What can y'all tell me about the "split attraction model"?

[Apathetic Echidna]

2 hours ago, bydontost said:

I guess my understanding was that patterns of attraction(s) itself(s) were influenced by things like that tbh.

I guess with that it would depend on where the person relates to their other influences. That would be a individual decision according to the person's own feelings.

I remember one comment on AVEN where someone on the Autism spectrum wanted that to be taken into account when they discussed their orientation (via orientation label that they included the word 'autism' in just to make sure everyone got it), so obviously they thought it was a fundamental part that could not be divided from whenever they discussed anything to do with their experience. ^{My search skill have left me again but this link says pretty much the same thing but about gender Not what I was looking for, but sorta?}

 

2 hours ago, bydontost said:

Should throw in N there too, to make "damn" ?.

But what could N possibly be? Split Attraction Model Now!  Nah, I think we should go with yours, PAMYDHAIYBIOPRYDHLYIATTM. 

I can't think of a word, or even set of words, that mean 'could be felt as separate, or combined but identifiable, or combined but melded together to basically be the same thing, or any combination of these 3, or their absence(s)'.

 

All in all @Coyote's Convergent, cohesive pieces/Divergent pieces and Singular composite/Singular specific/Multiple specific orientation is much more comprehensive than identifying as using SAM or non-SAM, but it is still a concept that would best apply when people have sorted shit out, which is hard most of the time and SAM (as per my basic understanding as stated before) is a useful tool for at least some people ^*cough* me ^*cough* to get that shit sorted...and that took between 5 months and 13 years to do (depending how you look at it) but personally I think that tool's usefulness is over for me and so I would prefer something less vague than 'non-SAM' to be out there. But even now I'm unsure about how I would fit in your 4 circles, maybe Divergent Pieces (as I can tell the difference between the ever pervasive constant aromanticism and the sexual/sensual) but maybe Singular Composite as I experience them as a cohesive whole when they do occur in conjunction and most differentiation is done in hindsight and even then it is tricky. Is that 5th circle or am I doing it wrong?

[bydontost]

55 minutes ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

All in all @Coyote's Convergent, cohesive pieces/Divergent pieces and Singular composite/Singular specific/Multiple specific orientation is much more comprehensive than identifying as using SAM or non-SAM, but it is still a concept that would best apply when people have sorted shit out, which is hard most of the time

I read @Coyotes post on their blog in the meantime and I'm actually ready to agree that sam is not enough to capture those subtleties, no matter how we rename it... I hope that wouldn't make things harder, but we need something to explain how all those attractions can influence identities and how identities don't have to be about attractions and all that.

 

You're not sure where you fit in those 4 categories Coyote suggested - maybe there's another one, I now notice it could be harder for someone who does think of their attraction as fluid to pinpoint where they fit, so that's something to think about. I'm definitely in the divergent pieces, multiple orientations, but it doesn't feel like a fractured experience - the pieces intersect, interweave to form a single sense of self. 

[bydontost]

Phew, so, I think that the issues that were supposed to be explained by sam, but weren't very structured in sam are answers to the following questions: 
Attraction: What kind of attractions do you experience? What is the pattern of this attraction? Are those types attractions you have experienced as cohesive?
Identity: What do you identify as? What is that identity influenced by (attraction/other factors)?

 

And answers to those questions and concepts around them could be structured more. 

 

More talk in a comment here: https://theacetheist.wordpress.com/2019/03/20/remodeling-on-the-reclamation-of-the-term-split-attraction-model/#comment-9651

[Coyote]

 

8 hours ago, bydontost said:

Hmm this is sth I'd have to think about tbh...?? I guess my understanding was that patterns of attraction(s) itself(s) were influenced by things like that tbh.

 

There's also, for instance, cupioromantic folks, right? Who want to express an openness to certain relationships, despite no specific attraction? I personally didn't get putting that in your orientation label itself, but people do it, and it's not something I'm going to fight them on. And more generally, there are some people on the border line who choose between the labels gay vs. bi vs. queer depending on who/what they want to prioritize, I think, right?

 

Although the ace and aro comms talk a lot about "attraction," it seems like there are a lot of other closely related factors, like desire and intention and cultural perception, that influence people's choice of description. See also that whole recent thread on a not-specifically-aro umbrella term, where it was mentioned that folks have been shying away from "greyromantic" because of unwanted associations (as was also mentioned on this post over here).

