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Excellent post. Was there anything you wanted to start the discussion with, or are we just sort of... starting to talk about whatever points are interesting? The one thing that caught my eye that I'm not familiar with is: quote:Sapiosexual-- people attracted to intelligence more than physical traits Is this generally recognized as a sexuality, per se? All the other ones make sense, but "I like smart people" seems like it doesn't really belong here. I think you could be attracted to intelligence while still being attracted to... only women, or only men, or everyone. I guess another question would be: is there a word for being, for example, "straight and attracted to nonbinary people" or "gay and attracted to nonbinary people" or does that fall under pansexuality despite excluding one or more genders? I suppose you could equally refer to that as bisexuality, despite the fact most people would understand that as being attracted to men and women. Another thing we could discuss: is genderfluid or genderqueer a label that someone has to identify as themselves, or is appropriate to say "X is genderqueer" because their gender expression is far outside societal expectations regardless of how they have identified themselves? For example, Lil Nas X has worn some beautiful dresses, but as far as I've seen, he identifies as a man and uses he/him pronouns.
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Apr 11, 2022 23:22
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I suppose I'd look at labels for sexuality like I would... a dictionary. A dictionary does not tell you what words are supposed to mean, it tells you what they do mean and how they are used. It's a descriptive statement, not a prescriptive statement. I honestly think most people who identify as straight would, if they were attracted to someone of the same sex, not have a problem with pursuing a sexual relationship with them, all other things being equal, in the absence of weird cultural/religious hang-ups. It's just that, to my mind, "straight" describes a lack of those attractions in the first place, not necessarily an unwillingness to act on any attractions that do exist. Say, for example, you encountered a person who said, "yes, if I were in position to start a sexual relationship, I would have sex with any consenting adult to whom I was attracted." Is that person pansexual if they've only ever been attracted to people of one gender? Likewise, if you have one of those weird preachers who says a thing like "homosexuality is a temptation we all have to fight," are they really straight even if they've only ever had relationships with the opposite gender? I knew a guy who identified as straight who said "if I ever meet a guy that really turns me on... yeah I'd gently caress him. It's just never happened." To my way of thinking, that probably describes a lot of straight people, absent social pressures. So, if you identify as straight but you're attracted to someone of the same gender and you both consent... well: have fun!
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Apr 12, 2022 03:09
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Miss Broccoli posted:I'm trans myself and knew my entire life. Mere months before I came out I got probed on these here forums for making a helicopter joke. Entirely out of self hatred and jealousy that non binary people get to do fucken wilddddd things with gender and i couldnt be a boring ol' plain woman. The other interesting thing about that fairly tired joke is: no one takes it to its logical conclusion. When someone identifies as a man or a woman or a non-binary person, that carries with it certain assumptions about how they wish to be treated, sometimes implied and other times made explicit. Just as one way of dealing with racist jokes as someone who is "supposed" to laugh at them is saying "...I don't get it, can you explain?" perhaps we should do the same thing when people identify as a helicopter or whatever. "Okay, how can we accommodate you in living as your authentic helicopter self?" Be entirely supportive; give them what they claim to want.
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Apr 16, 2022 14:43
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Twelve by Pies posted:I was going off what I remember someone who called themselves that explaining what it was a few years ago, so thank you for the correction. I'd agree with you that they're probably not oppressed, but I can't speak for everyone, and whether oppression exists or not if it's a label that makes them more comfortable to apply to themselves and helps other people understand them, I'm all for it. Early 2000s too, Chuck Lorre was a habitual offender in his sitcoms. It was occasionally played off more sympathetically than, say, Ace Ventura, but it was still used as a source of comedy.
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Apr 16, 2022 17:57
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Someone earlier in the thread mentioned that the "attracted to intelligence" part of sapiosexuality is not like, "I like people who have graduated college and read a lot of books" but rather, "I'm exclusively attracted to those who are intelligent/aware enough to be able to consent" which is still a bit insufferable as none of the other labels imply otherwise. I suppose you could argue it leaves things open, theoretically speaking, for sex with a consenting, sapient alien race, sort of like an extension to pansexuality, but -- again -- insufferable. Still, all those options are a bit less insufferable than "I only like smart people, actually" which we certainly don't need a label for, and does not strike me as part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. Speaking of labels, one thing I notice in this thread is we haven't come across the term of two-spirit or two-spirited, which is pretty commonly seen in Canada now as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. It's not really my place to define exactly what that is, but from what I gather it's basically an attempt by the First Nations to reclaim gender identities which existed within their various cultures prior to being suppressed by colonizers. I suppose our closest comparable term is non-binary, but I think it's really interesting because it's an acknowledgement that the issue of gender identity and specifically trans and/or non-binary identities have existed for thousands of years in various cultures, and this is not a new way of looking at the world that we've reached at this specific point in time because we're just so enlightened and great.
