Ouch. Why is Neil deGrasse Tyson doing this to himself?
If you have a gene for celibacy, you didn’t inherit it.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 12, 2016
No, that’s not right, for multiple reasons.
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Celibacy is a behavior that almost certainly isn’t genetic in the first place. It’s more of a choice, strongly shaped by culture.
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Traits that are deleterious to reproduction can get transmitted easily if they’re recessive.
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You can get pregnant even if you don’t enjoy sex, and even if you are firmly committed to never having sex. Has he never heard of rape?
But really, the biggest problem here is that he’s echoing a pernicious fallacy that’s used to demonize all kinds of behavior. Haven’t you ever heard a wingnut complain that homosexuality is unnatural and can’t possibly have a genetic basis, because gays can’t reproduce? It’s the same argument. And it’s wrong.
Jeremy Yoder has torn that one apart in depth.
It’s getting weird. Tyson just keeps throwing out science canards — which is something a science popularizer shouldn’t do.
Dr Tyson, Whilst both biological populations and stars evolve, expertise in one does not imply expertise in the other.
I hope he’s just trolling biologists.
There are celibate people. Is he suggesting they’re all the result of virgin births or some evasion of normal human reproduction?
Or is he making some kind of joke based on PZ’s point one: there is no gene for celibacy.
I don’t get it.
I wonder if working for Fox has infected him with TV fame cooties? Or maybe toxoplasmosis? I just can’t believe his anti-trump supporter comment either, but that’s now three really awful tweets in two days. I expect it to start raining frogs any time now.
My first thought was “bees”, though of course celibacy usually refers exclusively to humans.
What even prompted this? Does anyone know?
I’m pretty sure he was just joking this time around: The tweet came after he linked to your previous criticism of his earlier tweet. He seemed to be having some fun trolling biologists.
More troublesome was the tweet that came after that: “People who are anti-Trump are actually anti-Trump supporters — they oppose free citizens voting for the @realDonaldTrump.”
I have no idea what that means. I hope it was just a bad attempt at humor.
I saw that tweet, as well. Very confusing. I’ve seen him speak enough on politics to know he’s not a Trump supporter, so I would try to be charitable. I think we’re discovered something new and profound: twitter is a very bad medium for generating nuanced argument.
I’m both an opponent of Trump and his supporters, to the degree they support any of his shitty ideas. I do support their right to get together and say stupid things, though, and hey, if you want to vote for him, that is also a right. I don’t really see a big movement on the left to generate some poll-station quizzes: To vote, you must answer the following questions-
“Who did 9-11?”
“Do vaccines cause autism?”
“Do you think a casino owner is the best person to repair the ‘rigged system’ in Washington?”
Maybe Tyson was talking about internal Republican politics. That is the flaw that Trump is (finally) exposing: the establishment R’s have been getting the Evangelicals and blue collar whites on their side since Nixon even they have completely different interests. The Establishment does hate Trump voters, and they’re terrified that they can’t get them in line this time around. It’s been happening at the state level since “Idiot Meltdown Summer, 2010,” but this is the first time they haven’t been able to control the crazies at the presidential level.
Does he actually think that
a) all human behaviour is somehow controlled by genes
b) there’s a 1:1 translation from ONE gene to ONE behaviour?
I ain’t no biologist, but even I know that genes are not computer programs
Besides, asexual people exist. They’re not sick or broken. I think Mr. Tyson is telling us a lot about his sexlife but little about general biology.
Walter #5, I think he meant “anti Trump-supporters”.
Oh FFS. Hey, Neil! Shut the fuck up. Has Mr. Populizer not heard of asexual people? How about the fact that no, asexual people are not abnormal. Nor are all those with a less than superduperpowered libido.
I’m pretty sure that was just intended to be a joke.
It’s kind of like a Woody Paige saying, e.g. “If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for your.”
Cervantes @ 10:
How, exactly, does that make it okay? Let’s see, dump all over asexual and celibate people, because I really think I’m smart and witty! Yeah, that’s just dandy.
I read that as saying (snidely) that there is no such thing as a gene for celibacy. Why yell at NDGT for saying the obvious? I am disappoint.
I think he likes to say the absurd, to be obviously absurd, to make a point.
I think we’re being a little too harsh on NdGT.
re 9&10
I’m sorry, I do not see any judgement in NdGT’s tweet. Do you claim your asexuality is genetically based, and being told it is not, is an insult? I don;t understand.
I think the insulting part is how NDT is now making snide twitter remarks about asexual people, in order to assert his intellectual dominance over those sub-standard biology scientists who called out his previous asinine comment about evolution and painful sex.
Okay… in this case, he was absolutely trolling. It was proceeded by the following tweet:
“I think I’ll try out one more on the biologists…”
So yeah… trolling. I fear he’s fallen down the Dawkins Twitter hole…
Nate @ 15:
Gosh, with a bit of work, he could become the king of splash damage!
slithey tove
That’s not how if clauses work.
If you have a computer, you did not inherit it from your great-grandpa.
This clearly means there’s no such things as computers.
Oh, wait, it doesn’t.
Sure, he doesn’t say there is a gene for celibacy, but an if clause clearly implies there’s the possibility of one. He then goes on to make a statement about that gene should it exist.
Let’s try another one: If you find an image of Jesus on your toast, it is not a sign from god.
Or ho about this: If there is an earthquake, it was not caused by women showing cleavage.
He did post this disclaimer tweet on Feb 26
So I guess this qualifies as the promised brain droppings.
Neil deGrasse Tyson makes me miss Carl Sagan more. He probably goofed up some of his biology, but at least he didn’t go off at the mouth gratuitously like this copycat.
Daemonios @ 19:
I expect it’s a good thing Sagan didn’t live long enough for Twitter. It seems to reduce famous scientist brains to mush.
The trouble with being famous is that you really have to take a little bit more care when you goof around in public. With any kind power, you have to take at least proportional responsibility.
I have no particular opinion of the guy, one way or another, but this tweet was really stupid. I don’t really get the point of “trolling” biologists. “LOL, I’m going to annoy people in a field by saying stupid things about their field”. Um, ha… ha.. ?
He could have made an actual joke, if he wanted to have fun.
There clearly are genes for specific, even intricate behaviors in some species (think spiderwebs for example). I hope they never find any in humans. It could be used as a basis for discrimination, or weaponized by finding some way to trigger it.
Or maybe we have such genes, and their behavioral “signal” is simply overwhelmed by the “noise” of the cerebral cortex that spiders or bowerbirds do not have. To say nothing of the “noise” of culture.
Non-reproducing individuals are certainly not detrimental to the survival of a social species. Even if there were a recessive gene “for it”.