 

8 hours ago, bydontost said:

Anyway, maybe people who only have one orientation (either in terms of identity or attraction) could just say they're something"-oriented" as clarification..?? Like, "I'm aromantic, in the sense that I'm a-oriented"..?? 

 

I thought about the idea of an alternative suffix, yeah. Although it's not really my place to have a say on which one. ...Could be that people might not like the double vowels, though. Others' thoughts?

 

5 hours ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

All in all @Coyote's Convergent, cohesive pieces/Divergent pieces and Singular composite/Singular specific/Multiple specific orientation is much more comprehensive than identifying as using SAM or non-SAM, but it is still a concept that would best apply when people have sorted shit out, which is hard most of the time and SAM (as per my basic understanding as stated before) is a useful tool for at least some people ^*cough* me ^*cough* to get that shit sorted...and that took between 5 months and 13 years to do (depending how you look at it) but personally I think that tool's usefulness is over for me and so I would prefer something less vague than 'non-SAM' to be out there. But even now I'm unsure about how I would fit in your 4 circles, maybe Divergent Pieces (as I can tell the difference between the ever pervasive constant aromanticism and the sexual/sensual) but maybe Singular Composite as I experience them as a cohesive whole when they do occur in conjunction and most differentiation is done in hindsight and even then it is tricky. Is that 5th circle or am I doing it wrong?

 

Good question. I even thought about adding another circle for people who draw on both convergent and divergent concepts for multiple orientations -- ex. aromantisexual demisensual, for instance -- but I haven't heard from anyone talking about a relationship to these concepts quite like that, so I don't know if that would be useful to anyone or just theorizing for the sake of theorizing.

 

Anyway, back to your case: That depends. I don't think there has to be a hard boundary between these things -- and also, I didn't mean to imply that people with a convergent singular orientation necessarily can't "tell the difference," nor that people with a divergent orientation(s) aren't whole people who can necessarily parcel out their intersections in practice -- ex. being a quoiro gray-a doesn't mean I'm quoiro some of the time and gray-a some of the rest of the time; I'm both at once, of course, even though I like to conceptualize them with separate names. But to get back on track -- I was thinking of it in terms of this: Are you more "at home" with the more common composite use of "sexual orientation" you see basically everywhere else, or are you more "at home" with the ace & aro communities' typical way of talking about sexuality vs. romance as separate, or do you not really care and go with either one? With this way of drawing the circles, I'm thinking less about pinning down an exact experience itself and more about just... what chafes, if that makes sense. 

 

Note: I don't want to presume exactly what you mean here, but in case you mean "SAM" to mean "differentiating types of attraction," as in looking at "attraction" as something that can have multiple kinds (and not necessarily a specific number set in stone), then, just as a note, the thing that I'm going to be calling that is "differentiating types of attraction."

 

 

 

[bydontost]

2 hours ago, Coyote said:

 Although the ace and aro comms talk a lot about "attraction," it seems like there are a lot of other closely related factors, like desire and intention and cultural perception, that influence people's choice of description. See also that whole recent thread on a not-specifically-aro umbrella term, where it was mentioned that folks have been shying away from "greyromantic" because of unwanted associations (as was also mentioned on this post over here).

Yeah I follow those discussions, it seems quite a lot is breaking down over the attraction and other factors that may influence an identity. This is another symptom things could be reworked a bit I think. 

 

2 hours ago, Coyote said:

11 hours ago, bydontost said:

Anyway, maybe people who only have one orientation (either in terms of identity or attraction) could just say they're something"-oriented" as clarification..?? Like, "I'm aromantic, in the sense that I'm a-oriented"..?? 

 

I thought about the idea of an alternative suffix, yeah. Although it's not really my place to have a say on which one. ...Could be that people might not like the double vowels, though.

Idk if I don't want to go back on this actually, because it's so vague. This again would lead to the "but attraction/identity/preferences??" questions probably. The double vowel is why I put the "-" there Not a fix for pronunciation though. 

[Prismatangle]

@bydontost

 

Okay. Well… I will try to be more mindful of my language in the future. In turn, if you would, could you please try to be a little more patient with me?

