The gender and sexuality thread!

[snipertom]

In Australia apparently the problem is that there are very few kids up for adoption (high abortion rate). And the criteria for adoption are much stricter than those for foster care and for IVF and artificial insemination, which i don't really understand.

[bluerose]

May 26, 2013 16:45:45 GMT snipertom said:

Seeing as the latest happenings in the comic have stimulated a fair bit of discussion, I'm somewhat interested in seeing what the spread of sexual orientations is on this board, as there seems to be quite the variety! Anonymous poll that you can only see after voting of course, for obvious reasons, but if you wish to discuss or explain more, you can do so here.

Here is the Kinsey Scale for those who are not aware of it:



PS: play nice people

Demisexual. The closest one to me in that poll is asexual, and that's not exactly true in my case....

[Sivo]

A couple of points here. The way this poll is set up, it basically prefers responses on the extremes. There's functionally 3 responses that cover absolute bisexual leanings: K3 and Pansexuality are functionally the same thing (until we discover sapient sexy aliens of unclassifiable genders). Asexuality might be considered a form of gender-disinterested bisexuality. Then you have varying flavors of preferences around bisexuality to boot. The end results will divide up the moderate responses - this tactic has been used to political advantage by the extremes for quite some time.

This topic was peripherally a part of my blog entry this week. A much more detailed view of my opinions were posted earlier.

[SerenaJo]

Jun 1, 2013 16:07:51 GMT Sivo said:

A couple of points here. The way this poll is set up, it basically prefers responses on the extremes. There's functionally 3 responses that cover absolute bisexual leanings: K3 and Pansexuality are functionally the same thing (until we discover sapient sexy aliens of unclassifiable genders). Asexuality might be considered a form of gender-disinterested bisexuality. Then you have varying flavors of preferences around bisexuality to boot. The end results will divide up the moderate responses - this tactic has been used to political advantage by the extremes for quite some time.

This topic was peripherally a part of my blog entry this week. A much more detailed view of my opinions were posted earlier.

K3 is (approximately) equal attraction to men and women. Pansexuality is attraction with no basis on gender (including to those who feel they are somewhere between male and female or neither) and asexuality is NO sexual attraction (or close to none) which may or may not include romantic attraction to men or women or both. Those all seem pretty different to me, maybe I'm misunderstanding you?

[Deleted]

Dang, man. Look at all of these fancy words. And pansexual is tied for 2nd last with Full-split bi! Craziness. I identify as a male (but I think it'd be fun to be a gal for a while!) and am into just about everybody! Cuddles for everyone!

[Incoherrant]

Jun 1, 2013 16:07:51 GMT Sivo said:

K3 and Pansexuality are functionally the same thing (until we discover sapient sexy aliens of unclassifiable genders)

In addition to labelling "attraction regardless of sex/gender", pansexuality is also kind of handy on the odd case of falling for a transsexual mid-transition. It's not really that I can't classify my girlfriend as one sex, it's just that it doesn't really work accurately (yet). :V
Pan- also covers people who don't identify as strictly male or female better. This could possibly be viewed as making things unnecessarily complicated, but it's a thing that happens and it falls outside of the binary.

[Marnath]

Jun 1, 2013 16:07:51 GMT Sivo said:

Asexuality might be considered a form of gender-disinterested bisexuality.

I read this a couple times and I still have no clue what this is supposed to mean. You appear to be making some comparison between asexuality and bisexuality, which is hilariously wrong although I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you meant something less dumb than that with your comment. Would you perhaps clarify your statement?

