fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2354 ]

[ SECRET POST #2354 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2354 ⌋

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

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02.

[Kodomo no Jikan]

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03.

[figure skating/Brian Joubert]

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04.

[Stargate: Atlantis/ Sesame Street]

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05.

[K project]

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06.

[Teen Wolf]

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07.

[Married...With Children]

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08.

[Homestuck]

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09.

[One Piece]

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[Game of Thrones]

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11.

[Pokémon Black & White]

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[Phantom of the Opera 2004]

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13.

[Iron Man 3]

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[Neverwinter Nights 2]

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15.

[Almost Human/Total Recall 2077]

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[Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer]

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[Fire Emblem: Awakening]

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[A Bag of Hammers]

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[Without a Trace]

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20.

[Big Bang Theory]

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21.

[The Three Investigators]

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22.

[Team Fortress 2]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 043 secrets from Secret Submission Post #336.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - personal attack ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So according to a few friends of mine, apparently you can just use whatever labels you want for your sexuality. They were all talking about what [whatever label they use] means to them, but none of them gave the same explanation, and it doesn't really make sense to me.

I'm not trying to be an asshole or a troll but I am kind of a grammar/English nerd, so it's kind of hard to wrap my head around the idea that none of these things have one specific definition, and people can use them in all sorts of different ways.

Are my friends wrong or can people really just use whatever words they want and decide their own definitions?

You can use any word you want to call yourself. Now whether society listens and accepts the label is a different thing all together.

There are words that don't have a precise definition. Language, dialect, and accent being among them. 'Good' too, according to G.E. Moore. No degree of supposed nerdiness changes that.

Hell, 'nerd' doesn't have one specific definition everyone agrees on. Language is functional, not perfect.

Well different words mean different things to different people. And sexuality is a very tricky thing to pin down.

However if they were all "Yes, I identify as Gay but I am a woman who is only attracted to men." then no, you're friends are idiots.

Labels definitions are not set in stone but there are limits.

There's room for stretching in any word's definition. It all depends on how far you stretch it. For instance, someone who's half-white, half-Chinese can identify as White, Mixed, or Chinese, depending on personal choice, etc. They cannot identify as Black. (I'd even argue that they could, if they were adopted by a black family and were raised in, for lack of a better term, a "black culture".) Likewise, I think a gay person can be attracted to someone of the opposite/other sex, as long as they specify "gay, with an exception".

The problem is that stretching a word's meaning sets a new norm, which can then be stretched more. This happens a lot faster on the internet, especially with something as personal as identity.

They are right and they are wrong.

People like to label. It's a human trait. We see something, we want to define it. Not everybody arrives at the same conclusion. Sometimes something means something to them. Becomes part of their definiton. Sometimes even if they don't fully correspond to the meaning of that, it remains part of their identity.

Of course, sometimes you get people who are special snowflakes and want a label for no reason other then they think it's pretty. Wanting something to be part of who you are is not the same has HAVING something be part of who you are. And those people usually do end up looking like idiots, especially if they start talking about it. And sometimes you got people that are just stupid period.

Could you be more specific? Not personal details, but perhaps share what those used labels are, precisely?

My guess is one of these: Demisexual, Demiromantic, or Asexual.

I'll not deny what words they are using will influence my opinion on what it likely is, but there are people who, say, use Queer or bisexual very different then others. I don't want to presume.

Haha yes. This whole asexual/demisexual thing, I just...don't understand it.

Asexual = lacks sexual attraction period. So, looking at a pretty person turns you on about as much as looking at a sunset. That said, it doesn't mean you can't have a sex drive - it's just not directed at anything.

Demisexual = basically needing to be friends before you feel a sexual attraction to someone. For example, someone you don't know know? About as sexually attractive to you as a landscape. However, someone whose your friend [and not usually of the 'just met' variety]? You might very well find sexuall attractive.

DA

tbf I think the whole "searching for a label" phenomenon is a reflection of how young the Internet generation really is --- at that age, with hormones and puberty and six other degrees of hell to go through, I think the idea of having a set-in-stone "point-to-this-and-say-I-am-that" label is attractive, because really, they don't have the first freaking clue who they are.

When you're older? As in, much older? Yeah, the labels are not so much a fun thing anymore.

Well for example two are into both guys and girls but one says they're bisexual and the other pansexual, and they disagree about what bisexual actually means.

Another example, one girl has a boyfriend and has always been into guys but isn't really that interested in sex. She considers herself straight but another friend was telling her she's wrong and she needs to start calling herself asexual instead.

Then there's the one who called herself demisexual but pretty much everyone else basically said "that's not a real sexual orientation, you're being a fucking idiot."

And of course the one who considers herself queer but has only ever dated (and is seemingly only interested in) men.

It all just seems so confusing.

Yeah, sounds like they were just being idiots and/or trying to have some kind of special label.

The first two need to just get their shit together.

And the other girl is probably just not interested in sex -yet-. Sort of rude to tell someone that what they think they are is wrong.

Demisexuality is a joke.

Sounds like the "queer" one is straight but likes the special queer label.

Some pansexuals identify with that word rather than with "bisexual" because they think that "bisexual" excludes people who don't fall within the gender binary. Most bisexuals do not define the word that way.

The friend of the straight-but-not-interested-in-sex girl needs to stop telling said girl how to identify. If she doesn't want to call herself ace, she doesn't have to.