 

It’s not just you, but I feel like the overall tone of a lot of this thread has been coming across… just, kind of hostile. And in some places, a bit condescending. It may not be intentional, it may be partly because we have very different, uh… internet dialects? I guess? I dunno, it’s just felt pretty chilly in here, to me.

 

I do feel that it’s somewhat unreasonable to expect me to be perfectly “informed,” as you phrased it, about what your community standards/norms are, given that, yes, I am in fact new here. I’ve been engaging more actively with aro community discussions for a while now (since before the Carnival of Aros was announced, actually). But my time is not unlimited, and forums… are just not my preference, when it comes to internet communities, so I don’t prioritize engaging with them.

 

Thus, I will miss things. I’m sorry, I haven’t seen how many times you’ve been “over this” before. I get that you’re frustrated about it. But I feel it would have been much more constructive to calmly tell me what you wanted me to change, instead of just calling me uninformed. It was really not obvious to me what you would have had me do, because from my perspective, it was already totally clear that this is an aro forum and it seemed unnecessary to mention it. I thought it would have actually come across as very condescending to you, like telling you what your own space is. Of course you already know!

 

And I will say that now that I’ve caught up on the thread, it’s feeling better now than it was. Still, I want to drop a link here to Siggy’s post that explains the different cultural perspective that I’m coming from, just in case anyone here hasn’t seen it, and wants a better understanding. I feel that some of our miscommunications may have been happening because of issues discussed in that post.

 

 

 

@Apathetic Echidna

 

Quote

“@Prismatangle Welcome! I'm sorry to have misunderstood you when I quoted, so thanks for coming over and clearing things up (also thanks for clearing up the pronouns! I didn't want to make assumption so I went neutral). Am I right in re-reading your comment as you used the concept that we (at least Croutons and I) now call SAM?”

 

Thank you for the welcome!

 

As for whether I use/used SAM… Well, yes and no. I’m going to try to get into this in more detail in a blog post later, but basically, I used it in the past to figure out asexuality. But that was very hard, because at the time, I identified as gray-asexual and attraction was super confusing. (Now it’s somewhat less confusing, because my attraction patterns have shifted, and have stabilized now to have a pretty clear absence of sexual attraction.) And I tried for many years to categorize whatever other attractions I felt. But whatever attraction is there, it’s not really a separate/distinct experience, and not easily categorized. There are elements I can distinguish, but it’s all very nebulous, and feels like, to borrow some phrases from Coyote and epochryphal, a “cohesive whole” or a “holistic feeling” of fluid grayness. In my own words, I would say that my various attractions are integrated with each other. They’re not exactly the same thing, but they’re very closely connected and not something I can “split.” How do you split a cloud?

 

In the past, I assumed there was some kind of romantic element mixed in there, but was there really? I have no idea. If so, it's gone now, I think?

 

Either way, when it comes to romantic orientation, attraction is pretty much useless to me as a metric for figuring that out. And for my bi (not further specified) identity, attraction is entirely irrelevant. There is an orientation there, some raw experience that existed before I consciously labeled it, but it really isn’t particularly connected to attraction patterns. I don’t form relationships based on my attraction patterns.

 

So, I don’t use SAM at all for one of my orientations, I’ve tried to use it without success for another, and it only sort of works for asexuality now that my attractions have shifted to have a clear absence of sexual attraction. And like you, whatever you want to call this model, it’s not something I use anymore, because it’s no longer useful to me. I eschew naming my attractions, for the most part, but because of the intense scrutiny about them coming from all sides, I end up having to try to explain them a lot more than I would prefer to.

 

 

I'm going to try to gather my thoughts more and explain what I think about how exactly I would define "orientation," but as I mentioned here, I don't define it as either a pattern of attraction, or an identity. I think Echidna and Coyote both have similar understandings of what "orientation" means to me. But this... could take a while.

[bydontost]

@Prismatangle

Thank you and I'm sorry too that I got so mad at you first instead of suggesting a change. It seems that I didn't understand what you meant by your message (that you've been there for the discussions about those certain types of attraction before) and instead understood that you're connected to and informed on the discussions (in the aromantic circles) now. My comment was about the fact I thought you referred to aspec spaces as they are right now (ace and/or aro) as "ace/aspec" and I'm sorry I didn't show more patience. 

 

45 minutes ago, Prismatangle said:

And I will say that now that I’ve caught up on the thread, it’s feeling better now than it was.

