Sometimes I come across remarks that amount to, “Why does everyone have to split themselves into smaller and smaller groups? This labeling thing is ridiculous. I mean, c’mon, asexuality? Demisexuality? I’m expected to believe in those now too?”
This is a very silly attitude, and it seems to be based on a number of problematic assumptions. First is the assumption that anybody’s sexual orientation needs your approval or validation to be a real thing. Second is the idea that you “believe in” certain sexual orientations simply because it’s expected of you. The third assumption underlying this general attitude is that if you haven’t experienced it or it doesn’t fit your worldview, it must not exist. But underlying all of this seems to be a scarcity model of sexual orientations.
What do I mean by that? It often seems that people are distressed by the recognition of a “new” sexual orientation, as if it calls into question the validity of the “old” sexual orientations. It’s as if they’re operating from the model that there’s only a certain amount of sexual orientation validity to go around, and the more we give away to these “niche” sexual orientations, the less there is for the “real” sexual orientations— or, alternately, the greater the number of sexual orientations that are recognized, the more they dilute the validity of the “real” sexual orientations. But this is obviously ridiculous, since no such scarcity exists. There is no inherent value to trying to make people confine themselves to a set number of (often ill-fitting) boxes. We don’t lose anything by acknowledging that people are different. Imagine if this scarcity model were applied to race and ethnicity: “Why can’t you just call yourself white? Why can’t you just call yourself brown? What does it matter where your ancestors were 500 years ago?” (On a side note, according to Wikipedia, the number of people in the world who claim Irish ancestry is roughly equal to our best guess for the number of asexual people in the world. Fun fact!)
If someone tells me they’re dendrosexual, sexually attracted to trees, I’m most likely going to believe them in the absence of a very good reason not to. Sure, it’s statistically unusual and not something I encounter on a regular basis, but my experience isn’t the be-all and the end-all of the world. Why shouldn’t I believe them? If they’re not distressed, and not engaging in non-consensual activity (I’m operating under the belief that trees, unlike animals, have no consciousness and therefore the idea of consent for trees is meaningless), what does it hurt me to believe what someone tells me about hirself? To put it the other way, what grounds do I have for thinking that I’m really justified in telling them no, you can’t possibly be right, I know better than you about you? What possible objection could I make? “But that’s not a real thing!” There’s no evidence for that, and evidence against it right in front of me in the form of someone claiming to be dendrosexual. “That’s not a real thing” is something people used to say, and still say, about every sexual orientation that isn’t heterosexuality. In every case, they were wrong.
We’re not running out of sexual orientations. Acknowledging the validity of one sexual orientation (which isn’t a prerequisite for it to actually be valid, of course) doesn’t call into question the validity of another. Let’s stop acting like it does.
(originally posted at my Tumblr.)
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