So, I’m putting on my linguistics
caphelmet. Full speed ahead for nerdiness….around 1985 — decades before any kind of asexual discourse came into existence
1985 — decades before any kind of asexual discourse
1985 — decades before
1985
so anyway
pretty sure op’s linguistics helmet is a dunce cap
OK, I am not sure exactly why you’re calling me a dunce — which means of course that there is a possibility that I am one. If my facts are wrong, please correct me. I am dating the beginning of asexual discourse as we know it to the founding of AVEN, which was in 2001. So, yes, that’s only 16 years, not technically decades, but more than one decade at least. I admit I exaggerated slightly. Nevertheless, my only point here was that asexuals were not responsible for the original shift in meaning, and I believe that point stands. Unless I am misinterpreting your objection?
Yeah basically I object to you being condescending and using Wikipedia for citations and playing linguistics professor with no regard for sociological context or history.
and also it is funny because you make it sound like 1985 was forever ago
Fair enough about the 1985 thing. I was being hyperbolic. I did not intend to also be condescending, but lack of intention doesn’t necessarily mean I didn’t achieve it anyway. Although I am not a professor, linguistics is in fact my area of expertise, so I was trying to speak as a linguist to non-linguists, and I can see how that could come across as condescending. Though I’m not sure what to do about that, since hey, this is something I know a bit about, and I am trying to explain it to people who may not know about it. (And yes, I used Wikipedia citations to do that because this is a tumblr post, not a serious academic research project.)
So, those are my answers to your more minor points. You also say that I show “no regard for sociological context or history”, which I take more seriously. Can you expand on what you mean by that? If I have fucked up here, I do actually want to know about it.
So, I’m putting on my linguistics
caphelmet. Full speed ahead for nerdiness….around 1985 — decades before any kind of asexual discourse came into existence
1985 — decades before any kind of asexual discourse
1985 — decades before
1985
so anyway
pretty sure op’s linguistics helmet is a dunce cap
OK, I am not sure exactly why you’re calling me a dunce — which means of course that there is a possibility that I am one. If my facts are wrong, please correct me. I am dating the beginning of asexual discourse as we know it to the founding of AVEN, which was in 2001. So, yes, that’s only 16 years, not technically decades, but more than one decade at least. I admit I exaggerated slightly. Nevertheless, my only point here was that asexuals were not responsible for the original shift in meaning, and I believe that point stands. Unless I am misinterpreting your objection?
So, I’m putting on my linguistics cap helmet. Full speed ahead for nerdiness….
Yes, it’s true that hetero- just means ‘different’*, and that when the word heterosexual was first coined in the late 19th century, the -sexual part referred to sex in the sense of male/female, not in the sense of sexual attraction. So, if the meaning of the whole were made up strictly of the meaning of its parts, then heterosexual would just mean ‘different sex’. Note, it wouldn’t say anything at all about what exactly a heterosexual might want to do with a member of a different sex. The bit about attraction simply was not built into the word.
However, word meanings are not always built strictly out of the meanings of their parts, and from the very beginning, heterosexual was understood to be talking about attraction of some sort to someone of a different sex. It’s also true that the type of attraction was understood to be romantic in addition to sexual: at the time, the two were not distinguished.
Now, word meanings change over time. This is a utterly natural, ordinary fact about language. The word gentle once meant ‘well-born’ (i.e. belonging to the aristocracy), and the word slut once meant ‘a dirty or untidy woman’ in a totally non-sexual sense, but those meanings are now archaic — the core meanings have shifted. The meaning of heterosexual has shifted in a similar way. Specifically, the -sexual part has been reanalyzed as referring to sexual attraction, not to maleness/femaleness.
Asexuals weren’t the ones who changed the meaning in this way. It had already apparently shifted when Eve Sedgwick coined the term homosocial around 1985 — decades before any kind of asexual discourse came into existence. In the original sense of the word homosexual, homosociality could have been considered homosexual, since it implied attraction (of a social sort) to people of the same sex. But Sedgwick was explicit in saying that homosociality was not necessarily homosexual. This only makes sense if she had reanalyzed the meaning of the -sexual part of the word.