I miss Sagan, too.
@Caine I see your point; but having written books such as Pale Blue Dot, Demon Haunted World or Broca’s Brain, I’d say Sagan has demonstrated enough humility and adherence to a humanist philosophy not to get easily sidetracked by phenomena like Twitter.
Anyway, what you say might conceivably happen, and I don’t want to deify Carl Sagan. As much as I admire his work I dislike holding people as idols :)
I really don’t see why these half arsed ‘science jokes’ or whatever are getting attention, when there is that ridiculous ‘anti-Trump = anti-Trump supporter’ travesty available for mockery / disgust.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- @ 17:
I think the key word is “snidely”, so that may be a correct way to use an if clause if you’re being snide.
However, I do agree with you that the snide-if-clause theory is overthinking it, and that Tyson is simply stating an ignorant believe that genes that don’t lead to procreation wouldn’t get passed down. And this from the guy that gave such a nice explanation of how polar bears developed in the new Cosmos!
I still like Tyson even if says some dumb things now and then (as most people do). I don’t think this particular dumb statement was meant as an attack on asexual people. I think it’s unlikely to have any real-world repercussions for asexual people.
He is clearly taking the piss.
Jonah @ 25:
His intentions don’t matter. They aren’t magic.
@Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
Come on now, let’s not join in the silly arguments.
How about, “If there’s a God, it certainly doesn’t care whether you jerk off or not.” You believe that’s an assertion that God exists? It doesn’t even imply the possibility.
Or how about, “If vaccines caused autism, there would be many more people with autism.” The second clause is expressly there to point out the falseness of the if clause. “If Bigfoot were real, there would be some trace” … etc.
Tyson’s tweet is baffling enough without inventing new rules about language and logic to interpret it as negatively as possible.
@13
I think part of it is kind of a learned defensiveness because society really likes to characterize asexuality as either a choice or a medical condition that can (and should) be treated, rather than as a valid state for a person to be in.
So like, while I’m willing to give him the charity of not assuming he meant anything bad by this, he does exist in a context where a very popular view is “not caused by biology -> made up bullshit you should just get over and be normal”
Well, even though intentions aren’t magic, they do matter.
#27
Argument by slogan :(
It’s like that other joke, you know, if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
doubtthat
Goodness where did you learn your grammar?
If clauses of type two are much different to if clauses of type one.
That’s why there is indeed a difference between “if there IS a god” and “if there were a god”
Should I quote the relevant pages of some decent grammar books to you?
Jonah Glou
That is likely
Have you ever heard the term “microaggression”?
That’s exactly what this is. It reinforces negative stereotypes about asexual people. Those things cause harm even though the person who committed the act usually does not mean harm and often even means well.
Well, here’s hoping DeGrasse doesn’t become a second Dawkins or Hitchens, but the symptoms of the metamorphosis are clearly there…
Besides, “If vaccines caused autism, there would be many more people with autism” is as piss poor an argument as “If measles were deadly you’d be dead”
Heck, even many of the newer, complex, computer programs don’t bloody work that way. Some of them because they interact in unexpected ways, due to dependencies, and in other cases, because they are written to bloody handle fuzzy data, and produce derived results, not 100% predictable ones. And, genetic algorithms just make that even more nuts. We are not building bloody difference engines any more, where each cog nudges things a precise notch farther along, and where we know, absolutely, what the inputs will be. Half the freaking code I wrote, even back in the days when I was at college, or… heck high school, involved – how do you limit the idiot trying to use the machine, so they only enter what you expect them to, and trap any unexpected data, so that the damn thing actually does have a predictable 1:1 result?
That doesn’t just happen by accident, and some languages.. are very loose in how they handle data. Lua – if you don’t do certain things right is happy to treat a string as a variable name. Most version of basic will “guess” which data type you want, based on context. Most common issue there is if statements. if sam = ham then… whoops, one of those was supposed to be “ham”… and, if some place else you screwed up, then you get sam = 0, instead of sam being a string, and then its always true, since 0 = 0. Or, you could go back to COBOL, where strings and numbers where interchangable, so it ***literally didn’t care*** if you substituted one for the other, it just checked the contents between each other.
One to one my foot…. Only if you are damn careful, and that is just in the “language” part of the process, never mind when people start actually using it, and you find all the things you forgot to check for, against, predict some idiot would do, etc… And.. making anything actually “act” like its alive, even in the limited sense you can in a game, means “layers” of behaviors, the more complex, the less predictable the result. You do not *want* 1:1 results for that. It makes the game too predictable and easy to win. We ain’t writing Pac Man any more people.
@30
They matter, but I consider them like, beyond tertiary compared to the harm actions cause independent of intent.
@ Tethys #3
Would that be Foxoplasmosis?
@37
I think I agree (obviously harm occurs regardless of intent when it comes to microagressions, and many other things) but I’m not entirely sure what kind of ranking you are doing there.
@39
Harm caused by the thing -> Literally every other factor but intent -> Intent, in descending order of importance
I don’t think it’s a microaggression and I disagree that in substantially reinforces any negative stereotypes against asexual people.
It’s at best a statement which is trivially true and awkwardly worded so as to imply falsehoods; at worst, a falsehood itself. However, it doesn’t denigrate asexuality.
@Vivec, 39
I understood what your ranking would look like. What I’m unsure of is, like, what you are using it for.
Jake Harban:
Wow, yet another spokesperson for all asexual people.
Gee, it’s almost like science is not a single field, but a bunch of disciplines and expertise in one area doesn’t make for expertise in others.
As an asexual I found this statement aggravating and ignorant. Not all asexual are sex repulsed. Many asexual men and women and non binary individuals throughout history would have had no choice about reproducing. Corrective rape is something that happens to asexual individuals as well.
*grumps away *
@Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
Well, we actually have gotten into a semantic argument.
But that difference is not the truth value of the statement contained in the if clause. It’s the degree of likelihood that the action can be completed.
Type 1:
“If God exists, then he will not give a rip if you diddle yourself.”
Type 2:
“If God existed, then he would not have given a rip….”
Though it’s more obvious in type 2, neither form commits the speaker to making a claim that the if clause is factual:
“If fire doesn’t melt steel, a heated steel beam will still lose structural integrity.”
That is not a claim that fire cannot melt steel. That’s an argumentative structure where the speaker hypothetically grants a position in order to show that it’s irrelevant or incorrect…etc.
You are correct. And were I advancing that as a quality argument and not an example to show the logical/grammatical point at issue, I would be making very weak points.