[snipertom]

From word of Tom:

gunnerkrigg 26 Sep 10
Q: Have you ever tried wearing a bra?
Tom: Yes

gunnerkrigg 26 Sep 10
Q: Have we met any gay/lesbian characters so far?
A: Yes

gunnerkrigg 29 Aug 10
Q: You said before that there are gay characters, who did you refer to? Are there more than Zimmy and Gamma?
A: Yes

gunnerkrigg 31 Jul 10
Q: Do you refuse to reveal the LGBT characters because you don't want people to say "Tom is a perv cos *insert character name here* is gay with *insert other character name here* and they're lesbians" or cos it's not relevent? (we don't think you're a perv)
A: yup pretty much

gunnerkrigg 30 Jul 10
Q: Which character(s) is/are LGBT?
A: How am I supposed to weasel out of answering this question? It's very to the point. Well done.

gunnerkrigg 2 Jul 10
Q: why don't you just tell us if Zimmy and Gamma are together romantically or not? because then we'd all stop bugging you about it.
A: I thought I've said plenty of times that they are. But also it's not that simple.

gunnerkrigg 26 Jun 10
Q: Do Gamma and Zimmy love each other unconditionally?
A: Unfortunately, yes.

[snipertom]

Re asexuality vs non-sexual bisexuality...

My take on it is kind of analogous to colours and saturation.

Suppose that amount of romantosexual attraction is the same as saturation (colour richness, where 0% is a shade of grey and 100% is a very bright colour like firetruck red or royal blue)
Then suppose that the Kinsey scale is the same as hue (colour, where K0 might be red and K6 might be blue)

If someone is totally asexual and aromantic then they're a friendly colourless grey, while a horny heterosexual would be firetruck red, a horny bisexual would be bright purple (?gay purple) and a horny homosexual would be royal blue.

I guess if you pretended that asexuality with romantic feelings was, say, 50% romantosexual (yes I know it's more complex than that but bear with me), then a heteroromantic asexual would be a muted red, a biromantic asexual would be a muted purple and a homoromantic asexual would be a muted blue.

Purple and grey and muted rainbow colours are not the same as each other

[impish]

Heh, this reminds me of a thread on AVEN, with respect to VERY IN-DEPTH categorization and such (for those who like that sort of thing; those who don't are highly recommended to ignore the rest of this post as it'll probably annoy you )

The thread is here; it got refined even a bit more for people whom there's a distinction between sexual attraction and sexual desire. And there is a neat auto-chart-generator here, which even contains little blurbs explaining what each axis is, so you don't have to dig through the thread to get a sense of what each label means (whether you'll consider them things for which a distinction even exist, that's a different question ;P but suffice it to say that for some people they do)

Probably best to ignore the green line, it's there mostly for people who're ace but kinky or people who would never want to have sex with a person but like toys.

It has the added advantage of being able to include nonbinary folks or even get really specific with categories, since you could just draw on lines of extra colors and define what they mean, rather than something like the Kinsey scale where it's hard to alter (wrt the Kinsey scale, I'm like a K5 when it comes to sexual attraction/desire, and a K6 when it comes to romance - but my partner is genderqueer and not really covered by the scale at all )

Here's my radar chart via the autogenerator for an example, obviously I'm far from asexual and don't really need most of these distinctions, but those who are/do might like looking into it:



so there's that! (If you want a blank radar chart to draw on in mspaint, since the autogenerator can get kind of unclear when lines overlap, here's a blank version)

[legion]

With this chart, it would be nice to run statistical studies on many results to see if different axis corelate with each others or if they are really all independent.

Edit: oh also the generator works based on self-assesment? A quizz would be better, otherwise it's too easy to bias the results to conform to the image one has of themself.

Edit edit: also because as it is I have no idea how to fill this generator because I have no idea how the things described actually translate in terms of my personal feelings.

[impish]

Jun 2, 2013 16:57:07 GMT legion said:

With this chart, it would be nice to run statistical studies on many results to see if different axis corelate with each others or if they are really all independent.

Edit: oh also the generator works based on self-assesment? A quizz would be better, otherwise it's too easy to bias the results to conform to the image one has of themself.

Edit edit: also because as it is I have no idea how to fill this generator because I have no idea how the things described actually translate in terms of my personal feelings.

Welllll I mean it depends how independent you mean. Gender and gender-you're-interested-in are really really strongly correlated too, but we don't just declare that all men are interested in women and vice-versa (with alpha of 10 percent!) so we don't need any words beyond gender labels themselves

And yeah, the unsure-what-feelings-they-actually-mean is a definite downside.