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Apr 18, 2022 14:36
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Harold Fjord posted:I've always interpreted sapio stuff as rejecting the societal focus on 'beauty' Yeah, looking at some of the definitions online, I was probably wrong, but in my defense: it seems really ridiculous to call that a sexuality. Kink is not a sexuality, preference for intelligent people or tall people or whatever else, is not a sexuality.
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Apr 18, 2022 14:46
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Also: if you want to be a part of the club, but you don't really fit in properly, there's a great role for you: ally! I totally understand why people want to be part of the LGBTQIA2S+ community, it's full of really accepting and cool people, and that's enticing if you sometimes have a hard time fitting in elsewhere. I just don't think you have to invent a label for yourself to do that. Either that or I've been sapiosexual all along because, yeah, no poo poo I'm attracted to smart people instead of dumbasses. Is that not... normal?
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Apr 19, 2022 00:34
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Harold Fjord posted:Normal people are loving ridiculous, our culture is a mess. I can see what you're going for here, but... I'd take a time out and just consider what you were thinking when you chose to express this thought in this particular way, because... yikes.
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Apr 19, 2022 00:57
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some plague rats posted:Not to be lovely, but can we avoid doing the "wow yikes fam this ain't it chief" twitter thing and just be straight up with each other about what we find objectionable? Well, without the edit, it seemed like they were calling straight people "normal" and LGBTQIA2S+ people, by implication, abnormal, which I think would not be a good thing. The edit cleared it up, I don't think that's what they intended, and I admit I made a poor word choice in that regard myself. When I was talking about being attracted to intelligent people rather than idiots, perhaps the word I should've used was "common" instead of "normal." I can't imagine being seriously attracted to someone I didn't consider smart on some level, and I guess I've sort of operated on the assumption that it works that way for most people. Maybe that's just an erroneous assumption, but I still don't consider it a sexual orientation.
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Apr 19, 2022 03:02
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Jaxyon posted:So this twitter thread has been making the rounds on social media, but it's really fascinating and underscores how gender dysphoria and non-conformity has always been around, but not recognized. Yeah, I think this is an important drum to beat, to make plain that the "increase" in people being trans or non-binary is not driven by some nefarious conspiracy or a society that is too permissive or whatever -- it's a thing that's always, always been around, and if more people are identifying as non-binary or trans, it's because they have the language and/or the opportunity to express their feelings and act on them, whereas maybe in the past they would not have. On the other hand, I don't mean this as a gotcha or anything, but: it hadn't been recognized in Western culture. Various conceptions of non-binary and/or trans identity existed in many societies historically speaking, and even where it wasn't "recognized" there were a few people who chose to transition and lived in accordance with their gender identity even so. And, equally lacking the vocabulary or impetus to harshly criticize being trans, it seems to, arguably, have been less of an issue than it is today. On that subject: and I certainly don't mean to present this as historical fact, or an accurate depiction or even a kind depiction of transness, but I think in contrast to the obvious transphobia in film and TV that was already discussed, the earlier example of The Life of Brian offers an interesting contrast. Now, that was a much darker time for LGBTQ people in general compared to even the 90s, and yet... trans identity was still played off a joke, but not in the mean-spirited way of Ace Ventura or... whatever the gently caress Silence of the Lambs was, and I think that's an interesting contrast. Also relevant is that Graham Chapman, who was the lead in that film, was openly gay and had been for a while, in a time where that was nowhere near as easy as it might be today (though it's still difficult, to be sure).
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Apr 22, 2022 00:36
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OwlFancier posted:What the absolute gently caress is this moderation? Do you seriously think this is helping the thread, the forum, or your image by doing this? Do you have nothing better to do with your time given what you have been told in the feedback thread and given your contemptible performance moderating the last LGBTQIA issues thread, than to find the most spurious reasons to probate everybody contributing to this one? Just so it's not an emptyquote: we've had disagreements and discussion in this thread, and there's room for that. We don't need to allow the most absurd, and contemptible opinions to have valid discussions about issues with people on both sides. We didn't need that in the last thread, we don't need that in this thread.
