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Q&A: “Could you help me by defining those types of attraction?”
anonymous said: I get your point about the types of attraction being connected in a web, not a scalar. Could you help me by defining those types of attraction? For example, I know sexual attraction is a desire to have sexual contact, and aesthetic attraction is about appearance. I’m less clear on the others, which are often defined via tautology. (“Romantic attraction is desire to have a romantic relationship.” Ok, then what’s a romantic relationship?) Can you help clear this up? Thanks! (re: this post, however i’m going to update that post to include definitions) it’s true, definitions can sometimes be circular and thus unhelpful/difficult to understand. often because the thing being defined is difficult to define, obviously. i guess i’ll give writing simplistic definitions a shot… i’ve done it before, but never all laid out at once like this. this is quite the task!
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Feedback: “I just wanted to thank you for your post on the alterous vs platonic thing…”
anonymous said: Hi, I just wanted to thank you for your post on the alterous vs platonic thing–I’m aroflux, have a qpp and’ve been miffed about the same things. Like, it’s great the term exists, but I feel invalidated by many promotions of it. Love’s not a binary. yeah… i wish people would think of attractions more like this: instead of isolating certain types of attraction and positioning them on a linear scale or even spectrum, as people often do. that said, the above is the 15min product of my sleep deprived brain functioning after 3am on 4hrs of sleep. it’s not thought out and thus is full of holes and problems, so please don’t take it too seriously zzz… edit: someone asked me to define these types of attraction, so i gave it a shot. disclaimer: please bear in mind that these are my own personal definitions as of now (2.24.2016).…
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Q&A: “I wonder if we can use ‘pan’ for not only sexual attraction than why not the rest of them…”
anonymous said: You know I wonder if I could identify as bi or pan. Because I am certainly asexual and wtfro/aro but my sensual, aesthetic and platonic orientations are pan I think? And if we can use that for not only sexual attraction than why not the rest of them. there are people who use prefixes like bi-, pan-, homo-, hetero- etc to describe the other types of attraction that you mentioned. for example, pan(-)aesthetic, bi(-)sensual, homo(-)platonic etc. these words aren’t common, but i’ve definitely seen them in use, primarily within the ace and aro communities on AVEN and Tumblr.
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Q&A: “…do you think there could be other types of attraction?”
anonymous said: I know a lot of the time in discussions about asexual identities people break down attraction into 4 different categories: sexual, romantic, aesthetic, sensual (well and sometimes platonic). But do you think there could be other types of attraction? Sometimes I see people and I feel /something/ but I wouldn’t really categorize it as one of those – argh its so confusing! Am I just experiencing one of those types of attraction in a strange way?? without a doubt there could be (read: probably is) more to attraction than the categories that the ace and aro communities tend to refer to. attraction, as with feelings in general, is an insanely complex thing that most certainly cannot be neatly boxed into or described by categories. it doesn’t get said enough that not everyone even finds the existing categories helpful or meaningful in describing their attraction(s). you could be experiencing…
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Q&A: “what is romantic attraction vs sensual?”
anonymous said: i haven’t heard of sensual attraction until recently but i’m having a hard time separating it from romantic attraction? like what //is// romantic attraction vs sensual? sorry if this is a really basic question! not a “really basic question” at all! honestly, the world at large doesn’t even distinguish between different types of attraction, they’re all considered to be part of the same thing. it’s the asexual and aromantic communities that started dissecting attraction into different categories and it can be very confusing at times. within ace and aro communities, attraction is commonly broken up into 5 categories: platonic, aesthetic, sensual, romantic and sexual attraction. see these posts to find out the basics on all of them: [ 1 ] + [ 2 ]
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QAC 03 – Romantic Orientations & Other Types of Attraction
in this video i try to explain how there are several types of attraction, including romantic, sensual, aesthetic and sexual attraction. i also go on to explain that there are also romantic orientations in addition to sexual orientations and how these two orientations do not always match each other. i am certainly no expert on this topic, but i feel that this topic is not discussed enough, so i made this video with the hope of furthering awareness and discussion about the matter. i apologize if i have confused for offended anyone. re: the “Orientations” image used in this video, see here. feedback and comments are welcome. hope i explained things clearly/correctly enough. ;(