And, I should say, I have no idea what Tyson was trying to say. You may very well be correct about what he meant, it just doesn’t necessarily follow from the sentence structure.
Rowan @ 45:
But, but, Rowan, that can’t be! There have been several Official Asexual Spokespersons, in this very thread, who have shown up to claim that Tyson’s tweet wasn’t in any way aggravating, insulting, demeaning, or anything else.
doubtthat
Your ignorance obviously knows no limits. This is grammar, not semantics.
Apart from the obvious lack of sense, of course that sentence implies the possibility that fire may indeed fail to melt steel. That’s exactly the function of a conditional: it expresses possibility.
Do we need to go back to second grade?
If you go to the store, please buy some milk. This neither implies that this person will go to the store (I’d use “when” in that case) nor does it mean this person will not go to the store (in which case I’d use “went”.
It’s amazing how much you will deny the fact that Tyson said something really stupid.
Apparently the sentence “if you have a gene for colourblindness it is located on your X chromosome” does not include the possibility of the existence of genes for colourblindness. Amazing!
What’s that supposed to mean?
@42
It’s mostly for what parts of behavior I address and what parts of behavior I put more weight on morally.
If I’m going to address someone’s behavior, I’m going to spend a lot more focus and attention on the thing they did and how it affects people. I’m also a very big proponent of “nice people doing shitty things out of ignorance (or even out of good intentions) are still being shitty by doing it”
@51
Asexual people are disagreeing with you on whether or not it denigrates asexuality, and you phrased your statement as a definitive thing rather than as a matter of opinion/interpretation.
Jake Harban:
The fact that you posted that the tweet in no way had anything to do with asexual people, couldn’t possibly be a microaggression, and so fucking on. To speak for all asexual people (you must have missed Rowan @ 45), well, you must be asexual yourself, and able to speak for every single asexual person, yeah?
Don’t answer – you’ve been enough of an asshole already. Christ.
That’s phrased as a definitive thing? It seems pretty obvious that I’m offering my interpretation.
The second half of your post is phrased definitively, with the “However, it doesn’t denigrate asexuality.” sort of thing.
Vivec:
A fix. I’m not asexual, nor would I presume to speak for all asexual people.
I am, I was including myself in said group of people that disagree on whether or not it denigrates asexuality.
Jake Harban
No, it merely appropriates their sexual identity and uses it as the butt of a snide “joke” for his own amusement. Which is a textbook example of microaggression.
I posted my opinion on the subject but I do recall being a bit more reserved than that.
What of it? Am I not allowed to express my opinion on the subject without speaking on behalf of all asexual people everywhere?
Exactly what does this mean? Sorry, having trouble following.
What? I have no idea who you are and haven’t had anything to do with you.
I just saw this and my immediate reaction was that Tyson was joking. Having heros isn’t the problem; hero worship is the problem. Many people have a tendency to attribute characteristics that they wish to see their heros exhibit upon the heros without knowing whether or not the hero actually possesses those characteristics. And then those people become very irate and upset that their heros didn’t live up to their expectations (I think this has happened with Dawson, Harris, and Shermer; people who became popular for expressing some good ideas, before we found out that they harbor some horrible ideas and tendencies) People can be heroic in one aspect, but complete asses in another; people are complex. I don’t think Tyson should be vilified or disliked simply because he overreached on a subject; unless he doubles down on his mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, but it is troubling when people won’t accept that they were mistaken and change their behavior, ideas, beliefs, etc. If Tyson doubled down on his mistake, then I think he not only needs to be ridiculed, but also not taken so seriously in the future. But, as it appears, he seems to see that he made a mistake and joked about it. As long as he acknowledges that he was mistaken and tries not to misrepresent other scientific branches in the future, then he can be forgiven.
I didn’t want to get involved in the nitpickings about grammar, but since the first half of the post made it clear that I was expressing my opinion on the subject, I reverted to more more concise language for the second half rather than repeat some variant of “it is my opinion that…” in every sentence.
I’m not sure what “appropriating (one’s) sexual identity” even means. The quote doesn’t reference asexuality; only celibacy, which tends to imply non-asexuality. And I’m not sure how it’s supposed to be a “joke,” snide or otherwise. “If you have a gene that makes you not reproduce, then you didn’t inherit it from someone who reproduced” is just a statement about biology. (Statement in the sense of having a truth value, not in the sense of actually being true.)
In particular, it’s an “explanation” of natural selection that’s oversimplified to the point of being counterfactual. Which is sort of what I’d expect from someone who popularized science until his fame went to his head and he started making pronouncements about subjects he knew nothing about.
Like @15 pointed out, the NDGT’s preceding tweet frames this tweet as a joke.
Also, like I mentioned upthread, he’s saying this in a system that holds that yes, asexuality IS a choice akin to celibacy. That, or a mental illness that needs to be cured, but totally can’t be a valid state to exist in.
I’d be much more willing to give him leniency on this matter if we lived in a world where people don’t use the exact same reasoning to justify being shitty to asexual people.
Vivec
It’s ridiculous that the various NDT defenders in this thread have not picked up on that possibility. It’s as if their opinion blinders require signed affidavits before they might allow the possibility that this tweet could possibly be denigrating or a microaggression. I’m sadly unsurprised at the deference shown to NDT for his petty, passive aggressive behavior.
Caine:
You wouldn’t presume to speak for all asexual people, yet you seem to have already decided the correct position that all asexuals must take on the subject— and when an asexual person disagrees with that position, you accuse them of trying to speak on behalf of all asexual people everywhere.
Honestly, I’ve been finding you more demeaning than Tyson thus far.
Because you framed half your post in a way that is used when speaking definitively
Jake Harban
Maybe you should go fix that problem rather than going on at length with your uninformed opinions? We tend to be real big on knowing all sorts of advanced sociology and citing your sources, and it is not our responsibility to teach you.
I went back and read the preceding tweet and indeed, it does frame this tweet as a joke. However, it actually makes it seem less denigrating to asexual people; it puts the tweet in the context of: “I’m gonna piss off the biologists by promoting stupid misinterpretations of basic principles of biology.”
It doesn’t exactly make Tyson any less of a shitty person, but it does seem to make it clear that he’s not being specifically shitty to asexual people in particular.
That’s not been my experience— in fact, I’ve never met anyone who claimed I “chose” to be asexual. I have met plenty of people who denied that I’m asexual, but even they were outnumbered by the people who had never even heard of asexuality and needed it explained to them.
If we narrow the field of people I’ve met who are involved in some professional capacity with mental illness, then the predominant opinion has been denial— “being asexual is perfectly legitimate, but you aren’t asexual (and further discussion will suggest that I probably don’t think anyone is).” I ended up screening doctors after that.
