Orientation is About Finding the Pattern

A set of (x,y) data points with a best-fit line drawn through them. The data is basically linearly correlated, but the fit isn't perfect. Image source.

The topic for the August 2023 Carnival of Aces is "Asexuality and Orientation." So, I want to talk about how orientation labels are about describing the overall patterns of your feelings/experiences. It doesn't mean every single feeling you've ever felt fits the definition for that orientation label. It's about the pattern.

Here's a bunch of examples. First I have examples about orientation, and then I want to talk about finding or not finding patterns in my own life, related to dating, etc.

Here we go:

I once met a lesbian who was dating a trans man. This was confusing to me, because... "lesbian" means she's only attracted to women... is she saying that trans men are women? Uh that seems... not very trans-accepting. But thinking about it now, I don't think that's it. I think the overall pattern that describes her attraction is, she's attracted to women, and her trans man boyfriend is something of an exception to that. Or perhaps she's attracted to him because he has some of the qualities that she finds attractive in women, even though he's a man. The overall pattern of her being a lesbian is still true, but that doesn't mean every single thing in her life has to fit the simple definition of "lesbian."

Related to that, I remember seeing a post online where someone said, "I'm a lesbian, but my boyfriend was grandfathered in." (I find it HILARIOUS to use the word "grandfathered" here.) I guess she means, she already had a boyfriend, and then she figured out she's a lesbian, but she wants to stay in the relationship with him. (There could be all kinds of reasons she would choose to do that.) So "lesbian" is the term that best fits the overall pattern of her feelings/ how she wants other people to see her, but her boyfriend is an exception.

And here's a question: How do non-binary people fit into the straight/gay/bi/pan framework? If someone is, for example, a straight man, that means he's attracted to women. Is he attracted to non-binary people? Should we not use the terms "straight" and "gay" because they treat non-binary people like they don't exist? My answer to that is, most people know very few non-binary people (if they know any at all), and non-binary people's gender expression is all over the map- is it even possible to make generalizations, to find the "pattern" that summarizes your attraction to non-binary people? I think most people simply don't have enough data to find a pattern, so it doesn't make sense to use an orientation label that indicates "I'm attracted to non-binary people" or "I'm not attracted to non-binary people." If I'm a straight woman, and I'm attracted to 1 out of 100 men, and I've met 5 non-binary people and I'm not attracted to any of them, well, who can say if it's because I'm just not attracted to non-binary people, or if it's because I don't have enough data? It wouldn't make sense to draw conclusions one way or the other.

(See also this post from Siggy, Attraction to nonbinary people, and this video from Verity Ritchie, Everyone is Attracted to Nonbinary People)

Another example: In the comments section of my post Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality, sildarmillion said, "For me personally, I ID as ace, as I've only felt sexual attraction to one male person, so I could be ace and hetero for all I know, but idk, I don't feel a strong connection with the Heterosexual label, so I don't identify with that label." This was surprising to me, because I thought being a woman, and having at least 1 experience of being attracted to a man, and not any other genders, that falls under the category of straight/hetero. But for her, there's no pattern to it. It just happened 1 time, so it doesn't make sense to draw a conclusion about being straight/hetero.

Also, one of my friends, let's call her Claire, once told me that her attraction changes a lot, like one day she's only attracted to women, and a different day she's only attracted to men- I think she described this as "sexually fluid." (And later she found the term "abrosexual" and was very happy because she felt it totally fit.) Like, from day to day or week to week, her sexual orientation changes. This was very surprising to me, specifically, the idea of having a high enough frequency of data points that you can track changes on such short time scales. Wow! I very much cannot do that! I'm attracted to men, but on a typical day I probably won't meet any men I'm attracted to. (Except my husband because I live with him.) It's a really small percentage of men, and it's very normal for me to go for days or weeks without any of the men I meet being in that category. 

Really it's a super-interesting math question about how as you measure at higher and higher frequencies, any calculations you make about rates of change become less reliable because of noise. But, apparently, Claire had such a high frequency of being attracted to people, that she really could identify patterns on the scale of days or weeks. Wow! Cool!

(I can identify patterns on a time scale of years, personally.)

And, since it's about finding patterns, there could be 2 people with the same experiences, but one of them thinks those experiences show a pattern, and the other thinks those experiences are just exceptions that can be ignored, and so they use different identity labels. For example, maybe one person is bisexual, and one person is "I'm straight but I fooled around in college." Maybe it's a woman who usually dates men, but she has had a few sexual experiences with women here and there. Does she see those experiences with women as a key part of the overall pattern of her attraction? Then she might identify as bisexual. Or does she see herself as straight, and those were just small minor exceptions that don't really matter? Both interpretations are valid- it's a matter of what she feels like counts as a "pattern."

