Different terminologies between ace and aro community

[Guest Queerdo]

7 hours ago, DeltaV said:

But strictly speaking it changes nothing. It never changes ANYTHING. A claim that has any real content cannot be just about words. It needs to relate concepts – on which we (roughly) all agree on – with each other.

So that’s why I wrote “or so is generally believed”. lgb is commonly understood as referring to sexuality, so an ace lgb person is an oxymoron. I really don’t want to argue about this (reasons above). The point is just: those who push this argument against the term “allosexual” understand the terms that way.

Outside of ace/aro forums, sexuality is commonly understood as involving a whole mess of complex social, legal, religious, cultural, historical, and developmental relationships as well. So I feel very frustrated with the kinds of reductionism being invoked here when lgb people experience sexuality in extremely diverse ways. And in fact, lgb sexuality is defined in multiple different ways depending on which areas of experience are contextually relevant. It's not a contradiction to say that my QPP is both asexual (in terms of attraction) and bisexual (in terms of relationship history and experiences of biphobia.) 

7 hours ago, DeltaV said:

I meant this in a statistical sense.

Statistics are used to test hypotheses against evidence. And in this case, we have abundant evidence that these dimensions are not statistically independent of each other. Similarly you can't just say "there is logical entailment" about concepts that have little validity or reliability outside of perpetual political debates about how to gatekeep on AVEN.

There is a serious problem going on in both ace/aro communities of creating "sciency" definitions of sexuality, declaring them to be objective universal truths about the human experience, while simply rejecting any information that doesn't fit the model.

[DeltaAro]

15 hours ago, Guest Queerdo said:

Outside of ace/aro forums, sexuality is commonly understood as involving a whole mess of complex social, legal, religious, cultural, historical, and developmental relationships as well. So I feel very frustrated with the kinds of reductionism being invoked here when lgb people experience sexuality in extremely diverse ways.

Well that’s ok. But who invokes them here? Not me, for sure.

I still suspect that e. g. “asexual bisexual person” would be regarded as a bit paradoxical by the general public.

16 hours ago, Guest Queerdo said:

It's not a contradiction to say that my QPP is both asexual (in terms of attraction) and bisexual (in terms of relationship history and experiences of biphobia.) 

This really depends on the understanding of these words, the concepts behind them.

Your example opens up another can of worms, though, since you made it about relationships and not persons. And then these terms take on more of a derived or analogous meaning. We now have to deal with two persons and a special mode of how they relate to each other.

16 hours ago, Guest Queerdo said:

Statistics are used to test hypotheses against evidence. And in this case, we have abundant evidence that these dimensions are not statistically independent of each other.

Not convinced. Again like in the example: if you know only know that a person is cis or trans, you virtually cannot infer anything about their other qualities in the list. It would not be better, or only very marginally better, than a pure guess.

16 hours ago, Guest Queerdo said:

Similarly you can't just say "there is logical entailment" about concepts that have little validity or reliability outside of perpetual political debates about how to gatekeep on AVEN.

Why not? The logical entailment simply results from definitions of asexuality or e. g. bisexuality that are based on sexual attraction. While those are not common outside of small circles on AVEN and the like, it’s what those who propagate those arguments against the term “allosexual” use.

16 hours ago, Guest Queerdo said:

There is a serious problem going on in both ace/aro communities of creating "sciency" definitions of sexuality, declaring them to be objective universal truths about the human experience, while simply rejecting any information that doesn't fit the model.

Maybe? As I already said, I don’t think that “truth” can be applied to mere concepts.

[boba]

On 12/23/2021 at 9:08 AM, Holmbo said:

@nonmerci
how would you say the equivalent of "a romantic relationship" in french?
I've taken five years of French but I only know words for food and animals.

 

this is hilarious, and also. me too. same boat, bestie

On 12/23/2021 at 2:21 PM, DeltaV said:

The analogy to “cis” only works partially.

The usual axes of “privilege / oppression” are unrelated from each other. A person’s “state” can be represented by an n-tuple of independent binary values:

• man or woman
• white or person of color
• cis or trans
• straight or lgb,
• able-bodied or disabled
• etc.

So for any combination you can have two people which only differ in one being cis and the other trans; the remaining values are independent from them being cis or trans.

But for “allo or ace” this is not the case. Being lgb means you must be allo, you cannot be ace (or so is generally believed).

