sexuality beyond cissexism

the two for one special of cisgenderism and heteronormativity dictate that gender can be determined by sex and that only specific genitals can touch each other. this is completely false and mythical as gender is unique and people have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies.

but along with the news that gender is unique came the realization that the attraction i’ve experienced could not possibly have been related to that person’s gender as you can’t tell gender on sight. yet almost all of today’s words for sexuality frame it within a gendered context. in order to move away from gender-centric sexuality towards a more coherent model of sexuality new words are needed.

to that end i recently wrote about sexuality but with a focus on the ways that people experience attraction, what they find attractive and what types of attraction they feel. while the grid in that post does allow for a person to map out their attraction to get an approximate feel for things there are specific terms i want to focus on in this post and a few new ones that are more meta-descriptors for the patterns that might be represented on the chart.

if these words are not cool or sound strange to you please give me a better suggestion :3

aesthetisexual

so aesthetisexual would be the umbrella term for attraction based on appearance. this kind of attraction is extremely popular in pop culture and seems to be particularly popular within the toxic masculinity communities although with more of an objectification bent to it than an appreciative one in that case. unfortunately pop culture tends to attach gender identifiers to this type of attraction due to their absurd devotion to a link between biology and gender that has never been observed materially.

someone who identified as aesthetisexual (or the better word someone else invents) might be asexual or aromantic but in describing aesthetisexual sexuality it should be a high priority to avoid re-association between appearance and gender because those mythical associations are still believed by the majority of the world, their cognitive biases will make it easier to make those associations anew than to break them and so the discourse around aesthetisexualism should combat that more than probably anything else in the exploration of those experiences.

identisexual

identisexual is the placeholder name for the umbrella term for all types of attraction to a person’s affinities. the “identi” refers to “identity” and is meant to imply that it is an attraction towards how a person identifies themselves. to that person’s own expression of their chosen identities. and attraction to the shared affinity towards common identifiers.

technically words like heterosexual and homosexual would be included under the identisexual umbrella as they are defined as attraction to genders like or unlike one’s own which is an affinity attraction. although often in pop culture these types of attractions are used to label attraction to appearance despite affinities not being discernible externally (no harm in communicating them through expression however).

ideosexual

according to dictionary websites you can use ideo in compound words referring to ideas. so as beliefs and ideologies are essentially ideas, opinions even if strong ones, it makes sense to refer to this kind of attraction as ideosexual.

ideosexual could range from attraction to a person’s own moral code, to their unique worldview, or even just to the importance they place on certain values like honesty. which specific values, beliefs or ideologies an ideosexual person might find attractive will be unique from person to person there might be value in exploring attraction to similar vs dissimilar ideas.

noetisexual

a word that was coined by Michon Neal here. my attempt to describe it would be the experiencing attraction towards a person’s mind, which encompasses their personality, uniqueness and behavior (in it’s expression of their mind).

in my previous article about types of attraction i had mentioned noetisexual as being specifically for sexual attraction but i think the original intention was for it to be all kinds of attraction and the sexual in the word being an indicator of sexual orientation (a convention which i’ve adopted with the rest of these words too).

symbiosexual

symbiosexual is the umbrella term for attraction towards the nature of the interactions between yourself and the person that is being found attractive. this is where a lot of kinks live but also includes things like finding the way someone flirts with you attractive or liking someone who you find funny / who finds you funny.

usually symbiosis is thought of as a long term thing, as it’s often used to describe the partnerships between species for mutual benefit. but i don’t think there is any specific need for it to be a long term thing.

even long term relationships can produce higher levels of attraction as you learn to interact with each other in ways that you both like (eg synergy). so using this concept for both long term attractions as well as fleeting or completely distanced attractions (like feeling an emotional connection with a performer because of the performer-audience relationship you feel).

short respite

so i wanted to take a breather after that and mention that i’m not sure if these terms should be specifically used as personal identifiers, not unless someone wants to of course, but rather they are meant to be linguistic tools that can be used to explore sexuality and attraction without the overbearing framing around gender that exists in today’s discourse.

that being said i think there might be certain patterns in attraction that are worth being conceptualized as well and those would make much better candidates for self-identification. yet again i want to emphasize that i am literally sucking this out of my thumb so no doubt someone with a phd will do some research and write a paper with a better model and this will become obsolete, but until that happens i’ll at least have some framework with which to understand things.

so let’s have a look at some of these patterns…

omnisexual

omni is a pretty common prefix that conveys the meaning “all”. so in this context “all” refers to experiencing attraction to people who are attractive in all the properties of attraction.

in other words a person’s appearance, affinities, values, personality and interactions all need to be attractive before attraction to them is experienced. there might be different emphasis on specific attractive properties but none would be deemed unattractive if an omnisexual found that person attractive.

this might be experienced as kinda like a combination lock where it’s all or nothing, or it might be experienced as each being separately attractive but not enough so on their own for the person to be considered “attractive” and only requiring the presence of all of them to build up to enough net attraction.

omnisexual isn’t meant to imply a lack of preferences or tastes, one might still have specific preferences or things they find attractive, it’s merely an indication that a person finds someone else attractive only when all those preferences are met.

nihilsexual

i wanted to put a word to feeling no attraction of any kind. while there is currently discussions around being asexual, there has also been discussions around being aromantic.

asexual in the context of this graph would either be any of the blocks in the “sexual” row not being present in someone’s experience or an umbrella term for that whole row being missing. it would be ambiguous to use that same word for this and so the need for a new name.

nihil is commonly found in words like nihilism or annihilation and is meant to mean “nothing” which is quite appropriate and nihilsexual has a nice sound to it in my opinion.

indesexual

this word refers to someone who is indeterminate in their attraction, meaning that they will find might find someone attractive based on any one or more of their properties without it mattering which specific property / properties are being found attractive.

this is effectively a type of sexuality where the person is attracted to “at least one thing” about someone but with no preference as to what that thing is. this might be what some people refer to when they use the word “pansexual” but there are also definitions of that which refer o gender so it’s better to use a new word here.

dissosexual

this is different from nihilsexual in that the person definitely know they feel attraction but are unable to tell what they are attracted to. the name is derived from dissociate and is meant to imply a disconnection, ambiguity, confusion or obfuscation of a person’s sexuality but not a due to it being completely absent.

it’s also possible that a person might feel dissosexual for a specific period of time rather than it being a permanent state.

conclusion

these terms begin to bring this model into focus a little better for me but i need to do some more thinking before i make up my mind on whether it needs any changes.

yet even now i have started to think about my own sexuality and noticing that for example on the sexual row indicating actual sexual attraction and not sexual orientation i have each box present except for affinity. so i might take the word for the affinity orientation “identisexual” and add an a to the beginning to indicate absence and describe myself as “a-identisexual”.

i’m sure better names will come along but even placeholder names are useful in conceptualizing things. as i think of more patterns or combinations i’ll make additional posts with the new ones and come back here to edit in a link to them.

i’d love to hear some feedback on these ideas so if you’re interested join this facebook group and find me or tweet me.

if you want to read something else i wrote try this post on gender