historicallyace

[historicallyace]

What Kind Of Attraction? A History Of The Split Attraction Model

The split attraction model, or SAM, has been viciously attacked over the course of the past couple years, based on claims that it is homophobic, sexualizing, etc. In order to understand where these claims break down, it’s important to consider the history of split attraction as a model for orientation.

Disjunctive Identities: The Original SAM

Long before the split attraction model was conceived, before even the popularization of gay and lesbian as identity words, there was Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. By 1879, Ulrichs had published twelve books on the subject of non-heterosexual attraction. Though the language he used is not modern sexuality language, the various classifications of orientations that he eventually came up with are fairly similar to modern LGB+ identities, with some exceptions.

Most notable among those exceptions (at least for the purposes of this post) is the fact that he identified two distinct categories of people who would today be considered bisexual (which he then called uranodioning in men and uranodioningin in women): konjunktiver and disjunktiver. (In English, conjunctive and disjunctive bisexuality.) The first described a person with both “tender” and “passionate” feelings for both men and women. The second, however, described a person who had “tender” feelings for men, but “passionate” feelings for women (if the person was a man - the inverse if the person was a woman).

Though Ulrichs’s model was never widely popularized, due to its complexity (he also recognized “man who has sex with men in prison but is otherwise straight” and “man who has been through conversion therapy” as distinct sexualities, among others), it remains the first historical model of orientation to account for split attraction.

Limerance: Separating Love From Sex

The next instance of a model accounting for split attraction was published almost exactly a century after Ulrichs’s works. Psychologist Dorothy Tennov’s studies of attraction and love in the 1960′s led to the publication of her book “Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love” in 1979.

Limerance encompassed what would now be termed a crush, or infatuation with someone - the kind of attraction that would lead to the formation of a relationship, and which could lead to a longer-term, stable experience of love. Although Tennov viewed limerance as essentially including sexual attraction, she acknowledged that sex was not the focus of limerant attraction.

In and of itself, therefore, limerance would not be considered a split attraction model. However, it is worth mentioning because of later use of “non-limerant” as a precursor to today’s “aromantic.”

Affectional Attraction: The First Modern SAM

It is unclear when, precisely, the term “affectional orientation/attraction” first came into popular use. I have seen its coining attributed to Curt Pavola, a gay rights activist from Washington, and to Lisa Diamond, a psychologist. However, the term seems to predate both of these individuals, with the earliest use I can find being from a 1989 paper on education about gay and lesbian identities, wherein the authors use affectional attraction as a term which they do not feel the need to define, indicating to me that its origin must be earlier than that.

Affectional attraction/orientation was used, as a term, to indicate that simply using sexual attraction/orientation was reductive - that it implied that a relationship or feeling of attraction was entirely or mostly about sex. A large body of writing about orientation from the 90′s and early 2000′s uses “affectional/sexual orientation” or similar phrasing for exactly this reason.

Haven For The Human Amoeba: Today’s Split Attraction

Finally, we trace split attraction to a form that is familiar to all of us today.

An attempt on AVEN to trace the origins of romantic orientations as we know them leads to the Yahoo email group Haven For The Human Amoeba (the name of which was derived from the article “My Life As A Human Amoeba”). In that group, in 2001, there were a series of posts about the term "hetero-asexual”.

The idea of split attraction as used today, however, was developed about four years later, in 2005, on AVEN. Terms were hashed out, and the structure of the language that we use today was born. By 2007, the modern language of split attraction was in common use in asexual circles, and was also tentatively suggested to non-asexual people who were questioning their identities.

Conclusions

What can we conclude from this information? I would summarize what I’ve found with the following points:

1) That split attraction, or the potential for split attraction, is not a modern concept, but has been something we have been aware of for centuries.

2) That split attraction is not an exclusively asexual concept, but up until very recently was an integral part of orientation studies in general.

3) That the modern language of split attraction originated within the asexual community.

4) That anyone who blames asexual people for any perceived horribleness of the split-attraction model is flat wrong.

Further Reading & Sources

On Ulrichs’s Uranian model of orientation: one, two, three, four, five

On Limerence: one, two, three

On Affectional Attraction: one, two, three

On The Modern SAM: one, two, three

[historicallyace]

Thanks for the correction and additional info! (I think I was following you back in the day, but it would have been post-discourse.)

And please don’t go out of your way looking for things, especially if it’s distressing! (And double especially in the current state of everything is awful.) I enjoy doing tag deep dives, so when I actually have the energy to sit down and do that it’ll be a good distraction for me.