And that’s probably what those who push these “arguments” cannot accept: it cannot be right that being lgb confers (even indirectly) a “privilege”.

wait quick q, 

couldn't you be lgb romantically, and still be ace? So, the label alloace would work? 

I'm having a little trouble following what you're saying, and that is probably at least 75% because I might be sick. But, are we saying that people more readily agree with labels if there is a binary / mutually exclusive alternative?

Because if so, I think these "people" (as a constructed audience) might have a very very very difficult time processing the fact that intersectionalities exist

 

[DeltaAro]

6 hours ago, boba said:

couldn't you be lgb romantically, and still be ace? So, the label alloace would work? 

You could (ok, for “bisexual” fully spelt out instead of just “bi” it would be odd imho if it referred to romanticism). But it doesn’t change much.

In the end some people are going to think that they’re lgb because of their sexuality. And therefore that they’re oppressed because of their sexuality. But the term allosexual presumably reverses that and entails the claim that they have privilege because of their sexuality. It’s a paradox for them: how can you be oppressed and privileged for the same thing?

Now I’m not willing to defend this reasoning, I don’t take the whole theory that seriously. So discount it as concern trolling if you must.

I’m just saying it’s a common way of thinking.

7 hours ago, boba said:

I'm having a little trouble following what you're saying, and that is probably at least 75% because I might be sick. But, are we saying that people more readily agree with labels if there is a binary / mutually exclusive alternative?

Those problems occur with labels that are not independent (different from “mutually exclusive”) from each other.

This is not just my speculation, but my observation.

For example even here, we had this discussion about the term allosexual and an user wrote:

Gender, sexuality, and disability are different things. But how can you be oppressed for the exact same thing you're privileged for? Even in the case of cis women or non-cis men, one axis of privilege and oppression is trans status and the other is alignment under patriarchy so it's not the same thing.

As a gray aro, I am stigmatized for my ability to romantically love people of my same gender as well as for how rarely I experience romantic attraction. I'm also targeted for my sexual attraction, which I'm not privileged for. You're invalidating my experiences, posting bigoted propaganda, and being homophobic.

[Guest Queerdo]

On 12/26/2021 at 7:55 AM, DeltaV said:

Not convinced. Again like in the example: if you know only know that a person is cis or trans, you virtually cannot infer anything about their other qualities in the list. It would not be better, or only very marginally better, than a pure guess.

Puts on trans activist hat. That's assuming that you ignore the historical reality that European culture (especially American culture) only started considering gender identity and sexual orientation in the last generation (a shift that was politically spearheaded by LGB marriage and military advocacy.) As a historic fact, you have de Balboa's massacre of two-spirit persons for both cross-dressing AND homosexual behavior, and the fact that almost all anti-LGB slurs also make a statement about gender. The reality that sexual inversion theory was the dominant idea behind sexual orientation and is still a folk belief central to conversion therapy undermines the idea that sexuality and gender identity are independent.

Or you could take a look at the list of trans people killed this year, and note that the predominance of trans women of color can't be statistically explained as the additive effects of sexism, racism, and cissexism. Or you can note how a majority of trans people are also LGB, ethnic class, and educational biases in LGB self-identification, the cross-cultural observation that terms like "gay" and "lesbian" are strongly associated with gender presentation outside of the U.S.. 

If you're going to say that something is statistically independent, I as someone who actually collects and uses those kinds of statistics, am going to ask if you have a  methodology beyond, "because I say so."

On 12/26/2021 at 7:55 AM, DeltaV said:

Your example opens up another can of worms, though, since you made it about relationships and not persons. And then these terms take on more of a derived or analogous meaning. We now have to deal with two persons and a special mode of how they relate to each other.

When I provide an HIV test, part of the (anonymous) statistic tracking includes identifying individual risk in terms of relationship history. Which is why we have terms like MSM, WSW, MSMW, and WSWM. On top of that, we have multiple labels within LGB communities that focus on relationships, and a lot of work criticizing how heterosexuality is a legal and cultural construction beyond just invisible and unmeasurable "attraction." You can't do much of anything about sexuality, including describing it to yourself, absent cultural construction.

Frankly, I'd much rather talk about queer theology, recovery, developmental trauma, art, culture, and literature than attraction, but it's kind of hard to do that with people insisting that attraction is the only thing that matters. And I think that the ace/aro community is shooting themselves in the foot with that reductionism because you really can't talk about amato/heteronormativity without acknowledging that life choices consistent with our identities are politicized.

