Is the label allosexual is important to you?

[roboticanary]

Ok I will try to give an answer to this.

1.) They don't do a good job as an equivalent to allo. This is because point 2 about neutrality is wrong

2.) No. Because romantic and sexual are fairly common words in English they carry a lot of connotations that allo doesn't.  So they end up being less neutral.

Romantic, to me at least, carries a particular quality. I sometimes use it out of habit but there are people who I know who are alloromantic but because of attitude/class/background I would not describe them as romantic. Or they would not describe themselves as romantic despite them feeling romantic attraction. This would be a pain in the arse if I had to use the term to replace alloromantic.

Same with sexual. It carries in my head an idea of how that person acts now. There are people I know who are allosexual as a definition but, for example,  describing my granny as allosexual is very different from saying my granny is sexual.

Having allosexual allows a specific word defined by aspecs. No outside cultural meanings to confuse me or anyone I am talking to.

3.) No. And if the problem was that allosexual was being used as an orientation term at the expense of other orientations then how in the name of all that Is good and holy does saying sexual instead solve the problem.

[mewix]

Honestly I don't think a bit of healthy debate is bad at all. I feel like I said already much bout this but here

1) My opinion is having them interchangeable could be good for people who want to use it or if people are confused by the term. But I think they do give a slightly different meaning feel so they are not quite equivalents either. I don't think people should be barred from using it if they like that term tho.

 

2) Nothing is ever totally neutral I think. Both have their own connotations but I guess it's morw which one is closer to neutral. I guess the problem is some people see the words themselves having an existing connotation. 

3) nah not really 

 

 

[Guest Just a Comment]

Around where I live, we have a phrase "bless your heart." While superficially that's a neutral/positive statement, the subtext of it is Christian-centric and implies fundamental religious disagreement, often with a side helping of "I'll pray for your soul."

"Sexual," in spite of claims to neutrality, usually ends up with a subtext of amato/hetronormativity (often with a side helping of performative bi/pansexuality, for those of us who lean that way.) A culturally acceptable sexual lifestyle must be a life goal for adults, and lacking a sexual lifestyle is a Very Big Tragedy(TM) that must be fixed with major life changes. Partners have used that term to gaslight me about my own very vanilla and monogamish preferences. Therapists have assumed that my desire for cultural and religious connection with other LGBTQ people involves cruising for sex. I drive down the street, and billboards try to sell me hormone treatments that medicalize my choices not to have sex, and "romance" toys that imply that it's a relationship problem as well. (Outside of aro discussions, "romance" is a euphemism for culturally acceptable sex. My city doesn't have sex toy shops. It has "romance and novelty stores.")

AVEN in particular seems to have a huge issues with amato/heteronormativity when it comes to allosexual people. We are frequently told that we can't be Happy(TM) while practicing celibacy, sexual sobriety, trauma recovery, mixed-orientation relationships, or prioritizing other needs while climbing Maslow's pyramid. But, on to the questions....

1. I have a lot of issues with the ideas of "romantic orientation" and "romantic attraction." (quoi/wtf if you must use those labels for me) I experience them as arbitrary, socially constructed, and inaccessible to me as a sexually queer and genderqueer person. Outside of aro-friendly circles, do you mean the family of languages, the artistic movement, the literary and cinematic genres, or the normative system of ideal gender/relationship/sex roles of modern American culture? "Romantic" strikes me as  even worse than "sexual" in terms of being loaded with too much political baggage.

2. I don't think "sexual" and "romantic" are neutral at all in common use. Both carry a ton of cisheterocentric baggage, and calling my partner and I "romantic" triggers extremely strong gender dysphoria.

3. Well, to pull out the radical queer theory. My view on "orientation terms" closely matches Les Feinberg's ideas about the fluidity of pronouns. "Allosexual" is useful for talking about the distinctions between asexuality and celibacy, or how my ace partner and I have similar but different experiences with compulsory sexuality. "Bisexual" is most frequently useful, but I'll also identify as queer, bi, pan, omni, bi4bi, t4t, a fairy, and even gay. I pick the "orientation term(s)" that I feel will be most effective for a given audience and context. 

4. I'm personally deplatforming AVEN over the issues I described above. Please don't directly quote me, and I'm feeling hesitant enough about this post given a long history of ace and ace-adjacent people going weirdly aggro over my choices not to have sex.

(bi, trans, and quoiromantic for identity disclosure purposes.)

[PyonPyon]

Self ID: alloromantic asexual
Hope my contribution to the discussion as an alloromantic person - if I'm out of line, feel free to delete my comment or ask me to modify it.

On 9/21/2021 at 9:15 PM, nonmerci said:

Here we go again...

[...]