But, also, I've seen bi people who were unhappy about people labelling themselves as "straight but I fooled around in college" or "heteroflexible." The criticism was, people want to say their same-sex experiences don't "count", because they believe there's something *wrong* with being bi- so it's internalized bigotry against bi people. I think I come down on the side of "you shouldn't tell people what labels they're allowed to use" but also... maybe there's some truth to the argument that your own internal biases can have an effect on whether you identify something in your life as a "pattern" or an "exception."

Or, let's talk about the difference between asexual and gray-asexual. I think this difference is ALL ABOUT whether you personally perceive there to be a pattern in your own life or not. When I was first questioning if I was asexual, I was very concerned about how the exact definition says "no sexual attraction." What if I have had sexual attraction, at some point in my life, but I don't remember, or I didn't understand what it was? I can't prove that this never happened! How can I confidently ID as asexual? And eventually I concluded that since I can't figure out if I've ever experienced sexual attraction or not, that pretty much means I haven't- so I can ID as asexual. And also I was glad that the category of gray-asexual also exists, because then if I'm wrong and I actually have experienced sexual attraction, then that means I wasn't really that far off- asexual and gray-asexual are similar enough. It wouldn't be like... I'm a totally not-queer heterosexual person trying to invade the queer community because I want to label myself and be special.

But my point is, don't worry about "oh maybe I have had sexual attraction at some point in my life but I just didn't realize it" and think you're not allowed to ID as asexual. If it hasn't happened enough times that you can find a pattern to it, then you don't have to base your identity on it.

And what if you have experienced sexual attraction to exactly 1 person, throughout your whole life? Is that asexual or gray-asexual? Well, it could go either way, depending on whether you feel like it fits into a pattern that describes your identity, or it was just a weird thing that happened once and isn't really connected to the rest of your life. Perhaps you felt sexual attraction to 1 person, and you clearly understood that's what it was, and it feels like the sort of thing that could happen again- maybe then, you ID as gray-asexual. Or perhaps you felt sexual attraction, but the whole thing was confusing and seemed out of character for you, and you can't make sense of it- maybe you decide to ID as asexual then, because your overall pattern is being sexually attracted to no one, and this 1 experience just doesn't fit.

And maybe these hypothetical asexual and gray-asexual people actually had the exact same experience, and it's their own perspective and mental model of the world that leads them to conclude "this fits a pattern" or "this doesn't fit a pattern." Both interpretations are fine here. There's more to it than just your raw experience- it's also about the assumptions you use when you analyze your experiences to look for patterns.

(Gray-asexual can mean a lot of other things too- I recommend Siggy's post Many ways to be between.)

And I can talk about my own experiences with patterns or lack thereof. I'm straight, I know I'm straight because I'm a woman and I've been attracted to lots of guys, and not any women. Clearly a pattern. (Turns out, it wasn't sexual attraction though. It was other kinds of attraction.) Ever since I was in high school, if you asked me at any time who I'm attracted to, I could name offhand at least 1 of my friends/acquaintances and maybe a few celebrities. (Not that I would actually tell someone if they asked- that's none of their business.) Like, right now, there's my husband, and also Robert Downey Jr. (And more.)

Robert Downey Jr., as Tony Stark in the "Avengers" movies. Causing me to stumble. Image source.

And the patterns of how I'm attracted to guys have changed some, over the years. The ace concepts of romantic attraction/ sensual attraction/ aesthetic attraction are useful for analyzing that- but also, there are some other patterns I have which are more complicated. And I don't want to give details because it's my own feelings and not of interest to anybody else, but yeah I can identify patterns and see how some aspects of it have changed. But it always fit the definition of "straight."

So I can definitely talk about the overall patterns of how I experience attraction. And crushes. Plenty of those. But you know what I don't have a pattern for? Dating. I've only dated 3 people total (1 of them is my husband) and basically the whole time I felt like I was winging it and had NO IDEA what was going on. Every exciting development that happened was a huge surprise, and I had no idea how I was supposed to react. Every relationship problem we had, it felt like a completely unique situation, and I didn't have the faintest idea about general principles for how to solve those kinds of things.

(3 people total, not counting the times I went on dates without realizing they were dates.)

Here's an example from when I was dating my first boyfriend, let's call him BF1. So, we weren't officially dating yet, but we went out and spent the whole day together, and then had dinner at a restaurant, and I asked him, "So... are we dating?" and he said "I hope so" and I said "okay good." Is that normal? Is that how it usually works? Is that what I was supposed to say? I HAVE NO IDEA!

