Interchangeable with aroalloplatonic, aroaloplatonic/aloaroplatonic, alloaroamical/aroalloamical, aroaloamical/aloaroamical, alloarosocial/aroallosocial and aloarosocial/aroalosocial: platonic/amical/social attraction to aroallos/alloaros.
[ID: 5 stripes faded with a shaped diamond square in the middle, colored with two greens, white, yellow and two golden. End ID.] -Ap
Combining flags by @aroaesflags (combos), @bi-lesbian & @arotaro.
An alloaro bi lesbian isn’t always sexually bi lesbian only (as in lesbisexual), the allosexual label isn’t essentially defined, tertiary orientations might also be lesbian or bi too. I.e. being aromantic bisexual while platonically lesbian; a lesbian bisensual aro; a comsexual omnilarumansy bibian-alterous.
However, some arozed bi lesbians are duosexual or abrosexual, meaning they are bi lesbian (zed)sexually, simultaneously or fluctuating between both, others are bisexual aros who are wlw/sapphic or iridian/trixensexual.
Sexuality could fluctuate for some people, you don’t need to be always the same thing. Some people see their identity as innate (inborn, they born that way and will be always that) and other find themselves as fluid. You can go with comsexual or novisexual:
Com-: To experience attraction, polar opposite of A- (asexual/aromantic/etc). An orientation label to use if you do not wish to narrow your orientation down any further than simply feeling attraction. Different from allo/zed in that Com- is a specific identity while allo/zed are blanket terms.
Novi-: feeling complicated attraction or lack thereof in such a way that it is difficult or impossible to fit into one word or term.
You could be a achilliflux, grayflux, alloflux/zedflux, gayflux (or homoflux), fluctuating attraction intensity, from white asexuality (omniasexual) to black allosexuality (omniallosexual or omnizedsexual) for example. Reminder you can use achillean (mlm) without specifying the level of attraction.
Question yourself: do you can experience full attraction any time or at any circunstance? Or are you partially / conditionally / sometimes attracted to men?
There’s also abrosexual and duosexual people switching between grey-acespec and zedsexual (grey-allosexual), some are more greyflexible and other more zedflexible (or alloflexible), usually allo- but sometimes grey/ace. Read more on @greysexuality @grace-and-ace @abrosexuality @abrosexualpride @abrofriend @pomosexualpride @abrosexuallearning @aspecpplarebeautiful
Why we need a word for “off the asexual spectrum” (& how we don’t yet have one)
I’ve had this conversation with a few people recently which reminded me that I’ve been meaning to post something about it for ages but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
TLDR: If the only word to talk about people who are “not on the asexual spectrum” is “non-ace” then there is literally no way to distinguish in language ( without *many* words ) between people who are:
specifically “off the asexual spectrum” ( i.e., zedsexual people / “non-ace” )
people who are neither on nor off the asexual spectrum ( i.e., “non- ace” )
people who are simultaneously on *and* off the asexual spectrum ( i.e., “non-ace” )
people for whom the asexual spectrum simply does not apply and / or is not culturally relevant ( i.e., “non-ace” ).
[ And to be painfully clear, no, those “non-ace” categories are *not* talking about greys and demis– who are by definition *on* the asexual spectrum unless they feel-choose otherwise. ]
That distinction between the different ways of being “non-ace” is important and not being able to make it is actively contributing to / responsible for perpetrating a significant portion of the harm that I think people like @thingsthatmakeyouacey are talking about when they argue that people should stop using “allosexual” ( or any other word to name people who are not ace ).
We need to be able to make these distinctions, especially in order to avoid inappropriately grouping people who are off the asexual spectrum and people for whom the “asexual spectrum does not apply”. And we need language to be able to do it. “Allosexual” clearly isn’t that word, but we do need *something*. That’s not going to be a 1:1 replacement for “allosexual” and how it is currently being used, but it does need to be *something* allowing people to name “people who are off the asexual spectrum” ( and as something different from “people who are not on the asexual spectrum” ).
[read-more]
A lot of criticism of the idea of the word “allosexual” is framed in terms of arguments against *having* a word to name people who are off the asexual spectrum– arguments based on the harm of applying “allosexual” to people for whom the asexual spectrum either does not apply or is not culturally relevant. ( And based on tying it to a “privilege-oppression” axis outside of an intersectional framework. )
To me, those analyses don’t read as arguments for why we *shouldn’t* have a word to mean “off the asexual spectrum”: instead they read as arguments for why we *should* have a word meaning “off the asexual spectrum” ( which is *different* from the words we use to talk about people who are not on the asexual spectrum but who are also not necessarily *off* the asexual spectrum either ).
