all in a way that's more flexible. Caught red-handed. lol don't get too attached to it -- it's still got a ways to go. Still: thank you for saying so. :3 Not necessarily. The wording of the first description was based off of what I've heard from people like Yarrow and Siggy, who do use romantic orientation terminology on themselves (reluctantly, in Siggy's case) but also say that that community norm chafes for them because it "implies a split that isn't really there" and has "too strong a connotation of being different from my sexual orientation." See the links for full context in their original words. I don't want to speak for them on this. Siggy as a greyromantic gray-a, with the way he has described an alienation from the R/S dyad, and me as a quoiromantic gray-a, who feels pinched by the expectation that all aces should ID with a romantic orientation, do not have basically the same relationship to these different norms, no. I am not willing to collapse those. Categorizing people by "number and priority of labels" (ex. preferring to just say "I'm gray-a" and leave it at that) is not what I am after here. What I am after is describing the difference between, for instance, what Siggy wants to index himself as apart from and what I want to index myself as apart from, in terms of relationships to different expectations. The way he has talked about it, he doesn't like connotations/expectations of drawing a line through sex vs. romance and wants words for "people who don’t distinguish the different kinds of attractions, especially romantic and sexual attraction," whereas me, I do prefer excluding any statement on romance from my sexual orientation, and my problem with the romantic orientation norm isn't that it has "too strong a connotation of being different" or "split" but rather that the ace & aro communities keep talking in a way where it's expected that everybody involved uses that idea at all. That depends. Do they think the multiorientation approach is "splitting hairs," or do they mostly only default to the broader label because they're not in contexts where the multi-axis classification scheme is expected? ...Admittedly, I should probably add some kind of additional description here for people who are comfortable with both norms and switching between them as called for. Welcome. ;D They should give me some kind of recruitment award lol.
  16. General for the record statement: I want to have a discussion about orientations, labels, identities, and person-descriptors. Attraction is relevant to that, naturally, but not the main thing I'm trying to look at. But to answer the other aspect of your question... mmmI don't think I'm on board with the category-name of "tertiary attraction." That doesn't seem quite fair, calling everything that's not-specifically-romantic and not-specifically-sexual "tertiary." For me, aesthetic & sensual attraction are the most common, strongest, most distinct types of attraction I have experienced. I wouldn't even think to describe them as "tertiary." The way people discuss "the split attraction model" by completely omitting any acknowledgement of (for instance) sensual orientation and other uncommon orientation types is one of bones I have to pick with how people talk about it, yes. That's one of the sentiments motivating how I wrote a couple of my "narratives to complicate the SAM/non-SAM binary" in that main post I linked, up top. For clarity's sake, I'd ask that we avoid saying "SAM" in this thread unless called for, because I'm trying to get away from that language entirely. Um... Are you using "Model 3" to mean the third description, on the list? ...Because I don't think that's exactly what's going on there, no. Sometimes there aren't individual orientations to know. Yes. Agreed. _____________________________________ lol based on that first sentence I was about to say that's what I meant for description two, but that second sentence? That's a quoi mood right there. In retrospect I definitely should have summarized the third one differently for the purposes of that question. Resistance against the idea that, if you "separate" them, you must have one of each, is also part of it there. As is... more generally, the disidentification with that particular grid -- the romantic orientation and sexual orientation dyad -- for reasons like "maybe only one or neither of those frameworks is especially useful." For me, for instance, quoiromanticism is like "I don't have a romantic orientation, stop asking." But there's also people like, for example, Mal and Luna, from the narratives section I wrote. And more generally, I've also spoken to at least one person whose way of parsing themself into labels is highly contextual rather than static along that grid. I think some labels, like "bi" and "lesbian," may be especially prone to this, with some aces and aros feeling an association with them without specifically wanting to mark them as either "a romantic orientation" or "a sexual orientation" except when pushed to, and maybe not even then. !!! Truth. Man, I don't even know that there's any way to condense all that. There's a lot going on there, you know? ...So many ways that our ways of talking about these things can be a mess... Also it's harder to correct people on small points without "derailing" the whole post if you're on Tumblr which is Reason #83 why I wish these communities weren't so disproportionately active on Tumblr BUT ANYWAY. Back on topic: right now I'm thinking I want to maybe reword things so that it sounds like there's less hard lines between the circles, possibly even find a way to make it seem more like a continuum of sorts. Possibly it would help if I didn't write about them like groups or demographics at all, upon reflection. With that said, I do also want to keep things from getting too abstract.