I’m hardly planning to offer Tyson any leniency; trolling is shitty, using your reputation as a scientist to spew garbage about biology is shittier, and his apparent support for Trump is shittiest.
However, I don’t think he was being specifically shitty to asexual people as a demographic. In my experience, Tyson’s logic of naturalistic fallacy plus simplistic misunderstanding of evolution is generally used as an excuse to be shitty to gay or bi people.
Maybe you should stop using needlessly convoluted language. And while you’re at it, maybe you should try understanding that “uninformed opinion” is not the opposite of your opinion.
You’re seriously making the grammar quibble? I made it clear in the first paragraph that I was stating my opinion on the subject. When I restated that opinion in the conclusion, I used more concise language. More concise language sounds definitive, but the context of the first paragraph (which the conclusion was merely a restatement of) indicated that it was not.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that he’s intentionally attacking asexual people. Whether he is or not is irrelevant to how denigrating it is, by my metric anyways.
Well, it’s nice that you’ve never had to deal with that, then? I’ve ran into it fairly frequently, and it seems to be presented that way in a lot of the disparaging things I’ve seen said about us. A lot of it has this air of like “asexual is just a fancy word for “can’t get laid” and comparisons to the “incel” types.
I’m not just referring to professionals. The existence of corrective rape and “I can fix your asexuality with my penis” sort of talk is more what I was talking about.
Like I said, I’m not saying he was like “Haha how am I going to shit on those asexual people next”, I’m saying he did a shitty thing by repeating a sort of line I’ve heard plenty of times to justify treating asexual people poorly. Whether that was intentional or not doesn’t really factor into it for me.
I’m an ace and I would categorize this as a microaggression. Many aces are strongly inclined torwards celibacy, and that inclination may very well have an inherited genetic component. The tweet does not mention asexuality, but that’s only worse–it shows lack of awareness of the thing he denies. Asexuality is often emphasized as distinct from celibacy, but aces still aren’t ok with attacks on celibacy.
If NDGT is in fact trolling or joking, that’s like saying he was deliberately wrong rather than accidentally.
Are you guys serious? Tyson’s tweet was clearly just a joke about the paradoxical nature of a gene for celibacy. It wasn’t some attack on people who choose to practice celibacy or some sort of judgment upon anyone’s choice of lifestyle. It was just the standard PG-13 kind of joke he makes every time you see him talk.
@Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
Haha, ok. I guess this is how it will go.
I am amused that you find these categories to be mutually exclusive. There are simpler and more complicated definitions, but this is enough – Semantics:
What does a phrase mean in the context of a conditional statement? Certainly totally irrelevant to our discussion.
Logic and logical structure is also an important aspect of semantics, and simple conditional statements are one of the fundamental elements of logic. But whatever.
It makes perfect sense, but perhaps I was wrong to assume you spent any time dealing with 9/11 Truthers. They will whine, “Fire can’t melt steel,” this has the characteristic of both being factually wrong and irrelevant as steel did not melt on 9/11, it was simply the case that fire heated beams to the point that they lost structural integrity.
And yet it was typed by someone aware that fire does, in fact, melt steel. Granting a premise to show that it is irrelevant is a common rhetorical technique, and it does not imply a possibility. It merely asserts that if a claim was granted, the argument would still fail.
This just is not true. There are plenty of very common arguments that rely on conditionals to highlight how impossible something is. A reductio ad absurdum, for example, relies on that process and is often stated in the form of a conditional.
“If the Earth is flat, people would/will/should/are fall(ing) off the edge.”
That statement, in no way, asserts the possibility that the Earth is flat. It is demonstrating the exact opposite.
Whether or not that was Tyson’s intent, I don’t know. It’s not obvious from the content of the statement, because as PZ pointed out, it’s gibberish no matter how you try to read the sentential structure.
Not all of us.
Ok, so? I’m not the one trying to draw a conclusion about a speaker’s opinion on the truth value of a clause based on a conditional statement in isolation. You have basically made my argument for me. Right now, we neither know whether Tyson believes there is or is not a gene for celibacy, and the grammatical and logical structure of that tweet offer no insight.
But to believe that Tyson thinks there is a gene for celibacy, then you have to think that Tyson is asserting there are ways to obtain genes other than via inheritance. The only remotely cogent way to stick with this interpretation is to think he was saying something about mutations…I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s silly.
Sad effort. Whether joking or serious, whether intentionally targeted at asexual people or just some thoughtless aside, it was a stupid tweet. It’s pretty clear from the previous tweet that he thought it was funny, but that doesn’t really help resolve the stupid problem.
Yes? NDGT doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and statements can have unintended implications. What he intended to say in that tweet isn’t really part of any of our arguments.
I didn’t think anyone was claiming he’d intentionally attacked asexual people. However, I don’t think he attacked asexual people at all, not just inadvertently.
I’ve heard plenty of that, along with: “You just haven’t met the right person,” and “Well what if they were really attractive?” and “How can you say you don’t like sex if you’ve never tried it?” and also a few completely out-there ones, like blaming nonexistent defects in the physical makeup of my genitals. At this point, people have denied that I can be asexual in so many ways you’d have to be pretty creative to surprise me. However, I have not heard “you chose to be asexual.” If anything, that’d be a lot less annoying than all the things I have heard.
Well that is sort of the definition of the term.
I don’t think there’s any clear evidence of a genetic component clearly present behind sexual orientation in any capacity. It seems more like luck of the developmental draw.
Having encountered both lack of awareness and denial, I don’t like to see them conflated. Denial is ignoring the evidence in front of your face; lack of awareness is innocent ignorance of something that doesn’t necessarily come up for a lot of people. I’ve met plenty of people who’d never heard of asexuality and explained it to them, at which point some became denialists but many people accepted it.
To be honest, reading denigration of asexual people into this quote seems very much like attributing ableism to someone who said: “If anyone actually tried working the pit crew at a car race, they’d lose their arms.” It’s an absurd statement based on a fundamental misunderstanding of car racing (ie, the cars stop at the pit rather than expecting the crew to work on them as they pass at speed), but the connection to any form of prejudice is more than a little tenuous.
Oh, so you’re the Official Asexual Spokesman now?
Actually, I’m entirely OK with attacks on celibacy— celibacy carries a heavy connotation of non-asexual people choosing not to have sex despite wanting to, thanks to the influence of certain religions. When that connotation is baked in, celibacy is more than distinct from asexuality; it’s a completely different thing with only superficial similarity.
OK, you just proved Vivec’s point. I have now heard someone describe asexuality as a “choice” (albeit obliquely).