And no, I would *not* suggest “allosexual” for that word– for so many reasons from it’s connection to clinical authority ranging all the way to all of its other baggage. ( But there’s no reason why zedsexual or something else wouldn’t work fine– especially since any context where it would be relevant to name people who are specifically *off* the asexual spectrum is also probably a context where people are already familiar with the asexual spectrum. )
Having a word to mean “off the asexual spectrum” that is a *different* word from something meaning simply “not on the asexual spectrum” would mean changing the discursive landscape from:
“aces” &
“everybody else”, i.e., non-aces
to:
“aces” ( who are diverse ) &
“zsexuals” ( who are diverse ) &
“everybody else i.e., non-aces who are also not zsexual ( who are diverse ). This “everybody else” includes:
– people who are neither on nor off the asexual spectrum and / or
– people with much more complex relationship to the asexual spectrum ( maybe people who are both on and off it simultaneously ) and / or
– people for whom the asexual spectrum does not apply ( maybe because it’s not culturally relevant especially for women, and / or it’s tied up with sexual violence in a way that makes it non-applicable, and / or it’s something else )
But that’s not something the word “allosexual” was set up to do– it was set up to be an all-encompassing binary “us / aces” versus “them / everyone else”. ( And that “aces / everybody else” framing is incidentally is why some people have kept defending the specific word “allosexual” in particular [e.g., here ] ).
When “non-ace” means literally “not on the asexual spectrum”, that can include both people who are “off the asexual spectrum” *and* people who aren’t “off the asexual spectrum” but who also aren’t necessary on the asexual spectrum either. ( And when it doesn’t, then entire groups of people are defined out of existence, which is bad all around. )
“Non-ace” can be very useful when it’s what people are trying to talk about– and it often is.
But it’s also a problem for that to be the *only* term because it means there’s other stuff that *can’t* be talked about– or at least is *very difficult* to talk about. And that’s not helping anyone either, and it is contributing to some of the harm that people are talking about when they oppose the word “allosexual”.
Making that shift away from the ( explicit or implicit ) conceptualisation of an “ace / allosexual” binary is something that is necessary. It’s also something that theoretically might involve using a word to name people “off the asexual spectrum” ( as long as that word isn’t “allosexual” and doesn’t get used as a 1:1 replacement of how people are using “allosexual” right now ).
And as it happens, that shift is just as necessary as– and also related to– acknowledging that no single attraction-based / desire-based definition of asexuality is going to work for everyone… no matter how inconvenient that acknowledgement is for neoliberal identity politics that are framed around “involuntary attraction / desire” which is blameless-under-neoliberal-morality-and-therefore-deserving-of-protection-unlike-aspects-of-experience-that-people-might-be-able-to-exert-some-agency-over ( but more on that in a series I drafted a month ago but haven’t gotten around to posting yet. )
A lot of the criticism against the idea of having a word to name people who are not on the asexual spectrum have ( and require ) a lot of nuance. It’s not a simple issue and nobody has articulated anything I completely agree with.
@metapianycist broke down many of the common criticisms against the word “allosexual” in this post [ text ].
But a lot of the criticism originates from and / or is largely elaborated by @thingsthatmakeyouacey who has argued at length about the violence of grouping people with their oppressors in a broader system to label them privileged for experiences that are treated as being shared with those oppressors but which are in fact fundamentally different because they are related their marginalisation, particularly a colonial marginalisation [ e.g., text re: grouping oppressors despite different experiences , text explaining how it’s sometimes just not culturally appropriate or relevant to be framing things in terms of asexuality due to patriarchal-colonial violence , text talking more generally about ace community and “allosexual” as connected to white supremacy ].
The parts of those arguments are about grouping together people with their oppressors are the ones that have been most widely criticized, especially for holding a “double-standard” because so many other words ( that people seem to have no problem using ) group people with their oppressors in similar ways. For example, see this exchange [ here cw for violence ].
In my opinion, those are the weakest arguments against the idea of having *a word* ( any word ) to mean “off the asexuals spectrum”. For me, the argument carries more weight for me when applied to how people have specifically been ( mis )using the particular word “allosexual”... but that’s also not really a criticism against “having a word to name people off the asexual spectrum”.
