[Theory Thursday #1, part 2]

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Thanks, truly, for everyone who answered my last post. I am trying to thrash this out, and I don’t have very many people around that I can safely talk to about it. I appreciate the discussion — I appreciate the direct challenge to some of my basic principles, even. I do not promise to agree with anything you say, but I will try to be an intellectually honest little lizard, and try to understand them at least.

I am not sure quite how to go about this, though.

There are at least two sensible approaches.

First, I might have mis-classified myself in my current (and correct) classification system. I had somewhat assumed that in my previous post, but many of you have challenged me on it, so I am willing to consider the possibility that this is the wrong question altogether.

Or Second, my current classification system might be incorrect, in a lesser or greater degree. (Example ‘lesser’: modify the definition of ‘traff’ to allow some same-species interest. Example ‘greater’: toss the whole thing out, and simply rank a person’s possible interest in each of the eight prime species on a scale from 1-12.)

But I can’t see all the way to picking a new classification system right now. Before that, I should at least try to think of what makes a good classification system. Here are a few thoughts from a distinctly dazed dragonet:

1. Conciseness: it has as few categories as possible.
2. Simplicity: Each category is well-described by a simple phrase.
3. Accuracy: it describes people well; in particular, nobody is in two categories.
4. Ethnocentricity: it makes sense in terms of prime people and culture
5. Canonicality: it is, in a sense that I cannot currently define, defined sensibly. (E.g., a system with “likes mammals” and “likes non-mammals” is more canonical than “likes Cani and Rassimel” and “likes the other six species”.)
6. Usefulness: it is useful, e.g., for telling who I should admit to Castle Wrong on the basis of romantic preferences.

Bearing in mind that my current system scores well on all of these save, perhaps, accuracy. [Bard adds 'and canonicality' for reasons of its own. -bb]

Addendum: Tarfnie

(Tarfnie’s situation was rather more complicated than it might have seemed from my brief description. The Considerable Drama part of it include a number of regrettable incidents from nearly everyone involved, and I might have expelled Tarfnie — or Yowdon — on the basis of violence. The observation that Tarfnie was not traff and Yowdon was did help my decision. One or both of them had to go, though. I grant that several aspects of the situation continue to trouble me, and that I did not behave particularly well myself: but it was not so simple or wicked as discovering that Tarfnie was cissy and immediately tossing him out.)

Comments

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

The simplest, which is how I always think of cis and traff, and which covers your problem, is this:

Transaffectionate: capable of romantically loving/lusting someone of a species different than one's own.

Cisaffectionate: incapable of romantically loving/lusting someone of a species other than one's own.

It doesn't cover the subtleties of what people like in detail, but it draws the line culturally for what's "right" and "wrong" (a la Castle Wrong) in a way I think most people would agree with intuitively.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

I had an alternate system that was romance and relationship focused, and didn't say anything about lust, and with your system, would be written somewhat as,

Cisaffectionate: Interested in romance, love, and affection with their own species to the exclusion of others. Doesn't say anything about lust or play.
(Needs a term other than Libertine): Not actually interested in romance, love, and affection. Doesn't say anything about lust or play.
Transaffectionte: Interested in romance, love, and affection, but in any way other than "their own species to the exclusion of all others". Doesn't say anything about lust or play.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

A major problem here is that any system that focuses on brevity and simplicity will pretty much necessarily be at the expense of accuracy. People are complex; oversimplifying will lose a lot of important details. And when that oversimplification is repeated through multiple layers, it becomes even more of a problem - then you have people who don't even realize that there is complexity being lost, because they're taking the simplified version as absolute.

Castle Wrong might be best taken in a different metric entirely: people who are shunned by society, but not for anything that actually harmed anyone else, can have a place where they can be welcome. Or it can be left as "having transaffectionate leanings" without it being an absolute.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Here's a question: SHOULD any categorization include lust, play, and quick ephemeral and transient things like flings in it's categorization process? Or *should* it just describe something deeper and hopefully more solid, like the nature of a desire for a deep romantic relationship?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I'm confused shouldn't a classification system be there to describe the way things work? Like the way complexity and power describe properties of spells.

Doesn't your current classification system fit your experience? If it doesn't where did it come from?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Yes to the first, but in a useful way. Classifications like "like Sythyry" and "like Delights-in", one for each person, is accurate but not very helpful.

My current one generally fits my experience; it comes from various philosophers in the traff community of a century or so ago.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Well, if I were you, I'd first try to check out the current philosophical terms, leanings, and debates on the topic, see if the discussion has progressed any in a century or so, and maybe compare that to your current system?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The libraries in Eigrach have, I suspect, fairly little.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess you will probably have to find the surviving philosophers in person then! Too bad you aren't a wizard who specializes in teleporting and who has a skyship, and who is seen to be beneficial to the traff community! No, waitaminute... ;)

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Think of it as a Venn diagram. There are people who are cisaffectionate, and people who are transaffectionate, and there is some overlap between the two. How large the overlap is might be a lifetime's worth of study material for some energetic Rassimel researcher.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Stop thinking about it as a set of boxes to be placed in and start thinking of it as points on a two-dimensional graph. From left-to-right there's "cisaffectionate" to "transaffectionate"; from bottom to top there's "committed" to "flighty".