I'm not entirely convinced that demisexuality is actually a "special snowflake" label. There's a girl I know from college that it seems to describe pretty well, though I don't know if she identifies with the word: she told me once that she doesn't actually know whether a person is physically attractive or not, because that doesn't factor into whether she's attracted to the person at all. This is in contrast with me, who, while I do need a strong emotional component present to overcome the squick-factor of touching another person's tongue, genitals, or rectum, I also need for there to be a physical attraction there. So my friend from college might be demisexual, but I am probably just a germophobe.

That last friend could be bi; bisexuality isn't usually 50/50, and you can have a preference for the opposite sex and still be bi as long as you also have some interest in the same sex. It might be easier for her right now (I don't know where you live or what this girl's family is like) for her to stick with pursuing relationships with men at this time. Or she might be genderqueer or genderfluid. Or she might just be appropriating the label.

I'm not entirely convinced that demisexuality is actually a "special snowflake" label.

Personally, I think that demisexuality could be a useful linguistic shortcut to define how you process attraction to others. The problem is mainly when people use it as an orientation or claim that it makes them queer or oppressed or something, even when they're straight. That's why lots of people call it a special snowflake label.

First off, bare in mind (as said above) some of your friends? Might not even know what they are yet. I mean, they've got labels, but they aren't necessarily right about them. Or they might simple change because people do that sometimes.

Obviously it's a contested issue, your friends are proof of that. Personally, I tend to go with the "bisexual still focuses on the gender binary" myself. It does make the names make more sense. I suppose part of my bias here is my introduction to the terms: i had two friends who identified as such, but unlike yours saw it as a distinct difference and agreed on the terms.

On the next one, the one telling her friend what to call herself is the big fucking idiot here. There could be many reasons your girl with a boyfriend doesn't want to have sex, none of which would necessarily be because of asexuality. She doesn't know what she's talking about. Even if she's right and this girl is an asexual heteroromantic, odds are good she doesn't know the one friend well enough to say that with any actual intimate knowledge to back it up.

I think the problem with demisexual is it screams "special snowflake" in a lot of the cases that you see it used. The problem it, it pretty much fails to fill in any actual niche; you could say "really really picky (insert other orientation here) and pretty much have the same thing.

The last friend might know they are attracted to something more but haven't found any real life examples of it yet. Though this could be a case of special snowflake labeling as well. Without knowing your friend I won't pass judgement too quickly, but some folks for whatever reason decide they can't be as mundane as plain old straight and start looking for something else.

There's no one right answer, of course, but if all else fails, go with the dictionary.

First example, it sounds like they could be operating off differing definitions of the word bisexual. Most bi people I've known have used to mean that they're attracted to any gender. That's also the [usual] definition of pansexual. However, there are a fair number of people [bi and otherwise] who use the definition that someone whose bi is only attracted to two genders. So...you can make the argument both are right, since both are definitions that are used for the term.

That girls friend needs to screw off. Unless they has some really in depth knowledge of asexuality *and* all the reasons behind their friend's lack of interest they really have nothing they should be saying there. Even if they do have both, the most they can really say is 'Hey, it really seems like you might be...'

Demisexuality is hard because it basically seems to boil down to 'I'm only attracted to my friends', which, as Noodle said, can be summed up in a lot of other ways too.

It's possible they haven't openly discussed the women she's been interested in, or simply hasn't discussed it with *you* for whatever reason. Honestly, aside from demisexual, queer is probably the term with the definition that stretched the farthest, so there's a lot that fits under it.

As a rule, most labels have definitions that can stretch to some extent, but also have some pretty obvious limits.

For example, lesbian *can* include women who've had sex and possibly even feelings for a guy...but probably not someone who currently still attracted to multiple men [since, imo, that falls more under bisexual], or someone whose only ever been interested in men [seeing as that would be far closer to 'straight'.]

You can say a word means whatever you want it to mean. Like I could say to -me- sparkly means "to bark at the moon." Doesn't make it true. A word has to have a history and common usage to actually mean something.

Honestly, they are probably just trying to be "special snowflakes".

Up to a certain extent. Words can have individual meanings based on someone's experience, but there's identifying as one and then there's using it as a defining trait that people are somehow supposed to guess. Create your meanings all you want, but understand the base purpose of the words you use and don't pretend that everyone has to know exactly what you mean, then get offended when they don't.

If you really are a grammar/English nerd, then you would already know that using words in all sorts of different ways or redefining terms is what language is all about. Everyone does it, and has done it for centuries which is why the English we speak today is a completely different animal than the English say, Geoffrey Chaucer spoke/wrote.

No, I know that, it's just like the person above said, claiming to be a lesbian but only into guys. There have to be limits at some point.

That always kind of bothered me too. I mean, words need to mean things.

True - but language is also flexible and changing. It's just that people tend to ignore the inherent *limits* in a word that annoys me.

Not OP, btw

Language evolves, and we define it. There are only standard definitions when people come to a consensus, and sexuality is something our society is redefining (or maybe I should say considering to exist rather than being a deviancy?) at the moment.

Give it a few years and maybe they'll agree on what the words mean.

people can invent whatever words they want for things. whether other people understand or are meant to understand what those words mean is what's at issue. so if your friends don't care if other people understand what they mean when they label their sexuality with [whatever], who cares?

incidentally, just because two people label their sexuality [gay] or [straight] or some other common label doesn't mean they necessarily have that much in common sexually either. i know plenty of gay people who are completely sexually incompatible with each other. them saying they're [gay] only communicates certain things which may or may not be the most important things for that person, sexually.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2354 ]

Can people really define these words for themselves?

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Okay! I'm assuming your op?

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