fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3336 ]

[ SECRET POST #3336 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3336 ⌋

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The thing is, you never see any other sexual orientation broken down like this.

Imagine a guy who socially has sex with women he cares about, and sometimes likes it, and sometimes has fun. Are there any guys who do that and insist on identifying as gay?

On the flip side, you do see guys who sometimes have sex with other guys and enjoy it, and insist on identifying as straight -- but that's generally taken as a problem of homophobia, of them feeling uncomfortable or unsafe because of the stigma in being openly bi/gay. No one goes "oh, okay, Ted Haggard is completely heterosexual, that sounds legit." (Well, not seriously.)

...so I can see people having and enjoying sex while insisting on their asexuality because there's a lot of social stigma around sexual desire in general. Compounded if you're a woman, and/or a trauma survivor, and/or non-straight, and/or any number of other factors.

But it's weird that so many people are responding, not with "okay there is obviously a safety/stigma issue here", but "that sounds legit."

You're equating two very different situations.

A gay guy, left on his own, wouldn't have a girlfriend who likes sex and wants sex with him, who he would go through sex for. Why not? Because he's gay, he's not dating that girl in the first place.

A homoromantic asexual guy who identifies as gay might have a boyfriend who likes sex who he would go through sex for. Why? Because he's gay, he loves his boyfriend romantically. He's asexual, the boyfriend isn't.

So here's a third potential configuration: biromantic homosexual guy, has a girlfriend who likes sex, and will "go through sex for" those girlfriends -- but insists on identifying as gay.

How often does that one happen? Because I swear I've never seen it.

The only time I see people going "you are within my romantic orientation, so I will 'go through sex' for you, but I'm going to continue to identify you as being outside my sexual orientation" is with people who identify as asexual. [ETA: well, and the friends of the anon downthread.]

Edited 2016-02-22 01:27 (UTC)

What, you've never seen "gay/lesbian with an exception" in spite of the fact that we get at least three heavily reblogged articles by people who claim that a year?

We must be following different subsets of Tumblr.

I have seen a couple of people go from "gay/lesbian/straight with an exception" to "you know what, I wasn't sure about a bi/pan identity before, but now I'm going to embrace it."

I wish the discourse would hurry up and evolve a set of labels that mean "interested in x/not interested in y, no exceptions, seriously, none, if I had a different set of interests I would be using a different label."

There's more to the LGBT community than tumblr.

For one thing, tumblr seems unusually obsessed with pigeonholing sexualities into rigid categories.

Edited 2016-02-22 12:16 (UTC)

Asexuality isn't an orientation, though.

Unless of course it's _romantic Asexual amirite?

...I like how everyone says Asexuals aren't oppressed but then goes "your orientation doesn't exist/isn't valid". Now I remember why I hate this community so much.

nah nah nah you're missing the point. Not saying asexuality doesn't exist or isn't valid, just that it's not an orientation: orientation referring, after all, to what sort of people you're attracted to. So by definition asexuality's a separate thing, not an orientation.

A couple of articles which make clear that this is in no way a settled issue:

http://www.apositive.org/wordpress_backup/?page_id=222

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/asexual-disorder_n_3361472.html?1371562287

Sexuality is complex and culturally constructed. To say that all MSM must be gay or bi is ethnocentric. And it's ignorant of the living history where the question of which MSM were considered "gay" very much depended on your class and how gender-normative you were.

And some of us really object to the reductionist definition of "Suck one cock, and you're a cocksucker."

I would argue that the ideas that a man can be less "gay" if he's in a certain class, or has masculine-enough behavior -- even when he's engaging in the exact same behavior as men who are of a different social class or are more femme in presentation -- are products of classism and sexism.

But I'm happy to substitute "MSM" if you think it's clearer.

And I don't think anyone here has said "Suck one cock, and you're a cocksucker." People are allowed to try different things! People are even allowed to identify as one thing at one point, and then change their minds later on!

That's very different from saying "I regularly, happily, without coercion, go around seeking and enjoying sex with men, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, but, gosh, that doesn't have to mean I'm one of those MSM or anything."

Product of heterosexism to be precise, but it is what it is, and ignoring that "gay" is a socially constructed category that is not the same everywhere you go and isn't the same even among different groups in the United States fails to address how we're differently affected by heterosexism.

And the fact remains that between 25% to 50% (in the United States) of MSM don't identify as gay or bi, and probably will not. There's not really much point in trying to frame them as "really" gay or bi.

EDIT: Note that number is even higher for WSW, but since women are considered to be more flexible in their sexuality, we usually don't leap to the assumption that a WSW is necessarily a closeted lesbian.

Edited 2016-02-22 02:33 (UTC)

Imagine a guy who socially has sex with women he cares about, and sometimes likes it, and sometimes has fun. Are there any guys who do that and insist on identifying as gay?

Two of my lesbian friends have had longterm sexual/romantic relationships with guys and continued to identify as lesbian. (One of them in a F/M relationship, the other as part of a F/F/M threesome.)

And I have a straight female friend who had a longterm sexual/romantic relationship with another woman, and while I can't read her mind, I definitely believe that she wasn't identifying as straight because of social stigma. Among other things, she was very open about being in a queer relationship: her extended family knew, her friends knew, her coworkers knew, etc.

Then all I can say is that these friends of yours weird me out too.

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