  17. Okay. I think I get you. In that case, that sounds closer like a relationship to those norms that I meant for the second description to cover. Any suggestions for how to amend it? That's good to know! Neat description. ^^ Hmm... I was definitely thinking about these distinctions in terms of norms about naming orientations. But it could be that I've described the different relationships to those norms in a way that presumes too much about what lies beneath or motivates those reactions to them. Basically: I'm thinking of lines drawn between "I don't like the romantic & sexual orientations separation" "I like the romantic & sexual orientations separation, that's what works best for me" and "I don't like the romantic & sexual orientations separation either, but for different reasons than the first." Reduced down to that, do any of those three work for you? Or... more generally, how would you describe your relationship to different norms wrt orientation labeling?
  18. @Magni Gotcha... That's also a good anecdote for explaining how these things aren't necessarily set in stone. Got a question for you though. Would you say that the expectation that aros have to specify a sexual orientation... is a nuisance/obstacle/troublesome for how you want to describe yourself? Or are you saying more that, out of the two, aromanticism is the one that's more salient for you and that you want to put emphasis on? Asking because I'm trying to think about how I might adjust how I'm drawing the lines here.
  19. That's fair. Yes! ...or rather, yes and no, only because.... those do work as examples, but I don't want to imply that those are the only way to think of them, if that makes sense. So those are fine examples but not exact summaries, is I guess what I'm thinking. Essentially what I have in mind is less about people's specific choice of labels/label format and more about different relationships to (or resistance against) certain norms, like the composite sexual orientation norm and the dual romantic & sexual orientation norm. I'd also like to avoid accepting the language that anyone can be "technically" asexual (or anything else). I think that'd represent, among other things, applying the same cookie cutter framework of romantic & sexual axes to people even when that's not what works for them, which is exactly what the third group may want to flag as inappropriate language for them. I can't tell if you meant they might self-describe as "technically asexual," but I wanted to acknowledge that just in case. (Also, if somebody saw that I don't have a romantic orientation and decided to presume what I "technically" am, I'd blow a gasket.)
  20. Aight. Some of it's what I said above to Mark, but to elaborate: One of the writings by Plato I've read is called the Phaedrus dialogue, and it's written in script format as a conversation between the character of Socrates and the character of Phaedrus. First off, the tone of the whole piece is very uhhhh... flirty, between the two dudes (complete with a "is that a scroll under your toga, or are you....?" type of joke). In context this is pretty normal, since pederasty between teachers and students was the expected thing and that's basically the dynamic here. The actual content of their conversation is mainly on the topic of love and, abstractly, who it makes sense to get with (or "extend favors to," that is, bang): the person who's in love with you or the person who's not. They kinda go back and forth on this, but Socrates ends up giving this long poetic speech about how love (eros -- so, romantic-sexual passionate love) is "divine madness," caused by catching a glimpse of True Beauty (where, in context, this is also framed as basically a religious revelation), and that divine insight inspires people to bond and enrich each other and to pursue philosophy together and to soar closer to the Truth and... It is not an aro- or ace-friendly piece. So yeah, on a personal basis I don't like the word "platonic relationship" for friendships or companionate partnerships at all.