Fwiw in how i interpreted it - not that I'm a very good source, since I'm not ace or aro or gray or demi - it looks like for all three of the primary/secondary splits, they're mostly included for demi- folks. So primary is more, off-the-bat crushes/what-have-you, wanting these things in and of themselves for your own sake; secondary could mean things that certainly aren't there at all at first, but can develop over time with people you're very close to (as in, having a crush at all), and wrt the sexual ones, can also mean not wanting sex in itself, but strongly enjoying it for pleasing your partner.

And I think the desire/attraction split is for libido/wanting sex/sex drive in and of itself (desire) but not necessarily with another person involved at all, whereas attraction is... hrm I guess I'm even worse at words re: that. Being drawn to people...?

Yeah, definitely not very helpful in terms of what feelings those match up to ><

[Sivo]

Snipergirl did me favor of perfectly explaining why I consider asexuality the lowest volume of the gender-disinterested amplitude, with bisexual at volume 10 and pansexual at volume 11.

I tend to identify myself as gender-disinterested for strictly ideological reasons. Simply put, I cannot refuse a person affection based on gender any more than I would if they had a specific color of hair - because like hair color, gender is not something we choose. My previous post with my blog can clarify the details of this if need be.

[jasmijn]

Jun 3, 2013 19:59:56 GMT Sivo said:

I tend to identify myself as gender-disinterested for strictly ideological reasons. Simply put, I cannot refuse a person affection based on gender any more than I would if they had a specific color of hair - because like hair color, gender is not something we choose. My previous post with my blog can clarify the details of this if need be.

Except you don't choose your orientation either. I won't refuse a man affection because he's a man, but I'm never attracted to men. I'm not sure what you mean about "refusing affection", but I assume you refer to romantic relationships and kissing and what have you. In that case, I won't refuse a man affection because he's a man, but I won't kiss him just in the interest of fairness, because it's not like I want to kiss all women. The people who I want to kiss are a subset of of the people to who I'm attracted, and the people to who I'm attracted are a subset of women (as far as I know). (I would have no problem with kissing someone I'm not attracted to, including men, if it is for a play or something, but that is an entirely different situation.)

(I hope this all makes sense and is not too ranty.)

[Sivo]

Except you don't choose your orientation either.

I did, however. Originally, I considered myself heterosexual. Then I started to expand from that narrower ideology as I realized that treating people differently based off gender seemed unethical and selfish of me. I suspect a lot of the reasons why we discriminate between genders is caused by our culture's excessive gender-role programming that tends to make men more dumpy and less colorful than women. (I attribute the popularity of MLP to highlighting this particular dichotomy.)

I guess what I'm basically saying is we fall in love with a person, and not a gender - people are people first. And if we isolate to a subset of genders, we invalidate that. I'm a Bonoboist which believes that sexual contact is vital to community, and that many of our violent natures are rooted in the abandonment of this form of contact. Of course, not everyone (few, really) see it that way. Most of us just follow our urges without thinking about them too deeply, and sex is often the least contemplated one.

[SerenaJo]

Jun 7, 2013 13:52:15 GMT Sivo said:

Except you don't choose your orientation either.

I did, however. Originally, I considered myself heterosexual. Then I started to drift from that ideologically as I realized that treating people differently based off gender seemed unethical and selfish of me. I suspect a lot of the reasons why we discriminate between genders is caused by our culture's excessive gender-role programming that tends to make men more dumpy and less colorful than women. I attribute the popularity of MLP to highlighting this particular dichotomy. People are people first.

That said, I do sympathize. I don't expect everyone to see things my way. Most of us just follow our urges without thinking about them too deeply, and sex is often the least contemplated one.

The problem is this implies that someone who is unable to feel the same way is less ethical or selfish. The ability to love/be attracted to everyone is not always there like it was for you.

[legion]

The bonobos having sex instead of war thing is a myth/misconception, in that this is mostly observed in *captive* commnities of bonobos, in zoos. In nature, bonobos can be just as violent and vicious as chimpanzees.