Same here

47 minutes ago, Prismatangle said:

 I don’t form relationships based on my attraction patterns.

I think that's a separate issue too ? Could it be described in the language of relationship favourable/indifferent/averse...?? 

[Prismatangle]

Thank you! I'm sorry I misunderstood you and said something I didn't realize was insensitive too, and I'm glad we cleared that up!

 

1 hour ago, bydontost said:

I think that's a separate issue too ? Could it be described in the language of relationship favourable/indifferent/averse...?? 

 

I guess some people might describe it that way, but I don't. I think that's a bit different than what I'm trying to describe. And... well, it's one of those things where, because of my experience in the ace community, and how there are so many problems with sex-favorable vs. sex-averse and creating an accommodating space for both, I wouldn't want to adopt that language even if I felt it fit me. I don't like the trichotomy, feel like I fluctuate too much to fit it, and don't want to replicate that experience when I talk about relationships. Besides that, I feel that "relationship" in relationship-favorable etc. is too broad, it could mean virtually anything.

 

Honestly, I just try to avoid labeling things like this. I feel that labels just tend to impede rather than clarify my communication, so I would rather just describe what I mean, or not get into it at all. I've had some pretty uncomfortable experiences where I felt that people were putting me in one category or another and labeling my experiences for me, with language I really dislike and object to, so yeah... I'd rather not go there.

[Coyote]

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?

 

[Apathetic Echidna]

Quote

Ditto Coyote. There is a very long history of discussion of defining asexuality not solely with respect to sexual attraction. In recent memory, the last time it became a big discussion on the blogs was around Here’s 2015, but my impression is that it comes up even more frequently on AVEN. Generally, the other criteria under discussion are “sexual desire”, “sex drive”, or “wanting sex”. (Siggy from the blog comments)

8 hours ago, Coyote said:

There's also, for instance, cupioromantic folks, right? Who want to express an openness to certain relationships, despite no specific attraction? I personally didn't get putting that in your orientation label itself, but people do it, and it's not something I'm going to fight them on. And more generally, there are some people on the border line who choose between the labels gay vs. bi vs. queer depending on who/what they want to prioritize, I think, right?

 

Although the ace and aro comms talk a lot about "attraction," it seems like there are a lot of other closely related factors, like desire and intention and cultural perception, that influence people's choice of description. See also that whole recent thread on a not-specifically-aro umbrella term, where it was mentioned that folks have been shying away from "greyromantic" because of unwanted associations (as was also mentioned on this post over here).

I'm just going to tie these comments together because they work together to answer. 

So since I moved off AVEN all the discussion about aromanticism sort of hard lines 'aromantic' in relation to attraction and maybe a few other things on an individual basis. Desire, drive and wanting don't come into it in relation to aromantics, all of those other criteria are pushed into different labels like cupioromantic which then take it into account in it's definition. There have been quite a few people come through these forums expressing (sometimes very upset or stressed) that they don't feel romantic attraction but don't want to be that way, don't want to be 'aromantic'. They need that separation from the rest of the aromantics. Those labels may simply be a middle-step as they come to self acceptance or it may be the identity they choose for life, but they are incredibly important for people who want an 'out' from being aromantic as I highly doubt there will be much push to change the current attraction centric definition of aromantic. 

 

 

8 hours ago, Coyote said:

But to get back on track -- I was thinking of it in terms of this: Are you more "at home" with the more common composite use of "sexual orientation" you see basically everywhere else, or are you more "at home" with the ace & aro communities' typical way of talking about sexuality vs. romance as separate, or do you not really care and go with either one? With this way of drawing the circles, I'm thinking less about pinning down an exact experience itself and more about just... what chafes, if that makes sense. 

Sorting out the chafing in all our communities is probably the best aim any of us can have right now! 

I must say I composite, but not sexual orientation as everything defaults to aromantic for me (and I prefer not to name the rest). I find it is only in aro & ace communities that I find myself detailing other things and people assume they are separate, which is fair because generally it comes up when talking about a specific incident or event. I think what chafes is some of the language which reinforces division and there is no alternate terms, and the suffixes trip me up. Even with apressexual it makes little sense to use -sexual because it also involves another attraction anyway* (sexual only follows another sort of attraction), but I guess that is part of the sexual or sexual/romantic centric mentality. All I can say on suffixes though is that -ttracted would definitely not work, at least in the case of apres-.