Well, not much that can really be said, then. You and I have entirely different experiences. Nonetheless, the “asexuality is just another word for celibacy” line of thought is one I’ve encountered frequently, and that makes me sensitive to things like what NDGT made. You’re welcome to disagree with that interpretation.
Doubtless. No one is claiming we have to agree on everything.
That one I haven’t heard so much. I usually get “you just haven’t met the right person” or “you just need to get laid and you’ll discover you like it.”
Mind you, even if commonly uttered, the sentiment of: “Asexuality is just another word for celibacy” is wrong so I don’t find it bothersome to denigrate celibacy just because of that tenuous link. I’m far more annoyed by people who say “you just can’t get laid.”
I’m holding a lighter to a spoon. So far I haven’t burned my toes.
I rest my case. Buy yourself a dictionary and a grammar book.
PS “phrase” has a very specific mean in that context*. Just like “theory” has in science.
*PPS context. Your examples of using a conditional type one with the specific meaning of granting a hypothetical for the sake of the argument relies, indeed, on having built a context. You completely fail at showing how NDT built that specific context in which such a conditional can indeed function as a type 2. Why should anybody assume a rare exception over the common everyday use, especially if the meaning could have been made clearly hypothetical by simply using a type 2?
“If you had a gene for …., you wouldn’t have…”
I think he goofed trying to retell the old joke that childlessness is inherited, as in “If your parents were childless, you are going to be childless.” The joke is dumb, but true.
Is there a gene which leads to expressing a propensity for making crap statements in public spaces?
If so, it seems to be activated by celebrity status.
@Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
Ah yes, the rude death throes of a terrible argument.
Nope. I specifically chose a very non-technical definition (assuming you’re referring to the use of “phrase” in the definition of semantics – your statement is as vague as it is sanctimonious).
No specific context is necessary. Reductios are very common rhetorical devices:
“If the Earth is flat, people will fall of the edge.”
What context do you need? Perhaps if you saw this on Alex Jone’s twitter feed, you may think it was him asserting that people are falling off the edge of the Earth, but if you found that in the feed of Stephen Hawking, I would imagine that you would offer the benefit of the doubt.
Look at Tyson’s tweet:
“If you have a gene for celibacy, you didn’t inherit it.”
If you interpret that as a statement that there is a gene for celibacy then you are arguing that Tyson believes the following:
“There is a gene for celibacy and people obtain this gene through a process other than inheritance.”
Tyson has been saying silly things about biology (but it sort of seems like he knows they’re silly? I don’t know, it’s strange), but to hold that view means ascribing to him a frankly insane belief. Maybe that’s what he thinks, but I doubt it.
But regardless of that substantive discussion, the sentence structure just does not imply one answer or the other.
Because it isn’t rare, at all, and taking the “common use” seriously results in absurdity. If you think Tyson made an absurd statement (as opposed to an unfunny, pretty stupid one), that’s fine, but, again, that meaning is not the necessary result of the sentence structure or logical structure used.
I wonder how he explains why sickle cell anemia still exists.
@Giliell and Caine:
I appreciate what you’ve said here.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ 84:
Hey, haven’t seen you for a long while, it’s great to see you posting again. Thanks so much, but as you can see, it’s barely made a dent.
Kaleberg:
How does the truth of that joke hold in cases of adoption? Honestly, if people must defend that stupid tweet, do better.
Its like no one has ever listened to him outside of his formal presentations. Go listen to some “star talk” there is often a comedian as co-host. get this a science nerd who is an astrophysicist (hardly a common thing) tells really dumb jokes, possibly in very bad taste, which some people are very sensitive to.
the argument / discussion does not even include the guy who “said” the offending thing anyway and it goes on for over 80 comments
thats really something what I don’t know.
uncle frogy
reason and humor are some what opposed in intent
uncle frogy
@Caine #85:
I try not to let my desire to participate exceed my capacity.
Pharyngula tends to be more active than I can keep up with, so I mainly RSS the articles themselves. Occasionally I prepare a comment, then see it ninja’d by someone more qualified or eloquent. A good problem to have.
Beatrice @ 21:
At least he’s only trolling biologists and not openly dismissing their entire field, as he does with philosophers.
Troll: Successful
@Jake Harban
I’m traveling and don’t have the time to hold much of a two-way discussion.
IMO it’s not about being an official asexual spokesperson, it’s just that I interact with ace communities on a regular basis, whereas I suspect you do not.
If you want to know what aces think about celibacy, you can search “celibate” on my group blog, The Asexual Agenda. I honestly don’t know what you’d dig up in our archives, but whatever it is, I think you could try listening before pontificating.
Completely off topic, but not sure where else to address this …
What the hell’s happening with Greta, Dana, Stephanie, Alex, Aoife, Ashley, Brianne, Heina, Jason, Miri, and Zinnia? My RSS feed tells me they are taking their ball and creating a new home.
#72
Over analysis is the primary hobby of many people.
#92
Correct, though I have only heard indirectly from other people that this is the case; I don’t know what those named have actually said on the topic. Does RSS include tweets or something? I don’t follow twitter, and haven’t set RSS up so I am probably more in the dark than you!
I only saw one RSS post via Feedly on the matter — it’s the overall FTB RSS feed, not blog-specific — but haven’t gone to that blogger’s website to see what the hubbub is all about. No other posts have come through via RSS related to the topic. I haven’t seen any Twitter chatter, but PZ is the one I follow there.
But the rapist enjoys raping his victims, presumably?
I went to the blog and the article posted up via RSS has been disappeared from the blog, which suggests that it was posted prematurely. Except for Dana’s “big news coming next week” post last week and PZ testing how to add new blogs (New Frontier), everyone else is mute about the matter on FTB. Even the new network’s link, included in the RSS post, requires a login.
Since they let the cat out of the bag, I’ll just go ahead and speculate in the vacuum: This exodus is the we-are-finally-getting-back-at-PZ reaction I predicted back when it was clear they would never forgive that he wasn’t sufficiently hostile and vicious towards Ophelia last summer.
tonyinbatavia @ 96:
This shit does not belong in this thread. It doesn’t belong on the blog anywhere, actually. The fact that there is a dedicated off topic thread isn’t enough for you, as you’re obviously too fucking lazy or dim to look at the sidebar. Perhaps you can keep your speculations to yourself, as that’s where they fucking belong.
You’re right, Caine. While I’d say mostly lazy, I suspect it’s a bit of dim, too.
PZ, I apologize for not seeking out and using the off topic thread.