[spritznar]

sivo,

i think about it like handedness. some people are right handed, some are left handed, some are ambidextrous (or a fair number of people are mixed handed). sure, you can retrain yourself to be differently handed than your natural inclination, but is it really necessary? is being right handed or ambidextrous better? and if so, is it enough to mandate the effort to retrain people who are extremely right or left handed? are they then lazy for not learning to be ambidextrous?

i'll admit, being ambidextrous allows more choices and opportunities than being right or left handed, but if people don't want those choices or opportunities then why force the issue?


or for an alternate example, are there any kinds of food you really like/dislike? i really dislike most seafood. i could probably learn to like seafood if i had to, but there's plenty of nonseafoods for me to choose from. should i be culturing a love of seafood? (i'm sure some seafood enthusiasts think i should be, but i probably won't)

most people have preferences, i don't think there's anything wrong with that.


tl;dr - why not go with your natural inclination if it's not hurting anyone?

[Covalent]

There's something I've been wondering. Why is it that we never heard about transgender people in, say, the 1940s or 1950s? It seems that the identity has surfaced in the past decade or two.

SPOILER: Click to show

I am NOT transphobic; this is a serious question, and I'm just curious to know what people's thoughts on it are.

[Señor Goose]

Mar 5, 2014 5:04:43 GMT Covalent said:

There's something I've been wondering. Why is it that we never heard about transgender people in, say, the 1940s or 1950s? It seems that the identity has surfaced in the past decade or two.

SPOILER: Click to show

I am NOT transphobic; this is a serious question, and I'm just curious to know what people's thoughts on it are.

Covalent, do you live in America?

[kafine]

I am a cis woman and I don't really know how to pidgeonhole myself in terms of orientation. I also don't really like doing it. Coming to terms with not being heterosexual for me involved saying to myself "I don't HAVE to fit into anybody else's box".

On this paticular sale you'd probably call me a 3, in that both sexes attract me so that is what I answered... but as someone above said, this is a limited scale that only deals with one factor in attraction. I don't tend to ID as bisexual because I am not really "sexual". I like the way people look, get crushes, but I have to build a relationship with someone before it actually becomes that touchy-feely kind of lust.

Given that this can and does happen and my relationship with my fiance is fairly "normal" in this department, I also don't comfortably use the label "asexual".

It's more that my sexuality just isn't that important to me, until situations when I need it come up!

[GK Sierra]

Mar 5, 2014 5:04:43 GMT Covalent said:

There's something I've been wondering. Why is it that we never heard about transgender people in, say, the 1940s or 1950s? It seems that the identity has surfaced in the past decade or two.

SPOILER: Click to show

I am NOT transphobic; this is a serious question, and I'm just curious to know what people's thoughts on it are.

Because people in the '50s had a hard enough time comprehending the fact that gay people existed without their heads exploding, let alone people who wanted to be other genders. There are reports of such things in many different cultures from various times in history, so it is not unreasonable to assume it is just a thing inherent to the human condition.

To be honest, I don't know how to feel about the sudden upsurge in new ways to "identify" yourself, such as "gender-fluid", a lot of the language is just bewildering to me, but since it doesn't affect me directly it's none of my business and I am resolved to not pass judgement on anyone based on it.

[imaginaryfriend]

Mar 5, 2014 5:04:43 GMT Covalent said:

There's something I've been wondering. Why is it that we never heard about transgender people in, say, the 1940s or 1950s? It seems that the identity has surfaced in the past decade or two.

SPOILER: Click to show

I am NOT transphobic; this is a serious question, and I'm just curious to know what people's thoughts on it are.

My answer would be that society got kinda "militarized" in the 1940s along with the war effort and as sorta a reaction to "polite society" coming apart during prohibition where races and classes started mingling. Conformity was a virtue. Before that decent women really didn't go to watering holes and polite society was regularly shocked by occasional outings of prominent figures, while the commoners were uptight prudes and rubes (though others in some areas pretty much buggered whoever they pleased). Yeah that's an incredible oversimplification but it's a big country...