Read The Article Here 

I’ve been going back and recording ace history from years ago, largely about topics that at the time were of note, but weren’t distant enough to recap as if it was a touchstone until now.

This post covers that clash that happened when aces started to openly show up in fandom spaces on tumblr. How that conflict was largely between aces (of all sorts) and straight white women. 

While this article may seem like old fandom drama, it’s written in a way to show the inter-connectivity between groups, how community ideas spread, and how the companies behind fandoms can actually easily protect their LGBTQ fans.  

TW: Discussions of biphobia, acephobia, racism, and homophobia

[historicallyace]

This is an interesting read. Can’t confirm personally as I restricted my participation in the DA fandom to the things the friends who got me into the games shared with me, and this article doesn’t provide sources except for a screenshot of a tweet, so consider this added to my nebulous to-do list. (You all know how I am about loving to have sources.) Some day, we’ll see if I can’t pull up some corroborating info, because this feels right, but I’d love to be able to confirm this progression.

Read The Article Here 

I’ve been going back and recording ace history from years ago, largely about topics that at the time were of note, but weren’t distant enough to recap as if it was a touchstone until now.

This post covers that clash that happened when aces started to openly show up in fandom spaces on tumblr. How that conflict was largely between aces (of all sorts) and straight white women. 

While this article may seem like old fandom drama, it’s written in a way to show the inter-connectivity between groups, how community ideas spread, and how the companies behind fandoms can actually easily protect their LGBTQ fans.  

TW: Discussions of biphobia, acephobia, racism, and homophobia

[historicallyace]

asexuality is not an ‘internet identity’, a fad, or fake.

as an asexual person myself, it’s difficult to deal with feeling both under-represented and excluded, both in cishet society AND lgbtq+ circles. the general conception regarding asexuality, in my experience, is that it’s a new identity, specifically a ‘tumblr snowflake’ identity, it’s not real, it’s a medical condition, etc etc. not only is this perspective genuinely hurtful and damaging, it’s just plain wrong. 

asexuality’s history can be hard to pin down, exactly, outside of writings specifically about it because it’s difficult to write about an absence of something (in this case sexual encounters/attraction) rather than the presence of it. however, the concept has existed longer than our modern terms for it, as is the case with all other lgbtq+ identities. 

unfortunately, I’m going to be speaking from an especially western standpoint, because I myself was born and raised in the western hemisphere and the sources I’m currently privy to are western. 

before any terminology was coined, 17th century author and poet Catherine Bernard wrote various works that have since been read as relating to asexuality. her views of love, sex, marriage, and personal affairs (or lack thereof) speak to the asexual experience. here’s an article about her and her works for more information. 

‘monosexual’ was a term coined in 1869 by Karl-Maria Kertbeny, the same man who coined the terms ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ (all 3 in the same pamphlet, actually!). ‘monosexual’ refers to people who only masturbate, rather than have sexual encounters, the implication there being that monosexuals have no interest in sex/feel no need for it. (it’s a myth that asexual people don’t masturbate–some do, some don’t. asexual people have fully functioning equipment, and are perfectly capable of having and even enjoying orgasms. remember that stimulation of sexual organs is not the same thing as feeling attraction). 

Keep reading

[historicallyace]

“We chose the term “asexual” to describe ourselves because both “celibate” and “anti-sexual” have connotations we wished to avoid: the first implies that one has sacrificed sexuality for some higher good, the second that sexuality is degrading or somehow inherently bad. “Asexual”, as we use it, does not mean “without sex” but “relating sexually to no one”. This does not, of course, exclude masturbation but implies that if one has sexual feelings they do not require another person for their expression. Asexuality is, simply, self-contained sexuality.”

— The Asexual Manifesto, Lisa Orlando and Barbara Getz, 1972

[historicallyace]

Thank you for articulating this, because this was the idea I was trying to get at.

I remember that ace community, and I miss it dreadfully.

Okay so here’s the thing about “ace discourse”

There is literally no point debating people who think it’s no big deal if you “just” have to hide your orientation in fear of negative reactions, if you “just” have to deal with psychologists and institutions declaring your orientation non-existent and pathologizing you at every turn, if your orientation is “just” not taught about in school and college and if you “just” go a big part of or all your life thinking there is something wrong with you as a result.

It is simply a waste of time and energy to try and hold conversations with people who think being pathologized and dehumanized and declared to not exist at every turn is not in itself indicative of any big problem or form of marginalization - because don’t we know everything is fine as long as society doesn’t actively want us dead (just gone).