[stryck.livejournal.com]

Certainly in Monster world's sexual mores, there is overlap between those who have the standard attraction and those who have the non-standard one. So, us monsters usually use three categories, one to describe those with the standard attraction, one to describe those with exclusively the non-standard attraction, and one for those who have both.

Note that none of this has anything to do with love- it's all about sexual attraction. Love really has very little to do with sex. We might hope that we can find the two together, but all too frequently, this does not happen.

[rowyn]

That last does not match my personal experience at all, really. There are people that I love without being attracted to them, but almost everyone I've felt a strong sexual attraction to has been someone I love. I may be unusual in this regard, though.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

I was generalizing on a cultural level. One look at some of our common entertainments shows that, culturally, there is lots of sex without love involved.

Personally, I also don't feel much in the way of sexual attraction for people I don't already love. However, for all the time spent talking about "casual sex" in our culture, there's a real confusion where people mistake having sex for a statement of being in love. It causes a lot of harm to confuse the two. People make arguments based on love that are really about sex, or have expectations about sex that are really about love. It leads to a lot of people going after sex that really want love, who end up unfulfilled. It also leads to people who don't want love and just want sex hurting those who weren't told ahead of time that's what was involved.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

That would work, but doesn't give zir "three categories that absolutely everyone falls under"

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't want everyone. One Blenny is enough, for one thing. And having us be mostly traff means that there is a certain common understanding, common flirting, and considerable tolerance for other traff-folk.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

A concept with a certain undeniable elegance, but I am afraid I don't know what to do with it. And are those the only axes one might wish to consider? What of, say, "passive" to "aggressive" (in the sense of, some people tend to have passes made at them, and others tend to make passes)? Or "asexual" to "intensely sexual" (some people don't mind going for a few decades without a lover; others find it a hardship to go a few days without.) Or many others, I suppose, that one might want to know.

This approach is a triumph of accuracy and usefulness over simplicity and conciseness. But I seek to balance them.

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

Are you suggesting Sythyry deserves an entirely new branch of thaumaturgy to describe zir doom? For instance a Complexity 10 (Lusts-after+Is-confused-by)(Zi Ri+Orren) form of doom?

[bloofox.livejournal.com]

May I suggest a classification system that is as simple as the Ciff/Traff one, more useful, more accurate, and more ethnocentric?

1. Those whose predilictions in love and lust cause them social stigma.
2. Those whose predilications in love and lust do not cause them social stigma.

This seems to encapsulate all the important details, particularly on who should be admitted to Castle Wrong. THough for that purpose it may be desirable to add on a few exceptions for people doing dangerous things like wanting to bring their norren lover into the castle.

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

To clear up "canonicity" somewhat you might call it "well-dividedness". You're trying to figure out what ways of dividing the world matter to you, and that's a pretty subjective decision. Your gods clearly divided people into prime and non-prime, and primes by eight species, and there are physical (and magical) differences that play a big role in your lives. Interestingly, they seem to have made sex differences less important than in some other worlds. So you could either search for categories defined by the gods as important to them, or focus on more subjective categories that're important to you for whatever reason. Distinguishing between primes with red and non-red hides would be pretty pointless, but between your species vs. other species there're strong social taboos as well as divinely set rules.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Well if you wanted to you could try to quantify a potential lover as a point in n-dimensional space, where n is a number larger than fourteen because you've let yourself come up with far too many axes. And not so much classify them as points but as clouds, as areas that they wander around in.

but mostly my point is that you need to disconnect the 'cis/transaffectionate' axis from the 'capable of loyalty' one.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

"three categories that absolutely everyone falls under" fails to adequately model the world!

[redbird]

I'd say it should include them, but Sythyry is trying for simplicity, and that starts to require more terms: not only the possibility of sorting by whether people have or want flings, or sex with people they aren't in love with, but (for example) someone who can fall in love with their own and other species, but are only interested in casual play with one but not both.

[redbird]

We need more axes. One of which might be, indeed, whether someone is attracted to people they don't also love. With a range that would include "sure, they're separate things," "only attracted to those they already love," "fall in love with anyone they have sex with" (such a person might get cautious about taking new lovers), and "it depends on some other variable."

[At this rate I'm going to be digging out an old post by one of my partners, and noodling about things like what axes might be useful here.]

[redbird]

That's a useful binary if and only if sythyry agrees that none of that social stigma is inappropriate, and I suspect zie does not.