I need to get better about xposting things in a timely fashion. Originally from my Tumblr.
I've heard people suggest multiple times that anyone who's not queer is straight, therefore aromantic asexuals (and heteroromantic asexuals) are straight. I always thought that, as a woman, being straight would require me to have at least some minimal interest in men that I didn't have in women, but that's neither here nor there.
I've also encountered a different model that postulates that sexual orientation refers to the gender(s) to which you are attracted, not whether or not you feel sexual attraction to that/those gender(s). Most people have seen one iteration or another of this in the past few weeks, but one example can be found here (NB demisexual erasure-- link goes to privilegedenyingasexuals). What I find particularly significant is the repetition of "gender(s) you are attracted to."
While I know other aromantic aces experience things differently, I don't experience attraction in a gendered way. The forms of attraction of which I am most aware in my everyday life are emotional and aesthetic, in that order, with intellectual attraction popping up occasionally. (I made a post riffing on the types of attraction last week.) I’m emotionally, aesthetically and intellectually attracted to people irrespective of their gender, to people of multiple genders. These are the most significant attractions I experience and they are the ones around which I form my relationships (well, not so much aesthetically on that count). So, according to the second model, where sexual orientation is determined by the "gender(s) you are attracted to," I would be… pansexual?
I do not identify as pansexual for many reasons, most of which are extremely obvious and some of which boil down to "because I'm not pansexual." That is not the point of this post. (I would like to take a moment in passing to note that this model of sexual orientation also erases all asexuals: very few or no people are attracted to no one at all. Therefore, if sexual orientation is defined as the gender(s) to which you are attracted, under this model, no one is asexual; all asexuals have been redefined as heterosexual or homosexual or pansexual or what have you. I'm not sure why there is this urgency about telling asexuals they are really something else, but even this problematicity, the erasure of all aces under this model, is not the point of this post.)
The point is this: aromantic asexuals cannot be both straight and pansexual. It is inaccurate to classify them as either, unless they identify that way, but there is clearly a logical flaw with a system that identifies them as both. Aromantic asexuals who do experience attraction in a gendered way, and experience, say, emotional attraction primarily to members of their same gender, cannot be both straight under the first model and homosexual under the second model. These models cannot logically coexist, and this clash points to a larger number of problems with our various models of sexual orientation.
The problem with the first model is simple: aromantic aces not being queer (by virtue of our sexual and romantic orientations, that is) does not make us straight. It's become pretty apparent that binaries are a bad way to represent basically any form of gender or sexual identity-- you're not male or female, you’re not gay or straight, you’re not a man or a woman. Why, then, should queer or straight be the only options? Aromantic aces are neither queer nor straight (again, by virtue of our sexual and romantic orientations); we experience heterosexism but not homophobia. We’re another category.
The problem with the second model is more complicated, and is shared by other models of sexual orientation. Say there are numerous axes along which one can experience attraction: sexual, romantic, emotional, aesthetic, etc. Any model that defines sexual orientation along more than one axis is going to be unable to cope with people whose attractions along those axes don't match up. The more axes you include in the model, the more people are going to be completely outside of the model. Thus, when you attempt to define sexual orientation as attraction along any and all axes, like in the definition I linked, you end up with things like aromantic asexuals being classified as pansexual, or as homosexual. (This is also related to the problem I mentioned with the first model, which is the need to make asexuals fit in the categories that already exist. There's no need to attempt to classify aces as "really" heterosexual or straight or gay or "really" bisexual, unless we ourselves identify that way.)
Last month I found a pamphlet on non-heterosexual identities. It includes this definition: "Sexual orientation involves whom one is attracted to sexually, emotionally, physically, and/or spiritually." This is a good example of the problems I am talking about of defining sexual orientation along multiple (and rather arbitrary, in this case-- what is spiritual attraction, exactly?) axes. For example: a heterosexual man is attracted to women. Does this mean, going by this definition, that he is never emotionally attracted to other men? Is it even possible to form friendships without emotional attraction? It is possible to be in a sexual relationship without being sexually attracted to your partner, so by analogy, perhaps it's possible to be in an emotional relationship without being emotionally attracted to your partner. I question, though, whether this actually happens very frequently. Is it really accurate to say that heterosexual men are only ever emotionally attracted to women, and no other gender? If it's not accurate, then what happens to this definition when people experience attraction to different genders along different axes of attraction? Another example: assuming that physical attraction approximates something like aesthetic attraction, is it accurate to say that heterosexual women only ever are aesthetically attracted to men? What about an asexual man who is aesthetically and emotionally attracted to men? This definition seems to imply that he's gay, but it's extremely problematic to categorize him as so. Even models that only use two axes of attraction, sexual and romantic, have their own problems. There are people whose sexual and romantic attractions are not oriented towards the same gender(s), for example, someone who is attracted romantically to women and sexually to men.
Other problems of using multiple axes of attraction as determinants of sexual orientation include: how do you pick which axes to use? The definition I quoted from the pamphlet seems somewhat arbitrary in that it includes spiritual attraction, the meaning of which is unclear, but excludes romantic attraction. Not everyone forms their primary non-familial relationships along axes of sexual or romantic attraction; not everyone forms their relationships with the same amount of "input" from each axis. Another problem with these models is that they generally tend to erase demisexuals and grey-asexuals, who may feel that their sexual orientation has less to do with who they experience attraction to and more to do with the circumstances under which they experience attraction. A third problem with this type of model is the issue of whether or not people who orient towards or are attracted to the same gender(s) along potentially different axes have similar enough experiences to be considered the same sexual orientation. A man who is not sexually or romantically attracted to anyone but is emotionally attracted to men will almost certainly not have the same experience as a man who is romantically and sexually attracted to men. A person who is aesthetically attracted to women, men, and other genders will not have the same experience as a person who is sexually attracted to women, men, and other genders. A woman who is romantically attracted to men will not have the same experience as a woman who is sexually attracted to men.
Many of the models that exist of sexual orientation, and ways to characterize one or more sexual orientations and gender identities, conflict with each other. They are also problematic in their own right, break down with regard to certain identities or combinations of identities, and erase people who are demisexual or grey-asexual. They don't work consistently-- hence combinations of models that classify aromantic asexuals as both straight and pansexual, or as both straight and homosexual. This is a separate problem from the trend towards disallowing "none of the above" as an option and attempting to squeeze anyone who doesn't fit into the existing boxes, into those boxes anyway, instead of letting them open up their own boxes. Both ideas are problematic.
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