Man, the more society progresses in open and honest conversations about sexuality, the more I’m sure that “spectrum” doesn’t even begin to do justice to the vast, bizarre complexity of human sexuality.
It’s more like…that crazy 3 tier chess they play in Star Trek.
Yeah, I even felt weird using the word spectrum. I’m visualizing a 3-dimensional gradient where each individual point in space reflects a unique sexuality. It’s about as unique to you as your fingerprint. It’s insane to me that we had such black and white categories for so much of our history.
It’s an n-dimensional spectra, but I’m not really sure what n is in this case. It’s at least two, with one dimension being masculine/feminine and the other being penis/vagina, but there are way more things to sexual preference than that. We need one for dominant/submissive, multiple dimensions for hair color, maybe age, and all kinds of other factors. Every person will have a range of preference for all of these, and they aren’t just the far ends.
There are actually different models of talking about sexuallity. The one most common that you know where there’s stuff like gay, lesbian, bi… But when you have trans folks that doesn’t nessisarily give much credence to genital preferences. It’s more a reference to the cultural gender expectations. A cis man and a pre-medical trans man is still gay where a cis man and a trans woman in the same situation is straight… But when you are non-binary this model doesn’t serve because if I am culturally neither male or female is me liking a specific presentation gay or straight? If you’re defaulting to what my body type is then neither is correct. I am not pan or bi because I don’t like both and I am not straight or gay because those things frame relationships between physical sexes not fitting neatly into the changing cultural landscape of gender.
The other less used model just describes what someone finds sexy. A gynophile is attracted to feminine presentation, androphiles like the masculine, Skoliophiles are into non-binary people and ambiphiles like all.
It is a little 4D chess but it’s easier to pick up when you don’t have to account for old rules.
Man, the more society progresses in open and honest conversations about sexuality, the more I’m sure that “spectrum” doesn’t even begin to do justice to the vast, bizarre complexity of human sexuality.
It’s more like…that crazy 3 tier chess they play in Star Trek.
Yeah, I even felt weird using the word spectrum. I’m visualizing a 3-dimensional gradient where each individual point in space reflects a unique sexuality. It’s about as unique to you as your fingerprint. It’s insane to me that we had such black and white categories for so much of our history.
It’s an n-dimensional spectra, but I’m not really sure what n is in this case. It’s at least two, with one dimension being masculine/feminine and the other being penis/vagina, but there are way more things to sexual preference than that. We need one for dominant/submissive, multiple dimensions for hair color, maybe age, and all kinds of other factors. Every person will have a range of preference for all of these, and they aren’t just the far ends.
There are actually different models of talking about sexuallity. The one most common that you know where there’s stuff like gay, lesbian, bi… But when you have trans folks that doesn’t nessisarily give much credence to genital preferences. It’s more a reference to the cultural gender expectations. A cis man and a pre-medical trans man is still gay where a cis man and a trans woman in the same situation is straight… But when you are non-binary this model doesn’t serve because if I am culturally neither male or female is me liking a specific presentation gay or straight? If you’re defaulting to what my body type is then neither is correct. I am not pan or bi because I don’t like both and I am not straight or gay because those things frame relationships between physical sexes not fitting neatly into the changing cultural landscape of gender.
The other less used model just describes what someone finds sexy. A gynophile is attracted to feminine presentation, androphiles like the masculine, Skoliophiles are into non-binary people and ambiphiles like all.
It is a little 4D chess but it’s easier to pick up when you don’t have to account for old rules.