That reanalysis is widespread, and (I believe) now forms the core meaning of the -sexual part of the word heterosexual. It is the basis for newly invented terms like heteroromantic and homoromantic, which refer to specifically romantic (not necessarily sexual) attraction to someone who is in some sense the same (homo-) or different (hetero-) from oneself. The fact that the similarity/difference is in terms of sex or gender is now understood, but not built into the actual pieces of the word. Just as originally the ‘attraction’ bit of the meaning was understood, but not built in.
The point being: language change happens. It is not reversible. You cannot simply wave your hands and say that heteroromantics are actually heterosexual, just because the original coiner of the word heterosexual might have intended it to refer to romantic as well as sexual attraction.
I really think that half the vitriol being spewed in the ace tags of late is due to people’s inability to agree on the definitions of terms (like oppression and queer). I don’t feel qualified to weigh in on most of those definitions, but I think it is totally straightforward that heteroromantic means something different from heterosexual — it never would have been coined if the pre-existing word heterosexual had adequately covered it. To what degree the difference between romantic and sexual attraction is relevant to the current debate(s) is another question entirely. But I’m afraid I’d have to take off my linguistics helmet to answer it.
*Note that if you change “hetero-” to “homo-” and “different” to “same” throughout this paragraph, the same argument goes for “homosexual”.
Of course Ace Prom would turn out to be the same day as my MA thesis is (theoretically) due. Of course it would. I’m not quite going to make the deadline, but I am going to be staying up all night writing anyway. And I’m going to turn my internet off, so I can’t hang out with all my fellow aces at prom. (The thesis is also why I haven’t posted in, um, a month?, in case any of my tiny handful of followers were wondering.)
But I will be wearing my ace necklace while I write (and drink gallons of tea). And once this draft is done, I’m taking myself out for cake (and then taking a looong nap). Which is to say, I’m with you in spirit, guys. Have fun. Be fabulous, as I know you already are.
[Image description: Photograph of a white woman (me), wearing an ace of clubs pendant on a black string. Only the shoulders, neck, and bottom half of the face are visible.]
What it says on the tin. The Dreamwidth community is open! Spread the word :)
Day 20. Tell us about your partner(s). If you are not in a relationship, tell us about your best friend(s).
I had a best friend throughout my entire childhood. We met when we were 2. When I was 3, I announced that I was going to marry her when I grew up, and my mom had to sort of gently explain to me that actually women could only marry men (no longer true some places! yay!), so I was out of luck. Whereupon I declared that in that case I wasn’t going to marry anyone. Which was, all in all, a remarkably accurate prediction for a 3-year-old to make. In any case, it seems I already loved her then. And I still love her now.
But I am now actively trying to fall out of love with her. Because it’s been years since I’ve felt like I was truly important to her. We now live on opposite ends of the country, and for years, it’s always been me who maintains contact between us. I write the first letter after there’s been a lull. I travel long distances to see her. She says she’ll come see me too, and then… doesn’t. Oh, she is apologetic. Her apologies are sincere and moving, and she is grateful to me for not giving up on her. But guilt and gratitude are not what I want her to feel for me, and so this past year I have decided I need to let this go – to acknowledge that what we once had is gone, and has been for quite some time. I’m not shutting any doors between us, but I will no longer stand in the doorway waiting.
I think I’ve only had the strength to finally walk away from this friendship because of someone new in my life: my current roommate, whom I’ve already written about here and here. I’m not sure how much more I need to say about her, except that she is lovely, and she’s spending the summer with her boyfriend on another continent, and I miss her. But I know she’s coming home soon, and for now at least, that’s enough.
I’ve only read the first chapter so far, but I’m already reblogging it because hells yes!
This is how Jane and Helen met.
It was the Halloween dance. They were both dressed as male FBI agents. Jane’s hair was pulled back in a pony tail. No makeup. She wore an ill-fitting suit that she borrowed from her brother. The jacket looked silly over her breasts unless it was…
FS says: My favorite writer of all time. I love this man so much. He made me the writer and reader that I am.