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Apr 25, 2022 06:20
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If there is a conception of gender separate from sex outside human society, how would we know? Looking for evidence of this outside human society is essentially pointless because we would have no way of knowing what we were looking at even if it did exist. Further, if non-binary identity is just in our collective minds, does that make it any less real or legitimate? Many aspects of our identity exist only in our minds, they are no less real for it.
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Apr 26, 2022 01:20
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Hawkperson posted:1. There are trans animals?! What if all the animals we thought were gay were actually trans and heterosexual? I think that's probably not the case, but we honestly have no way of knowing because we have very limited insight into the notion of self-identity in non-human animals, for obvious reasons.
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Apr 26, 2022 01:31
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Craptacular! posted:There are animals that are "trans" in so far as they have sex changes as part of their biology. Clown fish are an example that most people have seen. That doesn't really make them trans, that means they change sex in a way that doesn't have a human analogue because our biology doesn't work that way. If anything, the fact that they change sex in a biological fashion makes them closer to... genderfluid and/or nonbinary, than specifically trans? But as we can't understand what a non-human's gender identity might consist of, it's still a fairly nonsensical comparison. I have no idea if their gender identity also changes in addition to their physiology because I haven't the faintest idea what "gender identity" would mean to a fish.
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Apr 26, 2022 01:45
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I guess the other question in regards to the theory that a lot of adolescents with gender identity issues don't end up transitioning or whatever is: provided that's the case and it's because they are not actually trans or non-binary... what's the harm if they experiment with their gender identity and later decide "nope, not for me, I'm cis!" Presumably they still had some reason for questioning their gender identity; if it's not 100% permanent all the time, is that a reason to be concerned? It's not like minors are getting surgery or anything permanent.
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Apr 26, 2022 02:51
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Dr. Stab posted:Two Spirit is not a specific identity, but an umbrella term for minority genders in native american cultures, which each may have their own names. It exists to replace the slur that was previously used. Yeah, I don't personally know much about those specific cultural practices beyond "I have heard people refer to themselves as two-spirited and they consider it part of the wider LGBTQ+ community." I like to include it because it's a reminder that, no, the idea of gender that exists outside the binary is not actually a new concept by any means, and the idea that it is gets into the unpleasant territory of considering Western culture to be some sort of neutral default setting. Plenty of cultures have their own conceptions of gender, and have had for a long time. The fact that Western culture held, for a long time, that you're either a man or a woman and it's inextricably tied to what genitals you have at birth, is one cultural construction of gender, but it's by no means the only one that's existed historically.
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Apr 26, 2022 04:16
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Yeah, I was thinking about the "well, what if attraction is about sex in addition to/rather than gender?" thing and it comes down to this, for me: if it's about the gender someone was assigned at birth, or their biology or their junk configuration or however you prefer to call it, then would you as a straight man, be more attracted to a trans woman or a trans man assuming neither had undergone surgery? Neither? Okay, both genitals and gender matter to you in terms of sexual attraction. I don't find anything inherently wrong with that. But if you identify as a straight guy or as a lesbian, yet are attracted to a man with a vagina, I would suggest you're not actually straight/lesbian. That's fine, there's no rule saying you have to be 100% consistent about your attraction, but be honest about what it is.
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Apr 27, 2022 01:23
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From what mainstream coverage I've seen of non-binary people, I'd also say that a lot of the mainstream perception, for lack of a better word, is driven by some pretty over-the-top people who say things like "I am too big and all-encompassing to be constrained by notions of gender, I am all things at once!" and it's like, well, cool, no self-esteem problems there, for sure! But I doubt that's how the average non-binary person understands their own identity and life, and mostly I'm guessing they aren't super vocal about it because it's still not hugely accepted in general. Depending on how they choose to present, and what pronouns they prefer to use, you might not even know a non-binary person is non-binary unless they choose to bring it up,
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Apr 29, 2022 23:47
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OwlFancier posted:The common one that really weird me out is "how can you be in a monogamous relationship, you'll always want to cheat with the gender you aren't with" To be fair, there's a lot of toxic relationships (usually hetero, if I'm being honest) where either participant "can't have" friends of the gender they're attracted to. It's mainly about insecurity and it's dumb as poo poo, but I see it disturbingly often.
