Eh, I suppose? The thing for me is that sexual attraction seems so much less complicated than romantic attraction, because it's contrasting a desire for sex--which is relatively easily defined, genital stimulation aiming at somebody's orgasm is the broadest one I can think of, and also sex is a relatively discrete activity--with a desire for a romantic relationship, which is considerably more complicated to define and also is defined in terms of mutual emotions and not a physical action you can see. I mean, it's generally fairly easy to figure out whether you've had sex--did you engage in genital stimulation aiming at orgasm for somebody? there you have it--whereas figuring out whether you're in a romantic relationship can be, uh, difficult.
Admittedly, possibly it could be easier for me say "that's easy to define" because I'm not grey-A but I do exist in the weird squishy confusing area for romantic orientation, so. Food for thought, that.
Agh, yeaaaah. I mean, that's the way I generally approach that issue in practice--not telling people how they should identify, but saying "asexuality encompasses all these very varied experiences, asexuality is not defined by behavior, it's about this specific form of attraction and I know people who engage in XYZ behaviors who are still asexual." And they can make up their own minds from that.
(oh god I know. And there's a big part of myself yelling that "GENDERQUEER IS A WORD FOR NONBINARY PEOPLE ONLY" except I... am not actually entirely sure that's true and oh god it's so confuuuuuusing. Do people ever get to stop questioning? It would be nice to fit into the nice clear areas more often, agh.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-09-14 03:52 pm (UTC)Admittedly, possibly it could be easier for me say "that's easy to define" because I'm not grey-A but I do exist in the weird squishy confusing area for romantic orientation, so. Food for thought, that.
Agh, yeaaaah. I mean, that's the way I generally approach that issue in practice--not telling people how they should identify, but saying "asexuality encompasses all these very varied experiences, asexuality is not defined by behavior, it's about this specific form of attraction and I know people who engage in XYZ behaviors who are still asexual." And they can make up their own minds from that.
(oh god I know. And there's a big part of myself yelling that "GENDERQUEER IS A WORD FOR NONBINARY PEOPLE ONLY" except I... am not actually entirely sure that's true and oh god it's so confuuuuuusing. Do people ever get to stop questioning? It would be nice to fit into the nice clear areas more often, agh.)