In tony’s defense, the off topic thread is pretty obscure, being that it is at the bottom of a clump of links four panels down the sidebar. Especially if the person missed the announcement of that particular change. Oh and I might suggest it be renamed ‘Off Topic’ rather than ‘Interesting Stuff,’ but I don’t know if that’s even possible in WordPress without losing the entire thread or something.
Being as I am asexual, I doubt I need to read your group blog to figure out what I think on this subject.
In fact, I’m pretty sure I already did read your group blog in an ultimately-futile attempt to figure out what “asexual but not aromantic” means and I’ve already formed opinions about it.
Tonyinbatavia
I’m not repeating your speculation, because it’s simply a horrible thing to have said. I’m fairly sure that I am not the only person who is still angry that so many supposedly rational people totally lost their shit all over PZ’s blog for something said on another FTB blog, which finally broke all of our open threads and our nice little horde community.
The part where everybody lost out because of the actions of a a few loud, angry, abusive people who absolutely turned PZ’s Tdome into an open raging hate fest is discouraging. So many regulars tried to have rational discussion, but they were drowned out by the hordes of angry mean people, and now we ALL can’t have nice things.
Why would you speculate that people changing their focus now is due to petty retaliation for insufficient bile? Why!? It’s just so insulting to everybody involved. I know you apologized, I’m not asking for another. Please just try to keep those thoughts to yourself in future, rather than speculating and starting vicious rumors.
Jake Harban
Why do you act as if every comment to you is a hostile, black or white argument? People are respectfully, and mostly politely trying to discuss it with you, and get your opinion on the subject, while SHARING their opinions.
In return, you doubt you could learn anything at all from anyone, over and over again.
When I saw the comment, I immediately scrolled down to see if anyone mentioned the asexual angle and… ah.
Jake-
I get where you are coming from, but I have to disagree. While celibate individuals not asexuals were the target of the “joke”, the framing of it is not accurate to claims made by celibate individuals. Celibate individuals do not argue that their celibacy is genetic. In fact, the very point of their celibacy is to make a big show out of denying their nature and thus being “stronger” than their “urges”.
It’d be like saying, if fish were to say they are mammals, why are they in the lake? Just missing the point on every level.
So yeah, it’s a bad joke, but the framing of that argument is true for a lot of asexuals. A lot of asexual activism does focus on the idea that asexuality is a valid sexuality and that we were in fact born with it, however that takes shape biologically. This makes his argument much more relevant to asexual experiences and I think that’s why a number of aces, myself included, do feel perturbed and targeted by this (though of course that isn’t going to be everyone, obviously).
Because that is an argument for dismissing asexual identity. And I recognize it because more dismaying, its a recycling of a long-standing homophobic joke in the STEM communities about how “if there’s a gay gene, where did you inherit it”, which similarly misses the point.
I do not doubt it was a simple throwaway joke (twitter makes it easy to ill-advisedly through those out there). But the social connotations of the joke are concerning and definitely echo a series of bad assumptions surrounding ace people including that we are celibate and those terms can be mixed and matched and that we are lying about being born the way we are.
Though more concerning than all that might be the accusation that he may have date raped one of the students he had as a grad student TA.
Jake @100
A romantic asexual is an individual who does not experience sexual attraction*, but who does experience romantic attraction, think falling in love and all that jazz, but not having pants feelings for people.
*This of course being an oversimplifaction, because asexuality and romantic orientation, much like gender is a vast spectrum, and so there are also different flavors of gray-asexual or demisexual who may experience sexual attraction in specific moments, in low amounts, or sporadically. And there are gray-romantic, demiromantic and so on individuals whose romantic orientation is similarly within the digital range.
Hope that helps!
DeGrasse Tyson is referring to the N0S3X gene. It is located on chromosome 24.
Well, Caine’s sure was and that kind of set the tone.
I don’t think many people would argue that asexuality is genetic. Orientation in general is shaped by a very wide range of factors, and it’s clearly not hereditary.
I dunno, if you replace “their nature” with “human nature,” and “denying” with “above” I could kind of appreciate the sentiment. I do think being asexual is far preferable to any of the alternatives.
Strictly speaking, it’s a lack of sexuality, but yes I get the point.
Indeed. I’ve only ever heard the simplistic evolution/naturalistic fallacy argument used against gay or bi people, but that it would be used against asexual people is hardly unexpected.
OK, this actually does bother me a little. I don’t “identify as” asexual or have an “asexual identity.” If someone pushed a magic button to reshuffle everyone’s presets and I became straight, I would be annoyed but it wouldn’t make me a different person. If someone tells me point-blank that I must want to have sex with someone because of (insert excuse here), they’d have uttered a complete absurdity, but they wouldn’t have dismissed my value or legitimacy as a person any more than if they’d insisted I must be a fan of some sports team or have a favorite movie or any other recreational thing some people presume is universal.
But what is “romantic attraction?” I have only ever heard “falling in love” with someone as a euphemism for/prelude to wanting to have sex with them, or otherwise referring to a category of relationships for which sex is a defining factor.
Moreover, the idea of a “romantic orientation” tends to presume sex being involved in some capacity; what bits you have doesn’t matter if I don’t intend to see them anyway.
The notion that there is something wrong or abnormal about people who don’t engage in sex/pair up is what is implied by this tweet, and the old joke. It’s a common enough idea in our culture now, but long ago when I was a wee child, there were many adults in my very rural conservative community who were simply not interested. It was completely ordinary.
There were all sorts of different “normal” living arrangements. Adult children often lived in the same house with, or next door to their parents, single or married. Nursing homes did not exist. Gay people also didn’t exist, although there were a few lifelong same sex “couples who never married so they lived with each other’. Other peoples sex lives were generally held to be private, and not open to inquiry.
Much of that changed with the sexual revolution. Some of it is good, progressive changes. It just seems so strange to me that with all this openness about human sexuality, being meh about sex, or not pairing up is seen as any other than perfectly normal and unremarkable human behavior.
Please stop talking. Now.
Jake Harban
Caine made you be rude and hostile to siggy? Wow, Caine must be a powerful magician to control you through the internet.
Now you’re just being absurd.
Tethys:
Yes, that’s me, the local sorcerer. I have mighty powers of super persuasion on those who are thick as a brick wrapped in cement, oh my yes.
Gad.
Being an asshole to asexual people is not a magic power.
Jake @107
I don’t think that that answer is fully concluded, but there are definitely factors that are inherited one way or another, whether they be due to genes, fetal development, or whatnot. That’s why asexuality, like most other orientations are seen in all different cultures, in many different animals, and so on. It’s clearly not environmental and since most people use “genetic” as a shorthand for “inherited”, well, I hope you can see me point.