[Daedalus]

Mar 5, 2014 5:04:43 GMT Covalent said:

There's something I've been wondering. Why is it that we never heard about transgender people in, say, the 1940s or 1950s? It seems that the identity has surfaced in the past decade or two.

SPOILER: Click to show

I am NOT transphobic; this is a serious question, and I'm just curious to know what people's thoughts on it are.

I think that alternative sexual orientations/lifestyles have simply become more accepted, and so it's something that people are no longer afraid to share. Many people are also willing to go more in depth to define themselves, so the 'normal' couple of orientations are not all of the options any more. All of which are very good things.

[warrl]

Mar 5, 2014 5:04:43 GMT Covalent said:

There's something I've been wondering. Why is it that we never heard about transgender people in, say, the 1940s or 1950s? It seems that the identity has surfaced in the past decade or two.

SPOILER: Click to show

I am NOT transphobic; this is a serious question, and I'm just curious to know what people's thoughts on it are.

I think "surfaced" is an excellent word. And the reason the identity has surfaced is because US (can't really comment on other areas) society is far less likely to drown - metaphorically or literally - anyone who dares show such tendencies.

It also doesn't hurt that transgender surgery is now widely known to be possible.

[GK Sierra]

Mar 5, 2014 12:22:42 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Mar 5, 2014 5:04:43 GMT Covalent said:

There's something I've been wondering. Why is it that we never heard about transgender people in, say, the 1940s or 1950s? It seems that the identity has surfaced in the past decade or two.

SPOILER: Click to show

I am NOT transphobic; this is a serious question, and I'm just curious to know what people's thoughts on it are.

My answer would be that society got kinda "militarized" in the 1940s along with the war effort and as sorta a reaction to "polite society" coming apart during prohibition where races and classes started mingling. Conformity was a virtue. Before that decent women really didn't go to watering holes and polite society was regularly shocked by occasional outings of prominent figures, while the commoners were uptight prudes and rubes (though others in some areas pretty much buggered whoever they pleased). Yeah that's an incredible oversimplification but it's a big country...

Oh yeah, this too. Red Scare was in full swing and gay people were obviously communists by default so...

It got particularly bad in post-war Britain, and culminated in the ruining of Alan Turing, who was a hero of the code-breaking effort and one of the most brilliant minds of the era in the field of computers.

There is still some speculation (and not entirely unfounded) that he was killed by the appropriate MI agency as gay people were considered to run a high risk of being blackmailed, and what he knew was vitally important to the Cold War which had already begun.

[snipertom]

The answer is that there's a long history among most cultures of one or more of the following:

• people essentially living as their gender which is the opposite of their biological sex secretly ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_transgenderism_in_the_United_States has some examples)
• people living in an accepted role openly as a 'third gender' that is sort of like a modified version of their gender, the opposite of their biological sex (eg en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fa'afafine or Hijra eunuchs in India)
• people living in an accepted role openly as their gender, the opposite of their biological sex

Plus then we have eunuchs who didn't chose to be eunuchs , who are different again.


Regarding whether the poll can 'accurately' describe someone's full sexual orientation, of course it can't. But that's what the comments are here to discuss. The poll is really just to kickstart a conversation and show to a certain extent the variety in the community, not to be prescriptive about 'kinsey number'. I don't use a label and my attractions vary from time to time. Regarding whether the poll is a good design for a scientifically accurate cross-section of the GKC forum population is kind of... I don't know where to start. It's not meant to be a scientific study but rather to engage people so we can talk about things.

