Next Step: Cake • Aces and monosexuality

Aces and monosexuality

So nextstepcake asked:

Where do people feel they are located with regards to the whole monosexual/non-monosexual divide?

For reference:

monosexual: sexually attracted to only one gender (i.e. heterosexual, homosexual)

non-monosexual: sexually attracted to multiple genders (i.e. bisexual, pansexual)

As for asexuality, it could interact with these ideas in various ways - before I state my thoughts, do any ace-spectrum folks out there have any thoughts on where they feel they would fit into this? Or if they fit at all?

I’m most interested in how feel they fit into this personally, rather than how asexuality as a broad category should be considered (although if you have thoughts on that they could be interesting too)

(also, as to why I’m asking: we were having a conversation about this in a planning meeting for one of my campus’ queer groups, and I realized I’m actually not sure what many other aces think on this, although I have a few of my own thoughts)

I was going to reblog, but then my response exploded and sprouted pictures, so I decided to make it its own post. Whoo!

So my first inclination is to check the “none of the above” box when asked whether I identify as nonmonosexual or monosexual. I’m not sexually attracted to anyone; therefore, I am neither monosexual nor nonmonosexual. But then I started imagining what that would look like, and I wound up with one of those graphs where asexuality is just sort of floating off in space above/below the graph while all the non-asexual people get to party together on the graph. And that made me sad, because asexy floating points just aren’t as cool as asexy points on the graph.

So then I thought about all this a little bit too hard and came up with a way to visualize monosexuality, nonmonosexuality, and asexuality all together, without having to put the aces in time out.

Prepare yourselves for a bunch of badly drawn diagrams.

So, ignoring aces for a moment, this is basically what I imagine the monosexual-nonmonosexual dichotomy looking like.

In one corner you have people who are interested in ladies, in another you have people who are interested in dudes, and in yet another you have people who are interested in both.

And, hey, we can throw some non-binary folks (who are normally excluded by these sorts of graphs) in there by giving them a side to themselves.

(Of course, the issue with this graph is that some people might interpret it as saying that gender is a spectrum from dude to lady, which it isn’t. I drew this while half-asleep this morning and I am aware it has problems, so if you want to come up with a better way to represent non-binary genders on this graph, please go ahead, and let me know what you come up with!)

So, anyway, the nice thing about this system is that you can plot a whole bunch of different points to correspond to different sexualities! Alternatively, you can think of this as some sort of triangular Kinsey scale with non-binary folks thrown in.

The problem is, of course, the aces.

…yeah, we’re just sort of floating out in space.

It’s pretty sad, actually, ‘cause while pink-dot person can be all, “Yeah, I’m attracted to ladies mainly and non-binary people a little bit,” and blue-dot person can be all, “Yeah, I’m mostly into the dudes,” and purple-dot person can be all, “I AM CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS,” the aces are mostly just hanging around awkwardly outside the triangle saying, “…hey…hey guys…I’m…I’m not really into anyone…can I come to the party anyway?”

So how do we stick aces into this?

So imagine the graph looks like this instead.

(Also imagine that I can draw 3D shapes. I can’t. I am well aware that I can’t. I have super limited depth perception, which makes drawing in 3D a special circle of hell for me. You can imagine how fun multivariable calculus was for me.)

So if we slap a couple of labels on there, we can see that basically it’s just the triangle from before turned into some sort of upside-down pyramid thing.

And, hey, we can use the 3rd dimension for intensity of attraction!

(Just so you know, the third arrow from demi is supposed to be pointing to the invisible back wall of the pyramid, not just randomly into space. Like I said, I can’t really draw in 3D.)

And, hey, now we can plot sexual attraction in 3D! Plus the aces aren’t sadly floating off in space!

Of course, you wind up with some weird things if you are, for example, heterosexual but have some grey-sexual attraction to people of the same gender. You can still graph that (for example, by using a line between the two points or a bunch of different points), although that might make your graph look really odd. (If any of you have solutions for this conundrum you should let me know too.)

Anyway, the point is, if you look at this graph, it’s pretty obvious that I don’t think asexuality is either monosexual or nonmonosexual. It’s sort of chilling out below the monosexual and nonmonosexual folks being like, “‘Sup, guys.”

…so, yeah, that’s what I did while I was half-asleep this morning.

Personally, if I didn’t have badly drawn graphs and I was forced at gun-point to choose being identified as monosexual or nonmonosexual, I would choose nonmonosexual, for the same reason that I’ll check the “bisexual” box when the only three options on surveys are gay, straight, and bisexual. Since I’m biromantic, I’m clearly not straight and clearly not gay, so “bisexual” is the closest I can get to “likes dudes and ladies romantically but not sexually.”

But, honestly, I’d really like a “none of the above” option.