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Nearly 30% of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ, national survey finds
(www.nbcnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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From a spectrum point of view, I suspect that something like 100% might be Q, as in everyone having their own combination of places on multiple orthogonal axes of attraction and identity... and that "pure" sexualities are just in denial of some part of themselves.
Paradoxically, it would mean that lacking a full description of someone's attraction and identity pattern, the closest "sexually" useful description in the sense of matchmaking, would be either that of their genitals, or none at all, with there being better matchmaking predictors that are not sexual.
The rest of labels, would be more of an approximation of one's tolerance and openness, rather than actual descriptions.
I think we can see some of that in the proliferation of orientation and identity "pride flags", which seem to have exploded in number, and represent more of a partial personal pattern rather than that of an actual group. It's still a nice thing to see people freely display their assumed identities, but in the long run I'd expect some systematization and have them classified according to the set of positions on which axes each one represents.
Maybe in some future version of Unicode, there could be a similar encoding to the one used for country flags, which are made of country code letter markers, or the ones for groups of people like 👩👩👧👦 or 👨🏿🤝👨🏼, but for sexual pride flags.
I really don’t like the idea that mono sexualities are just in denial. As a lesbian, there might be fictional men that I like but on real life, I just would rather not be with any guy. And it’s not like I ever tried looking at a guy to see if I find something attractive about him. But I just don’t. Kinda funny how only men that don’t exist appear attractive to me xD And compare that to women and enbies, where I just love everything: their hair, their soft face, their chest, makeup, their cuteness (and sometimes their hotness xD), the way they talk, the things they are most passionate about, and all the NSFW stuff too :D
I understand the experience is not universal, it’s perfectly fine if attraction works for you some other way. But when I analyze my attraction it works two way. First, just the sheer association with women and enbies. I don’t have genital preference, I like women with either equipment, but I would never date (or even be attracted to) a trans man, even if they’re pre-everything. Just the mere fact of knowing they’re a man simply turns me off. And the same applies viceversa: if I learn that someone I know is actually a woman, even if they’re presenting male, no hormones, etc. it’s like my mind opens up the possibility to being attracted to them (even if to a lesser extent). Which brings me to my second point, hormones.
I’ve heard this one from gay men too so I think I’m not alone in this one. When someone is taking E (or T in their case), it’s like everything changes regarding their physiology. Smell, skin, hair texture, shape, to name a few. And smell is a big one to me: manly smell might as well be repellent to me xD, but I know of people attracted to men that it is the entire opposite. And that’s ok! Physiological changes is not something that can’t be ignored for attraction either, after all we really don’t control what makes us tick, our brain is wired to determine what attracts us. I don’t make a conscious decision to find womanly smell attractive, my brain just responds to it positively.
To clarify, I think most people could be bi/pan, I don’t disagree with that. But I disagree that everyone is bi. Or else, how do you explain that throughout history, gay and lesbian people, rather than going the “easy” route and date the opposite gender, dared to date the same gender despite persecution and potentially death? You would probably say something about how they could’ve been bi but they had a very marked preference, but to that I say, isn’t that gay enough?
I see this from another point of view: I think that trying to define a "pure" sexuality, is falling into a No True Scotsman fallacy.
You have described some of your attraction pattern on several axes, and called that "lesbian". Fine, nobody has the right to tell you otherwise. What I don't see as clearly, is that it describes a "mono sexuality" or "pure lesbian".
Sounds to me like you're defining "lesbian" as "doesn't get attracted to males, unless they don't look, smell, or identify as males"... but that still leaves a whole lot of possibilities, while at the same time others might define "lesbian" in some other terms, including whether both people need to meet the same criteria, and that would be their definition of "mono sexuality".
The point you raise about history, is where I think the labels, as we have them, make more sense: as a transitory means to fight for the rights of people who were otherwise oppressed. It's a high call to have a heteropatriarhy suddenly become tolerant of all possible sexualities, so fighting for chunks at a time makes more sense. We still shouldn't lose sight of the end goal, which should be letting everyone be themselves, in all their complexity.