Also, regards what the literature has to say on dimensions of sexuality:

Some of the main independent dimensions found are:

• Biological sex (which itself contains the dimensions of chromosomal, anatomical, hormonal, etc sex)
• Gender performance/diagnosticity (eg masculinity, femininity, camp, butch, androgynous, etc)
• Gender identity (eg male, female, fluid, in-between, agender, third gender, etc)
• Sexual attraction by gender & sex category/ies
• Romantic attraction by gender & sex category/ies
• Friend preference by gender & sex category/ies
• Sexual instrumentality (dominance/submission/flexible/etc)
• Level of emotional expressiveness (in comparison to cultural norms?)
• Paraphilias & other

And interestingly, while males tend to statistically fall on a Kinsey-like 1 dimensional spectrum for sexual attraction by gender and romantic attraction by gender, females tend to be on a 2 dimensional spectrum.
So:



(However I doubt very much that this is the be-all and end-all of how to describe sexual/romantic orientation as it doesn't seem to really take into account libido or level of romantic interest in men)

So for example if you use the above, I would be:

• Female sex
• Feminine
• Gender fluid more female than male
• Sexual attraction: really into females, sometimes into males
• Romantic: almost exclusively into females
• My friends are in gender proportions that reflect the greater community so about 1:1 M:F
• Emotionally quite expressive
• I'm not discussing my sexual instrumentality or paraphilias on an internet forum

Once again, it's not really the be-all and end-all of human sexuality description but it's definitely more descriptive than the terms we usually use. It doesn't, for a random example, easily describe a preference, say for girly men vs manly men, or a preference for trans women or agendered androgynes.

But then who wants to go around saying "I'm an emotionally expressive girly gender fluid biological female who feels slightly more female than male who is really sexually and romantically attracted to females, sometimes sexually attracted to males and has friends of all genders." OH WAIT YES THAT'S RIGHT PEOPLE ON OKCUPID WHO LIKE USING ADJECTIVE SALAD

So I guess you've got the problem there of trying to communicate something complex fairly quickly which is why people try to simplify terms they use, or explain things in more detail when they need to.

[jasmijn]

Mar 5, 2014 16:30:29 GMT snipertom said:

Level of emotional expressiveness (in comparison to cultural norms?

What do you mean by that, exactly?

[Daedalus]

Mar 5, 2014 16:30:29 GMT snipertom said:

I'm not discussing my sexual instrumentality or paraphilias on an Internet forum.

Probably a good idea.

[tortoise]

I don't like the Kinsey scale at all. Tendencies of alternate sexualities are absolutely and perfectly normal and happen to everyone ever. 100% of people will entertain a homo and a hetero fantasy. That's 2 of the 6 categories totally eliminated.

But those who identify as "bisexual" manage to somehow occupy the middle two ends of the spectrum, 3 and 4. We'll just simplify those into 3.5...

AND SUDDENLY WE HAVE 3 SEXUALITIES + ASEXUAL AGAIN. Kinsey has done absolutely bupkis except to slather "bisexual" all over the human race...which accomplishes nothing.

Self-identification is healthier, and if you have to use the term "Kinsey 4" to describe yourself (there's a perfect example of a perfect Kinsey 5 in this thread in snipergirl, who occasionally has a strong sexual attraction towards certain men) then that's perfectly fine. But you should never, ever ask someone to define themselves on the Kinsey scale because other than extremely strong examples, Kinsey says nothing about human sexuality and might as well not exist. Kinsey should be used only as a specific and descriptive label for categories that can't be described as "heterosexual," "homosexual," "bisexual," etc. - as snipergirl said, "too many guys get the wrong idea" when she identifies as bisexual.

(Nobody can get the wrong idea with me ;0)

Addressing pansexuality: Pansexuality as a label was created when somebody misinterpreted bisexuality and got huffy about the perceived exclusion of trans, inter, and agender people. That's not how bisexuality works, but you can still use pan if you really absolutely want it perfectly clear that you will be totally DTF a trans, inter, or agender person. I consider it an intensifier. Pan people get huffy at me when I say that because there's a whole us vs. them mentality involved where they see bisexual people as closed-minded bigots () and don't like when that isn't the case (?? help). It's weird. Don't get involved. Don't ever debate sexuality.

I wouldn't go around talking about this stuff because it really isn't relevant and only draws attention to the fact that people disagree and giving them a place to voice their disagreement. It's an unfortunate fact of internet that minorities are overrepresented and majorities are underrepresented.