Oo! Somebody else who likes charts!

"I hope you don't mind if I split my response into two separate threads" Not at all! And thank you for such wonderfully courteous responses; I know this is a touchy subject. "As it regards the second issue, let's start by defining our terms." I knew I should look up "parallel" before replying to you. :) What I had in mind was analogy in the second sense: "resemblance in some particulars between things otherwise unlike." You proposed something along these lines: Sexual Orientations (To Whom) 1. Heterosexual with adult (woman) 2. Heterosexual with child (girl) 3. Homosexual with adult (man) 4. Homosexual with child (boy) Sexual Expressions (How) 1. Sadism 2. Necrophilia 3. Masturbation Etc. First of all, your chart makes no differentiation between a man attracted to a man and a boy attracted to a man, which shows that, even as a method of categorizing by age, the chart has its flows. But that's a minor matter. Let me try another chart, besides the one you have proposed: Sexual Orientations (To Whom) 1. Heterosexual 2. Homosexual Sexual Expressions (How) 1.With a child 2. With a masochist 3. With a dead person 4. With oneself Etc. You would object, no doubt, to being put in the second category, as though your attraction to children is a lesser matter than your attraction to males. Well, so does the sadist. It's not a question of whether one class is raised above the other (though in practice "orientation" is treated as superior to "expression"). It's a question of why gender should be treated as the overarching standard for determining a person's sexuality. You would add age as a standard, but that doesn't really resolve the problem that for some people, age and gender are not the most relevant aspects of determining whether they are attracted to a person. I say this as someone who's attracted to both genders; I'm sorry, but when I see a beautiful person walking down the street, my mind just doesn't ask, "Wait. Is this a male or a female?" Since I'm attracted to both, gender doesn't enter into the determination of whether I'm attracted to the person. (It could certainly enter into later questions such as, "Should I marry him and get good tax deductions, or should I marry her and live with someone who doesn't fall to sleep right after sex?") My mind *does* ask, "Is this an adult or a child?" because that's a relevant factor in determining whether I'll be attracted to the person, since I'm only attracted to adults. Similarly, a sadist who is attracted to both genders isn't going to be straining to see whether the person in front of him is a guy or a girl. He's going to be asking more important questions, like, "Would they look good in leather?" Here's another chart, which I think better reflects the reality of how people's attractions are oriented (these orientations are, of course, overlapping). Sexual Orientation (To Whom) In the chart below, choose A or B or both in each category Gender A. Someone of a different gender B. Someone of the same gender Age A. Someone of a different age B. Someone of the same age Power Differentials A. Someone who enjoys being given pain B. Someone who enjoys giving pain Life Status A. Someone who is dead B. Someone who is alive Closeness of Proximity 9. Oneself 10. Someone who is not oneself Etc. Now, I certainly agree that some people get centered in upon particular aspects of sexual expression; I just don't know how you can determine which centerings are variant enough to be listed in the "sexual expressions" category. I know guys who, for the life of them, could not go to bed with small-breasted women. It's just not in their sexuality. Why are they classified as "heterosexual with adult (woman)" under "sexual orientation," while a necrophiliac, who has a different standard for what he likes in women (namely, that they be dead) is classified under "sexual expression"? It's certainly helpful, in a rough sort of way, to classify sexualities, but it's dangerous to do this by creating a single dividing line and then declaring that everything on one side of the line is a sexual orientation. Rather, I think that one should do what historians of sexuality are beginning to do - make your classifications by recognizing that different types of factors enter into how people choose their partners. You might, for example, classify people by whether they are attracted to people, animals, or inanimate objects, in which case Mother Teresa is on the same side of the line as the voyeurs. Or you might classify people by whether they are attracted to certain age groups, in which case the zoophiles who are attracted to older animals would be classified with the men who are attracted to older women. Or you might classify people by whether they structure their sexual relationships according to hierarchy, in which case the mentoring boylovers and the sadists and the conservative Christians would end up in one corner, while the egalitarian boylovers and the egalitarian coprophiliacs and the (by definition) egalitarian masturbators would end up in the other corner. If you were willing to do *that*, then I'd have no problems with you saying, "Today we're going to classify people according to whether they are attracted to particular genders and age groups, or whether they are attracted by some other factor." You'd just need to recognize that this method of classification would be as arbitrary as the APA's decision to divide people solely by whether they are attracted by gender or by some other factor. Heather (who would like to retire the phrase "sexual orientation" before it gets used in the next round of warfare) Heather [E-mail]   [Home Page]