this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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I see this from another point of view: I think that trying to define a "pure" sexuality, is falling into a No True Scotsman fallacy.
You have described some of your attraction pattern on several axes, and called that "lesbian". Fine, nobody has the right to tell you otherwise. What I don't see as clearly, is that it describes a "mono sexuality" or "pure lesbian".
Sounds to me like you're defining "lesbian" as "doesn't get attracted to males, unless they don't look, smell, or identify as males"... but that still leaves a whole lot of possibilities, while at the same time others might define "lesbian" in some other terms, including whether both people need to meet the same criteria, and that would be their definition of "mono sexuality".
The point you raise about history, is where I think the labels, as we have them, make more sense: as a transitory means to fight for the rights of people who were otherwise oppressed. It's a high call to have a heteropatriarhy suddenly become tolerant of all possible sexualities, so fighting for chunks at a time makes more sense. We still shouldn't lose sight of the end goal, which should be letting everyone be themselves, in all their complexity.
Another interesting thing about history, is that throughout different periods of oppression, there always used to be "roommates" and "travel companions", who used to share the same bed, behind closed doors. Nowadays some of the most oppressive cultures, still have a similar "out of sight, out of mind" approach. So the fight is more for the right to public expression and social acceptance, which of course benefits from labels, flags, and all the bells and whistles.
Dunno, maybe I'm raising the point too soon, maybe there needs to be another half a century of fighting chunk by chunk, adding more letters and symbols to the LGBTQQIP2SA+ initialism... but I sure wish we could do away with it already, and simply call it "sexuality".
Sure, words can have subjective meaning that can change from person to person and even over time. So two people perhaps don’t completely agree what it means to be a lesbian. But the general idea usually is something that can be agreed upon. But what is the point of arguing against monosexuality in the first place? Because to me it sure sounds a lot like the “you haven’t found the right man” argument. Even if I was attracted to men and was in some kind of denial, like you implied in your first post, it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to date men, simple as that.
Also I don’t think you argued concretely towards my historic argument? To me it makes it sound like you’re implying women willingly chose to be exclusively lesbians and men, exclusively gay, to fight for wlw and mlm rights. Which i can imagine some did, but certainly not everyone.
Part of my point, is that there are individuals who self-label in ways that can't be agreed upon by all (see: TERFs). The point of arguing against "monosexuality", is to get people to define their positions on multiple axes, which more people could agree upon (with the definition, not necessarily with the positioning).
No, that would imply a single male/female axis, while my argument is there are more axes to take into account. If you were in some kind of denial, it would be about the existence of other axes, that are as, or even more, important than the male/female one. But then you went on to define yourself on several other axes... so what are we even talking about here?
Chose to label themselves only as, independently of what they thought themselves to be. Fewer labels are easier to fight for, than more labels, which is where I see it useful to have a few "umbrella" labels. Like, right now, I think a good umbrella label would be "Queer", even if I'd rather wish no label was necessary anymore.
PS: Hm... is "denial" a trigger word here? Not sure what other word I could use to express my point, but I'll stop if that's the case.
Are the axis you are referring to romantic, platonic, sexual, etc. attraction? Because I have no problem with those, but in that case I identify as a romantic and sexual lesbian.
And yes I would say denial is a very strong word. It implies you know better about how a person feels than themselves.
I hear you, my apologies. I didn't want to imply that I know better.
The idea I'm trying to express is "it's a complex situation with many nuances that a simplistic label doesn't convey". I would like to include that those using a label may not be aware of all those nuances, but wouldn't want to impose any particular interpretation or assumptions. Not sure which word or expression would best convey that... oh well.
The axes I'm referring to, would be... [identity1]×[attraction12]×[identity2]×[attraction23]×[identity3], and the sum of them all would give one's identity... but maybe that doesn't make much sense.
For example, something like: "A part of me sometimes identifies as a female with platonic attraction towards anyone who usually gets physically attracted towards anyone but males", and at the same time "A part of me sometimes doesn't identify as any gender and is sensually attracted towards anyone looking cute, but more if they identify as female and/or smell like food", and at the same time "A part of me identifies slightly as either male or female and is slightly sexually attracted to anyone presenting female", and... so on.
All of that is a mouthful, the number of possible combinations are mind blowing, while there are labels for only the most clear cut ones, plus a few labels for some parts of the rest, then nothing.
I wish more people realized that these things are there, that they are normal, gave them a structured set of names, and accepted that they themselves might fit on some of them even if it isn't in the definition of some more traditional label.
And going back to the beginning, I'd expect most people to fall somewhere other than 0 on more than one of these axes. Just by the sheer amount of possibilities, it seems unlikely that someone would be "strictly this, and nothing else".