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May 14, 2022 15:43
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They've also added "trans women who have sex with MSM" in the risk categories I'm seeing in a lot of places, which seems like an unnecessary qualification. I would assume that women, all women, who have sex with MSM, are at equal risk since it's shared by close contact, not the specific mechanics of the sexual encounter. So that's just a delightful dingleberry on top of this poo poo sundae.
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Jul 26, 2022 02:25
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Liquid Communism posted:Goes right along with their raging urge to accuse each other of being secretly transgender based on outright prhrenology-level weirdness, and spending their time harassing cis women in the bathroom for not looking feminine enough because contrary to their brainworms there just aren't that many transgender women in the world, as a percentage of population. I think the root of it is just a desire to harass people they don't like, because they've essentially created a system reminiscent of witch trials, where there's no possible right way to be after you're "suspected." Either you're not feminine enough, in which case you might be trans (or, you know, just a woman who doesn't wish to present as particularly feminine, or who is tall, or muscular), or you are feminine in which case you're suspect because perhaps you're just acting that way to throw everyone off. The other side of things is their bizarre paranoia about trans men somehow being women who were conned or forced into "being trans." The very idea of it is absurd, and the vehemence with which they assert this paranoia merely reinforces that gender identity exists separately from how one chooses to present oneself or who one is attracted to. The fact that many TERFs will come out with rubbish like "oh, they would've told me I was trans and forced me to be a man just because I don't present feminine" or whatever, actually proves, in my opinion, that gender identity exists independent of gender roles or presentation or sexuality or biological sex. These TERFs know they are women, regardless of anything else, and they are deeply uncomfortable, even offended (rightfully so, for once), by the suggestion that they're anything but women... which is exactly the situation trans people are in! They know their gender!
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Aug 17, 2022 05:04
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I think it makes sense that people who are, for lack of better phrase, forced to think consciously about how they fit into society, might also think more about gender identity and how it relates to that.
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Sep 6, 2022 01:45
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The thing that really pisses me off is that puberty-blockers are used precisely so that children don't have to make permanent decisions until they're old enough to really think through the consequences and decide what's the right choice for themselves. Deciding to restrict the medications which allow that free choice is nothing but the naturalistic fallacy, because puberty is pretty fuckin' permanent in a lot of ways. Also, and I think this gets missed a lot by the media that's uncritically repeating all this stupid transphobic poo poo: for most people, trans or cis, the changes associated with the puberty aligning with your gender identity are largely positive. If you're cisgender, then the puberty your body naturally goes through is one that will affirm your gender identity. I don't see the average cis teenager going "yeah, I'm not sure that's for me, let's hit the pause button on that one."
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Oct 17, 2022 05:36
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Timeless Appeal posted:The Rosetta Stone of a lot of conservativism is the old explanation of once you can't just say the n-word anymore, you have to figure out other ways to achieve the same goals. I largely agree with this, but I'd also like to point out that in all these cases -- literally all of them -- and more, including COVID vaccines, and probably whatever other stupid poo poo they push, the conservative viewpoint is asking us to consider the worst possible outcomes of A Given Choice, while never considering the average or worst-case consequences of simply choosing to do nothing and continue with the status quo. "The thing we've been doing must be great, because we've been doing it, therefore if the new thing causes any problems, it's clearly worse." It's a ridiculous line of thought, but it's very popular, so the response must be: by choosing to change nothing, you still have made a choice with its own consequences and (importantly) you own those consequences. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
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Oct 24, 2022 05:38
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OwlFancier posted:
Good lord... I feel like a lot of this poo poo is borne of people following a ridiculous axiom to its absurd conclusion and never once stopping to think if, perhaps, it's a stupid axiom that makes no sense. Like, take the supposed risk of sex assault and "competitive fairness" in school sport. You end up, in essence, with someone saying "look, there's a lot of weirdos out there... that's why we'll be making sure that adults can arbitrarily inspect a girl's genitals! Not just anyone, of course; that would be mad. No, we have a designated genital inspector!" and never stopping to think that maybe saying such a completely absurd and disgusting thing is evidence, in and of itself, that you've made your decision based on abhorrent and stupid assumptions. Likewise, I think if you reach the point you're compelled to flash a merkin at parliament, you have to consider that maybe there's something quite wrong with you and the thought process that led you to this point.
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Dec 22, 2022 22:44
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