Like, how do people ask people out? How do people know when they're "officially" a couple? I don't know! I can tell you how it happened for me, these 3 times I've been in a dating relationship, but I definitely don't feel like my experiences are "normal" or like they fit into a bigger pattern of "how dating works."

And when we had relationship problems, I didn't have any sense of "yes, this is the sort of problem that happens sometimes in a relationship, and usually it's related to this underlying reason, and you can address it by doing this." No, it always felt like the problems that came up were completely unexpected, and I had no idea how to deal with them.

But... that could be because of purity culture. Because I followed purity ideology back then, I didn't really have any understanding of what healthy or unhealthy relationships look like. It was just "if you're not having sex, that's a healthy relationship" and "if you're both Christians, that's a healthy relationship" and "if you want to date someone, you have to pray about it and find out if God says you can date them." So if there was a relationship problem, all I could do was... like... not have sex (that's easy, of course we're not having sex) and... ask God what to do. And God's answers could be ANYTHING- I had no understanding of like... a general body of healthy advice that applies to pretty much all relationships.

So anyway, back then, when I was dating other guys before my husband (and also at the beginning of my relationship with my husband) I felt that the things that happened were unique reactions to the unique situations we were in, and not at all generalizable to some "this is what dating is like" idea. And when my friends tell me about their experiences with dating, they're not like mine at all. So I don't have a "pattern" for dating.

I also don't have a pattern for "what sex is like"- I only know what sex is like with my husband, and when other people talk about sex, it isn't relatable to me at all. So I have no idea what sex is like "in general." I always wonder, how many people do you have to date, before you can make generalizations about "how dating works"? How many people do you have to have sex with, before you can make generalizations about "how sex works"?

But, actually, it doesn't necessarily have to be about your own experience with sex and/or dating. It could also be observing your friends' relationships, seeing relationships in movies, etc, and feeling like they make sense to you.

Because, here's something interesting: I *do* make generalizations about marriage. Hmm, I've only been married to 1 person, and yet I often make statements like "this is what marriage is about." How can that be? 

I think it's because, when I hear other people describing the specific dynamics of their marriage, they feel similar to things I've experienced in my marriage. Things related to living with someone for so long that you know all their little quirky/annoying/charming habits. Things like, "in a marriage, there's always 1 person who turns on all the lights in the house, and 1 person who goes after them and turns all the lights off." (This is the biblical definition of marriage.) Or, here's a little piece of advice: Before you get married, you have to find out if your partner is the kind of person who can't stop talking about what other movies all the actors are in, every time you watch a movie. Or, this is cute- the husband who gathers a whole bunch of pillows and sets them up on the wife's side of the bed, because she likes to sleep with a lot of pillows. Knowing these little details about your partner's habits, and showing them love in the way you adapt your own habits to fit together with theirs. That's what marriage is about.

And I think that is something that can generalize to most happy marriages (or even most relationships where people live together long-term). When people talk about marriage- specifically, the very deep ways that people know each other so well and care for each other, as a natural result of being together for so long- it does feel relatable to me. (I love Taylor Swift's song "Lover" and Justin Timberlake's song "Mirrors" because they're about these long-term relationship dynamics.) So that's why I feel I can make generalizations about marriage. (Unless they're talking about sex in marriage, lol I still have no idea.)

So maybe it's not just about if a pattern exists or not- it's about your ability to recognize the pattern, and that's very much based on the examples you've seen from other people, and what patterns they describe. Many queer people have had the experience of hearing about an identity label, and suddenly it "clicks." They never had a way to make sense of their experiences and feelings before, but then this identity label comes along and describes a possible pattern, and they realize, wow, I fit this pattern!

So when you're thinking about orientation and what label to identify with, you don't have to take it literally when a label says it means "only" attracted to a certain gender, or "never" experiencing sexual attraction, or any other words like that. You can identify with a label while still having a few experiences here or there which are "exceptions" to it. You look at the overall pattern of your feelings and experiences. And it's totally possible that people with the same experiences would choose different identity labels, because they may reach different conclusions about what's a pattern and what's not.

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Related:

Labels Are Useful When You're Far Enough From "Normal" That "Normal" Makes No Sense
OF COURSE Dating is Different as an Adult 
If One Partner Doesn't Want to Fix the Relationship, Then It's Just Not Fixable 
What My Marriage Is Actually About (It's Not Sex And It's Not Jesus) 

And these posts from Siggy: 
An ace perspective on single-target sexuality 
Shared Experience, Different Words

Update: sildarmillion wrote a response to this: Am I Straight Though? Or, Does Orientation Matter?