*Think about how messy long that would get adding varying gender targets for both or more attractions into one sexuality term if that is how people decide to specify their identities.    

 

and 'differentiating types of attraction' is what I meant by SAM, I guess I should change over too to be clear (Goodbye SAM^{wise Gamgee})

 

6 hours ago, Prismatangle said:

As for whether I use/used SAM… Well, yes and no.

...

So, I don’t use SAM at all for one of my orientations, I’ve tried to use it without success for another, and it only sort of works for asexuality now that my attractions have shifted to have a clear absence of sexual attraction. And like you, whatever you want to call this model, it’s not something I use anymore, because it’s no longer useful to me. I eschew naming my attractions, for the most part, but because of the intense scrutiny about them coming from all sides, I end up having to try to explain them a lot more than I would prefer to.

Yes, Yes. Everything you say. I understand it all. And it is precisely why until this topic sat without comment for 6 or so hours while I was on and off brain dead bored at work that I had avoided discussions of SAM. Detailing this stuff is hard. The fact that the vocabulary we have is insufficient or conflicting makes it so much harder still. When/if you manage to work up a post I would be very excited to read it, even if it takes a year or two  

The understanding of 'orientation' seems to be only slightly less messy, so good luck with that too. 

 

 

So maybe we can all agree that the concept of SAM as defined as 'a person may feel many attractions and they may not all be similar' (Using the word 'may' to also include a negative option or possibility of an absence of attraction) is a useful coarse tool for some people, but does not encompass many subtleties for which finer tools, concepts or terms are needed.

Personally I think the most problematic thing abut SAM is the fact people are trying to stretch it to cover those subtleties when ultimately it can only fail or exclude people.

[Apathetic Echidna]

8 hours ago, Coyote said:

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?

drawing....pictures? diagrams are good. ?

?????

Discussion of the circles warrants it's own thread, and some new commenters. 

Though I can just image that this is going to end up on a linkspam as the longest article (that probably even warrants a length warning)

[Mark]

6 hours ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

There have been quite a few people come through these forums expressing (sometimes very upset or stressed) that they don't feel romantic attraction but don't want to be that way, don't want to be 'aromantic'. They need that separation from the rest of the aromantics.

My own feeling is that being aromantic whilst enjoying various romantic coded things is a difficult situation. Thus it would be easier if I were alloromantic (or possibly also asexual). Where do I fit with this 'separation'?

[Apathetic Echidna]

@MarkWell I see the 'separation' I'm specifically talking about here as being caused by the questioning people having ideas (probably mostly fears) about what being aromantic means (probably based on a whole heap of misconceptions about turning into crazy-cat ladies who are forever alone or all their dreams of finding The One^tm and having happily ever after suddenly being smashed). So, we, the aromantics who find partners or enjoy romantic-coded things are sort of invisible because 'being aromantic' has already been rejected by them. And when someone has a gut reaction against a label or is uneasy about a label that should be respected like Oak says here. There are some interesting points over here, even if they are mostly using a sexuality vocabulary. 

 

As for your specific comment about being easier being something else, I don't really understand. Sure, the world would be a simple place if we were all allocishet with no neurodivergency, (but it would also probably be boring.) But if you mean that using the alloromantic label or asexual label would make things less difficult, that would be a personal choice you would have to make, just like if you decided to stop using 'aromantic' because you felt it did not explain your experience (like Ashere or oak in the first link).  

[Coyote]

20 hours ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

So since I moved off AVEN all the discussion about aromanticism sort of hard lines 'aromantic' in relation to attraction and maybe a few other things on an individual basis. Desire, drive and wanting don't come into it in relation to aromantics, all of those other criteria are pushed into different labels like cupioromantic which then take it into account in it's definition [...] as I highly doubt there will be much push to change the current attraction centric definition of aromantic. 

 

I don't have much to contribute on this, but I think it's worth linking this post by James on that topic.

 

20 hours ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

There have been quite a few people come through these forums expressing (sometimes very upset or stressed) that they don't feel romantic attraction but don't want to be that way, don't want to be 'aromantic'. They need that separation from the rest of the aromantics. Those labels may simply be a middle-step as they come to self acceptance or it may be the identity they choose for life, but they are incredibly important for people who want an 'out' from being aromantic

 

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.

