Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

I don't think sexual attraction is binary

60 replies

nellodee · 12/10/2019 19:26

Just brainstorming here, and these thoughts are certainly not set in stone...

I'm not attracted to men who identify as women (or haven't been yet, though admittedly, my exposure levels to this group are vastly different to that of male presenting males).

However, it's certainly the case that there are people who are exclusively attracted to both women and transmen. It's also the case that there are women who are exclusively attracted to both women and transwomen. There are probably also women who are attracted to anything BUT males. And every other combination possible, of course!

It strikes me as being fairly obvious that it's at least a quaternary, being attracted to:

same sex, same gender
same sex, other gender
other sex, same gender
other sex, other gender

I can understand that women who are attracted to women and transwomen want to call themselves lesbians, particularly if they subscribe to the view that twaw. And I can see they would feel that it was somewhat offensive to them to suggest that they are actually bisexual, given that usual meaning of this is to be attracted to male identifying males as well.

Unfortunately, the amount of combinations possible would mean we would need at least 50 new words even before we take NB into account. Given that there are four quadrants (at least, like I say NB would increase this even further), this gives 13 possible combinations of quadrant for each type of individual. Given TW are not going to want to sit in the M category, we have at least 4 different base individual categories. So, 4 x 13 words needed. Without including NB.

I'm quite curious as to how many people are single quadrant attracted vs being attracted to an entire axis. And is being "genitally" attracted any more common than being "gender" attracted?

Any thoughts?

OP posts:
Qcng · 12/10/2019 21:18

Unfortunately, these hypothetical women who are "exclusively attracted to women and transwomen" will be few and far between, virtually all women attracted to women and/or transwoman will be bisexual, so will also be attracted to men.

There are virtually no males who are homosexual, who fancy transmen, literally zero. If a man does find a transman attractive, they will be attracted to women almost all of the time.

Gender ideology is hell bent on redefining words and is weirdly obsessed with redefining "lesbian" for some reason

DuMondeB · 12/10/2019 21:13

I like the idea of making up loads of largely nonsensical labels, but they won’t catch on!

Boring old heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual work for almost everyone as no matter how many gender options Facebook offer, there are still only two sexes.

BolloxtoGender · 12/10/2019 20:43

Then have an excuse to get offended when people don’t get the labels right (in our minds) .

BolloxtoGender · 12/10/2019 20:42

No shit.

I think we should just make up labels for every single type and combinations of attractions based on sex, looks, personality and kinks.

Ffsnosexallowed · 12/10/2019 20:37

Who cares what the labels are??

mindproject · 12/10/2019 20:36

I'm not attracted to anyone.

Simple.

Themyscira · 12/10/2019 20:33

Boxes upon boxes upon boxes. Labels, labels everywhere but none of them are truly necessary.

littlbrowndog · 12/10/2019 20:32

Don’t overthink this stuff

You fancy a guy or a woman

Simple

Justhadathought · 12/10/2019 20:29

Honestly, I think this is way too complicated and over-analysed. Why do we need to make definitive statements at all? Why do we need to fit ourselves into a named category?

Sexuality is fluid in all of us...and we can be deeply fascinated by someone without it necessarily being a sexual attraction.

I'm not even sure what being " genitally attracted" is, or " gender attracted"? Although I suspect that men are more motivated & focused on certain physical types & obvious physical 'clues' than most women

Goosefoot · 12/10/2019 19:30

I think that you don't need a word for all of these things.

I am occasionally sexually attracted to women of a certain type and within a certain age bracket. I'm not particularly interested in them as romantic partners, or even friends. On the other hand I'm very attracted to quite a wide variety of men of varying ages and characteristics all the time, and I also quite like them and enjoy living with a man.

I call myself a heterosexual, because really there is no need to be more specific about it. It's a word that's a tool, I do not need it to know who I am or receive some sort of validation from other people or tell me how I should live or what I should think.