question to asexuals

Because it happens to be accurate information, according to everything we know. And actually, I often do go into detail about how to address the issue.


[/quote]I bring up homosexuality because, when it was being pathologised, it was very newly being researched. Asexuality is the same, it has only recently begun being researched in more detail and there are still many who don't believe it even exists.Researchers have been looking at sexual orientation for years, yes, but this focus has been on heterosexuality and homosexuality for the most part.[/quote]
That's simply not true. Kinsey wrote about asexuality in the 1940s, and it has been studied consistently since then.

Right, that's the entire point. People use the bisexual label, often, as a bridge. (and before the bisexual people get up in arms, certainly bisexuality exists and is common; it's just that some people incorrectly use the label when they are in the bargaining stage and coming to accept themselves.)

The difference here is, when people label themselves asexual, they often give up on the idea that there could be sexual attraction. If you're labeling yourself bi, you still leave yourself open for experimentation and exploration. When you label as asexual, many people simply accept that and give up on considering that it could be a transient experience and that something could be getting in the way. And as I said before, we've seen many who have done that and regretted it. Far better (in my book, anyway) to explore possibilities, and rule out other (changeable) factors that could be getting in the way of a permanent and unchangeable trait that means you'll never enjoy sex.

It doesn't. You'll notice that in each such conversation, I basically say "Here's what it means, according to the overwhelming majority of people. So if you're looking for an accurate label, this may not be it. But you're still welcomed to use it if it works for you."

If it helps them understand themselves better and isn't something wholly ridiculous (like a word for being sexually attracted to water bottles) then it causes no harm.
[/quote] I'll go you one farther: If someone wants to use a ridiculous label, like "object sexual", they're certainly entitled to, and even that may cause no harm. All I'm saying is... understand the ramifications of choosing a label that essentially turns off the possibility of exploration if you're going to act on that label.

That's essentially my stance. Only difference is, if someone throws out the possibility of the asexual label (which they would not otherwise be doing if not for the small-but loud-and-annoying crowd that's attempted to hijack the label) and has no signs of it, we do a disservice by not telling them that.

 

Uh, no. The difference isn't age or generation. The difference is on terminology being pulled out of your ass, where there's absolutely nothing other than crowdsourced common belief, vs. people who work with labels and people all day long and have a deep understanding of these nuances. None of the research, study, observation is new. What is new is a generation of people who were raised (and, by the way, this is extremely well documented... it's the disaster of the "self esteem movement) to believe that they are each special and individual and are entitled to special treatment.

That may have changed in the minds of unscientific people who don't care about validity of information, but I assure you that among anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and others who believe that having some common, replicable basis, there's been no sudden change in the importance of validated information in order to draw reliable conclusions.

While that may be true with regard to white people (since many studies are done using a college student population which has tended to skew white), the rest is not. If anything, there may be more studies on women than men, and there have been quite a few studies looking at various population samples. (You have to go to research done outside the US for many of them, but that in no way devalues the studies.)

On this we agree.

That isn't true either. There are constant new studies looking at a variety of things. And in particular, studies on sexual orientation, attraction, arousal, and lack thereof are consistent topics that have been explored for generations. And, unsurprisingly, all of the differences that the self-esteem generation thinks magically apply to them are... simply not supported by the research that's out there. I don't think this is a function of poor research, homogenous research samples, or excluded populations for the reasons already discussed.

If and when there's emerging information that supports any of the notions that people are, at this point, simply getting together and agreeing on... then there's something to talk about. In the meantime, if people want to engage in magical thinking, label themselves "objectsexual" or "lithrosexual" or "unicornsexual" or some other ridiculous label... they're certainly entitled to do so. But when we start using words without any basis for their meaning, we start getting confusion when there's no reallity-based consensus on what those words mean. And that, in turn, hinders communication. I'd hope that everyone can agree that the ability to communicate using common language is important.

Anyone is welcomed to use any word they want to, no matter how ridiculous, unfounded, and without any basis in reality it is. We have no disagreement on that point. Unless they want a word that will actually make sense to average people. Otherwise, what's the point? You're going to have to explain it to every person you run into, which defeats the purpose of using the word in the first place... unless the purpose of using that word is to feel special. And if that's the reasoning... there's a completely different issue at work.

Agreed.