We differ in that view. To me, asexual is just part of the hand I was given at birth, much like being trans. I don’t view myself as better than people with other sexual orientations or like I’m above their attractions for each other. And recognizing the challenges ace people and other people with marginalized sexualities face informs a lot of my queer activism.
I can only speak to my own experiences with romantic orientation, but for me, it’s an intense feeling of wanting to be with someone (not necessary sexually, but physically close in position, emotionally close in interaction, and with a nice dose of cuddles and life-sharing. It means I get crushes or feelings of NRE with people even if that doesn’t coincide with sexual desire to jump their bones. And so moments of NRE or nice anniversaries can be emotionally refreshing when I’m in a bad headspace. It’s feeling giddy or face flushed at the thought of someone.
It’s feeling like a romantic relationship (a thing that is acknowledged to be a romantic connection of some form with some appellation) is an important thing for my life and a need I want filled when I lack one. It’s probably everything you’ve heard with falling in love minus the pants feelings.
That’s just for me though, because I am very much a romantic asexual.
@Giliell, are you a native english speaker? The subjunctive tense is, in practice, used much less rigorously than prescriptivist texts demand, which may be a source of some confusion here. You’re certainly right about what those prescriptivist texts say.
This may help.
“Defining the brain systems of lust, romantic attraction, and attachment.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12238608
Helen Fischer also has a nice TED talk on the subject.
For my part I’ve seen enough asexuals speak about themselves to believe that all three of those can have different patterns of activity. I would be utterly unsurprised if there were patterns that result in human celibacy that are completely normal to our species.
I should have said “…all three can have different and independent patterns of activity”. For example I have spoken to some asexuals who can be sexual after getting to know people over time so they don’t do “love at first sight” (which honestly seems like a lust response to me), but they do attach sexually after a social connection is strengthened (they might be better off than most of us in this regard, many people don’t use that phase to build on the social connections very well).
I also should have phrased things better in my last sentence. There ARE completely normal patterns that result in human celibacy and this just helps to understand parts of how it is shaped. My apologies.
Tyson’s comment read to me as: “There is no celibacy gene”. This is consistent with his sense of humor. Any other interpretation puzzles me.
As some mammals never do procreate at all, while their peers so, Neil is not even wrong.
Astrophysicist makes joke about biology!
Film at 11…
Biologist makes jokes about astrophysics, film at 11:05, with reviews the remainder of the hour.
@Jake Harban #107 – Um, being straight has nothing to do with being asexual. Straight/gay/bi/pan is about who you feel attraction toward, whether its sexual attraction or romantic attraction. Asexual/demisexual/allosexual is about whether you feel sexual attraction and when. Different things. People can be romantically attracted to the same gender and still be ace.
Also being ace is not a choice. Someone who has chosen, as you seem to have (?) not to have sex is being celibate, not asexual. Asexuals do not feel sexual attraction to anyone – it’s not a decision, it simply doesn’t happen. Most of us didn’t choose to be ace any more than people choose to be gay. It’s who we are, how we have always been, no more a conscious decision than being gay or bi.
Brony #117 – that sounds like demisexuality, not asexuality. Demis can feel sexual attraction to another person if we have formed a significant emotional connection to the person. It’s not automatic, though, and doesn’t happen very often (usually we form emotional connections and remain friends and never develop sexual attraction to anyone, which is why we’re on the ace/gray spectrum).
*waves tiny gray flag*
@drst, even ace is a “choice”, albeit a biological choice or selection made by the organism during development, with conscious choices to support or fight where one exists within the vast spectrum of human behavior.
I suggest that if one’s preference is not one that would be destructive to one’s own good, one should follow the biology, rather than add the stress of fighting against the biological selection preference.
Where the selection is destructive, such as a self-destructive fetish or attraction that is felonious in one’s society, one should compensate by adaption.
But, a lack of attraction, or an attraction only after a firm relationship has been established is quite obviously part of the normal human spectrum of traits and behaviors.
To which, the French said it best, Vive la différence!
After all, if one only is with people like oneself, it’s as much an echo chamber as talking to oneself. That would be mind numbingly boring to me.
Only interacting with those much different from oneself can one learn about others, as well as oneself. :)
I don’t have kids. My sister has kids, and thanks to my extra free time, I can help babysit them fairly often. My sister’s kids likely have a lot of genes in common with me, some of which might include a lack of interest in the the ol’ bumper cars, as no one has ever called it.
Gee, that didn’t take much work, just a bit of imagination.
I love that Neil fellow, but he’s wrong on this one.
@drst
Ack….
Thank you. At one point I had these things mentally categorized as subsets of asexuality and I can have some issues rearranging things like that from time to time. Thank you for the correction.
quints
Nobody fuckin uses prescriptivism in English anymore.
So, I give you points for trying, but none for playing “silly non-native speaker with a fuckin English degree”
It’s certainly the product of many factors, but not inherited in the strictest sense of the term; knowing a complete history of your ancestors’ and family members’ orientations as well as your own does not allow you to predict your children’s orientations with any more accuracy. It’s entirely probable that sexual orientation is determined by an unpredictable multitude of interacting genetic and developmental factors.
That’s not actually a different view. I agree that my being asexual was simply luck of the draw and I don’t consider myself (morally) superior as a result. However, I do believe that being asexual is preferable to any of the alternatives. That something was random does not stop me from appreciating it; had I been born an aristocrat with a billion-dollar family fortune, I would also appreciate that even while recognizing that it wasn’t something I earned or chose or am morally superior because of.
I also believe that if I were magically transformed into a straight person, I would not be a different person because of it, any more than if I were magically transformed into someone with an “old money” fortune.
Oh. Omitting the physical closeness and cuddles (since I’m really weird about tactile sensations), that’s not exactly an alien concept to me. I’ve just never heard it called “romance” per se.
And how does “romantic orientation” fit in? None of the things you describe are contingent on sex (noun), so why should it matter what sex (noun) your partner(s) are?
OK, that I’m pretty certain I’ve never felt. I’m sort of nominally aware of the feeling but I always thought of it as a function of sexual attraction. Mind you, even if that’s the case I suppose it could still exist independently of it. I always sort of figured that “sexual attraction” was a number of elements stacked on top of each other, and even asexual people usually have part of an unfinished stack to varying degrees. I guess you just have one or two more pieces than I do?
Well, the way I’ve heard it, “falling in love” refers to a sensation/relationship foisted on you by your subconscious without your ever actually choosing it as such, which consists of (a) a sense of/desire for commitment and exclusivity, (b) a sense of/desire for emotional and sometimes physical closeness, and (c) a black box of all the stuff I don’t feel, which is mostly sex-related. Apparently, some of the black box contents are either separate from or at least separable from sex.
