[ SECRET POST #6184 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6184 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 33 secrets from Secret Submission Post #884.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Who should they educate themselves with, though? There's a lot of people out there who say that ace folks can feel sexual attraction; it's just different from sexual people in terms of frequency. Which of you is right?

[(Anonymous)]

Ace also includes the demi-ace label, which are people on the ace spectrum who feel attraction very rarely; usually after getting to know someone really well. They almost never just see a stranger in a crowd and feel sexually attracted. OTOH, it's a common allo trope that a man sees a woman he doesn't know in a bar and immediately falls in lust. Not a thing for the ace side of the spectrum.

[(Anonymous)]

The question to all of that then becomes: why?

Why stick "allo" onto "sexual," when "sexual" already means "experiences sexual attraction?"

Why say that "asexual," which uses a prefix meaning "not/without," and which is therefore usually understood to mean "without attraction," is a spectrum that also includes people who experience attraction? We don't say that "without light" denotes a spectrum including spaces with sparse light; we use it to mean "a complete absence of light."

Wouldn't it make more sense for "sexual" to be a spectrum that includes people with rare sexual attraction, with "asexual" being a non-spectrum describing people with no attraction at all?

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with this. There doesn't need to be another term that means "averagely sexual."

[(Anonymous)]

So, we have the Kinsey scale, yeah? A spectrum of sexual attraction, with completely heterosexual on one side and completely homosexual on the other. And people call fall anywhere in between on the spectrum. Just because they're a 5 on the scale doesn't mean they can't find people of a different gender attractive. Also, even though they're a 5 on the scale, it doesn't mean that they don't also experience life basically the same as a 6.

Allos and Aces are like that, too. On the one side we have Allos, who definitely feel sexual attraction, for a lot of people. And on the other we have Aces, who have never felt sexual attraction in their life. And a lot of people fall anywhere in between on the spectrum. Just because someone is a 5 on the Allo-Ace scale, it doesn't mean they haven't found one or two people attractive. Also, even though they're a 5 on the scale, it doesn't mean that they also don't experience life basically the same as an Ace.

Demis and people more toward the ace side - they also probably spent their formative years dating because that was the Thing You Did, not because they were actually attracted. They probably thought that "hot" was a euphemism for people who are aesthetically pleasing, and also didn't realize that some people literally get hot when seeing someone their attracted to. And until they do find someone (demi/semi so it happens rarely), then they can get a glimpse of what the other side of the spectrum is like. Just like a 5 on the Kinsey runs into a person of a different gender and they can experience a bit of what hetero life is like.

[(Anonymous)]

It's interesting you bring up Kinsey, because Kinsey had a classification for people who experienced either no sexual attraction or no interest in sex. There was not, in this research, a separate spectrum for them, because they were defined by a total absence of the thing. And a demisexual would not have been given this classification, because a demisexual person experiences sexual attraction, even if it happens rarely.

You're describing the concept of a spectrum perfectly well, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creating, on the one hand, a redundancy in the language; and, on the other, defining "without" as "sometimes with."

[(Anonymous)]

You're assuming that human experience is absolutely the same as the language we use to describe it. This is a fallacy. Language is what we've invented to try to describe and communicate the human experience, and some languages have focused on some areas more than others. This is why translation is so hard to do. Some languages have words that have no direct translation in English.

Just because a word is formed a certain way in one language, that doesn't mean that all of human experience must then conform to the way we have constructed one language.

[(Anonymous)]

What language are we translating that leads to this discrepancy?

The idea isn't that human experience must conform to the way we've constructed language; it's that language should be constructed in such a way that it describes the human experience. In English, when it comes to traits, we've decided to describe the human experience as follows: "attaching this suffix means that X trait is completely absent. If you don't attach this suffix, it means that X trait is present. X trait can be present in any quantity, so long as it is to some degree present."

What makes this insufficient? Why does, "this person with a slight presence of X trait belongs to the category of people who lack X trait" more accurately capture the human experience than, "this person with a slight presence of X trait belongs to the category of people with X trait?"

[(Anonymous)]

Well... you're making it all about English, my dude.

Why say that "asexual," which uses a prefix meaning "not/without," and which is therefore usually understood to mean "without attraction," is a spectrum that also includes people who experience attraction? We don't say that "without light" denotes a spectrum including spaces with sparse light; we use it to mean "a complete absence of light."

I'm talking about creating, on the one hand, a redundancy in the language; and, on the other, defining "without" as "sometimes with."

All that? Language issue.

Why does, "this person with a slight presence of X trait belongs to the category of people who lack X trait" more accurately capture the human experience than, "this person with a slight presence of X trait belongs to the category of people with X trait?"

Because when it comes to human experience people react to the slightest difference. Our instincts like to have Completely In-Group or otherwise Completely Out-Group. So, if you have someone with the Slight Presence of X Trait, they Do Not Belong to group with Definite Presence of X Trait. They belong with No X Trait, because they're not Completely In-Group which makes them Other. So, socially speaking, they have more in common with the No X Trait group because of how they're treated by the Definite X Trait group.

Also, your light analogy is wrong. We often say that something that is dark is "without light" - but it does actually have light. We just can't see most of the types of light.

We know this because we, um, educated ourselves....