Or am I just old and out of touch?

[snowdropsandcrocuses]

DD 15 has a group of friends consisting of all girls except one male. He's a lovely kid. I guess if I described him I would say good kid, loner, long hair, skinny. He's a nice boy but not particularly sociable.

So we're chatting about her friends and she says her male friend (we will call him Jack) is pansexual. I had to Google this to discover it meant he is attracted to both sexes. She then told me, in all seriousness, he is Aromantic.

I had to pause for a second and confirm she meant he does not like/do romance to which I got another honest, straight faced 'yes'

So wait, there is a 15 year old boy in your friendship group (all girls except him) that is attracted to both (all?) genders and is not interested in romance. In other words, he wants to shag but not date?

I swear I don't get it. She cannot see any irony in the term 'aromantic' for a teenage boy. And I want to stop the train and get off!

But as I understand it no one has been murdered for being greysexual.

They might not have. But they may well have the piss ripped out of them, made fun of, bullied. The list is endless. Like I said previously, anything other than cis or straight - then people have a massive problem.

As I said upthread, I'm not straight.

I actually find it deeply offensive that anyone thinks it's acceptable to align those who aren't looking for a romantic relationship/those who only look for romantic relationships/those who don't want to have sex unless they know their partner for a while etc etc etc with the struggles that gay people have faced for hundreds of years.

Having the piss ripped because you're not romantically attracted to others is not the same as being held in concentration camps, or the ignorance and prejudice which led to millions of deaths from AIDS in the 80s and 90s, or being murdered walking home, or being imprisoned. Do not tell me that it is. It's not very nice, but claiming that a perfectly mundane and everyday sexual urge (or lack thereof) is a sexuality and imagining that you're persecuted because of it is pretty tone deaf too.

And don't even get me started on straight men in nipple clamps on Pride marches.

I just looked it up and greysexual apparently means having once been into something but not being into it any more, or not being sexually attracted to many people.

That's basically everyone with an ex, and everyone who exercises any discernment whatsoever with sexual partners.

Exactly.

It's no more a sexuality than preferring people with brown hair or not fancying sex when you're tired is a sexuality. It's just a facet of desire (or lack thereof).

When greysexual people have to fight through the courts to have their relationships recognised in law, get back to me.

I think far from being old and out of touch, too many adults are so keen to not appear out of touch, they are indulging children and young people in increasing levels of nonsense. So desperate to keep up with the times, otherwise intelligent rational people have abdicated all responsibility for guidance, and handed over the reins to children, dociley complying with whatever is the latest fad, and in some cases allowing it to become all consuming.
This obsession with gender, sexuality and labels that's currently gripped some young people will for the vast majority turn out to be just another trend, and while there's little harm in letting them get on with it to an extent, I think its important to keep and encourage perspective.
I think the thing will run its course, and be replaced by a new fad, but in the meantime I think adults need to be encouraging children to see there is more to life than pronouns and who at a particular point in your early teens you may be sexually attracted to.
If Jack wants a label and to talk about their aspirational sex life, fair enough, but its just one element of Jack, with the important parts being whether they're decent, respectful, fun, interesting, a good friend, and have a personality outside of their 'identity'.

and have a personality outside of their 'identity'.
This
How tedious if that is their abiding focus.

Exactly this! And IMO many parents indulge in this BS which is actually in some cases destroying their children rather than addressing the real reasons that their kids are so unhappy and so self-indulgently in need of validation.... because this would actually involve far more work for the parent....

I would suspect that most”young” people don’t really believe any of this. They just can’t call their friends out for navel gazing. Or at least that is what my young adult children and their friends think.

In public they fawn round a friend who has announced they are pan, bi and a list of other things.

In private it’s more of FFS. She needs to give her head a wobble.

Well said. Claiming that you are special when in actuality you are simply a person who likes people with the opposing set of genitalia is just ‘look at me’.

Not fucking on the first date is not a sexuality.

I wouldn't personally care if my parents were in an open marriage regardless of what labels they used or didn't. Their life their business. As long as they agreed on it and weren't cheating.

I'm in my early 30s and my parents who are separated sometimes say: I'm dating a man (dad) or I fancy that woman (mum) expecting a reaction from me.

Me: OK! When do I meet them?

Them: only joking

I guarantee you most kids nowadays don't care and are the most accepting of all honest, consenting adult relationships. It's the adults that get freaked.

mum, I like boys, I like girls, I like girls who used to be boys and boys who used to be girls.

Are you sure you haven’t got the wrong end of the stick and he’s “a romantic”, you know, a bit like Lord Byron?

Love this song! Never heard it before. 💕