So here’s the thing— I could totally go for a committed, emotionally close relationship with someone I like spending time with, but I don’t find the absence of such a relationship to be affirmatively unpleasant as such and I really don’t like the idea of having such a relationship be based on having a feeling giving me a drive to be with someone specific. I would particularly like having such a relationship with someone I could cuddle with and not recoil but since such a person probably doesn’t exist I’ll just say it’ll be a no-touching type of affair. So where do I get classified on the “romantic” spectrum?
Speaking of, a relationship defined by emotional closeness could easily be with a member of one’s own family, yet it seems odd to define “romance” in such a way that familial relationships can qualify.
I didn’t say it did. Being straight and being asexual are two very different orientations. My point was that if you magically changed me from one to the other, I wouldn’t be a different person as a result.
Not quite. Straight/gay/bi/ace is about who you feel sexual attraction toward; opposite-sex, same-sex, both sexes, or no one respectively. Romantic attraction, as defined above, would not have hard-wired orientations because one’s sex is irrelevant for its purposes. Allosexual vs. demisexual refers to the circumstances under which straight/gay/bi people feel sexual attraction to their preferred sex(es); arbitrarily, or only within existing relationships respectively.
Wait, hold up— is this about sex or gender? Gender is culturally constructed and thus fundamentally arbitrary, meaning it’s impossible for there to be hard-wired gender preferences on a species-wide level.
I’ve never heard anyone say it was (at least until freetotebag in this thread).
I never said I chose to be asexual, just that I’m happy I am— I do not feel sexual attraction to anyone, but what I know about sexual attraction makes it seem like an imposition that I am lucky to be exempt from.
Jake Harban
It certainly can be an imposition, but I’m glad to have experienced the altered state of mind that comes along with both good sex, and being in romantic love. Endorphins are perfectly healthy for humans, and better than any drug.
@Tethys #128:
Given the thread’s subject and audience, do you see how an effusive comment about how YOU ARE able to enjoy a thing that said minority (often) cannot, and how great you believe it is, can be problematic?
I get that you were reacting to add a valid counterpoint, but most human cultures are already saturated with the sentiment. At best, the reminder is superfluous. At worst, it can feed the broken/abnormal narrative.
skycaptain
My comment is my own experience agreeing that it can be an imposition, and a reply to one particular person. Effusive? I hardly think ‘glad to have experienced’ qualifies as effusive, or implies other choices are not valid.
@Tethys #130:
“better than any drug” actually. But otherwise: understood. I won’t derail over that.
Just something I thought worth considering for future threads. The “aces aren’t broken” is a message directed to aces themselves as well as everyone else.
skycaptain
I see how you could conclude that based on one comment, but it is not valid to do so.
It’s been a very long discussion, and that was simply my most recent comment, which was a reply. If you think I am implying any brokenness with asexuality, by making a factual statement about brain chemistry, you are mistaken.
Hmm… #131 was incomplete. I wasn’t referring to your intent.
When one sees oneself as broken, others’ positive personal experiences come across as testimonials about how rewarding it’d be to seek a way to fix oneself. Such messages don’t invalidate in and of themselves, but they feed an ambivalence aces sometimes suffer.
Is that clearer?
What is not clear to me is why you think I need you to explain any of this to me? We have been discussing the harm of our over sexualized culture for several days from multiple viewpoints. I made that comment days ago as part of a longer conversation, and if Jake feels I was dismissive I will immediately apologize for invalidating his viewpoint.
Oh christ, I’m not touching the above bigposts with a ten foot pole. Too much binarism for my taste.
Or just like, general wrongness.
My lesbian friend didn’t magically become bi because her girlfriend is trans.
@Tethys #134:
My expectations were inappropriate. This was an ace-topic thread, not an ace forum. Your perspective here was not uninvited, and you were unimpressed by my suggestion of splash damage. I have nothing to add.
I missed the binarism, and I just don’t even know what you’re complaint is in #136 vivec. I don’t really care to go into the specifics of having sensory issues as it applies to sex, versus romance, versus not caring if you engage in any combination of emotional/physical relationship.
I hate auto spell. Your not you’re in my previous.
@138
It was in reference to the “attraction is about sex, not gender” sort of thing. By the definition given in a post (not one of yours), a lesbian in a relationship with a trans woman is bisexual.
Skycaptain
Actually I am annoyed that unless I out myself, you will continue criticizing me for something I never said or thought.. I refuse to apply labels, and you are having a context failure. I currently identify as an extinct female ocean, it’s not just my name and photo.
Thanks vivec for the clarification at #140. I try to respect all people, so please do call me out if I use the wrong terminology or say something unkind.
@142
I mean, no worries, I didn’t see anything particularly objectionable so far.
I just much prefer gender-based terminology – and its certainly how I identify my orientation, not by sex. Otherwise I’d be in the position of being in a “straight same-gender relationship” and I don’t really feel that describes me, any more than calling my lesbian friend bisexual because her girlfriend is trans.
@Tethys #141:
I apologize for my oversights and for annoying you.
Experiencing romantic attraction and enjoying sex itself are not grounds for assuming “Not Ace”, or that your perspective would be unwelcome on an ace forum, however you identify. I retract my criticism.
Vivec
Yes, that doesn’t really seem particularly accurate to me either. Sexual attraction does not necessarily require gender, except for the people involved. People tend to have very specific attractions, and so I think it is best if they choose their own labels to define them. I am happy to use self chosen labels, I just rebel whenever people try to pigeonhole any human behavior with a label.
For all its sexual freedom, American culture is seriously basic human touch deprived. It’s really quite sad that as adults, snuggling is only accorded a sexual connotation. I once had a group of workmates who came from Mexico, and they would all sleep as I drove between jobs, all snuggled up and using each other as pillows. It was so sweet and so very foreign to me to see a bunch of macho dudes hug, kiss, and engage in that much physical contact with friends.
skycaptain
Thank you. I accept your retraction and apology. I think the general topic was celibacy and it’s evolved into a very interesting discussion about the very different personal ways various people have conceptualized it for themselves. All of them are valid except claiming that being ace is abnormal, so I was very confused by your critique.
@Tethys #146:
My desire to participate exceeded my capacity. Foot-in-mouth moments like this are a big deal to me, so even though they resolved amicably, they’re more memorable than my useful contributions, and I have this urge to redeem myself that makes me reckless the next time. It’s an intermittent urge at least. : /
@147, we’ve all had our share of fine meals of our own feet.
What counts is when one realizes such, one gracefully acknowledges the fact and all move onward constructively.