There is no talking with people who feel comfortable trivializing, mocking and adding on to these experiences because they hate aces and they hate aros and would we just shut up if we can’t produce very specific studies they would still do their best to pick apart and be fully prepared to ignore or make up lies about if they can’t (remember “asexuality is a white orientation based on this US website poll where participants, from the US, were mostly white” - this is what that crowd will do with data).

There is no “ace discourse” on this website if you understand discourse as a productive conversation. There are people who hate aces and aros a whole lot who feel picking apart and tearing into our minority orientations is a good way to strengthen their arguments, and more people who largely go along with that, who are hurting so many aces and aros belonging to so many oppressed groups, and now it just goes on and on and people who are not deeply familiar with it - or who are desperate to make the worst of it stop - mistake it for something that can be productive. But it’s not. It’s been going on for years and years and all that changes is the degree of horrible-ness, which goes up and down but never far down.

And if I don’t include any proof of how bad this shit is then people are likely to come flocking to this post to paint me as hysterical at best so I’m doing it even though I’d rather not

There are all kinds of discussions you can have about asexuality and aromanticism and discussions that are important to have but “ace discourse” as a thing that is largely focused on criticising and picking apart the ace and aro communities is toxic beyond belief

And people need to understand that

[historicallyace]

I could write a whole essay on this in addition, but short version because I don't have the processing power for that post today:

Not only is this not discourse, the thing that we've named "ace discourse" is actively preventing discourse. I know I've said this before, but there are intracommunity conversations we could be having that cannot happen because those conversations are always going to either come from a place of exclusion or be used by exclusionists even when they're in good faith as a sign that all aces are bad.

Okay so here’s the thing about “ace discourse”

There is literally no point debating people who think it’s no big deal if you “just” have to hide your orientation in fear of negative reactions, if you “just” have to deal with psychologists and institutions declaring your orientation non-existent and pathologizing you at every turn, if your orientation is “just” not taught about in school and college and if you “just” go a big part of or all your life thinking there is something wrong with you as a result.

It is simply a waste of time and energy to try and hold conversations with people who think being pathologized and dehumanized and declared to not exist at every turn is not in itself indicative of any big problem or form of marginalization - because don’t we know everything is fine as long as society doesn’t actively want us dead (just gone).

There is no talking with people who feel comfortable trivializing, mocking and adding on to these experiences because they hate aces and they hate aros and would we just shut up if we can’t produce very specific studies they would still do their best to pick apart and be fully prepared to ignore or make up lies about if they can’t (remember “asexuality is a white orientation based on this US website poll where participants, from the US, were mostly white” - this is what that crowd will do with data).

There is no “ace discourse” on this website if you understand discourse as a productive conversation. There are people who hate aces and aros a whole lot who feel picking apart and tearing into our minority orientations is a good way to strengthen their arguments, and more people who largely go along with that, who are hurting so many aces and aros belonging to so many oppressed groups, and now it just goes on and on and people who are not deeply familiar with it - or who are desperate to make the worst of it stop - mistake it for something that can be productive. But it’s not. It’s been going on for years and years and all that changes is the degree of horrible-ness, which goes up and down but never far down.

And if I don’t include any proof of how bad this shit is then people are likely to come flocking to this post to paint me as hysterical at best so I’m doing it even though I’d rather not

There are all kinds of discussions you can have about asexuality and aromanticism and discussions that are important to have but “ace discourse” as a thing that is largely focused on criticising and picking apart the ace and aro communities is toxic beyond belief

And people need to understand that

[historicallyace]

Stop trying to add more stripes to the ace flag.  The gray strip is for grey-ace and demisexuals

[historicallyace]

Thank you so much! I feel relieved, because everything you said was everything (except the modding part, and the triangle's origins) that we had already picked up on and argued against. For what it's worth, one of the people from Ace Twitter does have a friend who knows DJ and he's a biromantic ace (yes, in a triad), and apparently was a homoromantic ace back then? So he always was "allowed" to joke about the f word anyway. But yeah, you tackled it all. My eternal appreciation and gratitude.

Glad I could help. Actually that was helpful for me too, since I didn’t realize just how many of those arguments were in seriously bad faith until I put that answer together so! Unfortunately, variations on those arguments have been going around for...mmm I want to say a solid ten or more years at this point? I know I was seeing them back when I was actually on AVEN. So do consider that when you decide how much to engage with them. 

(As a note, I also updated the section in that post about the mod drama, with some more correct information.)

Give Ace Twitter my love!