So, I am willing to believe that what I’m about to say is petty, unhelpful, and unnecessarily divisive. But there’s also a part of me that thinks, well, maybe it’s not. I’m genuinely interested in what other people think about this.
The issue: my friend L, who is romantic and sexual, has both a boyfriend and a platonic life partner. Or at least, she has a person she refers to as her platonic life partner. But I always find myself getting annoyed when she uses the term, because judging by the available evidence, her relationship with this person doesn’t really sound like a life partnership.
It’s not that I doubt the depth and sincerity of her feelings for her PLP, and I do appreciate her willingness to acknowledge that depth and sincerity – the importance of the relationship – with a term that grants it a greater dignity than (what is commonly understood by) the word “friend”. It’s just that I think for me, a necessary part of the definition of “life partnership” is that it must be a primary relationship. You must be willing to shape your life around the other person in significant ways, which I do not see happening between L and her PLP. You see, L lives with her boyfriend, travels with her boyfriend, is about to move across the country with her boyfriend. And she sees her PLP maybe a couple times a year, for maybe a weekend at a time. I don’t know how often they talk to each other in the meantime, or exactly what roles they currently play in each other’s lives, but I don’t hear them planning to e.g. live in the same city as soon as their school/work obligations allow. Boyfriend always seems to trump PLP. So from my outsider’s perspective, it sounds like a secondary relationship. Close friends, but not partners.
Ok, so, I define the word differently for myself, but (you may be asking) why do I feel like I have any right to impose that definition on others?
1) Because the term “(queer)platonic life partner” is important to me. It took me a long time to find it. It’s the best way I’ve found so far of explaining the kind of relationship that I’m hoping for in some distant, beautiful future. I’m kind of protective of it.
2) Because if other people are using it to mean something different, that reduces its usefulness to me. I can no longer use it to explain myself. This is not a merely theoretical worry: there is a particular person, M, whom I would really like to have a queerplatonic relationship with. She is also friends with L, and I’ve overheard the two of them discussing the concept of a platonic life partner, using L’s definition. M has a Best Friend (not me) to whom she is starting to apply the word. I’m currently trying to figure out how to have a conversation with M about what exactly we are to each other, and I’m afraid that L’s definition is going to make that conversation just that little bit harder than it needs to be. As if it didn’t already feel sufficiently impossible.
3) Because I think L’s use of the term “platonic life partner” feeds into the Romantic-Sex Based Relationship Hierarchy, but in a particularly insidious way. It seems at first to be actually subverting the hierarchy, since it acknowledges the importance of a non-sexual, non-romantic relationship. But in fact, she’s not throwing out the hierarchy, just bumping her friend up to a higher position on it. She gives her friendship the highest and best name she knows – creating a new rung on the ladder – and yet it is still secondary to her romantic relationship. To me, this implies that she simply cannot imagine the kind of relationship I want, and would not consider it of equal value to her own relationship with her boyfriend. Romance still trumps, every time. And that makes me go all grr-y and incoherent in my head. Every time.
Now, caveats. Again, I am only an outside observer of her platonic life partnership, and I am making assumptions about its inner workings that I have no right to make. And even if my interpretation is correct, I’m still not sure that I have any right to police her use of the term PLP. I am all for respecting other people’s identities, even when I don’t fully understand them, or would identify differently if I were in their shoes. So it’s probably hypocritical of me not to respect their relationships in the same way.
And yet… grrr.
So, help me out here, folks. Am I hypocritical and full of shit? Or is there something here that’s actually worth getting bothered about?
Day 19. What do relationships mean to you?
Relationships are strange and confusing and the ones I want don’t fit into any of the standard size boxes. I’m never sure if the right answer is to start custom-building boxes for my relationships with the important people in my life, or if I should throw out the boxes altogether and have a bonfire.
Zucchini or s’mores, that is the question.
(I have no idea whether that last line makes sense to anyone but me. Oh well.)