 

20 hours ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

I must say I composite, but not sexual orientation as everything defaults to aromantic for me (and I prefer not to name the rest). I find it is only in aro & ace communities that I find myself detailing other things and people assume they are separate, which is fair because generally it comes up when talking about a specific incident or event. I think what chafes is some of the language which reinforces division and there is no alternate terms, and the suffixes trip me up.

 

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. 

 

20 hours ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

drawing....pictures? diagrams are good.

 

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.

 

[Apathetic Echidna]

8 hours ago, Coyote said:

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.

well the only reason people hang around in online communities is when they feel accepted, if they feel it is toxic they will leave. So I just think giving them whatever kind of support they want initially. Don't think I have ever brought up cupioromantic unless it was already in the thread. As I said to Mark, these are the people who see 'aromantic' as a painful idea so they are not initially going to listen to 'but aromantics can do that too' comments. 

8 hours ago, Coyote said:

I think there's beliefs and ideas about worth and regard that need to be addressed there with far more than a label. 

These sorts of things are all over the forums. It is a popular topic in all it's guises.

My mind set on this is basically reassure them in however they want to be reassured, so that they accept that the community is welcoming. Then hope they might find some conversations and experiences of others that can help them, or even start a conversation about their fears. I know there are some people around who had a label before aromantic because they thought to be aromantic was to give up on a dream, which it doesn't have to be. 

I guess the 'giving up on something' is a trope we are fighting as a community, and the labels that define 'aromantic but unhappy about it' are a soft way to handle people's distress. Not to mention all the 'letting go of something I don't actually want anyway' distress in the forums. I'm not going to poke the cupioromantic bear (at least not yet) as some people find it reassuring . 

 

 

8 hours ago, Coyote said:

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. 

Ahh, I was still working from the understanding from the raws, so if you've edited it might be clearer for me. (I did think that the circles section was the most confusing, but with clearer context hopefully I can get a better understanding)

[Coyote]

 

10 hours ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

18 hours ago, Coyote said:

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.

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]

 

[Galactic Turtle]

On 3/15/2019 at 5:19 PM, Coyote said:

What have you seen people using "split attraction model" to mean? What does it mean to you?

 

If their romantic and sexual orientations are not aligned, people typically use it. Or if we're in an aro/ace community where discussing split attraction is more common, people default to listing their romantic and sexual orientations separately. To me it's just a tool.

 

On 3/15/2019 at 5:19 PM, Coyote said:

If somebody says that they use it, what does that mean to you? If somebody says they don't use it, what does that mean to you?

 

If they use it I think it means they recognize that romantic/sexual attraction are separate things. If someone says they don't use it I assume it doesn't matter to them because their attractions are readily recognized and also aligned. 

 

On 3/15/2019 at 5:19 PM, Coyote said:

Do you usually think of "split attraction" correlating with "having more than one orientation," or no?

 

I guess it could?

 

On 3/15/2019 at 5:19 PM, Coyote said:

Does anybody have a source dating it back prior to 2015?

 

I have not looked.

 

On 3/15/2019 at 5:19 PM, Coyote said:

Any other thoughts on the dilemmas raised? Does it fill a lexical gap? Does it have multiple meanings? Is it useful?

 

This is just a quick response so I did not read through all of this. Sorry! 

 

[Apathetic Echidna]

10 hours ago, Coyote said:

I think it's an overall tricky situation, probably with no one-size-fits-all solution.

Definitely. I wouldn't say it is a unanimous community reaction, I just find for answering those initial questioning topics that run less along 'I feel bad about my self' and more like 'I am scared I am this thing I have preconceived notions about' with a 'you don't have to be that thing' is more welcoming/encouraging(?) than debating why they are wrong, when the perception change must come from inside which is best done by hearing others experiences and opinions which never really seem to make their way onto those questioning posts. I guess this is all my reaction to those posts elsewhere where questioning people ask about terms they are interested in and get answers along the lines of 'that's not really a recognised/legit term #toomanylabels' and then the questioning person abandons their account. Some people have a drive to quantify themselves with labels even if they later decide to stop using them. 

(Those other 'I feel bad about my self' topics don't tend to focus on labels like questioning topics do so it is much easier to discuss and reassure using personal contexts, generally they also get much more activity, more different users and more comments)

 

6 hours ago, Galactic Turtle said:

This is just a quick response so I did not read through all of this. Sorry! 