[historicallyace]

Collecting Resources for Black Aces

If anyone would care to help update it, I’ve set up a new google doc for Ace POC resources, since the other resource lists I”m aware of aren’t actively updating. We’re currently trying to work on the section for resources for Black aces first.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D-hEueVjziJoK9lIpbOQXzEJjmImRGGQXdzHFlFWf18/edit#

[historicallyace]

Hi hello, I've gone through your whole blog and it's fantastic! Now for my question, which is actually a general...wondering? Have you heard or seen sources for why the AVEN founder, David Jay, is apparently homophobic/misogynist/AntiSemitic? Myself and other Ace Twitter people are looking, but so far all we've found is normal queer growing pains and people making stuff up. I saw that you intended to look into AVEN eventually, so I thought maybe you'd have info?

I’m not planning on doing a post on AVEN any more at this point, because I’m so far removed from that drama and that website that at this point it just feels silly, but yeah, we can talk about David Jay. That might as well be how I start my day.

Let’s start with the fact that these arguments, regardless of any truth to them, are always being made in bad faith. The argument is never “David Jay is a bad person and shouldn’t be in charge of AVEN (aside: is he actually in charge of anything any more? He’s not listed on the moderation team at AVEN any more), and you probably shouldn’t use him as a source of information about asexuality,” it’s always “David Jay is a bad person, and therefore asexuality is bad, and therefore all asexual people are bad.” One of those, given reasonable evidence (take note of that disclaimer, it’ll be relevant later), is a reasonable argument. One of those isn’t.

With that said, let’s break down the arguments under the cut.

If they’re saying “David Jay is homophobic!” what they most likely mean is “David Jay made a joke on an AVEN thread once that involved a slur that I don’t think he has the right to use!” Here’s the thread, which is a shitshow all the way down to be honest, but is peak 2003 Internet. User AVENguy is David Jay, and posts in the thread about changing a university LGBTQ+ group’s acronym to include the word f*g. Given that no such university group has any web presence at all, ever, that I can find (and in particular, Wesleyan University, which is the school Jay attended, seems to generally use queer for its services and student groups), I’m reasonably confident that is is meant to be a joke poking fun at the length of the extended acronym, which you’d think exclusionists would love given how much they love chopping that acronym off at the knees in defiance of all history and logic. Now, I’m not saying that it’s a joke in good taste. But it smells like a joke to me, and doesn’t get treated as one in the court of Internet opinion.

Whether Jay actually has the right to use that particular slur is, to my mind, up for debate as he has had relationships with men (I believe he’s currently in a committed polyamorous relationship with a man and a woman?). I don’t know whether he IDs as bi in addition to ace, although I know people on Tumblr have made that claim. I’ve never seen a source one way or the other. I don’t know whether he’s attracted to men. I do know that I’m 100% not interested in interrogating what words he does and does not have permission to use based on a detailed history of his relationships.

If they’re saying “David Jay is a misogynist!” what they most likely mean is “David Jay has had sex and didn’t enjoy it, and the way he talks about it in interviews is uncomfortable.” See this interview for an example of this. What statements like this get interpreted into is the classic exclusionist line of “asexual people are being manipulative if they have sex”. The way Jay talks about sex is definitely not the way that someone who isn’t ace would expect to talk about sex. It’s not the way that I talk about sex, as an asexual person. But I’m not uncomfortable in a “this man is definitely treating these women badly” way, I’m uncomfortable in a “oh boy, you were obviously making some choices here that weren’t great for you” way. YMMV.

I’ve also heard allegations that Jay was “documenting his sex life with his ex-wife on AVEN.” Given that 1) Jay has never been married, 2) I don’t have enough search terms to go on to find the threads in question, and 3) I definitely don’t remember seeing something like that back in the day when I was actually active on AVEN, I’m inclined to discount that, but it’s an argument that’s out there.

If they’re saying “David Jay is antisemitic!” what they most likely mean is “I don’t like the AVEN logo.” This is honestly one I’d never heard before, and I’m not confident that this is right. If David Jay has actually said or done something that is antisemitic, though, I’m not able to find reference to it. So I’m guessing it stems from something like this, in which an anon is calling out the AVEN logo as antisemitic (under the assumption that is is based on the pink triangle). AVEN’s triangle gradient logo is based on the Kinsey scale (see here for an example of this diagram in use). It is a reconfiguration of the Storms Model. The fact that it is the same shape as the pink triangle is coincidental.

I feel like there could also be a connection to the AVEN mod drama of 2015-2016 - at the time, AVEN’s forums had rules that were enforced in such a way that peoples’ threads would get locked for pointing out that something someone else had said was bigoted (under “personal attacks” rules IIRC). I don’t remember whether there were specific incidences around that rule with antisemitic hate speech, but it is possible. Striking this part because I’ve managed to pull up some of the old references to the mod drama (see here for some details) which was actually older than I remembered it being, and am not finding any references to antisemitism accusations. So it’s probably just the triangle, which again, has no connection to the pink triangle. Two things can be the same shape without being based off each other.