Another interesting thing about history, is that throughout different periods of oppression, there always used to be "roommates" and "travel companions", who used to share the same bed, behind closed doors. Nowadays some of the most oppressive cultures, still have a similar "out of sight, out of mind" approach. So the fight is more for the right to public expression and social acceptance, which of course benefits from labels, flags, and all the bells and whistles.
Dunno, maybe I'm raising the point too soon, maybe there needs to be another half a century of fighting chunk by chunk, adding more letters and symbols to the LGBTQQIP2SA+ initialism... but I sure wish we could do away with it already, and simply call it "sexuality".
Sure, words can have subjective meaning that can change from person to person and even over time. So two people perhaps don’t completely agree what it means to be a lesbian. But the general idea usually is something that can be agreed upon. But what is the point of arguing against monosexuality in the first place? Because to me it sure sounds a lot like the “you haven’t found the right man” argument. Even if I was attracted to men and was in some kind of denial, like you implied in your first post, it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to date men, simple as that.
Also I don’t think you argued concretely towards my historic argument? To me it makes it sound like you’re implying women willingly chose to be exclusively lesbians and men, exclusively gay, to fight for wlw and mlm rights. Which i can imagine some did, but certainly not everyone.
Part of my point, is that there are individuals who self-label in ways that can't be agreed upon by all (see: TERFs). The point of arguing against "monosexuality", is to get people to define their positions on multiple axes, which more people could agree upon (with the definition, not necessarily with the positioning).
No, that would imply a single male/female axis, while my argument is there are more axes to take into account. If you were in some kind of denial, it would be about the existence of other axes, that are as, or even more, important than the male/female one. But then you went on to define yourself on several other axes... so what are we even talking about here?
Chose to label themselves only as, independently of what they thought themselves to be. Fewer labels are easier to fight for, than more labels, which is where I see it useful to have a few "umbrella" labels. Like, right now, I think a good umbrella label would be "Queer", even if I'd rather wish no label was necessary anymore.
PS: Hm... is "denial" a trigger word here? Not sure what other word I could use to express my point, but I'll stop if that's the case.
Are the axis you are referring to romantic, platonic, sexual, etc. attraction? Because I have no problem with those, but in that case I identify as a romantic and sexual lesbian.
And yes I would say denial is a very strong word. It implies you know better about how a person feels than themselves.
I hear you, my apologies. I didn't want to imply that I know better.
The idea I'm trying to express is "it's a complex situation with many nuances that a simplistic label doesn't convey". I would like to include that those using a label may not be aware of all those nuances, but wouldn't want to impose any particular interpretation or assumptions. Not sure which word or expression would best convey that... oh well.
The axes I'm referring to, would be... [identity1]×[attraction12]×[identity2]×[attraction23]×[identity3], and the sum of them all would give one's identity... but maybe that doesn't make much sense.
For example, something like: "A part of me sometimes identifies as a female with platonic attraction towards anyone who usually gets physically attracted towards anyone but males", and at the same time "A part of me sometimes doesn't identify as any gender and is sensually attracted towards anyone looking cute, but more if they identify as female and/or smell like food", and at the same time "A part of me identifies slightly as either male or female and is slightly sexually attracted to anyone presenting female", and... so on.
All of that is a mouthful, the number of possible combinations are mind blowing, while there are labels for only the most clear cut ones, plus a few labels for some parts of the rest, then nothing.
I wish more people realized that these things are there, that they are normal, gave them a structured set of names, and accepted that they themselves might fit on some of them even if it isn't in the definition of some more traditional label.
And going back to the beginning, I'd expect most people to fall somewhere other than 0 on more than one of these axes. Just by the sheer amount of possibilities, it seems unlikely that someone would be "strictly this, and nothing else".