Men's IssuesVICE - "The Straight Men Who Have Sex with Trans Women" (i.e, gay men who lie to themselves)

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[–]strictly 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

"Ant" is insufficient to the entomologist. If, however, my house was being overrun with a specific sort of ant that needed a specific approach to combat? I would then care about kinds of ants. We don't share the same objective, I don't think.

The need for specificity and non-specificity depends on the situation. Let's say I had a job where I had to handle aggressive dogs so I ask an expert for advice. This person thinks “dog” should only refer to the specific dog breed terriers so instead of giving me a general approach for how to calm dogs down he gives me a technique which is super effective on terriers but infuriates other dog breeds. In that case I might end up in dangerous situation as he made the overly specific assumption that dog only means terriers.

Anyway, it seems you think asexual, bisexual, heterosexual and homosexual should only refer to normaphilic attractions. In that case we would want an umbrella terms for each which includes the paraphilic attractions as the joint normophilic/paraphilic attractions to a sex is usually what we want to know with the terms as just counting the normophilic ones only gives half of the picture with other half missing (i.e man who only hooks up women with colored blue hair but does so every day would count as asexual which isn’t what most of us mean with asexual).

You don't have to bite off anything about gender identity to agree that gamete examination isn't a thing.

Gamete examination isn't necessary for the existence of monosexuality. I am not attracted to males (estrogenized or not) and I have never needed to examine how attractive their gametes look under the microscope to know I am not attracted to them.

If you're only into horses, can you be straight if you only like opposite sex horses?

One could make the specification that orientation only refer to attraction to male/female humans if one is squeamish about being classified as having the same orientation as a zoophile. But yes, I would personally classify exclusive zoophiles who are only attracted opposite sex horses as heterosexual in my head. It’s the same way I think a flower and a car differ a lot but still share a color and be blue. I see nothing impeding zoophiles and normopholic people sharing an attraction to targets of a certain sex even if the species of the targets differ.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The need for specificity and non-specificity depends on the situation.

I think for the goal of this subsaidit, more specificity is required than common, lay parlance. Certainly, I see some perfectly understandable ignorance (and I wasn't born knowing this stuff, either!) on common topics. Some of that could be shored up with better labeling. Some variety of specificity for phenomena is required to understanding them, label or not.

Anyway, it seems you think asexual, bisexual, heterosexual and homosexual should only refer to normaphilic attractions.

Yes, but I'm not yet quite asking for a label for everything. As quoted above, my current approach is an exclusionary one, in part because it prevents a proliferation of words. Het, homo, and bi have always had an implicit activity associated with them, and I want to keep that. I would like to make that explicit--it's sex. It's not grocery shopping, it's sex. Ace is not a lack of interest in sex, it's a lack of any motivation for sexuality; ace is the odd one out. I've kept het/homo/bi for my taxonomy because it's a very prevalent phenomena, and useful, established way to call things. However, in cases of atypicalities: If the normophilic attraction is present, then they can be het/homo/bi, in addition to any paraphilias. Empirically the two exist obviously exist in distinct individuals. However, any presense of a paraphilic interest, whether that's 10% or 70% of that person's overall sexuality detracts from sex. Such a person thus wouldn't be considered perfectly het, homo or bi, but some degree thereof. To provide clarity, in the case of only having a paraphilia, het/homo/bi (and ace) do not apply, because those words have an explicit activity tied to them--sex. That's my taxonomy in a nutshell. It's just a model. It does not change the way anybody is.

I think sex is a reasonable locus to hang this off of, it's an appeal to the way our species reproduces. Certainly, same-sex activity isn't procreative, but it's still copulation. I could also hang it off of procreative sex, perhaps more easily, assuming there are no value judgements about individuals on account of that, which I don't think there should be.

But yes, I would personally classify exclusive zoophiles who are only attracted opposite sex horses as heterosexual in my head.

I'm not claiming you're "wrong," I just find it fascinating how we see this topic so very differently. In some sense, you're looking at the sexes of the actors first, where I'm focused on the wrong species angle as being more important. Is that a fair characterization?

[–]strictly 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Some variety of specificity for phenomena is required to understanding them, label or not.

Your desire for specificity here also has the consequence of making other terms less specific as your definition of homosexual/heterosexual would no longer specify monosexuality. In your definition of lesbian we would have no hint at regarding her attraction to men, possibly she not attracted to men, possibly she is attracted to men all the time in a paraphilic way, the word would give us no way of knowing. Women with paraphilic attractions to men are not more relatable to me than the women with normophilic attractions to men. The reason I like homosexual spaces is because it’s nice meeting other people who know what it’s like to be both monosexual and same-sex attracted. I consider the monosexual part of lesbian equally important as the same-sex attracted part. I understand when normophilic bisexual people say they want to be distinguished from paraphilic bisexual people so I’m not against more terminologies if bisexual people would find dividing bisexuality into subgroups useful to them. I don’t consider it my call though as I’m not bisexual. Personally I don’t feel a need to be distinguished from paraphilic lesbians though but I do want lesbians to be distinguished from male-attracted people as these are not lesbians.

ace is the odd one out

I consider ace as being attracted to neither male nor female people as that is what makes the most sense to me in the taxonomy.

In some sense, you're looking at the sexes of the actors first, where I'm focused on the wrong species angle as being more important. Is that a fair characterization?

Yes, I think sexual orientation is about the sexes of the actors but I don’t see the species angle as less important, it’s just not part of jurisdiction of sexual orientation. Had zoophilia been very common we would probably have invented a separate species orientation taxonomy to classify people so people would have both a species orientation and a sex orientation.