So there you have it. These are the crimes of which David Jay has been accused. I find the evidence to be specious and open to interpretation at best, and flat-out lies at worst. You can, of course, make your own judgement calls.

My personal opinion is that I don’t really like the guy, but I will defend to the death the facts that he is not the be-all and end-all of asexuality, and he probably doesn’t deserve all of the vitriol that is slung at him.

[historicallyace]

Three Essays by Black Asexual Women

“Romance Is Not the Only Type of Black Love that Matters” by Sherronda J. Brown

“The bonds that Black womxn share amongst ourselves are unlike any other. It is with Black womxn that I am able to be completely and unapologetically myself. It is with Black womxn that I have been able to foster a sisterhood, kinship, and camaraderie that fulfills me and will never let me be alone.”

“As a Black Woman, Celebrating Pride This Year Has Been Hard” by Yasmin Benoit

“Now is the time to remember that queer culture wouldn’t exist without Black culture and Stonewall wouldn’t have happened without Black trans women. Even if none of that were true, it wouldn’t make our struggle any less significant to the LGBTQ+ community. All Black Lives Matter, no ifs, no buts, no justification. That includes Black trans lives, Black gay lives, Black bisexual lives, Black asexual lives, Black non-binary lives. That’s what I’m going to make some noise about, and you should too.“

“The Hardships of Being an Asexual Woman of Color” by Kimberly Steele

“I feel like growing up as a black cis female, I wasn’t given many choices with any kind of way to have a healthy relationship with sexuality. It’s almost like everyone, no matter what race they were or what religion they followed, was raised to view sex and sexual situations the same. That method didn’t work for a great number of people of color, and I feel like my relationship with sex (well, lack of a relationship to it) is part of that.”

[historicallyace]

If you want to see this in an actual paper, @kgdragoon found one version here. (Of course, Dear Abby was a syndicated column, so this same letter would have appeared in a variety of papers.)

[historicallyace]

Historical references to asexuality (in concept) in the Independent Voices collection. See captions for citations; more under the cut.

“WE’RE HERE! WE’RE THERE! WE’RE EVERYWHERE! GET USED TO IT!“ indeed. While we can’t assume “asexual” as used here matches our modern definitions exactly (did any sexuality labels?) or evidences lasting pre-internet communities, these references show how this identity essentially fills a latent gap in theories of sexuality. Even in the hypothetical, it was something so coherent just waiting to be articulated.

Keep reading

[historicallyace]

“Gay, Straight, Bisexual, Asexual—All God’s Children Need Love,” 1973; photograph by Crawford Barton, Crawford Barton Papers (1993-11), GLBT Historical Society.

Spotted in the “Labor of Love” online exhibition by the GLBT Historical Society, which I highly recommend everyone visit for virtual!Pride Month (by googling it because tumblr hates links)

[historicallyace]

Read Full Article Here

[historicallyace]

[ Image Description: A screenshot of a Facebook post by Asexual Alliance, posted May 20, 2013 at 9:43 PM. Their post consists of a screenshot of a Dear Abby column, with the comment “From 1995!”

The column has a header with the Dear Abby logo in a calligraphy font, and a black and white picture of the columnist inside of a heart. The poor quality of the image makes it difficult to see anything other than that she is wearing some kind of high-necked shirt and has a short bob with the ends flipped up.

Text of the column is below the cut. The image is formatted in the style of a newspaper column - formatting (such as all-caps first words and justified margins with dashes to break words) has not been preserved for ease of reading.

Column reads:

Dear Abby: I am writing in response to a recent letter from a 27-year-old male virgin who never had a date.

Well, I’m a 53-year-old virgin who never had a date, but unlike the other fellow, I am not shy or afraid of being rejected. I just have no interest in women. Even back in high school, I had no interest in girls, or going to school dances.

I don’t know if you would consider my lack of feelings for women a problem, but I work in an office where employees have photos of their loved ones on their desks. Because I’m not married at my age and ave no photos of a girlfriend on my desk, people assume I’m gay - which I am not. I have no feelings for men or women.

I have been reading your column for years, Abby, but I’ve never seen a letter from a man who has no interest in sex. You can sign me...

Not looking for a girlfriend in New Jersey

Dear Not Looking: People who have no sexual feelings are called “asexual.” Since it doesn’t appear to bother you, it should present no problem. You are accountable to no one except yourself.

End Description. ]