The thing is : the fact why AVEN dislike the terminology the ace community invented, while the aro community use it and no one cares... that confuses me a lot, so I want to see what people think about this topic. (I mean, I do have an idea about why, but I won't say it here because it would start another debate, let's focus)

This made me SO angry lol
Before reading your thread I had no idea they were having debates like those on AVEN ._.
Others have answered before about why "sexual" is not a good substitute for "allosexual" nor is "romantic" a good substitute for "alloromantic". I refer to @roboticanary's comment, for example: the prefix "allo-" allowed use to create specific, unmistakable words (which romantic and sexual aren't) to designate our corresponding outgroups.
I'm not aromantic, so I'm not going to talk about what "allosexual" can mean and how it can be important for aromantic people as a word - that would make no sense.
But I wanted to point out that "allosexual" as a word is hella important for the asexual community, too. It literally designates our outgroup, the other end of a specific axis of oppression we face (as aspecs in general, because of allonormativity, aphobia, amatonormativity, and specifically as asexuals - as it is for "aros" and "alloromantic", I presume).
Yeah, I hear the "you lump gays/lesbians/bisexuals together with heteros, so 'allosexual' is HOMOPHOBIC!!!" discourse a lot - from aphobes, tho. Not on f*cking AVEN?!

Idk if this can be useful for the conversation (I understand they're talking about "alloromantic" and "romantic" too), but I'll also add my perspective as a user of the word "alloromantic". 
No, I don't use "alloromantic" to indicate my orientation. As I said, it's an outgroup label. I refer to myself as asexual and bi. When I use "alloromantic" for myself, I do it inside the aspec community or in the framework of aspec events/content/awareness, to indicate clearly I can't and won't speak for aros, because that would be speaking over them. Or I use it to specify my "position" inside the a-spectrum, what my specific experience as an aspec is, or to underline other specific experiences inside the a-spectrum, expecially when they are under-represented (e.g. "alloaros") - I don't consider the use I make of the "allo-" prefix inside the a-spectrum as an outgroup-designating label, it's a modifier needed to identify different aspec identities, different aspec experiences; I wouldn't consider "alloaros" my outgroup. (I know this might be felt differently across countries).

I don't have an AVEN account and I never joined AVEN.
As far as I've seen, I fear people on AVEN forums (I'm not referring to the AVEN board, I mean literal people in the forums) think they're extremely relevant and important for the asexual community and that AVEN is the place to discuss and decide things like that.
The thing is... I'm not saying AVEN isn't important! It was and it is and it will be for a long time, I'm sure. But although some people still think it's, like, the center of the asexual universe (expecially anglophones *cough cough*)... it's not. It's not... anymore?
If all the active users on the AVEN forum decided that starting tomorrow "allosexual" shouldn't be used... 60% of the asexual community around the world wouldn't even know. Another 30% would know, would shrug and go on.

(EDIT: I re-read this comment and realized maybe it's too angry? ahah I'm sorry I probably missed the point entirely and got angr at AVENites instead)

Edited September 22, 2021 by PyonPyon

[mewix]

10 hours ago, Guest Just a Comment said:

AVEN in particular seems to have a huge issues with amato/heteronormativity when it comes to allosexual people. We are frequently told that we can't be Happy(TM) while practicing celibacy, sexual sobriety, trauma recovery, mixed-orientation relationships, or prioritizing other needs while climbing Maslow's pyramid. But, on to the questions....

I haven't read anything like that directly.

But I do get that kind of vibe about how allosexuals have to have sex to be fufilled thing.

I mean I did read some people saying stuff about that on the forum but it came from the "sexuals" themselves, saying they need sex etc. Otherwise it doesn't work. 

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by mewix

[nonmerci]

8 hours ago, PyonPyon said:

Hope my contribution to the discussion as an alloromantic person - if I'm out of line, feel free to delete my comment or ask me to modify it.

Don't worry, I'm very happy to have an alloromantic's perspective. I didn't thought there were a lot here so I didn't ask specifically, my bad.

(I should have asked on AVEN for alloromantic I guess, but I'm sure it will start a fight there so I need time to prepare myself lol)

 

Anyway thanks everybody for sharing your thoughts, that's very insteresting.

 

[Guest Guest from AVEN]

I feel like this thread demonstrates why we need the word alloromantic:  https://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/218719-romantic-but-also-aromantic/

If it's possible to be a "romantic aromantic" as stated in the thread, then obviously we need another word for when we're talking about someone with romantic attraction. If you say someone is "a romantic" or "a romantic person" anywhere outside of the aco/ace community, people are going to think you mean something else entirely.

Also, with regards to the "allosexuals need sex to be fulfilled" thing... I'm guessing that's due to their focus on defining asexuality so much in terms of "intrinsic desire." 

[Storm_leopardcat]

This is interesting, I’ll comment later.