  21. [ an extension of this previous thread now that that one has gone so far off-topic ] I'm trying to address, or at least describe in order to talk about, an intra- & intercommunity problem. In the ace & aro communities both, there's arisen a norm of talking about ourselves and each other in terms of "romantic orientation" and "sexual orientation" as discrete entities. This has been preferable for some people but not for others, and that's caused some conflict, which people have tried to address in a lot of different ways already (all with their own issues). What I'm trying to do, at the moment, is try to map all of those different relationships to different norms of orientation modeling. Here is the blog post where I explain more of why I'm bothering with this. You may want to go read that first if this post is confusing to you, but for those of you who already have the context, you can skip it. So I'm working on the following loose descriptions right now (in the list below), and here's my questions for y'all: Do you feel like you fit anywhere among these? Is there any way I could change the wording to make more room for you to fit better? Is there anything else I left out? Should any others be added? Should any of the descriptions be subdivided into more? Are there any other norms or dynamics I should be taking into account? Here's the descriptions I'm working with so far [work in progress, edited 3/28]: ORIENTATION LANGUAGE: This is the norm of using the word “orientation” as a part of how to talk and think about particular ways of desiring, connecting, and relating to other people. Not everyone uses or wants to use orientation language at all. And even among those who do, they don’t all use the same models, definitions, types, or categories; using orientation language for one thing or in one way doesn’t necessarily entail using it for every conceivable experience of interpersonal desire or attraction. The degree to which orientation language feels right or applicable to different people for different feelings will vary. And again, some people may prefer to stay away from using it at all. COMPOSITE SEXUAL ORIENTATION: This is the Western composite norm of thinking of “orientation” in the singular, where “sexual orientation” is synonymous/interchangeable with “orientation” in general, where romance & sexuality are intertwined, and where one’s pool of romantic interests is integrated with one’s sexuality. One’s relationship to this norm can be thought of as a scale ranging from “convergent” to “divergent.” The more you prefer this way of modeling your orientation, the more you could say your relationship to this norm is more convergent. The more you feel alienated from this norm or want to distance yourself from it, the more you could say your relationship to this norm is more divergent. Those are just the extremes, though; think of this as a sliding scale. ROMANTIC ORIENTATION/SEXUAL ORIENTATION DYAD: This is the aro & ace communities’ norm of talking about “romantic orientation” and “sexual orientation” (RO SO) as two things that aros and aces have. In other words, we are expected to have a “romantic orientation” box and a “sexual orientation” box, and we are expected to apply labels to or some how fit our experiences into those boxes, making ourselves legible under this framework. The more you relate to this norm (RO SO) as an applicable and useful framework for yourself, the more you could describe your identity as “rosol.” The more you feel alienated from this norm or want to distance yourself from it, the more you could describe your identity as more out of alignment with this dyad, or “non-rosol.” Think of this as a sliding scale with plenty of room in between for those whose relationship to this norm is ambivalent or apathetic. ONLY ONE OR TWO TYPES OF ORIENTATION: This is the norm of thinking and speaking of “orientation” language as something that only, strictly pertains to either sex, romance, or both. One’s relationship to this norm is strong when you think of all your orientations as making reference to romance and/or sex in some fashion. One’s relationship to this norm is more alienated or distant the less you think of your orientation (or one of your orientational identities) as being “about” the canon categories (of sex or romance). With reference to this norm, we might think of romantic and sexual orientations as the more “orthodox” types, and we might think of other kinds of orientation (like sensual, aesthetic, affectionate, etc.) as more “unorthodox.” ORIENTATIONS BY AXIS: This is the norm especially prevalent in the ace & aro communities that all orientations must be specified along a specific axis, such as romanticism, sexuality, sensuality, platonism, alterity, and so on. Under this norm we are expected to “map” every orientation label along a specific axis on a grid. One’s relationship to this norm is stronger the more that all of your orientations align with a specific axis (or bundle of axes) and the more you feel comfortable with this way of sorting and defining your orientational identities. These are identities that we might describe as more “axial.” One’s relationship to this norm is more alienated or more distant the more you do not subscribe to this framework. The less you bind or map your identity to this norm, the more you might describe that identity as “non-axial.” Again, think of this as a sliding scale.