This thread is monster length ? and it goes off topic a few times (with very long posts). Sorry!

[Coyote]

Bumping this old thread again to ask if there's anything anyone can contribute to reconstructing the history on this. To rehash, this is what Belowdesire managed to dig up for me/what we have so far:

 

On 3/19/2019 at 12:29 PM, Coyote said:

• "i got a prollem w ppl splitting a complex sociocultural influenced ting like attraction into only two distinct experiences that ppl present as inherently unrelated all the time." (approx March 25, 2015)
• "stop this hyper-progressive (romance and sexual attraction are completely different so lesbians can still date men!!) shit which just circles riiiiight back to being your run-of-the-mill bigot" (approx April 23, 2015)
• "in the past few days i have alluded to the idea that the split attraction model plays into homophobia and particularly lesbophobia but i have not explained that in depth. i have discussed in the past how 'allosexual' is an alienating term and how it potentially hurts non-ace gay/bi people who are already hypersexualized, particularly sex-repulsed gay/bi people (me!!!). but i dont know where these posts are and my position on this is also not fully developed i think." (approx May 10, 2015) (note: this user says tumblr user medicine "is smart af and has definitely talked about split-attraction model before" -- I believe user medicine is the same person as user pure, up in the first link I've listed here)
• "the split attractions model encourages the maintenance of internalized homophobia" (approx June 24, 2015)
• "Again, the split attractions idea does apply to some people. But the model in which sexual and romantic attractions are intrinsically different is not. That difference does not apply to everyone. Trying to apply it where it does not exist is harmful, and reflects many types of homophobia." (approx June 24, 2015)
• "split attraction model is the idea that every single person experiences romantic/platonic/sexual/aesthetic/sensual attraction entirely separately and identifies every single LGBT+ person using that as a guide " (July 22, 2015)

[Coyote]

Well, this thread didn't get any new posts since I was last here, but an unspecified member(s) of AUREA recently published this post about it. For anyone keeping track: I posted my thoughts about that here (see comment section also). Short version: 1) interpreting "tender" and "affectionate" as equalling "romantic" deserves to be called into question, & 2) as a historical account, this is overly cautious in all the wrong places and not enough in others.

[Mark]

On 8/2/2019 at 7:46 PM, Coyote said:

Well, this thread didn't get any new posts since I was last here, but an unspecified member(s) of AUREA recently published this post about it. For anyone keeping track: I posted my thoughts about that here (see comment section also). Short version: 1) interpreting "tender" and "affectionate" as equalling "romantic" deserves to be called into question,

I think "called into question" is far too mild a way to put it

 

On 8/2/2019 at 7:46 PM, Coyote said:

2) as a historical account, this is overly cautious in all the wrong places and not enough in others.

There's also the anachronistic language. Since.there's no possible way that Ulrichs could use the term "heterosexual" in 1879.

Even if he were making use of a "Split Attraction Model" it would be a different model from that being described. Ditto for Tennov.

[Coyote]

1 hour ago, Mark said:

I think "called into question" is far too mild a way to put it

 

 

1 hour ago, Mark said:

There's also the anachronistic language. Since.there's no possible way that Ulrichs could use the term "heterosexual" in 1879.

 

Admittedly the other reason he wouldn't have said "heterosexual" per se was because he was a German and writing in German. I'm not sure what the exact German words he used were, besides "Uranodioning" etc., which has been translated as "bisexual." 

[Coyote]

Bump/update:

• It's still relatively common for people to use this term without knowing where it came from/what it entails ideologically, so in the interest of helping with that, I'm updating this post with some more condensed notes
• The term "split attraction model"
  • is no older than 2015
  • comes from outside the ace and aro communities
  • comes from the same crowd who thinks "allosexual" is a bad word
  • is linked to anti-ace, anti-aro, and anti-bi ideologies
• For more detailed info, see here and here and here
• If you're looking for alternatives, ask yourself what you're actually trying to get at 
  • For orientation stuff, consider: aro quoisexual, unit aro, aro neu, varioriented, etc.
  • For attraction stuff, consider: attraction subtyping, differentiating types of attraction, etc.
  • For treating attraction as the same thing as orientation, don't