 

A quick sampling of studies that took about 2 minutes, all with non-white, some mixed sexual orientation (gay/bi/lesbian) and often non-cis populations. I didn't specifically pull out lesbian and trans-related studies, but there were quite a few of those as well :

• Bibliography of Berdache and Alternative Gender Roles Among North American Indians.
• South Asian-Canadian Gay Men and HIV: Social, Cultural, and Psychological Factors
• We Pretend Like Sexuality Doesn't Exist: Managing Homophobia in Gaysian America
• Dual identity among gay Asian Pacific Islander men.
• Sexual Positioning and Race-Based Attraction by Preferences for Social Dominance Among Gay Asian/Pacific Islander Men in the United States
• Negotiating multiple marginalizations: Experiences of South Asian LGBQ individuals.
• Negotiating the Confluence: Middle-Eastern, Immigrant, Sexual-Minority Men and Concerns for Learning and Identity
• Asian Cultural Values, Internalized Heterosexism, and Sexual Orientation Disclosure Among Asian American Sexual Minority Persons.
• Modernist Re-Orientations: Imagining Homoerotic Desire in the "Nearly" Middle East
• Garnering an In-depth Understanding of Men Who Have Sex with Men in Chennai, India: A Qualitative Analysis of Sexual Minority Status and Psychological Distress.
• Correlates of Sexual, Ethnic, and Dual Identity: A Study of Young Asian and Pacific Islander Men who Have Sex with Men.
• A Model of Asian and Pacific Islander Sexual Minority Acculturation
• New Kids on the Block: Human Rights, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity in Southeast Asia
• Sexual identity development of a new generation of emerging adult men: The P18 cohort study

There were hundreds. And that list is from a search of North American journals. Were I to go into the database of European and Asian journals, it would have been a much larger list.

And no one should have any problem with that.

You seem to think I have some problem with the idea of expansion of labels. I don't. I'm not at all attached to any particular belief about much of anything; in fact, if you were to look back at my posting history over my 17,000 posts in the past 7 or 8 years, you'd likely find that I've shifted position 180 degrees on a number of topics, as more information became available, and prevailing thinking changed.

My problem is solely with the accuracy of information being conveyed, and the importance of having some basis in which to ground information and ensure repeatability. Without it, everything is conjecture, and a society built on conjecture and non-replicable information wouldn't last very long.

This is the same tired argument people keep repeating. The problem with it is, we've been looking at all of this stuff -- intimate friendships, erotic attraction, sexual attraction, romantic attraction, communication, and all of the interrelated pieces -- for decades.

You seem to be trying to make it generational, except that it isn't. Much of the research, study, discussion, and treatment is being done by people in their 20s and early 30s, and the majority of them *aren't* on board with the the "throw out the science and support the special snowflakes" movement that a tiny, vocal minority is promoting. On the contrary, at the various conferences, professional seminars, and various academic venues, I run into an awful lot of people in their 20s and early 30s who don't buy into the "science doesn't matter" bullshit that you seem to be promoting.

On the contary, among those that work with the younger populations where this trend is prevalent, they are deeply concerned with the proliferation not of the labels, but of the maladjustive patterns that seem to coexist among many of those who are so deeply attached to these labels and the philosophy behind them. This, in turn, feeds back into the whole discussion of the "self-esteem movement" and the problems that have arisen with this generation as a result. That's not the fault of the millenials; it's a byproduct of faulty research and poorly considered conclusions that led to bad patterns with child raising and schooling, and it will take a generation to fix. But the changes have already been made for the most part.

And I've also talked with quite a few of the people in their 30s and 40s who have been doing this for 20+ years and have seen the same patterns (often on different topics) re-emerge multiple times... people like you come along, think you've got Great New Information that has nothing backing it,get mad when pesky, annoying things like science demand more than stuff pulled out of your ass to back it up and then... magically, when it turns out that, in fact, the Great New Information was full of shit, it goes away.

Now... I'm open to the idea that much of this stuff has some validity to it. I think it's unlikely, given that we have been studying these things for decades already and have seen little or no signs of it, but it would be foolish to have a closed mind, as there's always more to learn and understand. All I ask is that if we're going to present information to vulnerable populations, such as the populations at EC, that it have something on which to base it, rather than simply being pulled out of someone's ass, or off of Tumblr (actually, those are probably synonymous.)

And in the meantime, as I've said many times, anyone is entitled to use any label s/he wants to use. If it works for him or her, then nobody should be objecting. The only concern is that we shouldn't validate these as objectively factual things we promote to others when there's nothing on which to base that validation.

If you think this is a generational issue, or that a majority of people in their 20s and below agree with the "science-free" approach... I think you're the one with the rude awakening coming.