And we define people by their relationships all the time. A lawyer is a member of the legal profession. An undocumented person lacks key legal relationships with the governments of my jurisdiction. A parent is a person who has biological children or serves as a caregiver for children.

On 12/26/2021 at 7:55 AM, DeltaV said:

Why not? The logical entailment simply results from definitions of asexuality or e. g. bisexuality that are based on sexual attraction. While those are not common outside of small circles on AVEN and the like, it’s what those who propagate those arguments against the term “allosexual” use.

My point is that you can define asexuality as bouba and allosexuality as kiki. But without reference to how people outside of AVEN actually live our lives, that logic provides about the same base of knowledge as Q-Anon's "King of America" and flat-earther cults.

And I'm under no obligation to accept definitions that are dangerously inconsistent with the diversity of experiences I support in my activism.

17 hours ago, DeltaV said:

But the term allosexual presumably reverses that and entails the claim that they have privilege because of their sexuality.

Isn't that failing to treat allosexuality and privilege as independent? ?

Privilege is a magnifying glass, not a sledgehammer.

[nonmerci]

On 12/26/2021 at 1:55 PM, DeltaV said:

Not convinced. Again like in the example: if you know only know that a person is cis or trans, you virtually cannot infer anything about their other qualities in the list. It would not be better, or only very marginally better, than a pure guess.

They may be independant in this sense, but it doesn't mean they can't be interconnected in another sense. If it were not the case, trans women and black women would feel represented by feminist activists, because feminism would be the same for any category of women... which is not the case right now.

 

3 hours ago, Guest Queerdo said:

Frankly, I'd much rather talk about queer theology, recovery, developmental trauma, art, culture, and literature than attraction, but it's kind of hard to do that with people insisting that attraction is the only thing that matters. And I think that the ace/aro community is shooting themselves in the foot with that reductionism because you really can't talk about amato/heteronormativity without acknowledging that life choices consistent with our identities are politicized.

I'm not sure what you mean by that? Attraction is only the tool we used to define the term. But when we talk about amatonormativity, I think we do discuss the cultural aspect, so all the things you listed. Or am I mistaken? 

[Guest Queerdo]

8 hours ago, nonmerci said:

I'm not sure what you mean by that? Attraction is only the tool we used to define the term. But when we talk about amatonormativity, I think we do discuss the cultural aspect, so all the things you listed. Or am I mistaken? 

Well, just in this thread we have the idea that one can't be both bi and ace. Those mixes make perfect sense if you use something like the Klein Grid or are looking at ethnography and self-identification. I don't live 24/7 in a petri dish, I must code-switch my self-description to best communicate with the people in the room.

Read a great manifesto from the mid-90s that stated "Individual existence precedes typology" and "We will freely disregard and destroy language and typology when they fail to reflect our realities." If your constructed language isn't useful to someone, they're not going to adopt your constructed language. Conversely, we're free to adopt constructed language that is useful for us. Unfortunately, AVEN is filled with people who insist they have a true understanding of sexuality and therefore are entitled to police others in terms of using allosexual, the SAM, and using multiple identity labels.

[nonmerci]

Ok, I see more what you mean.

I think it is a matter of people not accepting some words can have more than one definition. Personally, I always said that language adapt to our needs. For instance, the SAM spread so much in the aro and ace communities because there is a need there to differentiate between romantic and sexual attraction, considering all the people from whom it is split. But I get why people outside the community don't want to do that and continue to use bisexual to mean "willing to engage in a relationship with more than one gender", for instance (I'm pretty sure this is not the best definition, but you see what I mean). In this case, bisexual ace would not be an oxymoron, just someone using the definition differently.

[DeltaAro]

On 12/28/2021 at 7:00 AM, Guest Queerdo said:

Or you can note how a majority of trans people are also LGB

The focus was simply on group membership. So this quoted passage would indeed be a counter-example (contrary to your other examples). I agree: LGB and trans “status” are correlated. The problem is: correlated in the wrong direction (since LGB and trans are obviously not considered ”privileged”). So it’s not what we would want for a good “mock argument”!

Anyway, perhaps the bigger issue really is that many people think there’s conceptual entailment ace > not-LBG. Or at least that “lgb ace” is something very obscure.

