Attraction Fixation
Feb. 9th, 2021 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osteophage[Note: this post was originally posted to Pillowfort on Jan 7, 2020.]
For my own future reference, since it comes up a fair bit: This is a post about a formulaic "if this, then that" approach to attraction as a sole determiner of orientation, as a type of identity essentialism. I'm open to suggestions on what else to call this -- attraction-centrism? attraction essentialism? -- but "attraction fixation" is the placeholder I'm going with for now.
A lot of examples are related to aces and aros just because those are the examples that I happen to be familiar with, but I welcome making other connections.
(a)sexuality
In the barely twenty-something years that the asexual community has been around, there's been a lot of arguing over how to define asexuality, but one definition more than any others has gained popularity in 101 materials: the one tracing back to early 2000s AVEN, with its declaration that an asexual is "a person who does not experience sexual attraction." Note that AVEN wasn't the first or the only online asexual community at the time, but it is one that happened to gain a lot of prominence, and so the attraction-based definition has become very prevalent as a result.
The attraction-based definition of asexuality has, in some contexts, served a useful role against umbrella crunching. For example, it was one of the alternatives to the essentialism advocated by the now defunct Official Nonlibidoism Society, which once argued that you're not really asexual if you have a sex drive. Likewise, it can be useful as a way to make space (conceptually) for asexuals who like sex, if you model sexual attraction as something separable from the choice to have sex.
But at the same time, the attraction-based definition has its limitations. There has been a longstanding see-saw cycle in which aces of all sexual dispositions may feel pushed to the sidelines, and within that context, attraction fixation can pose some problems for asexuals who mark "not wanting/liking/having sex" as core to their asexual identity. Plus, when people narrowly define asexuality in terms of attraction only, that encourages people to extrapolate the same metric onto other ace identities, like gray-asexuality. This is not entirely faithful to the variation among gray-asexuals.
For a non-ace-related example, see also how people discuss (and contest) the role of attraction in relation to gay and bisexual identity (PF link).
(a)romanticism
I'm not as familiar with the aro community, but I do know that "aromanticism" as a concept emerged from the ace community, so it's not surprising to see the similarities. Within aro contexts & aro advocacy, "a person who does not experience romantic attraction" is perhaps the most commonplace way of defining aromantic.
Unfortunately, this definition has also ended up getting policed and pushed onto people, despite the fact that some aromantics name other factors in their identity, like desire, ambiguity, and preference. Alienation from amatonormativity and romantic norms can also play a role in aro identities. For further reading, AUREA has posted a three-part series on "My Aromanticism" (Part One, Part Two, Part Three) that you can look through as some examples of aro narratives, some of which discuss attraction and some of which don't.
As with gray-asexuality, the attraction fixation in aro contexts has also created problems for grayromantics, as well.
other types of orientation
It's fairly uncommon, but some people do label themselves with additional, nonromantic/nonsexual orientation terms, especially in the ace and aro communities. So when "aplatonic" was first used on AVEN in 2012, in retrospect, it should have been predictable that it would end up twisted away from its original purpose in favor of an attraction-based definition. See for instance this (inaccuracy-laden) post on "Aplatonic and Related Language," which defines an aplatonic as someone who "does not experience platonic attraction or form platonic bonds."
Meanwhile, there are also those who use terms like homoplatonic without basing that identity on an experience of "platonic attraction" per se. In fact, it remains unclear to me how common the application & experience of "platonic attraction" actually is.
So these are three different areas where I've witnessed an excessive fixation on attraction, specifically, as a determining factor of orientation/identity. As I said above, I welcome more examples, as long as they reflect the same attraction fixation or direct attempts at contesting it.
For my own future reference, since it comes up a fair bit: This is a post about a formulaic "if this, then that" approach to attraction as a sole determiner of orientation, as a type of identity essentialism. I'm open to suggestions on what else to call this -- attraction-centrism? attraction essentialism? -- but "attraction fixation" is the placeholder I'm going with for now.
A lot of examples are related to aces and aros just because those are the examples that I happen to be familiar with, but I welcome making other connections.
(a)sexuality
In the barely twenty-something years that the asexual community has been around, there's been a lot of arguing over how to define asexuality, but one definition more than any others has gained popularity in 101 materials: the one tracing back to early 2000s AVEN, with its declaration that an asexual is "a person who does not experience sexual attraction." Note that AVEN wasn't the first or the only online asexual community at the time, but it is one that happened to gain a lot of prominence, and so the attraction-based definition has become very prevalent as a result.
The attraction-based definition of asexuality has, in some contexts, served a useful role against umbrella crunching. For example, it was one of the alternatives to the essentialism advocated by the now defunct Official Nonlibidoism Society, which once argued that you're not really asexual if you have a sex drive. Likewise, it can be useful as a way to make space (conceptually) for asexuals who like sex, if you model sexual attraction as something separable from the choice to have sex.
But at the same time, the attraction-based definition has its limitations. There has been a longstanding see-saw cycle in which aces of all sexual dispositions may feel pushed to the sidelines, and within that context, attraction fixation can pose some problems for asexuals who mark "not wanting/liking/having sex" as core to their asexual identity. Plus, when people narrowly define asexuality in terms of attraction only, that encourages people to extrapolate the same metric onto other ace identities, like gray-asexuality. This is not entirely faithful to the variation among gray-asexuals.
For a non-ace-related example, see also how people discuss (and contest) the role of attraction in relation to gay and bisexual identity (PF link).
(a)romanticism
I'm not as familiar with the aro community, but I do know that "aromanticism" as a concept emerged from the ace community, so it's not surprising to see the similarities. Within aro contexts & aro advocacy, "a person who does not experience romantic attraction" is perhaps the most commonplace way of defining aromantic.
Unfortunately, this definition has also ended up getting policed and pushed onto people, despite the fact that some aromantics name other factors in their identity, like desire, ambiguity, and preference. Alienation from amatonormativity and romantic norms can also play a role in aro identities. For further reading, AUREA has posted a three-part series on "My Aromanticism" (Part One, Part Two, Part Three) that you can look through as some examples of aro narratives, some of which discuss attraction and some of which don't.
As with gray-asexuality, the attraction fixation in aro contexts has also created problems for grayromantics, as well.
other types of orientation
It's fairly uncommon, but some people do label themselves with additional, nonromantic/nonsexual orientation terms, especially in the ace and aro communities. So when "aplatonic" was first used on AVEN in 2012, in retrospect, it should have been predictable that it would end up twisted away from its original purpose in favor of an attraction-based definition. See for instance this (inaccuracy-laden) post on "Aplatonic and Related Language," which defines an aplatonic as someone who "does not experience platonic attraction or form platonic bonds."
Meanwhile, there are also those who use terms like homoplatonic without basing that identity on an experience of "platonic attraction" per se. In fact, it remains unclear to me how common the application & experience of "platonic attraction" actually is.
So these are three different areas where I've witnessed an excessive fixation on attraction, specifically, as a determining factor of orientation/identity. As I said above, I welcome more examples, as long as they reflect the same attraction fixation or direct attempts at contesting it.