  22. well the only reason people hang around in online communities is when they feel accepted, if they feel it is toxic they will leave. This seems to me like a false dichotomy, if I am understanding you correctly. I wouldn't have thought that responding to "I feel bad about myself" with support and reassurance in the form of "it's okay, you don't need to feel bad about yourself" would necessarily amount to "making them feel the community is toxic." I think it's an overall tricky situation, probably with no one-size-fits-all solution. I wouldn't expect every single person in that kind of situation to respond to a single message all in the exact same way. ...The one thing I'll stick by, though, is that I don't think a total absence of reassurance is necessarily the "softer" route to take, speaking from experience on the hurting side of things. I could all too easily see myself having gotten hurt all the worse, personally, if that had been the unanimous Community Response during times when I've spoken up about feeling broken. The response that I actually did get -- and that I can pull quotes from, for those interested, because it happened online -- was much more of what I needed. [edit: new thread for talking about orientation modeling]
  23. I don't have much to contribute on this, but I think it's worth linking this post by James on that topic. That... sounds ideological. If it were me, and someone came to me distraught saying "I don't feel sexual attraction but I don't want to be this way," my response wouldn't be to just... recommend some kind of a "asexual but is unhappy with that" label. I think there's beliefs and ideas about worth and regard that need to be addressed there with far more than a label. Those people need reassurance and community support, no matter what they identify as. I see that as the ethical duty of both the aromantic & asexual communities -- to reassure people on issues like exactly that. I see. That's kinda what I'd intended for the convergent group, then. Is there a way I could change the wording for that one to better suit you (i.e. make it broader/more identifiable)? Note that I've gone and made edits to the main post for that section recently, although can't say whether that will have made a significant difference yet. Lol I meant in a figurative sense, like drawing lines in the sand, but I could eventually work up toward a diagram too, sure, once I'm more confident in the wording to go with it.
  24. Huh? I agree with you on that. I would never call it that. Does it need to be labeled with a personal identity label? I'd rather use a full sentence, like "This term was coined and popularized by aces, some aro and some not, to be used by anyone who finds use in it." Why would it be? Sciatrix is wtfromantic and Kaz has a romantic orientation of "divide by cucumber." I am insistent on not treating them as simply "aro" when that doesn't completely reflect their self-stated relationship to (a)romanticism.
  25. Seconding what @Prismatangle said about [concept]-adjective stuff uhh opening its own can of worms, I'm afraid. Also gonna throw in "relationship =/= romance," but yeah. That post she linked there mostly gets at the main things I would say about it, I think. Not that the aro community has to or is necessarily going to go down the same paths as the ace community in terms of how to talk about things, but to the extent that aros borrow from our language/formats, I think it's worth learning the lessons from our mistakes and intracommunity conflicts, too. Here's two posts from some of the more recent iterations of that tension, for the curious... although those posts are different in that they're not as focused on the sex-adjective terminology itself. I mean, to the extent that people want to have shorter words for longer-to-describe-fully ideas, I'm good with that. I'm a fan of words, just to make that perfectly clear, here. My reservations have to do with seeing the past results of similar classification schemes (which all too quickly turned into "everybody fits into one of these three categories" and boxing people into overly specific narratives that a lot of people couldn't fit themselves into) and also maybe a hint of generic Foucauldian "visibility is a trap" wariness here. (Come to think of it, that could be a good premise for another post, couldn't it... Certainly disputes the, uh, received wisdom, in some of the convos about community activism). Anyway! By now this thread is, I think, getting relatively long (ish?), to the point where it could be hard to follow or folks are too intimidated to join in because of how much reading there would be to do just to catch up and make sense of all the back-and-forth, but I'm still interested in assessing these four/five circles I'm drawing, with others' help. Would it be too soon/unwarranted to go and make another new thread?
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