On 12/28/2021 at 7:00 AM, Guest Queerdo said:

Frankly, I'd much rather talk about queer theology, recovery, developmental trauma, art, culture, and literature than attraction, but it's kind of hard to do that with people insisting that attraction is the only thing that matters. And I think that the ace/aro community is shooting themselves in the foot with that reductionism because you really can't talk about amato/heteronormativity without acknowledging that life choices consistent with our identities are politicized.

Many of those theories have a strong “Cartesian” bent to them: You can be skeptical about everything, but not about what introspection reveals about yourself. The alternative would be introducing elements from behaviorism* – would that be an improvement?

* perhaps the aversion to this can be explained by: it’s regarded as “gatekeeping”. But IDK.

On 12/28/2021 at 7:00 AM, Guest Queerdo said:

My point is that you can define asexuality as bouba and allosexuality as kiki. But without reference to how people outside of AVEN actually live our lives, that logic provides about the same base of knowledge as Q-Anon's "King of America" and flat-earther cults.

And I'm under no obligation to accept definitions that are dangerously inconsistent with the diversity of experiences I support in my activism.

Of course, but from that angle the whole theory becomes kind of … strange. What should be the common ground instead? Who decides what kind of activism is good & necessary and what is harmful & misguided? What “diverse experiences” are representative? (e. g. for what is fundamentally “wrong” about a society?)

So if the whole theory makes any sense at all, it must be from the ”bird’s eye perspective” with some heavy abstractions.

On 12/28/2021 at 7:00 AM, Guest Queerdo said:

And we define people by their relationships all the time. A lawyer is a member of the legal profession. An undocumented person lacks key legal relationships with the governments of my jurisdiction. A parent is a person who has biological children or serves as a caregiver for children.

That’s okay. But we talked about a relationship itself being LGB. I don’t know what that means, precisely. It seems to be a derived or analogous meaning.

On 12/28/2021 at 7:00 AM, Guest Queerdo said:

Isn't that failing to treat allosexuality and privilege as independent? ?

Privilege is a magnifying glass, not a sledgehammer.

It gets a bit tiring to defend positions I do not hold myself. What this was all about is: the analogy or the mock argument ‘allo is just like cis’ does not work. I don’t defend any claims here beside that one.

Those people who are offended by “allo” do not think it is just like “cis”! Because they see a conceptual entailment LGB > allo.

Edited December 30, 2021 by DeltaV

[boba]

On 12/27/2021 at 5:49 AM, DeltaV said:

You could (ok, for “bisexual” fully spelt out instead of just “bi” it would be odd imho if it referred to romanticism). But it doesn’t change much.

In the end some people are going to think that they’re lgb because of their sexuality. And therefore that they’re oppressed because of their sexuality. But the term allosexual presumably reverses that and entails the claim that they have privilege because of their sexuality. It’s a paradox for them: how can you be oppressed and privileged for the same thing?

Now I’m not willing to defend this reasoning, I don’t take the whole theory that seriously. So discount it as concern trolling if you must.

I’m just saying it’s a common way of thinking.

Those problems occur with labels that are not independent (different from “mutually exclusive”) from each other.

This is not just my speculation, but my observation.

For example even here, we had this discussion about the term allosexual and an user wrote:

Gender, sexuality, and disability are different things. But how can you be oppressed for the exact same thing you're privileged for? Even in the case of cis women or non-cis men, one axis of privilege and oppression is trans status and the other is alignment under patriarchy so it's not the same thing.

As a gray aro, I am stigmatized for my ability to romantically love people of my same gender as well as for how rarely I experience romantic attraction. I'm also targeted for my sexual attraction, which I'm not privileged for. You're invalidating my experiences, posting bigoted propaganda, and being homophobic.

gotcha! Thank you for explaining!

[Collie]

I only half read the full discussion since my postings in this thread, but I think you can be oppressed in some ways and privileged in others. ?‍♀️

[roboticanary]

I had a bit of wondering about this. And stumbled on a really old post about the same subject from about 5 years ago. 

 

Which suggests using romantic/sexual rather than allo was something that was asked to non ace people whether they were comfortable with the term.

What that makes me think is that it is less an aven/arocalypse difference but more like this:

Most of the people aven asked were probably neither aro nor ace and were there because of someone else. E.g. romantic partner is ace.

Seems like there is a major difference between what aro-allosexual want to be called and what people who are neither want to be called.