While words like “allosexual” might “sexualise people against their will” *because* it has been imbued with a meaning of experiencing ( a particularly significant amount of ) sexual attraction [ e.g., as @metapianycist argued text ]. And this meaning stems specifically from tying asexuality to a discrete, “objective” definition of asexuality based in those things ( i.e., sexual attraction ) and which ( within its framework ) can and should be applied across the board to people without their input.
That approach to defining asexuality and aceness doesn’t make any sense, doesn’t fit with the diverse lived experiences of aces ( who don’t all come to ace identities for the same reasons ), results in identity-policing of denying some aces their aceness and imposing asexuality on non-aces… and does a lot of other stuff that I don’t need to get into here.
Clearly, this type of definition is hugely problematic “across the board”, and promotes people applying the definition to others without input based on people’s experiences of attraction disembodied from their lived realities within power structures.
And that’s the approach to defining asexuality that @thingsthatmakeyouacey seems to be referring to by saying about the word allosexual that “3. It requires discrete definition of “asexuality,” [ entire text linked to above cw for racism, discussion of anti-semitism and other violence; text cropped so it’s easier to read that list when QueerAsCat responded ].
And I agree that that’s a problem. But I disagree that having a word to refer to people “off the asexual spectrum” specifically requires a discrete definition of asexuality, let alone requires *that* particular neoliberal-sexual-orientation-identity-politics definition of asexuality.
As @thingsthatmakeyouacey has argued many times, there are other ways of framing asexuality within the ace movement, and ace discourse needs to be fundamentally changed, especially if it’s intrinsically based on things that are harmful, such as the word “allosexual” [ text ].
We need to make changes, sure. And we need the language to be able to do that. *Part* of why conversations focused on issues of “how patriarchal-colonial violence can make the asexual spectrum ( i.e., being on or off it ) especially complicated and / or not applicable” aren’t mainstream in ace spaces... is that we don’t have the language to talk about it in a way that isn’t confused by multiple meanings.
And part of that confusion, ironically enough, is that we actually *don’t* have a word that names people who are “off the asexual spectrum”. As people are very clear, both defending and opposing the word “allosexual”: “allosexual” means “people who are not on the asexual spectrum” ( which is actually *not* the same thing as people who are “off the asexual spectrum” ).
We don’t need a word for “not on the asexual spectrum” ( because we have “non-ace” for that). We *do* need a word for “off the asexual spectrum”.
And, once we do have a word for “off the asexual spectrum” ( say zsexual for instance ) the first question glares “whom does it name”? Who are the people who are actually “off the asexual spectrum?” And who are the people who are non-ace, non-zsexual?
That’s a useful question. The answer isn’t easy or obvious or simple. And many times it’s going to be unknowable without first asking people about their experiences and how they make sense of them. And that’s the way it should be. And we need the words to be able to ask the question.
With all the talk and criticism re: “allosexual”, we still don’t have a word that means “off the asexual spectrum". ( Giving “zsexual” that meaning was part of my intention when I tried to re-purpose it in Jan 2015 [ text ], but I didn’t communicate that so it’s a somewhat moot point. )
We do need the words. If we’re actually going to acknowledge the how asexuality is connected to, and acts as a vehicle of, colonialism, and if we’re actually going to work to reshape the “ace movement”, then we need to be able to clearly name where asexuality is and is not applicable. We need to be able to distinguish between “non-ace because off the asexual spectrum” and “non-ace because asexuality is not applicable”. We do need a word to name “people off the asexual spectrum”.
I’ve got no problem with “allo” but I much prefer z/zed which plays on the whole “a-z” thing. As a Demi, it includes me better and just makes more sense overall. “Allo” means other. Other what? There’s nothing in the word itself to indicate “other than ace/aro” so technically any sexuality could use it and be correct.
“Every sexuality other than insert-chosen-sexuality-here-sexual”sexual. It’s weird.
Y’know, considering that the whole point is supposedly to avoid forcing connotations of sexual activity/sexual availability/sexualization onto non-ace groups who may be at risk from such assumptions, it seems kind of odd that all the popular coined alternatives to “sexual” still end with…”sexual”.
Made a minor post about a linguistic thing that’s been bugging me for a while.
